Posts Relating To: linden labs

Initial Impressions of SL Viewer 2.0

So the next iter­a­tion of Second Life viewer has come along, and it’s look­ing mar­velous! I’m actu­ally really impressed. Here’s my quick run down of Linden Lab’s new mon­ster.
What it has…
Aes­thet­ics
The new cli­ent looks abso­lutely mar­velous. Yup I know that sounds like a fairly unim­port­ant thing to talk about, but actu­ally it isn’t. How pleas­ing a GUI …

February 25, 2010 – 1:11 am | By Aaron | Posted in Reviews, Thoughts, second life | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (5)

Avatars United — A Sticking-Plaster Solution for Networking in Second Life

So I guess almost every­one who’s going to read this post is aware of Linden Labs pur­chase of Avatars United and the assim­il­a­tion of it’s cre­at­ive minds at Enemy Unknown. Spec­u­la­tion is rife as to what motiv­ated this pur­chase, the grand avatar purge that counts Ener Hax amongst it cas­u­al­ties? Prob­lems with scal­ing? Chances are …

February 2, 2010 – 2:29 am | By Aaron | Posted in Thoughts, second life | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (2)

Do you Collaborate in Second Life? Interviewees Needed

As part of my ongo­ing PhD pro­ject, I’m look­ing to inter­view around a dozen or so people about how they use Second Life to col­lab­or­ate with oth­ers on pro­jects. I’m using a very loose defin­i­tion of col­lab­or­a­tion here, which could include things like gen­eral meet­ings, work­ing on products, organ­ising events, land admin­is­tra­tion, present­a­tions, per­form­ances, even …

January 19, 2010 – 9:49 pm | By Aaron | Posted in research, second life | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (5)

Second Life and Poor User Centered Design

Yes­ter­day I wrote a post about how copy­bot­ting can essen­tially be seen as the con­sequence of bad design, I spoke about how the design of Second Life is such that some people are will­ing to take great risks in-order to com­pensate for design related prob­lems. I think it’s safe to say that much of those …

December 16, 2009 – 2:43 pm | By Aaron | Posted in Thoughts | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (2)

Copybotting as ‘intentional human error’

I’ve been read­ing quite a lot of blog posts on the topic of copy­bot­ting recently. For those who don’t know, copy­bot­ting is the blanket term used to cover Second Life pir­acy. Its name comes from the pro­cess where an auto­mated avatar (bot) sys­tem­at­ic­ally inspects and then rep­lic­ates an in-world item — although it now tends …

December 15, 2009 – 2:00 pm | By Aaron | Posted in Thoughts | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (2)