SECOND LIFE PASSES 2 BILLION HOURS

Linden CEO Phillip Rosedale announced recently that Second Life passed 2 Billion hours in views.

Hamlet Au's New World Notes put those hours into prespective!

• 2 billion total user hours translate to 228,310 total years of Second Life usage.
• About 20 million people have tried Second Life so far. So 2 billion user hours averages out to 100 hours per user -- i.e. 5 days in Second Life.
• SL surpassed 1 billion user hours in September 2009, which took six years from its Summer 2003 launch to reach, so it took only 3 years to add one billion more

I know they got a billion out of me!

All of Hamlet's story after the break.

Philip Rosedale: Second Life Usage Surpasses 2 Billion Hours

By Hamlet Au

After I Tweeted that Second Life was still in Nielsen's Top 10, SL co-founder Philip Rosedale responded with a Tweet of his own: "SL recently passed 2+ Billion hours of use!" Maybe I missed if this milestone was mentioned before, but in any case, it's worth noting here. SL surpassed 1 billion user hours in September 2009, which took six years from its Summer 2003 launch to reach, so it took only 3 years to add one billion more.

From a certain perspective, "2 billion" is such a large number it sort of seems meaningless, so here's some elementary math to put it in perspective:

• 2 billion total user hours translate to 228,310 total years of Second Life usage.
• About 20 million people have tried Second Life so far. So 2 billion user hours averages out to 100 hours per user -- i.e. 5 days in Second Life.
• If you laid those 2 billion hours end to end, they would stretch so far into the cosmos that the ghost of Carl Sagan would appear in front of you and say, "Motherfucker that analogy makes no goddamn sense." And he would be right.

So, 2 billion hours. Monthly active users, to be sure, remain fixed below a million uniques, and probably stand at around 400,000 to 600,000 regular recurring users. But as the hours suggest, those actives are active indeed.

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HBO DOCUMENTARY ABOUT SECOND LIFE GETS EMMY NOMINATION

According to NEW WORLD NOTES, Hamlet Au's blog, yet another documentary about Second Life has been nominated for an Emmy.

In previous years, two others were nominated. One of them actually won.

This one is about romances that "clicked" on Second Life.

Read the whole article below after the break.

HBO Documentary Featuring Second Life & Machinima Gets Emmy Nomination for Innovation in News

by Hamlet Au

"When Strangers Click", last year's HBO documentary about online romance featuring a couple who met in Second Life and a lot of SL machinima, was recently nominated for an Emmy award, under the category "New Approaches to News and Documentary Programming". (Emmy listings here.) The rest of the documentary, by Robert Kenner, while good, was pretty standard, so I strongly think the machinima footage was a major part of the Emmy nomination. (My friend Douglas Gayeton, who created the "Molotov Alva" machinima that HBO also picked up, helped Kenner a lot on that front.) I hope this encourages other documentary filmmakers to experiment with machinima, and to look for great stories to tell in worlds like SL. (I can guarantee you they're teeming with them.)

News of this comes to me from NWN alum Rik Riel, who was a consultant on the project, so thanks and congrats are in order. See a clip from the documentary after the break:By the way, this isn't even the first SL project to get an Emmy nomination -- "Deep Down" got one last year, and in 2008, an SL project actually won an Emmy.

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MORE HAIR FAIR 2012 FROM A HAIR WHORE!

So now I've been through half the hair at Hair Fair 2012. Two in particular struck me as really pretty.
The one above is a rigged mesh hair from Analog Dog. Its callled

And this one below is by LollipopZ. Its called WINTER ROSE.

If you do go to the HAIR FAIR, help them keep lag down. I saw a lot people wearing a lot of prim.
When I go, I take off all detachments...shoes and even hair (I wear a good hairbase tattoo).

I do leave my AO on...that's a no-no :(

Also try and collect demos but don't try them there. Try them at home then go back and buy the ones you love.

Although I have to admit, there were a few I just had to try on the spot.

So spank me!

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SL TIP OF THE YEAR: HOW TO SIGN ON WAYYYYYY FASTER

Got tech trouble signing online?

For about a month I just quit using Firestorm. No more. I quit.
Something was buggy. When I signed on, the little bar thingy would go across and show everything was fine.

Then on the last step it would stall. And it would just log me out before I even started.

Very frustrating.

Then I found out how to fix it. It was RIDICULOUSLY simple. And it's made logging into SL about 20 times faster for me.

(find out how after the break)




The answer was NOTIFICATIONS.

According to the Firestorm help group, all those notices that your groups send to you add up.
And they slow your log in time a TON.

And if there's too many notices, your viewer won't even log.

Try it!! Clear all your notices out and see how fast you get online next time.

And if you are like me and can't even get on, here are the steps you need to take to clear all those notices out RIGHT NOW:

Firestorm Logs out During Login

When you receive notifications, unless you dismiss them, they accumulate for later reading, in the small envelope icon on the lower right of the screen. Over time, they will grow in number. If you log out, these unread notifications are saved for when you next log in. If there are too many of them, processing them during next log in can cause a log in time out and you will be disconnected. The solution here is to delete the file with the saved notifications.

• Locate your Firestorm settings folder. If you do not see this folder, you may need to show hidden folders.
  • On XP: C:\Documents and Settings\[YOUR USERNAME]\Application Data\Firestorm 
    or use the environment variable %APPDATA%)
  • On Windows Vista and 7: C:\Users\[USERNAME]\AppData\Roaming\Firestorm 
    (or use the environment variable %APPDATA%)
  • On a Mac: /Users/[YOUR USERNAME]/Library/Application Support/Firestorm
  • On Linux: ~/.firestorm
• In this folder, open each folder which has the name of your SL account(s) and inside that, delete the file called open_notifications.xml - this will result in all past, unread notifications being lost.
  
  
  For more info, just CLICK HERE

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