Announcement: Metaversatility!

Filed under: News

There's a new player in town, brushing up against Metaverse Development Companies like Electric Sheep Company and Rivers Run Red: Metaversatility! I'll let the press release speak for itself:

San Antonio, Texas, December 11, 2006 - As virtual worlds receive more and more serious media attention, it has become apparent that development and service companies are needed to build virtual spaces and brands. Metaversatility, Inc. was formed to meet this need. With five founding shareholders, Metaversatility brings a unique blend of skills and experience to the virtual world development sphere.

Metaversatility founders Adrienne Haik (known as Adri Saarinen in Second Life), Dr. Aaron Delwiche, Peter Haik (known as Peter Newell in Second Life), Dr. John Plevyak, and Matt Daly represent a combination of creativity, experience, and academic credentials. Other team members include Rebecca Small (known in Second Life as Haver Cole) as client liaison, Brian Hayes as sales and business development, and Inga Munsinger Cotton as general counsel. They are well prepared to serve the needs of both traditional and exclusively-virtual clients.

Metaversatility offers a full range of metaverse services that spans multiple virtual worlds. Equipped to work in Second Life, There.com, Multiverse, and Open Croquet, Metaversatility also keeps a close watch on developments in other virtual worlds as they emerge. Metaversatility specializes in promotions, branding, and application development as well as metaverse orientation and business strategy consulting. Recent clients include Creative Commons, PopSci.com, the Metaverse Messenger, ICANN, SL Bank, and Dublin in SL.

While excited about the possibilities of the broadening metaverse, the Metaversatility team is also concerned with the social and cultural implications of this expansion. As long-time metaverse residents, they feel it is vitally important to maintain the freedom of imagination and intellectual development virtual spaces often represent.

Metaversatility Inc. is incorporated and headquartered in the state of Texas. For more information about Metaversatility, the team, services offered, and a portfolio of work, visit http://www.metaversatility.com.

Congratulations, Adri and Peter! This couldn't have happened to nicer folks, and I look forward to seeing what you bring to SL!

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Just Askin': How Useful is a Reputation System?

Filed under: How-To

Currently, you can right-click someone's avatar, and choose 'Rate'. This gives you the opportunity to rate someone in one of three categories: Overall behavior, Skill at appearance, and Skill at building. It costs 25L per rating, and you can leave a little message in the text field that accompanies the ratings. Sure, it's a nice thing to do, but other than that, is it useful?

For one thing, my understanding is that there used to be a Negative option that has since been removed. I can see how that could quickly become fodder for bad feelings, but it can't all be wine and roses. For another thing, wouldn't it be useful to have more categories, or at least, more specific ones? Or a category for scripting?

None of this even ties in to a database, so it's not kept track of by LL; it's just a little thing that the resident in question can tally up, but without knowing the taste, or level of critical thought that the rater employs, there's no way to know if these positive ratings are worth anything. Why is it still in use?

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Place searching spends some time kissing the canvas

Filed under: News, Linden Labs, Exploration

Like a punch-drunk, exhausted boxer, Search > Places kissed the canvas again for a count of nearly two hours from 14:35 SLT. No reason was given in the official notice, but the event markers for the map are still offline so you can probably guess that it was load and scaling issues. If it isn't (and even if it is) then hey ... we'd love to hear about it.

Pugilistic references aside, though, quite aside from being told when it goes down and when it comes back up, it would be nice to know if we can expect this sort of thing to continue to occur. In case we might be planning on showing around our friends, relatives, co-workers or customers, for example. If there's a strong likelyhood of this sort of thing continuing to happen this week, we might want to reschedule.

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Thomson NETg responds to the recent removal of paid educational event support by Linden Lab

Filed under: Educational, News, Odds and Ends

Well, in the wake of the termination of Instructor subsidies, the educational support is just rolling in, isn't it? Thomson NETg describes themselves as an education company that provides online live classes with two instructors and self-paced courses with 24x7 online mentoring across an extensive array of topics to hundreds of thousands of learners and thousands of companies.

For the last seven months, Thomson NETg have been running streaming audio/video classes in Second Life on their own island. Thomson NETg has partnered with the Academy of Second Learning (ASL). Thomson NETg is providing funding to ASL to manage the overall program so they can recruit, train, and deploy "a significant number of instructors in Second Life. Once everything is fully up and running, we are looking to provide in excess of 1,000 free classes per month."

Thomson NETg is looking to ASL to ensure that instructors that participate in this program are certified and maintain a high standard of quality.

We wondered if NCI was going to take advantage of this model to help with class funding and support and to supplement the sponsorship scheme that they recently began. Carl Metropolitan replied, "No--so far, NCI has had good luck in finding our own funding sources. But we can't teach classes for everyone. Multiple funding sources are good for SL education."

He was, however, very positive about the program, "It's a good a thing for education in SL--another choice for Instructors in the post-LL funding world. I think ASL is an excellent choice to administer the program for NETg."

Selaras Partridge, head and manager of ASL, was not immediately available for comment, but we expect to speak with her in the near future about this, and other educational matters in Second Life.

If you're interested in signing with ASL and Thomson NETg as an instructor, you should grab an application form from ASL in sim Eson.

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Maker of the Linxter™ suite responds to the recent removal of paid educational event support by Linden Lab

Filed under: Educational, News, Business, Odds and Ends

Nerine Kasei of Useful Technology (whom we recently mentioned) offers us the following information about supporting instructor/educators in Second Life, now that Instructor subsidies are no longer paid by Linden Lab. We'll be hearing more about Nerine Kasei and Useful Technology before their launch on the 17th of December.

Plantation, FL - Useful Technology[TM] Corporation, an emerging next generation technology company and makers of the Linxter[TM] software suite, announced today that it will offer educational stipends to instructors who hold their classes on Usability Island, the company's virtual outreach island in Second Life.

As Second Life continues to grow, so do the responsibilities and roles of Linden Lab, the creators of the online virtual world. CEO Jason Milgram believed that while Linden Lab removed monetary support for educators within Second Life, they have instilled enough community spirit to inspire others to follow in their footsteps. Milgram hopes that Usability Island will not only assist programmers, designers and artists, but educators and nonprofits as well.
"Supporting educators within Second Life is an important cornerstone of this user created virtual world." said Milgram. "Useful Technology's goal is to create new paths and opportunities for information exchange. Second Life allows individuals, regardless of geographic location, to interact with each other, as well as organizations and businesses in a way previously not possible. We are glad to be able to extend the use of our island to support educators and provide them stipends, assisting with the continued growth of this multimedia rich interactive world."

After educators register with Useful Technology[TM], they will be granted full access to the Usability Island Educator Center to prepare for future classes. Classes will be required to be open to the general public for free. After a successful class where more than five people attend, an educational stipend will be offered to the instructor.

Instructors will also be given access to other services on Usability Island, such as interactive surveys with immediate result reporting, a public amphitheater for large events and event advertising throughout the island. Also, instructors will be able to rent booth space at the Usability Mall to conduct product or service usability studies at a reduced rate.

Milgram noted that a public beta of the Linxter[TM] software, including secure tools to allow Second Life users to extend their virtual identities while not logged into the virtual world, will be available mid-December. The software will be a free download for end users.

About Useful Technology: Useful Technology[TM] Corporation was founded in 2003 with the goal of creating new paths and opportunities for information exchange. Useful Technology is an IBM Business Partner as well as a member of Microsoft's partner program. Its prestigious advisory board includes: former Secretary of Commerce for the state of Florida, Charles Dusseau; Alfred Seifert, the former Director to the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command at the Pentagon; Gregory Brill, founder and president of Infusion Development; Stephen Rosenthal, the former United States Department of Justice attorney; Arne Themmen, a Senior Vice President with Northern Trust Bank of Florida; and Stephanie Toothaker, a partner with Blosser & Sayfie and a government relations specialist who previously served as Special Counsel to United States Senator Robert Graham assisting the U.S. Senator in his role as chairman of the Senate Intelligence committee.

The makers of Secure Email and The Linxter [TM] Suite, Useful Technology Corporation is headquartered in Plantation, Florida. For more information: http://www.useful-technology.com or call 954-727-8482.

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Inventory Migration nearly complete

Filed under: News, Linden Labs

Jeska Linden, comm-monkey for the week, reports that the week-long migration of some residents' inventories to a new server is 'almost done' and that they're hoping to have the inventory data consistent and correct 'when it is ready'. Apparently no actual ETA is specified, "As of today, this process almost complete."

Residents with missing inventory after that point (whenever it is) should file abuse reports, then contact either Kona Linden or Beast Linden with the tracking numbers that they get in email. Hopefully we'll get an update when that point actually happens.

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Active users figure unsticks

Filed under: News, Linden Labs

After being stuck at 690,800 for one hour less than eight full days, the logged in last 60 days figure has just unstuck itself, and is now showing 789,440. This still doesn't address the rather more mysterious issues surrounding this figure and why it should be so comparatively low.

Right now, we don't know if it means what Linden Lab apparently thinks it means, or how it is derived or calculated, but either it or the signup figures are seriously wrong. We heard from Linden Lab's Community Development Team late on Friday that they are investigating this, and hope to have more information to share on this disparity soon.

To put the disparity into a more everyday frame of reference, about 5,000 people signed up each day over the last 60 days that never logged into SL, even once -- at least according to this metric.

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