The Lab has released a curious new project viewer on Wednesday March 26th.
Project Zipper (currently version 3.7.2.286810 is designed to speed-up the viewer installation process. A blog post on the viewer has also been released, which reads in full:
As we continue to work on improving the Second Life experience, one challenge we’ve been tackling is the length of the Viewer installation process. No one likes waiting, and now with Project Zipper, you don’t have to!
With the project Viewer available today, there’s really only one thing different – the installation is super fast. Rather than waiting for install to complete, you’ll quickly be in Second Life doing what you love.
Try out Project Zipper with the project Viewer here.
To try-out the new installation process, I opted to run a clean install of the current release version of the viewer (3.7.2.286707) and a similar clean install with the Project Zipper viewer, and carry out a rough-and-ready timing between the two. I starting the stopwatch on clicking the Install button, and stopped when the Start Second Life Now prompt appeared. The results were:
Second Life release viewer 3.7.2.286707: 35.6 seconds
Second Life Project Zipper viewer 3.7.2.286810: 16.4 seconds.
The installer runs faster, but don’t expect to see any differences in the familiar on-screen messages
Nothing has physically changed in what you see during the installation process, but the faster time is pretty clear (at least on my system – YMMV depending on CPU, disk speed, etc).
This seems to be an odd change to make, and I can’t help but wonder if it is indicative of something else coming down the pipe. Time will tell on that.
Those wishing to try out the project viewer, which I believe should be fully up to par with the HTTP updates in the release viewer, can do so by following the links above in the quoted LL blog post, or below.
Since his first official blog post introducing himself, Ebbe Altberg has not only been immersing himself in the activities required of a new CEO on joining a company, he’s been making the time to respond to a series of SL forum posts made in a thread started as a result of his blog post.
In doing so, he’s demonstrated the same candid feedback which has marked many of his Twitter exchanges with Second Life users, and also shown during his recent meet-and-greet with a number of us.
LL’s new CEO, Ebbe Altberg, seen here on the right in his guise as Ebbe Linden at a recent meet-and-greet: laying the foundations for improved communications from the Lab?
On Communications
One of the major topics of early exchanges with him via Twitter and through various blogs has been on the subject of broader outward communications from the Lab.
Commenting on the forum thread, Amethyst Jetaime raises communications, saying in part:
However I hope you at least take our opinions to heart, take our suggestions when you can and honestly communicate frequently through the official SL channels. Not all of us use twitter and facebook or third-party forums …
And they can’t wait to do that…most common question/issue on both sides of the “fence” has been the same thing! I’m getting love from both sides when I’m talking about fixing communication. I don’t know when/how it got strange but we’ll work hard to make us better at it…motivation is not an issue at all. We just need to figure out process for doing it effectively at scale…
How this will be achieved is open to debate; but the Lab has the means at their disposal to make broad-based communications far more effective, and I tried to point to some of them in my own “Dear Ebbe…” blog post on the matter. In that piece, I particularly look at both the official SL blog and the opportunities presented by e-mail, both of which would appear to meet the criteria of scalability, with an e-mail approach additionally having the potential to reach out to those no longer directly engaged in SL on a regular basis or at all and perhaps encourage them to take another look.
On the Public JIRA
Elsewhere in the thread, Pamela Galli takes the issue of communications to point to the closure of the public JIRA in September 2012:
… In the opinions of many, a good place to start is to make the JIRAs public again so we will know whether an issue is a bug that has arisen, or something on our end. Very often, residents working with Lindens have identified, reproduced, and even come up with workarounds if not solutions to problems. Closing the JIRA felt like a door being slammed, esp to those of us who are heavily invested in SL. (Just grateful for Maestro, who posts in the Server Forum.)
Funny, both engineering and product heads here also didn’t like that jira was closed and want to open it up again. Proposal for how is in the works! I hope we can figure out how to do that in a way that works/scales soon.
Later in the thread, Innula Zenovka who provides one of the most lucid, clearly stated reasons why a complete closure of the public JIRA was perhaps more counter-productive from a technical standpoint than the Lab may have appreciated at the time. Ebbe’s response is again equally reassuring:
Yep, that’s why we will figure out how to open things up again…plan is in the works…
Whether we’ll see a complete re-opening of the public JIRA remains to be seen. I rather suspect the Lab will be looking at something more middle-ground, such as making the JIRA public, but restricting comments to those currently able to access it, together with those actually raising a report also gaining the ability to comment on it as a means of providing additional input / feedback.
While not absolutely perfect, it would mean that the Lab avoids any situation where comments within a JIRA become a free-for-all for complaints, accusations, and arguments (either directed at the Lab or between comment participants), while offering the majority of the advantages which used to be apparent with a more open JIRA mechanism.
Of course, optimism around this feedback – and particularly around the proposal for the JIRA – should be caveated with caution. Not only may it take time for changes to be implemented, it may also be that technical or other issues may impede something like a more open approach to the JIRA from being achieve to the extent that even the Lab would like. However, that there is a willingness to discuss the fact that matters are already under consideration at the Lab would hopefully suggest a reasonable level of confidence that things can be done without risking the disappointment following the decision that there would be no return of last names back in March 2012.
Whatever does happen, there’s enough in these replies to give rise to a cautious and reasonable optimism that things are likely to be changing for the better down the road. Most certainly, it is good to see an outward follow of communication from the Lab’s CEO that is open and candid.
Long may it continue once Ebbe has had to turn his attention more fully on running the company, and others have stepped in to fill the void, and to ensure the follow-through is both achieved and consistent.
On Tuesday February 18th, 2014, Linden Lab’s new CEO said an informal “hello” to Second life users through the SL blog.
His message comes just over a week after he officially started working at Battery Street, and it’s something of a personal piece, explaining why he decided to take-up the challenge of helming the Lab (and doubtless much to the delight of LL board member and close personal friend, Jed Smith, who has apparently been trying to get Ebbe to work with him for quite a while…). The post drew immediate comments in the forums … to which Ebbe also replied.
At the same time the blog post came out, Ebbe sat down with a small group of us in an informal meet and greet arranged by the Lab’s Director of Communications, Peter Grey, to talk about his appointment, Second Life, Linden Lab and its products, and other things joining Ebbe and Peter in a friendly session which lasted about an hour at the Lab’s PR island were myself, Saffia Widdershins, Jo Yardley, Mal Burns, Draxtor Despres and Daniel Voyager.
Some of the highlights of the chat were:
Ebbe has had a long-term awareness of both Linden Lab and Second Life. He is close friends with board member Jed Smith and also friends with Philip Rosedale. his knowledge is not in-depth, but it is certainly not an unknown to him
He is deeply passionate about user-generated content and about empowering people’s creativity
His son, Aleks, actually joined SL while still too young and got kicked from the platform – twice! – prior to becoming one of the founding members of the old SL Teen Grid
He is aware that the new user experience needs to be addressed, as does user retention levels and is already starting a preliminary look into the history of these issues
He’s already providing guidance on simplifying the Lab’s portfolio of products, and news is due on that later in the week
He’s conscious of the fact that the Lab no longer carries the message about Second Life where the media and the world at large are concerned
He is enthusiastic about Oculus Rift, Leap Motion an emerging VR and AR technologies and the potential for Linden Lab to help shape how they are used and gain acceptance.
While I had sound issues, I recorded proceedings, and have permission to reproduce Ebbe’s comments in this article. For those who want to know more, please do also listen to this Friday’s (February 21st) The Drax Files Radio Hour, where there will be more analysis of the conversation. Please note that what follows is not presented in the order in which things were discussed. Instead, I’ve ordered things to try to give something of a progressive flow to the comments made in response to questions and observations.
Ebbe Linden (the robot, rear right) and Pete Linden (rear left) meet with a small group of SL users
A Little Introduction
“Hi, everybody! I’m Ebbe and I’m extremely excited to be here. I’ve already interacted with a few of you a little bit, or at least read or heard or watched your amazing videos or cities or whatever, and I’ve only been here for a week, and I’ve spent pretty much of the whole first week doing almost nothing but just talking and meeting with employees. and so that’s been pretty much wall-to-wall, so I’ve explicitly avoided diving into Second Life … but I’ve managed to get just the basics going; signed my paperwork and managed to log-in find parking and all these little things, just to get comfortable and getting my office up-and-running, my computers up-and-running.
“So it’s been just fundamentals, no extreme things. I’m obviously starting to have some meaningful conversations with team players and customers alike about top issues, top concerns, top opportunities; things to do more, things to do less and stuff like that. Just a few decisions have been made so far; most of it has been just conversations with team members and colleagues. So with that … I’m really excited to get to talk with you in person right here.”
On Deciding to Join the Lab
“I’ve known Linden since [its] early beginnings. Jed Smith, who is on the board, is a good friend of mine … I was an early beta user and as Drax said, my son was very involved early on, and I thought it was a fantastic experience for him, the ability to create, collaborate and also to earn. At a young age, he became sort-of a producer working with engineers and designers and clients and partners in creating solutions for people.
Ebbe Linden
“So I’ve always known about it, then I’ve really been too busy in my work life to really participate on an ongoing basis. but when Jed came to me and said he wanted me to do this – and he’s been trying to get me for a number of companies, but this was the first time he succeeded – it was not a difficult decision for me at all with regards to what Second Life is or what Linden Lab is or what we can do because those things are just instantly fascinating to me. I love products that empower people to do things that otherwise would not be possible. I prefer these kinds of products. Call them products that are enabled user-generated opportunities or platforms that can really scale and empower people to succeed as opposed to doing products that are just selling widgets to people.
“So I was instantly passionate about the subject matter, or the materials as they call …a product that enables this tremendous creativity but using technology to do it on a massive scale, and the communication and collaboration elements are also very near and dear to me. So the materials to work with, if you’re someone like me in software product development and digital product development, are just fantastic.
“The only thing that took a little while to overcome was Jed and I are close friends and we had to look each other in the eye for a few days and make sure we could this together, him being on the board and me being CEO, and not have that be damaging to our personal relationship. But after having talked to our wives and families, we completely agreed that we could do it and do it very successfully.
“So that’s kind-of a little bit about why I took this on … I’ve worked on similar things for quite some time at Ingenio, the start-up I joined having left Microsoft, where we basically worked on apps, or I worked on apps – although very successful apps, I think all of us have used those at some point – at Ingenio it was really a marketplace for people to sell what they know. We thought of it as the E-bay of what’s in the top of your mind as opposed to the top of your attic. And we empowered a lot of people to run some very successful businesses on top of the platform we created by just taking ‘phone calls and helping people. and the three days later we would direct deposit their earnings they’d made from helping their customers.
“And at Yahoo!, even, there were a lot of UGC [user-generated content] products I worked on; I was responsible for Yahoo! answers for a while and also at the end responsible for a platform … we bought a company that created the Yahoo! Contributor Network, where we could have hundreds of thousands of people contributing content which could make it into one or many of the Yahoo! verticals to broaden the amount of content we could create, and again empower people to do what they love and to make money doing it.
“So this is a context that’s very familiar to me and near and dear to things that I’m passionate about.”
As many are aware, and as I’ve blogged about several times recently, Linden Lab are required to collect various items of documentation from Second Life users that meet certain transaction thresholds.
When the announcements were first made, it is fair to say that they resulted in confusion for a lot of people.
As a result of this, the Lab has put together a set of resources to help people to understand why the information is being requested, and what they need to do in order to comply with any request for information, should they receive one.
The new resources, in the form of two wiki FAQs, have been announced in an official blog post. Peter Gray, the Lab’s Director of Global Communications, dropped me a line to help spread the word of their existence, and I’m only too happy to do so.
As we’ve blogged about in the posts linked below, US law requires that institutions like Linden Lab collect documentation from Second Life users that meet certain transaction thresholds:
These documentation requests can sometimes be confusing, and so to help the users who receive them better understand what’s needed and why, we’ve created a list of FAQs about these requests here:
As noted in the FAQs, if you receive a request for documentation from Linden Lab and have additional questions, please open the request in your Case History in the Support Portal and reply to the Case.
Linden Lab have announced the formal release of Fitted Mesh. The announcement came as the former Fitted Mesh release candidate viewer was promoted to the de facto release viewer on Monday February 10th.
Today, we’re happy to announce that Fitted Mesh is available in the main Second Life Viewer! As we’ve previously blogged, Fitted Mesh gives Second Life content creators the power to craft mesh garments that make avatars look their absolute best. We’d like to thank the vibrant community of creators for their thoughtful feedback and help testing this feature.
For more information, check out the video below, then update your Viewer to the latest release and get creative with Fitted Mesh!
A video narrated by Torley is included with the post.
For those unfamiliar with Fitted Mesh, it is a technique adopted by the Lab to help make worn mesh garments fit avatars more correctly. I was fortunate enough to be allowed a preview look at the technique when it was first announced, and you can read my report in this blog.
The code, which is not the same as the mesh deformer (again, see my preview post), is also starting to appear in TPVs as well, with several already having adopted it into release or pre-release versions. Those that have not (as yet) release versions of their viewers incorporating the code can be expected to do so over the coming weeks.
Ebbe Altberg at Yahoo! circa 2008 (image courtesy of LaFlecha)
Update: February 20th: I was fortunate to attend a meet-and-greet with Ebbe Altberg in-world, and have published an article presenting his views on the Lab, You can read and listen to his comments by following this link.
So Ebbe Altberg is the new CEO at Linden Lab, and will formally take up his new position on Monday February 10th. But who is Ebbe Altberg?
You can read his official LL biography here, and I’m using that as a leaping-off point for a slightly deeper look at his career.
Mr. Altberg, Swedish by birth, graduated fromTärnabySkidhem in 1983. This is categorised as a “general college / university” in Foursquare, but appears to (also?) be a ski school.
Tärnaby itself is a locality (“urban area”) situated in Storuman Municipality, Västerbotten County, northern Sweden. It is noted for being the home of several of the country’s top international skiers and is regarded as one of the country’s best ski resorts.
Following this, he attended Middlebury College, Vermont, USA, where he graduated with a BA (subject not clear). Founded in 1800, Middlebury is one of the oldest liberal arts colleges in the United States, and offers 44 majors in the arts, humanities, literature, foreign languages, social sciences, and natural sciences.
After eleven and a half years as Product Unit Manager at Microsoft, where he was involved in products such as Word, Office, Mac Office, and multimedia products, he moved on to Internet and Telecommunications company Ingenio in March 2000. Here he was responsible for managing the engineering, program management, operations, and quality teams. Interestingly, and as noted in the LL bio, he also served as the company’s interim CEO.
Joining Yahoo! in February 2008, he spent two years and nine months working as Vice President, Head of Audience for the company’s EMEA division, based in Rolle, Switzerland. Here he was responsible for consumer strategy, products and content throughout EMEA, including Search, Mail, Homepage, Media products, including News, Sports, Finance, Music, Movies, Autos, Travel, Games, Answers, Flickr etc. He ultimately managed all teams responsible for product management, design, editorial, programming, content, production, content business development and product marketing – some 180 people in total across six countries.
During this period, he also served on the board of Yahoo! SARL (Société à responsabilité limitée) – think the equivalent of a Pvt Ltd company in the UK or a limited liability partnership in the USA.
In October 2010, Mr. Altberg became the Senior Vice President for Media Engineering at Yahoo! with global responsibly for Media Engineering for all of Yahoo! Homepages, News, Sports, Finance, Movies, Music, TV, Games, OMG, Lifestyles, Weather, Screen, Livestand and IntoNow products, including related partner portals, publishing platforms and the Yahoo! Contributor Network, across all devices (PC, Tablet and Mobile). This position involved managing an organisation of more than 600 engineers, architects, program managers and quality engineering staff, as well as having dotted-line oversight of some 150 product managers and designers.
Ebbe Altberg joined BranchOut as the company sought to pivot its ailing Facebook app, resulting in the launch of Talk.co
Thirteen months later, in October 2012, he moved to join BranchOut, based in San Francisco, as Chief Operations Officer. At the time of his joining, the company had already experienced something of a rough time.
Founded in 2010 by Rick Marini as an application designed for finding jobs, networking professionally, and recruiting employees, it proclaimed itself to be the “largest professional network on Facebook”.
The app attracted some $49 million in three rounds of funding between 2010 and 2012, and in March 2012 it boasted some 25 million users and was active in at least 60 countries. However, by August of that year, user numbers had fallen to some 3 million, and the company had indicated it would be working to pivot BranchOut into a workplace chat app, As COO, Mr. Altberg played a key role in this effort, which saw the development of Talk.co, a private messaging application. Launched in October 2013, Talk.co promotes itself as “a better way to communicate with those you work with”.
Mr. Altberg defines his key skills as:
Specialties: Team development, strategy, provide vision, software and business inventions, product design, engineering, product/program management, quality engineering, operations.
Manage teams that invent, create, define, spec, build, produce, test, ship, market and operate products.
Unsurprisingly, Mr. Altberg is a keen supporter of his son’s racing and driving career with APR Motorsport and elsewhere (image courtesy of Talk.co)
Away from work, Mr. Altberg appears to have an interest in space exploration, particularly efforts from within the private sector. He’s also a follower of Formula 1 racing, and (obviously) a keen supporter of his son, Aleks, a former instructor at the Dirtfish Rally School and who is currently an instructor at the Lamborghini Driving Academy, as well as being a winning driver with APR Motorsport.
From his résumé, it’s fairly clear why Ebbe Altberg has been seen as a good fit for Linden Lab by the board of directors. He has considerable breadth and depth of experience in both product development and product management, as well as in multi-discipline team management and developing and operating software across multiple platforms and product categories.
A lot of Mr. Altberg’s background revolves around social media and the need to establish strong communities. Indeed, his lists his motivating factors as creating “fantastic and profitable experiences that positively impact millions of people.” This might actually bode well for Second Life, particularly if he has the freedom to ensure the company more broadly re-engages with the SL user base, and becomes more pro-active in key areas of communication (such as with changes to the ToS and better communications about legal and requirements which impact users, etc.). He has already received a number of Tweets from SL users (myself included) requesting he takes this into consideration while welcoming him to the company.
Time will obviously tell as to how well Mr. Altberg fits-in at Linden Lab, as well as revealing the direction in which the board would like him to take the company.; in this respect it is perhaps interesting to note how the press release announcing his appointment is directly focused on Second Life and Blocksworld (with a mention in passing of Desura). In the meantime, I’ll once again welcome him to Linden Lab. The hot seat awaits!
The Lab has released a curious new project viewer on Wednesday March 26th.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 