Valiant Westland

Mr. Altberg, Can we get a clear Positioning Statement on the future of Second Life vs Sansar including Target Audience, Content, VR Support, etc? Will moving SL to the AWS Cloud provide any opportunity for VR Support in SL or the migration of assets from SL to Sansar? Are there any plans to improve the tools and integration offered by SL, such as using Google Docs, instead of NoteCards, Google Sheets to Sort & Manage Inventory, etc? Last, but not least, why, with a burgeoning choice of 'Virtual Worlds/Platforms' to choose from, including Sansar, High Fidelity, etc., should existing or new users invest Time, Talent and Treasure in SL going forward? What's the Compelling 30 Second Elevator Pitch for SL's Value Proposition as an Entertainment, Social or Business Platform of the future?

I would like to run a SL Viewer (SL or Firestorm (preferred)) on a Windows Hyper-V Guest Virtual Machine. The Host & Guest are running Windows 10 Pro X64. The Host has a dedicated nvidia 1080 graphics card and the Guest VM has been configured to support VideoFX, which includes support for the latest OpenGL. Has anyone gotten a similar configuration to work?

Why can't "support" tell me what # my case is in the que or an anticipated TTR (Time To Resolution)? On Feb 16th I opened a "Support" Case, regarding my desire to purchase a parcel of abandoned mainland. After 5 days or no updates to the case status, I contacted support to find out what that status was. As with my first post case filing checkup chat, each subsequent 5 daily chats with support have gone the same. The following is a sample transcript: DeanT S: Hello! I may be working with multiple issues already, so please explain your issue (including any ticket numbers we will be discussing) and I will be with you shortly. You: Hello Dean. Checking on the status of Case # 01863752 DeanT S: Valiant Westland, thank you for contacting us at Linden Lab Support. Give me a moment to pull the case up and check on it for you. You: Sure... DeanT S: Valliant, I'm sorry to hear of your land issues. Please be patient as the case will be reviewed in the order it was received by the land operations department. You: When was it "received by the land operations department?" DeanT S: The case presently is assigned to the land operations queue. It will be reviewed by them in the order it was sent to that queue. You: This case was originally filed on the 16th. It should have taken less than one business day to be routed to the proper department. You: I would like to know when it was actually received by them, how many cases they have in their cue and what my relative cue number is for my case. DeanT S: It was sent to the land operations queue on 2/16/2014 after it was created =) Is there anything else I can assist you with today? You: The level of ineptitude and poor customer service exhibited by the handling of this case would put SL at the BOTTOM of any JD Powers Customer Satisfaction Survey. You: I would like to know when I can expect this issue to ACTUALLY be reviewed. DeanT S: Rest assured it will be answered in the order it was received =) I cannot provide an exact timeframe, as I am not able to see the queues of other departments. But I will say you did the correct thing by creating the case, as only the land operations team may approve mainland sales of abandoned land that is not set up for sale.DeanT S: Is there anything else I can assist you with today Valiant? You: You haven't "assisted" me at all... Just as my prior X # of contacts with support have been vain attempts by me to get a reasonable answer about support timing... Would you wait in ANY Customer Service que indefinitely, with no idea of where you were in the cure? You: *cueDeanT S: As you don't seem to have any other unrelated questions and I have answered this as best as I can I thank you for contacting us at Linden Lab Support and wish you a good night! =) What does everyone else think? Do you think it's reasonable to want a support ticket system that provides REAL status information about open tickets? Accountability has NEVER been a strong suit of LL and there doesn't seem to be any push by LL to develop it now... If there was a comprable Virtual World platform that offered JD Powers-level support, I would jump ship in a heartbeat!

Good Riddance! I'm one of the property owners (1/2 Region) who filed dozens of Abuse Reports against the creator of these pieces of $#!+, that would constantly pile up on MY land. They were based on OLD tech that was never updated. I would love to see a similar idea that was actually maintained and equiped with the latest Path-finding technology. Unfortunately, mainland maintenance is no longer a priority with Linden Lab.

Note: This Post was originally published on January 10th, 2013, on my SL Revolution Blog For years I've been predicting that the next wave of Virtual World development would be driven by the inevitable competition of e-commerce, marketing and gaming heavyweights like Google, Amazon & Microsoft. All of these players have a huge vested interest in capturing the annuity income produced by the rapidly expanding world of Virtual Products and services. So imagine my "surprise" when I saw the Second Life Community announcement, about Linden Lab offering Start-up and Enhancement Kits on Amazon! I believe this is a first step towards the eventual disbanding of the Standalone SL Marketplace, in favor of an Amazon-powered alternative. If I'm right, SL itself could be an acquisition target for Amazon in the not too distant future. The early failure of Google's Lively Virtual 3D World and the lackluster performance of Sony's PlayStation Home Virtual World offering, should not be used to throw out this line of speculation. These earlier efforts have one thing in common that Amazon and even SL doesn't, a lack of profitability. In addition to an Alpha-level user interface, no realistic profit potential is the main reason Google pulled the plug on Lively. Interestingly enough, Sony, in response to Microsoft's hugely successful xbox.com webstore, has used this years CES show to announce it is bringing its own SEN (Sony Entertainment Network) store to the US and integrate it with the PlayStation Home experience. So why would Linden Lab give up running its own primary revenue source (Marketplace)? Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and a potential increase in Net Revenues by outsourcing e-commerce to an organization like Amazon. Amazon has arguably the most cost-effective and efficient e-commerce platform in the world. They also have something Linden Lab does not, more than "164 Million paying customers!" This is a huge potential untapped market for Second Life, that would be almost impossible to reach, without this type of partnership. Many people, not directly involved with Second Life's back-end development, might be surprised to learn that since 2006 "Linden Lab has used Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) to store elements used in the Second Life world and to distribute the Second Life Viewer to end users." In fact, Amazon has featured Linden Lab in a Case Study, from which this quote was taken. Every company reaches a point where one or more things happen. They either fail, diversify with new products & markets to sustain growth, go public, acquire additional private capital or are acquired. Linden Lab has thus far failed to expand its market. Their attempts to diversify their product via their Enterprise product was, as reported by Hypergrid Business, "a costly mistake." Their more recent Patterns and Creatorverse products seem unlikely to generate the type of revenue or market expansion required to have a measurable impact on their overall business. Going public is an unlikely option and it is doubtful any more private capital would flow into a stagnant business model. The only remaining choice for the original investors to cash out, sell Second Life! Amazon's Jeff Bezos has proven he is a fierce competitor who is willing to take risks and sacrifice margin to dominate an industry. In fact, a Jan 8th, 2013 Bloomberg Businessweek story on Amazon was summarized like this: "As long as consumers are consuming and shareholders are buying what Bezos is selling, Amazon looks fairly unbeatable." Hang on to your virtual hats ladies and gentlemen, I think 2013 could shape up to be an interesting year. My advice. Buy Amazon (AMZN) stock and look forward to a Virtual e-Commerce SL Marketplace experience powered by Amazon in the near future!

Amen Brother!

Welcome Rod. Good fortune in your new role at Linden Lab. It's no surprise that LL has hired a gaming-oriented CEO. There is clearly a ton of money to be made on games. There is a ton of competition in the MMORPG space. Does LL think SL can really go head to head with the Top 10 MMORPG Games? Rob has great experience with the SIMs. Perhaps we'll finally see LL implement shrink-wrapped starter kits and expansion packs for SL! I've suggested this, along with contests to reward content creators, who create best-of-class virtual designs, with inclusiion and co-op advertising in the shink-wrapped content CDs. Note: All of this content could/should be digitally watermarked, to prevent it from being re-labled / resold on the grid! I just fired off a cover letter and updated PowerPoint presentation, that I previously forwarded to the former CEOs, detailing how LL can/should develop a VAR channel to target the SMB (Small to Medium-size Business) community, including SMG (GOV), Technical Training, JITE (Just In Time Education), Continuing Education and Association prospects. I continue to believe that a truly immersive virtual experience, coupled with appropriate levels of support & training, can be a valuable business tool for many organizations. Linden Lab should hedge their bets by creating an offering for the SMB market that is at LEAST as competitive as Teleplace. However, without a channel distribution model, with appropriate marketing, sales and support to the channel by LL, it will never happen. Throwing the baby (business) out with the bathwater (Enterprise) is a knee jerk overreaction to bad management, marketing and execution. If Linden Lab puts all its eggs in one basket (gaming) again and throws all its efforts into yet another highly competitive, high cost of penetration market and fails, SL will be gone forever!