How do I use the World Map? is our featured article this week. Learn about Map Legends, Navigation Beacons, Tracking Friends, Creating SLURLs and more! We’re on a roll this week and have an added special surprise! New and veteran map users alike, a bounty of bear goodness awaits you. Support teams have created Special Team Bears which are placed on I-World Island from now until Monday at 1 p.m. PDT. Here is a little help. I’ll give you various coordinates to land in and then the hunt is on! New to using coordinates? Check out our Article of the Week! Central Area: I-World Island (107,129,24) or (147, 130,24) or (130,175,26) In-World Expo Area: I-World Island (177,185,23) International Area: I-World Island (185,74,29) Kiosk Area: I-World Island (72,53,23) Science Laboratory & Museum Area: I-World Island (82,172,22) Special thanks to VTeam, I-World Team, GTeam and Concierge for these team bears. You will also find bears scattered about from Gail Linden, Teeple Linden and Matthew Linden along with bears from other I-World Team Lindens. Today our Documentation Team is celebrating Independence Day and our normal office hour held on Friday at 2 p.m. PDT will resume next week. We are leaving you a treat in our absence found near our pier-shaped office in Beaumont : Knowledge Bear 1.0! Kate Linden

Filed under: World of Warcraft , Video , EverQuest , Second Life , Cinemassively , Machinima

On this 232nd day marking Independence in the United States , we wanted to feature some of the patriotic videos created in MMOs. They range from quick videos showing off fireworks in platforms such as Second Life , Everquest , and World of Warcraft , to artistic videos set to Bruce Springsteen, all the way to silly safety tips from the Red vs. Blue boys. As you're planning your real life festivities this year, considering taking some time to pop into your favorite game to get in on some of the action. Happy 4th of July! If you have machinima or movie suggestions from any MMO, please send them to machinima AT massively DOT com, along with any information you might have about them. Check out more videos after the jump!

Continue reading Cinemassively: Happy 4th of July

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Filed under: Guild Wars , Second Life , Comics , Dwell on It

Continue reading Dwell On It: A sudden chill

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Filed under: Culture , News items , Second Life

Famous Teen Second Life user Katharine Berry has spoken out on conditions in Linden Lab's Teen Grid . While, of course, there are rules about content and conduct, they're neither well-followed, says Berry, nor well-enforced.

'Of course, these rules are completely ignored ... Once upon a time, in 2005, Linden Lab would keep track of these things. Today, in 2008, they do not,' asserts Berry, citing an example in her experience where an unauthorized adult in Teen Second Life took more than a year to be removed.

Continue reading Ghetto grid: Katharine Berry slams Lab's negligence

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Happy Independence Day, fellow Americans!  Hurray for freedom, democracy, and fries!

Filed under: Second Life

The Justice Commons. Preview grid updated -- Rollout to follow next week. Check those sound scripts. 1.20(RC12) -- Release candidate viewer. Mostly regressions.

Continue reading Second Life daily news

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There's a couple in-world Independence Day firework parties events featured today on Lanna's List-- go here to check them out-- and likely a whole lot more happening throughout the grid. In the days leading up to the Fourth, the Second Life...

Filed under: Patches , News items , Second Life

The preview grid (Aditi) has been updated with SLS1.23, and the schedule has been set for it to roll out onto the main grid on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday next week.

This contains a second attempt at the infamous sound-throttling feature that caused widespread trouble for scripts some weeks ago. You've got several days to test to see if it breaks your content on the preview grid before it goes live on the main grid.

Continue reading Preview grid updated to SLS1.23. Dynamic sound throttling, take two

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Filed under: Betas , Patches , News items , Second Life

Linden Lab has released the thirteenth 1.20 Second Life release candidate viewer. Release candidates start counting from zero, so the first one in the series is RC0.

We're not sure if this is the RC with the least number of changes or not, exactly. Aside from a localization fix where the viewer was still talking about First Land, the remaining three items all seem to constitute code reversions -- essentially undoing what has been done.

User-Interface skin switching isn't in this release. We're going to go out on a limb and suggest that you won't see that for a couple weeks at least.

Continue reading New Second Life release candidate viewer: 1.20(RC12)

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Second Life podcaster Radar Murasaki has a thoughtful post reflecting on what many see as the heyday of Second Life podcasting, when MTV icon and podcasting innovator Adam Curry erected a castle in Second Life, spurring a merry band of fellow...

Capping off SL5B, Linden Lab board member Mitch Kapor will deliver a keynote address about Second Life as a disruptive technology platform. In addition to Second Life as a creative, social space, he will discuss the emergence of Second Life for broader uses such as education, philanthropy, art, fashion, medical research, architecture and design, science, and entertainment. The speech will be held at the Main Stage We know there is a lot of speculation about Mitch’s announcement…some of it is good tongue-in-cheek , some of it raising expectations. To put to rest to some of that speculation—Mitch’s announcement will not be about strategic nor business issues regarding Linden Lab. Mitch’s announcement will be about a new program that recognizes the achievements of Residents in making Second Life a disruptive technology platform. We will have video and audio feeds that we will post prior to the event, and like the opening event, we will provide transcripts, audio and video archives for download. Don’t forget to check out the rest of the birthday events. All are listed on the SL5B wiki

We will be deploying server version 1.23 to Second Life in a rolling restart next week, following the schedule: Tue, 07/08, 7:30PM : a pilot roll to ~300 regions Wed, 07/09, 5:00-9:00AM : a rolling restart of half the grid Thu, 07/10, 5:00-9:00AM : a rolling restart of the rest of the grid Each region will be down for about 10 minutes; regions will receive warnings starting 5 minutes before they are restarted. If your region stays down for more than 20 or 30 minutes, please contact support. There is no way to delay the restart of any given region. No client upgrades will be needed as a result of this rolling restart. Please help us ensure this code is as bug-free as possible! Test this code on the Preview Grid. The code to be deployed to Second Life is currently available on the “Second Life Beta Server” channel of the Preview Grid . If you wish to test the changes, and make sure that your objects or scripts work properly, follow the instructions for logging in to the Preview Grid . The new server version is 1.23, and is on regions in the “Second Life Beta Server” channel; other regions on the Preview Grid If you find any problems, first make sure that you are in fact testing the new version; the above-linked Wiki page on about the Preview Grid instructions for figuring out the channel of the version you are in . Please report any problems or issues you find using our Issue tracker . Report the issue as a Server issue (SVC), and tag it as an issue with version 1.23. Below is a list of the changes that are introduced with this server version: Changes: New LSL call for count of agents in region: llGetRegionAgentCount() (Note: this will not be usable until the call is also supported in the viewer; it is expected to be included with the 1.21 viewer.) New LSL call to get user’s client language: llGetAgentLanguage(llDetectedKey(0))) (Note: this will not be usable until the call is also supported in the viewer; it is expected to be included with the 1.21 viewer.) Dynamic sound throttling. This is done differently from how it was done (and then removed) a few weeks ago. Test your content on the Preview Grid if you want to make sure this release doesn’t break it! Fixes: Havok4 fixes: SVC-2485 : Phantom Objects Collide with Virtual Prims in 1.22.2 SVC-2484 : llVolumeDetect () Fails to detect some avatars SVC-2448 : llUnSit Attack/Bug MISC-1261 : Sim crashes following unlinking of a group of overlapping individually scripted prims rotating with llTargetOmega. Fix to llSetLinkPrimitiveParams Toxic message alert (’Unable to create item that has caused problems on this region) is now a script error and throttled Fix to XML parser to improve simulator performance Fixed: Sim crash by rezzing complex objects. Other Fixes: SVC-1507 : Notices failing for larger groups SVC-216 : New autoreturn email message shows incorrect region name & position VWR-4513 : Second Life takes my money but doesn’t give me the service I paid for VWR-3729 : Notices still received when “Receive Group Notices” is unchecked Fixed: LSL Changed event on region cross behaves poorly Fixed: Gestures deactivate when moving them between folders

We will be deploying server version 1.23 to Second Life in a rolling restart next week, following the schedule: Tue, 07/08, 7:30PM : a pilot roll to ~300 regions Wed, 07/09, 5:00-9:00AM : a rolling restart of half the grid Thu, 07/10, 5:00-9:00AM : a rolling restart of the rest of the grid Each region will be down for about 10 minutes; regions will receive warnings starting 5 minutes before they are restarted. If your region stays down for more than 20 or 30 minutes, please contact support. There is no way to delay the restart of any given region. No client upgrades will be needed as a result of this rolling restart. Please help us ensure this code is as bug-free as possible! Test this code on the Preview Grid. The code to be deployed to Second Life is currently available on the “Second Life Beta Server” channel of the Preview Grid . If you wish to test the changes, and make sure that your objects or scripts work properly, follow the instructions for logging in to the Preview Grid . The new server version is 1.23, and is on regions in the “Second Life Beta Server” channel; other regions on the Preview Grid If you find any problems, first make sure that you are in fact testing the new version; the above-linked Wiki page on about the Preview Grid instructions for figuring out the channel of the version you are in . Please report any problems or issues you find using our Issue tracker . Report the issue as a Server issue (SVC), and tag it as an issue with version 1.23. Below is a list of the changes that are introduced with this server version: Changes: New LSL call for count of agents in region: llGetRegionAgentCount() (Note: this will not be usable until the call is also supported in the viewer; it is expected to be included with the 1.21 viewer.) New LSL call to get user’s client language: llGetAgentLanguage(llDetectedKey(0))) (Note: this will not be usable until the call is also supported in the viewer; it is expected to be included with the 1.21 viewer.) Dynamic sound throttling. This is done differently from how it was done (and then removed) a few weeks ago. Test your content on the Preview Grid if you want to make sure this release doesn’t break it! Fixes: Havok4 fixes: SVC-2485 : Phantom Objects Collide with Virtual Prims in 1.22.2 SVC-2484 : llVolumeDetect () Fails to detect some avatars SVC-2448 : llUnSit Attack/Bug MISC-1261 : Sim crashes following unlinking of a group of overlapping individually scripted prims rotating with llTargetOmega. Fix to llSetLinkPrimitiveParams Toxic message alert (’Unable to create item that has caused problems on this region) is now a script error and throttled Fix to XML parser to improve simulator performance Fixed: Sim crash by rezzing complex objects. Other Fixes: SVC-1507 : Notices failing for larger groups SVC-216 : New autoreturn email message shows incorrect region name & position VWR-4513 : Second Life takes my money but doesn’t give me the service I paid for VWR-3729 : Notices still received when “Receive Group Notices” is unchecked Fixed: LSL Changed event on region cross behaves poorly Fixed: Gestures deactivate when moving them between folders

As part of our festivities, I was just on a panel alongside Kate Linden (moderator), Jeremy Linden, and Dimitrio Lewis discussing with our appreciated audience. What about? One of my fave focuses in Second Life… Community Enlightenment — sharing and spreading knowledge to make your Second Life better! From the Knowledge Base to the Wiki to those Video Tutorials , it RULES when answers to your questions exist… but SUCKS when you can’t find them. That’s what we’re here for. Read the transcript , check out the links, and if you’re Stateside or honorarily so, have an independent weekend! -Torley Linden R to the E to the M! POWER TO YOUR CREATION! … and stay tuned for more KB Article and Video Tip awesomeness…

Today we are releasing a new Release Candidate, 1.20 RC12. If you have already been using the Release Candidate (RC11), you will be required to update to RC12 with the latest bug fixes. But, the Release Candidate is always an optional series of viewers that you may choose not to use — or use side by side on your computer with the main viewer which is always offered on our Downloads page (or get.secondlife.com). As I mentioned in the last RC announcement , we are currently developing code which will enable you to switch the User Interface between the classic grey color or a lighter Dazzle theme (as requested in VWR-5059). But this feature is not yet tested and ready to be released. In the meantime… we are releasing RC12 with the thread monitoring “watchdog” again disabled. Also, we have also eliminated the proposed change to Snapshot behavior that appeared in RC6– in which Uploading a Snapshot would crop your screen to enforce a powers-of-two dimensions. Please continue to report any new issues in the Issue Tracker and be sure to set “Affects Version/s” to “1.20 Release Candidate”. To get started with the new Release Candidate, visit the Test Viewers download page (Note: use the links at bottom of page, under Test Viewers)! Release Notes for Second Life 1.20(12) July 2nd, 2008 ===================================== Fixes: * Fixed: VWR-7178: ‘Upload a snapshot’ cannot take full screen snapshot; limited to square images * Fixed: Allow the –set option to be specified multiple times on the command line * Fixed: Disable the thread monitoring (watchdog) in settings again for the Release Candidate Localization Fixes: * Fixed: VWR-7086: floater_buy_land.xml still contains messages regarding First Land

In the spirit of Second Life, M Linden was on hand to answer questions in text chat on Teen Second Life! Our Teen Residents’ enthusiasm is irrepressible. Upon our gathering at the TSL BIRTHDAY region, we were swamped in excited IMs, friendship offers, and bear requests! Numerous teens simply could not help but express their enthusiasm out loud. If you missed it or are simply curious, here’s the chat transcript . M and moderators Blue and Mia have been colored for ease-of-reading. Enjoy!

Something for everyone today! M will make his appearance on the Teen Grid at 11am. Author Tom Boellstorff will be discussing his new book on SL5B Linked at 12pm SLT and there will be a Community Enlightenment roundtable at 3pm SLT, also on SL5B Linked. M will be addressing teens in TSL, recognizing the great work they’ve been doing as well as organizations like Global Kids. Moderated by Blue Linden, he’ll also be answering some of their questions and concerns about TSL. The session will be done in chat, and transcripts will be made available as soon as possible ‘Coming of Age in Second Life’ shows how virtual worlds can change ideas about identity and society. Bringing anthropology into territory never before studied, Tom Boellstorff’s book demonstrates that in some ways humans have always been virtual, and that virtual worlds in all their rich complexity build upon a human capacity for culture that is as old as humanity itself. Second Life is full of features and services ready to be explored. Our panel, which is a mixture of Lindens and Residents, will introduce information about Groups, Content Creation, as well as Educational Resources and how they relate. Join our casual gathering of Q&A and enhance your in-world experience. As always, the full schedule is available on wiki

Clarrice created this delicate and painterly image in Hosoi Ichiba, a Japanese-themed shopping locale based on Virgin Island (direct SLURL teleport at this link), and having just bought a geisha avatar outfit, went searching for a place to suit her...

Charlanna just noticed a great Second Life event from the esteemed Dorkbot community, and added it to her Lanna's List calendar: the programmer formerly known as Ventrella Linden (real life background here) is appearing July 6 at 1:00 pm in the...

It's my mutha&%$*ing 39th birthday, folks! 

In between coordinating a virtual fossil dig and heading to Cali for a family wedding, I haven't had any time to plan anything for my birthday, unfortunately.  I'm hoping to  rally the troops for some dance outing next weekend, though.

Meanwhile, here's some reasons why I'm not getting older, I'm just getting bad ass-er:

I'm a lindy hopper -- BAD ASS I'm a b-boy -- BAD ASS I work and play in virtual reality -- BAD ASS I live in Brooklyn -- BAD ASS I help run the most amazing swing dance website in the world -- BAD ASS

Seriously, I feel so grateful for being given another year of a wonderful, rich life, and looking forward to what's to come.

[Photo Credit: Cliff Weissman]

OK, these aren't mine, they belong to dinee Ghia... or even more precisely, they're synthetic toes embedded in the new pair of heels she just bought. Like hands, default avatar feet in Second Life have long been an immersion breaker--...

Filed under: Second Life

"Epic Conditions"

Continue reading Second Life daily news

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Charlanna Beresford’s weekly round-up of upcoming Second Life events… At 2 PM on Wednesday, July 9th, there will be a tour of TowerVisions, the adaptive re-use of Bethanienturm, a church in Berlin that was heavily damaged during World War 2. Vision...

Thanks to moderator Rissa Maidstone, the recording of the Roundtable: Urbanism, Architecture & Planning: How Second Life can Help Build the Urban Landscape of the Physical World and Vice-Versa is now available. It is also available on the SL5B wiki

The I Dig Tanzania summer camp participants finished the virtual portion of their program today.  Here's a picture of our New York IDT participants posing with Mark Kingdon, the CEO of Linden Lab, the creators of Second Life. 

A dedicated group of 16 teens in Chicago and New York completed a week-long set of activities in Second Life, learning about paleontology, evolution, careers in science, Tanzanian culture and arts, and geography.  Along the way, they also gained a number of valuable technical skills in Second Life, from virtual building to customizing their avatar to photography.  It's been a heady and wild ride for all of us involved at Global Kids, the Field Museum in Chicago, and the researchers in Tanzania working together!

Here's a quick recap of the last day of the program, which started with hip hop and ended with virtual dancing...

The day began with -- surprise -- Second Life being down for maintenance. Shawna, Dominique, myself and our counterparts at the Field Museum in Chicago quickly devised a back-up lesson that didn't require Second Life.  It involved giving the teens sets of questions to answer about Tanzanian culture and letting them view various YouTube videos to learn more.  Once Second Life came back up later in the morning, we had the teens meet in their teams and collaborate on their answers before blogging about it later.

Then we got a real treat as a Tanzanian hip-hop artist came by named Eric.  He explained various aspects of Tanzanian and Maasai culture that might have been confusing for the kids, such as the role of hip-hop in Africa versus hip-hop in America.  Then he played a djemba drum provided by Dominique while leading us in a call-and-response song.  It was so sweet.

We took a lunch break and then came back to talk again with the researchers in Tanzania, who at this point had returned from the field and were in Dar Es Salaam preparing their fossils to be shipped back to the States.  I'm afraid that the satellite phone connection was so bad that the kids didn't get much out of this conversation.  It's some solace to know that they will get to meet in person several of the research team when they all go to the Field Museum at the end of July.

The final, quite difficult task we assigned to the teens drew upon all their skills as builders, writers, photographers, online researchers, and collaborators. The task was to pull together all of the information that they had gathered at this point about their virtual fossil and present it as a museum exhibit with a diorama, a notecard of information, and a poster explaining their research process.  The result was very impressive, showing how much they had learned and how well they worked together.

This is a picture of the virtual exhibit created by one team that really looks like it could be in a museum, complete with benches to sit on in front.

To work on their presentations skills, we had each team elect someone to speak on the team's behalf about their exhibit and what they had learned in the process. It was great hearing their voices, since for the entire program we had restricted them to just using text chat.

Finally, after the final exhibit was presented, it was time to party! We brought all of the teens to a picturesque pond area, where they had been fishing a couple of days ago, and set out a dance floor with pre-set dance animations.  I threw on some African music, Barry handed out glow sticks, people set the environment to midnight, and the dance party was on! 

To close the program, we brought everyone back to the campfire, took a group picture, and said our thank yous and "see you laters" to all the participants.  Several of our New York teens seemed genuinely disappointed that they wouldn't be in Second Life after today, which was surprising to me given all the difficulties and frustrations they had encountered over the past five days.  But I guess they were having a much better time than I had originally thought.

Here's a picture of most of our teens assembled together in Second Life in front of the virtual exhibits that they created together.  Everyone really rose to the occasion, from my fellow GK staffers Dominique, Shawna and Joyce, to our Second Life builder Midnight Sun / Amulius Lioncourt, our counterparts in the Field Museum Johanna, Andy, Krystal, Katie, Audrey and Elizabeth, the Tanzanian research team Ken, Bill, Christian, Seb, Linda and Roger, and our 16 teens from Chicago and New York who all did amazing work.

Now off for some much needed rest before the long weekend! Whew!