Small update to Avatars United

I recently noticed a branding update at the Avatars United site. Instead of the Avatars United logo, it was changed with Second Life and a link to launch Second Life was added.

At first I thought it was kinda odd because it would alienate users from all other platform. To be sure I made a new avatar on my account page, made it a Lotro account and set it as the active account. At that point the banner changed back again to what it was before.

Kinda interesting, any thoughts?

cross-post from Franscharming.com

LL has a new Open Source Director.

Scott Lawrence just joined Linden Lab and has become Oz Linden. A aptly chosen name that alludes to the wizard behind the curtain and Open Source in general. Scott will be the new Director of Open Development, taking over from Rob Lanphier who has left LL a couple of months ago.

Rob had been the Open Source 'busybody' for about three years at LL before moving on. He has was greatly appreciated and during his absence it became clear that a dedicated open source person was being missed. It took some time for LL to find the right person to fill his shoes.

For the last ~7 years Scott has been been leading the Open Source sipXecs SIP PBX project. His new role at the Lab will be as he puts it: "to expand and improve the open source viewer program".

Besides being the Director of Open Development, he will also be heading up the Applied Engineering team with the "mission of making our sustaining activities for the viewer even more responsive to the needs of our Residents".

Hopefully Oz Linden will be able to fill the Lab and the open source community with renewed energy to work on great new features and improvements in collaboration with each other.

If you have a facebook account you can see him here scooting around on his motorized skateboard!

You can read his introduction email here.

Hat tip to Opensource Obscure.

Troubles with the Second Life Blogger group. [Update]

If you are one of the people who gets innudated with emails after the Second Life bloggers group moved from Ning to Grouply,  Eddi Haskell has written a explanation on how to get yourself removed.

Ning is changing to a paid service only and the Second Life bloggers group moved to Grouply consequently. At first we where invited to create a new account at Grouply, but I and I assume many others choose not to do that. I never really used the Ning group anyway in the several years I was a member. Apparently all of the almost 1500 members got transferred over anyway, causing quite a stir because group messages work differently and seem to be emailed to every one. What caused some people with auto responders on their email to broadcast their phone numbers and emails to all the other member. 

I'm assuming good intentions of the group owners, and not having known the difference in behaviour of the services. I hope if you are affected you can get yourself removed, or with the help of the group owners.

End Public Safety Message.

update: Zoe Connolly posted the following

To all Second Life Bloggers.My deepest and sincerest apologies on the whole Grouply matter. I had no idea it would turn into a spam machine. My blackberry was loaded with spam as well as messages pleading for help and not a few angry ones. 

 Obviously Grouply is NOT the solution.For a temporary fix I've disabled ALL messages on all my Grouply groups until such time as I can delete all of them, any help with how to delete a grouply group would be appreciated. 

 Again I'm so very sorry for the disruptions and it WAS very unprofessional. 

 ~ Zoe Connolly

Most Excellent Machinima Music Video - Potlatch - "Plant Her"

This is one of the most impressive Music Videos made in Second Life that I have seen. I think what makes this video work so well for me, is in the editing. Which is a art in it self.

This does not mean it is perfect, but it brings us right to the edge of what works well in doing SL machinima. Make sure to watch it in full screen.

Potlatch - "Plant Her" (Music video) from Arbit Delacroix on Vimeo.

Official music video for "Plant Her" by Potlatch from the album "Ravenshadow" on Louipimps Records.Music written and produced by PotlatchSecond Life machinima filmed at Butterdish, China, Pixel Mode and Cloudcroft.

The singing by the avatar is done well, I don't think the lipsync tech in SL is good enough yet to do this properly. But this is a great effort with a great result.

Two of the scenes that I found particularly interesting, was the camera scene in the white room and the man that drowned the old school newbie. At least that is what I imagine he did, maybe it is a metaphor to getting rid of our inner noob.