October 6th, 2011 by Marianne McCann

Inner Child Camp is back for 2011, and this year we’re honoring the Burning Man 2011 theme, “Rites of Passage” with one of our own, can you climb up to the top of our passage, and survive the trial by fire? Come and try – or just hang out and play!

All are welcome at Burn2 and at Inner Child Camp. While there, you are likely to meet the greatest cross-section of Second Lifers you’re likely to come across. This will be the fourth year of Inner Child Camp, though SL kids have been “on the playa” for many more years than that. Come celebrate!

So what’s Inner Child Camp, anyway?

Inner Child Camp is a virtual kids theme camp at Burn2. Sort of a virtual version of the first life Kidsville camp.

And Burn2 is?

Burn2 is a virtual extension of the Burning Man festival

Okay, and Burning Man is?

Burning Man is a festival that takes place in the Black Rock Desert in Nevada every August. Over the course of a week, a great city springs up in that desert, celebrating art, community, and fire. An annual burning of the man takes place, as does the burning of the temple. And at the end of the event, it all goes away, leaving no trace of its existence.

Anything I should know before I come?

SL kids are fully welcome at the event. Don’t feel you have to only stay at Inner Child Camp. Go explore!

While you are welcome to come however you are, many like to participate in the aesthetic that is Burning Man. This means coming dressed for the harsh weather of the Nevada desert in late Summer and/or early Autumn, as well as providing your own “artistic flair” to your own presentation. Here’s some shots of adults at the first life event that might inspire you!

With the above in mind, be aware that there can and will be some adults that will be running about in various states of undress. Non-sexual nudity is allowed on the virtual playa (though Second Life™ rules about child avatar nudity do still apply).

As part of Burn2 and Burning Man’s tradition of gifting, Inner Child Camp has a number of cool freebies you should check out. Feel free to at least grab a Inner Child Camp bracelet, modeled after the ones the first life kids wear on the playa.

Burn2 is not, itself, a role play area, but there are many elements of the first life event that one might consider “role playish.” The greeters at the front gate, the lamplighters who tend the lamps at night all (and party at the temple all night long), the Department of Mutant Vehicles, and the rangers all fulfill their virtual duties in ways similar to the real-world event staff and volunteers. So do us virtual kids, really.

The Rangers do watch out for trouble, but there more than just “desert cops” or “desert EMTs.” Best I can explain is they work at the event as a sort of “social lubricant.” They’re friendly and helpful, and all around good people.

Also, for a full on experience, come into the event through the entry gates in Burning Man-Deep Hole rather than just starting at an individual camp. It’s part of the experience to come in though the gates, ring the bell, maybe even make your first dust angel.

June 26th, 2011 by Marianne McCann

Now that I’ve discussed some general feelings, I want to introduce my own parts of SL8B

With the passing of BlueGin Yifu last year, the task of doing a birthday build representing the Bay City Alliance ended up in my lap. I wanted to do something that would serve both as a memorial to some of her ideals, while also fitting Bay City’s theme and attitude.

First and foremost, I wanted it to be a largely open space. BlueGin was very particular about this, pushing for an open air meeting space, and doing an open air build for SL7B. While it was important o reflect the urban nature of Bay city, I also wanted to have trees and fountains, both things that were highlights of her own spaces.

Carrying the Bay City, mid-century theme, as well as a metaphor of the SL birthday events being akin to a “World’s Fair,” I dug up images from the 1939 New York World’s Fair. For the main parts of my inspiration, I looked at the circular entranceway and tall uprights of the Gas Exhibits building, the rotunda atop the League of Nations building, and the color and spire of the Electrical Products building. The fountain was further inspired by numerous fountains at the 1939 and 1964 fairs.

I produced a simple machinima for the interior of the rotunda, focusing on what makes bay city so magical, and asked residents to offer both quotes and banners to decorate the building. There are also a few whimsical and hidden touches throughout, as well as a retractable dance floor on the second floor where we held a couple parties featuring Marx Dudek and Holocluck Henly’s DJ talents.

Overall, I’ve every pleased with the way the build came out. You can find it at SL8B Exhilarate, near the “entrance” to the birthday event.

Keeping with my roots in birthday builds, I also did work on the Second Life Children build. The concept and much of the execution was Pygar Bu’s, but I did provide textures, a notecard, some scripting help, and a few other odds and ends.

A whimsical build featuring a giant, walk-in jello mold, it carries a lot of the themes of previous SLC builds, focusing on fun as well as stories related to why people play kids, and what they do while here. It can be found in SL8B Spellbound.

Both will be available through the 2nd of July.

June 26th, 2011 by Marianne McCann

I find I did much the same last year, finally blogging about SL8B as the event wound down. There’s still one more week to see the builds, though, so please, by all means, do so.

I want to talk about my own builds, but first I want to talk about SL8B in general. This year, the overall mood of the event was much brighter than it has been for years. Probably back to SL4B. That was my second SL birthday event, and one I still look back at fondly. It had this whole basis on history, with two sims (one moderate, one general) for every year SL had been around since the end of Beta. I got to see a lot of cool, old stuff.

It is probably what made me an SL history nut and – given my druthers, I wish I’d had the chance to go back and see it all again. I’m sure there were things there that would only be relevant to me now.

Then SL5B hit, and I don’t think I need to even mention what a drama that was. I think it was bad for everyone, not the least of all for Second Life as a whole.

SL6B was on a dark, always-nighttime asteroid. Cool, but not exactly a cheerful birthday party due to the very nature of the theme. Also, it happened right at the height of the big Zindra/Adult content move.

SL7B had its own dramas too, not the least of which was Linden Lab shedding a large number of staff members and losing their CEO during the buildup and run of the event. That really cast a pall over the event, as people went to the graveyard in Rogue rather than celebrated.

This year is different. While it is not without its dramas, including the loss of more Linden staff members, a content theft issue, and other troubles, the whole mood is a lot more positive. This is reflected in the builds. While the last couple years contained some a few grains of wheat amongst a lot of chaff, this year is full of many good things worth seeing. Everything from trick performing dolphins to builds that form before your eyes. Brilliant and beautiful stuff. It’s not all home runs, but you’ll find a lot more of them than  you might have in previous years.

If I had a complaint, however, it would be this. Much like Lalo Telling said in his own blog, there’s a lack of history to the event. One of my builds is next to the time capsules, which haven’t really been promoted or mentioned, and which last the creative display of some of those time capsule’s alluring contents. There’s nothing to thank those who came before for getting us to where we are today, nor displays that show where we came from.

I’d also love to see some attempt at grouping similar builds together. There’s four kid-themed builds, but they’re each in different, not nearby, regions. The Bay City build is some six regions away from the Nova Albion build, when these sister cities could mutually benefit by being closer.

That said, these are relatively minor issues, and I don’t offer them to tear down what is/was the best SLxB is many years.

One thing I don’t think of as minor, however, was the lack of front-facing Linden involvement. Yes, there was some, sure, but I think it would have been better for Rodvik to make a speech of at least some nature. Cheer us on. Ditto Kim, who’s somewhat rushed-feeling 90 second speech was a shock to many, given the much longer presentations by Philip Linden and others in the past.

June 12th, 2011 by Marianne McCann

So I took a long, long balloon ride.

I actually did it over a couple different days – May 30th and June 12th – and in four “sections” so that I would not really “over do.” It was a total of 126 regions crossings. I had to rerez my balloon twice (not counting at the planned breaks), and recovered it from near-calamity two other times. Overall, not that bad.

My vehicle of choice was the Terra Cirrus hot air balloon. it is a slow but stable flyer, and easy to manage. I roughly plotted a course that would take move over protected land for the majority of the trip, only deviating at Abbotts and Cowell. I could likely have stuck to protected land there, but Cowell is such a beautiful spot to fly over.

The slower you hit a sim crossing the better – usually – so the balloon was perfect for this sort of trek. If I was in a speedboat or something, my results would be a lot different. My graphic settings were on high, with a 128m draw distance (I did increase it sometimes for photos, and decreased it in a spot in South Channel that tends to be rough for me)

I started off from Promissa, in the upper waterway on the Heterocera Atoll continent. In retrospect, I wish I’d started from a more northerly location, but I’m not sure I could have stayed to a “protected land” route if I’d done so. Anyway, I found one person’s dock ’round there, rezzed out and move into the waterway to start my journey.

The waterways through this first section of the Northern Continent were pleasant, without having to do a lot of wiggling about. There were even some nice open waterways where I could fiddle around with IMs or check my map while in flight. This was fine until I hit Cepphis. My balloon decided to ail on without me there, and I had to do some backtracking to find a spot to re-rez and continue. A lot of the old protected regions – and some of the new ones – seem to lack rez zones, so this was tricky.

I then flew over the walkways of Iris, and then into the lower end of the atoll. This spot remains one of the more picturesque you’ll find on the mainland. The temple is always so pretty.

The waterways there are a bit trickier and tighter. I did make one wrong turn around Tuliptree, and had to briefly back up and get back on track, but it was no more than a 20m deviation.  I also picked up a passenger briefly here, dropping him off at my first scheduled stop in ANWR.

The prim derrick does not have good facilities for lunch, but thankfully I brought a sandwich and a couple cookies with me, and enjoyed a little break there. The derrick is always fun to explore, especially if you ever wondered where all those plywood cubes come from.

I picked up my journey after locating a rez zone nearby and heading on. The next part of the trip started through the new northern passage which has been the bane of more than a few intrepid explorers. The crossing from Hildegardre to Lothair can be especially rough. but it was fairly smooth sailing as I headed into Theodrada, even shouting an “Ahoy” at a sailor below.

And then both he and I failed at that crossing. Thankfully, I was able to recover and even grab my balloon and continue on. A trick: sometimes when you get stuck at the crossings, you can sit on the ground to recover. Also, for some reason, a “stop all animations” can help you get unstuck.

I continued into familiar territory, passing by the Suburbs (I coulda almost seen my house if I’d dared turn my draw up that high!), Nova Albion, and Bay City, then into the new Southern Passage. I welcomed no more mishaps on the way to Abbotts, and met my brother on the tarmac. Well, him and also some role players shooting up some zombies on the runway.

My next leg of the trip took me off from Abbotts and east into the interior of Sansara. There were some areas there that I’d not travelled in a long time. Indeed, some Im not sure I’d ever visited. As much as people mock Mainland, there are some lovely spots. Cowell Village, A little village in Myrtle. The East River Community, the Riverwalk, the canals of Lakeville — each examples of what dedicated Residents can do when given a chance. All very beautiful.

I did run into trouble in Atlas. It looks like one big lake, but there’s a patchwork of Resident parcels in there, making the route treacherous. I ended up against the 1-2 punch of no object entry on one parcel, and ban lines on another. So I again had to find a spot to rez, and continued on my way around.

There are plenty of Linden and Mole made things to see along the route, too. I already mentioned Iris and ANWR, but this route also took me over the asylum, near the vehicle regions, through Ice Bay and the Sea of Fables, over the dam in Ganymede and the Mimas Bridge. All worth seeing.

Speaking of the Ice Bay, brr.  I wish I’d thought to not wear shorts back in Abbotts. Thankfully, much of my trip skirted the colder parts of the snowlands. Only Ice Bay proved daunting. I welcomed the warmth of Lakeville, and the Sea of Fables.

There were many spots where I came across automated tours along my path, By the way. Of course the “scourgemobiles” were about, me even almost doing a “touch and go” off one of the buses near Clarksburg. There’s the planes in Abbotts, the “pods,” and even Qu Qi’s old ferry boat in the ANWR passage. But I had no idea that the old Lost Lakes Balloon was still in service ’til I passed it in Hudson.  It made me smile to see it still offering tours all these years gone. I IMed the creator – who was on – and took a moment to thank him for still running it after all this time.

At one time, the Lost Lakes balloon was pretty much the typical “style” of balloon in Second Life, featuring a large, glass bottom gondola and seats around the perimeter for looking down on the land beneath. One of my earlier memories of exploring the mainland came when a friend of mine took me out in a similar balloon and showed me the area around Dowden. Somehow it just seemed to remind me a lot of those times, seeing the old balloon tour while only a few sims west of the Dowden area.

It was time for my next stop, and I landed in the big inlet to Poseidon’s Island, in Bohol. Again, dining options were pretty slim, but the scenery made up for the lack of a warm meal.

After another break (and some time spent helping get a stuck region of a friends to be a lot less stuck), I headed off again, heading north. This would take me through Linden Village, which feels a lot less busy than it once was. particularly in Ambleside. The big “temple” like structure is still in Kirkby though, and Waterhead is still, well, Waterhead. old physical cubes littered the waterway, but did not hamper my trip.

I mentioned the beauty of some parts of the mainland, but it can still be hazardous out there. The aforementioned crossing in Atlas was difficult, and I had to clam on the proverbial breaks in somewhere around Cook, saving myself from ban lines as the very last moment.

I would prove to not be as lucky when I made my way through Derwent, and accidently went up the wrong waterway. While trying to correct course, I ended up crossing a private parcel — and their security orb. 6.0000000 seconds later, I was at home, and offered a notecard to get my own little orb of joy. I declined and teleported back, rescuing my balloon from the otherwise empty parcel, and continued on my way.

it wasn’t long after until I entered the last of my waterways, and into the protected land of Bevel. I actually backtracked a bit from there before finishing, making a safe landing in Langdale — but not before one last picture.

It was a fun float, and I had a blast doing it. I hope that, maybe, this will inspire you do to the same. Maybe you’ll take a boat, or a train, or a car, or maybe you too will balloon or otherwise take to the air. either way, explore our world. There’s a lot to see out there, and no time like the present to go and see it.

Oh, to see all of my pictures from the trip, visit Snapzilla. Enjoy!

April 18th, 2011 by Marianne McCann

One of my places made it into the destination guide. To “celebrate,” here’s the little widget-y thing it generates. This page doesn’t necessarily play too good with the HTML, but oh well.

Miramare Place

Located in historic Nova Albion with a view facing Yamato and the Ahern welcome area, this area serves as a small information location and hangout for explorers of the Second Life mainland. Ample seating for discussions, resources on both the local area and other notable mainland locations, and — of course — snow cones served by a robot.

Visit in Second Life

February 26th, 2011 by Marianne McCann

Shortly after the most recent round of auctions ended in Bay City – Dennis, I got an IM from a friend, Liz Gealach, telling me she’d scored the parcels she wanted. I logged in and went on over. While there, I noticed a kid avatar (who also happens to go to the same RP elementary school as me) setting up on one of the other recently auctioned parcels, next-door to a location promoting the GOHA organization. Across from there, Marx Dudek — another friend — has set up the Kerfuffle store.

As I talk with my friend, Harleywan Haggwood from Never You Mind — who bought a couple 512s over in Bay City – Mashpee — goes by on a segway. We exchange pleasantries before he decides to ride on.

Back on my own parcel, Bryce Carter is setting up his detective agency over ahkenatan Grommet’s Primouth dealership. Robin Sojourner has rented my other storefront, too, bringing in her new line of furniture.

My friend Molly Montale, who has already set up a great vintage burger joint in Bay City – Sandwich, manages to score a bit of Bay City frontage herself. She’s test fit a gas station, but is still pondering what she’ll do with it in the end.

In the Bay City Alliance group IM, Holocluck Henly is checking out the route for the big Giant Snail Race through Bay City this weekend, making sure it’ll all work okay. Later that night I’ll also see RacerX Gullwing and Tindallia Soothsayer checking out the route while I hang a “Welcome Snails” banner.

Also while hanging the banner, another friend and Bay City Resident — Ever Dreamscape — tromps by in a giant monster avatar, “terrorizing ” the city and noting I’d likely taste good with ketchup. A few minutes later, two young furs will be hanging out in the store, watching Superman cartoons on my television.

Now that’s the Bay City I’ve always wanted to see and be a part of. A vibrant city, a community full of really great people. Things to see, do, and enjoy.

This is what Second Life can be, at it’s very best.

February 8th, 2011 by Marianne McCann

Pardon if this post turned out to be very much too long. It’s actually a couple of blog entries, all smushed into one the longer I thought about it.

You see, I was thinking of Rodvik Linden, and what the legacy he is inheriting from Philip’s stint as once-and-future-CEO, and M Linden’s two years in the driver’s seat. In the course of doing so, it caused me to think about what Second Life is, what matters, and — in my opinion — where things may well have gone a bit off the rails.

Two big things

I think there’s two big things with Second Life, and these are what makes Second Life what it is. It’s the things that keep me coming back to this place and, I presume, is at the core of many other peoples’ interests.

The first is building. In a December 2001 presentation given on a little program called LindenWorld, would-be investors heard that 5% of LindenWorld users would build the content that 100% of the users would enjoy. We can argue how close the numbers are, but I think it is the tools to build your world — and even make some modest profit from same — that drive Second Life.

I think that a majority of users, if not most, have at least a rudimentary knowledge of building. I don’t mean that everyone is a content creator: I mean they might know that they can right click and edit their hair to resize it, or how to move a rezzed object.

When Viewer 2 came out, one of the biggest complaints was that it was antagonistic to builders. This was fairly true. Not only did builders have to re-educate themselves to the basics of finding their build tools and learning how to upload a texture, they also were faced with the inability to rez a prim on top of another prim, and the removal of a much-loved “build” button at the bottom of their screen. Likewise, a new Welcome Island that hit the grid around the same time did not include ll but one mention — in a shared media video — about the fact that it was we, the Residents, who build things.

One of the most enchanting things with Second Life is that we not only get to explore and consume content, but we get to create the content. We’re not tied to whatever the game company’s staff put there. If we want a better mousetrap, we have the tools to build it. This is so very key to the fabric of this world.

I think some of that vision was lost. I think we see that at the heart of Viewer 2, and I hope that we can see this change.

In a meeting with some of the creatives of Burning Man, T Linden defended Viewer 2 in part by suggesting that maybe a third party would make a viewer “for builders.” Indeed, his view was that maybe there should be a whole lot of different, specialized viewers for builders, and machinimatographers, and so on.

I don’t think we need a lot of different viewer, however. We need one viewer that works. We need the existing tools made that much better.

In seeing Rodvik’s first blog post about building his crude log cabin and raft, well, maybe we will indeed see an increased focus on providing a quality experience for Second Life’s builders.

One caveat: Mesh. It’s beautiful stuff. Far more robust and a lot less tricky than sculpties, and in the hands of a good designer, it’s almost magical to see the results. Yet the downside should be obvious. All you need do is upload your mesh model to second life and pay an upload fee. There is no inworld tools to it, no manipulation — and therefore less of a reason to even put it in Second Life in the first place — because the second big thing is socializing.

Second Life is a social medium. Sure, we build, we explore, and we shop. But to what end? While we do these things, we build a network of friends and acquaintances in this world, people who we share similar interests and desires. We explore not only so that we can see the cool stuff, but so we can show others the cool stuff we found. We shop for things to make our avatars represent us better, and we decorate our spaces with items we’ve built or bought to make them more comfortable for us ad our friends.

Over the last several years, people have banded together, creating communities, affinity groups, and cultures within this world. The Luskwood has become a vibrant home for furries, the SL children have their schools, neighborhoods, and camp. Steampunk has flourished stretching out into Caledon, New Babbage, and Steelhead, amongst others. Even the mainland has its own unique culture, as do some of the cities — both Linden and Resident formed — that populate it.

You can create the most beautiful things here — but without the people, it’s all just ones and zeros.

To this end, I have never understood why Linden Lab have continued to hobble the ability for people to come together. The backbone for friends, groups, chat, and Instant Messages have been problematic for as long as I’ve been in Second Life. The obvious example: group chat has always broken down, and conferences are just as unreliable. There remains no good way to communicate to your friends what you are doing in SL on a large scale without resorting to other social media sites like Twitter and Plurk. It was only with the addition of the “Share” feature in Viewer 2.2 that one could even send an object to more than two people at a time.

The ability to socialize is so key in Second Life.

Yet in the last year we’ve seen the community team more than decimated, and the focus being on marketing over community. This, IMO, is a mistake. Without a grasp on ones own users, you cannot effectively market to the people who may well be attracted to your product and have not yet taken the plunge. The existing userbase can make or break the product. Speaking of which…

Viewer 2

I had the dubious pleasure of being part of the private beta on Viewer 2. Really, what this means is that I’m able to say “You should have seen it before public beta!” to those that hate the V2 UI. I’ve actually continued to use it since then, only logging into 1.23.5 on those rare moments that I have to use my creaky old MacBook Pro to access Second Life.

but I need to go back before the beta. Back at SLCC 2009, the crowd was wowed with screen shots and video of what was to come. By wowed, I mean some catcalled the need for things like, oh, working group chat over mesh, advanced graphics, and shared media — but many seemed to like what they saw.

Nevertheless, this was the “SL 2.0″ we were being sold at the time. A redesigned UI (although we were told it would look nothing like what we were seeing on screen), shared media, advanced lighting and shadows, and mesh capabilities. This was called, at the time, “Viewer 2009.”

Now 2009 came and went without release, and the private beta started in earnest within the first quarter of 2010. Many of the beta testers were not what you’d call enthusiastic with what they were testing. Things were radically changed, with a sidebar that had to be slid out to get to most of the much-needed components. There were no media controls aside from the ones buried in preferences. The UI was unusable for those with special needs, and the small, white-text-on-black-background caused us all to get used to squinting.

Now a majority of the troubles with the UI are ones I call “moved cheese,” based on the book title from a couple years ago. After years of doing things one particular way, changing your methods to V2 makes you feel like a noob — and no one wants to feel like a noob.

Consider what everyone who used V2 for the first time got to experience.

You load the software, get past the “we’ve set this based on the specs of your computer,” type your information in, and hit the login button. So far, so good. Then things go wrong. Your avatar — your very representation in the world – just won’t load. This is only one problem you face, because the audio and video feed of the parcel you’re on are blaring through your computer’s speakers. Both, at the same time. You fumble for the sound controls, which are not just two buttons in the upper right hand corner. If you were lucky enough to be on the first public beta, you even had to stumble over the fact that the play and pause buttons were reversed (a feature, we were told).

So your heart has stopped racing from the noise. You still have no shape, you have to fumble around looking for your inventory. You’re friends and group chats are all coming in within these little windows, you’re confused and upset, and suddenly everything your friends told you about V2 makes sense. You log out, reinstall 1.23.5 or a third party viewer, and join the ranks of those who hate viewer 2.

For what its worth, Viewer 2.2 is around where a Viewer 2 user like myself begun to feel like the severe bugs were ironed out and we could start to move forward. That said, Viewer 2.3 and up cause my iMac to hard lock. “Logging out” by clicking your computer’s power switch is never a good option.

Back to the UI. Yes, much cheese was moved, but it’s deeper than that. No one needed to feel that way. The UI was poorly developed, and is still flawed.

Now I don’t mean “zOMG teh sidebar,” though I know many point to it as an issue. I don’t think it is in and of itself — but the way it was presented was. People were used to working with multiple windows open, and at launch you had a single, fairly inflexible dock. Sending group notices with attachments became difficult, viewing two profiles at a time was impossible.

But this was a symptom of the bigger issue. The UI is inflexible. It was seemingly not designed with extensibility in mind. While it was designed to be simple, it was instead constraining. Features were hidden, and workflows were hobbled. I would go so far as to say that the UI was the very antithesis of what Second Life should be. In a world of infinite possibilities, why impose arbitrary constraints?

Almost done, promise!

We have needs

Early in the release of Viewer 2, I saw my avatar Ruthed. Later, I saw her folded over. She would sometimes be invisible, or her textures would go solid black. She might even end up with the textures of a completely different avatar.

Some of these bugs had been supposedly resolved ages ago, yet here they were again. It was as if all the bugs that were squashed, weren’t. They were merely brushed under the carpet, left for someone else to deal with, some day. Or maybe the SL codebase is so labyrinthine that its nigh-impossible to straighten out these issues. After all, there has to be some reason why blocking a prim will get stuck offlines to load, or changing a group tag will get “cloud” avatars to load.

Meanwhile, we saw support and governance staffs cut to the bone in the last year. Support is now even more nonexistent for free accounts (a move I don’t necessarily disagree with), while other support tiers have been given outsourced service or limited hours to contend with.

Meanwhile, governance — the people who take care of terms of service and community standards violations — seem to be rare birds nowadays. So rare that few even know who is handling governance. While they still do seem to handle big issues fairly quickly, it is the more complex — and often more necessary — governance issues that are falling through the cracks.

I understand the need to cut costs. 2010 was a rough year for Linden Lab, and things simply had to happen. Nevertheless, there are things that need to be tended to in order to keep the existing userbase feeling like they’re more than simply the cash cow that gets milked every so often. And this brings me to my last point.

Communicate.

Communication has long been difficult in Second Life — and this time I don’t mean failed group chats. From support staff that offer responses to problems that don’t fit the trouble, to SL seemingly being the only company that actively does not advertise itself, to “conversation managers” who don’t well, have conversations, it’s always been a sore spot.

Like I said above, one of the big things in Second Life is socialization. Many of us are here because of this. we need that from the Lab, too. No, I don’t expect Rodvik to come by my inworld residence and leave a mint on my pillow (besides, I don’t have many prims there). What I do expect is for them to give us a clear vision of where the Lab is heading, what we should expect in the next weeks, months, and year.

So often, life on the grid has been a gamble. Tomorrow, some piece of code and/or some policy change could wipe out my way of Second Life. I know what its like to log in, having friends and acquaintances pouncing on me to let me know that something is up — from the original “notecard policy” that child avatars faced in 2007, to the June 8th layoffs.

If things are going to be rough — tell me. Let me know what you face, so I can try to make things easier. Let’s weather the storm together. If there’s some new shiney in the pipeline, let us know. We may need to make changes to our own products and services to accommodate it. We may even have ideas on improving it.

In 2008, we were told in essence that we did not matter. In my opinion, the shock waves from that — and later actions that buoyed that opinion — are still feeling felt in 2011. Now’s the time to change this.

January 31st, 2011 by Marianne McCann

I’ve written about Bay City more than a couple times on this very blog. But I’ve always gone from what might be an erroneous assumption: I don’t need to explain what Bay City is, as that’s already known.

I’ve recently talked with several friends about Bay City, in light of the likely move of the former Teen Grid Bay City regions to make up the westside of the current Main Grid Bay City. What surprised me is how few really had heard of it, or knew much about it. So without further ado, an introduction.

Bay City is a parcel of regions to the west of the Nova Albion City sims and the Ahern Welcome Area. These regions were the first product of the Linden Department of Pubic Works’ attempts to redefine the mainland, and as such provide a large amount of mole-made “follies” and open parkland, as well as canals, roads, and other bonuses.

Also, thanks to the large amount of open parks and such, the Resident parcels in Bay City are “double primmed,” meaning that a 512m parcel in Bay City has the same amount of available prims as a 1024m on most of the mainland (Nova Albion, Nautilus City, and some parts of Kama City on Zindra also enjoy this bonus).

The area is lightly themed. As announced on the Second Life blog, Bay City is themed as “the American urban experience, between 1940 and 1965, perhaps best typified by Chicago circa 1950 and marked by a distinct deco influence.” I say “lightly” because it is mainland, and landowners are welcome to build whatever they wish. Many do, however, stay within the basic spirit of the city.

There is one great barrier to life in Bay City, however. While much of the mainland has seen skyrocketing abandonment and prices in the basement Bay City has always been known for being some of the priciest land on the grid. Most parcels start from around L$50k and go upward. On the plus side, it is likely to remain so, as it has weathered even the tough inworld economic times of Mid-2010.

In exchange for the cost you not only get double-prim land, likely with more than one protected side, and nice views of Linden-owned parks and follies, but you get access to a network of roads and canals, the possibly of a boat dock in New Port, and nearby access to the SLRR and the Hau Koda airport. For those who sell, you have two infohubs in the city (and two more within a 5± region distance), free advertising space at the Bay City Community Center, and several other stores within relatively close proximity.

You also gain the Bay City Alliance, a group made up of Bay City Residents and other interested parties who work together to provide events and foster community in the City by the Bay. I’ve had the pleasure of watching this group mature over the last two years, and see a strong group dedicated to helping make the city a success. They’re one of the big reasons I’m there.

I hope, as the area heads to its third anniversary in May, that you’ll opt to join us. If you are looking for good, quality mainland, think Bay City.

January 6th, 2011 by Marianne McCann

Okay, let me start with a heresy: Second Life needs to be more like Facebook.

Now, before your get that tar up to boiling, and before you collect a sufficient amount of feathers, let me explain. I don’t think Second Life should be any less involved or complex as it is now. I certainly don’t think it needs to be a Zynga game. It does not necessarily need to be a web-based thing (though Project Skylight does look good). I don’t need to send data from Second Life to Facebook. I don’t need Mark Zuckerberg & Co. to data scrape my avatar. None of that.

But there are features that I would dearly love, and those features are the sort of things I see on Facebook, Twitter, Plurk, and elsewhere. I think these features would revolutionize the way we connect in Second Life, would be useful for both wide-eyed noob and jaded oldbie, and would make Second life be far more (dare I say it?) fast, easy, and fun.

Let me give you a couple scenarios from my own SL experiences, so that maybe you can see what I see. In the Summer, I do a weekly fireworks series every Saturday night. At current, I have the following ways to tell my friends about this event. I can start a conference chat a couple minutes before to let everyone know, I can send a group notice, and I can send each of my friends an IM or notecard about the event.

But people don’t always appreciate conference IMs. Many don’t want the intrusion or me and my other friends suddenly plopping into their space. Likewise, even a 40 group limit is not going to allow people to really join groups to find out about events, and group notices are also, shall we say, spammy. Finally, sending the 750 people on my friend’s list individual IMs about such things is a monumental amount of work. None of these are good solutions.

Rather, if there was some way that my friends could see a status message from me — at their convenience — it take all that pain away. They could see at a glance that I was going to have a fireworks show (or whatever), click the SLURL I put with it, and be on their way.

Second example. I might want to connect with my friends beyond just knowing what event their hosting. I might want to know what they’re up to, how they’re feeling, or just a bit about them. I want to connect with them. Again, I could IM them, and often do – but with the size of my list, again, it is a chore, and people do fall through the cracks.

It would be that much easier if I could pull up a status feed and see, right there, that Mary Resident is at a cool concert (Maybe I should check that out?), and Bob Resident just finished building a tree fort (Maybe I need to check their store!), and Alice Resident is Flying her biplane (which means that IMs with her are likely going to be hit and miss). Heck, it would also help me to know if Ralph Resident is off on vacation, or what have you — all in a glance.

Imagine this as the response to the perpetual noob question of boredom, and see this as a way for each of us to be a bit closer. Think of it in terms of the “like” button as a way for us to show our friends a place we thought was a “must see.” And imagine being able to do this without leaving the Second Life interface to go off to some other place on the web.

That is the way I’d like to see Second Life be more like Facebook. I want those tools to serve my digital self, within Second Life, the same way they serve my flesh-based form in my first life.

December 27th, 2010 by Marianne McCann

T’talk about Christmas this year, I need to go back to Christmas of 2007. Before that, I need to talk role play.

Many in SL who role play kids end up in families. They’re adopted by adult avatars, usually a romantically-involved couple, and serve as daughters or sons. the couple get to experience having children together, and the kids get to enjoy having parents to role play off of. It’s a mutually beneficial arrangement.

Unfortunately, for every happy SL family, there are hundreds of stories of broken homes. Sometimes the couple decides their children take too much of their “me time,” or the kids end up disliking the parents. More often than not, however, the parents break up.

In the Winter of 2007, things were rocky for my SL parents. They had a Second Life marriage and a first life long-distance relationship that was going through turbulent times. Jealously and anger was replacing trust and love. And it was Christmastime.

We tried to have a holiday. All the trimming were there, including a big, snowy-white christmas tree surrounded by a mound of presents. We decided that we needed all of us – my mommy, daddy, and us three kids – to be there for the tearing of virtual holiday wrap. We made plans. And then we waited. And waited.

By February, we had yet to have that time when we could do any of this, and by then it was all but incidental. My parents did not have much in the way of happy moments at that time, and it would be a day or so after Valentine’s that it was all truly over.

The gifts would be sitting under the tree for months more, eventually returned. We could not really bear to spend time down in the living room in the Summer of 08, looking at the tree, and gifts, from the Christmas that never came.

2008 I spent some of Christmas at Camp HardKnock, 2009 me and my sibs had a somewhat quiet one at home. This year, we decided to take Christmas back, and make it fun again.

So we had th’ big holiday thing at home at the home me an my siblings share. Once again, we had a tree with presents beneath it, but this Christmas they’d be gone before the end of Christmas day!

Me and my sister were bursting with excitement! We had to keep skipping and hopping and stuff, just waiting!

My friend who is a boy (but it not my boyfriend!), Johnny, and his Sister Valla came over. We had fun with Christmas crackers and paper crowns…

Oh, and fun with pingpongers. They may have been “stocking stuffers,” but they sure were a blast!

Then it was gifty time. We all exchanged goodies! I had a gifty f’r Johnny (a knit cap and some cool bow ties)…

…an he had one f’r me (it was some cool ice skates):

We then played and partied at home…

…and posed out front

We decided to share the joy, and went to the Hau Koda Infohub and caroled. People actually did enjoy it. One of them even gave us cookies.

After that we went skatin’. I got a chance t’break in the skates Johnny got me. Thankoo, Johnny!

All this made for a super fun Christmas in Second Life. We took it back, and it was fun again. Thanks also to Johnny and Valla for joining in on this special day.