The transcript is now available here.

Our specific question on server models was not addressed – the closest was an answer on deployment of servers to Europe which is apparently something Linden want to do.

Further analysis later in the day.

Corey Linden posted on the Linden blog today to pre-empt a number of likely questions at tomorrow’s Town Hall (being held 5am Friday morning Australian east-coast time).

Theoretically, the level in this Town Hall should be at an all-time high as the SL population has never been greater. Corey Linden’s pre-emptive information does provide some explanations, particularly around inventory loss but the larger issue of general performance is brushed over:

“Grid stability and performance

As an aside, problems like teleport failures and inventory issues are not related to either Havok or Mono. While both will bring improvements to individual sim node’s performance and stability, they have no appreciable impact on problems related to back end systems. Havok 4 is in testing prior to hitting the Beta grid and the Mono project has fixed the major blockers for us, so we are waiting for resources to free up from other projects there.

Teleport failures could be the results of many different problems, and are definitely exacerbated by problems in agent presence. We have a team currently investigating this problem. Again, additional data points and reproducible cases would help them a lot.”

The story over on New World Notes confirms the anecdotal evidence of a stalling in concurrency – people are spending less time in-world due to ongoing frustrations with performance.

The key question to be asked and answered is what Linden Labs’ plans are for improving scalability and performance using the current central server model. Additionally, is any work being done on alternative models that are likely to see the light of day this year? We’ve posted a question for Corey Linden on the SL Forums thread devoted to that purpose:

What plans (if any) does LL have to internationalise the server configuration currently used and are there any plans in place to move away from a central server model?

We’ll post the transcript of the Town Hall as soon as it’s available.

Project Open Letter has been around a bit over a week now, and their impact has been noticeable as evidenced by Robin Linden’s post on the Linden blog.

A Town Hall is now on the agenda with Cory Linden to discuss stabiiity and general techncal issues. The last couple of Town Halls have had some technical issues themselves, so it will be interesting to see how this one goes given the record numbers in-world.

The open letter remains available for signing. The text of it reads as follows:

“In the past eighteen months, Second Life has expanded, growing from a small community of early adopters to a platform supporting millions of users. Linden Lab has created a world that inspires a deep level of passion in its users and provides unprecedented opportunities to share creatively, socially, and financially.

With explosive levels of growth often come unexpected problems. In keeping with your company’s policy and rich history of resident involvement, we the undersigned would like to take this opportunity to address some concerns that we feel have gone unanswered for too long.

There are some consistent, ongoing problems that are getting worse under heavy load, not better, and are not simply irritants but problems that are causing financial loss in some cases, which is unacceptable. Here is a brief list of the main concerns:

* Inventory loss – this is a devastating problem that is worsening. We have no ability to protect our own inventories through backups, and are trusting you to protect that data. This is the highest priority. Sensible inventory limits (on non-verified accounts only), combined with better management tools and ways to protect our inventory ourselves would help to mitigate the problem as well. Regardless, this cannot continue – we will not accept financial loss as a feature of Second Life. It is your responsibility as service provider to ensure our data is not lost, and you are failing us.

* Problems with Find and Friends List – we continue to see search outages on a far too regular basis. It is bad enough trying to get anywhere without being able to use search, but many users are also paying money for classified ads. Our friends lists just do not work reliably any longer, after years without an issue with them. If America Online/MSN/Yahoo can provide presence information for hundreds of millions of users, surely there is a way to make our friends lists work again.

* Grid stability and performance – teleports fail quite regularly, especially under heavy load. Attachments end up in places they did not start out in, and sim performance varies wildly. None of this makes for a very pleasant experience for users. Long promised improvement to physics and scripting would help dramatically to reduce these problems, but there are a lot of other scalability issues as well. It often feels like the grid is coming apart at the seams. The promised use of limiting logins of non-verified accounts during peak load has been severely lacking. This would be an effective interim solution to load issues, but Linden Lab seems unwilling to use it.

* Build tool problems – the importance of build tools that actually work as promised cannot be overstated enough – we rely on them to create content. Prim drift, disappearing prims, imprecise placement, problems with linking and other issues with the tools need to be addressed. Too much time is being spent trying to work around the problems.

* Transaction problems – inventory deliveries are failing with an alarming (and annoying) frequency, leaving merchants with the burden of replacing missing content and having to try to confim the transaction in the first place. We trust that our L$ balances are accurate, but given recent problems, that is a cause for concern as well, and one we place our full trust in you to ensure its accuracy.

We remain fully supportive of Second Life and are more than willing to continue doing our part to help, but our confidence is steadily being eroded due to a general lack of communication and the apparent failure to successfully address the many issues detailed above. What we are asking for is that these problems are addressed immediately, ahead of new features, and that we are able to see tangible improvements. We accept that this will not happen overnight but it also cannot be allowed to continue indefinitely either.

Thank you for taking the time to read this letter.”

On May 19th, Romanians vote in a referendum to determine whether their suspended President, Traian Basescu, is reinstated after being suspended for ‘abuse of power’ earlier in the year.

The issue has moved into Second Life with a space made available for supporters of both sides to make their case and to organise rallies. T-shirt and flag dispensers, surveys and a news board round out the offering. Streaming of the real-life results will occur also.

With a Federal Election occurring in Australia this year, we’ve started making approaches to political parties to ascertain any intentions of SL presences.

Check out the Romanian presence in-world

As announced on the Official Linden Blog, sculpted prims are now a reality. What this essentially means is that the limitation of the current shape options is now gone. The best explanation of what this means has been provided by Torley Linden on YouTube:

Linden have also provided a high-res version here

A discussion topic on sculpted prims has been started on the SLOz discussion forum

Gary Hazlitt has posted on his blog some vignettes from his attendance at Mip TV / Milia 2007.

Gary’s posting contains some interesting insights on marketing in SL and future developments including some fascinating statements made by Linden Lab CEO Philip Rosedale.