Category: News

Flickr announces significant account changes

Posted on by Inara Pey
via Flickr.com

Flickr, the image and video hosting service is exceptionally popular with Second Life users. Initially created by Ludicorp in 2004 and then acquired by Yahoo! In April 2018, it was sold to SmugMug, with the promise that there would be changes down the road.

On November 1st, 2018, those changes were officially announced, and could hit those SL users making use of Flickr’s free account offering hard.  In short, it has been announced that:

  • As from January 8th, 2019, free accounts on the platform will be limited to no more than 1,000 photos or videos.
  • After that date, members over the limit will no longer be able to upload new photos to Flickr.
  • Starting on February 5th, 2019, free accounts that contain over 1,000 photos or videos will have content actively deleted, starting from oldest date uploaded, to meet the new limit.

To compensate, SmugMug is upping the Flickr Pro account to try to make it more attractive to users. Pro accounts already receive unlimited storage, ad-free browsing and advanced stats, and will in the near future include things like a 5K photo display option, an increasing in video length from 3 minutes to 10, improved support, and additional partner discounts. To further encourage free account holders to move to Pro usage, those upgrading to the service before November 30th, 2018, will receive a 30% discount on their first year’s annual Pro membership (usually US $49.99 or equivalent per year).

As well as the main announcement, SmugMug have offered a blog post explaining the changes, which in part justifies them as being something as a “return to Flickr’s roots”: prior to 2013, free accounts on the platform were limited to just 200 photos at a time. The further state that in their estimation, the majority of free account holders tend to have fewer than 1,000 photos stored on the service.

Given the prolific nature of Second Life users, I double either of these reasons will serve to sate upset at the announcement – particularly given that the old free account limit was rescinded simply to encourage wider user of the service. Whether the “extras” of the Pro account will be enough to persuade those so affected to pay the annual fee or simply bite the bullet and move their work to another platform, remains to be seen. Those interested in seeing what else is available might want to check this list from Tom’s Guide.

It’s also interesting to note that at the time of the announcement, SmugMug’s own photo sharing options can be utilised from US $48.00 a month, putting it slightly below Flickr’s usual annual pricing for Pro accounts, with a 14-day free trial period. Their Basic account provides users with: unlimited uploads, 20 min / 3Gb videos, a customisable website, full-screen galleries, drag-n-drop photo organisation, multi-level password protection (allowing controlled access to images), print ordering options, and the expected sharing options.

In the meantime, if you’ve not already seen the announcement and the blog post from Flickr and are a free account user of the service, be sure to follow the links above, read, and consider your options.

Addendum

JMB Balogh asked about the grandfathering of Pro accounts – something I wrestled with querying myself in the above article, eventually opting to keep to just the facts about the free account impact. However, in checking my quarterly Pro membership fees (I’d forgotten a payment was due at the end of October), it would appear the Grandfathering has been rescinded as well. 

April Linden blogs the weekend’s DDOS

Posted on by Inara Pey
Graph showing “normal” log-ins over the course of a day compared with Sunday, October 28th. Credit: April Linden

In my week #44/1 User Group update, I noted that April Linden had indicated the issues Second Life users experienced with the platform on Sunday, October 28th through Monday October 29th, 2018 were the result of a Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attack.

April has now issued a blog post expanding on her original forum comments, with the full text of her post reading:

Hello amazing Residents of Second Life!

A few days ago (on Sunday, October 28th, 2018) we had a really rough day on the grid. For a few hours it was nearly impossible to be connected to Second Life at all, and this repeated several times during the day.

The reason this happened is that Second Life was being DDoSed.

Attacks of this type are pretty common. We’re able to handle nearly all of them without any Resident-visible impact to the grid, but the attacks on Sunday were particularly severe. The folks who were on call this weekend did their best to keep the grid stable during this time, and I’m grateful they did.

Sunday is our busiest day in Second Life each week, and we know there’s lot of events folks plan during it. We’re sorry those plans got interrupted. Like most of y’all, I too have an active life as a Resident, and my group had to work around the downtime as well. It was super frustrating.

As always, the place to stay informed of what’s going on is the Second Life Grid Status Blog. We do our best to keep it updated during periods of trouble on the grid.

Thanks for listening. I’ll see you in-world!

April Linden
Second Life Operations Team Lead

Shug Maitland kept an eye on the ups and downs of log-ins during the DDOS attack via https://etitsup.com/slstats/ through Sunday, October 28th, 2018 and into the early hours of Monday, October 29th, sending me the above screen capture

There not a lot more that can be added – DDOS attacks are an unfortunate fact of life, and while the Lab has learned to try to deal with them without impacting the normal flow of activities for Second Life users, it’s also unfortunate that at time this cannot always be the case.

Thanks once again to April for the update on the situation.

November 15th Town Hall with Grumpity, Oz and Patch

Posted on by Inara Pey
Patch Linden, Grumpity Linden and Oz Linden

Linden Lab has announced the next in their series of Town Hall meetings, this one again featuring three of the decision-makers for Second Life’s ongoing development: Director of Product, Grumpity Linden, Technical Director Oz Linden, and Senior Director of Product Operations, Patch Linden.

Like the September 13th event, this will be a single session, the date and time being:

Thursday, November 15th 2018 from 10:00 SLT onwards.

The official blog post notes:

Collectively, these three have over 28 (!) years of experience working on Second Life and work closely with all the Second Life teams to continue to improve this platform that we’ve all come to love.

They are some of the biggest stakeholders in the direction of the product development roadmap each year, and know the product inside and out!

If you have a question that you would like to ask these Lindens, please take a moment to post it in the Community Forum thread “Town Hall Meeting with Grumpity, Oz, and Patch Linden – November 15” in advance of the Town Hall. Questions will be selected from all submissions made prior to November 9th, so be sure to get your question in before then.

The Town Hall meeting venue

For the benefit of those who may not be familiar with Patch, Oz and Grumpity, the following is a brief outline of their responsibilities which I hope may help when considering questions to submit for consideration at the meeting.

Oz Linden is the Technical Director for Second Life, having joined in 2010 with initial responsibility managing the viewer open-source project and rebuild what had become a fractious relationship with TPVs, with his role expanding over time to encompass more and more of the engineering side of Second Life.

As work on Sansar started to progress in earnest, he pro-actively campaigned within the Lab for the role of Technical Director of SL, building a team of people around him who specifically wanted to remain solely focused on Second Life and developing it. His team works closely with the product and operations team to ensure SL constantly evolves without (as far as is possible) breaking anything – a process he refers to as rebuilding the railway from a moving train.

Grumpity Linden is the Director of Product for Second Life. She originally came to Linden Lab while working for The Product Engine, a company providing end-to-end consulting and software development services, and which supports viewer development at the Lab. Grumipty was initially involved in the development and viewer 2 (as designed by 80/20 Studio).

She became a “full-time Linden” in 2014. Her current position involves coordinating the various teams involved in bringing features and updates to Second Life (e.g. Engineering and QA), liaising with legal, financial and compliance to ensure features and capabilities meet any specific requirements in those areas, etc. This work can involve looking at specifics within various elements of the overall SL product, such as UI design and layout, etc.

Grumpity jokingly refers to herself, Patch and Oz as the “hydra” or troika, responsible for the development and direction of all aspects of Second Life.

Patch Linden is the Senior Director of Product Operations at Linden Lab. Originally a Second Life resident, he joined linden Lab in 2007, after being invited to apply to the company as a result of his work as a community leader and mentor from 2004 through until the invitation was extended.

His role is the only one of the three here that also encompasses Sansar, as he manages the respective support teams for both platforms. In this regard, he recently established a support centre in Atlanta, Georgia. For Second Life, his work also involves overseeing the content development teams, the Mainland Land Team, the Linden Department of Public Works – LDPW, aka The Moles, and managing the account support team.

SL Marketplace update: wish lists and favourites

Posted on by Inara Pey
via Linden Lab

After  pause of a couple of weeks when a last-minute hitch held up deployment, the latest Marketplace update rolled out during week #41, with the Lab blogging about it on Wednesday, October 10th, 2018.

It’s an update that sees a trio of new features added to the MP, all of which have been the subject of numerous requests – wish lists and favourites / follows. The update also includes a number of bug fixes.

For this article, I’m looking purely at the wish list and favourites options:

  • Wish lists:
    • Add items you’re not ready to buy to your personal wish list.
    • Make purchases from your wish list.
    • Share your wish list with friends (so they can buy you rez day gifts, etc.).
  • Favourites:
    • Add favourite items to a personal list for easy relocation.
    • Make purchases from your list.
    • Add favourite products to your wish list.
    • Add favourite stores to your list (use them to check on new releases more easily).
    • View one of your favourite stores from the list.

Adding Items to Your Wish List and Favourites Lists

Individual items are added to your wish list   / favourites list by viewing them in the Marketplace and then click on the Add to Wishlist or Add to Favourites options, located on the right of the item display.

Individual items can easily be added to your personal wish list or favourites list

Add A Store to Your Favourites

To add a store to your favourites, open the store’s main page in the Marketplace, and click the Add To Favourite Stores option on the left of the store’s main page.

Adding a Marketplace store to your Favourites

Viewing Your Favourites

You can view your favourites whilst on the Marketplace by clicking on your account name (top right) to go to your account page, then clicking the My Favourites drop-down, which will display the options: Products (favourites), Stores, Wishlist. The Products page will open by default, but may be blank if you have not selected any favourites.

You can access your lists from your Marketplace account page : click your account name at the top (arrowed) then click the My Favourites drop-down (circled, left). This will display the list options and open your Products (favourites) page (shown). Note the Add To Wishlist button, arrowed at the bottom.

With these lists:

  • Clicking on an item in the Product or Wishlist pages will take you to the Marketplace listing for that item.
  • Stores in the stores list will be displayed with up to four of their most recent releases.
  • Clicking on a store in the Stores page will (unsurprisingly) take you to the store.
  • Listed items / stores can be removed individually or in bulk by clicking on the check box on the left of an item / store and then clicking the delete button.
  • Favourite items can be added to your wish list via the Add To Wishlist button on the Product page.
  • You can share your wish list with friend using a dedicated URL:
  • You can view your wish list or list of stores directly using the following URLs:

 

The further revamp of Linden Realms in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
The re-vamped Linden Realms and rock monsters. Credit: Linden Lab

Since it first opened in 2011, Linden Realms has proved to be an enduring game within Second Life. It’s seem various updates over the years, with the most notable (until now) occurring earlier this year when the existing playing regions were effectively fire-bombed as a part of an ongoing saga involving the wicked Ruth, she of the villainy in Tyrah and the Curse of the Magical Glytches (see my review here) and named for the original default avatar of Second Life.

On Tuesday, October 9th, linden Lab announced the latest revamp of the game, which sees it completely overhauled in looks and aims, building further on the backstory of Ruth and possibly – just maybe, perhaps – (I’m not going to give everything away) seeing the return of Old Boozehound himself, Magellan Linden.

In the new version of the game, the Linden Realms regions get a much-needed face-lift with much more modern-looking mesh items (most notably the rock monsters). In terms of game play, players must complete tasks and try to reassemble Ruth’s magical amulet … the breaking of which might have led to Magellan faking his own death in order to escape her wrath. (If this all sounds like the script from a soap opera, wait until Tyrah wakes up and finds Magellan stepping out of the shower*.  Just kidding! Although on second thoughts, I wish I hadn’t; the mental image of an undressed Magellan is now fixed in my head.)

Part of the re-vamped Linden Realms. Credit: Linden Lab

Anyway, I’m not going to go into great depth here, on account that LL have themselves with a veritable tome of documentation and images on the updated game. Suffice it to say, collecting crystals (exchangeable for L$) is still very much a part of things, so expect the new Linden Realms to be as popular as previous iterations.

I can say the new look is refreshing when compared to the old, and the detailing such that the locations spread across the 12 regions of each game area shouldn’t place too much extra load on things when avatars are running hither and thither in their hunt for crystals and amulet bits.

The game HUD has also been nicely updated, and looks the part – the old one really was looking long in the tooth.

The updated game HUD

As always, accessing the game is done via the Portal Parks (links below). As with previous iterations, those new to the game will have to accept the experience to gain access, but if you’ve previously played and have not revoked the game, you’ll be automatically granted access. And no, this isn’t anything to do with Project SSR 😀 .

More is promised by the Lab on Linden Realms, by way of an article on how this new version was developed and built, as a part of the Lab’s efforts to show creators how tools such as Experience Keys might be used.

*Yes folks, A Dallas reference!

Portal Park SLurls

Note the portal Parks and Linden Realms are all rated General.