3pointD.com

• IGN: Brooktown High: Senior Year
  21st century Willy Bemish high school sims ftw
  (tags: games psp brooktown sims)

A team of five undergraduate students from the Worcester Polytechnic Institute has designed a prototype of what looks to be a cool 3D mouse that you wear on your finger like a ring. The MagicMouse works using ultrasound receivers that picks up sound waves emitted by the ring. You can move around in three axes at the moment, and the students are working on adding gestural functionality like mouse clicks as well. You can watch a video of the thing, if you can get the page to load. If you can’t, and you want to see some similar technology, watch this YouTube video, which demonstrates cursor control based on a user’s hand gestures in space — both hands — with no transmitting technology involved. Interesting.

The Upfronts are the week when television networks show off the season’s upcoming shows to advertisers, hoping to win them over and grab fistfuls of their cash. For that reason, they’re very important, and the networks make sure their presentations are top-notch and designed to entertain. CBS made its showing yesterday afternoon at Carnegie Hall — and kicked it off with a machinima piece (produced by the Electric Sheep Company, sponsors of this blog) showing an avatar of JoAnn Ross, the president of network sales, flying around the virtual world of Second Life, according to Paul LaMonica of CNN/Money (who wasn’t sure it really was SL, apparently). CBS hasn’t posted the video on YouTube yet, but it will apparently be up there eventually, 3pointD hears, though it could take a week or two. The network is definitely taking a brave step into the future with the use of machinima in such a context, but it isn’t yet moving around the present very quickly, it seems. You can look for more good stuff in this vein from CBS, I’d bet. What I like about it is that it’s the kind of thing that will drive adoption of virtual worlds.

There’s so much metaversal news these days that it’s impossible to make a blog post out of everything that crosses my browser. (It was impossible before, but it’s getting more impossible now.) In an attempt to cram yet more news onto the blog, then, 3pointD is happy to introduce “D-Briefs,” an occasional roundup of short news items, some big and important, some trivial but interesting. Look for D-Briefs to appear on a consistently every-so-often basis. Today we have news of a Sony/ClubPenguin deal, a new immersive world from Shanda, IBM getting Torqued, and a million bucks tossed at a startup world. (more…)

For those of you still skeptical about the value of game consoles as a social and communications channel in an age of virtual worlds, I offer this Variety story, which describes young Hollywood execs networking and talking about deals over Xbox Live. Voice chat means they’re undeterred by the lack of a keyboard. And the games provide the engaging activity around which social functions are organized: “Nobody is yet selling a script or getting cast in a movie on Xbox Live. But like any social activity, the bonds formed in a game of “Gears of War” — currently the most popular game on XBL — carry over into other areas. In an incestuous industry town like Hollywood, most people’s social circles primarily involve people in the biz; so tagging somebody with a grenade at night can make it easier to give them a call about a project the next day.” World of Warcraft may be the new golf, but Live seems to be the new Chateau (or wherever’s more hip these days). Romantically, however, it’s not so hot: “Xbox Live is not a universally appealing way to socialize, even among the under-35 set. The games are predominantly male; the rare female voices are often girlfriends or wives in the background asking when the player is coming to bed.”

Landowners in the virtual world of There.com got new control over the weather at their plots yesterday, according to the company. As of yesterday, “all members owning zones, neighborhoods or property lots will have new options for customizing the environment and weather for their locations in the virtual world. Owners will see two new pull-down menus — environment and weather. The environment menu provides for different looks for the sky, including new dawn, high noon, romantic sunset and moonlit night. The weather menu provides for rain, snow and thunderstorm settings. Both menus have the ability to restore the default settings for each particular location.” This is pretty cool, if you ask me. I’d love to see the thunderstorm setting going off right next door to someone’s romantic sunset. And if none of the There.com member-developers have crafted a rain-cloud attachment that hovers over your head as you move around, they should get on that as well. If nothing else, this is going to pump up the market for virtual umbrellas.

German bank Wirecard Bank AG has opened »an island« in the virtual world of Second Life, according to a press release [<-- registration required]. The German financial services provider is also planning to set up shop in Entropia Universe, it says, which implies that it may be one of the five winners of the banking licenses that Entropia recently auctioned. (more…)

Nashville’s Bluebird Cafe, which has nurtured a few of the biggest country and western music stars to emerge in the last 25 years, will start streaming video of its shows into the virtual world of Second Life this evening, 15 May, 3pointD hears. The Bluebird Cafe SL, located in the »Nashville Music City region« of Second Life, replicates the tiny music club in Nashville, and was built out by a firm called Sansoft. The club will apparently be streaming its shows into SL six days a week, beginning tonight with Fred Eaglesmith. This is pretty cool. Most of Second Life’s native musicians who’ve seen the most success are small acts that play intimate venues like the Bluebird. How cool would it be to tie the two types of gig together, so that the venue became a place to see not only emerging talent from Nashville, but emerging talent in a similar vein from Second Life. Who knows, it might even get some SL musicians in front of the ears of the talent scouts lurking at Nashville’s Bluebird.

[UPDATE: One interesting aspect about this project is the fact that the virtual Bluebird will charge an admission charge of between L$1,000 and L$2,500, or about US$3-9. (This information wasn’t apparent until a press release appeared after my earlier post.) Most SL establishments don’t dare charge anything for admission, so it will be interesting to see whether the Bluebird is both brave and shrewd (quite possible) or just foolhardy. The question is, are these acts you’d pay that kind of money to watch on the Web? The SL experience is enhanced, but audiences aren’t used to being asked to pay. This is an experiment to watch, in any case.]

I am not sure if there has been much ballyhoo about this, but Autodesk have at last opened »their island« in the virtual world of Second Life, a project that’s been in the works for some time. Autodesk is the company behind what is arguably the world’s leading 2D and 3D modeling software, and so it seems a natural fit for them to be in Second Life. Indeed, Autodesk’s Maya product has recently been highlighted by Linden Lab as an appropriate tool for the development of the soon-to-be-launched sculpted prims. The island would appear to be the work of design firm Clear Ink, though they have made extensive use of the Canadian designer and builder, Second Life resident Scope Cleaver. (more…)

This year’s iCommons Summit, the annual gathering of 300 leading thinkers working toward a free Internet for all, will be held in parallel in the virtual world of Second Life, according to the summit’s Web site. The summit, which takes place this year in Dubrovnik, “will be run in parallel in Second Life,” according to the site. In addition, “all iSummit keynote addresses will be streamed into Second Life, and video and artwork from the Summit’s Artists in residence programme and some parallel sessions will also be available on the USC Center on Public Diplomacy’s »Annenberg Island« in Second Life,” where the summit will be hosted. (The USC site also has an announcement regarding the event.) Held this year on 15-17 June, the summit is a three-day meeting of “300 of the world’s leading intellectuals, authors, lawyers, artists and technologists on the cutting edge of Internet policy” who meet to talk about “the importance of a free Internet for free culture, new rules to keep the internet free, how to build free culture communities and the lessons we can learn from pirates.” I’d say this is valuable stuff to make available through Second Life. Last year’s summit, held in Rio, was apparently quite the hot event. What will be more interesting is when the organizers bring the two realities together, so that the virtual event isn’t held in parallel with the real-world event but is simply another part of a single whole. This’ll do for now, of course. Anyone planning to attend, in either reality?

A small raft of news emerged from the virtual world of Entropia Universe this week, including tie-ups with MasterCard and a real-life bank, and a new awards show being put on by virtual entrepreneurs Anshe Chung and Jon “Neverdie” Jacobs.

First up, MasterCard. Entropia has been trying to implement a real-life card for some time. A year ago, it gave its customers the ability to deposit real money to their game accounts via a bank card used at an ATM. Cash was withdrawn from your real-world account, converted on the fly into PED, Entropia’s virtual currency (which is fixed at 10 to the U.S. dollar), and deposited into your Entropia account. Entropia also has a reloadable debit card that you can deposit your PED to, which is then available as real-world cash at ATMs. Now, the company has struck a new deal with a financial institution that can give its cards MasterCard branding, Entropia says: “The new card will be cheaper to use for our customers, and have more functions including MasterCard branding which will allow the card to be used in retail outlets as well as traditional ATMs.” [Via RCEUniverse.] (more…)

SecondCast #60 is now on the air, featuring an interview with podcaster C.C. Chapman and Steve Coulson (aka Second Life’s Cleon Goff and Gideon Television) of Crayon, the new media marketing firm that launched last year. The pair relate their experience designing Coca-Cola’s Virtual Thirst contest, in which Coke drinkers (or anyone, for that matter, whether you’re a member of Second Life or not) can submit their ideas for the coolest, most fantastical virtual thirstquencher. There might be some news thrown in there as well.

• Bandology: A social web game about bands
  if u want to try to bridge the casual/hardcore gap - join my band “zombies 8 my brain”
  (tags: design education games gaming music online research school simulation technology teens videogames)

On May 19, Romania will hold a referendum on whether to impeach its suspended president, Traian Basescu, who has been charged with violating the country’s constitution. Before that time, members of the Romanian community in the virtual world of Second Life would like to hear from him and other Romanian political leaders in a virtual venue that’s been built out for the purpose. The two-minute video above provides a tour of a nice build that’s apparently designed to host a debate between real Romanian political leaders, should they care to put in an appearance. The »debate hall« looks fairly accomodating, and comes complete with voting mechanisms and a press room that’s apparently wired to provide television feeds. The video cites 20,000 Romanian Second Life users, and says around 800 a day are visiting the in-world location. Of those polled, 95 percent say they’d like to participate in an electoral meeting in SL. (more…)

British carmaker Vauxhall is entering the virtual world of Second Life with the creation of a user-generated guide that will be assembled over the next month, according to a press release. The Corsa Guide site for SL provides a fairly long list of locations (”as diverse as wonderful water parks, awesome fantasy gardens and crazy nightclubs where anything is possible”), complete with teleport links. SL members can visit the locations and vote on them using Corsa kiosks located there. The top ten results will be “unveiled” (in what form the press release doesn’t say) in Mid-June as the Corsa Guide to Getting a (Second) Life. Besides being a mildly interesting way to have a Second Life presence, Vauxhall’s project — as well as the many other guides to SL now appearing or in the works — also points up the continuing need for better search tools for the virtual world. But that’s a subject for another post. As well as the continuing need for an SL presence for those little guys in the Vauxhall ads, who so clearly belong in Second Life. Why weren’t those guys included in the project? That’s what I want to know.

Rand Leeb-du Toit is the man behind Outback Online and its hotly awaited “user-generated spaces.” A few days back, in the wake of Cristiano’s open letter to Linden Lab, makers of the virtual world of Second Life, Rand posted his three virtual-world rules:

1. build right from the start — by which he means not “build immediately” but “build correctly from the ground up”
2. community first — “Being useful to a community beats exciting them with new whizzbangery.”
3. integrate — “Virtual world developers need to . . . integrate with what their users are already doing.”

All seem sensible, though they’re not that much of a stretch. We’ll see whether Outback can deliver on the same points. Hopefully I’ll be able to bring you some more news on that in the near future. Outback is still running very quietly, but that hasn’t stopped them from being one of the most interesting metaversal experiments in development. I’m looking forward to seeing more. Also, go wish Rand a happy birthday.

A screenshot from HiPiHi

The stiffest potential competition for Second Life seems to be coming from Asia these days. First it was HiPiHi, the Chinese virtual world “created, inhabited and owned by its residents” (I’m glad it’s inhabited by its own residents; things could get tricky otherwise). There was a nice interview with HiPiHi’s founders in April, as well as an account of the author’s first days there. The creators say it isn’t a clone of SL, but check out the screenshot above; that’s very Second Lifelike.

The latest entrant, though, is a world named Splume that hails from Japan. Splume sounds somewhat less sophisticated than either SL or HiPiHi, according to this Japan Times article, but is more narrowly targeted at the Japanese market, and so could have an edge over SL there (where the Japanese localization recently went into beta), or perhaps be competing for different users altogether. It’s not necessarily a zero-sum game in any case; it’s still very early in the adoption curve of virtual worlds, and there should be room for new entrants to experiment and help push the space forward by fostering competition for some time now.

If you check out the latest ad buy on 3pointD’s cousin publication, the Second Life Herald (see the right sidebar, top), you’ll see that the inevitable is finally about to happen: Playboy Magazine is entering the virtual world of Second Life. No word yet on what form Playboy’s presence there will take, but it would seem to be the perfect place for them. After all, constructing a sexy avatar for yourself is just an extreme version of the airbrushing that often goes on in the pages of higher-end skin mags like Playboy. The possibilities, of course, are very interesting: in-world girlie mag to compete with Marilyn Murphy’s Players? A Playboy mansion where a virtual Hef and the bunnies will hang out? (Second Lifer’s won’t have any trouble finding things to do in the Grotto.) If there are virtual bunnies, will Playboy take as good care of them as they take of the real ones? RL Playboy Playmates are pretty much set for life; Playboy offers them jobs (albeit they’re usually jobs as professional cheesecake) and often does stuff like help pay for their education. In return, the organization gets a steady supply of buxom women to decorate their parties and functions with. Working as a virtual fleshpot is already a popular pursuit in Second Life; why not get paid a decent wage for it? And while it’s still exploiting the female image, you can’t say it’s exploitative of the women being photographed or hired, since you don’t know whether there’s a woman behind that curvy female av. All very interesting. The ad says Playboy won’t hit SL until June, but you can already sign up for email updates. The shape of things to come? We’ll see.

I checked into the virtual world of Second Life tonight for a sneak peek at two islands that were just opened by Amazon Web Services as a community-building effort for AWS developers. According to SL resident Jeffronius Batra (aka Jeff Barr, Amazon’s senior Web services evangelist), »the islands« — which are an official Amazon project — will not only provide resources for developers but also link to and show off what the AWS development community has created inside Second Life. (Jeff mentioned Jnana as an example. You can read more about what they’re doing in SL on the AWS blog, or just visit »Jnana in Second Life«.)

The virtual architecture, by Joshua Culdesac (who lives in France), is very handsome, though some of it was too tight for my camera. Jeff did the terraforming. Amazon took delivery of the islands in December, Jeff said, though planning had been going on before then. Amazon’s virtual estate is near an IBM island (and not by accident; Jeff invited them to buddy up), but there’s a mysterious island named Innovation that intervenes. Jeff hasn’t been able to get into it yet to find out what’s going on there. The Amazon islands aren’t quite done yet, Jeff says, but from what I could glean in my visit, they seem to have succeeded in being “very SL-friendly, not overly corporate,” as Jeff says they were intended. Amazon has been poking around in Second Life for something like a year now. Nice to see them finally get something going on an official level. (more…)

Mysterious news on the Millions of Us blog this evening: it seems there’s now a Microsoft island in the virtual world of Second Life. At least, that’s what the »teleport link« in the blog entry implies. And indeed, Microsoft has a build set up on its island devoted to Visual Studio — though it’s not clear what the rest of the island is for. And then there’s the blimp, which Millions of Us clearly wants us to be interested in, especially judging from the teaser video. It’s a pretty nice blimp, actually — although if you get too close to it, it first gives you a security warning, and then teleports you to your home location! More will be revealed at a launch event at 3pm 6pm SL Time (9pm Eastern) on Thursday, 10 May. Until then, it’s interesting to note Microsoft’s presence in Second Life. Various people from Microsoft initiatives like Channel 9 have set up shop in Second Life, and a mad Microsoft marketer chose some interesting spots to make the launch of Vista, but I think this may be the first big Microsoft presence in SL. Hard to tell what it means coming out of such a sprawling company, but it will be interesting to watch. Especially if there’s something good in that blimp.

It was just over a year ago that I first blogged about Etsy, the online community for makers and sellers (and buyers, of course) of crafts of all flavors and kinds. Because they’re here in Brooklyn and because they have their metaversal aspects about them, I thought I’d go and pay them a visit recently. The metaversal aspects of Etsy are mostly the doing of the company’s highly talented Flash programmer, Jared Tarbell, and prove that you don’t necessarily need a Z axis to have a good time. If you’ve poked around the site at all, you’ll have seen hints of them, in the form of the various “ways to shop” found on the front page. (Try time machine, and definitely check out the color page, which is slightly too awesome for its own good.) Where Etsy really comes alive, though, is when you become part of the community and start doing things like attending classes and town halls online. Jared’s cool interfaces give presence to your “avatar” (who’s nothing more than a square uploaded image) in a way few Web page have managed to. And now, Rob Kalin, Etsy’s founder, is thinking about putting Jared’s mad Flash skillz to work in a Flash virtual world that would be an online bazaar for Etsy crafters. More on that (and a couple of other interesting developments) after the jump. (more…)

You might remember Babbage Linden’s SLateIt heads-up display that can be used to flag and tag objects in the virtual world of Second Life, much like the functionality of Digg. Well, Babbage has been hard at work since we first blogged the SLateIt HUD back in February, and now he’s come out with a YouTube video demonstrating the latest version’s feature set. It’s nice stuff, too, usable via either dialogue boxes or the chat line. It even interfaces with the SLateIt Web site, pulling in the last-flagged item on a search and offering you a teleport to its location.

What’s nice about this is that it lets you see how many times an object has been “SLated” without having to leave Second Life. I realize Babbage uses the word “rate” to describe what SLateIt does, but I don’t think that’s accurate, since the only actions possible are a “SLate” (a thumbs-up) or a “hate.” (Objects that are too hated get removed from the list.) Rating seems to me to imply a scale of more than just zero or one. So as usual I’m going off on my own tangent and refer to it as “SLating” — which is more in keeping with the “Digging” model anyway.

The only other things I’d like to see? An open API to both the HUD and the Web site so that people can build their own cool services atop this cool service. (I think the HUD may already be open-source, I’m not sure.) In any case, it’s nice work. With enough people using it, it could become a useful tool.

Saul Hansell has a pretty nice piece in The New York Times today all about 3D printers and the possibility of their becoming cheap enough for home use. It’s a great vision, although it kind of misses two things: first, even though printers can be had increasingly cheaply, the materials needed to make solid, sturdy objects are very expensive. Second, printing out a 3D object is not as simple as just sketching on paper or sticking some primitives together in Second Life. A lot of work has to be done to insure that the object you’re trying to print is in fact internally consistent in a way the printer can handle, so that it won’t fall apart in the end. Neither of those points are mentioned, but they’re not insurmountable obstacles. Material prices will of course come down over time. And one of the potentially most promising uses Hansell mentions for the devices are to do things like “print out replacements for a dishwasher rack at home” (which doesn’t require any design knowledge on the user’s part). I imagine this will be how they’re used most often, to print out simple items the designs for which can be downloaded over the Internet. I really dig that vision of the future, in which I don’t have to go to the hardware store to buy some new jewel cases for the CDs I’m burning for friends, or a new part for the coffeemaker I broke last week. It isn’t quite here yet, but it’s probably coming.

Jordan Bigel (aka Second Life’s Dire Lobo) of metaverse development company InWorld Studios sends along the news that his company is launching a new movie service for the virtual world of Second Life. Set to premiere this Friday, 11 May, the service is known as InWorld Cinema and has some interesting features — and is opening with a full-length feature film. Audience members occupy individual “vPods” and access scenes or chapters within the film via a heads-up display. Tickets cost L$260 (about US$1) and let you spend as much time watching the movie in as many visits as you like over a 48-hour period. (more…)

If you missed the Virtual Worlds 2007 conference, don’t worry: now you can close your eyes and it’s almost like you’re there. John Swords has now posted most if not all of the audio files of the conference sessions over at RezNation.com, home of SecondCast. You can find all the files under the Metaverse Sessions tag, even though they’re not, really. What they are is good, informative listening. You can catch a case study of Pontiac in Second Life, the Electric Sheep Company’s Sibley Verbeck giving a keynote speech, IBM’s Colin Parris talking about his company’s plans for virtual environments, my own blatherings on a fun panel about the future of these things, and more. Happy listening.

Thursday, May 10, will mark the expansion of IBM’s presence in the virtual world of Second Life when the company opens “a new and unique island,” designed as a combination R&D lab and communications center for the company’s BeNeLux division (that’s Belgium-Netherlands-Luxembourg, to you) and its clients. Other than that, not much information is available about »IBM’s BeNeLux sim« at the moment, but we’ll bring you updates if we arrange a tour. The sim is closed to the public at the moment, but the place certainly looks cool enough in IBM’s press shots.

Check out Virtualive.tv for details of a cool-sounding mixed-reality concert that’s taking place on May 10 in the virtual world of Second Life and the virtual world real city of New York. Arranged by Adam Broitman of Morpheus Media, with the help of popular Second Life DJ and promoter Nexeus Fatale, the concert will be simulcast into »the Morpheum sim« and »the Vesuvius sim« as part of an ongoing series of concerts meant to bring performance in the two worlds closer together, and bring new artists to new audiences. Got an indie band that needs a gig? Get in touch. Says Adam: “Our goal with this event is to create a platform whereby we provide all the logistics and funds to make events like these happen (we are possibly looking at an ad-supported model) and allowing anyone across the country the ability to apply to hold a Virtualive.tv event. The only criteria are that you are not on a major label and that you have some interest in virtual worlds. We think this can be a really cool way to empower indie musicians and at the same time create yet another way to employ the metaverse in a meaningful fashion.” Read more details in this press release.

According to a report released by comScore, one of the leading online traffic analysis firms, there are now more Germans using the virtual world of Second Life than there are U.S. residents. Only 207,000 Americans logged into SL in March of this year, compared to 209,000 Germans, comScore says. In fact, Europe has by far outstripped North America. Europe accounted for 61 percent of SL logins in March, comScore says, versus only 19 percent from North America. And yes, comScore claims to be counting “unique people” age 15 and up who actually logged into the service. Interestingly, comScore also says the male-to-female ratio was 61 percent to 39 percent, which, if I remember correctly, is somewhat less balanced than SL has been in the past. Where have all the American women gone??

Alex Harbinger holds a teen grid debate on intergrid commerce in the virtual world of Second Life. Photo courtesy of Lucky Figtree.

We recorded a great SecondCast this past Wednesday with two residents of Second Life’s teen grid, Lucky Figtree and Alex Harbinger (both 15 years old). They’re leading the charge (or at least, Alex is) to unite the teen and adult grids, or at least to let them overlap to a certain extent. Along the way, we discuss Cristiano’s open letter to Linden Lab, and give away a couple of books. (There’s still time to enter the giveaway, actually.) Plus, listen for the dulcet tones of Starr Sonic, who joined us from the Second Life Cable Network as a special guest host. Definitely check out SLCN.tv’s news archive and live broadcasts. Starr’s doing it right.

Not alone in the wilderness

RuneScape, the browser-based massively multiplayer game from Jagex, now has a million paying subscribers, the company reported today. Just $5 a month gets players “exclusive quests, skills and a huge map of the fantasy world Gielenor, to explore.” The fact that it’s being shelled out by a million kids (or their parents; the RuneScape demographic is reportedly very young) is fairly impressive. Among Western MMOs, only World of Warcraft can boast more than a million paying subscribers. (Most MMO subscribers, including WoWs, pay around $15 a month.) And, as Matt Mihaly pointed out some time ago (in asking whether RuneScape would reach 1 millions subs), the game reportedly has some 5 million players, including those who play for free, and concurrency rates above 200,000. Jagex says they have 150 support staff devoted to the game, if that’s any gauge. [UPDATE: Matt has more details from an interview with the Jagex dude, Andrew Gowan.] I think it’s pretty significant to the future of media that there are a million young teens paying for this game, and four million more playing it from time to time. More evidence that 3D multiuser environments are here to stay as part of the media landscape. Most readers of this blog don’t need to be convinced of that, but there are many, many people out there who aren’t yet clued in. Successes like Jagex’s should help with that.

Nate Randall of RCE Universe sends along the news that Second Life mogul Anshe Chung has won one of five banking licenses recently auctioned in the virtual world of Entropia Universe. Though billed as “banking licenses,” they really give their holders the right to use the in-world interface and non-player characters to make collateralized loans and collect interest, which is an interesting way to go about it. Entropia notes, of course, that “Should an interested party hold a real banking license in the real world, many more services and features can be added.” It doesn’t appear any of the winners meet that qualification, although they are listed only be avatar name, so you never know. It’s an interesting prospect.

Randall seems to have scooped Entropia itself, which is still running the auction announcement. According to Randall’s figures, Anshe seems to have been almost the shrewdest bidder, winning her license for PED600,000, or US$60,000 — the Entropia currency trades at a fixed 10 to the U.S. dollar — while the other winners bid PED590,608, PED900,002, PED950,001, and PED999,000. The auctions were held in the in-game auction system, Randall reports, where bidding was fierce in the final minutes. (more…)

Linden Lab, maker of the virtual world of Second Life, announced on Monday that it would hold an impromptu town hall meeting with chief technology officer Cory Ondrejka to address the concerns of the almost 3,500 SL residents who have thus far signed on to Project Open Letter, a list of five complaints about the Second Life platform that have long gone unanswered. The open letter is an initiative of Second Life snapshot baron Cristiano Midnight, who’s also one of our co-hosts on SecondCast, and has been a member of Second Life for several years now. The project was started “after I read yet another open letter in a third party forum begging Linden Lab to fix myriad problems that have been going on daily for more than a year, in some cases extending years,” Cristiano writes on the project site. He goes on to point out that LL has closed down all the centralized venues of feedback, such as the company-sponsored forums, that had formerly been available to residents. A bug-reporting system is in place, but LL has not been as responsive to that as many residents would like. In the wake of the letter, LL appears to be listening harder, but it may not yet be hard enough. The platform remains vulnerable; read on for more details. (more…)