Filed under: Culture, News items, Second Life, Virtual worlds

Eric Krangel, whom most Second Life users will more readily recognize as the personable and approachable Eric Reuters and primary representative of the Thomson Reuters news service in Second Life for so long, is finally moving on.

Krangel will be taking up a writing position with Silicon Alley Insider, ending his long stint that saw him replace Adam Pasick (aka Adam Reuters) as the front-man for Thomson Reuters in Linden Lab's virtual environment.

In many ways it seems like the end of an era.

	Are you a part of the most widely-known collaborative virtual environment or keeping a close eye on it? Massively's Second Life coverage keeps you in the loop.

Continue reading Reuters reporter to withdraw from Second Life

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Filed under: MMO industry, News items, Opinion, Second Life, Virtual worlds

Tom Hale, formerly Senior Vice President and General Manager of the Knowledge Worker Business Unit at Adobe Systems has been hired to fill what is apparently a new role at Linden Lab: Chief Product Officer. Hale, as CPO will be reporting to new Lab CEO, Mark Kingdon.

Hale isn't the actually first to be poached away from Adobe Systems to the Lab recently. Clare Rees, a Senior Group Manager there was recently hired as the Lab's new European Marketing Director. Marketing what and marketing to whom -- this is not yet clear.

	Are you a part of the most widely-known collaborative virtual environment or keeping a close eye on it? Massively's Second Life coverage keeps you in the loop.

Continue reading Linden Lab hires another from Adobe Systems

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Filed under: Guides, Tips and tricks, Second Life

One of the most misunderstood concepts in any online medium is lag. Lag essentially refers to a delay. Most commonly we're referring to the delay between when you expect something to happen and when it actually does happen.

What makes lag difficult to understand is that it is a syndrome. There are multiple possible causes for lag, some under your control, and some not -- all of which contribute to that molasses-like feeling, and occasionally crashes or disconnections.

To help you make the most of your Second Life experience, we'll look over how to easily and simply identify what kind of lag you're getting, and what (if anything) you can do to reduce it.

Jump to a section:

• Your computer
• The servers
• The network
• Final thoughts

	Are you a part of the most widely-known collaborative virtual environment or keeping a close eye on it? Massively's Second Life coverage keeps you in the loop.

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Filed under: Culture, Economy, News items, Second Life, Virtual worlds

Phatland (aka Phat Cat's Jazz club) was originally founded by Dilbert Dilweg and Charity Colville, two people who met in Second Life, worked together, fell in love, and forged a successful and lasting relationship in the physical world -- not an uncommon story. Indeed, it seemed like Phatland and its club grew with their romance, up until mid 2007 or so Phatland was one of the single most popular places in Second Life by any reasonable reckoning.

When the couple moved to be with each-other in the physical world, they needed to make some changes in their lives, as one might expect. And that included the sale of Phatland. The sale went through, but not everything went smoothly with Phatland after that, and Dilbert and Charity were banned from the site. Phatland's traffic started to fall significantly. Where there had once been 90 or more users at all hours of the day, soon the site seemed to be a mere shadow of its former success.

	Are you a part of the most widely-known collaborative virtual environment or keeping a close eye on it? Massively's Second Life coverage keeps you in the loop.

Continue reading Phatland for sale: Famous island to go on eBay

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Filed under: News items, Second Life, Virtual worlds

Linden Lab apparently is in the planning stages for an upcoming rollout of new, "Class 6" hardware for Second Life, representing a step up from existing Class 5 server systems. Little is actually known about the roll-out, but they appear to be part of another project to migrate the server systems from 32-bit to 64-bit. How far along in that planning they may be is uncertain.

With SLS-1.24 server code still in the process of being stabilized, we wouldn't even begin to venture predictions as to when 64-bit server software or Class 6 servers will make it into testing, let alone into actual production. We assume it will be some time yet before the hardware is even purchased.

	Are you a part of the most widely-known collaborative virtual environment or keeping a close eye on it? Massively's Second Life coverage keeps you in the loop.

Continue reading Class 6 servers planned for Second Life

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Filed under: Fantasy, Game mechanics, PvP, Warhammer Online, PvE, Opinion, Hands-on, Anti-Aliased

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Filed under: Patches, News items, Second Life

A new Second Life viewer is available. Not a release candidate, but an update to the 1.20 series -- what's generally referred to as an 'official' or production viewer. The version number for this release is 1.20.16 (97603), and only contains one listed change over 1.20.15.

The lone change appears to be security-related. The text of the change (not yet available in Wiki release notes) is "Discard messages sent over UDP that should not be trusted."

It isn't clear exactly which messages those are, precisely, and whether they might be sent from servers or spoofed from other hosts (or if they should simply be being carried on another transport protocol) -- however if it was important enough to release a fresh production viewer with just this one change, it is likely to be an important upgrade for users.

The new viewer is available for download now for Linux, Windows, or Mac (universal binary). We assume that if you've had problems running the 1.20.15 viewer, 1.20.16 will not work any better for you.

Linden Lab has not yet announced this release on any of its blogs.

	Are you a part of the most widely-known collaborative virtual environment or keeping a close eye on it? Massively's Second Life coverage keeps you in the loop.

Continue reading Production Second Life viewer 1.20.16 available now [updated]

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Filed under: Culture, Opinion, Second Life, Virtual worlds

One of the things that comes up repeatedly in third-party discussions about Second Life is the low population density, often with concern that it represents some manner of deficiency or failure. Two general points are made: Firstly that the Second Life grid lacks the ability to support very high densities, and second that the Second Life grid is largely "a deserted wasteland", due to the low active population per square metre. Take a moment to imagine the digital tumbleweeds.

Actually, there's a good reason for the second, and it makes the first rather irrelevant. Sure, the population density is low -- because, apparently, that's the way the users prefer it. Many individuals might prefer higher population densities within Linden Lab's virtual environment, but as an aggregate population Second Life users tend to actively select against that in practice.

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Continue reading Second Life's low population density

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Filed under: Culture, Second Life, Politics, Virtual worlds

Week after week, year after year, Australia's police-men and -women put their lives on the line for us. Even when we're ungrateful and unpleasant about it. They see the best and the worst of us, and they keep on going. The Western Australia police force have a recruiting center newly established in the virtual environment Second Life -- and there's some interesting stories being told there.

You see, there's a peculiar issue with the police force in Western Australia which has long been under the radar for local print-media. It took Second Life and the Metaverse Journal's Feldspar Epstein to bring it to light, and now the Western Australian print-media is buzzing with it.

	Are you a part of the most widely-known collaborative virtual environment or keeping a close eye on it? Massively's Second Life coverage keeps you in the loop.

Continue reading Second Life publicizes din of inequity

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