Linden Lab has entered further into the Halloween mood with a new photo contest, offering a total prize pool of L$19,000.
The competition, launched on Thursday, October 15th, runs through until 17:00 SLT on Thursday, November 12th and challenges residents to take a snapshot of their avatar in a suitable Halloween theme in Second Life.
Competition entries should be posted to the competition page in the Second Life forums, where they will be displayed together, and open to popular vote by other Second Life residents.
The blog post announcing the competition reads in part:
In Second Life, every day is an opportunity to dress up, but come Halloween time, Residents step it up and take it to a whole new level of fun and creativity. If this is your first Halloween in Second Life – or even if it’s your 12th – you are in for something incredible!
All over the grid, regions decorate, put together trick-or-treat style hunts, blast some chilling tunes for your move your avatar bones to, and generally run amok in the undeniable excitement of Halloween. We couldn’t be left out of the spooky shenanigans, so there’s a few official events you won’t want to miss out on.
Entries are limited to one per avatar account and must conform to the Second Life General maturity rating, as defined by the Lab’s Maturity Ratings guidelines. In addition, images must be submitted in a valid .jpg, .jpeg or .gif format(s) no larger than 20Mb and cannot have been submitted previously to any other promotion of any kind, or exhibited or displayed publicly through any means.
The prize pool is made up of the following individual prizes:
L$ 10,000 Grand Prize (estimated value at US$40.00)
L$ 5,000 First Prize –(estimated value at US$20.00)
L$ 3,000 Second Prize (estimated value at $12.00)
L$1,000 Third Prize (estimated value at $4.00).
The winners of the competition will be contacted no later that 17:00 SLT on Sunday, December 6th, 2015.
Please refer to the competition rules page for further guidelines / requirements.
It’s widely recognised that for many with disabilities, Second Life offers a major source of engagement, support and enjoyment which might otherwise be beyond their reach. As a result, there are a number of charities, organisations and support groups active within Second Life providing a wide range of services and support networks for those with disabilities and / or disabling illnesses.
One such group, of which I’m embarrassed to say I only quite recently became aware, is the Pixel to Pixel (P2P) Foundation. Founded in 2009 by Jadyn Firehawk (also known within P2P as Pixel Falconer), it offers a unique service to Second Life users who in the physical world are supporting themselves purely through disability benefits.
“Second Life is a lifeline to many people with disabilities,” Jadyn says in discussing P2P’s function. “Some may live in social isolation, so SL keeps them connected with friends. Others may suffer a physical impairment, and SL gives them the virtual experience of full mobility and freedom.
“But there are costs associated with being involved in Second Life, and for those who are reliant solely on disability assistance programme benefits can struggle to meet those costs. So, the P2P Foundation gives direct financial assistance in the form of weekly Linden dollar stipends to people on disability, to help them enjoy their time in-world.”
This stipend, L$500 (approx US $2.00) per week, may not sound much, but for someone who is living purely on benefits, it can mean a lot. As one participant states, “two dollars for me means a loaf of bread for a week.” So the stipend can lift the burden of choice, allowing the recipient to put it to use in Second Life – help cover their rent, upload textures, buy goods or clothing in-world, or spend it however they like, without necessarily having to draw on their physical world finances. As well as the stipend programme, P2P will occasionally award discretionary grants to recipient, so that they can start a business or pursue a major creative project in Second Life.
Because P2P operates purely in-world, beneficiaries can reside in any country around the globe, and their disability assistance can be either from their government or from a private disability insurance company. However, in order to be eligible for the P2P programme, applicants and recipients must be able to demonstrate, if asked, that they are on disability benefits. This is done by sending a copy of their disability benefits award letter (or similar document) to Jadyn via regular, physical world mail, with their personal identifying information blacked out and replaced with their avatar name.
The 3 LI P2P donation Kiosk is available as a part of the P2P fund-raising kit available from the P2P HQ
The money used to pay out the stipends comes directly from donations and fund-raising activities. These currently enable the Foundation to support 20 people in Second Life through payouts amounting to L$10,000 a week. However, as Jadyn notes, there are a further 20 people on the Foundation’s waiting list – and it can take in excess of two years for someone to secure a place in the programme.
“People who are on disability and in Second Life tend to stay, because SL becomes such an important part of their daily lives, meaning that new slots do not often open up,” Jadyn tells me.
Currently, P2P can generally only take on new recipients as a result of others leaving the programme, such as by becoming self-sufficient through their own entrepreneurial activities in SL – hence the discretionary grants programme P2P operates, which can help facilitate this.
One way to increase the number of people the Foundation can support is through greater guaranteed inflow of donations. Anyone can help with this, simply by making a donation of any amount directly to Pixel Falconer, the Foundation’s donations account, or through one of the Foundation’s donation kiosks located throughout Second Life (see the list at the end this article for the current locations).
Businesses, venues and groups can also help with fund-raising by visiting the Foundation’s HQ to obtain a fund-raising kit, and then setting-up kiosks, posters, etc., in their store / on their land. The kiosks not only help with generating funds to run the programme, but also help raise awareness of P2P’s work. Jadyn would also be delighted to hear from any business, venue or group interested in organising and hosting a P2P fund-raiser.
The P2P Foundation gallery features the work of disabled artists, all of which is available to buy. The proceeds of sales going to the artists to help support them directly, although some may opt to share the proceeds with the Foundation
Two of the most effective means of assisting the Foundation is to either become a weekly / monthly donor, or by sponsoring P2P participant.
If you would like to become a weekly / monthly donor, you can do so by making your payments directly to Pixel Falconer. Or you can also grab a donation kiosk and use it as a visual reminder to donate, rather than relying purely on memory to make payments to Pixel Falconer it might also encourage your friends to support P2P!).
Should you wish to sponsor a P2P participant, either as an individual or through your business, please contact Jadyn Firehawk directly in-world.
Update, Firday October 9th: It was indicated at the TPV Developer meeting on Friday, October 9th that QuickTime media may still work on this viewer, rather than being disabled. However, this should not be taken to mean either QuickTime or Flash are to be supported by the by the Lab, and media creators should not rely on either Flash or QuickTime working correctly for everyone.
On Wednesday, October 7th, the Lab issued the long-awaited project viewer utilises the Chromium Embedded Framework (CEF) for media handling – and more – in Second Life.
The Valhalla Project viewer, which sees the viewer version number increment to 4.0, is intended as a replacement for LLQTWebKit, which has traditionally supported web-based media in Second Life.
The latter has been subject to increasing issues over the last few years, such as the libraries used within the viewer being out-of-date, and it being focused on both Flash and QuickTime, which have issues of their own.
As a result, the Lab started looking to replace LLQTWebkit with CEF a little over a year ago, and actually blogged about the change in July 2014 when discussing upcoming improvements to SL. At that time, it had been anticipated that a project viewer would be appearing “soon”.
However, a number of other projects served to stall the work on CEF; most notably the change-over to the new tool chain and build process for building the viewer. Understandably, this caused the Lab to hold off from making large-scale changes to the viewer code until after they were confident of the builds using the new tool set, and this inevitably pushed a number of project back – including the CEF work.
Commenting on the CEF project during the TPV Developer meeting on Friday, September 25th, Oz Linden indicated that the release of the viewer was finally on the horizon, and confirmed that when issued, it would not support QuickTime and would have Flash support disabled by default (see update at the top of this article).
Loki Eliot has been poking at the new viewer, including visiting a virtual world from inside a virtual world when he logged on to Gojiyo, which is now being promoted as a part of the sinewave.space “federation” of virtual worlds (see my article here)
The Valhalla viewer, version 4.0.0.305703, is liable to remain a project viewer for an extended period in order to allow the CEF capabilities to be thoroughly tested, and to ensure content creators who make web media systems (TVs, etc.) and those using in-world media capabilities, have plenty of opportunity to update their products / systems as and where required. Commenting on the status of the viewer in the release notes, the Lab also states:
This is the first iteration of a Project Viewer – which means that while a lot of the problems facing the old MOAP implementation should now become a distant artifact of the past, we are still cranking through the many new issues with our CEF-based solution. See a bug? If you don’t see it filed already – file a Jira! We look forward to your feedback. Thanks!
There are a number of known issues already with the viewer, which are worth noting here as well:
Mac issues:
Search window crashes
Mac keyboard issues can prevent logging in
The in-viewer destination guide doesn’t work under chrome
Drop down lists do not work in internal web browser or MOAP
Profiles and marketplace are asking for a login each session
WebG and HTML support within the browser potentially offers some interest means of more interactive media elements within Second Life. Draxtor and Loki have been playing around with the new viewer and some of the more interactive elements, and have produced a short demo video. Loki has also been playing with the viewer more extensively, and you can read his thoughts about it as well.
The latest in the Lab’s renewed social meet-ups in-world with residents is currently in the planning stages. Given the time of year, the Lab have decided to mix the Halloween season into things and hold a “travelling meet-up”, as a blog post from Xiola about the “Creepy Crawl” explains:
A-haunting we will go! This year we’re going to take inworld meetups and Halloween shenanigans and mix them together for a frightful mashup of mind-blowingly fun times. But – we need your help to make it happen.
Are you interested in hosting a stop along our Second Life Creepy Crawl? We’re looking for spots that will have music, are appropriate for general and moderate audiences, and don’t mind having a few Lindens and Residents dropping in all at once to dance and hang out for a bit.
The return of the SS Galaxy to Second Life was marked by an impromptu get-together with Lab staff – now you can play host with your venue / location, as the next get-together takes to the road
The date for the event will be – naturally enough – October 30th, 2015. The full details for those just wishing to hop along and join the fun will be announced in due course. However, for those who wish to offer their venue / place as a possible stop along the way, there are some simple instructions to follow, as Xiola goes on to explain:
Hop over to this form and fill it out before October 20th – we’ll start selecting the venues after that!
Keep an eye out for an email and/or notecard after the 20th to let you know if your venue was selected.
So, if you fancy hosting a little Linden Halloween fun, make sure you get your venue in the DG (if it isn’t already) and fill-out the application form.
Obligatory Sansar promo shot via Linden Lab (pretty please, can we have something new, LL?)
Taking a peek today at the Lab’s press page on the web, I saw that Geek Dad has an article by Derrick Schneider in which he discusses the Lab’s in-development “Project Sansar” virtual experiences platform with Linden Lab CEO Ebbe Altberg.
The article, Project Sansar: Giving Virtual Reality a Second Life, doesn’t give out much that is new about “Sansar” for those who have been following whatever news has been made available, but it does tend to further clarify a few things, while re-stating others.
For me, the more interesting part of the discussion revolves around the concept of the “creator”.
Ebbe Altberg: talking Sansar to Geek Dad
Within Second Life, and while it can have a fairly broad generic application, the term is most readily identified with the role of the model-maker; those people who actually create models and objects, whether in mesh or prims.
However, in broader terms, anyone who creates a region or a parcel, be it for their own use or to be shared with others, is equally a “creator”, even if they purchase the items they use either in-world or through the Marketplace.
For “Sansar”, it appears the Lab is using “creator” in this latter context, rather than identifying a specific group of skilled model makers. That is, people who can bring together models and content into a single experience and present it for use by their intended audience.
Obviously, those who build the models are an important subset of this creative group; hence why the Lab has engaged with modellers and “content partners” (itself an interesting term)” during the current closed alpha for “Sansar”. But the model makers aren’t perhaps the central focus of the Lab’s endeavours in building Sansar as some may have taken the term “creators” to mean.
This leads us, by way of a discussion about instancing experiences, to matters of revenue generation, which I also found to be of speculative interest. In an almost throwaway comment, Schneider demonstrates just how different “Sansar” will be from Second Life, and offers a glimpse of some intriguing new possibilities for revenue generation which may not have been readily considered thus far, once the platform’s audience and use grows:
If you make a great experience in Sansar … you can resell that experience… which you really can’t do today in Second Life.
Picture, for example, a group such as MadPea Games, able to create and licence / sell entire game / hunt experiences to clients in the physical world, completely packaged and ready to go, branded for their client. but with full credit to MadPea Games. That the experience is actually running on the “Sansar” servers operated by the Lab is neither here nor there as far as the client is concerned, so long as they can use whatever mechanism they’ve chosen to engage their desired audience in the experience.
Equally, this also raises some potential questions around content, licensing and permissions, particularly given the earlier statements around those building an experience not necessarily being those would actually build all the models, etc., within that experience. For example, how do you cater for the model maker who doesn’t want their creations to be re-packaged and sold on to or licensed out to third parties? Or how do you ensure that models and content remain “affordable” to the majority whilst allowing the maker to generate sufficient revenue to make it worth their while in allowing they models to be “sold on”?
Again, it will be interesting to see how questions like this are addressed – or if they are even an actual concern as “Sansar” becomes more accessible.
Sine Wave Entertainment are also looking at the concept of a “white label” platform – sinewave.space (which I wrote about here). These also encompass some of their own product offerings, such as Wet.fm, complete with direct discoverability through the web
Discoverability is also again touched upon, with Schneider nicely encompassing the approach being taken with “Sansar”:
Imagine going to a web page that goes in-depth on a given topic — Mayan temples, say — and then says, “here’s a VR experience that gives you another view” in the same way you might see an embedded video today. There will also be ways to find other experiences once you’re inside the ecosystem.
Alongside of this there are the by now familiar references to the likes of WordPress and YouTube, which initially appeared back in June and July. These comments have, to me, tended to confirm my own view (held since I first started reading what was being said about the platform in places such as the 2015 VWBPE conference) that Sansar, conceptually at least, is somewhat analogous to the idea of a platform as a service (PaaS) providing a “white label” environment to potential users. I’ve been promising for a while to expand on this, and rather than sidetrack things here, I really will make an effort to re-organise my thoughts on this and other speculations I have about “Sansar” and get them in print in this blog, hopefully within the next week.
Overall, while (again) not revealing anything that is really startlingly new, the Geek Dad article does make for interesting reading, simply because it does perhaps clarify certain things at least a little bit, and because of the possible questions which might yet be applied to the platform as more is revealed.
From September 12th through September 27th 2015, live performers, DJs, entertainers and venues from across Second Life came together for two weeks of music and entertainment to raise money for Stand Up 2 Cancer’s world-wide activities in funding practical cancer research and treatment.
Organised by the incredible Still Braveheart, Stand Up 2 Cancer in Second Life 2015 brought together over 150 entertainers across more than forty venues during the two weeks of the event, and the total amount raised in-world has now been tabulated – and it is impressive:
L$3,040,393
That’s around US $11,784.47. As per SU2C in Second Life’s stated aim, the money raised will be divided equally between SU2C’s work in Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States.
“I watched so many of you put aside everything to come together and make this so successful,” Still states in her blog.
“We did something this year that no one else has done before (at least to my knowledge)….we said global and we did global As Stand Up To Cancer grows so will we. Many that have refused to do other things came out and worked with us on this. Commenting on the two weeks to me, she added, “thank you to each and everyone that came out to an event, for together we truly made a difference.”
In addition to being able to make donations in-world, those in the USA and UK also had the option to donate directly to SU2C’s work in those countries to the SU2C in SL Team Pages – and these amounts have yet to be included in the above total. Doubtless, Still will announce those figures as soon as they are available.
In the meantime, the full transaction report for in-world receipts of donations received through the kiosks and boards placed at the participating venues is available, although as Still notes, it may be liable to additional revision and tidying-up.
Congratulations to Still and all who were involved in SU2C 2015, whether assisting in the organisation, or as venue owners, performers or supporters. And here’s to 2016!
About SU2C
Stand Up 2 Cancer provides an innovative approach to ending cancer, which puts funds directly where they are needed: into leading-edge cancer research and treatment, and undertaking aggressive research programmes through what is called Translational Research. 100% of all donations made through SU2C goes directly into funding this work, none is lost to “administrative costs” or put aside for CEO or executive salaries, etc.
Such is the success of this approach that as of 2014, and in the USA alone, SU2C has raised over $261 million in seven years. This money has all be used in directly supporting 141 clinical trials of possible cancer treatments, involving 750 scientists and 5,000 cancer patients, and which have spanned 112 US institutions.
Related Links
Still’s blog (for the most up-to-date SL SU2C event news and updates)
Linden Lab has entered further into the Halloween mood with a new photo contest, offering a total prize pool of L$19,000.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 