23
Feb 10

Second Life Viewer 2.0 Beta – Quick Primer Pt 1

Logging into Second Life with Viewer 2.o beta for the first time..

This is as much for myself as anyone else who might be interested.  Some resources related to Viewer 2.0 for SL users:

Download the Viewer

Second Life Viewer 2 Beta Download:   http://www.secondlife.com/beta-viewer

Tom Hale Keynote Slides

Keynote Slides: http://torley.s3.amazonaws.com/temp/SLProKeynote.pd

Video Links from SLPro! Keynote

Viewer 2.o Intro:  http://torley.s3.amazonaws.com/temp/Viewer2UI_640x480.mov

Shareable Media:  http://torley.s3.amazonaws.com/temp/SharedMediaWebVideo_640x480.mov

Shared Flash Media:  http://torley.s3.amazonaws.com/temp/SharedMediaWebVideo_640x480.mov

Scoble’s Interview with Mark Kingdon (SL: M Linden)

Excerpts from Claudia Linden’s Email to SLED

Announcing Second Life Viewer 2 Beta and Shared Media
Today, we’re excited to announce the launch of Viewer 2 Beta, the next generation of Second Life viewers — combining an easy browser-like experience with shared media capabilities — providing what we believe is the best experience yet for accessing Second Life, and a new option to choose from among Viewer 1.23 and other Third Party Viewers. Our Viewer 2 blog post is here: https://blogs.secondlife.com/community/features/blog/2010/02/23/second-life-viewer-2-beta-now-available

Shared Mediaâ„¢, a standard capability in Viewer 2, makes sharing standard Web-based media and content in Second Life easy, and enables content creators to make more compelling, interactive experiences. Content creators can now place Web pages, video, Flash content, and other web media, onto any surface in Second Life. We expect that Shared Media will inspire a creative renaissance in Second Life as Residents explore more immersive and integrated inworld experiences and business opportunities such as gaming or theaters.

Resources to Help You Learn Viewer 2 Beta
* Quickstart Guide (SL Wiki) http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Viewer_2_Quick_Start_Guide
* Frequently Asked Questions (PDF) https://wiki.lindenlab.com/mediawiki/images/2/2d/Viewer_2_Beta_FAQs.pdf
* Release Notes (SL Wiki) http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Release_Notes/Second_Life_Beta_Viewer/2.0
* Video Demos (YouTube)  http://www.youtube.com/secondlife
* SL Answers (SL Answers) https://blogs.secondlife.com/community/answers/v2beta

We Look Forward to Your Feedback
We need to hear from you! Participate in the Viewer 2 Forum (https://blogs.secondlife.com/community/forums/v2) and share your experience and suggest future enhancements. Then, go tell your friends! If you Twitter, then use the #SLViewer2 hash tag.

T Linden: torely videos are here

Interface introduction

Appearance and Outfits

Automatic camera zoom

Context menu replaces pie

Giving inventory

Menus

Move and Viewer controls
http://vimeo.com/9656028

Navigation
http://vimeo.com/9656031

Notifications and Conversations

Preferences

Search

Shared Media
http://vimeo.com/9656041

Sidebar
http://vimeo.com/9656046


23
Feb 10

Scoble asks, Is Second Life about to enter its “second life?”

Robert Scoble, the guy with one of the loudest voices on the internet, just posted about Second Life and an upcoming announcement that he suggests might breathe some life back into the platform.

Considering I’ve been working there pretty much full time the last few years, I didn’t know it was dead.  😉

OK that’s not fair, the hype cycle of 2007-08 came and went and it’s had a palpable effect to be sure, but those kinds of posts always make me vaguely defensive even though I have my own criticisms of the platform and the company running it.

I started to write a response in his comments, but I lost my text twice (I think it’s Chrome’s fault) so finally I said heck with it, I’ll put it here instead:

Whatever the failings of the platform or LL’s specific implementation of it, they were hugely successful at introducing the concept of a non-game-based virtual world to millions of people, and most importantly IMO, a world created by the users rather than the company.  User generated content and crowd-sourcing is practically passe now, but back in the day, those were still very untried, untested concepts.  The idea that an immersive 3D space could be populated with content using the same community/random user model as Wikipedia was definitely not a given.  That it succeeded at all in Second Life still seems miraculous to me, especially given the technical skill required and the dreadful interface.

As it stands now, Linden Lab’s biggest advantages are 1) that enough of us who saw the potential in those early years have managed to stick it out and continued to populate the world with experiments, interesting use cases, and compelling content, and 2) they got a very lucky reprieve, just when things started to not just plateau but decrease, the economic crisis dried up a lot of funding for potential competitors.  Anyone professionally interested in the future of the metaverse has little choice at the moment BUT Second Life (or its cousin OpenSim).

Hopefully it will give them enough time to fix what’s broken, especially with the interface and new user experience, but just as importantly with the scalability issues and lack of APIs that have hindered integration with other platforms and enterprise data systems – it’s the latter holding back increased institutional adoption more than the former.

Either way, whether Second Life as a platform (or Linden Lab as a company) endures through the ages is less interesting to me than seeing where the concept of the metaverse goes from here.  I still think robust competition from some wholly different conception of a virtual world will be the best medicine for Linden Lab, but I worry that they’ve got such a corner on the still relatively small market that currently exists that it’s actually stifling innovation in other directions. It wouldn’t be so troubling if I saw more evidence that they could continue to innovate, but the Second Life we use today is not _markedly_ different than the Second Life I logged into in 2003.

Perhaps whatever they’re going to announce will prove that statement wrong, but if my long experience in Second Life has taught me anything, it’s not to get my hopes up too high.

Having said all that, I still give them all due credit for what they’ve accomplished, and for what they’ve made possible for people who have had the patience and foresight to understand that this is still very, very early days for the metaverse indeed.

Scoble promises an announcement tomorrow at Building43, I plan to tune in and see what’s got him so excited.