SecondLife - How To Make Money In Second Life

How apt: the first video tutorial on our new blogs is about a couple things I’ve been hearing a lot of word-of-mouth about ever since we launched yesterday:

1. Subscribing to our blog - You can be auto-updated of new posts and other content via email or RSS feed. To the left of every channel and sub-channel are Notifications links.
2. Changing your email notifications - Some Residents have said it’s too spammy every time they get a new comment from a thread. You can selectively turn the default OFF but you need to login, then go to “Your Preferences“. I’ll also show you how to remove notifications selectively. I know, it’s not the most obvious… we’ve got awesome Lindens working on making it more elegant!

This vidtut will show you all that and move in less than 5 minutes, enjoy and let me know what other blog tips & tricks we should be broadcasting.

[UPDATE] One thing not mentioned in the vid: for you infoholics, you can subscribe to EVERY SINGLE POST ON THESE ENTIRE BLOGS by using this feed. (Thanks Yoz!)

No, I haven’t turned into an English woman. That’s Emma Linden, who voiced Jon Linden’s script for the newest Documentation Team video production, HOW TO USE THE SUPPORT PORTAL! Short on time? It’s only 2 minutes long, so get the facts fast:

The Support Portal is @ secondlife.com/support

(bookmark that link!) and as the name suggests, is the central location to learn how Second Life works in the Knowledge Base, and get help on various issues — tickets and live chat are further shown in the video.

As easy as it may seem to experienced inworlders, there are many Residents each day who need a little help getting help, and this will hopefully make things more clear and enjoyable despite troubles you may come across.

A big thanks to James Schwarz and the 100 avatars

who participated in his masterpiece. Earlier, I was like “d00d, I need to use this in a video! Just don’t know which one yet…” Graciously, James let everyone know: “Feel free to do whatever you want with these…”. So here it is. Many faces from across Second Life, yet not even coming close to representing the rich avatar diversity we have.

Like Soylent Green, Second Life is made of people.

Whether it’s Lindens providing Support Portal guidance or volunteers contributing info on SL Answers and the wiki, like spice… THE KNOWLEDGE MUST FLOW!

Have a tip on using the Support Portal that’ll benefit fellow Residents? Please share!

Check out Shared Media on YouTube

The Viewer 2 Beta is  finally here, and with it comes a whole host of amazing improvements and  new features. There’s so much to be excited about that it’s impossible  (and unnecessary!) to pick a favorite. But — if I really had to pick — I’d  choose Shared Media, since I’m the Product Manager for Shared  Media. So, let me tell you about it.

Shared Media Brings the Web Into Second Life

Second Life Shared Media, a  new Viewer 2 capability, makes sharing  standard Web-based media in Second Life easy and seamless. It enables  content creators to make more compelling, interactive experiences.  Basically, Shared Media brings the Internet inworld.

For the more technically inclined, what this means is that you can now put media textures on any prim in Second Life.  More specifically, the viewer uses WebKit to create a fully interactive, dynamic texture from a Web URL.  This even includes support for Web-browser plug-ins, like the Adobe Flash Player. And, you can place dozens of them on the same region. (We still don’t know what the upper  limits are. I’m sure that you’ll let us know.)

A World  of New Experiences and Businesses Possible

By seamlessly integrating  the Web into Second Life, Shared Media unleashes a new wave of  creativity and new business opportunities. Imagine the richness of a SL store with interactive signs and displays. Think about Flash-based games, theaters, and innovative Web-based services appearing inworld. Display your Twitter feed on the front of your house! (Okay, don’t.) Build a HUD to read your email  inworld.  Interact with walls that encourage graffiti or use your signature to sign guest books. Educators and their students can now interact in even more immersive classrooms. For the enterprise community, online collaboration tools (such as Google Docs, EtherPad, Webex, and Acrobat Web Connect) combine with the power of Second Life to make working inworld much easier and more powerful.

You’re in Control of Shared Media

Viewer 2 introduces a new UI  for  controlling Shared Media. Shared Media authors have the option to  offer a  2D menu bar (similar to a browser-like URL bar) that will  appear in front of a Shared Media object when any Resident mouses over  it.  Also, a new Nearby Media control will enable Residents to more  easily control what media is allowed to play.

Web Skills Will Drive New Inworld Building  Techniques

There are also new Second Life build features for  Shared Media: assigning URLs to objects and faces, controlling  auto-play, auto-scale, size settings, etc. With Shared Media, SL  building now extends well beyond SL into the vast and varied skill set  of Web development. Suddenly, skills like PHP, SQL, ActionScript, Apache  and FMS can be used to create compelling inworld content. Flash and  Flash Media Server (FMS) become particularly useful tools for creating  animated, interactive Shared Media that can be kept in sync. Flash media  server hosting services, such as Influxis,  offer low-cost hosting.

Synchronicity is Content- and Context-Specific

Behind the scenes, Shared Media is different. Second Life always stays synchronized for all Residents. That is, the simulation takes place on our servers, and each person’s viewer renders their perspective on that simulation — everyone is looking at the same thing. Shared Media, on the other hand, can look different to different people — sometimes. Everyone’s instance of the Shared Media is always  presenting the same URL. However, not everything will stay in perfect sync unless the content is specially designed to do that.  For example, a simple Web browsing session will keep the pages synchronized, but not the position of the scroll bars. We may both be looking at the same Web page on the same inworld object, but I might be looking at the top portion, while you might be viewing what’s below the fold.

Consider a URL that doesn’t  always serve the exact same page, perhaps a Web page that displays a random background color each time it loads. If an inworld object’s surface displayed that page, I might see a green background while you might see a blue one. Even more striking: if an inworld object’s surface was pointed at a site with user login like Gmail, you and I could both log into it, and we’d be looking at our own inboxes, not at each  other’s.

What’s really cool is that sites that are specifically designed for synchronous collaboration, like EtherPad, for instance, will stay in perfect sync. So if it’s the intention, it is possible to design content that uses a back-end server to stay perfectly synchronized in all cases.

In short,  synchronicity is content- and context-specific, making possible a world of new applications and interactions.

We Look Forward to Your  Feedback and Creations

With this release of Shared Media, we’re just at the starting  line; we need your feedback. Please post your thoughts and experiences on Shared Media to the Viewer 2 Beta Forums. And if you build cool stuff and want to share it with us for inclusion in a Shared Media Showcase, please let us know in comments.

Ok, enough reading about Shared Media. Go download Second Life Viewer 2, now in beta, and try it out!