Second Life Press Corps and the PR of the Lab
We all know Linden Lab uses to manage their Public Relations in… let’s say interesting ways. One of those “interesting ways” is a group called Second Life Press Corps. For those who don’t know it, is a group managed by Pete Linden to connect with SL bloggers, informers, writers, TV-machinima creators, etc… Some like a press club. The group is not “Open” but theoretically everybody would join following the instructions included in the group chart:
This group will be used by Linden Lab’s PR team to share announcements, invitations to inworld press events, etc.
To request an invitation, please email pete@lindenlab.com with the following information:
- Your Second Life name
- The outlet (blog, magazine, TV show, etc.) that you work for – please provide the name, URL, and a brief description
Note: To be admitted to the group, the outlet you work for must be in compliance with our trademark guidelines: http://secondlife.com/corporate/brand/
So if you want to join, you know what to do. I’ve been member of this group for a year or so, and it was pretty silent until a month ago or so, i presume that’s related with the changes in the PR team of Linden Lab, well, in the full Lab. Sincerely, never thought to blog about it, because of this silent, but after reading this interesting blogpost by Chestnut Rau possibly it was the time.
I’m not an expert in PR, but i understand the Lab wants to control who has access to some information, or at least who has it first. Let’s see an example, today there was a Meet and Greet event with Rodvik Linden (Rod Humble), new CEO of Linden Lab. The PR team of Linden Lab sent a notice in the Second Life Press Corps group, and i think only inside this group, asking the members to send a request by email to be in that meeting. Initially i was supposed to be out today and i didn’t send the email (Chestnut Rau was in the Meet and published a transcription *good work*).
I’m trying to be neutral and just to tell the facts, but is hard not to express an opinion about that matter. I presume Linden Lab wanted to introduce the new CEO to the “inworld press”, and that’s nice… i also presume they wanted to do it in a “safe environment”, out of greefers, excessive lag… maybe excessive criticism too? It’s nice the CEO connects with the residents, is even important since those residents are also customers, but i wonder if that could be done in a different way not so… FIC, not so “VIP club”. Maybe is just i’m missing the times when we had those Town Hall meetings with the Lindens to talk about things…
Anyway… what do you think?
Second Life® Mesh Beta… and some shadows
Last week Linden Lab opened the beta for Mesh upload for Second Life. Mesh Import allows you to bring models into Second Life from the many popular 3D tools such as Blender or Google SketchUp (both totally free), or Maya™ (incredibly expensive), using the COLLADA file format. You can find more information about Mesh and everything related in the SLWiki.
So decided to visit Aditi (the Second Life test grid) with the Mesh beta viewer and took a look at the models some residents made. As you can see even a full avatar in the beginning! To make Mesh understandable, and correct me if i’m wrong, it is something… similar to sculpties. Is a way for the client to model a 3D object. It is more complex someway that sculpties, but it loads MUCH faster and permits higher complexity or detail. This new tool will change how SL looks, as sculpties did. Will change the places, clothing, avatars… everything. And the best about it is there are free tools any resident can use to create mesh objects. I didn’t tried to create and upload something, but i saw the beta models of some residents and they are amazing as you can see in the video.
At the same time i saw that test viewer permits shadows in my Mac!!! And that was a surprise, because i think is the first time they work, even in the actual Viewer 2.2 shadows are not working in my computer.
It was pretty easy to set, you can see it in this image. Only select “Lighting and shadows” and it works, as easy as this. Anyway, don’t try to use AntiAliasing at the same time or it will crash.
Used shadows on during the recording of the video and you can see it doesn’t affect too badly performance. Anyway, before anyone gets too excited, after having a chat in Plurk with other Mac users it seems this is only working in Macs with Nvidia graphics cards, not working in ATI ones (someone commented it would work in the latest ATI cards).
I think is important i paste some info about my computer:
- Apple iMac
- Intel Core 2 Duo 2.8 GHz
- 4GB RAM
- Nvidia GeForce 8800 GS 512MB
Just hope to see shadows working for all Mac users soon, some days ago Strawberry Singh blogged about it and linked some interesting Plurk discussions.
My name is Raul Crimson
For almost four years i’ve been Raul Crimson, and i will be Raul Crimson for a long time (i hope). And i know this may sound kinda silly, but i’m sad about that Display Names thing Linden Lab is working on (read more in their blogpost).
I understand this feature may be useful for a lot of people, but at the same time i’m not happy about how Linden Lab is planning to implement the feature:
- Your actual name will become your username with a period between, so Raul Crimson will be raul.crimson.
- Anybody can use any Display name and change it once a week, so anybody can be Raul Crimson as display name and the option that Linden Lab offers me if someone uses my display name is… change mine to another one.
- “Real” Usernames will be hidden by default.
There is something i find… funny. In the Wiki about this new feature says you can keep your actual name… but also anybody can take your actual name too. That’s what i don’t like at all.
Names are something related to identity, Raul Crimson is a way to identify me and i feel it only identifies me, not anyone, only me. The only thing i say is, ok, go with this feature, i’m all for new things and i’m sure a lot of people would find this useful and interesting, but please, make the direct transcriptions of usernames (like Raul Crimson to raul.crimson) only available to the username owner, so only me can be Raul Crimson.
So… what do you think about this new feature?
Farewell to M, a welcome back to Philip and some thoughts
As possibly you know M Linden (Mark Kingdon) is going to step down as Linden Lab CEO and Philip Linden (Philip Rosedale) is back as interim CEO.
I was not a big fan of Mr. Kingdon, i think his view was not as passionate as Philip one, maybe was more about marketing than about community, and even i’m sure he tried his best to make Second Life a better place (or maybe only a better business) he had some… let’s say wrong (or “non popular”) choices or issues: SL Enterprise, the ban of freebies in XStreetSL, Zindra, Avatars United…
Anyway, i think those were not “bad” decisions themselves, but all of them together made a lot of residents be against him and his management. Of course there is also Viewer 2.0, but i’ll talk about it later. It seems sometimes we like to make M look as the Devil, but i’d like now to make some positive comments about M’s management:
In the time Mr. Kingdon was CEO of Linden Lab i think performance and stability has been better and better. Of course that means generally and sometimes is understandable a system so complex as the Second Life Grid has some problems.
Viewer 2.0 is a good product, works pretty good, has less problems with memory use that Emerald or any 1.23 based viewer and has some really cool features. And even you don’t like the UI (i like it personally even it can/should be improved) you can always use alternative viewers based in 1.23 UI.
I’m saying all this from my experience and point of view and is possible someone doesn’t agree, specially about Viewer 2.0, but i think is a question of preferences and nobody HAS TO use it, is an optional viewer.
And i needed to say all this because i’m tired of negativity, of “Second Life is crap”, of all this shit. Is difficult to find positive comments sometimes about Second Life, specially from the residents. Some of the SL residents seem to be incredibly reluctant to any minor change and they will complain about anything in any case (I still remember people complaining about Windlight), and to those who always complain i ask… if Second Life is so crappy and they have nothing positive to say about it why are they still in it? Why are they just complaining and complaining and they just can’t make or say something constructive? What are they doing to make Second Life better?
Criticism is good, it is even needed, but not empty one. Some people who doesn’t like the viewer is creating cool viewers with different features, that’s constructive criticism! Of course most of us can’t create a new viewer, but we can point what we don’t like, suggest how we think it would me and keep loving what we deeply love in this virtual world, say i like this and i dislike that.
As always i don’t pretend to tell people how they should act or react, i just express what i think, so feel free to comment and share also your point of view… and about Philip… welcome back home, Phil!
Image by Daniel Voyager published under a Creative Commons license.
The public works
Second Life is supposed to be a world “built by its residents”… and it is, even the “government” (in this case Linden Lab) promotes some works, some like other governments do. They do it with the Linden Department of Public Works (LDPW from now) and the team of residents who build the projects are The Moles and since they are residents i presume this way Second Life remains as that “world built by residents”… 
The first work by the LDPW was Bay City, this was a quite huge project, and under my point of view is a really good work, if Linden Lab wanted to “dignify” the Mainland with a project then this was good, land in there is INCREDIBLY expensive.
The there there was urban, a city full of channels of water, bridges, a port, industry… including public transportation (tram and water-tram systems).
Other big projects were Nautilus (ancient mediterranean culture themed), Zindra (the Mainland area dedicated to Adult content), the Mainland sail sims, the Linden Homes sims… and i presume they are planning some more.
But their work is not only about this kind of themed communities, also they are developing roads in Mainland (in the top picture walking around one of the newest roads) and working a lot lately in the SLRR (Second Life Railroad) and a ferry connection between two “Maritime stations”. But loving as i love railways i’ll write a special post about the SLRR soon.
Knowing the chaos the Mainland became when Linden Lab decided to “leave it for its own” i think this LDPW is a really good project, first for Mainland residents, making their neighbourhoods better and keeping the value of the land, and second for all the residents, providing nice places to hang out or explore. Possibly the land auction system was not really smart and caused the prices of land to raise due speculation, specially in Bay City, but i really hope Linden Lab learned about it and the new projects would have better ways to “distribute” the land.
Photos by me, Shadoe Landman, Wildstar Beaumont and Alpha Auer, all published under Creative Commons license, follow the images links for more info.
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