Getting Somewhere…
For over a year I have been using an open-source piece of software called OpenSim which is a reverse engineered Second Life simulator. (If you don’t know what a simulator is, it is the thing that gives you land and prims and all that happy stuff). Ever since it was released I have always felt that those servers would one day interact with the Agni grid.
Another thing that I love about the OpenSim project is the ability to run your own simulator locally. This is great for a variety of reasons. Testing scripts outside of Second Life, Building Practice, Tutorials etc. I basically love OpenSim. There are a few problems with it i’ll admit. It is still unfinished in terms of physics, inventory and usability but this will all be ironed out in the future.
So, recently the main grid was able to connect to an OpenSim server, which of course excited the hell out of me. Then this happened to appear in my feed reader. Open Grid may still be in it’s early days but it is something that makes me excited for the virtual worlds. This obviously opens up so many possibilities such as independantly run servers.
I will continue to keep watching the space and finding out what happens with OpenSim because whatever it will bring. It will be a good thing for all.
What the Plurk?
Since Yxes wrote a post about Plurk…I will too.
Plurk is a Twitter-like webapp that in my opinion is brilliant. Why do I like Plurk so much that I have mentioned it on Podmafia two times and blogging about it now? It’s because Plurk is simply better than Twitter.
To me Twitter is a chaotic mess that you can’t really catchup on without going through pages and pages of tweets and adding people more and more to see what was replied to and by who. Not to mention that it is intertwined with the Fail Whale.
Plurk makes it easier for me to catchup on what’s been happening with people and also to read the threads of conversations. It also seems to be a good way of getting traffic fast. Case and Point, Yesterday I was flying around Second Life when I got an IM asking if I wanted to try out the PlurkHUD. Since I am a sucker for BETA I tried it out and gave my location away with the tool. Then GoSpeed turned up and GoSpeed told people where she was. After a while a whole crowd of people came and was just having fun and while Plurk is currently small in size of community it is seemingly quicker to get traffic.
Am I a plurk fanboy? Yes. Do I think people should leave Twitter. Yes. Will it happen. I don’t know.
But if you want to add me…well add me!
Remember, It’s only a Server
Last week the Lindens announced that they were going to be introducing a new land store system which promises almost instant delivery of sims. With this a price drop was announced for the purchasing of Estate simulators.
When the new Land Store launches, setup fees will be:
* Normal Islands: USD$1000 setup
* Normal Openspaces: USD$250 setup
* Educational Islands: USD$700 setup
* Educational Openspaces: USD$175 setup
For some reason people started to interperet this as being a move against the OpenSim project or that the Lindens are having poor sales.
But if you take a logical approach to it. You will realise that it really isn’t the case. The fact is that technology gets cheaper and cheaper. Take an iPod for example. As more features and storage is added, the prices drops. This is the way that the tech industry moves and it obviously ripples into Second Life.
But wait, what about OpenSim?
Well… I am pretty sure that just last week, it was announced that OpenSim and Linden Lab are working together to integrate OpenSim servers into Second Life.
How is that going to work?
I think that they will probably have a message that pops up every time you enter the area of an OpenSim based server like, “This is a third-party server and Linden Lab is not responsible for what may happen”.
Personally I am excited about the prospect of having third-party servers in Second Life as this will lead to even cheaper server options for people. Of course all the backing up is down to the third-party or you instead of Second Life, hence the cheaper aspect. After all part of the cost for sims is that you need to pay the maintainence fees, backup charges, bandwidth etc.
As stability slowly comes to Second Life…so does some really exciting stuff that I just love the idea of.
Judgement Day Part II
Corporation’s find SL
Judgement Day Part I
Shoppers - 1 - The Sale
Ruthed
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