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Linden Lab: standalone servers soon

November 29, 2008 by 15 Comments

AVWW 2008 continues (a wrap-up of Day 1 will appear soon), with some superb presentations and discussion.

This morning I attended the presentation by Linden Lab’s Chris Collins, who gave an interesting overview of Linden Lab’s approach and future plans. Two standouts for me were:

1. The 2009 beta of a standalone Second Life grid – this, like the OpenSim platform, will allow users to run their own grid. Expect to hear more on the beta program in the very near future.

2. When asked on the delay in Australian Second Life servers, there was an admission that the ‘real soon now’ of 18-months ago had stretched considerably, with no commitment given on when, if ever, this may occur.

The standalone servers will provide a great opportunity for Australians in addition to current offerings like Openlife. Once further work is done on being able to move between grids, Australia may actually have a higher performance option than currently exists.

More on AVWW presentations soon – if you have the chance today, jump into the Second Life AVWW sessions for some fascinating insights.

Filed Under: Australian News, Virtual Worlds Tagged With: ,

AVWW 2008 commences

November 28, 2008 by Leave a Comment

The Australasian Virtual Worlds Workshop is underway today and continues tomorrow (all day Friday and Saturday 28th / 29th November Australian time). The base for events is Swinburne University’s Koala Island.

It’s still not too late to get involved and it’s even free to join the Second Life component of AVWW (click here for landmark)

We’ll be covering both the RL and SL event over the coming two days – the event organisers have arranged a comprehensive program so do take some time to participate if you can. We’re proud to be a media partner for this event.

Check it out in-world

Filed Under: Australian News, Education, Virtual Worlds Tagged With:

AVWW this weekend – registrations still open

November 24, 2008 by Leave a Comment

Just a reminder that one of Australia’s best virtual worlds get-togethers in on this weekend in Melbourne and in Second Life – AVWW 2008.

Registrations remain open – there’s no cost for in-world attendance, $20 for students and presenters attending the Melbourne event, $50 for other attendees.

There’s a great program on offer so do think about registering – Australians are at the forefront of virtual worlds research and development and forums like this will ensure things keep going from strength to strength.

Our own Feldspar Epstein will be attending this weekend to cover the best of the event but nothing will beat being there yourself.

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VastPark expand developer pool, SDK on the way

November 20, 2008 by 2 Comments

Vastpark’s slow but steady progress toward launch continues, with an announcement that its Developer Program has some new faces. Two of those faces include Australian-based companies: Finpa (an eLearning outfit) and The Project Factory (a virtual worlds developer).

The other entities coming on board are MindTaffy (USA), Metaversatility (USA) and ADMINO (Finland)

Vastoark’s CEO is obviously very happy with the expansion – “Given VastPark is an Australian company headquartered in Melbourne, it is great that we’ve got some wonderful Australian developers joining us”.

There’s also a call out for further involvement by developers. VastPark’s Major Projects Manager, Liz Chung: “We’re keen to work with our developers to help them achieve their digital world project goals. For anyone with a project who is either looking for recommendations to a developer or seeking to partner with us on a project, please contact us at Developer AT VastPark.com”.

With a software developer’s kit (SDK) on the way, there’s no arguing that the momentum is building for VastPark – it needs to in the burgeoning virtual worlds marketplace.

Disclosure: The Project Factory are a former advertiser on The Metaverse Journal.

Filed Under: Alternatives, Australian News, Virtual Worlds Tagged With:

Australian politics and virtual worlds – no momentum

November 20, 2008 by Leave a Comment

It’s coming up to a year since the change of Federal government in Australia. In Second Life, there was an election night party.

At the time there was lots of excited talk about the ALP’s broadband policy and the promise it may bring – there is progress on that front but it’s fraught with problems. Then there’s the internet censorship issue bubbling along. All in all, Communications Minister Stephen Conroy hasn’t shone in his role to date. There’s a real perception that we’ve got a government with 20th Century views on some distinctly 21st Century challenges.

In the year since that Second Life election party, there’s been zero interest by either political party in virtual worlds. There’s certainly been significant forays by both sides into social networking via YouTube, Twitter and Facebook. The US presidential primaries this year saw Second Life play a role, and Barack Obama’s supporters kept that going through the campaign itself. Kevin Rudd and Malcolm Turnbull have obvously been watching the US Democrats’ online campaigning efforts, but there’s no inkling of a virtual world foray at this stage.

We’ve previously queried our pollies on their thoughts with no response – it appears that the current Minister is no more cognisant of the opportunities and challenges than his predecessor.

Filed Under: Australian News, Politics, Virtual Worlds Tagged With: , ,

Virtual sex brings ’em in

November 17, 2008 by 5 Comments

Over the past few days Second Life has reached a new peak concurrency of more than 76 thousand.

The reason being cited is recent stories on a divorce resulting from virtual adultery. It’s not suprising and it’s backed up by an Australian Second Life resident who spends a significant amount of time mentoring new users. In a brief discussion with him this afternoon he confirmed a surge in new users needing help and that the UK-driven story seems to be the catalyst.

Mainstream media rightly get pilloried at times for their sometimes uninformed coverage of the full gamut of the virtual world experience. There is an upside though: growth for the virtual worlds themselves. How ‘sticky’ these users will be in always uncertain. Wagner James Au sums it up nicely:

How many of these new users are interested in committing virtual adultery… and how many of them are real life partners of now-suspicious SL users, looking to catch them in the act?

A lot of people on their first glimpse of virtual sex will tend to react along the lines of ‘why would you bother?’. The reality is a significant proportion of these people go on to engage in virtual sex regularly and in forms arguably more varied than real-life.

What are your thoughts – are we about to see droves of new people looking for virtual options for sexual expression, followed closely by another group seeking to catch them out? I think it’s a little too simplistic an assumption but sometimes the simplest explanation comes in closest to the truth.

Filed Under: Australian News, Virtual Worlds Tagged With: ,

Australian absenteeism this Friday

November 14, 2008 by Leave a Comment

I’m going to make a fairly safe prediction: on Friday 14th November Australian businesses and government departments will experience a spike in leave of all varieties. And here’s why:

Wrath of the Lich King, the second expansion pack for World of Warcraft went on sale midnight Thursday. Most specialist game stores opened at midnight with significant crowds in some locations (more than 100 were lined up at my local game store, one of three in the area).

We’d love to hear your thoughts – are you taking a day off to experience the new content?

Filed Under: Australian News, Virtual Worlds

AVWW 2008 – registrations open

November 10, 2008 by Leave a Comment

The Australasian Virtual Worlds Workshop and (AVWW) is back again in 2008 and it’s looking like a fascinating two-day program. It’s being held at Swinburne University in Melbourne on the 28th and 29th November.

Keynote presenters include the New Media Consortium’s Larry Johnson, SLCN‘s Keren Flavell, Linden Lab’s Chris Collins and VastPark CEO Bruce Joy.

We’re proud to be a media partner for the event and will be covering both the real-world and Second Life proceedings. If you’ve got any interest in virtual worlds and education, health and business then think about registering.

Filed Under: Australian News, Education, Virtual Worlds Tagged With: , ,

Openlife sees benefit of Linden Lab price rise

October 30, 2008 by Leave a Comment

The past 48 hours have been fascinating to observe. Since the announcement by Linden Lab of price rises for OpenSpaces sims in Second Life, there have been protests, petitions and the odd paragraph of doom-saying. It’s been one of the larger resident backlashes since the gambling and banking bans, and some are voting with their feet already.

Bettina Tizzy has reported on a not insignificant influx of new registrations to the Openlife grid, run by aussie Steve Sima (profile here). The number is more than 800 since the announcement, taking the resident count above the thirty-two thousand mark. (Update: Steve Sima states that more than 2000 have now registered since the Linden Lab announcement)

That’s small change compared to Second Life but it’s a nice base from which to grow – something we discussed back in September. It’s a grid not as developed as Second life but that gap continues to close. The challenge for Openlife will increase if the spike in new user registrations continues – as Linden Lab only know too well, concurrency and scalability are big hurdles to jump. To that end, a development office in Taiwan is in the process of being set up, so it appears Openlife is a grid on the move.

Filed Under: Alternatives, Australian News, Virtual Worlds Tagged With:

Australians in Second Life Update – small declines

October 25, 2008 by 3 Comments

Linden Lab have released their metrics up until September 2008, and in the Australian context there’s been a slight drop in activity – 686,872.48 hours, which is nearly eight thousand hours less than last month. Across 10-15 thousand active users, that’s not a big drop and Australia maintains the 11th spot worldwide.

Overall:

– user hours dropped from 34.8 million to 33.2 million

– the number of islands owned jumped from 1,610 to 1,723

– in-world accounts with positive cashflows grew from 60,788 to 62,633

– premium accounts (those that people pay a monthly fee for) continued their decline to 83,23, down from 84,883 last month and December 2007 highs of 93,219.

It’s a mixed picture and I’ve had a lot of people ask me in recent weeks how the real-world economic issues is impacting Second Life. These metrics don’t point to a significant decline related to the worldwide economic downturn and I’m not seeing any erosion of confidence. That said, the worst of that downturn occurred in October from a public perception viewpoint, so next month’s metrics should make for fascinating reading.

What are your thoughts? Are you seeing people spend less in-world? Have your spending habits changed in recent months?

Filed Under: Australian News, Metrics, Virtual Worlds Tagged With: ,

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