Online operators avoid balls-up with football trademarks
The last time we saw any statistical data on overall awareness of intellectual property issues, it seemed that awareness of copyright and trademarks was quite appallingly low – and actual accurate knowledge about them was a very rare thing indeed. Surprisingly few people seem to know their ...
The Virtual Whirl: A brief history of Second Life (2004)
2004: Features, bugs and Tringo In 2004, versions 1.3, 1.4 and 1.5 brought a slew of new features and enhancements: new group tools and abilities, expanded estate controls, new prim shapes and settings, audio streaming on parcels, custom animations, XML-RPC communication with scripted objects from ...
The Virtual Whirl: A brief history of Second Life (2002-2003)
2002-2003: Beta, taxes, layoffs and the road to economy In November 2002, closed beta testing of the newly dubbed Second Life began, and open beta followed in April 2003. The user interface was primarily green in color. Second Life initially suffered from a tragedy of the commons, so a rudimentary ...
The Virtual Whirl: A brief history of Second Life
Second Life has just seen its seventh anniversary (called its seventh birthday, only it technically isn't -- the original birthday is in March, but the anniversary is in June. There's history there). It's also traditionally a time when Linden Lab and Second Life users most often treat each other as ...
The Virtual Whirl: A crisis of confidence
Most things in the world operate on faith. Governments, currencies, intellectual property, human rights and brands all require certain minimum levels of belief and confidence in order to function. When it comes to virtual environments, as I've maintained in the past, faith is critical. ...
The Virtual Whirl: The bottom line
Hot topic of the week would be the Linden Lab layoffs. 30% of the staff (roughly 110 or so individuals) were laid off this week in a round of layoffs that we spotted ahead of the official announcements. Additional staff have been shed since the beginning of the year. Staff have been dropped from ...
Linden Lab laying off staff, closing Singapore office
Back in April, we observed the departure of what we estimate to be approximately 5% or so of Linden Lab's total headcount. Some churn is to be expected, of course, especially in a tech company. It seemed a little odd that the positions didn't appear to have been advertised or refilled, but sometimes ...
The Virtual Whirl: Is one hour enough to be considered an active user?
It has long been a matter of considerable debate among virtual-environment pundits about what constitutes an 'active user'. In some ways, subscription MMOGs have it a lot easier than many other kinds of virtual environment. You can always count paying subscribers, and that's all that matters. In a ...
2010 Linden Prize winner: The Tech Virtual
The online arm of the San Francisco Jose based "The Tech" museum has been announced as the winner of this year's second annual humanitarian Linden Prize. The Tech Virtual museum will collect the US$10,000 prize for projects that "[elevate] the human condition through using Second Life," and ...
The Virtual Whirl: Linden Lab short-lists viral poultry for humanitarian prize
In just a few more days, the winner of the second annual Linden Prize is going to be revealed, and the ten finalists have been announced. The stated criteria for the Linden prize are projects that "[elevate] the human condition through using Second Life," and "that improve the way people work, ...
