Tag: SL News

The Phoenix team have issued a blog post on a Viewer bug that affects setting permissions for Friends.

From the Phoenix website:

The Bug
You can no longer change permissions for your friends while on a viewer which doesn’t utilize Web Profiles and whether you are, or are not on a viewer that uses web profiles the friend you are changing permissions for needs to relog after you have set the permissions through their web profile. I am assured by LL that they intend to resolve this issue as soon as possible but at this time they cannot provide a date when the fix will be rolled out. You can read the Jira report about the bug herehttps://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-7104

The Work Around
In the meantime, there is a work around. First, you must open the “Web” profile of the person you wish to change permissions for. This includes Map rights, Modify my objects permissions and Online status permissions.
1. Open the web profile of the person you wish to change permissions for using the following URL in your web browser.http://my.secondlife.com/firstname.lastname. Replace the first name and last name with the persons first and last name. If they do not have a visible last name dohttp://my.secondlife.com/firstnameinstead.
2. Once you have their profile open, click on the “ACTIONS” button near the top and to the right, then choose “Permissions” from the sub menu.
3. Give or remove the permissions you wish to change and click “Save”.
4. Now the person you’ve changed the permission for will need to relog in order for them to actually get the permission change.

OR

If you just want to remove all permissions for a friend to default, you can just remove them from your friend list and re add them.

With thanks to Jessica Lyon.

Second Life received something of an indirect publicity boost today, having gained mention via an Emmy nomination. The Virtual Mine – an extension of Deep Down–A Story From the Heart of Coal Country, aired by PBS – has been nominated under the New Approaches to News and Documentary Programming: Documentaries category.

Deep Down–A Story From the Heart of Coal Country, first broadcast in the autumn of 2010, is an examination of the human consequences  of our environmental impact. The film follows  Beverly May and Terry Ratliff in Appalachian mountains of eastern Kentucky,, a region that has supplied the USA nation with coal for over a century, and who now find themselves in the midst of a debate dividing their community and the world: who controls, consumes, and benefits from our planet’s shrinking supply of natural resources? While Beverly organizes her neighbours and leads a legal fight to stop Miller Brothers Coal Company from advancing into her hollow, Terry considers signing away the mining rights to his backyard-a decision that could destroy not only the two friends’ homes, but the peace and environment surrounding their community. Through their eyes, the battle over energy and the wealth and environmental destruction it represents in through into sharp relief, and raises questions relating to humankind’s own morality, our connection to the earth’s resources, and most importantly, our link to people whose daily lives are far removed from our own and yet deeply impacted through our actions. Through a complex human story that cuts across environment, economics, public policy, and culture, the story of Beverly May and Terry Ratliff reveals the devastating impact of our energy consumption against an explosive backdrop: Appalachia’s centuries-old struggle over the black rock that fuels our planet.

The Virtual Mine, nominated for an Emmy today, was created as an adjunct to Deep Down, and launched on November 10th 2010 with over 40 people in attendance, including Second Life experts and environmental activists and educators. It is an immersive, educational 3D environment, game, and educational curriculum located within Second Life (Surl) for teachers, students, and anyone who’d like to learn more about mountain top removal, coal fired power production, alternative energies, and the amazing music and culture in the Appalachian mountains. The video below explains some more about the thinking behind the project.

The game can by played individually in in groups, with players progressing sequentially through the first three levels,to achieve “mini-game” outcomes at each level.  Every level contains a video prompt leading players to begin the next phase of this energy story. The first stage of the game examines mining itself and the need for energy; the second looks at reducing our energy demands, and the third looks at alternative energy sources, while the forth chapter provides the opportunity for celebration and to learn about energy conservation.

For teachers, the game offers opportunities to explore a range of subjects with their students, including:

• Identity, representation and empathy
• Problem solving and collaboration
• Exploration and environmental discovery.

Funded by  ITVS and MacArthur Foundation, and developed at BAVC’s Producers Institute for New Media Technologies, the Virtual Mine is open for anyone to explore, and demonstrates the tremendous power of Second Life as an educational tool and also presents a unique and immersive means of supporting the original Deep Down documentary itself.

More information on The Virtual Mine can be found on the Deep Down website. An official press release on the nomination is available from Sand Castle Studios

Emmy winners will be announced on the 26th September 2011. Good luck to all involved, and congratulations on your nomination.

Privacy in SL is a nebulous thing.

We can employ banlines, security orbs and other systems; we can restrict parcel access to those without our own Group, or by access list; we can even resort to ban lists and systems that support them.

Whatever option we take, the fact remains that, unless we have our own private sim (Homestead or full), our privacy lasts only so long as someone who is so minded opts to step up their draw distance and use their camera to zoom-in and watch us.

The ability to “camera-perve” has long been an issue in SL. Indeed, it was one of the worries people had when the grid merger took place: while those under 18 may well be restricted to G sims, if they are on mainland, there is nothing to stop them from camming out of a G sim and into a neighbouring M sim and seeing something they shouldn’t.

Now even that might be about to change in the near future.

A new parcel-level permissioning flag is currently being tested on the beta Grid, and could soon be rolled out to the main grid with a number of other new parcel capabilities. This is the Hidden Avatars flag, and when set against a parcel, it will have the following impact:

• All avatars inside the parcel will not be rendered in the Viewers of those outside the parcel, however avatars inside the parcel will be able to see one another
• Avatars outside the parcel will not be rendered in the Viewers of those inside the parcel
• In either case, avatars will still show up on the map and mini-map as dots/icons as usual.

This isn’t an ideal solution to all matters of privacy; objects within the parcel will be visible and touchable by those outside the parcel, for example, and it may even lead to confusion for some (open chat conversations apparently popping out of thin air – the SL equivalent of hearing voices). However, this is a step in the right direction when it comes to increasing people’s personal privacy when combined with other privacy features such as the aforementioned security options.

It’s not clear when (or indeed if) this new option will appear on the main Grid; not everything tested by the Lab in the beta Grid winds up as being rolled out to the main Grid, but looking at it now, and limitations notwithstanding, there doesn’t appear to be any major reason why it shouldn’t find its way onto the main Grid in the near future. Indeed, one has to wonder why LL have been resistant to implementing it in the past, given it has oft-been requested by users over the years.

If you want to test Hidden Avatars for yourself, you’ll need to log-in to the beta Grid using the SL Viewer 2 (I found things didn’t actually work that well when I was running Firestorm, which is based on the 2.4 or 2.5 Viewer 2 code). Instructions for doing this can be found in the SL wiki.

Given recent losses within the Lab – Amanda, Courtney, Blondin – it’s not surprising that the communications team are perhaps a little short-handed, even if news and announcements coming out of Linden Lab have been in short supply for a good while now.

So it is interesting to see that Featured News on the official blog appears to have moved to a monthly round-up / announcement, as exemplified by the “July Update” which popped up earlier today.

It is a fairly comprehensive piece, covering the implementation of new default avatar types – something Rodvik alluded to last month on Twitter; progress on fixing Group chat and the upcoming changes to web profiles I’ve given something of an overview to here, as well as news on changes to promotional e-mail and an update on the new Search system.

The new default avatars cover animals, robots and vehicles – all of which LL have received criticism for having previously “ignored”, and which will hopefully prove to be welcome additions.

I’m not entirely sure the comments on Group chat lag being a thing of the past are not going to come back and haunt LL; I’ve been in Group chats as recently as yesterday and witnessed the kind of issues referred to in the piece, and I’ve seen similar comments from others on the subject. So while things have undoubtedly improved, I’m not entirely sure its a matter of “case closed” just yet.

As to the web profiles, it is interesting to read the formal announcement of what is coming and see what appears to be the “smaller more integrated” in-viewer web profile window (see below).

While the window does appear smaller and less intrusive, I’m not sure that “more integrated” is the right description. As I’ve said elsewhere, “integration”, to me, suggests something that blends-in with the rest of the Viewer in terms of layout, skin, etc. This isn’t really the case with the in-viewer web profile view.

Possibly the most controversial item reported on in the update is the SL Marketplace, which has seen a series of on-going changes that have been met with frustration in some quarters and concern in others. Of these, the upcoming Direct Delivery system, which is currently in its “Alpha phase” and which will eventually replace magic boxes, is perhaps the focus of the majority of concern when it comes to the Marketplace. As I’m not participating in the Alpha phase of this system, I’m not in a position to comment (and probably wouldn’t be able to comment even if I were, given the NDA requirements around the project); suffice it to say others have passed comment on the new system, and their concerns do seem justified.

Stepping back from the details of the post, I have to say that I hope that this “monthly update” approach is not going to become the trend for all of LL’s blog posts. We get little enough communication from them through “official channels” as it is, and I’d personally rather get fed the news “as it happens” rather than getting it almost in retrospect (as is the case with some of the content of this update – the new avatars have been reported on elsewhere already, and the updates to web profiles have been the subject to a lot of chatter for over a week now).

It’s also a shame that LL are (again) pushing people out to Twitter in order to discuss news. For crying out loud, Rodvik et al – you’ve clearly spent time and money developing and rolling-out a “community communications platform” so why the hell are you guys not using it effectively?

OK, so fair enough, you also point people to the Technology Forum – but the fact is, this is also hardly ideal unless you start specific topic threads for each update that comes out – and even then, it’s hardly convenient. If you really want feedback and comments on what is happening, then give us the means to do so in as quick and convenient manner as possible.

By that I mean letting us us comment on your blog posts directly. It’s the way almost every other blog in the world operates when comments and feedback are allowed – so why not you? You used to at one time, but then you moved away from this approach, almost as if you were either afraid of what we might say, or didn’t want to hear what we were saying.

But the fact is, if you really want our feedback, you really should consider making it as easy as possible for us to do so, even if it does mean opening up your blog entries for comment once more.

I mean honestly, are we really that bad?