Blog Entries

Shutting down

alto@altoxeno.com — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 08:00:00 +0100

After a week of fighting comment spam from an Australian website, and some annoyances with my hosting provider, I've reached the conclusion that maintaining this site isn't worth the bother.

So a "thank you" to the roughly 25,000 of you who read this during 2009, despite my not adding any new content. I'll be shutting this down sometime in the next 24 hours, then will think about whether I want to do anything in future with this site.

Alto

A patent on virtual worlds?

alto@altoxeno.com — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 08:00:00 +0100

American patent law is a terrible mess. The latest example of this is a patent infringement suit that claims a Boston company holds a key patent relating to virtual worlds.

Virtual worlds developer Worlds.com, which seems to make custom virtual environments for corporations, is using a patent it filed claim for in August 2000 and was granted in 2007, to sue NCSoft, the Korean maker of virtual worlds such as Lineage, City of Heroes and Guild Wars.

The core of the patent claims a met [...]

R.I.P. Lively

alto@altoxeno.com — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 08:00:00 +0100

In case you missed it, Google has decided to shut down Lively at the end of this year.

I am not surprised. Livelywas neither a realistic competitor for the Second Life virtual world, nor was it going to challenge the social meeting spaces that attract teens and pre-teens. Lively was not all that easy to use, and each time I visited I was left with the distinct impression that the majority of people using it were offering the 3D virtual worlds equivalent of telephone sex.

With the [...]

Taking a Break

alto@altoxeno.com — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 08:00:00 +0100

I am taking a break from Second Life and other virtual worlds. While they still interest me for their potential to change some aspects of business communications and teaching, I am no longer finding participation in them very interesting, so I have decided I need to step back for a while.

I will keep this site running and may post from time to time, but I doubt it will have a great deal of new content anytime soon as my focus will mainly be on other sites I build and operate for m [...]

Second Life Management Problems

alto@altoxeno.com — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 08:00:00 +0100

Linden Laboratories, the developers of the Second Life virtual world, have recently displayed an uncanny knack for making their paid "residents" very unhappy. As I see it, some of the problems stem from the residents themselves, but others are surely the fault of management.

The most recent unrest among residents of SL concerns so-called Openspaces (also known as void regions or opensims). They did not get a whole lot of attention until two years ago, when the original offer (one or [...]

Privacy (not) in Second Life

alto@altoxeno.com — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 08:00:00 +0100

In a post about a week ago, Dusan Writer talked about code in the SL viewer that can be used to track any avatar in SL, any time. This was a "feature" of the SL map until late 2006, when it was turned off, but the underlying code is still there.

Second Inventory, a tool that lets users make backups to their own computers of any inventory items to which they own full permissions, has in its communications tools a function that lets you see the region and exact coordinates of an [...]

China's War of the Worlds?

alto@altoxeno.com — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 08:00:00 +0100

The virtual worlds of China have been pretty quiet for the past year or so, after an initial burst of publicity about HiPiHi, Novoking, and then uWorld. It looks like that is changing, in a hurry.

The "Old" Worlds
HiPiHi's next beta release appears to have been delayed. While I have not seen any official statement to that effect, friends in China seem pretty certain the company is re-thinking its strategy. Concurrency (the number of concurrent users in HiPiHi), has always [...]

Phantom Prims at Sim Boundaries

alto@altoxeno.com — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 08:00:00 +0100

I recently was walking over a bridge connecting two sims when the inevitable happened and I fell through the bridge, which had turned phantom.

This has happened to me more times than I can count in SL. It is annoying because the solution is pretty simple. So, in the hope some of you whose bridges and walkways and paths go phantom at the sim crossing might read it, I have written a short "how to" article which explains how to fix the problem.

While I was writing about mak [...]

Asinine University Administrators

alto@altoxeno.com — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 08:00:00 +0100

There are times I really do despair at the behavior of administration people in universities. For the past month I have been following the extraordinary actions of administration staff in general and IT staff in particular at Carlton University in Ottawa, Canada.

Let me tell you the story as it unfolded.

On September 8 and again on the 10th the news department of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reported the story of 20 year old mathematics and statistics undergraduate studen [...]

Myrl connecting virtual worlds

alto@altoxeno.com — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 08:00:00 +0100

Myrl is an interesting new social networking site that describes itself as a "social gateway for virtual worlds" and asks you to "Join in to build the first collaborative social picture of life in the virtual worlds."

I have started testing it, signing up from SL and using yet another "wear it" item to connect myself from SL to Myrl. The device promptly interfered with my MystiTool, hijacking the location of the MystiTool implant. I will have to select where the (invisible, thankfully [...]

Sony, Microsoft 3D worlds

alto@altoxeno.com — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 08:00:00 +0100

Sony and Microsoft are both making an entry into the 3D space with add-ons for their game consoles, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. Neither is going to be a competitor for the major 3D virtual worlds like Second Life.

Sony's "Home" software is currently in closed beta and the launch of this previously announced software has been dragged out by various delays in development, but I expect it will launch quickly in response to Microsoft's announcement. It is the more sophisticated of the two o [...]

New Virtual World in China

alto@altoxeno.com — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 08:00:00 +0100

IBM today launched in collaboration with the Palace Museum in Beijing, China, a new virtual world which is an interactive simulation of the iconic Chinese landmark, the Forbidden City in Beijing.

The software for accessing this world is large: the Windows download weighs in at 204MB and wants 2GB of free disk space for installation. I have no doubt the Mac OS X and Linux installers (also available today) are of similar mass.

You will also need a good graphics card and monitor. Th [...]

Bots in Second Life

alto@altoxeno.com — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 08:00:00 +0100

Every few months, the issue of bots in SL arises in forums, blogs, and newsmagazines, quickly spawning passionate arguments for and against.

The bots that elicit the greatest anger are alt avatars scripted to stay online almost permanently. Some retail and services vendors in SL use them to give the impression their location is very busy - lots of green dots on the map. This has two potential benefits to the vendor:

Newcomers (noobs) in SL are almost always confused about where t [...]

Tweaking for SL Speed

alto@altoxeno.com — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 08:00:00 +0100

After getting my rebuilt and upgraded PC running smoothly, I spent a while yesterday hunting down tweaks that would make it perform better in SL and other virtual worlds.

The result, after messing with settings in SL and settings on my computer, and applying an update to one software package I use all the time in SL, is that I achieved a visible improvement in render times and cut lag down a great deal. The quality of the visual experience in SL also went up, a lot.

The article de [...]

SL Groups: Need More?

alto@altoxeno.com — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 08:00:00 +0100

How many groups do you belong to in SL? I have hit the limit of 25 on a number of occasions, and am hoping the cap will be raised one of these days. I would prefer that to happen soon.

You may belong to some groups in order to receive update notices and "special sales" notices from retailers; other groups may hold events that you want to be notified of; and other groups may be ones you formed with friends to manage real estate holdings. More group memberships could relate to education [...]

Imprudent SL Viewer?

alto@altoxeno.com — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 08:00:00 +0100

One of the penalties rebuilding some of my computers imposed was, I fell behind in reading blogs, wikis, and other places than interest me. So I am late in coming upon Jacek Antonelli's very interesting project to build a new viewer for SL.

The project aims to initially improve some of the truly annoying aspects of the SL viewer, such as the preferences control. At the same time, the glacially slow pace of applying patches to the viewer will be much accelerated.

The manifesto [...]

Spiral and Circular Stairs

alto@altoxeno.com — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 08:00:00 +0100

Judging from both comments and emails, there seems to be lots of interest in ways to build spiral (circular) stairs in SL. This weekend I have added two more "how to" articles on that topic.

The first article describes how to build a spiral stair of up to 10 meters height using and abusing a single, tube prim. The article is posted in the Quick Builds section of the site.

The second article is an extension of one I wrote a while ago, where I described how to use Cadroe Murphy's wo [...]

Rebuilt!

alto@altoxeno.com — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 08:00:00 +0100

Finally have the new hardware and software up and running on the XP Pro box, and most of the internal network reconnected. The speed improvements in SL are nice.

As soon as I had the new system stable, I logged into SL. Removed all camera constraints, disabled draw distance and set graphics to the max. Then I teleported into Textures R Us, went to the right corner of the building, and started a timer. Less than 70 seconds for all textures in sight to rez.

Went back today (Saturday [...]

Rebuilding

alto@altoxeno.com — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 08:00:00 +0100

I am having a serious geek week. I am in the midst of a rebuild of a few of my computers here in the real world.

My primary hardware for SL and other virtual worlds for the past while has been a PC with the following specs:

Intel Core2 Duo cpu at 2.13GHz between 2 and 4GB of fast RAM 300GB HDD x3 plus 2TB of NASnVidia GeForce 7600 GT driving a 22" widescreen LCD and a 19" CRT.

I am changing the motherboard and installing:

an Intel Core2 Quad cpu with 8MB of L2 cache and a 1066 [...]

Cutting, Farming, Extorting in SL update

alto@altoxeno.com — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 08:00:00 +0100

Jack Linden has updated his blog discussion of Ad Farms and Network Advertisers. The plan to license advertisers has been dropped and instead "ad farming" will be dealt with as Harrassment under clause 4.1 of the Terms Of Service. They are specifically taking aim at the use of multiple parcels, on multiple regions, for the primary purpose of advertising. There are a lot of new rules, some of which will impact everyone.

Land cutting is only obliquely addressed. It will be looked at if the remov [...]