SecondLife - How To Make Money In Second Life

So what has Second Life founder Philip Rosedale been up to since handing over control of Linden Lab to new CEO Mark Kingdon four months ago?

Hanging out, mostly. “I’ve had a really relaxing summer,” a broadly smiling Rosedale told Reuters.

Rosedale had just come out of the morning breakfast at the Second Life Community Convention in Tampa, where he praised Kingdon’s leadership of the company he started. But Rosedale was quick to add he wasn’t done with Second Life or Linden Lab. These days, he’s concentrating on two projects: Working on improving Second Life’s user interface, and efforts to spread Second Life technology to developing nations.

But Second Life fans shouldn’t expect interface problems to be solved soon. “Look at Lively or Vivaty, they’re dealing with the same thing. This is a hard problem,” Rosedale said. “If there was a trivial solution, we would have done it already.”

Original post by Eric Reuters

So what has Second Life founder Philip Rosedale been up to since handing over control of Linden Lab to new CEO Mark Kingdon four months ago?

Hanging out, mostly. “I’ve had a really relaxing summer,” a broadly smiling Rosedale told Reuters.

Rosedale had just come out of the morning breakfast at the Second Life Community Convention in Tampa, where he praised Kingdon’s leadership of the company he started. But Rosedale was quick to add he wasn’t done with Second Life or Linden Lab. These days, he’s concentrating on two projects: Working on improving Second Life’s user interface, and efforts to spread Second Life technology to developing nations.

But Second Life fans shouldn’t expect interface problems to be solved soon. “Look at Lively or Vivaty, they’re dealing with the same thing. This is a hard problem,” Rosedale said. “If there was a trivial solution, we would have done it already.”

Original post by Eric Reuters

SECOND LIFE, Sept 3 (Reuters) - Second Life users who frequently access the Internet from consumer-grade computers and laptops are about to find keeping touch with other avatars a lot easier.

Yesterday Linden Lab announced the launch of “SLim,” pronounced “slim,” an instant-messaging client that allows users to communicate with users inside Linden’s virtual world without running Second Life.

“When you’re running a system that doesn’t have a 3D card, SLim allows you to take your friends list with you,” said Linden VP Joe Miller. “Visually it looks a lot like other IM apps.”

Second Life only runs well on high-end gaming machines. On many computers, particularly laptops, the Second Life viewer software runs so slowly even typing can be difficult. Miller said SLim was designed to tackle that problem.

The software will tie to an avatar’s friends list of contacts, and users inside Second Life will be able to see who’s on SLim but not in 3D virtual space.

In addition to sending text messages in and out of Second Life (or to other SLim users) like AOL’s AIM or Google’s Gtalk, the SLim client will support voice-over-IP calls in a manner similar to eBay’s Skype.

One notable feature of SLim will be support for VoIP voicemail. Users who register for the service will be able to set up a voicemail greeting and accept VoIP messages of up to five minutes in length while offline, Miller said. Linden’s servers will email the voice message to its recipient as an MP3 file.

Miller said the service is expected to debut in a “First Look” version of the Second Life client software next week. Participation in SLim and voicemail will be on an opt-in basis, and users can set the destination email address for voicemail to a different address than the payment contact for their secondlife.com account.

The service will be available on all platforms which support Second Life, including Windows, Macintosh, and Linux environments.

Original post by Eric Reuters

SECOND LIFE, Sept 3 (Reuters) - IBM, a company long at the forefront of exploring the business applications of virtual worlds, announced on Wednesday it has added support for 3D chat to its Lotus Sametime instant messaging software.

Users of “Sametime 3D” who are collaborating on a business document will be able to meet in a variety of virtual worlds, with IBM’s software handling the logins transparently, said Neil Katz, a company spokesman who worked on the project. Platforms supported by IBM include OpenSim, SecondLife, Forterra, and ActiveWorlds.

Katz said IBM will initially be working with select customers to test the new software’s capabilities, before rolling it out to the mainstream.

IBM foresees uses for corporate 3D chat such as walking customers through the replacement of a computer part by rezzing a 3D model. The Sametime 3D integration also smooths the process of importing data from an application such as Powerpoint into a virtual world.

IBM already hosts private regions within Second Life, and is working to draft interoperability protocols that connect disparate virtual worlds.

While reliability issues have plagued virtual worlds such as Second Life, corporate applications may be made to run in a more stable manner, particularly using OpenSim.

“We’re creating a room with 20 or 30 users, we’re not building a persistent virtual world with thousands or hundreds of thousands of concurrent users,” he said.

Original post by Eric Reuters

SECOND LIFE, August 26 (Reuters) - The real-world economy may be slipping into recession, but the global slowdown isn’t impacting Second Life. According to recently released company statistics, Linden Lab’s in-world economy is larger than ever.

Over 61,000 avatars earned more Linden dollars (Second Life’s in-world currency) in July than they spent. That’s a 5.7 percent month-to-month gain in the number of profitable in-world businesses and the most on record.

User hours grew for the fourth consecutive month to 34.7 million in July, also a new record. However, the user hours number may be unreliable given the proliferation of computer-run avatars, or “bots,” throughout the Grid.

Economic activity grew briskly. Over US$9.5 million was traded on the LindeX, a 5.5 percent gain from June and a new record. User-to-user transactions in July stood at L$8.4 billion (about US$31.3 million), a 7.3 percent gain from June and the most currency transactions since the gambling ban in July of last year.

The sole dark spot for Second Life was the continuing decline in premium accounts. Linden shed an additional 1,410 premiums in July — over 45 a day and the seventh consecutive month premiums declined.

The principal benefit of a premium account is land-ownership privileges on Second Life’s mainland, where avatars have neighbors and enjoy a sense of community. Linden Lab has been unable to grow the mainland for three months due to weak demand, but private islands have grown to occupy 1.7 billion square meters, an 8.7 percent gain from June.

In recent months Linden Lab has announced a series of beautification and zoning initiatives in an attempt to restore user interest in the mainland.

Original post by Eric Reuters

SECOND LIFE, August 26 (Reuters) - The real-world economy may be slipping into recession, but the global slowdown isn’t impacting Second Life. According to recently released company statistics, Linden Lab’s in-world economy is larger than ever.

Over 61,000 avatars earned more Linden dollars (Second Life’s in-world currency) in July than they spent. That’s a 5.7 percent month-to-month gain in the number of profitable in-world businesses and the most on record.

User hours grew for the fourth consecutive month to 34.7 million in July, also a new record. However, the user hours number may be unreliable given the proliferation of computer-run avatars, or “bots,” throughout the Grid.

Economic activity grew briskly. Over US$9.5 million was traded on the LindeX, a 5.5 percent gain from June and a new record. User-to-user transactions in July stood at L$8.4 billion (about US$31.3 million), a 7.3 percent gain from June and the most currency transactions since the gambling ban in July of last year.

The sole dark spot for Second Life was the continuing decline in premium accounts. Linden shed an additional 1,410 premiums in July — over 45 a day and the seventh consecutive month premiums declined.

The principal benefit of a premium account is land-ownership privileges on Second Life’s mainland, where avatars have neighbors and enjoy a sense of community. Linden Lab has been unable to grow the mainland for three months due to weak demand, but private islands have grown to occupy 1.7 billion square meters, an 8.7 percent gain from June.

In recent months Linden Lab has announced a series of beautification and zoning initiatives in an attempt to restore user interest in the mainland.

Original post by Eric Reuters