Little Ming

http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Featured-News/July-Update/ba-p/964435 Another big thank you Linden Labs for taking a suggestion and making it better than anything I could have hoped for. Two thumbs up!

I just wanted to say I tried out the new viewer, and guess what? It has options to link in your social networking sites on your profile! YAY! Thank you Linden Labs!

It's not so much a complaint as it is a suggestion or an idea. I do not expect everyone to want it, or to even use it. There are hundreds of existing features in SL that every day residents never even touch, but they are there for the ones who do make use of it. I understand what you are saying now, thank you for elaborating on your original thoughts. While I don't agree with your viewpoint I do understand it much more clearly now and can see your side of it. So perhaps you would not use the features, but does that mean they should never exist because some people would not use them? If that ideal were true, then there would be no buy function on prims. There would be no parcel media. There would be no landmark function. There would be no marketplace. Not everyone uses these features, some use a portion of them, some use all of them, and some use none of them but participate in SL in a different fashion. But they are available for the users who WANT to use them. What I am suggesting is not a mandatory feature for users, but the availability of such a feature. Just because I say Secondlife is built around the idea of a social environment, does not mean that I am specifically talking about ideas like facebook or twitter or any number of other social sites. Part of the appeal of secondlife to many of the users is that it offers a very social and interactive environment. Whether you agree or not, by definition, Secondlife is a social platform. That is a fact, not an opinion, and it is even advertised as such in many of their marketing themes.

"secondlife is based around the concept of a social environment". Really? That's news to me. I thought it was a highly-customisable world in which we could do more or les whatever we liked.If it was not based around the idea of a social platform there would be no online component, profiles, sharing of inventory, images, friends lists, etc. There would be no purpose for them. There are anti-social individuals who are a part of SL and its creation process, HOWEVER, do not assume there is not a large number of users that DO interact with SL for the main purpose of socialization. A number of examples, the shoppers, clubbers, role-players, and designers could all benefit from deeper integration and communication methods with other social networks. "secondlife has not taken steps to harness the power behind social media networks". Linden Lab seems to keep trying. There isn't anything on/about those networks that appeals to me though.Fair enough, there may not be things there that appeal to you, but I can see a demand for them from other users that would. I do realize LL is trying to enhance the social experience, what I am curious about is why they have not taken steps to use what is already there. "the ability to link a sim directly to your facebook". Erm, what would I want to link land to Facebook for? Or are you demonstrating such a massive ignorance of SL that you think it's The Sims? Should you be referring to avatars then there is a Face-slap button on the profiles window for those that like such things.I've been around SL for over 5 years now, I assure you that part of my statement was not out of ignorance. Perhaps you are not familiar with the ability to link sim locations outside of SL as web URLs that can be directly loaded into the client for easier teleportation? The idea would be to help share store locations, clubs, interesting sights. Much like the linden labs integration of the grid map on this very website. The feature I'm speaking of would allow direct sharing from within the client itself to other social networks such as facebook, and save an extra step, and extra software running for those users with lower-end systems. Kind of like how youtube has a share link "what if store objects ... to share a product you like with your friends". This already exists in SL.Not quite on the level I am speaking of. There is a way to list individual products, but the marketplace could easily be further integrated to allow direct sharing through other social mediums. Again, reducing the need for external applications and making the work-flow and user experience more seamless. "I wonder, how many of you would find an interest in such an integration of these two web technologies?" Possibly more if your ideas made any sense.I'm sorry I was not clear enough for you on my ideas, I hope that my elaboration on my thoughts will help you to more deeply understand my intent. In response to the others who brought up the issues of RL information and the way facebook works, that is something I hadn't considered but is a very valid point. Perhaps LL can look into using the technology they purchased a while back with the social sites based around SL to integrate a more social experience with sharing information both in, and outside of the client. Still at least having the OPTION to give Secondlife rights to post to your wall would be an interesting concept for users who would take advantage of it. If my response sounds snide, snippy, condescending, or rude, please do not take it that way, as it's not intended to be. Also, keep in mind I use Facebook as an example, but it's only one of many potential possibilities of a TYPE of technology for social integration.

So secondlife is based around the concept of a social environment, so it comes as a big surprise to me that secondlife has not taken steps to harness the power behind social media networks and adapt them to enhance user experience in secondlife. For example, facebook. How many users on secondlife not only have a facebook account, and use it to keep in touch with friends you have made in secondlife as well as share your adventures and stories with your friends? Secondlife already has so many features that could easily be adapted to enhance this communication and sharing among social networks. Imagine if you will, the ability to link a sim directly to your facebook with description and all with the click of a button. Compare this to existing tools used in the real world for geolocation and "checking in". Or what if store objects were given the option to associate a description linked through the marketplace but able to be linked via the website or directly though the pie menu in game to share a product you like with your friends. I am only touching the tip of the iceberg with these ideas. I wonder, how many of you would find an interest in such an integration of these two web technologies?

As I said in another thread, what they really need to do is put together a current list of bugs/complications that they are working through with Mesh on the beta grid. Much like a 'patch list' or a 'change log'. This will give us, the residents, a good idea of what is holding up mesh, and make our own guesses as to when it will be out. It will also help us to provide a little more feedback and support to LL in finding solutions to the holdups. Shame... I doubt we'll ever see anything like that though.

I do hope very much that the Lindens will provide a progress report for Mesh. I don't care if LL can't provide a release date, that is fine! Completely fine! Just put together a check list of current issues and update it regularly as they get fixed/checked off. This would help the community and yourself in MANY ways. For one, it would tell those of us on the beta grid what needs more testing. It would allow programmers outside of LL to possibly take a look at helping to provide solutions to the problems (after all two heads are better than one). And it would give the general populace an idea of how close mesh is to hitting live so we can start ramping up for it when it's time. Lets not forget the most important of all of these though, it would honor Linden Labs promise of more open communication with the community. Because you can't sit there and tell me lindens don't have an in-house priority list of issues to be resolved. So not every department has the full list, just a list specific to their particular area. That doesn't mean there's not a 'community manager' somewhere out there that can pull together that list and post it nice and pretty on the blog for us and update it once a week as things get completed

I would be happy with the ability to disable email notifications for specific products individually. It's frustrating offering free items and getting an email notification every time someone picks up a copy. But currently the only way I have seen (unless it's hidden somewhere) to disable this is to disable email notifications entirely. I've even gone through the trouble of putting free items in a seperate server and trying to disable email notifications from that one server. No such luck.