As I mentioned last week, today the Second Life Forums, Blogs, Knowledge Base and SL Answers are now temporarily in read-only mode. This means that everything housed within the http://blogs.secondlife.com site is available for you to read, but you cannot post comments–or contribute content–until we launch our new community platform (http://community.secondlife.com) on March 2nd.

Get ready for a more robust self-help platform with powerful capabilities, including unified search, reputation systems, new community tools, and social media features. And, please pardon our dust while we transition over to the new system.

To be informed immediately when the new community platform is live, follow us at @Second Life on Twitter where we’ll be officially announcing the launch.

As I mentioned last week, today the Second Life Forums, Blogs, Knowledge Base and SL Answers are now temporarily in read-only mode. This means that everything housed within the http://blogs.secondlife.com site is available for you to read, but you cannot post comments–or contribute content–until we launch our new community platform (http://community.secondlife.com) on March 2nd.

Get ready for a more robust self-help platform with powerful capabilities, including unified search, reputation systems, new community tools, and social media features. And, please pardon our dust while we transition over to the new system.

To be informed immediately when the new community platform is live, follow us at @Second Life on Twitter where we’ll be officially announcing the launch.

As a Second Life Resident, you have a profile that you can customize to share more about yourself. It’s opt-in and can be a lot of fun to fill out. Why bother? Many fellow Residents surf profiles, and if you’re open to making new friends, a completed profile makes you a much more fascinating person to get in touch with.

As you may know from Q Linden’s post announcing Viewer 2.5, this new version of Second Life has profiles stored on the web. The following video chock full o’ tips will help you learn what’s changed as Linden Lab continues to evolve how you express your virtual identity.

If you want text instructions and more info,

Check out the “Web profile” wiki help page

Feel free to edit and update it to make it awesomer! Remember, we’re moving to a new community platform so this may get ported over as-requested.

Also, you know how much I love followup and to set expectations so you understand what our intentions and plans are at Linden Lab. I’m constantly asking our company gurus for goodies I can share with you. After all, I live and breathe SL; the same stuff that bothers you bothers me too. I’ve read some comments to the tune of,

“Is that it for web profiles?”

No! Since this is only the first instance of web profiles, there’s usability stuff in a sort of “in-between” state that Linden Lab hopes to improve in the future. For example:

• Web profiles tend to load slower than old-style sidebar profiles, so there’s room for performance increases.
• Some stuff hasn’t been migrated to the web profile yet — like you can’t edit a classified in the web profile yet, so the behavior of hopping back and forth is confusing. But plans are hatching for better integration.
• Having both a web profile and the sidebar open at the same time takes a lot of screen space, and that could be tightened up too.

And the odd moments of quirkiness shown in the video. Again, I emphasize: this is just the beginning. Stay tuned for improvements, but right here, right now (like the Fatboy Slim song), the above tips should help you get the most out of web profiles today.

On a misc. fashion note,

“Where did you get your eyeshadow, Torley?”

Some of you have also asked this, as featured in my recent videos! I had been looking all over Second Life for eyeshadow in my fave pink + green colors, and this is “Fruity Fresh” by Miasnow Myriam. It can be bought on Twomoons Island:

Check out the Destination Guide for more rad Second Life places and send your suggestions to our Editorial Team (which I’m on)!

…

Finally — for now, the ending of one chapter and the beginning of the next — this is my last blog post on this Jive system before moving to the new community platform.

I’m giving a gracious thankyou to each and all of you lovely Residents who’ve benefited from these Tips & Tricks, and hope you’ll join me in TnT’s next incarnation. (I also need to figure out how I’m going to preserve and promote the still-useful archives.) See ya on the flipside after the read-only freeze!

In the meantime, stay awesome in Second Life and I look forward to meeting you in-avatar…

I wanted to give you an update on several important new Customer and Community Support initiatives currently underway. We have recently added significant resources–of both people and technology–to improve your experience with both Customer Support and community interaction and communication.

On the Customer Support front, we have increased coverage to eliminate our backlog within the next 3 weeks and have already resolved 70% of the outstanding tickets. We are also continuing to work on changes to our Support processes and policies to improve communication about cases and speed up resolution time.

Additionally, we are actively investing in technologies that help you to quickly solve problems, find answers, share insights, and get help from the community.

Powerful New Community Platform To Launch Soon

On March 2nd, we will launch a new, and much improved, self-help community platform–comprised of Forums, Blogs, Answers, and our Knowledge Base. This new fully integrated platform helps you to more efficiently leverage the power and knowledge of the community. Among many architectural and usability improvements, the system also includes:

• Robust Self-Help Functionality: It will be easier and faster to find the answer to your question or the information that you’re looking for. For example, in Answers, when you begin to type a keyword, an intuitive category search will return common matching solution results. And, solutions accepted by the question author are automatically nominated for Linden editorial review and possible inclusion in the Knowledge Base.
• Unified Search: You can find the information that you’re looking for in one federated search field that returns organized results from relevant content in the Forums, Blogs, Answers, and the Knowledge Base.
• Single Sign On: Just as you can in the current system today, you will use your current Second Life username and password to log in to the new platform.
• Contribution-Based Roles: Based on your contributions to the platform, you will be able to earn new capabilities and roles in the community–from a brand new Resident to seasoned and experienced Helper.
• Easier for Experienced Residents to Share Their Wisdom: If you’re an avid Second Life Resident who wants to participate in the community, then it will be much easier for you to update existing articles; comment on published articles; and nominate, review, and include subject matter for the Knowledge Base.
• Industry-Standard Social Media Features: As you can in many other community platforms, with the click of the mouse, it will be easy to Twitter, Facebook, Digg, etc., interesting content that you want to share with your friends in the Social Web.

The Resident testers who were given a sneak peek into the system gave us great feedback and insightful reviews. Big thanks to everyone who participated!

Forums, Blogs, and Answers will be in Read-Only Mode Starting February 21st

We’re in the final roll out stages and wanted to give you notice on what to expect. At 12:01am PDT on February 21st, the Forums, Blogs, and Answers will switch to read-only mode until March 2nd, when we launch the new system. This means that everything housed within the http://blogs.secondlife.com site will still be available for you to read, but you cannot post comments–or contribute content–until March 2nd. Why go dark for over a week? Good question. We need the time to make sure that the data set, housed within our current system, is safely ported into the new platform and that everything is fully operational and ready to go for you on launch day.

Looking forward to sharing more on launch day and to your contributions to the new platform.

I wanted to give you an update on several important new Customer and Community Support initiatives currently underway. We have recently added significant resources–of both people and technology–to improve your experience with both Customer Support and community interaction and communication.

On the Customer Support front, we have increased coverage to eliminate our backlog within the next 3 weeks and have already resolved 70% of the outstanding tickets. We are also continuing to work on changes to our Support processes and policies to improve communication about cases and speed up resolution time.

Additionally, we are actively investing in technologies that help you to quickly solve problems, find answers, share insights, and get help from the community.

Powerful New Community Platform To Launch Soon

On March 2nd, we will launch a new, and much improved, self-help community platform–comprised of Forums, Blogs, Answers, and our Knowledge Base. This new fully integrated platform helps you to more efficiently leverage the power and knowledge of the community. Among many architectural and usability improvements, the system also includes:

• Robust Self-Help Functionality: It will be easier and faster to find the answer to your question or the information that you’re looking for. For example, in Answers, when you begin to type a keyword, an intuitive category search will return common matching solution results. And, solutions accepted by the question author are automatically nominated for Linden editorial review and possible inclusion in the Knowledge Base.
• Unified Search: You can find the information that you’re looking for in one federated search field that returns organized results from relevant content in the Forums, Blogs, Answers, and the Knowledge Base.
• Single Sign On: Just as you can in the current system today, you will use your current Second Life username and password to log in to the new platform.
• Contribution-Based Roles: Based on your contributions to the platform, you will be able to earn new capabilities and roles in the community–from a brand new Resident to seasoned and experienced Helper.
• Easier for Experienced Residents to Share Their Wisdom: If you’re an avid Second Life Resident who wants to participate in the community, then it will be much easier for you to update existing articles; comment on published articles; and nominate, review, and include subject matter for the Knowledge Base.
• Industry-Standard Social Media Features: As you can in many other community platforms, with the click of the mouse, it will be easy to Twitter, Facebook, Digg, etc., interesting content that you want to share with your friends in the Social Web.

The Resident testers who were given a sneak peek into the system gave us great feedback and insightful reviews. Big thanks to everyone who participated!

Forums, Blogs, and Answers will be in Read-Only Mode Starting February 21st

We’re in the final roll out stages and wanted to give you notice on what to expect. At 12:01am PDT on February 21st, the Forums, Blogs, and Answers will switch to read-only mode until March 2nd, when we launch the new system. This means that everything housed within the http://blogs.secondlife.com site will still be available for you to read, but you cannot post comments–or contribute content–until March 2nd. Why go dark for over a week? Good question. We need the time to make sure that the data set, housed within our current system, is safely ported into the new platform and that everything is fully operational and ready to go for you on launch day.

Looking forward to sharing more on launch day and to your contributions to the new platform.

Bustin’ a move on the virtual dancefloor and losing control is all fun and games — until you try to stop and yet your avatar just keeps on doing the electric boogaloo. When you find yourself in such a socially awkward situation:

1. Go to Me menu > Movement > Stop Animating Me

FREEZE. This applies to all animations, not just dances: if you teleport and find yourself magically-yet-uncomfortably sitting in midair, that’s another opportune time to use Stop Animating Me. (Although I see that less than I used to, let me know what your experiences have been.)

Context:

• Normally, you can click a Stop button in an animation window or command an inworld object (like a dance ball) to cease. If all else fails, you have Stop Animating Me.
• This feature has moved various places over time, but in 2.4, Linden Lab decided it was useful enough to bring out from the confines of the Advanced menu, so here you are.

Then, get back to intentionally dancing.

Please join us in the forums for discussion/Q&A

__Oskar

Today we launched Viewer 2.5, now out of Beta. The most significant update is a new, web-based profile system, which allows profiles to be viewed and edited both on the web and in the Viewer. For example, here’s mine. Please note this is just a starting point for the web-based profiles; we’ll be doing a lot of work to refine the usability and make them richer over time.

In response to your feedback from the early beta versions of Viewer 2.5, we’ve added some privacy settings that will allow you to control just how public your profile is. Once you’ve logged in, click on “Privacy Settings” in the upper right corner of your profile. Group settings set in the Viewer will be overridden by these group privacy settings.

• “Everyone” means that the information is available to the whole Internet and can be picked up by search engines.
• “Second Life” means that the information is available to all Second Life Residents who are logged into the website or inworld. This is the default for all existing Residents using Viewer 2.5.
• “Friends” means that only your Second Life friends can see the information on the web and inworld.

This is why we have a beta process–to address concerns and improve your user experience. We will continue to iterate as we get more feedback. Thank you for all your help and comments. Please attend the Viewer 2 User Group meetings if you would like to share your thoughts and feedback directly with me and the Snowstorm team.

Viewer 2.5 also has some other new features. The one I like best is that you can now have your Favorite landmarks also appear on the login screen, so that you can log directly into your favorite locations. Torley made a video about this, so check it out! We’ve also improved some texturing performance and fixed another batch of bugs. Watching the internal data, we’ve already seen a noticeable improvement in stability and performance–on par with Viewer 1.23.

Download Viewer 2.5, try it out, and keep the feedback coming! And, if you Twitter, please use the hashtag #slviewer2.

Helpful Links

• Download Viewer 2.5:
  • Windows | Mac | Linux
• Viewer 2.5 Release Notes
• SL Forum on Viewer 2
• SL Answers on Viewer 2

Today we launched Viewer 2.5, now out of Beta. The most significant update is a new, web-based profile system, which allows profiles to be viewed and edited both on the web and in the Viewer. For example, here’s mine. Please note this is just a starting point for the web-based profiles; we’ll be doing a lot of work to refine the usability and make them richer over time.

In response to your feedback from the early beta versions of Viewer 2.5, we’ve added some privacy settings that will allow you to control just how public your profile is. Once you’ve logged in, click on “Privacy Settings” in the upper right corner of your profile. Group settings set in the Viewer will be overridden by these group privacy settings.

• “Everyone” means that the information is available to the whole Internet and can be picked up by search engines.
• “Second Life” means that the information is available to all Second Life Residents who are logged into the website or inworld. This is the default for all existing Residents using Viewer 2.5.
• “Friends” means that only your Second Life friends can see the information on the web and inworld.

This is why we have a beta process–to address concerns and improve your user experience. We will continue to iterate as we get more feedback. Thank you for all your help and comments. Please attend the Viewer 2 User Group meetings if you would like to share your thoughts and feedback directly with me and the Snowstorm team.

Viewer 2.5 also has some other new features. The one I like best is that you can now have your Favorite landmarks also appear on the login screen, so that you can log directly into your favorite locations. Torley made a video about this, so check it out! We’ve also improved some texturing performance and fixed another batch of bugs. Watching the internal data, we’ve already seen a noticeable improvement in stability and performance–on par with Viewer 1.23.

Download Viewer 2.5, try it out, and keep the feedback coming! And, if you Twitter, please use the hashtag #slviewer2.

Helpful Links

• Download Viewer 2.5:
  • Windows | Mac | Linux
• Viewer 2.5 Release Notes
• SL Forum on Viewer 2
• SL Answers on Viewer 2

Whether you’re in a corporate environment or have a few computers connected at home, your network likely includes firewalls, which prevent security intrusions and other kinds of unauthorized access. If you’re trying to connect to Second Life behind firewalls that are too restrictive, you may be blocked unless you open ports and otherwise allow the necesary traffic through. If this has happened to you and you don’t know which ports to configure, check out:

Configuring your firewall to allow access to Second Life

Obligatory disclaimer: don’t “play” SL at work unless it’s on company business (like me, hah!).

Thanks to Kyle Linden who recently provided me with updated details. Speaking of, I should also emphasize: over time, firewall details change, so if you’ve used the guide to connect successfully, you’ll surely want to bookmark it if something breaks in the future.

Please let us know your feedback in the comments!

As customers, your satisfaction and input is critical to the success of Second Life. However, we know that it has sometimes been confusing and difficult to communicate with us and we can always do a better job of  listening. Toward that end, we’ve taken a hard look at all of our Resident-Linden communication paths and designed, or revamped, a series of new programs and tools to help us all have a more productive dialogue. Our goal is not only to listen and acknowledge your feedback and ideas, but also to work more collaboratively to help build a better Second Life experience for the common good.

In addition to rolling out new Community Participation Guidelines that apply across all communication paths, we also want to make very clear which ones are best to share your ideas about how to improve the experiences, content, and economy in Second Life, which ones are best to communicate with each other, and which ones to use when you want the latest news on Second Life or Linden Lab.

Also, please note that next month we will be rolling out a new community platform–an integrated system that will include SL Blogs, SL Forums, SL Answers, and the Knowledge Base. We will be blogging about that in the coming weeks as we get closer to launch.

First, we would like to explain what we are trying to achieve and how we propose to do it.

NEW COMMUNITY PARTICIPATION GUIDELINES SET THE STAGE FOR CONSTRUCTIVE DIALOGUE

We’ve updated our guidelines about community participation and they’re largely the same, just clarified and streamlined for easy reference. The purpose of these new guidelines is to keep the conversations  constructive, courteous, respectful, and in the spirit of collaboration so that we can have more thoughtful and effective discussions. The new Community Participation Guidelines outline the ground rules, in addition to our Terms of Service,  for all Resident and Linden communications on the blogs, forums, bug  tracker (JIRA), SL Answers, User Groups, and the Knowledge Base.

PARTICIPATE IN USER GROUPS AND JIRA

Office Hours Transition into Focused User Groups: The best part about the Office Hours program was direct Linden-Resident communications, but it was often a challenge to find the best Office Hours (or Linden) to give your feedback to. And, the conversations were sometimes not as focused or productive as they could have been. For us, we struggled with the unstructured nature of Office Hours. They were not effective enough in getting the right pieces of feedback to the right people who could act upon it–the Product Managers and teams–or creating a broader, representative sample of what most Residents thought about the topic.

Today, we are announcing a new approach–User Groups. User Groups are product or community focused and each one is led by the Linden responsible for the specific topic. The User Group program is about opening up a more representative and focused dialogue about user needs. Most User Groups are public and may include any or all of the following: inworld meetings, JIRA sections, a Twitter feed, an SL Forum, and/or an SL email list. It’s up to the User Group leader and the core Resident team to determine how they best communicate with one another. The discussions should be open, direct, and be more forward-looking and focus more on how we can improve your user experience.

A complete list of User Groups, and their Linden owners, is available here on the Second Life wiki and there’s also a Google Calendar where you can see all User Group meetings and add them to your calendar. Many User Groups will have several Linden team members participating, in addition to the User Group leader. All User Group leaders will be publicly posting agendas and notes from each meeting that may include an audio recording or a text chat log. So, whether you are a participant in a specific User Group or not, it will be easy to check in and see what’s going on in any area that you’re interested in.

Submit Bug Reports in JIRA: For those that aren’t familiar with JIRA, it is our public bug tracking system and it’s the best place to go to let us know about bugs or suggest new features that are proposed in User Group meetings or outside of those sessions.

Our development teams actively review the bugs that you submit in JIRA and do one of several things: place the item onto a development team backlog to address, ask the submitter to contact Support or provide more information if the developer cannot reproduce the bug, or close it and explain why we aren’t going to tackle this particular bug or idea.

It’s also important to note that we are going to remove the “voting” feature in JIRA in one month. Today, we do not use voting to triage or to make product decisions and the last thing that we want to do is set false expectations. So, when you are interested in what action we will take on a particular JIRA, use the JIRA “Watch” feature so that you will be  immediately updated in email when there are new comments on that particular JIRA issue. We will continue to use the number of Watchers as an indication of the level of interest.

PLACES TO CONNECT WITH ONE ANOTHER

Find Solutions SL Answers: If you haven’t explored SL Answers yet, then you definitely should try it. Second Life Answers is the best place to ask questions and get answers from other  knowledgeable Second Life Residents. It’s a very helpful tool when you  need to have your questions answered quickly. And, if you’re a long time  Resident, you should jump in and help answer questions and help out  your noobie friends.

Participate in SL Forums: SL Forums are a great place to connect with other Residents on specific topics. As I mentioned earlier, we’re going to roll out a new community platform for Forums that is easier to use and more organized. Look for that next month when User Groups will be adding specific areas for lively discussions with our Product Managers on topics relevant to each User Group.

Join the SL Email Lists: Late last year, we cleaned up the old SL email lists and created a few new ones to accommodate discussions happening among smaller communities that may not have any other way of connecting–ranging from the open source community to the educators in Second Life. The lists are a great resource to use when you want to tap into the collective wisdom of a group. Take a look at the current SL email lists that are available and join the ones that most interest you. If you would like to suggest a new list, then just email me (address below) or drop me a note card (SL: Amanda Linden).

GET THE LATEST SECOND LIFE AND LINDEN LAB NEWS

Check out the SL Blogs to Get Second Life and Linden Lab News: The SL Blogs are always the best place to go for news and information about Second Life. As is true with Forums, we’ll be rolling out a new Blog structure next month–and be blogging about it shortly. So, stay tuned!

Follow Us on Twitter: Twitter is a great way to get the latest and greatest information about Linden Lab and Second Life. There are many lists to choose from and we encourage you to follow us and join the conversation. The primary Twitter account to follow, if you want immediate notices of blog posts and other news, is @SecondLife. For a complete list of official Linden Lab/Second Life Twitter feeds, click here. This page will constantly be updated, so check back often. We also actively follow these hashtags: #sl, #secondlife, #slviewer2, #slmarketplace and suggest that you do, too.

Like Us on Facebook: Facebook is the best place to find out about cool things going on in Second Life, share ideas, and get the inside scoop on inworld events, contests, machinima releases, PR activities, fun discussions, and more. Come join over 111,000 people who have “Liked” our Second Life Facebook page.

Of course, these communication programs are evolving, and we look forward to your feedback on these changes and other suggestions on how we can continue to improve our community communication programs. Feel free to leave comments here or email me at amanda at lindenlab dot com.

As customers, your satisfaction and input is critical to the success of Second Life. However, we know that it has sometimes been confusing and difficult to communicate with us and we can always do a better job of  listening. Toward that end, we’ve taken a hard look at all of our Resident-Linden communication paths and designed, or revamped, a series of new programs and tools to help us all have a more productive dialogue. Our goal is not only to listen and acknowledge your feedback and ideas, but also to work more collaboratively to help build a better Second Life experience for the common good.

In addition to rolling out new Community Participation Guidelines that apply across all communication paths, we also want to make very clear which ones are best to share your ideas about how to improve the experiences, content, and economy in Second Life, which ones are best to communicate with each other, and which ones to use when you want the latest news on Second Life or Linden Lab.

Also, please note that next month we will be rolling out a new community platform–an integrated system that will include SL Blogs, SL Forums, SL Answers, and the Knowledge Base. We will be blogging about that in the coming weeks as we get closer to launch.

First, we would like to explain what we are trying to achieve and how we propose to do it.

NEW COMMUNITY PARTICIPATION GUIDELINES SET THE STAGE FOR CONSTRUCTIVE DIALOGUE

We’ve updated our guidelines about community participation and they’re largely the same, just clarified and streamlined for easy reference. The purpose of these new guidelines is to keep the conversations  constructive, courteous, respectful, and in the spirit of collaboration so that we can have more thoughtful and effective discussions. The new Community Participation Guidelines outline the ground rules, in addition to our Terms of Service,  for all Resident and Linden communications on the blogs, forums, bug  tracker (JIRA), SL Answers, User Groups, and the Knowledge Base.

PARTICIPATE IN USER GROUPS AND JIRA

Office Hours Transition into Focused User Groups: The best part about the Office Hours program was direct Linden-Resident communications, but it was often a challenge to find the best Office Hours (or Linden) to give your feedback to. And, the conversations were sometimes not as focused or productive as they could have been. For us, we struggled with the unstructured nature of Office Hours. They were not effective enough in getting the right pieces of feedback to the right people who could act upon it–the Product Managers and teams–or creating a broader, representative sample of what most Residents thought about the topic.

Today, we are announcing a new approach–User Groups. User Groups are product or community focused and each one is led by the Linden responsible for the specific topic. The User Group program is about opening up a more representative and focused dialogue about user needs. Most User Groups are public and may include any or all of the following: inworld meetings, JIRA sections, a Twitter feed, an SL Forum, and/or an SL email list. It’s up to the User Group leader and the core Resident team to determine how they best communicate with one another. The discussions should be open, direct, and be more forward-looking and focus more on how we can improve your user experience.

A complete list of User Groups, and their Linden owners, is available here on the Second Life wiki and there’s also a Google Calendar where you can see all User Group meetings and add them to your calendar. Many User Groups will have several Linden team members participating, in addition to the User Group leader. All User Group leaders will be publicly posting agendas and notes from each meeting that may include an audio recording or a text chat log. So, whether you are a participant in a specific User Group or not, it will be easy to check in and see what’s going on in any area that you’re interested in.

Submit Bug Reports in JIRA: For those that aren’t familiar with JIRA, it is our public bug tracking system and it’s the best place to go to let us know about bugs or suggest new features that are proposed in User Group meetings or outside of those sessions.

Our development teams actively review the bugs that you submit in JIRA and do one of several things: place the item onto a development team backlog to address, ask the submitter to contact Support or provide more information if the developer cannot reproduce the bug, or close it and explain why we aren’t going to tackle this particular bug or idea.

It’s also important to note that we are going to remove the “voting” feature in JIRA in one month. Today, we do not use voting to triage or to make product decisions and the last thing that we want to do is set false expectations. So, when you are interested in what action we will take on a particular JIRA, use the JIRA “Watch” feature so that you will be  immediately updated in email when there are new comments on that particular JIRA issue. We will continue to use the number of Watchers as an indication of the level of interest.

PLACES TO CONNECT WITH ONE ANOTHER

Find Solutions SL Answers: If you haven’t explored SL Answers yet, then you definitely should try it. Second Life Answers is the best place to ask questions and get answers from other  knowledgeable Second Life Residents. It’s a very helpful tool when you  need to have your questions answered quickly. And, if you’re a long time  Resident, you should jump in and help answer questions and help out  your noobie friends.

Participate in SL Forums: SL Forums are a great place to connect with other Residents on specific topics. As I mentioned earlier, we’re going to roll out a new community platform for Forums that is easier to use and more organized. Look for that next month when User Groups will be adding specific areas for lively discussions with our Product Managers on topics relevant to each User Group.

Join the SL Email Lists: Late last year, we cleaned up the old SL email lists and created a few new ones to accommodate discussions happening among smaller communities that may not have any other way of connecting–ranging from the open source community to the educators in Second Life. The lists are a great resource to use when you want to tap into the collective wisdom of a group. Take a look at the current SL email lists that are available and join the ones that most interest you. If you would like to suggest a new list, then just email me (address below) or drop me a note card (SL: Amanda Linden).

GET THE LATEST SECOND LIFE AND LINDEN LAB NEWS

Check out the SL Blogs to Get Second Life and Linden Lab News: The SL Blogs are always the best place to go for news and information about Second Life. As is true with Forums, we’ll be rolling out a new Blog structure next month–and be blogging about it shortly. So, stay tuned!

Follow Us on Twitter: Twitter is a great way to get the latest and greatest information about Linden Lab and Second Life. There are many lists to choose from and we encourage you to follow us and join the conversation. The primary Twitter account to follow, if you want immediate notices of blog posts and other news, is @SecondLife. For a complete list of official Linden Lab/Second Life Twitter feeds, click here. This page will constantly be updated, so check back often. We also actively follow these hashtags: #sl, #secondlife, #slviewer2, #slmarketplace and suggest that you do, too.

Like Us on Facebook: Facebook is the best place to find out about cool things going on in Second Life, share ideas, and get the inside scoop on inworld events, contests, machinima releases, PR activities, fun discussions, and more. Come join over 111,000 people who have “Liked” our Second Life Facebook page.

Of course, these communication programs are evolving, and we look forward to your feedback on these changes and other suggestions on how we can continue to improve our community communication programs. Feel free to leave comments here or email me at amanda at lindenlab dot com.

What gadgets can I use to control Second Life?

At a minimum, you need a keyboard and mouse to use Second Life. But they’re not the only options.

While it’s largely uncharted territory, some experimenting with other input devices — or even maximizing what you already have — can yield great results. In other words, taking an hour to customize your controls can save you many more hours down the road.

(Even more adventurous in our history, see The Rig and Hands Free 3D.)

For example, most mice (including popular Microsoft and Logitech models) already have drivers that let you map extra buttons to keyboard shortcuts. Some builders I know mapped side buttons to Link (Ctrl-L) and Unlink (Ctrl-Shift-L) so they can quickly modify sets of prims when building. For awhile, I mapped a side button to Ctrl-Shift-S for taking a snapshot — until I figured out something even better (more on that in a bit).

We’ll check out more gadgets later in this post.

What’s the next step up from keyboard shortcuts?

Macros! With a macro, you can execute a whole sequence of keystrokes from a single keyboard shortcut. And in turn, you can make a single mouse click trigger that macro. There are various macro programs out there; on the Windows side I like PhraseExpress, but I recommend checking out Lifehacker for lots of info you can precisely apply to Second Life.

Ever feel like the keyboard and mouse are too stiff to see what’s going on? While it isn’t the most publicized thing, many machinimatographers (moviemakers) and other fans of smooth motion are fond of the SpaceNavigator (learn more about usage), which has been marketed as a “mouse alternative” and makes it easier to zoom through scenes because it was built with 3D in mind. While it’s been awhile since Linden Lab declared official partnering with 3Dconnexion (makers of SpaceNavigator), the setup still works the same way in the latest Viewer (2.4 as of this writing), and what you need to do is:

1. Install the SpaceNavigator drivers.
2. Plug the SN into a free USB port.
3. Start the Second Life Viewer and login (it’s easier to test when you’re inworld).
4. Go to Me menu > Preferences.
5. In the PREFERENCES window, click the Move & View tab.
6. Click the Other Devices button.

It should recognize the SpaceNavigator by name here. The default settings work fairly well and all the fields may look scary, but here’s an example setup which is good for capturing inworld sporting events. Notice it disables Pitch Scale (0.00) so you don’t get flip-flopped upside down when tracking motion:

An odd thing about the specific SpaceNavigator model that I have is that it’s gone up in price over time. This is because the “cheaper” ones some of us got ages ago were a “PE” model: functionally the same hardware-wise but lacking the same level of tech support — something to consider if you use the SN with other apps. Typically, you can find the “SE” model for under US0 on Amazon and other places, although if you hunt around on eBay, you may be able to score one closer to US, which is what the old price was.

The SpaceNavigator isn’t the only USB input device compatible with SL: I’ve heard from Residents using XBOX 360 controllers and other gamepads and joysticks. None of these have been certified to work for sure, so before you go exploring, I recommend doing research for pre-existing experiences and buying from somewhere with a good return policy.

What other input options are worth considering?

Not long ago, I acquired a Scythe USB Foot Switch to solve a problem: taking photos and videos when my hands are busy with the keyboard and mouse! Now, all I have to do to grab some footage is STOMP! It’s a lot of fun, the Foot Switch seems to be built pretty well.

Mine is the 3-pedal model and looks somewhat like a guitar stomp box. I got it for about US from Newegg; cheaper 1-pedal and 2-pedal versions also exist. The setup software is really crude but you can map it to most keys on your keyboard. One drawback is that I could only find Windows-compatible software, although interestingly enough, it retains the keys in memory so you might be able to set it up on a Windows machine (or Boot Camp install), then plug it into a Mac. I’m unsure of Linux compatibility.

In my specific (read: geeky) setup, I’ve been using the F-keys at the top of my keyboard as PhraseExpress triggers. That way, I can have the Foot Switch setup so:

1. The left pedal is mapped to F11 – Starts/stops movie capture in FRAPS.
2. The middle pedal is mapped to F10 – Triggers PhraseExpress macro to (1) take a snapshot to disk (good ol’ Ctrl-`), (2) hide the UI and take another snapshot to disk, and (3) send a postcard. Whew! I did this because postcards are flaky and I wanted to have an easy copy of the hi-fi original.
3. The right pedal is mapped to F12 – Takes a picture in FRAPS.

Note that the F-keys themselves are pretty much arbitrary and I’ve configured this simply as I feel comfortable. I’m still exploring the possibilities and these are very specific needs, but specific needs are often the most timesaving for one’s particular workflow. And you can always adapt these principles to your own processes.

Can you remap Second Life’s keys?

Yes, you can. It’s not the most user-friendly but it’s not brain surgery, either. What you need to do is open a text file and change some lines. I previously wrote the “Keyboard mapping” help page to show you how.

Have a question or a tip about using input devices with Second Life? Ask/answer away in the comments!

No matter where you are in the world, it’s always sunny somewhere in Second Life. The SL editorial team is getting ready for “Spring Break” with a search for the hottest beaches and outdoor club spots to spotlight in the Destination Guide, as well as the March edition of The Sandbox newsletter.

2010 ended on a positive note for the Second Life economy, with several key measures growing while others remained stable as compared to Q3 numbers.

Total money supply, LindeX volume, and web merchandise sales volume were all up between 6% and 8%, indicating growth in economic activity. Also, the L$ rebounded strongly from Q3, appreciating 3.7% quarter to quarter.

When comparing 2009 to 2010 measures, average monthly repeat log-ins were up 8%, average monthly economic participants were up 4.3%, annual web merchandise sales volume was up 104%, and the world size grew by 5.8%.

For a definition of the metrics in this post, please see this wiki page. Click on each image below to see a larger version.

AVERAGE MONTHLY REPEAT LOGINS

Repeat logins gained 1% this quarter. Average monthly repeat logins in 2010 rose 8% over the 2009 average.

USER HOURS

User hours were flat this quarter, appearing to stabilize after a gradual decline in the prior four quarters. Total user hours in 2010 fell 10%  from 2009.

AVERAGE MONTHLY ECONOMIC PARTICIPANTS

Economic participants were flat in Q4, remaining in the historical five-quarter range. Year over year, the 2010 average of monthly economic participants was up 4% from 2009’s average.

AVERAGE EXCHANGE RATE

Increasing demand and falling supply on the LindeX caused a 3.7% appreciation in the value of the L$ in Q4.* The average L$ value in 2010 was within 1% of the average value in 2009.

*Note that the exchange rate is expressed in L$/USD, meaning larger numbers represent a lower L$ value and smaller numbers represent a higher L$ value. The average rate is calculated by dividing the total L$ exchanged through the LindeX by the total US$ exchanged through the LindeX in the quarter.

L$ SUPPLY

Money supply grew significantly in Q4 to US.4m worth of L$, 8% over Q3. The year end money supply in 2010 was 11.9% over 2009.

LINDEX VOLUME

Mirroring money supply growth, volume on the LindeX grew 8% in Q4, nearing the top end of the historical five-quarter range. Total LindeX volume in 2010 was nearly US9m, 2.8% over 2009. This means that an additional USm traded hands on the LindeX in 2010.

WEB MERCHANDISE SALES VOLUME

Driven by greater merchant adoption and improved shopping features, web merchandise sales volume grew 5.8% in Q4. 2010 web sales volume was up 104% relative to 2009.

WORLD SIZE

World size remained flat in Q4; 2010 year end world size was up 5.8% relative to 2009. Today, Second Life’s virtual land mass would be roughly twice the size of Hong Kong.