Telstra BigPond is a large Internet Service Provider in Australia. They have had a presence in the virtual world of Second Life for some time The BigPond virtual sim included cinema, racetracks, games, dance areas, and company information areas in addition to a customer service area that was fully staffed.

Telestra BigPond will close down their virtual sim on December 16, 2009. Craig Middleton a spokesman for Telstra BigPond stated that 2,000 regular Second Life users came through the BigPond virtual sim.

Teleport there now

Below is a short video created about a year ago of the BigPond Telstra virtual sim.

Goodbye Telstra BigPond:

Here are some more videos:

Pondi Beach:

Pondfield:

Linden Lab released the 3rd quarter virtual economy statistics. Highlights include a 54% increase in total transactions, and an increase of 27% in voice usage. Total user hours and peak concurrency was down. Linden Lab attributed this to a crackdown on bot usage. Trading volume on the LindeX was flat.

New aquisition Xstreet SL reached an all time high gross sale of $1.6 million USD which is a 13% increase.

Median concurrent users is down from 61,000 to 54,000 but a high point of 77,367 was reached.

International usage of Second Life continues to increase with the United States of America now accounting for only 37% of user transactions and 41% of user hours.

Stability and downtime have been holding steady.

Read more here.

It seems like only a short time ago that Linden Lab made the Second Life Viewer open source. Since then many developers have created viewers that violate the terms of service in the virtual world of Second Life such as allowing unrestricted copying of objects, etc. It has become such a problem that Linden Lab will begin suspending and banning developers who create viewers that violate either the terms of service or the community standars. Soon new guidelines will be created as well as a registry of approved viewers.

Read more here.

We have written several times about the Second Life Knowledge Base and Wiki. Linden Lab has announced that the Second Life Knowledge Base has now officially been migrated to the Second Life Wiki. The update includes direct linking and an accelerated article revision time.

Linden Lab Official articles can not be altered by residents and have been locked and protected. All other articles can be edited with approval by volunteers.

Check it out at http://wiki.secondlife.com

We wrote before about the change of the Second Life Knowledge Base into a Wiki.

Linden Lab has been testing the program for the last few months and has decided that it will be the new format. They will move forward with a full migration. Contributions will need to be approved before they are published.

I applaud this move and it fits with what Linden Lab has been doing all along to move to open source and outsource major initiatives.

We recently wrote about the Rezzable BuilderBot and how it could be used to copy or steal an entire Sim like CopyBot. Rezzable has attempted to correct the issue by adding coding that only allows you to copy items that you own but they recently went a step further by adding permissions restrictions to the Builder Bot program. This will differentiate it from CopyBot.

You can watch a very long video discussion at Treet.tv

Read the Rezzable BuilderBot post here.

We have written about the changes that Linden Lab has made to policy on traffic bots. The Second Life traffic score will now be changed in the way it effects search results. This is partly due to problems in the calculations. To correct this traffic will now be total minutes spent on the parcel by all avatars from the previous day divided by 60 and rounded up or down to the whole minute. The changes will take effect on Monday, August 31, 2009.

We have extensively covered the development and progress of the Zindra Second Life Adult Continent. The relocation request tickets were available as of Monday, June, 29, 2009 and Linden Lab has already had over seven hundred requests. Large parcels have been requested and so more of the Zindra land will be opening and available. New areas will be added to the East and to the South. The closing of request tickets has been delayed until Friday, July 24, 2009.

Tateru Nino from Massively has aquired some data on Second life private simulator numbers and estimates the number of private simulators to be almost 30,000. Based on the pricing found in the Second Life Land Store this would put the revenue from private sims for Linden Lab between $2,250,000 and $8,850,000 a month at least. This is at least $27 to $106 Million a year.

This is not at all surprising given a recent post from New World Notes that valued Linden Lab at $700 Million given a $100 Million 2009 revenue forcast from NeXt Up Research.

The Second LIfe 6 Year Birthday Celebration closes today.

This was an amazing event and the 4 sims of the SL6B were very cool indeed. The 4 large sims of the celebration were larger than the initial entire Second Life.

To sit or not to sit? That is the question…..

Below we see the closing keynote from Second Life founder Phillip Rosedale (known as Phillip Linden). Check out the video below. He also highlights that over 17,000 visitors came to the Second Life Birthday Celebration from over 140 countries. Please note that the build and sims will still be open for about a week after the celebration closes. Teleport there now.

Phillip Rosedale Second Life 6th Birthday Closing Keynote Video:

HD Flyby of SL6B Event Locations

Linden Lab has released an update to Zindra in Second Life. This includes a new map which you can see below. Tickets will be available starting on Monday, June 29, 2009 at 10:00 am.

The ticketing process will be open for 3 weeks and close on July, 20, 2009 at 10 am. Check out the updated map below.

Read more information here

Check out the below high definition video which is a walk through of some of the locations where the Second Life 6 Year Birthday Celebration will be held.

The video is about 8 minutes long and features some very phantom of the opera like music. Check it out below:

HD Flyby of SL6B Event Locations

We wrote before about the Second Life Land Expo which ran from June 9 – June 13, 2009. Well it is over now. Did you attend? What was your experience like?

Linden Lab is also very interested and has created a survey for feedback to make the SL Land Expo better next year.

Second Life Land Expo Survey Questions:

1. How many days did you attend the Expo?

2. Were you an exhibitor? Presenter? Both? Attendee?

3. What was the best and worst part of the Expo?

4. How would you change the Expo?

5. Would you attend another Land Expo?

6. How would you rate the quality of the Presentations?

7. How would you rate the quality of the Exhibits?

8. Please add any extra comments about the Land Expo here:

9. What is your SL name? (Optional)

Take the survey here.

We have written before about some of the exciting developments with OpenSim. Hippo OpenSim Viewer, which is the most popular modified Second Life View used for the Open Simulator is reporting some impressive usage statistics.

Users per day of the Hippo OpenSim Viewer are increasing and have reached 1,800 per day and over 32,000 total users. This is indeed a good trent for Hippo Viewer. Currently in v0.5.1, MJM Labs continues to develop and support unique features such as building to the height of ten thousand meeters, support for large mega prims up to 256 square cubed meters, join up to 100 groups, and more.

Read more here

ThinkBalm has created a virtual sim in Second Life. The ThinkBalm Data Garden Virtual Sim is a great way to present visually the results of the ThinkBalm Immersive Internet Business Value Study, Q2 2009 report which was sponsored in part by Linden Lab.

The virtual garden shows results of surveys on immersive technologies and more. Teleport there now.

Erica and Sam Driver from Thinkbalm will also be talking live in Second Life on Sunday June 7, 2009 at 6pm SLT. Teleport there.

You may have heard that the United States Navy has created a Naval Underseas Warfare Center in Second Life for testing and drills as well as information. Buildings, exhibits, and submarines have been virtually recreated.

The United States Navy will conduct training and operations testing in the virtual world of Second Life while partnering with Qwaq.

The idea of a virtual submarine combat center and war games and other exercises is really cool. This technology was recently showcased at the 2009 National Defense University Washington, DC Federal Consortium for Virtual Worlds Conference.

It has been awhile since we had an update on Second Life Homesteads. The Homestead pricing will be changing but purchases made prior to July 1, 2009 will retain the old cost.

These prices will stay in place for 1 year until July 1, 2010. The cost is $95 a month (in US dollars not Linden Dollars) which is pretty steep but not compared to the new pricing of $125 a month. Any purchases after July 1, 2009 and all old purchases after July 1, 2009 will see the increased price of $95 a month for Homesteads.

Remember that Homesteads are the new Openspaces and with some exceptions Open spaces are not really offered anymore.

Also any Homesteads that were abandoned after January 1, 2009 can be reactivated without the setup fee. Read more information here.

We wrote before about Linden Labs buying XStreet SL and expanding into micro transactions with the sale of virtual goods.

There have been a few changes since then but the most notable is that you now use your Second Life account when purchasing from the XStreet SL web site.

Another change is that Linden Lab is offering listing enhancements (a-la ebay) for an extra fee (some of them already existed). These include:

1. Bolding your listing

2. Highlighting or bordering your listing

3. Featured item listing at the top of the page

4. Featuring the product on the homepage

So don’t forget to get your water slide or whatever else you need.

We wrote earlier how ridiculous and ironic it was that Taser was suing Linden Lab and a Crack Den in Second Life for the virtual use of stun guns.

Apparently it turned into a bout of bad press for Taser and the lawsuit has been dropped.

Don’t Tase Me Bro

I have 4 words for you “don’t tase me bro”. Maybe Taser decided to focus on other lawsuits against them that they could win or maybe they were happy with the removal and renaming of content. It is also worth noting that the Taser gameplay in the Crack Den will most likely be stopped or moved to the Second Life red light district in a perfect timing of the changes in policy to adult content in Second Life.

Check out the below video interview by New World Notes of Linden Lab CEO Mark Kingdom and Chief Product Officer Tom Hale.

It covers the virtual economy in Second Life, OpenSpaces & Homesteads, business in Second Life, the growth of users, and more.

Video Interview with Mark Kingdom and Tom Hale:

You may have heard that Linden Lab is segregating adult content in Second Life. There are many users that are unhappy about these new restrictions and verification requirements.

In an update, Linden Lab has defined Adult content, Mature content, and PG content. They have also announced the below milestone dates:

1. Finalizing definitions by April 30, 2009.

2. Release Candidate Viewer 1.23 containing new functionality and filters by April 30, 2009

3. Launch new viewer and functionality by end of June 2009.

4. Move all Adult content to new content and Restrict access to verified accounts starting July 1, 2009.

Definitions of Adult Content:

1. Intensely violent acts: photos or 3d of torture, death, dismemberment or other bodily harm

2. Photo-realistic nudity

3. Sexually themed content, activities, or spaces both 3d and photos.

You may have read one of my previous posts on the Road Building Projects of the Department of Public Works in Second Life.

You can help decide what the Department of Public Works next road building project is by taking this Poll. There are three routes to choose from on the Corsica and Nautilus virtual sims.

In the below video you see a comparison of OpenSim with a patched version that loads textures two hundred percent faster, is more efficient, and reduces memory usage.

It was created for Remedy Limited using the Opensim software.

HD Video of OpenSim Texture Improvements:

I wrote before about the Star Wars Movie: Escape currently being filmed in Second Life.

Below we see another 9 minute long storyboard type machinima of the film from Star Wars Galaxies and Second Life.

After the Linden Lab purchase of XStreet SL many questioned what types of changes would be coming to Second Life and XStreet SL.

Linden Lab said little changes would be happening but I have noticed one important change that has already happened.

Linden Lab has made an important change to the XStreetSL Currency Exchange. Minimum orders have been set at L$500. I discovered this as I attempted to place an order for under L$500. Many will be annoyed with this if they have small leftover amounts of L$ under 500 sitting in their accounts.

Linden Lab has delayed for about a week a move to a new blog format. Citing technical difficulties Blue Linden has expressed disappointment at the delay and looks forward to renewing a higher level of communication.

Back in August we wrote that Linden Lab was combining the blog and forum and further changes came in October with the result being overall less communication. I applaud the change and look forward to the multi-blog format.

If you were wrapped up in some football awesomeness (Go Cards and Steelers in Superbowl!) then you may not have noticed that the Second Life grid went down in the late afternoon on Sunday. The outage was due to a mySQL crash. Logins were blocked and there was an outage lasting several hours.

I recently wrote that Second Life grid stability was off to a rough start in 2009 and boy was that ever true.

Fortunately Linden Lab wrote in their blog that they will be hiring several mySQL professionals to optimize and make changes. Here are some of the changes that will be coming:

Linden Lab Changes in Response to Second Life Downtime in 2009

1. Finally moving away from a one database model

2. Better and faster hardware and network connections

3. A new API for Linden Dollar Transactions

4. Modular inventory in the works

5. Django used for internal web development framework

2008 was a huge improvement in terms of dependability and reliability for access to the virtual world. Grid stability in Second Life has overall improved with committments from Linden Lab as well as OpenSpaces, Homesteads restrictions and Script limits in Second Life.

2009 however has had a rough start in January in terms of grid stability in Second Life.

Recently we have seen level 3 outages and issues with the central database resulting in logins disabled as recently as January 14 and 13. Inventory issues and more required a rolling restart and even the Second Life blog was unavailable for a time. This followed a database upgrade and ML-RPC service request issues.

2009 has been rough so far but I look forward to improvements going forward. LLnet and asset storage improvements should help the situation.

I wrote before about the Second Life WinterFaire Winter Wonderland. Well now Linden Lab is auctioning off space in the Holiday Marketplace. New auctions started for over 57 plots of different sizes. The Holiday Marketplace is available for sixty days with no monthly land fees and only a one time charge. The parcels have holiday names such as the names of Santa’s reindeer. Please note that you must have a premium account 15 days old to bid.

Since my last post on 26 Ways to Improve Premium Accounts in Second Life it looks like Linden Lab has received many different suggestions in the forums. In a response Linden Lab states

“I appreciate all the time you’ve spent reading and commenting on this thread, and going forward we’ll digest all the great input you’ve provided as we continue to evaluate how we can make the Premium membership a more valuable part of your Second Life experience….We don’t have a timeline for this yet, but we’ll share that as soon as we can.”

It looks like when improvements are scheduled to be made they will focus on:

1. Communication

2. Additional Benefits

3. Social Networking

4. Training

5. Reporting and APIs

6. Increasing Limits

7. Changes to Homestead/Open Spaces Purchasing Rules

8. Stipdend, Classified, Tier Benefits

9. Customer Support

10. Real Identification