Google's Virtual World

It looks like Google may be launching their own virtual world by the end of this year. It will probably use the data from Google Earth, i.e. be a virtual replica of the real world. It will be interesting to see what Google does with it. Since it doesn't look like there will sword fighting any time soon, I probably won't abandon Second Life, but knowing Google they probably have some pretty cool stuff planned. At the same time, it appears that Linden Labs is working on opening up Second Life as much as possible:

"We imagine a future where Second Life is able grow beyond the borders of Linden Lab. We see regions running on open source, alternative simulators. We see web services that allow people to build mash-ups of Second Life and the Web. We see organizations being able to integrate their members and their members’ avatars. This is the vision of future Second Life Grid that we want to develop."

So it's possible we will see a future where the best parts of Google's new virtual world are integrated into Second Life.

Google is also going to announce on November 5 a new API that will be similar to Facebook's application API. Basically, web developers will be able to leverage social aspects of Google's tools such as Orkut and Google Talk on their own webpages. This is pretty huge, as it has the implication of turning the entire internet into a social network if the API is used extensively. The Google Talk API, for example, could be used to easily create an area in a webpage where everyone currently looking at that page could chat with each other. Imagine if this new social internet was completely accessible from and integrated into Google's virtual world. I think the next 5 years should be pretty interesting.

p.s.: Didn't Google try to buy Linden Labs earlier this year?

Jokes

I found a list of computer science jokes. I was a bit disturbed by the guy pointing at me and laughing.

Quality Metrics

Linden Labs now has a page showing Service Quality metrics. Right now, it just shows a bar graph of planned and unplanned interruptions since March. The trend doesn't look good. Hopefully the fact that they have made this information publicly available indicates that they hope and expect to improve it.

Talk Like a Pirate Day

I've never been very good at pirate talk. Let me give it a try.

"I can burn you a copy of Spiderman 3 if you want."

p.s.: I realize the bold I added in my last post isn't very visible. I added underlining to make it stand out more. If you missed it, my final comment may not have made much sense.

ToS Problem Resolved

Ok, I got my alt working again by going to live chat support a third time. I spoke with "Patrick" again, but this time convinced him to actually fix my account. I got this amusing email when they fixed both of my accounts. I emphasized my favorite phrase in bold.

Dear Colin Kiernan,

Greetings from Second Life. Occasionally, Linden Lab needs to determine the cause of bugs, simulator slowdowns, and various other occurrences that you may have experienced while in Second Life.

While fixing a bug, we were able to trace it to something that your avatar may have been doing, or something they may have seen. For this reason, we have disabled your ability to log in to Second Life while we examine your logs and try to determine the cause.

Your account will be returned shortly (usually within a 1/2 hour), and no changes will be made to your character or account other than those required to resolve the problem.

Your account will be restored as soon as we resolve the specific issue, and we will notify you via email when that happens. We apologize for the inconvenience. Please feel free to contact us if you have further questions.

Best Wishes,

Linden Lab

"Sir, we have tracked the problem with your account to last Friday, when your avatar witnessed a double homocide involving a pregnant woman and a kitten. It was extremely traumatic."

Comments from the Official Linden Blog

Sometimes I wonder what percentage of Linden Lab's employees take anti-depressants.

"…we value free expression, bla bla bla"

"How about the account history page NOT updating for hours…a problem that exists since last thursday?

Good morning Linden…hope you guys/gals had a good rest - at least your sleep seems to be very sound !"

"It’s posts like these that make me laugh quietly to myself."

"WOW…… right now i can’t remember any of the bugs i was working around all the time that HASN’T been fixed!!! GREAT WORK!!!"

"You know this may be alittle OFF TOPIC - but you keep on with this new CRAP! I WANT YOU TO FIX THE SOFTWARE FIRST ! I have crashed 24 times today - get that LL 24 friggin times. This time EVERY NIGHT (LISTEN NOW) EVERY NIGHT I start jerking and jagging and stuttering and slobbering all over myself. I push 8md bandwidth !!! HEAR THAT LL ???? It’s not on MY SIDE> I am damn tired of it. You charge me $9.95 every friggin month “ON TIME” cause that’s the only software you HAVE that WORKS!!!!!!!!!!!!! I am sick and tired of friggin posting here cause you never fix crap - you never answer OR resolve “BUG REPORTS” you do nothing but introduce new crap that screws things up more. You are loosing premium members and “gaining” newbies that don’t pay crap!!! I am sick and tired of you not addressing the issues brought up in the blog replies. You whistle and bell us and give us a story. LL you have some SERIOUS ISSUES to address. Some of which are SECURITY ISSUES>which I have told you about the bugs in your software and you ignore. You take our money - on time. When your “cracked” software allows avatars to poof objects and manipulate other avatars and access my funds - you have a serious problem -YET YOU PAY NO ATTENTION TO IT OR ANSWER MY REPORTS!!!! That’s “good” business! You pay absolutly no attention to “bug” or “abuse” reports except send me an email. I can use your online support fine “that works” half the time to waste 70 minutes to get no where and cut off. Your relationship with PayPal - well let’s just say PayPAl don’t like you. Straight up!!! Everytime I do PayPal I call to call you - on MY DIME to set it straight - let me hear you explain that LL. It does get straight but it costs me another 5 bucks long distance to do that. How many lindens it that LL? You can remove this post if you don’t like the truth."

"/me laughs at yet another half-done pseudo-effort of problem solving."

These are all from the past few weeks or so. Some of the best ones were from the Wednesday maintenance posts back when they shut down the grid every two weeks. I might go back and look through those if I find myself with nothing better to do.

Can LL change anything without a bug?

LL made a change to the Terms of Service today. The nature of the change isn't the topic here, although it appears to be beneficial. The problem is I now can't log in to SL as I have to agree to the new ToS, but the dialog is stuck on "loading..." and won't let me choose to agree. I have tried restarting the client. Grr...

Update: I went to the support page on the website and connected to live chat. "Jake" asked what my problem was, I told him, he said "I will fix this" and then a few minutes later "fixed". I successfully logged in (I didn't see the ToS box). So...I avoided agreeing to the new ToS...?

Update 2: I am having the same problem with my alt (who I haven't introduced yet, that post is coming), but since my alt doesn't have a premium account, I can't use live chat. I went back to my normal account and back into live chat, telling them I was having the problem with an alt. This time "Patrick" said they knew about that problem and were working on it. I asked if there was a work-around, and he said they were asking people to just wait a few minutes until it loads. I think I have been waiting close to 10 minutes now. Where is "Jake"!?