Once again the Lab is running a New Year’s photo competition. Running now through until the deadline for submissions at 10:00 SLT on Saturday, January 10th, 2015. The blog post announcing the competition reads in part:
We want to know how you celebrate the coming of the New Year in our New Year Snapshot Contest. If it’s a whole new look for your avatar, or an in-world party to celebrate — share your snapshots.
On offer are four Linden dollar prizes:
Grand Prize – 10,000 Linden Dollars (estimated value at US$40.00).
First Prize – 5,000 Linden Dollars (estimated value at US$20.00).
Second Prize – 3,000 Linden Dollars (estimated value at $12.00).
Third Prize– 1,000 Linden Dollars (estimated value at $4.00).
Winners will be decided on the basis of popular vote.
In a move that should keep people happy, the competition doesn’t require posting anything to Facebook. Rather it sees the return of of uploading entries via the forum post itself, under the Entries tab, and then clicking on the New Entry button (you must be signed-in to the forums for the button to work.
The competition blog post also includes word on the seasonal gift all residents can claim by visiting the Portal Parks and finding the red gift box – a charming gingerbread cake by Vitae Mole
Competition entries are limited to one per account, and there are, inevitably, some contest rules to go with the competition, which should be read and followed. For some, one of the most intriguing rule might be the fact that, “Canadian residents will be required to answer an additional mathematical question in order to claim their prizes.”
This, I’ve been given to understand by a Canadian friend, appears to be in connection with the Promotional Contest Provision of the Canadian Competition Act, which states that the “selection of participants or distribution of prizes is not made on a random basis” (and selection by popular vote in this competition is a random basis for distributing the prizes). To avoid this, it’s common for Canadian competitions to include a math-based “skill test” to demonstrate a measure of skill has been involved – hence the requirement with the Lab’s contest!
So, Canadian or otherwise, should you opt to enter – good luck!
On Tuesday, December 16th, the Lab issued a brief statement on the matter of missing inventory which has been affecting some SL users since Wednesday, December 10th.
News on problems first arose via a forum post as people started noticing animations from Akeyo and Vista (among others) being replaced by “IP replacement” placeholders – which usual indicate removal as a result of a DMCA action. Some of those affected additionally indicated that they had also received an e-mail on the matter from the Lab – although others apparently did not.
How widespread the issue actually has been, is hard to judge; the forum thread itself involves a relatively few people, although this is obviously no accurate barometer of the overall impact and certainly not any form of mitigation for those who had been affected. Matters were further confused as a result of some support tickets raised on the matter being responded to as being a “resident to resident” issue, and therefore outside of LL’s remit.
By Sunday, December 14th, a number of SL users were pressing both the Lab (through their official community account) and Ebbe Altberg for comment, prompting him to reply:
Ebbe Altberg’s Tweets on the issue
Quite what went wrong isn’t clear, other than it apparently being a possible fault within an internal process. Even so, it appears to have caused a few headaches for the Lab in terms of sorting out. On Tuesday, December 16th, Ebbe further Tweeted:
Only this turned out to be a little premature, as a blog post was subsequently issued indicating that the Lab was still working to fix the matter:
Due to a recent internal error, some Residents may have noticed a few items were recently replaced within their inventories. We are working to reverse the process and hope to have the original items restored quickly.
If you believe that your items were affected, please keep an eye on your inventory – you should see the original items restored soon.
In addition to restoring the original items as quickly as possible, we are also taking steps to resolve the issue that caused the error so that we can avoid repeating it in the future. We apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience.
As this article is being written, some people are still indicating that they have yet to see inventory items reinstated. An important point to not here is that if you have been impacted by the situation, do not delete the “IP replacement” placeholders in your inventory; if you do, you may adversely affect the return of your items by the Lab.
Per my comment above, precisely what went wrong is unclear. However, mistakes can and do happen, and generally without malice aforethought. But that said, given there was something of a serious mistake made, one in part exacerbated by a degree of confusion in communications from the Lab (vis e-mails sent to those affected and support tickets being closed), one hopes that the lessons learned in both correcting the matter and as a result of reviewing how the problem first arose will be taken to heart.
Linden Lab has launched a new feedback form, inviting platform users to offer up constructive suggestions on how the Second Life experience might be improved.
The blog post announcing the new form reads in full:
What’s the one thing Linden Lab could do that would have the biggest impact on further improving your Second Life experience?
Many Second Life users have thoughts on this – from different approaches for the way things are done today, to brand new features that could dramatically improve their experiences, to seemingly small things that could have a big impact. Today, we’re launching an easier way to share your ideas with us, a new “Feedback & Suggestions” page on SecondLife.com. You can also find this page by going to Help and finding New Feature Suggestions in the drop down.
Just sign-in with your Second Life account, select the topic or category that’s most appropriate, and describe your suggestion in the text box. Once you submit, you’ll see a confirmation page and receive an automated email as well. We won’t be able to reply individually to each suggestion, but every idea will be routed to the appropriate Lindens and each one will be reviewed and considered.
We’ll of course continue to be on the lookout for ideas as they continue to surface in social media, direct conversations, or via JIRA, but this new page should make it easier than ever for any Second Life Resident to share suggestions directly with us.
The new form is easily accessible via your Second Life web dashboard
Covering a range of topic categories, including the likes of avatars, communications, content creation, groups, inventory, commerce, land, mesh, navigation, performance, scripting, teleports, tools, user interface, viewer, and the all-important “other/unknown”, the new form is simple to complete, and can be accessed directly from your Second Life dashboard and the support portal.
As the form notes, it is not intended for support requests, bug reports, and other inquiries; these should continue to be directed through the Second Life Support Portal and the JIRA.
Also, please do remember that suggestions are being sought – not statements. So, for example, a demand for reducing tier isn’t going to gain much traction. But if you actually have a considered plan for how tier might be lowered in such a way as to not damage the Lab’s ability to generate the revenue it needs to continue operating (and have some good figures to support your case) – now is the time to drop them into the form and let them take a look.
The suggestions form can also be accessed from the SL support portal via the link in the lower right corner of the portal web page
Obviously, not every suggestion will be acted upon; but this is still nevertheless a good move by the Lab.
Up until now, the most direct route of putting an idea to the Lab has been via a “feature request” submission through the SL JIRA. However, the JIRA has been something a lot of users have preferred to steer clear of, seeing it as confusing and / or intimidating when trying to complete a report. Therefore, the offering of a simple, clean form for people to use is to be welcomed, and kudos given to the Lab for offering it.
The Lab has issues a reminder via the Grid Status Reports page that there will be no concierge telephone and chat support available from midnight SLT on Wednesday, November 26th through until 08:00 SLT on Friday, November 28th.
This is to allow support staff in the USA to enjoy Thanksgiving with their family and friends.
Concierge phone and chat support will be offline this coming Thursday, 27 November, so that team members can spend the Thanksgiving holiday with their friends and family. Both services will close at midnight Wednesday evening and will re-open at 8am Pacific on Friday morning.
To the support staff and all at Linden Lab, I’d like to pass on my best wishes for a happy Thanksgiving, and the same also goes out to all those I’ve come to know in SL who are celebrating Thanksgiving as well.
In October 2014, I reported on the viewer-managed Marketplace (VMM) project, which the lab has been developing for several months.
The aim of the project is to enable merchants to manage the creation and management of Marketplace product listing through the viewer, bypassing the need to use the Merchant Outbox (and have copies of items stored on the Marketplace inventory servers) or using Magic Boxes.
VMM does this by adding a new Marketplace Listing panel to to viewer, of which more below.
On Friday, November 21st, the Lab announced that wider beta testing of VMM is now ready to start on Aditi (the Beta grid). and is inviting merchants to download a new VMM project viewer they can use to test creating and managing product listing through the viewer.
Alongside of the announcement, the Lab also made available:
A VMM FAQ which contains important additional information
A VMM JIRA project for the reporting of specific issues and problems discovered during testing
A VMM API wiki page for viewer developers (merchants do not need to worry about this!).
If you are a merchant and wish to test the VMM functionality, you’ll need to download and install the project viewer, and use one of the following three test regions on Aditi: ACME D; ACME E and ACME F. Using the viewer anywhere else can generate error messages when first logging-in (designed to indicate VMM is not available, and which will not interfere with using the viewer for other activities).
If you’ve never logged-into Aditi, please refer to the instructions on how to do so on the beta grid wiki page.
When testing VMM, remember that it is not intended to enable all Marketplace-related activities through the viewer. Rather, it is intended to allow merchants to create new Marketplace listings with inventory, associate inventory with an existing Marketplace listing, remove items from a listing and unlist goods entirely. All other Marketplace activities will still have to be carried out within the Marketplace itself.
Also note that at present there is a bug within the Aditi Marketplace that will cause purchases to fail. The Lab is working to address this, and it shouldn’t interfere with testing VMM to create and modify product listings.
The following notes are intended to get you started with the project viewer and beta testing, please refer to the Lab’s VMM FAQ for other pertinent information.
The Marketplace Listings Panel
An active Marketplace Listings panel showing the four tabs used to manage inventory
The heart of the viewer-managed Marketplace is the new new Marketplace Listing panel within the viewer. This will eventually replace the Merchant Outbox, although both are provided in the project viewer.
The Marketplace Listing panel allows a merchant to carry out a number of Marketplace tasks from within the viewer, such as: create a new product listing, modify a listing, change the items associated with a listing, etc.
It does this by enabling merchants to directly associate products in their inventory with product item listings on the Marketplace, eliminating the need to either upload copies of products to the Marketplace inventory servers via the Merchant Outbox or, in the case of limited stock items that are No Copy for the merchant, having them stored in-world in a Magic Box. When a customer purchases an item listed via VMM, it is delivered to them directly from the Lab’s asset servers.
This does mean that care must be taken when handing product items in inventory in order to avoid occidentally deleting items associated with Marketplace listings. To help with this, the folder associated with the Marketplace Listing panel remain hidden from view (as far as is possible) when working directly in the inventory .
Google Form
The first time you open the Marketplace Listing panel, it may display the following message:
This feature is currently in beta. Please add you name to this Google form if you would like to participate
If this happens, it is likely because you logged-in to a non-VMM region and then teleported to the test regions. To correct, simply log-in directly to one of the three ACME test regions (ACME D; ACME E and ACME F). The Marketplace Listing panel should open correctly; if you haven’t already created an Aditi Marketplace store, it will display a message requesting you do so, with a link to the Marketplace.
Update: At the time this article went to press, it appeared the daily restarts were still in progress (hence the reference to the restarts being Nov 17th-21st). Subsequent to this article appearing, the Lab updated the Grid Status report to indicate the work has actually bee completed, therefore the Lab’s blog post did in fact mark the end of the work.
The week of November 17th – 21st 2014 has been marked with daily periods of region restarts. Notice that these would be going on was first posted via a Grid Status update on Friday, November 14th.
As I noted in the first of my SL project updates for the week, Simon Linden indicated that restarts and the attendant maintenance was hardware-related, requiring servers to be taken down and physically opened-up, although precise details on what was being done was still scant.
In a blog post published on Thursday, November 20th, the Lab provided a detailed explanation on the reasons for the restarts, which reads in full:
Keeping the systems running the Second Life infrastructure operating smoothly is no mean feat. Our monitoring infrastructure keeps an eye on our machines every second, and a team of people work around the clock to ensure that Second Life runs smoothly. We do our best to replace failing systems pro actively and invisibly to Residents. Unfortunately, sometimes unexpected problems arise.
In late July, a hardware failure took down four of our latest-generation of simulator hosts. Initially, this was attributed to be a random failure, and the machine was sent off to our vendor for repair. In early October, a second failure took down another four machines. Two weeks later, another failure on another four hosts.
Each host lives inside a chassis along with three other hosts. These four hosts all share a common backplane that provides the hosts with power, networking and storage. The failures were traced to an overheating and subsequent failure of a component on these backplanes.
After exhaustive investigation with our vendor, the root cause of the failures turned out to be a hardware defect in a backplane component. We arranged an on-site visit by our vendor to locate, identify, and replace the affected backplanes. Members of our operations team have been working this week with our vendor in our data centre to inspect every potentially affected system and replace the defective component to prevent any more failures.
The region restarts that some of you have experienced this week were an unfortunate side-effect of this critical maintenance work. We have done our best to keep these restarts to a minimum as we understand just how disruptive a region restart can be. The affected machines have been repaired, and returned to service and we are confident that no more failures of this type will occur in the future. Thank you all for your patience and understanding as we have proceeded through the extended maintenance window this week.
Once again, it’s good to see that Landon Linden and his team are keeping the channels of communication open, and working to keep users appraised of what’s happening whenever and wherever is necessary / they can.
Once again the Lab is running a New Year’s photo competition. Running now through until the deadline for submissions at 10:00 SLT on Saturday, January 10th, 2015. The blog post announcing the competition reads in part:
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 