January 22nd News Conference Re: Acquisition of Onrez and X-Street SL

Last night I received an invitation to the Linden press conference where questions will be answered about Linden Lab’s acquisition of X-Street SL and Onrez. I ruminated a bit and came up with a couple of questions and I queried a few business friends as to what their concerns were.  Below are the questions and a summation of their answers as I understood them:

1) Will competitors like Apez.biz be allowed to continue operate in the same
fashion as before?
*Yes

2)Will the use of in world terminals continue?
*for the time being yes, but will be phased out

3)Have they considered the impact this will make on the 3D environment. If everyone can sell their creations via a search interface, it is quite possible that we will see people begin to abandon shops in favor of this method instead of paying tier or rent?

*It’s been thought out, minimal impact

4) What features of ONREZ will migrate to X-Street?

* Store fronts, and possibly more

5)In the long range, assuming the DMCA  issues ever get ironed out, will this new service be accessible to private grids?

*no definate plans, but not out of the question

So there you go. X-Street will cannibalize Onrez to a degree and the whole shopping experience will be integrated into the viewer at some point. They promise not to discourage or inhibit others from doing the same thing. We’ll just see how this all pans out. A good sign that some degree of continuity will be established is that the owner of X-Street is now a Linden, Calyle Linden. So we got that going for us, which is nice .

Radar Masakumi got permission from Melissa Linden to record the event since all the Lindens used voice to answer questions. Expect his next podcast to contain that audio. His site can be found here: http://slundertheradar.com/

Below is some pics of the event:

Lindens Calyle, Colossus, Grant, T, and Catherine

Dizzy Banjo,Melissa Linden, Beyers Sellers, and Zee Linden (woof!!)

Tinsel Silvera, Pete Linden, Me, and Katt Kongo

More below the fold…..

Metanomics interview with Philip Linden

No doubt others will blog about the content of the interview between Philip Linden and Beyers Sellers today at the Metanomics studio. I do have one thing to add about the possible merger of the teen and main grids. Nightmare! I would think there would be a demand that there be a visual way to identify teens or a flag in their profile to deny them entry to sims or parcels. This will pretty much lead to ostracizing them. That’s not a very pleasant place to be for them. Also in today’s uber touchy environment if you’re seen socializing with a teen you could easily be smeared with the pedophile tag.  Sad but true. I think a better solution is to allow more vetted adults into the teen grid like a teen’s parents and educators. Heck! Get Torley in there to help run events and engage those kids! Torley is a natural teacher.

Now on to what I am better at, pictures!

Philip, honestly, you need a makeover. Even Beyers said so

Prospero and Robin were there:

Prokofy looked pretty damned serious in this Asian avatar:

What often happens when the grid is maxing out with online users (about 77K when the interview was conducted) funny things happen. Prims begin to disappear and become phantom.

Poor Daniel Voyager who just recently graduated to the main grind sank into the floor and found the secret bunker for the SLCN.TV staff

Jane2 McMahon was there as a gatekeeper. Thanks for letting me in dear!

And to finish this post, Maggie Mahoney. Simply Lovely….

Go

Catfight!

A humorous video of Ginger in her cat avatar vs that crazy catbot pet Nika Dreamscape gave me for Christmas. Who will win? Watch and see.

Kim Stanley at Sophrosyne’s Salon, 17 January 2007

“Kim Stanley Robinson, Hugo- and Nebula-award winning author of The Mars Trilogy and the Science in The Capital Trilogy, will be the featured guest at an open talk show in Second Life next week . At noon Pacific Time on Saturday, January 17, Robinson will be featured at Sophrosyne’s Saturday Salon in the futuristic community of Extropi…”

Please follow this link for more information: http://eventsinextropia.wordpress.com/2009/01/10/kim-stanley-robinson-in-second-life/

Tunes in SL – 37 and counting

Tunes in SL, originally uploaded by ** GoSpeed Racer **.

I stopped in on Crap Mariner this evening to see how many artist have given him artwork and links to buy their works online.. 37 so far and hopefully more to come. When you click each sign it gives you a menu of all their websites from iTunes, Amazon, CD Baby, etc… Please come by and check it out, Click and buy to support our SL artist !!!