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 enemies and obstacles; and it is a time for retrospectives and for considering the future.

With the departure of Linden Lab CEO Mark Kingdon (the press release release says "stepping down," but the day prior to the release many Linden staffers were saying that Kingdon was fired) Linden Lab has hit a turning point -- or the end of another era.

Accordingly, over the next couple of weeks, we're going to look at the history of Second Life, starting back in 1999 and continuing to the present day. Or at least as much as we can cover the ten-year history of something so rich and diverse in the available space.

Second Life is quite legitimately a phenomenon (and even won an Emmy award). It was also something of an accident, since it wasn't what Linden Lab started out to make.

Continue reading The Virtual Whirl: A brief history of Second Life

The Virtual Whirl: A brief history of Second Life originally appeared on Massively on Sat, 26 Jun 2010 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

April Fools' Day is quite the hodge-podge in Second Life. Linden Lab doesn't generally pull pranks on the user-population (some may disagree with us on that) but there are hordes of different groups and communities, and even a relatively low percentage of hoaxers lead to literally hundreds of hoaxes, almost all of which are spread by word-of-mouth.

We'll quickly round up some of the most common gags that are going around this year (a few of which are perennials).

• Linden Lab is going back to charging for teleportation (the sum of L$1 per teleport). This one's formatted as a press-release, though the grammar is quirky enough to be a tip-off. Besides, this one came around the last two years as well.
• Linden Lab has been purchased outright by [Microsoft/Activision-Blizzard/Electric Sheep/7-11/NCsoft/AOL/Worlds.com/IBM].

Continue reading April Fools' Day 09: Second Life users pull the other one

April Fools' Day 09: Second Life users pull the other one originally appeared on Massively on Wed, 01 Apr 2009 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Cory Ondrejka, co-founder of the virtual world of Second Life and ex-CTO of Linden Lab has switched roles. No, it's not actually another virtual world, but we're mentioning it anyway, because we know you all love Ondrejka, or love to hate him. Either way.

Ondrejka's moving in with EMI (one of the 'big four' record companies) as their senior vice-president of Digital Strategy. 'It's time to take everything I learned about innovation, community, intangible items, markets, economics, and technology building Second Life and apply it to a much larger arena,' said Ondrejka today, 'There are a million and one difficult problems to solve, but I'm absolutely thrilled about my new role.'

Continue reading Second Life's genius cuddles up with music giant

Second Life's genius cuddles up with music giant originally appeared on Massively on Mon, 09 Jun 2008 10:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

The source code for llMozlib2 (an essential piece of glue library enabling in-world and in-viewer HTML rendering for Second Life) is now available on Linden Lab's public subversion version control system, and is now the single source of the code, rather than having a second (possibly divergent) version tucked away in an internal repository.

Linden Lab so far is continuing to release source code for both viewer and server-side components progressively (a process initially announced in late 2005 and given an expected timeline of several years), despite some fears that the process might suddenly cease after the departure of Linden Lab CTO Cory Ondrejka. While only a few server-side components have so far been released, there is no sign yet that that process will be or is being stemmed.

llMozlib2 source code now available originally appeared on Massively on Tue, 18 Mar 2008 01:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Yes, we know that technically it's already been beta since 6 February 2006. However, Cory Ondrejka called that a an alpha test, so we're willing to more or less go with that. The Linux Second Life viewer entered closed alpha, and open alpha a mere four days later.

Now, just over two years later, the Linux viewer is finally considered to have entered the beta phase. With the introduction of gstreamer support for media, and 3D voice support, the viewer has finally achieved comparable functionality with the viewers for Mac and for Windows -- only it runs faster and smoother. On average about 15% faster on the same hardware than the Windows version based on our tests.

Four days from closed alpha to open alpha, then 25 months to open beta. How long until production, we wonder.

Second Life viewer for Linux goes beta originally appeared on Massively on Wed, 05 Mar 2008 23:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Gallery: Metaverse U 2008

Continue reading Metaverse U conversation: Raph Koster, Cory Ondrejka, Howard Rheingold

Metaverse U conversation: Raph Koster, Cory Ondrejka, Howard Rheingold originally appeared on Massively on Mon, 18 Feb 2008 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Stanford University's Metaverse U Conference originally appeared on Massively on Thu, 31 Jan 2008 08:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

It's been no less a tumultuous year for Second Life in 2007 this year than any previous year, frankly. There are a few standout items though.

This isn't the list that anyone else might make - We might completely skip over one of the things you see as standing out as a huge impact, based solely on that we don't actually think it was that big a deal in the scheme of things.

Continue reading Peering inside - looking back at 2007 [UPDATED]

Peering inside - looking back at 2007 [UPDATED] originally appeared on Massively on Tue, 01 Jan 2008 10:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Linden Lab's departed CTO and co-founder will be spending the (USA) Spring as a visiting professor at USC Annenberg, according to New World Notes, and Ondrejka's new personal blog Collapsing Geography.

According to Ondrejka, "I'm now consulting, writing, and speaking about the economic and technological impact of virtual worlds; the interrelation between innovation and learning; and, the requirements of product development across geographically dispersed teams," at least until he figures out what he's going to do next.

Continue reading Professor Ondrejka

Professor Ondrejka originally appeared on Massively on Sun, 30 Dec 2007 01:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

One-time Linden Lab insider and virtual worlds/games journalist Hamlet Au (Wagner James Au) gathers comments from recently departed Linden Lab staff about the departure of Linden Lab CTO, Cory Ondrejka, and garners additional feedback from Linden Lab CEO Philip Rosedale.

Comments are provided from the former Chadrick Linden, and the former Iridium (once Heretic) Linden. Quite what Ondrejka himself thinks is anyone's guess at the moment.

[via New World Notes]

Ex-Linden staffers on Ondrejka departure originally appeared on Massively on Wed, 19 Dec 2007 23:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Second Life's Cory = Apple, Inc.'s Woz originally appeared on Massively on Wed, 12 Dec 2007 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Ondrejka's leaving Linden Lab at the end of the month. It wouldn't surprise me to see him working for (eg) Google on 2 January. Face it, Ondrejka's hot geek property, any issues of sex-appeal aside.

Recruiters, if you want a piece of Ondrejka, you've probably got very little time to pitch something at him. Whatever Linden Lab's fortunes are, or have been, Ondrejka's the bee's knees right now, both technically and from a PR perspective.

Continue reading Peering inside - What does Cory Ondrejka's departure mean?

Peering inside - What does Cory Ondrejka's departure mean? originally appeared on Massively on Wed, 12 Dec 2007 01:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Shortly after we received Philip Rosedale's official statement on Cory Ondrejka's imminent departure from Linden Lab, a source close to Linden Lab passed us a copy of Ondrejka's internal email about the matter.

Trying to sum up 7 years of work at Linden is an impossible task. All nighters at the Linden Street office. Gaining 20 pounds but then losing 70. Flying 350,000 miles on Linden travel. Recruiting and hiring many of you. Creating a programming language that now had 2.5 billion lines of code written in it - note to self, next time spend more than one night designing language. Changing the world.

Continue reading Cory Ondrejka's departure in his own words

Cory Ondrejka's departure in his own words originally appeared on Massively on Tue, 11 Dec 2007 21:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Linden Lab's CEO, Philp Rosedale has responded with a statement on the departure of Linden Lab CTO Cory Ondrejka.

"I can confirm that Cory Ondrejka, CTO, will be leaving Linden Lab at the end of this year, in order to pursue new professional challenges outside the company. I wanted to take this opportunity to publicly thank Cory for his tremendous contribution to the company and to Second Life, in terms of its original vision and ongoing progress.

Continue reading Philip Rosedale responds to Cory Ondrejka's departure

Philip Rosedale responds to Cory Ondrejka's departure originally appeared on Massively on Tue, 11 Dec 2007 21:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Continue reading [UPDATED] Was Cory Linden fired, or did he quit?

[UPDATED] Was Cory Linden fired, or did he quit? originally appeared on Massively on Tue, 11 Dec 2007 20:17:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.