SL Blogosphere

Here we are folks... today we want to talk about Lucky and Unlucky Chairs but... uhmm... we think most of you know anything about them...

In Karjam shops we have 4 Lucky Chairs and 1 Unlucky Chair:

- in KarJam Baggy Land 1

1 Lucky (where you can win Baggy Outfit for woman)

- in KarJam Baggy Land 2

3 Lucky (2 on the ground floor where you can win Baggy Outfit for man and woman, 1 on the 1st floor where you can win Baggy Outfit for kids) and 1 Unlucky (on the 1st floor where you can win Baggy Outfit for man or woman or a tattoo it depends)

The letters change every 10 minutes... anybody can win so dont need to be in KarJam Group.. that's why i invite you to spend a little of your time to try to win that Baggy Outfits...

Major news

Most visible news from metaLIFE and the network during the past month:

• Network Sales Growth was even more tremendous than last month (see new chart comparing April month to previous ones)

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• metaLIFE team just came back from Metameets2009 conference held in an amazing city of Amsterdam (more about that in next post)
• Nokia Joined metaLIFE to create a brand and sell their virtual phones via metaLIFE grid-wide marketplace
• Categories added and tweaked - now you can search by keyword or browse in categories
• Video Added - attach Youtube video to your item listing
• Ability to filter mature items
• First metaLIFE network reached 700 and then (unannounced) 800 Voters inworld - during the time of one month
• Partnering with Alicia Stella
• New and Dynamic Home page design, showing latest, hot, favorite, etc.. items of the day
• New object - metaLIFE ATM Kiosk introduced, got much attention right away
• Many new, important and demanded upgrades/improvements were released (Optimized KIOSK most important of them all).
• Got noticed by Xstreet and LL
• Various contests and promotions
• Some issues arose along the road (more details below)

Grid-wide marketplace overview

Overall metaLIFE and the grid-wide marketplace we together with our partners are creating - is doing pretty fine. More and more people are starting to make money via this network, more and more people are seeing this as a way to make a living in Second Life, or at least add some extra income without the need for heavy support or lots of hours input!

As more people start using metaLIFE - we are getting more and more requests for new features or upgrades for existing services and tools. We are always listening to your thoughts and ideas, discussing them openly, making the whole process as transparent as possible, if you want to join the discussion - join our group in Second Life, just search up "metaLIFE partners". So we will continue doing this, making a system that gives more and more value to you - it's user! Just tell us what are your wishes, and we will promise to take a look and if possible implement them over time!

It didn't all go without issues

Last week was heavy on Second Life Grid upgrades and improvements. And this week coincided with our trip to Amsterdam to Metameets conference. The result - some systemic failures, mostly because of broken communication protocols:

• sometimes in-world tools failed to communicate out of Second Life
• Sometimes our servers, failed to reach in-world tools

These failures resulted in a few failed deliveries, failed money deposits or withdrawals...

We are sorry for these failures, so if you have experienced them and haven't been helped yet, please contact us, we will investigate your case and will sort this issue. Contact Pauly Richez or Robbie Kiama in-world, or write us an email at into[et]meta-LIFE.net

Finally

We are pretty happy with how things go for metaLIFE and our growing network of partners. There is tons of work ahead, making metaLIFE services trully valuable to the majority of Second Life users, but first few hundred innovators already are starting to see benefits of this network and earn their first L$ (or first few tens of thousands of L$ :) )

Let's keep the conversation going and we promise to keep the innovation coming

[UPDATE 12:18pm PST] The maintenance is running a little long, but should be completed shortly. Please watch this blog for further updates.

[Updated 10:17] The maintenance has been extended and the Support Portal will remain offline until 12:00.

[Updated May 27, 7:04am PST] The maintenance has started, and our Support Portal is now offline.

As per our notice a few days ago, the Support Portal will be undergoing some maintenance today, Wednesday 27th May from 7:00am until 10:00am Pacific.

During this time period, Live Chat and Ticket submission will not be available although telephone calls will be unaffected.

[RESOLVED 11:29am PST] - The Issue Tracker (Jira) is once again available and can be used as normal.

The Issue Tracker, also known as Jira, is temporarily unavailable. We are currently working to bring the service back up. Please keep an eye on this blog for further updates as they become available.

[Blog] The Gold Solution Providers Programme: A few of us who are in Second Life® mostly for business have long ag… http://ping.fm/sKzEH

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Post tags: .sl, business, economy, gwyneth llewelyn, second life, sociology, VIRTUAL WORLDS

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A few of us who are in Second Life® mostly for business have long ago complained to Linden Lab, in the years of 2005 and 2006 mostly, how little they cared about businesses in SL, and how little effort they put in expanding and opening the virtual world to healthy business from the real world.

In those days, SL was viewed by LL as a “cool place” for designers, talented creators, and programmers, to build their own virtual world. They were expecting youngsters to flock to SL and start being creative immediately. That utterly failed to happen — in real life, only about 1 in 100 people are really talented and innovative, the remaining are passive consumers of entertainment, but not producers. And SL couldn’t grow just with the happy creative crowd, even if that crowd is staggering in its huge size.

The alternative was to start to pitch Second Life for serious business use (as well as for research and academic teaching). This took Linden Lab years to realise, and they were very reluctant to do so. The first step was creating the Developers’ Directory, but, of course, this has little impact, since none of those developers were “certified” or “acknowledged” or even “endorsed” by LL. It was just a listing, one of many others, which just happened to be hosted on a LL server.

Later, Linden Lab introduced the whole business-oriented site, Second Life Grid, and added a staff of Lindens to start forging connections with the business and academic world. There have been many hurdles. LL is always fearful of being biased and showing “favouritism” towards others. So businesses — businesses as large as IBM, Xerox, Microsoft, Sun, Dell, and others — have been treated pretty much like the average Jane Avatar. For instance, businesses had a hard time to get invoices, and had still to pay for their sims using a credit card or PayPal — an impossibility inside most corporate structures — and there was still this stupid need of having to create a “special” avatar just for the purpose of owning estates (while the ToS forbade password sharing). And although some Lindens were open to hear a bit more about businesses and educators, they were reluctant to get influenced by them.

Thanks to that, many examples that popped up in 2006/7 have shook their heads at Linden Lab and went away, the most well-known being MTV (who went to There.com again) and the Electric Sheep Company (who developed their own, Flash-based virtual world instead). But they were not the only ones, there have been horror stories about the relationship with Linden Lab by many dozens or hundreds of organisations.

This is now 2009, and M Linden definitely is pushing ahead the message that “SL is also for corporations and academic research too” (perhaps even putting too much emphasis on those!). Now things have really started to roll. LL pushes clippings about the use of SL in business almost every day. They sponsor case studies. They have created the possibility of licensing their software to run on your own servers behind a corporate (or campus) firewall. They sponsor business conferences and get in touch with educational groups regularly — now as part of their daily routine, not as something that they do “sometimes” when they’re in the “mood”. Their staff to address business users has increased and is professional and knows what businesses are after — and yes, the same is also true for the academic world. They started something called a General Solution Provider programme last year, getting SL developers together, and gathering their input.

The latest iteration of this effort has been going towards an accreditation/certification process for business-oriented developers in SL. While the programme is not perfect, Linden Lab, out of the hundred thousand or so content creators, the thousands upon thousands RL-based freelancers, the hundreds of companies listed on the Developers List, reviewed a bit over 40 applications for the Gold Solution Provider Programme, and 30 were selected.

I’m proud to announce that my own company, Beta Technologies, is part of that list.

Now a lot has been discussed elsewhere about the merit of this programme. It’s akin to, say, the Microsoft Gold Partner programme, or programmes from similar corporations. To apply for it (the list is not closed), you need to demonstrate a relatively high level of skills and competences — validated by experience, not by taking certification tests, but by actually having RL customers hiring your services. You have to demonstrate that your company is doing regular business with SL as a platform — i.e. not just created one virtual presence in, say, 2006, and going away. You have to show that you have different kinds of customers (again, not just one, or just one type) and are able to deploy any kind of project that heads your way. You have to demonstrate your ability to pull in customers from megacorps, governments, or renowned universities. You have to show press coverage, for you and your clients. It’s an extensive list of requirements, and, most importantly, Linden Lab will validate your claims and check your references, interview your clients, and examine your ongoing work. Some people in the past have mentioned that these can be easily “gamed”, and I guess that if you’re a one-person-shop with a handful of friends that have hired you out to glue some prims together, you might be right. But the Gold Solution Provider programme is a bit more demanding than that

Still, no matter the criticism, I believe that LL is aware that no solution is “perfect” and that this is just one step in the right direction: not shunning away businesses and academic institutions, but draw them under their protective fold. If this means coming up with more clever ideas — full certification is a long-due project that has been on hold for over a year now — that’s all good. The important thing for LL is to remain open-minded towards the concept that developers are good for SL since they directly bring new customers to embrace the virtual world, and indirectly more visitors — all of them, sooner or later, paying tier which is the core business of Linden Lab.

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Post tags: gold solution provider, program, programme, providers

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Filed under: Business models, Economy, News items, Second Life, Virtual worlds

As we come up to the time of year when the long-awaited Second Life Homesteads price-rise is due to hit, Linden Lab has announced that any Homestead simulators owned before 1 July, 2009 will continue at the old monthly rate of US$95 instead of US$125, before the price-rise finally kicks in for those too on 1 July, 2010.

The deal essentially saves owners of Homestead products a once-only total of US$360 per simulator, if the simulator is owned or purchased before 1 July this year (a bit less than the cost of a new one). If you've abandoned your Homestead simulator this year, you can have it reinstated at no extra charge. Homesteads have a limit of 20 agents (avatars, if you prefer), and 3,750 prims, and will still be subject to as-yet-unspecified script-limitations before the end of the year. Homestead simulators cost US$375 each to purchase.

	Are you a part of the most widely-known collaborative virtual environment or keeping a close eye on it? Massively's Second Life coverage keeps you in the loop.

Second Life "Homesteads" owners to save US$360 originally appeared on Massively on Wed, 27 May 2009 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

For immediate release:

NEW YORK - In the 1980s there was teleconferencing. In the 1990s, videoconferencing came of age. Now there is 3D collaboration. Global companies like IBM and Northrop Grumman as well as many smaller ones are using the virtual world of Second Life Grid® for holding business meetings, conducting employee training, and getting product feedback.

What they gain is a foothold in a new world experiencing rapid economic growth. And they eliminate travel costs. Gone too is the productivity drain when people are pulled out of the office for meetings. Meanwhile, from  networking to learning opportunities to spending time with the top execs, all the benefits of meeting face-to-face are real though the environment is virtual.

“Companies that are thinking of establishing a business presence in a virtual world need a solutions consultant that is serious about business,” says Jeff Bush, managing director, Beta Technologies in the U.S. The firm is like a website designer for virtual worlds, and has just been named a Gold Solution Provider by Linden Lab®, creator of the virtual world Second Life®. After a rigorous qualification process, Beta Technologies has been certified for its expertise in creating solutions for design and programming in Second Life.

In announcing the Gold Solution Provider Program, Linden Lab stated, “We are excited about taking this step to recognize the excellence and experience and provide further support of Solution Providers operating on the Second Life Grid.”

Beta Technologies’ stake in Second Life Grid is called Beta Business Park. Its level of service and level of seriousness are appreciated by clients like Xerox and DHR\New Media, LLC.

Contact: Jeff Bush, (212) 645-2228

About Beta Technologies

Our skills and knowledge range from 3D content design, real architecture, programming, web and logo design to project planning and management. All of these have proved effective in helping companies make a transition to a virtual world for doing business. We are incorporated in the United States. Our home office is in Lisbon, Portugal.

Joining Second Life® could not have become easier for business professionals. At Beta Technologies, we offer you the comfort of an orientation area, where you will be assisted in your first steps in this brand new world - just call one of our assistants for help!

In all of the hubbub, I forgot to announce that the prestigious Getty Images stock photography service has put up several beautiful photos from the Frankie 95 Birthday Festival, mostly from the memorial service and the dance in Central Park on Friday, May 22.  Check out the entire set here.

One of them has already been used on the BBC Day in Pictures site.