In this post:
—Second Life Birthday Survey Released
—Thanks to you all
—Some Event Statistics
—Teens Crash-Land New Region at SL6B

—Gates Remain Open til July 6th

— We have a short survey online where you can tell us what you thought of the Second Life 6th Birthday celebration. It's only 10 questions, but it will really help us make things better next year. Your comments on a similar survey last year were very helpful as the Resident staff prepared for this year's event, and we hope that those of you who made suggestions last year were pleased to see some of them implemented in 2009.

Please tell us what you thought here.

— Thanks so much everyone, for your amazing participation. Thanks especially to the Resident staff, who together put in a truly terrifying number of hours to organize this event. There were at least 50 of you. (I think I'm missing a few infrastructure builders— let me know if so.) And thanks also to all the exhibitor/builders without whom there would be no reason to celebrate! The Lab is proud to have been a partner, and pleased to be able to donate the land.

— First Week Event Statistics:

• Resident Staff: 50+
• Mentor/Greeters: 68
• Exhibitors: 300+
• People who helped build those exhibits: 899
• Futurist & Android Stage DJs: 103
• Main Stage Live Musicians: 100+
• Regions: 20 (plus one from the Teen Grid)
• Scheduled Events: 815
• Unscheduled Events: LOL
• Unique visitors: 17,712
• Hours spent: 23,662
• Countries represented: 140
• Advertising kiosks placed: 698
• Event Calendar page views: 23, 260
• People who caught Alien Gift Thieves: Only 94!
• Most Aliens caught by one person: 139

— If you haven't yet noticed, the industrious people on the Teen Grid have sent an entire region across the age gap for our amusement. The Region is named (appropriately) SL6B Teen. It has appended itself to the side of the main event, and can be reached by a causeway from SL6B Polaris. It's a lovely piece of work, and the Teens are undoubtedly the Future of Virtual Worlds. Come see how they are going to knock you off your pedestal, gramps.

— BUT WAIT!
It's not over yet! The gates will remain open at the SL6B regions for your further exploration and reflection. If you haven't managed to see it yet, do drop by The Paradox for a journey across "Dallier's Hope". The regions will remain open til around July 6th.    

Last Monday the new adult continent known as Zindra was officially opened to the public. After a week of comments and feedback, we'd like to take this opportunity to update the community to some small changes we hope will make the transition from the mainland and the migration to Zindra a bit easier. An updated map of Zindra to showcase the addition of double primmed areas has been attached.

1) How do I claim a plot if nothing is parceled?  The original idea behind keeping a majority of Zindra unparceled was to allow more freedom for the Residents in their ability to request land. We realize now though that a lack of parcel boundaries has made this task incredibly difficult. In an effort to provide a bit more guidance, the Department of Public Works will be hard at work the next few days carving Zindra into smaller, more recognizable plots. Please, take some time and re-visit the landmarks you've identified for the migration as they may have changed slightly due to the new parceling. You can view property lines by selecting View > Property Lines. After a brief pause you should see land boundaries shown in red.

2) Why is all the waterfront protected land? The DPW have been actively patrolling the coast line and creating more parcels which will include beach and water.

3) What's the status of X parcel, or Y piece of land? IM Michael Linden, he can adjust parcel tags for clarity. The parcels labelled Special Ocean, Special Water, etc. are just late additions to the land available for Residents.

4) Why can't we terraform the land? In order to protect some of the builds and Linden land, terraforming and join/subdivide will not be allowed in the city areas. However, the rural regions will have the usual +/- 4m allowance as well as the ability to join and subdivide land. 

5) Is there enough Zindra to go around? Yes! There is plenty of land that is still offline. If we need to bring it up then it will not be a problem.

6) When will the tickets be available? The ticketing process will open on Monday, the 29th at 10am PST. They will remain open for 3 weeks, closing July 20th at 10am.

7) When will I hear back from Linden about my ticket to move? We ask that Residents be patient as we are expecting a flood of requests. Submitting a ticket to ask when the first ticket will be addressed will only prolong the process as it increases the support load.

8) I own a large parcel and/or have a bunch of stuff on my parcel that I don't own but need to have with me in my new location. We have an answer for you!  If you are willing to move to a Private Region (not part of the Mainland) we can essentially peel your parcel (terraforming and all) off of the current mainland region it calls home and put it on a brand new Private Region (note that this won't work for moves to Zindra, as those regions exist and are terraformed as a whole).  If your parcel is larger than 16,384 m^2, you can request movement to a Private Region instead.  We will discount the Private Region setup fee (normally US$1,000) based on the amount of land you own.  For example, if you have 32,768 m^2, you would pay $500 for the setup fee.  If you have 49,152 m^2, you would pay $250 for the set-up fee.  The regular monthly land fees of $295 will be charged 30 days after the move. There will be a separate ticket type specifically to request this sort of move.

9) Are child avatars allowed on Adult land? Child avatars are allowed on adult land as long as they are account verified like any other Resident. Those choosing to represent themselves with a child avatar do not represent a minor as the account holder. Not all adult land is going to be hosting adult content either. There is plenty of protected land on Zindra that will technically be adult but safe in terms of content. This however does not change any prior policies regarding child avatars. Sexual ageplay is not allowed anywhere on the grid, regardless of rating.

For additional information, please visit the Zindra Wiki Page

It’s here!

The Knowledge Base to Wiki Pilot is up and running!! For those of you that missed our previous news, this is a pilot which will be testing the Second Life Wiki as the new home for our current Knowledge Base. Our plans are to use the Wiki as a place where you, the Resident, will not only get more accurate information, but also participate in the collection and dissemination of that information!!

Most of the Knowledge Base Beginners' articles on the Wiki will be editable. We have added a review system using Flagged Revisions, which will allow you to update our articles with useful, new, and up-to-date information. We have selected some Residents to act as reviewers based on interest and commitment to the current Second Life Wiki. The articles will appear as their reviewed version to all Residents when looking through the Wiki, but will still be available for updates! Every Wiki page has a complete revision history. Destructive changes can quickly be undone, not only by Linden Lab employees, but by fellow Residents.

A few pages, such as our legal and policy articles, will continue to be protected, and won't be editable by Residents. These articles will appear in the namespace "Linden Lab Official" to differentiate them from the other articles.

If we deem this Pilot test to be a success based on your active participation and the data we collect, we'll begin transitioning the entire Knowledge Base to the wiki.

During the pilot, Knowledge Base Suggestion tickets will be unavailable. For all other ticket types, see "Support Tickets Explained". Your participation will be key during this pilot process, so please feel free to comment and provide us with feedback from your Wiki experience!! Enjoy!!!

For updates please check out this page. 

Your KB2Wiki Team!!

We're proud to announce the release of Snowglobe 1.0! Snowglobe is a Second Life-compatible viewer, built jointly by the open source community and Linden Lab. As Philip Linden described when he first announced the project back in March, we set out to create "a widely-used, openly developed version of the Second Life client which is a compelling alternative for a broad set of users, and contains enhancements and development that then rapidly make their way back into the mainstream Second Life version." The viewer we're releasing today represents our first step toward that goal; getting some early features into your hands.

Watch Torley Linden's demonstration of Snowglobe in action:

The biggest new feature is the new map. Zooming out is fast and seamless. The icons only show up when you're zoomed in close enough for them to be useful, and don't clutter the view when you're zoomed out. Map tiles load quickly with the right amount of detail for the view. In short, the map really works now.

Another fun feature: the minimap will now let you zoom ridiculously close in.   Handy for those large gatherings where all of the avatar dots just seem to pile on top of each other.  It's also more fun than you ever knew you could have with your scrollwheel.

There are under the hood improvements as well.  The changing of the map necessitated pulling in some work that we're doing to improve how textures get loaded in the viewer.  We now have an updated texture loading mechanism, along with some textures (just map tiles for now) being loaded via HTTP rather than over our custom UDP protocol.  Don't expect too many performance improvements just yet as the result of this, but expect bigger improvements later as we more heavily rely on this feature for future server releases.

C++ developers should find this release much easier to work with.  We've rolled out some work we've done with Kitware, makers of the popular CMake build configuration tool, which makes it much easier to compile your own build of the Snowglobe viewer.

Some things to look out for, though. This viewer is developed on a more rapid release schedule and less formal manner than the official Second Life viewer and therefore can be less stable. Snowglobe will typically contain new features, changes, or capabilities in SL which are not yet available in the official release. Some of these changes may be experimental and may or may not ultimately be included in official releases. Also note that Snowglobe connects to the live Second Life Grid. All user information, L$, content, land and other transactions conducted in this viewer are real.

If we haven't scared you off, then please, see for yourself! Download Snowglobe now, and visit the Snowglobe home page to learn more about participating in the development of Snowglobe.