Category: News

Attachment issues in SL

Posted on by Inara Pey

The recent server updates on the 8-10th February introduced an intermittent attachment issue that was uresolved with the roll-outs of the following week.

The issue has been widely reported on all Viewers, and in some cases wrongly labelled as a Phoenix Viewer issue (I’ve recently assisted people using Phoenix, 1.23.5 and Viewer 2.4).

A JIRA has been raised on the issue, and the Phoenix team have posted some useful guidelines on dealing with matters (with thanks to CS for bringing this to my attention).

Lithium to drive the Community Platform

Posted on by Inara Pey

A little birdie chirped in my ear today that Lithium is to drive the new Comminity Platform recently blogged about.

No, not the copper coloured top variety made famous (in the UK at least) by a horde of clever little pink bunnies, but rather this kind. While it has not been confirmed, I’m guessing that the actual software will be this, which clearly ticks all the technology boxes Vogt Linden alluded to in his blog post; although I suspect the Lithium Awareness product may have a roll to play, given LL’s one-sided love affair with Facebook…

Certainly, the suite look more up to the task than the current tools in use. I still have reservations about the “power to the users” aspect of the new system, for reasons stated – and will be watching out for more news on this aspect of things. In the meantime, here’s to Lithium…

New community platform announced

Posted on by Inara Pey

Following Amanda Linden’s somewhat faux pas-ridden announcement about communications, Vogt Linden chips in with an overview of what to expect from the “new integrated community platform” currently on (apparently) a closed beta at the moment and due to roll out on March 2nd.

Given the Jive platform was supposed to be the saviour of all our woes some 18 months ago, and was specifically chosen by LL for its, umm… “ease and flexibility of use”, one can hardly be blamed for sidling up to this announcement (which, given the overall negative response to Amanda’s post, unsurprisingly has comments turned off) with a degree of scepticism.

The key points are:

A robust self-help facility: well, good – providing it works. Getting assistance is hard enough as it is at present, and anything the enables people to sort out for themselves what can be sorted out for themselves is a good thing – providing it stays relevant (and the comment about answers being editorially reviewed by LL for inclusion in the knowledge base is welcome. However (and you know that was coming, didn’t you?). Many things cannot be resolved through self-help or through the assistance of other knowledgeable users; they simply require expert and understanding help at the Lab’s end of things – and by and large, this is where it all falls down.

  • Non-premium members have a limited range of tickets that they can submit; often times the categories don’t match the problem they are encountering, and a ticket raised under the “nearest” (or most descriptive) category to their issue tends yo unhelpfully closed with a warning that it was incorrectly filed.Given that, by-and-large, non-premium members contribute to Second Life (and Linden Lab) in terms of content generation, revenue, turn-over, etc., this needs to be sorted out.
  • Even premium members are faced with tickets remaining open for weeks or even months at a time without resolution. Again, this is unacceptable.

These issues being the case, Help needs to be a level playing field for all users. It doesn’t matter if you’re a premium member or not, suffering an inventory loss or seeing items becoming visible but unobtainable in your inventory is upsetting on many levels, and LL need to beef-up their entire support environment, rather than rely on self-help and other residents.

A unified search function: “Search” and “Linden Lab” are not, to many residents, term that set well together (unless the words “borked”, “screwed up”, “messed up” or “doesn’t work” enter into the same sentence); ergo, it’s possible that this function in particular is going to come under a lot of scrutiny. Even so, if it works, then LL will equally be due the praise as well.

Single Sign-on: Many thought we had this, after all it was at one point touted as one of the “strengths” of the JIVE platform. Good on Linden Lab if it now turns out to be a reality, rather than a hoped-for.

Contribution-based roles: Here is where my hair starts standing on end, and I really would like to see more information around this idea. What I will say for now is, for God’s sake, Vogt / Amanda / whoever don not give any resident the powers of moderation! Period. The General Discussion forum is already awash with egos aplenty, cliques, and self-appointed “guardians” of what should or should not remain seen (though an over-zealous use of the Abuse button). More than one “high-scoring” forum participant has a reputation for re-editing her own past posts in order to “score points” against her adversaries. The very last thing we need is for these people to suddenly be granted additional “powers” that enables them to further interfere with discussions and debate.

Easier ways for Residents Customers to share their knowledge: again, good in theory, but I’ll reserve judgement on how this works out in practice, assuming there isn’t some overall Linden-grown editorial control.

Social Media hooks: Personally for me, a “meh” point – but if they provide a service other people like and wish to use, then excellent. Just don’t go making them an imperative (say on web profiles, etc.), for those that don’t want them. In short, and where appropriate, make them fully opt-in, not partially opt-out (as is indeed currently the case with web profiles).

It’s going to be interesting to see how some individuals handle the week-long block on forum postings. Given that some forum contributors  post at the rate of 5 or 6 posts a day (and one is currently running at an average of twenty post  a day (number of posts / number of days a member of the forums) – where on earth does she get the time to actually log in to SL?), I think LL are going to need to provide counselling and care for those suffering from withdrawal!

Improvements to Web Profiles

Posted on by Inara Pey

Q Linden has posted about Viewer 2.5 going live, and in particular brings up the subject of web-based Profiles.

The introduction of web profiles has caused a lot of consternation, not least because of the inclusion of Facebook and Twitter buttons. For myself, I actually rather like the approach in general: being able to edit my Profile from the web, rather than having to log-into SL is a useful feature. The moving Profiles to this format reduces asset server loads is also no bad thing (assuming it does).

However, privacy has been a thorny issue for some – and not just because of the aforementioned buttons. Many kicked back against the idea that their Profile, far from being nice and secluded inside Second Life, would now be viewable by anyone on the Web. Protests were written  – Linden Lab read them and listened.

Firstly, they made the Facebook and Twitter buttons optional – but only if you opt not to have your Profile searchable in-world. Not an ideal start, it seemed at the time, but a start.

Now, with Viewer 2.5, Linden Lab have extended the degree of privacy you have with regards to your Web Profile. You can now:

  • Opt not to have your Profile displayed on the web at all
  • Select whether your Groups and Picks are viewable by “everyone” – the entire Internet and by search engines, or visible only to Second Life Users logged into SL / using the SL website, or only visible to your friends
  • Select whether any Classifieds yo may have are searchable / viewable on the web as a whole, or only by Second Life residents.

These are welcome changes, and even the defaults for Groups, Picks and Classifieds are sensible (they are set to Second Life). I’d personally prefer to see the option to have your Profile displayed on the web given precisely the same level of granularity as Groups and Picks, rather than it simply being an “on” or “off” affair – but perhaps that will come in time.

To see your profile and set your defaults, type:

https://my.secondlife.com/First.Last

into the address bar of your browser (where First.Last are your SL first name and last name). Press RETURN and your Profile page will be displayed.

You may have to log-in to the page using the link at the top right, which will take you to the log-in screen. Once you’ve logged in (SL username and password), you’ll be returned to your Profile page, which will now be editable and have a Privacy Settings link in the top right corner (see below).

Click on this link to open the Privacy option page, which is quite straightforward in its use.

Also, if you leave your Profile as viewable on the web, and are concerned about personal information, you can use the EDIT button from your profile page to re-word  / remove references to your real life – all such edits will be reflected back in your in-world Profile as well.

These moves are not perfect, but they are stepping in the right direction, and Linden Lab deserve the credit for adding this functionality to Viewer 2.5.

ADDENDUM – Feb 14th

There are times when one should look before one leaps. I’ve just had time to fiddle with Viewer 2.5, and I have to say two things:

  • Profile loading is abhorrent. I’m running a quad-core system with a newly-upgraded graphics card exceeding the recommended specification for SL, with bandwidth wide  open for SL – and the average time for a Profile to be grabbed and loaded is around 5 seconds. Hideous.
  • It appears the option to “Hide your profile” from the web means that no-one in-world can view your Profile either. This makes the ability to “hide” your profile about as useful as a chocolate shovel is for moving hot coals.

Far from deserving credit, as I originally stated, someone at LL needs a swift kick up the arse. Not everyone wants their profiles blasted across the interwebs; yet to maintain visibility in-world, that’s precisely what people have to do with Viewer 2.5, and frankly, that’s pathetic.

I sincerely hope there will be a way to correct this idiocy and give people a genuine choice.

And, having updated this post, I’m off to nibble on crow pie…

More from Rod Humble: Privacy

Posted on by Inara Pey

“Privacy is extremely important for anyone putting themselves out there, expressing themselves, or expressing a side of themselves through an avatar. People don’t want other people to connect the dots from their avatar to their real life person – or even, for that matter, to an alt. One of the ethical obligations we have is to protect people’s privacy

“People come to Second Life because they want a story, they want to be in a story….and we have an ethical obligation to protect that.

“I’m not so sure that the conventional wisdom makes any sense. Yes, it might be technically easy to track people and all that. But in the long-term I’m optimistic that we’ll see the pendulum swing back in the other direction towards more privacy.”

Thus speaks Rod Humble in what is quite possibly the best interview held with him since he took office at Linden Lab, and Kudos to Dusan Writer for bringing it to us.

It’s an uplifting piece on many levels. The comments about privacy, for example, are particularly relevant given both the degree to which Linden Lab seems determined to shovel users of Second Life towards Facebook and the manner in which data is being scraped and potentially used by the likes of RedZone.

For me, the interview is encouraging, as I’ve been advocating the need for Linden Lab to take what I term a more holistic view of Second Life, and to stop looking at it in terms of how it can be “compartmentalised”: focusing on individual technical issues, trying to tap into audiences, etc., and start looking at it as a complete, unified entity. In fact, I’ve already had concerns that Rod Humble is sliding into this very trap.

But no, he does seem to get it: he recognises the fact that the magic of Second Life is about the ability to create – physically and metaphorically (he talks about us being able to create “personas” in SL and imbue them with specific identities) – and he really does demonstrate he’s thought about these ideas, and is not simply peddling words.

Similarly, he recognises that Second Life can increase its relevancy in terms of real world interactions by providing n-world and supportive tools that work with the platform to empower people to interact with one another through Second Life (rather than telling them to bugger off elsewhere).

This is marvellously encouraging. Of course, there is a degree of hyperbole that strays dangerously close to Rosedale Country; after making very valid points about the relevancy in having multiple personas in life (which we all do), and these personas / identities being an integral part of our being (a marked difference from Zuckerberg over at FB, who views  multiple identities as demonstrating a “lack of integrity”), Rod does unfortunately slip into Pipspeak:

“I don’t want to get all geeky about it, but I sort of see this day coming when there’s a formalization of identity that happens. We haven’t had the tools before to formalize our broken up bits of identity…We can increasingly go deep on each element of identity and they become more valuable and I can’t help thinking that if we formalize the structures around those identities and have the tools to do that it might actually change us – it might change the person.”

Shades of Transhumanism lurking there – but not enough to shake one’s feeling that here, finally, Linden lab have struck gold. Rod Humble not only gets Second Life technically, he gets it visually, socially, personally, and metaphorically. In short, he appears to understand it holistically.

Lets hope that understanding translates itself into policies and action that allow us all to look back in 12 months or so, and we”ll all be “talking about all the new kinds of content and creations and categories of creation…and say ‘Wow, it’s amazing, look how far we’ve come in having ways to make stuff‘.” And that we’re all secure and confident in the levels of privacy and security Second Life affords us.

Apez sold

Posted on by Inara Pey

After all the confusion, Apez has now been sold. It appears that Egoisme is now the new owner. Some Apez users are reporting on SLU that service continued more-or-less “as normal” during the last few months, and Cenji has indicated that all accounts have / are being honoured in terms of payouts.

How things will pan out for people remains to be seen. Certainly, with the demise of Slapt.me, the apparent disappearance of Metaverse Exchange and the wholehearted chewing-up-and-spitting-out of On Rez in favour of the SL Marketplace (nee XStreet SL nee SL Exchange), a good, solid, competitor is required to face-off against Linden Lab if only to encourage further development of, and enhancement to, current services. Whether this can be Apez / Egoisme remains to be seen.

Certainly, no-one can deny that Apez as a brand is now  – pardon the pun – damaged goods. Therefore, any attempt to “restore” the Apez name (as Egoisme state they would like) is potentially going to be akin to trying to push water up a hill.

However, the Apez system – servers, vendors, etc., did and do work well, and retain a lot of potential. Put them together with a reliable level of customer service (which many complained was a major issue with Apez), develop a really solid front end that disposes with things like “Sekrit Naughty Words Of The Day” lists, which offers both consumers and merchants a flexible means of both finding and promoting goods and services under a brand entirely distinct from Apez, and Egoisme might just have something. It’s still going to be an uphill climb – especially given the overall state of stagnation within Second Life and LL’s ability to massively steer people towards SLM; as such whether the possible rewards of persevering with such an effort prove worthwhile for those concerned remains to be seen.

Update: Egoisme apparently sold Apez not long after acquiring it. When this took place & to whom is unclear. All reference to Apez (including the press release announcing the acquistion linked-to above) has been removed from the main Egoisme website.