Gavin Hird
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Blog Comments posted by Gavin Hird
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Welcome to the New Second Life Community Platform
A group blog by Secondlife in General
Aha! I tried uploading an image from the iPad, and voila; the root of the issue. "You must install or upgrade to the latest version of Adobe Flash Player before you can upload images...."
Seriously?!!
You have created a community platform with FLASH at the core of the functionality? The security hole infested ....
... and that should leave out quite a few mobile devices too.
The diagnosis for Safari on the Mac was simple once I realized flash was involved. The Safari extention "Click to Flash" would of course block the operation - which it did. Disabling it restored the upload function like in Firefox.
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Welcome to the New Second Life Community Platform
A group blog by Secondlife in General
Image uploads fails with Safari on Mac OS X 10.6.6, with an error message. The same upload works in Firefox 4.0b9.
Since Safari is the default browser on the Mac and iOS devices, this should be fixed ASAP.
Oh... and if I press Preview, I get a warning that leaving the page will loose all unsaved changes, so does that mean preview will kill your message? :-)
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Improving our Lines of Communication with the Community
A group blog by Secondlife in General
What about all those who pay a membership fee? are they not direct customers?
Sorry, the premium account holders that does not own any land are included in the 85k customers. This is where the bulk of LL's income comes from.
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Improving our Lines of Communication with the Community
A group blog by Secondlife in General
I downgraded to a free account a few years ago and see no reason to go back to premium because unless the outright lying stops and improvements are made, SL will simply go away.
... So if/when it becomes standard, you will have lost yet another CUSTOMER.
P.S. WE are not "residents" we are PAYING CUSTOMERS.
So which is it? A free account or a paying customer?
LL only has about 85k direct customers; the land owners (estate and mainland). This group is fairly small compared to the overall (regular) user base.
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Improving our Lines of Communication with the Community
A group blog by Secondlife in General
Gavin, I know for sure it would make some people very angry if I pointed out that some of what is being created and sold in Second Life probably drives away other types of potential business. If that is the case, it might sense to ease out business that has limited or maxed out value to make way for other business that is believed to have greater value.
I'm willing to wait and see how it goes.
Yes, there is content in SL that keeps other people out, but that will swing both ways. Lack of said content will keep others out. Besides there are ways of handling separation of content much more intelligent than what is currently done.
You also need to realize that these content providers you don't like are the ones who have pushed for more advanced animations, better looking avatars, skins and clothes, and more advanced vendor systems, reliable delivery and marketing. We see exactly the same on the internet at large. Without these folks, SL would be a much more boring and bland environment.
As I said in the 4Q economy thread, Linden Lab's long term business objective is to open up the grid for a wide, family oriented audience. This will drive some people away, clearly. There are many folks, however, waiting it out. There is nothing in this process that gives you any particular right to tell others to pack up and leave. At the end of the day, you might as well be the one felling the heat and leave.
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Improving our Lines of Communication with the Community
A group blog by Secondlife in General
Cherry, it's great that you are making money in SL, but that isn't part of the service Linden Lab is offering. It isn't their responsibility to support your business. They have made no promise to do that and have no obligation to do it no matter how much you have paid them in the past.
It may not be in the service Linden lab is offering, but it seems to have completely escaped you that unless people like him – people who make and provide content and create experience, or help debug and build software for free, Linden Lab and SecondLife would simply not exist.
Linden Lab does not make any content and experiences.
They don't own any content but a few Library provided items.
They only provide a managed server infrastructure and a base platform consisting of the sim server and a viewer. The marketing they provide is rudimentary and not very targeted.
So what you do is telling the content providers, people who have collectively, invested tens of millions of dollars to leave if they are not being sufficiently supported to sustain their business. In the same breath you also call the death of Linden Lab and SecondLife, because without these people Linden Lab's business is not sustainable.
Since you seem to be so hung up on prices of sims, my recommendation is you download a free version of the server tools and build your own world for free ;-)
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Improving our Lines of Communication with the Community
A group blog by Secondlife in General
Facebook Connect might be a good guess. So you can log on with your FB identity. Hence the need for changes to login names.
You cannot register in Facebook with a false identity. The name of our SL accounts it is not a "real" identity.
That is just a matter of policy. I am sure the software can handle it technically.
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Improving our Lines of Communication with the Community
A group blog by Secondlife in General
There's something sinister about all these Facebook promos from Linden Lab, one wonders what the next Facebook link will be, Facebook comments on the new forums perhaps? The new forum software is under NDA so we'll have to wait and see.
Facebook Connect might be a good guess. So you can log on with your FB identity. Hence the need for changes to login names.
Just my 2 cents.
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Improving our Lines of Communication with the Community
A group blog by Secondlife in General
LL have to go with the persective that best works for them as a profit making company. I think we all need to remember that LL is a profit making company and profits are always going to come first when it comes to the crunch.
This is where your logic fails.
Linden Lab's business model is built on selling land (leasing server time) to content creators who can sell their goods and services to people who find the offering compelling enough to spend their time and cash in SecondLife.
Unless LL supports said content creators and the businesses leasing server time sufficiently for those two groups to be successful, LL's business model falls flat on its face.
Viewer 2, changes in search, SL Marketplace and to a some extent Zindra, even the teen grid merger and removal of camping throws spanners in the road for these two groups.
This is what the contention is all about at the core of it.
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Improving our Lines of Communication with the Community
A group blog by Secondlife in General
We absolutely understand there are many stakeholders and considerations around the product decisions, which is why I asked if it was possible for you to publish RACI*-charts for your various products. Then at least we have a base for who should heard and participate in the discussion, and which to build a common understanding on.
*RACI = Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, Informed
Most of the contention over the viewer, which I understand is your product, stems from the user interface which only to a very little degree satisfies the requirements of one of the biggest stakeholders in SecondLife; the content creators. It also makes it harder to operate land and estate businesses, which must be one of your other big stakeholder and largest source of income.
Without the support of those two groups, LInden Lab's current business model is not sustainable.
Changes in search and the marketplace are also hitting these two groups of stakeholders unproportionally hard, which has been another source of contention.
The viewer also a user interface that is not extensible, and has therefore, in my opinion, failed already at the design phase, which is why I would recommend you stop putting effort into viewer 2, freeze it in a stable state, and divert your effort to viewer 3 where the UI is separated from the core engine.
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Viewer 2.5 with Web Profiles Has Arrived
A group blog by Secondlife in General
There seems to be various reports of the speed of which the profiles load. Some say fast, others say slow.
I have made a breakdown of where the bits and pieces of my profile are loaded from.
11.2 kB from https://my.secondlife.com/widgets/29.6 kB from https://my.secondlife.com/gavin.hird33,9 kN from https://secondlife.com/app/image/A total of 846.5 kB of which only 72 kB come from LL servers (or their domain.)We see the bulk comes from amazon servers (cloudfront.net is a front-end to those) in addition to a sizable block from googleapis.comI wonder if we see different load times simply because the bits from amazon is not geo-cached, so it is served up to users in Europe and outside the US via a sub-optimal and slow network path.We have seen the same in iTunes where content is cached in Akamai servers around the globe. If Akamai thinks you are in the US, the content will be served from a US server and is very slow to load here in Europe.So the question is, does the viewer kick off the requests for the profile load in such a way it seems like it originates in the US and therefore all content is served from there, rather from a cache location close to the receiver? -
Viewer 2.5 with Web Profiles Has Arrived
A group blog by Secondlife in General
Starting from friends list, I (on a Mac) right click on a friend and select profile.
1) It takes too long to load the profile. As somebody said above, it should be as fast as loading any ordinary web page.
2) The window opens with my friend's URL but then switches to my URL and loads my profile. #DEFECT!
I see the same defect as your #2.
Loading a profile first time typically takes 14 seconds and somewhat faster on subsequent loads. On my MBP with screen resolution set to 1440 x 900 the profile window covers about 55% of the screen area, that is way too big. With webkit in the viewer, they could have made a html based widget (floater) that was much less intrusive and consistent with the rest of the interface.
I see the advantage of using html for these functions particularly at the backend (I have suggested it many times in the blogs), but the implementation leaves a lot to be desired. The advantage is of course it can be fixed without updating the viewer.
Agreed on the aspect ratio. People will have to update large amounts of profile images at L$10 a pop ;-)
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Viewer 2.5 with Web Profiles Has Arrived
A group blog by Secondlife in General
No error message, i can see the writing, but no pictures :-(. Sucks, lmao
Sounds like you are running Vista. Might have to add my.secondlife.com as a trusted site.
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Improving our Lines of Communication with the Community
A group blog by Secondlife in General
Since you are removing voting in JIRA (we kinda suspected you did not use it anyway, hehe), would it be possible for to publish a flowchart on how product improvements/requests are handled, and what stages they move through so we better can understand the process?
The Snowstorm team, which does Viewer work and integrates work both by other Linden teams and open source contributions has a detailed flowchart on the wiki of how issues move through the change process.
That's the workflow for the STORM project, so there's an implied step not show in which the VWR issues are triaged and moved to that flowchart...
Thanks, that is useful.
Perhaps you could generalize the chart so it is valid for all your products and more detailed in the triage steps, although, perhaps, the bulk of issues end up in the viewer.
It would also be useful if you published RACI* charts for your products so we know who you think are the stakeholders and who are the decision makers.
*Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, Informed
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Improving our Lines of Communication with the Community
A group blog by Secondlife in General
--We do not depend on Facebook/Twitter to communicate with you, but since so many of our Residents are using these social platforms, it makes sense for us to be where you are--from a communication perspective--in addition to being inworld and using inworld communication tools. Today, most smart businesses use social media to reach out to customers, get feedback, etc. and we are not only using them, but also providing clarity on which ones are best for different types of communication and audiences. That said, it’s completely opt-in. And, more importantly, using these social networks is an effective way to reach new potential customers and grow Second Life. That sounds pretty good to everyone,
Many small businesses have a presence on Facebook because they don't have their own social media platform where they have their customers full attention. SecondLife customers logs on to that platform to do their business, and you have every means possible to communicate directly with them there. That is a heck of a difference! (...on a side note, I hope your new platform will be visible inside the viewer or at least tightly integrated.)
When you review you communications strategy, you need to instill in everyone involved that you already have the ideal (perhaps not in tooling) platform for communication with your customers; it is completely captive and you don't need to go elsewhere.
That you use Facebook, twitter and others as a secondary communications channel it fine, and it may also be an efficient channel for prospecting new customers. The biggest problem is that you have little control over what direction your Facebook communication takes; you try to convey a message, but that can be highly skewed by comments and likes for that profile, This is not something small businesses will see as they have a defined product set that usually is not controversial like parts of SecondLife can be with other Facebook users.
I also see a large portion of the fan photos placed on the SecondLife profile is product marketing for resident businesses. Not sure that was the intention?
I hope the new communications platform also will be mobile friendly so we can hang on to our secondlifes also when not in front of the big screen. ;-)
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Improving our Lines of Communication with the Community
A group blog by Secondlife in General
It will be interesting seeing the marketing effect of SecondLife Facebook filling up with likes from resident profiles of escorts, slut-wear merchants, Gor masters dragging their women and slaves, vampires, sex bed creators, shackled slaves, yiff loving critters and furies, femdom goddesses, child avatars and role players all mixed up with teens.
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Improving our Lines of Communication with the Community
A group blog by Secondlife in General
Since you are removing voting in JIRA (we kinda suspected you did not use it anyway, hehe), would it be possible for to publish a flowchart on how product improvements/requests are handled, and what stages they move through so we better can understand the process?
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By insisting SecondLife is a game, you limit your audience. That is the entire point.
What you call it is irrelevant. What Linden Lab market it as is imperative for the success of this place.
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I totally agree with you on that, and I think it is important to squish the use of the word game or in game when talking about SecondLife because it creates false expectations for new and potential residents on what they will experience here. So they turn away bored.
Yes, you may play games in SecondLife, the but the environment is not a game in itself.
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You completely ignored the part where I said that it should have hit the development community for a longer period of time before going into the stable tree. The overall arrangement of the UI, language used in some of the menus not withstanding, is a big step closer to being inline with MacOS and GNOME's UIs.
Changing the language of the some menus while they are strewn all over the place sure no UI compliance makes.
It would be interesting to make a mockup of the viewer as it should be according to Apple Human Interface Guides. It would look quite different from v2, and actually some of the Ui elements from v1 is much closer. I might actually do that in Interface builder and publish it.
One of the biggest mistakes you do in UI building is to keep it in the developer community only, here is what AHUI guide says about that in the Design Fundamentals section:
Involving Users in the design process
The best way to make sure your product meets the needs of your target audience is to expose your designs to the scrutiny of your users. Doing this during every phase of the design process can help reveal which features of your product work well and which need improvement.
When you give people an opportunity to use your product (or a prototype of it) you may uncover usability problems that you did not anticipate during your initial design phase. Finding and eliminating these problems early can save you time and money later on. Clearly identifying the needs of your users helps you create products that deliver effective solutions and are typically easier for them to learn and use. These improvements can translate into competitive advantages, increased sales, and enhanced customer satisfaction.
The part LL seems to neglect over and over again is the ...doing this during every phase of the design process..., where they only blurt it out as a beta that goes live to everyone the same day or max a week later. So the feedback they would get during the early design phases completely escapes them, and when it comes to beta it is really to late as they have also implemented the server backend to support it at that time. (mesh is an exception from the above)
It further says:
It is useful to create scenarios that describe a typical day of a person who uses the type of software product you are designing. Think about the different environments, tools, and constraints that this person deals with. If possible, visit actual workplaces and study how people perform those tasks you intend your product to help them perform.
Throughout the design process, find people who fit your target audience to test your prototypes. Listen to their feedback and try to address their concerns. Develop your product with people and their capabilities—not computers and their capabilities—in mind.
Unfortunately the design target for v2 are new signups, and forgot the rest of the audience, and this is almost impossible to undo without going back to the drawing board.
The only logical outcome of that is to stop doing more development on the v2 interface, freeze it in a stable state, and put your resources into getting v3 right.
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;-))
Let's put it this way; I think there were many lessons learned on both side in this case. However, at the outset I believe it was pretty clear how those sims were supposed to be used. With the direction it took, it had to come to an end.
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This honestly surprised me. Not for what Linden Research did, they were only enforcing the usage scenarios they advertised for those regions; but what people buying into OpenSpace did. Heck, even the name is indicative of what it was intended for: Sparse regions with little, light weight development. Not malls. Not apartment allotments. Just space where acreage mattered more than object count or scripts.
Agreed, no fail on LL here.
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All in all the new v2 GUI brings a lot to the table, and brings it more inline with the GUI design standards for two of the three supported operating systems (with Windows, as usual, being gratuitously different from the rest of the world).
The new GUI brings a lot to the table all right - a lot for grief and utter frustration.
As to bringing it more in line with supported operating systems, I can tell you, it is as far from the Apple UIG as it can be. All the way from the placement of menus, use of system widgets, colors, to consistence and usage of screen real estate. It is not consistent with anything. Absolutely nothing.
Further, the entire code is structured in such a way you can't even separate the GUI from the core engine. Total fail in system design.
Yes, they have made good strides in performance both for the viewer and the grid, but with all the extra clicks and errors you make because of inconsistency every time you want to do something, it sure feels slower overall.
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Not only that, but these days, you pretty much need Facebook to be visible in the marketplace.
There is a difference between being visible on Facebook and telling your customers to go to Facebook on your login screen and communication in blogs and email messages. That is just disingenuous and completely failed marketing.
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Embark on a Quest in Linden Realms: Collect Crystals, Earn Linden Dollars and Have a Blast!
in Featured News
A group blog by Secondlife in General
Posted
Cool as a technology demo and proof of concept. I look forward to study and understand the technology behind and how it can be used. ...but, maybe it is just me, but is not this theme a little bit on the childish side for an audience that is predominantly 18+ ?