Tag: SL News

On Christmas Day I picked-up on comments that the direct messaging capabilities of the profile feeds had apparently been disabled. I heard things by way of Ciaran Laval, who pointed me towards a thread on the forums.

While one poster – Bondboy Dagger – commented on the thread that LL’s support had indicated  the capability had been discontinued, I was a little cautious in stating this to be the case because my.secondlife.com has been subject to more than a few problems of late – as many of us who still are unable to post snapshots to our feeds can testify.

As news spread, so did the speculation that it may be down to scammers abusing the system with offers of cheap rates for buying L$.

In my original article, I promised to drop Pete Linden, the Lab’s Director of Global Communications a line and ask him for an official comment – although as I explained at the time, it would be unlikely that any answer would be forthcoming until the new year as Pete was out-of-the-office enjoying a well-earned break (and I actually forgot to send the mail at the time – it was left stranded in my DRAFTS folder *cough*).

Anyway, Pete is back in the office today, and did drop me a short reply to my question about the service being discontinued on account of misuse, which reads in full:

Hi Inara,

On this inquiry, I can confirm that yes, as a result of a rise in abuse of the system, we have turned off the direct message function on My.SecondLife.com profiles.

Best,
Peter

So there you have it. The capability has indeed been disabled. Whether it might be re-enabled in the future remains to be seen.

My thanks again to Pete for his reply.

Saffia Widdershins has blogged over at Prim Perfect about a somewhat annoying situation that has arisen for Second Life users who have Gmail as their e-mail provider. I’ll let Saffia explain:

It seems that a few weeks ago, Linden Labs was put on the SPAM list for gmail. Because of this, many of your offlines from Second Life may have been going to your spam folder (a peek into the dark recesses of your spam folder will confirm this.

She goes on to provide a set of instructions for those so afflicted on how to set a filter to overcome the problem.

Setting filters is good advice for any e-mail service, Gmail or otherwise. I actually switched away from Gmail a few years ago and now use GMX.com.  By default, I use a filter to direct offlines to a given folder  in order to keep them separate from other e-mails flowing into my inbox (or, indeed, ending-up in my junk mail folder). Helps keep things tidy 🙂 .

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Update, January 2nd: As promised, I contacted Peter Gray (Pete Linden) at the Lab, and he confirmed profile feed direct messaging has been turned off.

Ciaran Laval brought this to my attention: it appears that direct messaging (DM) on my.secondlife.com may have been discontinued.

The capability was slipped out by the Lab back in October 2011. Like many things about the profile feeds (and elsewhere in Second Life) there was no announcement about its introduction, and people were left to trip over it for themselves. At the time I noticed it, I offered a short tutorial on using it. The removal of the feature – if that is indeed what has happened – has similarly occurred sans any announcement.

I’m using caution here, as things on the profile feeds have been a little higgledy-piggledy* of late, what with snapshot uploads having been badly broken for many for the past week or more (and still broken for some – I confess, I’ve not tried in the last few days). Therefore, the capability might have been suspended due to problems with the hamsters servers.

However, a comment on a forum thread started on the matter would appear to suggest the option has indeed been removed. Responding to the question “…No more private messages?“, Bondboy Dagger states:

I too noticed this feature being gone. I created a ticket to inquire and have been told this feature has been discontinued.

Certainly, the options to send private messages have now gone. There is no longer a New Message button in the Messages tab of the Inbox, and the option to privately message a friend by clicking the message button on their profile feed has also gone – the only option left is to IM them via the viewer (i.e. in-world).

Similarly, sending a message in an existing DM conversation no longer works. While the text input box is still there, together with the Send button, and while you can still enter a message, clicking on the Send button does nothing; your text remains displayed in the test input box.

I’ve dropped a line to Pete Linden to enquire on the matter – but it is Christmas Eve (actually very early Christmas morning where I am!), and I know Pete is out of the office until January 2nd – so please don’t hold your breath over the holidays waiting to find out!

If the option has been removed, it’s liable to meet with mixed reactions. Many have probably never used it, even if they use the feeds, or may have used it occasionally. On the other hand, those of us who have used it, have found it to be extremely useful. For my part, I can say it has been of major assistance in communicating rapid-fire messages as a part of various collaborative projects. Obviously, whether it will be replaced by something else (assuming it has gone the way of the Dodo), is also up in the air at this point.

More news if / when I hear anything back in the New Year!

*for an explanation of “higgledy-piggledy, a technical term, please refer to the bottom of this page (in the hope it raises a smile or two)

He’s been one of the longest-serving members of the Lab’s team, and actually out-lasted Philip Rosedale for time put in with the company, but after more than eleven years with Linden Lab, Andrew Linden is saying “farewell”.

He broke the news during his regular appearance at the Tuesday Simulator User Group meeting on December 17th, saying, “This is going to be my last User Group meeting as a Linden: I’ve decided to leave LL and pursue other things. I’ve really enjoyed these User Group meetings, which is why I’ve been showing up all these years.”

He confirmed that he will be joining Rosedale at the latter’s latest venture, High Fidelity, saying, “”I’m going to join Philip and his new project. Not because I don’t love SL or am not excited about what LL is working on, but because I’m ready for a change, and I really like working with Philip.”

Andrew’s final day with the Lab will be on Thursday December 19th, after which he’ll be off to join the High Fidelity team.

As a long-serving member of the Lab’s staff, he will be sorely missed. Over the years he’s been exceptionally popular among residents, and he has worked on many of the Lab’s server-side and other projects. Most recently, he has been instrumental in overhauling the platform’s interest list, massively improving the way in which in-world scenes and managed and loaded between the servers and the viewer, and which has also seen an overhaul of the viewer’s object caching capabilities (which are currently available through a release candidate viewer), all of which has significantly improved scene loading and rendering. This work was recently featured in a video narrated by Torley Linden.

The video demonstrating the interest list work: the last large-scale undertaking Andrew worked on

Also of late, Andrew has worked on a number of anti-griefing measures within the platform, and has currently project has involved LSL updates to enable the uniform scaling of objects and linksets (such as uniformly increasing or decreasing a linksets size by a factor of 2). This work should be appearing in an RC release in the New Year.

In the time I’ve been attending the Simulator User Group meeting (formerly the Server/Sim/Scripting group), Andrew has always been polite, inquisitive and helpful to all, and demonstrated a willingness to readily delve into issues and see what he can find and / or put right. In response to the direct enquiries I’ve put to him in the past, he’s always been more than helpful in his replies, willing to provide concise explanations and offer additional information and guidance.

The news of his departure was met with a mix of sadness and best wishes from those at the meeting. For my part, I’d like to again extend my thanks to Andrew for his input to, and work on Second Life over the years, for his support of the Simulator User Group and to wish him all the best for the future.