So this weekend I did try to get into SL, and it pretty much wouldn’t let me. Or when it did, I was unable to move. Once I did get some traction, although asking even a basic hug animation to play was beyond the system. Keep that in mind over the next paragraph or two.
Without a grid that lets me move around and run animations or poses, it makes it a touch difficult to do my twice weekly photo shoots – I’ll try again later tonight. It’s one of the reasons that the Open Source project to make your own Second Life Server got me a touch excited – of course it’s far from being ready, which is a shame because having a little private oasis for shoots and meetings would be perfect. I guess that it’s going to blow Linden Lab’s income stream out the water if and when it is available to anyone. Why would you pay $1600 setup fee and $300 a month to Linden’s server cluster when you can get your own generic server for $300 for a year?
The other little snippet I noticed was that Google’s Gmail opened its doors to anyone who wants an account. Now this caught me out for a moemnt, before I realised that up until this announcement, Gmail was still invite only – you needed to know someone already on Gmail and ask them to send you an invite before you could sign up (The same is happening with the TV streaming service from the people behnd Skype). So even the high volume of Google had to throttle the signups till very late in the game.
Perhaps Linden Lab might want to switch to an invite only model to slow the signups while the sort out the basics?
February 15, 2007 at 6:52 pm |
With the new open sourcing, I’m waiting for developers to offer freeware or shareware viewers and server software, so I can set up my own private server. You’re right, it’s a sound investment, especially for those of us whose livelihoods depend on lag-free movement and no grey backgrounds!