Tech -- Culture -- Humour
Pearse’d & Cut is an Australian-owned Second Life business that focuses on 19th Century menswear. Owner Edward Pearse offers waistcoats, trousers, hats and shoes and an array of military uniforms.
The whole get-up is authentic as you’d expect from a business on the Caledon sim. I even picked up a kilt for the hell of it.
ABC Island played host to an election night party, with lots of chat about unfolding events in the real world. The ‘Australians’ group in SL was also buzzing with a running commentary.
It’d be an understatement to say those gathered on ABC island and the group chat were pro-Kevin Rudd:
Numerous comments were expressed in regard to the ALP’s broadband policy and its impacts on the SL experience. There was plain old partying.
As one party-goer said, “I just wanted to be with some Aussies at this historical moment”. There’s been no involvement by Australian political parties in Second Life to date – my prediction is that by next election there’ll be a marked presence by at least one party in the virtual world sphere.
Terra Incognita is a veteran education presence in Second Life that we’ve covered previously. It’s an area that next week will be hosting the launch of a new service by edna (Education Network Australia).
The full announcement:
“Education Network Australia – better known as edna – is celebrating ten years of service to the Australian education and training sector on Tuesday, 27 November and is inviting educators from across the country to jump online and in-world to join the celebration.
From 3pm Adelaide time education.au, the company that manages the edna web site and related services, will be doing a live broadcast of presentations and the unveiling of the new myedna service on the island of Terra Icognita.
Pick up a free t-shirt, indulge in some virtual cake and champagne and, following the formalities, your avatar can rock out to popular Second Life band Space Junky.
For educators that don’t have the broadband or hardware to participate in Second Life, there is a parallel being held in edna’s Sandpit Groups using Live Classroom web conferencing software.
For more information, visit the 10th birthday page on the edna web site.”
The Second Life Herald ran a story today about landbots, those automated entities that cause all sorts of problems with buying and selling land. The SL Herald is alleging that around 20 avatars placed in water sims are part of the landbot scam. Whatever the reason for the submerged avatars, it’s a little strange. Yesterday I noticed that an avatar was showing up in the middle of a water sim:
I teleported to the spot and found this:
I returned 24 hours later and found the avatar in the same position and location. Not surprisingly there’s no profile data and the avatars are usually dressed in stock standard orientation clothing. Have you come across one of these drowned avatars? If it turns out they are linked to landbots then hopefully Linden Lab will have a clean-up. It’s hard to imagine what legitimate reason there is for their presence.
The latest blog post by Linden Lab tops off a horror week for Second Life stability. Combine that with the ever-present lag and usability remains the chestnut issue for Second Life.
If the rumours are true about Australian-based SL servers finally arriving, then part of the significant frustration with the Second Life experience will be remedied. The roll-out of improved broadband in Australia is likely to occur no matter who wins next week’s election, but it’s still a while off. None of it will remediate the enormous logistical task of keeping a virtual world running across thousands of servers – that’s something that can at best be minimised as a performance issue.
We’d be interested in your experiences with lag – has it been around the same for you, better or worse?
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