M Linden hints at what's coming up in 2010

This is really interesting, as M Linden "sets his draw distance 10 years into the future" as well as giving us a glimpse of what is in store for Second Life in 2010: https://blogs.secondlife.com/community/features/blog/2010/01/03/happy-new-year-looking-backlooking-ahead

These are just a few things of note that are coming up this year:

- viewer 2.0 is coming in Q1 2010
- additional payment options
- new "social tools"
- The ability to choose either real names or fantasy names in Second Life
- Content management and protection tools, including a viewer and seller directory
- rebranded and redesigned e-commerce experience, simplified for shoppers and merchants, segmented for play/work, supported by filtered search and giving merchants new tools to manage their product lines and businesses.
- A renewed focus on opensource development
- more functionality (like HTTP-IN) and new API to the developer community as fuel for new innovative, user-generated content and tools.
- allowing content creators to use a much richer language for scripting (C#) that will open up Second Life to a larger community of developers
-Extension of our data center and network infrastructure to Europe

More details in the offical blog posting above. So what do you think?

I've seen this coming for a while. They had two developer positions related to search open at The Lab. Last I checked the senior-level position was still unfilled.

I wish them luck in this, as it is desperately needed, but fear that anything the lab can create, gamers can un-create. What's needed is a non-automated solution, and that's not likely to come from The Lab.



I look forward to seeing what they come up with. I hope they don't have viral marketing in mind. I also don't see their sub-minimum-wage venue reviews being very useful. I really hope they have something else up their sleeves.

I don't think they'll duplicate my work (never released) since it involved a lot of in-world work. Again, a non-automated solution isn't likely from The Lab.

Best of luck to them, though. These two things are needed desperately. Much more important than everything else on their list.

I would also like to see inventory move across grids, and was hoping that efforts to move between SL and OpenSim grids would lead to a decentralized 3D internet, but for that to really work LL has to give up some control. So I'm not holding my breath.

I also like the note about SL becoming a universe of grids, which sounds like what BM is creating: a platform with connected worlds running on LL servers. This I can see, and may be a way to do several interesting things, like move the adult content to a grid that can be blocked either for age reasons or political reasons (if they want to see China and other restrictive governments allow access to SL from the firewalled official systems), or to allow content that is leagal in some regions but not others (blocking US access to a Caribbean or European server would allow for legal casinos to return to SL).

I think he's an optimist.

I think I'll just copy/paste what I posted to the blog:

/me continues to be disapointed and frustrated that product stability isn't a higher priority. If the product doesn't work, none of the other stuff matters.

Is it that you, M, and other Management Lindens do not see the problems? I again invite you to visit my high-traffic home region where you can see the whole region lock up for 15-20 seconds every couple minutes. Really. It's that bad and has been for +6 months now.

You're charging me US$125/month for this service. Would you, M, personally pay that for, say, cable TV or internet if it just stopped working for a bit every couple minutes?

If it seems like I'm always yelling at you guys and calling you twits, it's because I believe in SL and want it to succeed and am very frustrated to see LL working on "improvements" that are change-for-changes-sake or steps backwards (SL Answers, this damned evil blogware) or pushing hard at new areas (enterprise, etc) when the core product doesn't work.

I continue to believe that SL will not see serious growth until LL puts more focus on making residents happy. 2009 (and late 200 got LL a serious reputation for not listening to residents or for saying "we're listening!" then ignoring what's being said clearly and loudly in favor of the minority that agrees with you. Please put more effort into understanding why so many of your customers are angry (even if they're not as vocal as I am) and what you can do to make them happier. A good first step would be to look at the Blondin (Blue?) blog about 3rd-party viewers - what most residents said they liked about Emerald was that 1) it worked, 2) they quickly fixed problems when it broke and 3) they added things that people wanted. These are the things that all product developers, be they working on software products or not, should strive to hear customers saying.

/me looks forward to saying "hey, M isn't that bad after all - he came through for us!" at this time next year.

It all looks good to me.

M's "look-ahead" for 2009 (https://blogs.secondlife.com/community/features/blog/2008/12/30/a-look-back-a-look-ahead):
At least he tried to rephrase things for this year, but it's still largely the same.

Moving more into Europe is a mistake. If anything they need to remove what corporate presence they have there now.

Why?

umm yeah why?

Due to the VAT tax I believe is why.

VAT and the refusal of the EU to recognize the basic human right of free speech.

/me waves at Chris

Didn't know about the later part of your response. Thank you

Well, it's just nice to hear from him! That should be a once a month routine - keep us posted!

This sounds exciting:




Maybe one of these days RL merchants will get this process down effectively. Just a matter of time, before someone nails it. Not sure if the current population as a whole wants to deal with that, but if a person comes into SL specifically to shop for high-ticket RL product.....surely they would be enticed to drop some lindens inworld, at the same time. They're going to have to have a house to try those RL products out.

In 2012 - I predict a hook-up with Ebay. Yeah!

On this:



My SL counseling sessions on how to protect your main av from of a messy dramafest from a psycho woman or psycho man, just increased tenfold. Might have to start charging for that.

Some of it sounds a bit ominous and vague...But I'll be interested to see what it all means.

I still think mixing RL info and a fantasy world like SL is asking for trouble.

They'll be smoking too much of the doobage at the Amsterdam office. Oh wait, I think they do that in SF already, except it's for "medical" purposes.

The real life name thing intrigues me. Personally I don't want to go that route but I can see if they do a partnership with facebook or something, they could make some sort of easy registration link using your FB credentials or something to set up an SL account using your rl name. I'm sure this will be some sort of premium or additional cost feature. Even though I don't want to have rl name av at this point in time, I wonder when the opportunity presents itself, whether I will actually create one just to have first dibs on the account name.

I'm also curious to hear from the scripters about implementing the ability of using C# in SL. I can barely make a box say "hello, avatar!" but my understanding is that C# would open more interesting possibilities than what lsl has to offer? The http-in and api stuff also sounds interesting but again I have no expertise in what practical implications this will have for most users.

The rebranding of Xstreet will be interesting as well as this approved "viewer and seller" directory he talks about in section 2. I wonder what hoops you'll have to jump in order to get "on the list" and also I suspect this will come at a substantial cost for sellers.

I'm not in Europe but I think the technical network and data centre stuff across the pond will be welcomed by European users.

How? Where is the discussion link on the referenced blog entry? (yes, I logged into it)

My response on the flog (comments are still open there, folks) brought up this point as well. This was one of Nika's few posts where she actually tried to punch through the rubber wall between residents and Lindens, and get a Linden to READ it.

Nika wants her SL, her fantasy world preserved. If the typist, however, were to respond directly, she might have more to say about how to bridge RL and SL grids; but Nika just tried to present her needs persuasively, letting LL do what they will (if anything) to address them.

The typist knows that LL neither needs nor wants her inputs on how to do anything.
.

That's kind of been an ongoing conflict within SL for, like, forever, the whole immersionist vs. augmentationist thing. I actually found that tidbit to be kind of encouraging, because it's the first time I've noticed M to really acknowledge that not everyone wants to connect their first and second lives. This is a good thing, it means that the current management has at least given a passing thought to the notion that SL is a world, not strictly a platform.

Agreed, the fact that he puts it's for people to choose is encouraging, that's how it should be.

That's always good.

This part of M's "ten year look ahead" is gas:

"SLHD blurs the distinction between real and virtual. New tools and capabilities for content creation and animation together with enhanced graphics and multi-sensory rendering enable SLHD (Second Life in High Definition) to blur the distinction between real and virtual. You pet a chicken and feel the smooth texture of its feathers. You bend down to smell a rose and, well, you smell a rose. "

This is the sort of thing an executive who has no concept of technology is apt to say. Implementing touch, taste, and smell is incredibly harder than engaging the senses of sight and sound. Frankly, until there is such a thing as a direct plugin interface to the brain's sensory centers, I don't foresee this happening, simply because the necessary peripheral hardware would be too expensive and/or uncomfortable for the mainstream computer user.

It makes me wonder what else he's wrong about.

My guess is that over the holidays he saw Avatar, and then read CNN over the weekend:

http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/12/30/brain.controlled.computers/index.html


.

Unless...the brain 'evolves' to process other senses through visual stimulus, which is kind of interesting...