The Alphaville Herald

Auto-Bans For Copybot Clients – SL Viewer Wars Escalate

Skills Hak's client detection system & ban relay fights copybot-capable clients – Transylvania vampires warn against running griefer clients
by Pixeleen Mistral, National Affairs Desk
Taking Second Life anti-copying software as a service in a new direction, Skills Hak has released a client detection and ban relay system which Hak says "detects all known viewers with copybot/griefing [...]

Bill Gurley Discovers Virtual World Bean Counting

Why there is a difference between the provider and the consumer
by Jessica Holyoke
Over on  above the crowd blog, Linden Lab board member Bill Gurley talks about a sit-down meeting with Jeff Grabow of Ernst and Young.  Presumably this was in a real office and not in an immersive workspace premium collaboration solution.  In this meeting, [...]

Saints of Hell MC Implicated In Second Life Content Theft – Part 1

Motorcycle and parts theft copybot outrage!
by Coke Supply, Investigative Reporter
[In this multipart tale of dark dealings in the Second Life motorcycle and parts trade Coke Supply delves into the shady activities of Black Lisle, AKA BiackLisle, of the Saints of Hell Motorbike Club to reveal anastonishing level of complicity amongst the group's leadership withregards to [...]

OpenSim Regions Predicted to Overtake Second Life in 2011

OpenSim growth rates shame Linden Lab
by Pixeleen Mistral, National Affairs desk
Citing an annualized OpenSim growth rate of 177%, Maria Korolov predicts the OpenSim grids will overtake Second Life in early 2011 in an article in Hypergrid Business. Ms. Korolov made her prediction after comparing the 29% increase in OpenSim regions between September [...]

Op/Ed: Facebook, IslandLife, Second Life, Lively, Metaplace – Why Worlds Fail

by Jessica Holyoke
As previously reported, IslandLife, which looks a lot like Metaplace, has opened on Facebook.  Metaplace is a virtual world that closed at the end of 2009.  Metaplace looked a lot like Google's Lively, which also closed. What does IslandLife in Facebook and the failure of Lively and Metaplace mean? Consider one world that hasn't closed, [...]

Second Life metaLIFE Market Grows at XStreet’s Expense

by Coke Supply

Ever since XStreet was taken over by Linden Lab, there has been a demand for independent sites that offer the same services due to resident fears that Linden Lab would run their site into the ground. Now that the Lab appears to be doing just that with the introduction of their [...]

Pink Linden’s Commerce Survey Scares Merchants

Pink points out Apple takes 30% of iPhone App revenue – will LL follow suit?
by Pixeleen Mistral, National Affairs desk
 
Pink Linden
It is hard to blame Second Life merchants for being concerned about the virtual goods' retail landscape – the Lab has a long history of changing the rules of the game on what seems [...]

Residents Displaced as AzureIslands Takes a 5% Haircut

Sim closures blamed on Linden Lab price increases, bad economy
by Pixeleen Mistral, National affairs desk
Evidence that the virtual land market is not immune to real life economic woes appeared this weekend when a number of residents were informed that their parts of the metaverse will be closed by the end of the month. The sad [...]

Open Letter to Your Boss about SL

Help promote serious business in Second Life 
by Pappy Enoch
I done read the “Open Letter to Your Boss” that them Linden Gorillas put up on the Interweb thing and them Lindens done left out a thing or two. So I took a crack at that-there letter myself.  A city feller from a college (not wantin’ [...]

L$ Economy In Summer Slump?

Q2 in-world economic results
by Jessica Holyoke
If you haven't noticed on the log-on screen, the Lab has released their numbers for the economy this past week. Now the Herald Stat Department is able to provide the results of the SL Economy. 

User to User Transactions are the big story for T Linden as it shows [...]