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Philip Rosedale, the visionary who founded Second Life in 1999, is returning to Linden Lab in a full-time role as Chief Technology Officer. Philip will guide technology and product strategy daily alongside Executive Chairman Brad Oberwager and the executive team, and is also joining Linden Lab’s Board of Directors.
Brad Oberwager, who has led Linden Lab’s evolution over the last four years, notes this exciting transition with enthusiasm:
"Over the last four years since the acquisition, Linden Lab has re-focused itself on improving and serving Second Life. We’ve divested ourselves of unnecessary projects, streamlined our operations, increased the quality of customer support, and grown our overall revenues and profitability. We’re now in a unique position to define the future of virtual worlds, and Philip is returning to help myself and the exec team achieve that goal."
Philip’s return comes at a time when advancements in AI and mobile technology are rapidly making virtual worlds more accessible and mainstream than ever before. A pioneer in virtual world development, Philip is uniquely able to drive Second Life forward in new, transformative directions. Reflecting on his journey, Philip shares:
“I started Second Life in 1999 – a decade before cloud computing and two decades before AI. We were early, but the success of Second Life to this day shows that we were not wrong. Virtual worlds will play an increasingly important role in the future of human culture, and I’m coming back to help make that happen in a way that has the most positive impact for the largest number of people."
Community Roundtable with Philip - This Friday!
As part of his return to Second Life, Philip will be actively engaged inworld with our communities and creators to listen, learn, and collaborate on ways to improve our shared virtual world. He will be taking your questions and sharing more of his vision for Second Life this Friday at 10 am SLT as part of our next Community Roundtable series, located at the Linden Estates Services region. Here’s your chance to interact directly with Philip inworld to learn more about the past, present and future of our shared virtual world. Questions can be submitted in advance for consideration at this link.
Meet Philip Rosedale: A Legacy in Virtual Innovation
For those who may not know Philip’s background, his journey to Second Life was fueled by a lifelong fascination with using computers to simulate the beauty and complexity of the real world. Born in San Diego and the son of a Navy carrier pilot, Philip grew up moving across the United States before returning to San Diego for high school and college, earning a B.S. in Physics from UC San Diego in 1992.
Philip’s career began with a software startup he founded in high school, funding his college education. Moving to San Francisco in 1994, he discovered the Internet and developed FreeVue, a groundbreaking video conferencing app that was acquired by RealNetworks in 1995. There, he led the development of RealVideo and ascended to the role of CTO.
In 1999, Philip left RealNetworks to found Linden Lab, pursuing his vision of creating an open virtual world. After leading Second Life as CEO for a decade, Philip went on to co-found experimental projects like LoveMachine, Worklist.net, and Coffee & Power, before founding High Fidelity in 2013, an open-source virtual world platform initially focused on VR. More recently, High Fidelity has innovated in spatial audio, an area critical to the immersive experience of virtual environments.
Beyond these achievements, Philip has been actively involved in new projects at his IRL415 lab in San Francisco, including FairShare, an initiative aimed at addressing wealth inequality through group-based digital currency.
As we enter this new chapter with Philip’s expertise and visionary leadership at the helm, Linden Lab is more committed than ever to enhancing and expanding Second Life in ways that impact our community positively and prepare us all for a future where virtual worlds play a central role. Join us in welcoming Philip back and stay tuned for exciting updates as we move forward together!
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Happy Wednesday!
We’re writing to remind everyone that we’ll be holding our monthly Web User Group meeting today at 14:00 SLT in our usual meeting place, where we’ll be discussing our status with ongoing projects and our near future plans for our web properties. As always, we’ll leave plenty of time for Q&A from the community. This meeting is conducted using voice. We're happy for you to contribute in voice or in text, but you'll need to have your voice settings activated. We look forward to seeing you there.
Stay updated with all of our user group meetings on our wiki and public calendar.
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To all our Residents impacted by the bumpy grid roll Tuesday, we’re sorry - and we want you to know what happened.
Timeline:
It started out as a normal roll to Second Life Server (SLS) when, around 7am SLT, the team noticed some regions were not coming back as swiftly as they should. Alarms were raised and we got a team together to tackle the issue immediately. It was quickly determined that we could not continue with the roll without causing more extensive pain to Residents, and the decision was made before 9:00 AM SLT to halt the in-progress grid roll. That left approximately 3800 regions in an offline state, while we continued the investigation.The team continued to bring the regions back manually, while simultaneously working to identify the cause of the problems. By noon there were still approximately 350 regions stuck offline.
Cause:
We’ve identified the root cause of the trouble. The server code itself is not the issue, but infrastructure communications between various AWS services broke down and prevented the normally smooth weekly grid roll.Next steps:
We’ve canceled the RC Roll on Wednesday while we ensure this problem doesn't happen again. Next week will be a quiet week with no SLS roll. Things should return back to normal with the following week’s server updates.Thank you for your patience while we banged on things yesterday.
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The Concierge and Land User Group meeting is a monthly, public meeting for discussion and education on Second Life, useful to both Mainland Residents and Estate owners.
Topics include any issues relating to Customer Relations/Support or concerning Land in general (mainland, islands, Linden Homes, estates, auctions, etc.).
Join us on Wednesday at 12pm PT at Linden Estate Services. All are welcome.
Keep up to date with all of our user group meetings on our wiki and public calendar.
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🍂🌰🍁
Residents featured in this image:
Top Row (from left to right):
Middle Row (from left to right):
Bottom Row (from left to right):
Thank you for sharing your beautiful images with us! 💖
For a chance to have your image featured in our social campaigns, submit your work to the Official Second Life Flickr Group.
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As we continue to evolve and improve our various community initiatives, we have decided to put the Second Life Blogger Network (SLBN) on a temporary hiatus. This pause will allow us to dedicate resources to upcoming changes and enhancements designed to enrich our community's experience even further.
We sincerely appreciate the incredible contributions that each of you, our esteemed bloggers, have made to enrich the Second Life community. Please know that this decision was made with careful consideration and is not a reflection of the value we place on your work.
During this hiatus, we're excited to expand our Second Life Weekly Email Newsletter. This will be one of the main venues for us to highlight community features, showcase events, and share important news directly. We encourage all of you to subscribe to stay updated with the latest and greatest from around Second Life. It's a fantastic way to ensure you don't miss out on any of the action!
Moreover, we invite you to visit our Community Resources Portal, where you can connect with user groups and discover numerous other ways to engage and contribute. Whether you're looking to network with other Residents or find support and inspiration, these resources are there to enhance your Second Life journey.
We extend our heartfelt thanks for your understanding and continued support. The creativity and dedication of bloggers like you are what makes Second Life such an incredible place. We look forward to bringing you along on this next phase of our journey and seeing all the new ways we can continue to grow together.
Stay tuned, stay connected, and, most importantly, keep creating!
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Hi Everybody!
I would like to introduce a new member of the Linden Support team, Boxy 5000.
Boxy 5000 is a virtual assistant/support bot trainee.
But wait, wasn’t there already a chatbot who answered questions for premium users? Indeed there was! Boxy 3000 was the earlier model of the trainee chatbot.
We are learning from some design flaws and moving forward with a more advanced bot. Boxy 3000 has been re-invented and given an extra 2000!
But wait a second time! Won’t this bring about the machine apocalypse? Not just yet–Boxy 5000 is more advanced and learns as they go but Skynet is still a few upgrades away.
The upgraded bot will be a 24/7 support option for both premium and non-premium residents! (Previously only available for premium customers.)
Boxy will have the ability to answer commonly asked questions, keep you up to date on current issues, help with ticket submission and in some cases handle a support request.
Boxy has uses for all residents, from early adopters to fresh new faces.
For new and more casual residents Boxy is available to help them find the support they need.
For our seasoned veterans Boxy can offer support options for some specific requests. Specifically, Boxy will be able to submit an abuse report on your behalf and in some cases help with the restart of a region!
Boxy will continue to learn as we go. Boxy might not have all the answers currently, but we will continue to review questions posed and help the bot to better answer your support queries.
We realize that a chat bot is not a substitute for a customer support representative, and this bot is not meant to be. It is however meant to help when we are unavailable or may be experiencing higher call volumes.For premium residents Boxy will only be the first point of contact before being passed to a support representative during office hours. Utilize Boxy to help better explain your issue once you are transferred to a support representative. Outside of office hours Boxy can help or create a ticket for when we are back in the office.
The ability to get an answer to your question or to get your issue resolved without having to wait until our Support Lindens are available is Boxy’s primary directive.
Anyone interested in saying hello to Boxy can access it by logging into our support portal. The Boxy 5000 chat widget should appear in the bottom right hand corner of your screen.
Boxy 5000, it’s advanced…
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