Autor: Bartholomew Gallacher

Search changed

As many might have now noticed (or not) – the implementation of the search feature in SL has changed.

According to this article in the SL blog it is now this way:

You may have noticed that Search > Places returns slightly different results after today’s update. Previously if you had a place with a description like “clothingshirtshoes” a search on “shirt” would find that place. Now our searches work more like Google, Yahoo, ect. and will only find full words. Thus “clothing shirt” and “clothing, shirt” will be found, but not “clothingshirt”.

This, to say it simply, hurts business until the word spreads around under the users and still then some might not know how to do it otherwise.

(Yeah, some people would just right now say: LL is to blame for using the „toy database“ MySQL, why have they not used Postgres or $insertyourfavoriteenterpriseRDBMShere from the beginning? Guess what? Stick this statement in your ass, those flamewars bring nothing new…)

Ah, and of course, the inevitable Mr. Prokofy Neva has written an article about it, too, using much more words to get the same message to the people like I did. I’d like to see him as a Rebel without a clue from now on.

Second Life goes Opensource – so what?

Yesterday was one of these days – out of the blue happened one important thing, about that already many rumors spreaded around lately. The client part of Second Life was released under the GPLv2 license, which means: it became opensource.

Well, some expected it sooner or later, because there were already interviews around in which the CEO of Lindenlabs, Philip Rosedale, was very open about it. So now the first step happened. We are going to see, if they are also opening up part of the server side or not. But, and this is the important message: the cat is out of the bag right now and no way to get it back – anymore!

So, the important questions to ask are: why did it happen and what can I, the user, expect from it in the future? What does it mean to me personally?

„Second Life goes Opensource – so what?“ weiterlesen

Home visits and the consequences

Yesterday I visited the new home of my dear friend Lu Stapleton. It’s a very nice and modern house somewhere on the mainland, which is definitely a good fit. She was quite impressed by the work of the builder and for sure is going to recommend him to others.

While I was there, some classic music played on the parcel. She told me that she bought SLTunes, a nice interface for iTunes to set the media URL on the parcel based on the radio station list in iTunes. It was a cheap buy, doesn’t get in the way and gets its job done. A well thought out piece of software, just like all software should be. A tool that doesn’t get in your way!

Well, I was curious, so I used Google to find some information about this tool and stumpled upon the website of the maker, Darius Lehane, named „Darius Lehane’s Second Life.“ Doh!

Ok, the name of my blog isn’t exactly brilliant, either, but I gave the site a try and it was worth it. First, if you want to buy some nice software, you can get some very good things there.

But, more important and fun to read for me, was Mr. Lehane’s „Hall of Shame“. It’s a list of 8 points and listing some of in his opinion bad developments in SL. And guess what? He’s right!

For example he mentions empty malls (even the idea of opening another mall is bad), Mr. Lee’s Greater Hong Kong and other stuff. It’s worth a read!

Well, he also has a short list of three points of „Top Places“ in his opinion, also a very nice read.

And last, but not least, his very interesting article „Guide to Land: How to Own Land and Make Money (or not spend much).“ It has some very good tips you should consider when buying land and tells you in all glorious details why it sometimes could be better to buy land from a land baron, and sometimes it is better to buy on mainland and the differences between these two fundamental choices.

My Friday in SL

Well, today was smooth and without any trouble. All was quiet in the garden, danced with several nice ladies and I found some stuff to read and to do.

Well, here’s my roundup:

  • An article named „What do Paris Hilton and Second Life have in common?“ from the CEO of Iron Realms, a company doing business in and with MUDs, from 10/20/06. Well, Matt Mihaly takes a very negative stance against SL. No great news there, because they are competitors. The quote „SL is famous for being famous“ sums his opinion up very well! He has some points there, but the reason for a company going into SL is always first – cheap publicity. If you join there, then you’re hip, you get big press for nothing at all and the project costs are just a very minor part in your budget. That’s the way it works!
  • A piece named „Relay for Life and Exploits“ from Hiro Pendragron from 06/20/06. Quote: „Linden Lab loves to play this game called „Let’s release a patch befor a major release!““. About the problems of the patch schedules and that he is the opinion that the Lindens should be allowed to play actually in the world while at work to get a grip of it. Point taken there, but not all Lindens are technicians like he writes.
  • The article of the day: „Politiker in „Second Life“: Der US-Kongress wird virtuell.“ This was today at the frontpage of the website of the German magazine „Der Spiegel“. It’s about a new sim, in which the US congress was put into. Well, actually good PR for LL at no cost at all, since this is a biggie.

Second Life in 2007 – potential backlash?

In Terra Nova is an interesting article about potential backlashs about Second Life in 2007 by Ren Reynolds.

Points one to three are:

  1. It’s all just sex. sex sex sex I tell you
  2. It’s not just sex, it’s prostitution
  3. It can be used for hiding / laundering money

Well, guess what? Point 3 already has happened, there are already articles about this possibility in the web. Definitely also worth a read and some of them are just bound to happen sooner or later!