M Linden hints at what's coming up in 2010

It wasn't roses I was smelling while reading some parts of that blog post ...

The real name option is something that is very needed by many people in SL, especially those here for business purposes. A friend of mine, who is a musician, finds it very frustrating that she can't use her real last name here. She knows other musicians who haven't joined SL because they can't perform under their own name. It's a major impediment to building a consistent brand across social media.

When I joined SL in 2007, I was very frustrated by the limited last name choices. I have used the name Ayesha online since 1996, so it's part of my "brand" as such, but "Lytton"? Meh, I still don't love it.

Since I have so much inventory on this avatar, I'll keep using it primarily, but I'll also want an av with my real name, or some kind of link between my real name and this av, so people can find me. So here's one big thumbs up for this change!

I liked the bit about people having a 3D scanner built into their mobile phone that "auto-magically" imports content into SL .

I guess he didn't give much thought about the some rather interesting copyright concerns that would raise either even if it was possible on that scale (and why would you still buy anything in-world then: just go to Ikea and "scan" the entire store to decorate your SL home with).

I had the same thought.

Maybe he was trying to be visionary?

M probably didn't have Rose Petals in his nose either when he wrote it.

Giving people the option to use their real names and such with SL is fine and dandy, I can see why business and artistic types would want to, but I can imagine the carnage that may ensue when the internet loonies get ahold of people's real names.

I was picturing the crappy quality of a lot of catalog photos...honestly, current content creators often do much better.

I believe that was last years message, only it was called viewer 2009... new name, same product...

well it'd be nice if gift cards work, but I hope we don't see gaming cards like the various reup packages out there.

like links to facebook? please no.

didn't we already have that (almost) with the vanity name and custom surname policy? it would be nice if that feature wasn't buried away and made more accessible though.


translation, we're going to dumb it down even farther, and make the powerful tools harder to find...


I like Open source, but I'm not so sure this is a good idea...


can we make the http-in behave properly so it'll work with the largely available market? =/


wihtout some much needed documentation (all the user documentation on the wiki notwithstanding) I see this as being more, not less confusing


good in the sense that crappy ping times to locally held content will be resolved, bad in that where assest are contained will determine your best choice for marketing... assuming you get to choose at all.

So if there was intergrid transport and you could push a button and everything go to OSgrid, Opensim, or reactiongrid, exactly what do you think would happen? SL concurrency would plummet.

The only thing keeping people in SL right now is the difficulty migrating out and the fact the other grids are not 100% compatible or have enough infrastructure to meet the demand of the exodus. But this condition will not last forever.

Don't be expecting Linden Lab to make much of an effort in paving a one way intergalactic highway out of SL.

I went to OSGrid last night. For about 5 minutes. I really don't feel like having to start from zero again. It is sad that that is all SL has going for it anymore.

Tell your friend how to create a group and create a group tag that is the real name.
Sorted.

Tell your friend how to fill in a profile with real name info.
Sorted.

Tell your friend how to create events and classifieds, etc. using teal life info.
Sorted.

Nothing is stopping anyone from putting their real life name on anything in SL. And your friend could have paid for a vanity account already.

Must be some other problem going on. Or some other motivation for saying they can't do what they could do if they felt like it.

As I noticed before but didn't harp on in the blog was that M seems to have put the discussion thread as a question..

Who will get points for providing the correct answer???

Ha! I did ask him to mark the correct answer. (Saw your post after, I swear!)

There's "being a visionary"...

...and then there's "being uninclined to think things through, but being VERY inclined to neglect/exploit current customers on the belief that The Future Customers Of My Vision Will Make This Company Rich, So Who Cares About The Current Customers!?!?"

I was trying to be nice.

Ann - those are a bit complex for most people to bother searching out though, and paying for a real name currently is a lot of money.

I have a different dilemma. My real name is already an avatar name and it's already taken too.

I think you were being accurate, too. I think he IS trying to be a visionary...and I don't criticize him for that.

'Vision' has an important place in the business world.

What I do criticize him for is the aforementioned 'being uninclined to think things through', and for the also-aforementioned penchant for dismissing current customers in favor of the customers LL might have in that future in which touch and smell are part of the computer interface (and comps that can run SL are cheap and plentiful, and all other technical bars to the Visions have been solved).

That future is years away. Maybe only a few years, but years nonetheless.

And my point is that it's poor business to ignore the customers you have, and the customers you could fairly easily get, in favor of the hypothetical customers that lie years ahead in a hypothetical future.

I bet that "real" avatar names will be extended with invisible metadata so that there can be 4000 "Ann Smith"s in SL, as in real life, and an overlap with legacy avatar names will be no issue. As in most social networking sites, it will probably be the user's job to figure out which "Ann Smith" they're looking for when they search!

Btw, M has been responding to some of the earlier posts on the Flog discussion.
.

Really?

So far I have mostly avoided the flogorums...Link?

Free speech isn't free.. mine was bought and paid for in blood. <.<

from M's blog post:




"Segmented for play/work"....does he mean there will be one XStreet-successor* you can log onto at work that will be 'boss-safe', and another with, ahem, ALL the content that you can log onto when home and At Play.....?

Or, instead, does this 'segmenting' refer to content for developers/builders (at work) being segregated from content for shoppers (at play)?


*the rebranding he mentions will surely result in a new name for the site.

What do I think? *looks down at card*

BINGO!!

He means they are introducing the "SL Work Marketplace" (http://work.secondlife.com/en-US/worksolutions/marketplace/), a version of XStreet aimed at the SL Enterprise product, as well as at inworld sims that are extensions of RL workplaces and schools. These folks: http://work.secondlife.com/en-US/

The Work Marketplace content will be provided by LL-approved providers, and will include real software applications that will tailor SL to business/collaboration needs. It will probably resemble the Office Depot site more than XStreet.
.

so none of the stuff in 2010 I'd like to see....how about :

tier restructuring, with better pricing for long term members...

the ability to pay fixed rates in our own currency independent of the value of the dollar and without the need to go through three parties to do it...

introduction of mega prims as standard....

new building tools especially those designed to compliment use of megaprims...being able to apply text to builds in world for example I would say is a long time overdue

new shapes of prim to enhance and improve 'the building experience' and the ablity to cut holes any shape on multiple surfaces

regional boundary stability...

more to encourage use vehicles on land, at sea and in the air and to enable those of us who enjoy transportation to use it properly without the wide variety of hindrances against travellers in sl now....

improving the hands and feet of avvys so we dont look as if we've been struck by frostbite....

Lindens actually admitting the importance of its premium membership and doing something for those of us who feel that by our continued support financially for linden labs expect a little more for our cash rather than this sense that we're expected to be grateful to pay to come to sl.

Constructive Solid Geometry. Unlikely to happen, they're more into out-of-world building tools these days.

Ah, thanks. I had heard of this in passing but hadn't seen a URL.