i check in with SharesPost on occasion to see how they are currently valuing Linden Lab’s private capital stock. lately it’s been pretty flat but i missed a may 16th “Research Update” (probably because i haven’t looked in the last two weeks) =p

the research report is created by Candlestick Advisors who also evaluates companies like facebook and they see Linden Lab as stagnating and being flat in growth

here are a few excerpts from their PDF:

• estimated market capital as of May 15th, 2012 – $186-232 million (vs. $288-334 July 2011)
• 2012 estimated revenue – $103 million | 2013 estimated revenue – $104 million
• estimated price per share of $2.9 – $3.6 for common shares, down 33% from our previous estimate of $4.5 – $5.2 to account for stagnating activity on Second Life
• user hours have decreased continuously for two years to reach 408M hours in 2011, compared to 435M hours in 2010 and 481M hours in 2009
• virtual currency exchanged on Lindex has stagnated and has declined for 2 quarters, from L$31.5M in Q1’11 to L$30.6M in Q2’11 and L$30M in Q3’11

About Candlestick Advisors -

Candlestick Advisors Pvt. Ltd. provides consulting and advisory support to the financial services industry. Founded in 2007, we combine Wall-Street expertise with strong analytic prowess. Our reports have been repeatedly hailed for consistency and accuracy in projections by our clients and the media.

on may 24th, 2009 i made myself a commitment to publish at least one blog post a day without missing any days

that will be three years ago next week – phew!

we haven’t missed a single day and have averaged 1.333 posts per day (1459 posts in 1089 days – wow, that means we could take the next entire year off and still average just over one post per day!) *who ya calling OCD?* =p

this blog started as a free WordPress blog and the first post was regarding the only “real” machinima we ever made (Mo Peterman, subQuark Hax, and moi - complete with narration!) and that was on the 29th of january in 2008

since that time, there have been a total of 1,652 posts (25 by DreamWalker, 16 by Micheil Merlin, 3 by Sunny Whitfield, 70 by subQuark, and 1538 my yours truly)

also since that time, we’ve uploaded 13,162 pics to Flickr, have done over 7,900 tweets with 34,000 followers, and reached a peak of being in the top 1.72% of the web

those are all big numbers and they really don’t matter much, but the number that has the greatest value to me is the number of passionate people in this very small community. you are worth more than any follower count or a million tweets. i am truly grateful for you =)

some posts have been serious and handy, many were silly, and a few actually talked about my estate which was the entire purpose of this blog. i was hot and heavy into Second Life in 2008 and would soon have 19 sims. i thought i’d be in Second Life forever and absolutely loved it and spent 20-40 hours a week in-world including being a genuine Second Life Mentor (i really liked that a lot)

things change – i haven’t logged in to Second Life for over a year and i have no interest in “selling” land anymore. but some things don’t change – i still have that child-like excitement when i build things, i regularly wear my parasol as a reminder of the passion which Torley ignited within me, and i love virtual worlds even more than before (not worrying about a huge tier helps too!) =D

Second Life, and OpenSim, have changed a lot since january of 2008 but a few things have remained the same, like the following repost of an august 5th 2009 post which also applies to OpenSim and has a footnote about Creative Commons licensing that i just talked about on wednesday (see, some things never change) =)

Second Life mini-map tips

a few Second Life mini-map tips, more here =)

from our flickr pics

from our flickr pics

from our flickr pics

this work by Ener Hax is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License

that means that anyone is free to use almost anything from our Flickr photostream and make anything out of it, even use it for commercial purposes  =)

Linden Lab makes serious scratch with an estimated $5.86 million USD per month from private and mainland tiers (from Tyche Shepherd’s Grid Survey). add to that membership dues, Linden Exchange fees, and even texture upload fees – back in 2008 they were making $90,000 USD a month just on those uploads!

how much of an impact is the loss of about 1000 private sims since the beginning of 2012?

that 1000 fewer sims means $225,000 less this month than in January (math below). $225k is a big number to me (it won’t all fit in one pocket) and it’s about a 4% dip in their monthly revenue

is a 4% dip a big deal?

i’d hate to lose that from my monthly income and if the trend continues, the end of the year would see a 7 to 8% dip. is that a big deal?

since Linden Lab no longer publishes quarterly economic reports, using Tyche Shepherd’s numbers might be as close as we’ll have to measuring the economic pulse of the Lab

so why should anyone only using OpenSim care?

there are several reasons – Second Life still generates mainstream awareness of virtual worlds (albeit, some of that carries a negative connotation), third-party viewers are driven by SL to an extent, and there are content creators who make money, even earn a living, from their Second Life endeavors who also make their content available to the open world

at around $6 million a month, it’ll take more than the loss of a few hundred thousand to have a big impact on Second Life

.:*~*:._.:*~*:._.:*~*:._.:*~*:._.:*~*:._.:*~*:._.:*~*:._.:*~*:.

from Grid Survey -

• Jan 1, 2012: 23857 private estates & 7221 Linden owned
• May 14, 2012: 22851 private estates & 7117 Linden owned
• total change: -1006 private estates & -104 Linden owned
• 58.5% are full, 40.8% are homesteads, and 0.7% are openspaces
• therefore, 589 are full, 410 are homesteads, and 7 are openspaces

$173,755 (full @ $295)
$51,250 (homestead @ $125)
+ $525 (openspace @ $75)
————
$225,530 loss per month for private sim revenue vs. january 2012

my answer would be yes . . . and that’s just an opinion based on the “vibe” out there and the reviews on Glassdoor. also my opinion is that when companies get to be of a certain size, that “love” which was possible with the early employees and a small company size simply get pushed out of the way by formal Human Resource departments

i’ve worked at a place that for its first 10 years had half-day Fridays with a keg of beer – unfortunately, i started there when they were 15 years old . . . no more beer . . .

the love factor makes a big difference and i was reminded about how Linden Lab was in 2006 – it felt very loving and like everyone was in it together. i remember one time phoning in to support just to thank them for doing a great job. the Linden i spoke to put my name and my thanks up on their scrolling love board (i don’t remember if that was its actual name). that night i had several Linden’s give me their bears – that was such a wonderful time and those bears were very cherished by me

When someone recognized another’s hard work, “It made you feel wonderful,” he said. Plus, since the messages were public, it gave upper management a clear sense of who was out (and under) performing. link

Philip commands big dollars to speak at conferences and even though he hasn’t been very involved in Second Life for four years, he still talks about the importance of that love

to a certain extent, i believe that Philip really believes in that love stuff, and maybe that’s what is missing from LL these days

Hexagon 2.5 is a 3D modelling application from Daz3D that has Second Life sculptie export built right in! that’s a huge plus because you just export the TGA file

Hexagon is a real 3D tool that works with polygons (meshes) but what caught my attention (after Sarge bonked me on the head and told me about it) is its native sculptie export. i don’t know about you but i am intimidated about making meshes and totally terrified of trying to figure out how to import them into OpenSim

it’s weird because i like using Blender and have used it for real work projects (although it’s been like two years ago). for some reason, i have it really stuck in my head that exporting the mesh and then importing it is an incredibly complex task. clearly it’s not an impossible one and there are many great virtual world content creators doing awesome mesh work!

Hexagon 2.5′s built-in TGA export to create in-world sculpties eases my fear and is something i am going to try. plus since they are sculpties, i don’t need to worry if people have a mesh viewer. i’m still a proponent of sticking to native prims for most work but sometimes a sculptie would be really nice, like to make sofa and chair cushions and pillows =)

Hexagon 2.5 is currently free (list price of $149.95)and all you have to do is create an account on Daz3D, then go “buy” Hexagon from their store, and you’ll get a registration number on your account page (last image below). good luck!

ps – here’s the Daz3D video of Hexagon being used for Second Life

it’s been a while since i posted glassdoor reviews on Linden Lab and now there are 37 reviews online. you should read these with your own grain of salt and i have gone through the process of creating an account on glassdoor and it does take a certain amount of effort (more involved than flaming a blog or forum)

here are the latest five . . .

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Feb 28, 2012 - Linden Lab Senior Software Engineer (Current Employee)

“Coming out of transition a fun place to work”

Pros: A great core product with some cutting edge new products in the pipeline.

Unique technical challenges.

Over the past year or so the company has been changing dramatically in the way it does things, it is faster paced and very focused on solid deliverables.

A good blend of great old coders who made Second Life and talented new blood.

A lot of the most exciting SL projects are engineering driven such as pathfinding and the solid performance improvements. The new projects are web or tablet based which is very current.

The company is morphing into a hot technology company with multiple products rather than a one trick pony.

Cons: Well there is no way to be polite…. like any tech company that has been around for ten years there are a handful of burnt out bitter [ex]employees. You have seen some of their comments below, would you like to work with them? The good news is as you can tell many have left, but some linger on. Avoid them.

Advice to Senior Management
Get those who do not want to be here to leave. They are no fun to be around. More programmer backfills particularly on the core product.

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Feb 25, 2012 - Linden Lab Anonymous (Current Employee)

“Motion of no confidence…”

Pros: The offices are nice, and the pay is okay. There are some really great people remaining, although attrition is draining many of the people who made the culture unique and fun. The SecondLife product itself is cool, and the users are still excited about it.

Cons: It pains me to list the downsides, as many of these came to be only after the last year or so. Linden has lost its culture of trust. The core value of ‘good people make good decisions’ is no longer valid, and management simply doesn’t trust its employees with anything but basic tasks.

There’s a fair bit of micromanagement going on from engineering leadership, probably because engineering leadership came from the video game industry which consisted primarily of more junior people who needed more handholding. If you’re a experienced person, don’t expect respect for your experience. Linden has even lost its former level of trust between peers.

Things are very top-down now. The front line people have very little say in what they do, and the process of generating cool ideas and getting them into the corporate backlog is very difficult, and likely impossible if you’re not seated next to product management or the leadership (sorry, remote offices, you’re cogs in the machine). There is simply no space for people to be creative.

There’s not really a chance to expand one’s career, as people are starting to be looked at as a set of ‘skills’. If they need someone with a new skill, they hire, they don’t let people learn the skill. This may change as attrition and difficulty hiring makes them desperate.

Product management has checked out. Here we are, half way through the first quarter, and they’ve still not produced a plan for the year.

Advice to Senior Management
* Give people some semblance of autonomy.

* Trust your employees to the level of their experience.

* People are motivated not by money, And by all means, listen when people come up with good ideas. No more ‘product didn’t come up with this new feature, so go stick your head in a fish’

* I know it’s all about numbers for you. Your life is the count of $. Don’t assume, because of that, that the rest of us are all about $. There’s plenty of science backing the fact that creative folk don’t find money a positive motivator, just a negative one. People find opportunities to be creative a motivator. And opportunities to have an impact.

* Get to know your employees, their hopes, their wants. Individually. Not all engineers are the same. Not all testers are the same. It takes work, but it’ll help tremendously.

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Feb 8, 2012 - Linden Lab Anonymous in San Francisco, CA (Past Employee – 2011)

“Sinking ship”

Pros: If you’re looking to coast for a few months/years, this is the place for you. The office is empty most of the time as most “work from home”

The only people in the office are those who truly care about the product and what’s left of LL culture. The rest are most likely looking for an exit strategy.

Cons: Very demoralizing. Makes me sad just thinking about it.

Advice to Senior Management
You gave up on the Lab a long time ago. Quit pretending to care.

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Dec 28, 2011 - Linden Lab Anonymous in San Francisco, CA (Past Employee – 2011)
“Tragic fail of executive leadership”

Pros: It’s been written here a dozen times:

1) the colleagues and friends at LL are what endures. At one point LL attracted industry-leading talent to work on the the virtual world revolution. Those people and the strong culture they created through 2007-2009 created an incredibly strong ex-Linden community that lasts to this day.

2) the small size of the company relative the the huge technical infrastructure, combined with relatively big budgets allowed for low level access and responsibility with powerful and complex systems.

Cons: Many negative glass door reviews can be dismissed as ‘sour grapes’ or some kind of failure that the reviewer is not living up to. I recognize that when I say: Linden Lab of 2011 really is an awful place to work. It didn’t use to be like that. It really is the current CEO, CFO and their tragically bad leadership. Control of information, decimating company culture, inability to hear criticism, making decisions based on ego not based on known fact — all traits that have seen the CEO roll out one failure after another in 2011. Internally, the company is dominated by the CFO who bullies people and uses his control of the purse strings to micromanage all aspects of the company. He has created a culture of fear, distrust and blame. After 8 years of no exit strategy, the board is checked out. They seem willing to buy anything that the CEO tells them and have given up on all accountability. Worse yet is that the CFO and CEO are recruiting friends into power positions who are not qualified to be in those positions or who thrive on the cabal. They lack the industry knowledge of online games, virtual worlds, or anything social, and worse yet have zero leadership skills to execute on anything. No one at the mid-management or line-level respects them. It’s very dysfunctional.

Linden Lab is a troubled organization, masked by the positive balance sheet and the blessed residents who pay and persist. By all measures of a company’s internal health, LL is troubled: inability to retain talent, inability to innovate, release successful products that move financial or retention needs, and employee dissatisfaction as evident by the exodus of great people from LL in 2011 (two VP’s, several Sr Directors, lots of top tech talent). Second Life could have innovated and stayed relevant but the lack of leadership in 2011 has buried the company. The real failure isn’t about virtual worlds. It’s the tragic, heart-wrenching failure in top management that has brought the Lab to where it is today. If you’re looking to the future, go to a different company.

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Dec 3, 2011 - Linden Lab Anonymous in San Francisco, CA: (Past Employee – 2011)

“Eventually you just feel as though you are part of an elaborate social experiment”

Pros: Offices are nice, modern and have well stocked kitchens. You will love a good deal of your coworkers.

Cons: Remote offices are viewed as stepchildren, when they are viewed at all. If you are not at headquarters you are unpromotable. Compensation within departments varies quite a bit, relating only it seems on when and whom hired you. Employee moral within most departments resides somewhere near complacency. Promotions are rare, raises even more unheard of for most. Bonuses are dangled but never materialize. Direction changes quarterly. General impression no one knows who the end user is or what they want.

Advice to Senior Management
Step back and take a look at how this company has become so self hating over the past few years. Then address this. People once loved working here.

creating training videos is economical and relatively quick using OpenSim or Second Life. i tend to think in terms of branched scenarios and only two or three people (easy to manage). like one person walking up to another and posing a question or presenting a certain situation. then the video stops and the learner makes a choice between two or three outcomes (typically videos). i also approach it like subQuark does with a voice of God, an inner dialogue, because that makes it easier to edit later and you don’t have to worry so much about timing or lip syncing

virtual worlds are not photo-realistic and if you can embrace that, then you have a pretty easy tool to use. it’s much easier to create a cast of characters with outfits, build a virtual set, and never need to worry about lightning, expensive camera equipment, or expensive hardware and software. it’s much less expensive to create three minutes of machinima than three minutes of real actors on a real set

as with most training videos, the content is the most important part – getting the key points across in a timely fashion while still presenting relevant visuals to reinforce those points

this example is nicely done and i would imagine it was done in fairly short order and for a reasonable budget. i don’t know anything about digging but i did learn by watching this and it clearly is making specific points in an easy to understand manner (like all pipes are not in the centre of right-of-ways). it has a nice number of characters which realistic fit the situation (i like the guy in the white tank top!) and uses lip syncing which pops this above anything i’ve done

i think it was done in Second Life but i’m not sure, the YouTube channel doesn’t list much info

in my 2012 predictions i stated that SL would lose 2,500 private sims and thought i was being really bold by increasing that from the 1,000 i had initially penned

some people say making a prediction that SL will decline (many in the blogosphere do) is not bold (i can agree with that) and also seen as antagonistic against Linden Lab. i can see that perspective but i don’t see a decline in Second Life as a negative thing for virtual worlds overall

a few years ago, this decline would have meant people leaving virtual worlds but now it could also mean people coming over to OpenSim. OpenSim is steadily growing and some of that is from people coming from SL

on january 1st of this year, Tyche Shepherd from Grid Survey listed 31,078 total sims with 23,857 being private

yesterday she listed 30,026 total sims with 22,906 as private sims making a decline of 1,052 total sims. of those, 951 were private sims and we are about a quarter of the way through the year. at this pace, we’d see the loss of about 3,600+ private sims versus the 2,500 in the predictions

only time will tell and maybe Linden Lab’s Wilderness will forge a clear path to growth . . .

© Tyche Shepherd

by humans, i mean human avatars. in Second Life i often built as a beaver and also loved being a fox and a fennec. the beaver AV made me smile the most because it was considered a tinie and my corny self made the connection of being a beaver with being a canadian – beavers were an important part of canadian history and adorn the nickel (btw, did you hear? canada is gonna stop minting pennies!)

nothing like canadian beaver

ever since i’ve been in OpenSim, i have only been the human version of Ener – mainly because i have never gone looking for a furry avatar and it’s not as easy to find nor is there the huge selection like you have in Second Life

i also enjoyed being a huge robot and that’s what made me wonder about this issue – Nebadon and his crazy huge robot standing at 15 metres tall (that’s ten times the human Ener shrimp of 150 cm!)

apart from the smaller shopping selection of furries and alternative AVs like bots, i tend to think the demographic of OpenSim users is a bit different from SL peeps and most would be humans if they were also in Second Life

for me this is a hard one to gauge because i am such a hermit living on a private grid and my idea of going out is firing up sim-on-a-stick! =D

so what’s your view on this? are their more humans, percentage-wise, in OpenSim than Second Life?

fennec Ener with dual Desert Eagles

dancing Ener bot - $5,000L

Virgin Ener ready for Easter

last thursday i posted about a 2% decline in Linden Lab’s capital index by SharesPost and mentioned that Linden Lab doesn’t seem to fluctuate much or doesn’t get analysed that often by SharesPost. i checked it today and was surprised to see it dropped again – albeit, by a very tiny amount (0.04% or 2.22% in the last 2 weeks)

even though any drop is bad (i’d hate to lose 0.04% of my salary but i wouldn’t cry over it), this drop is really miniscule and i’m not sure why it is even reported (but then, in the real stock market, drops like that do influence all kinds of bs)

the bigger “take-away” from this, imo, is that Linden Lab is being looked at and maybe that’s from the buzz that Rod Humble has created for this year (see today’s earlier post)

it looks as though the things that the Lab are planning are being noticed by more than just their residents!

yesterday gameindustry international published an interesting piece titled Linden Lab: “The Weirder The Better” which is pretty detailed and goes into what Rod Humble is wanting Second Life to become this year. it also includes details about the role that LittleTextPeople will play. my cynical side zoomed in on the tidbit that the two former owners of LittleTextPeople are long time friends of Humble and that one of them worked on The Sims with Humble. that’s really not a big deal and a common thing in corporate America and the important thing is whether the acquisition furthers Linden Lab and adds value

the future of SL could be very interesting and seems more framed as a game than what i see SL as – an open space to be highly creative, socialise, and even develop a business. i don’t think i’m misinterpreting SL being seen as a game because Humble is quoted as:

Linden Lab has been very successful with one innovative product, but I want to stretch the company out again, to make it a really exciting place where people can’t wait to find out about the next unusual title we’re going to release.

next title seems like pretty game-like jargon to me! the way he describes what he wants to see happen in 2012 is very interesting and maybe SL can be both the creative space and a more broadly appealing game as well. there was one quote that i did not really understand that concerned me as far as creative freedom goes: “. . . democratise the actual creation process”. what does that mean? isn’t the current model supportive of that? you can make what you like and if you are an estate owner or a content creator, the market will speak as to the value of your creation – be it landscaping, roads, and waterways in your rental estate or clothes, cars, and animations that you sell

i also found it interesting that Humble said that they have increased new users by 40% and had holiday sign ups of 20,000 a day! from the comments i read on this blog and a few old time SL friends that email me, that seems to be contrary to what’s going on in-world

of course now that LL no longer publishes their metrics, they can spin stuff anyway they like

overall, the article was interesting and the goal of three new products this year seems genuine and also a game changer

march is a month of particular retrospection for me because of two significant events. the first is an event that the entire world should mark, but alas perhaps everyone observes it modestly in true and humble Ener fashion – my birthday! =p

the second event is my departure from Second Life around March of 2010 and full start in OpenSim. it’s only been two years but it seems like more; i think i have logged in twice to Second Life since then

as part of my introspection i thought i’d look at how Second Life region counts are going. overall there has been a slow decline in the last year but that’s only part of the story

i used Tyche Shepherd’s Grid Survey and plotted March numbers for 2009 to 2012. interestingly, the total number of Linden-owned estates has steadily climbed with a 32% increase from 2009 to 2012. a decline in private sims accompanied by an increase in mainland sims seems like a costly trend for Linden Lab. mainland sims make less money and require more attention and maintenance than private estates

• 26874 total – 21500 private & 5374 Linden – march 8, 2009
• 30874 total – 24731 private & 6143 Linden – march 14, 2010
• 31523 total – 24741 private & 6782 Linden – march 6, 2011
• 30140 total – 23036 private & 7109 Linden – march 9, 2012

i check on the the venture capital index for Linden Lab from time to time as one measure of the Lab’s success. LL affects OpenSim, especially for viewers, and will be the virtual world leader for some time to come

the index has been pretty flat for the six months since they had an 8% drop last August (my past posts)

Sharespost evaluates many other private companies and has seen lots of activity with facebook lately. with Linden Lab being a relatively small player (compared to facebook) i don’t imagine they spend much time analyzing Linden Lab but they do make mention of the aquisition of LittleTextPeople

when a company aquires another one, the revenue of the aquired company is added to that of the parent company. in the US that means if an $80 million dollar company buys a $20 million dollar one, their new revenue figure is $100 million (regardless of aquisition costs)

so it surprised me that there was no increase in the venture cap index for LL and that it actually dropped 2.18%!

indexes are pure speculation – just like the stock market is all speculative – and you should not feel like the sky is falling. but, like the real stock market, that speculation and going up and down does impact real lives, home values, quality of living, and the overall economy

for virtual worlds, a drop in Linden Lab’s value means very little to you and me, but there are people who pay attention to these indicators and base decisions partly on them. maybe it’s a bean counter at the Lab, a larger company looking to aquire something like Linden Labs, or other buying decisions by the Lab itself

either way, take it with a grain of salt =) *runs screaming in circles with hands in the air*

i have talked many times about what you need in OpenSim in order to have a region that is comparable to a sim in Second Life

there is no direct answer because there are many ways to deploy OpenSim. when you run it on a stick, your own machine, or even a server – you do everything that Second Life does (except commerce). you hold the account info, inventory, messaging, media, worldmap, and a few other things (databases) that Linden Lab handles with other servers in addition to the actual region server. InWorldz would be the closest to an architecture like Second Life although Tranq has refined that to be far more scalable and smart that the aging Second Life infrastructure design *kudos to Tranq!* =)

generally, one cpu core and one gig of RAM is about one SL sim. if you can get set-up with more RAM, you’ll be able to have more accounts, more inventory, and more concurrency (and more prims – 50 mb per 1,000 plain cubes vs. 150 mb per 1,000 for complex prims)

that’s all fine and well, but on LinkedIn someone asked about disk space and i have never thought about it much

Does anyone know how much server space a Second Life 15,000 prim private region is using? I’m looking at a VPS hosting service that offers from 20GB to 160GB of server space.

of course the answer to that is incredibly variable and here is how i answered and how subQuark (DM) did too. your experience would be great and let me know your thoughts in the comments

EH: great question and not an easy answer. remember that SL is using additional servers to host your inventory, account information, communication, media, and world maps so what an SL sim takes is less than what is needed by OpenSim

also it depends what your prims and textures are – if you never import textures it will be much smaller. if you use cubes rather than hollowed and cut tori, it will be smaller as well

we have 16 regions (sims) with about 40,000 pims rezzed out PLUS an inventory of 20,000 prims and i use about 120 GB of disk. that includes keeping some daily backups of regions and of the entire MySQL dbs. we have a physical server so it has to hold its operating system too (Win 2008 64-bit web edition)

there are only 6 accounts on it, but more accounts would require more space

my guess would be that for one region you could do with well under 50 GB (i think i only had 20 GB when i was with Reaction Grid 2 years ago and also had 16 regions but they ran as 4 megaregions)

knowing your needs would help guide you better than making a direct SL comparison. my overall rule of thumb is that one CPU core + one GB of RAM is close to one SL sim (our server is 4 core, 8 gig RAM, and 500 GB diskspace)

do you know about Kitely? it will soon have named user accounts in addition to FB login – kitely.com – it is the cheapest solution apart from running OpenSim on your own machine and connecting to OSGrid

great question and i’d say start on the low end and the expected number of visitors (concurrency) will be a factor as well (will they hypergrid over and thus not need to have all their inventory on your grid or will they make an account with you?)

maybe a crude way to test how much space you need is to use http://simonastick.com and build your region out and just see how big it becomes – crude but maybe indicative

good luck =D

>>>

DM: It is a good question and Ener’s response is correct. I looked at your profile Carla and I assume you may be wanting to do this for training?

I have been doing eLearning development for a few years including speaking at eLearning Guild conferences about the use of Second Life.

I now only use OpenSim for many obvious reasons and do so to create branched scenario video.

Depending on your needs, a physical server will always yield faster performance but that in itself may not be critical. The Kitely suggestion is a sound one and very economical.

However, I have held workshops with Ener’s sim-on-a-stick which was downloaded some 7,000 times last year and is in use by the US Air Force and by elementary students! Its applications are endless and work very well for some purposes.

Good luck with your endeavors and I hope you find OpenSim as enjoyable to use as both Ener and I have! (We work together on EnclaveHarbour.com)

>>>

EH: ha ha ha, you have to wake up early and drink a lot of joe to be faster than a speeding Ener! =D

we need to combine our responses into today’s blog post! =p

like anything, there isn’t a simple answer but the 20 GB would be a starting place and you should be able to scale up (i would think)

i have to say i am very spoiled with having our own server – it has run far better than anything i had in SL

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so there it is from LinkedIn and it’s probably a question a lot of “casual” users have. i say casual because you guys that read this blog tend to be pretty hardcore users with mad skillz! =)

i think the lady’s question is also indicative of people who found SL fun to use for training and now are looking for profitable ways to offer more in-depth virtual world solutions (like Rivers Run Red and their departure from SL, but on a smaller scale)

wow, Daniel Voyager is my source for sim closings in Second Life!

ISTE Island closure on 1st March 2012

the International Society for Technology in Education has been a very active group in Second Life for years now (i remember attending stuff they had way back when)

they are going to stay inSL and have a $500 a year budget to do so but i am going to offer my same unpopular opinion that i did when the ALA said they were closing their sim

going from having your own sim to not having a sim is a lesser commitment from a financial point of view (putting less money where your mouth is)

a parcel does not have the same freedom as having an entire sim because you are no longer a Linden Lab customer (unless it’s mainland). you are now a customer, or guest, of someone else  - you have removed yourself by one degree from Linden Lab (and potentially another degree from Kevin Bacon) and added someone else who can affect what you do (like if they decide to drop their sim).  if i pay my neighbour for the use of their car it is not the same as me making loan payments to Toyota for my car

in the virtual world realm your greatest freedom is OpenSim on your own machine, next would be on your own server (or your institution’s), then your own server with an OpenSim hosting company (including Kitely or SimHost like us), then a commercial grid (like InWorldz or Second Life), and finally renting land from someone on a commercial grid (like Ener Hax’s SL estate in 2008!)

my opinion is that the more committed you are then the more important your endeavor is and the more important that is, the more you want ownership of it (OpenSim OAR backups in your possession versus a license to your work!)

i’m not bashing Second Life, it’s excellent for many projects (from having an active adult education initiative to holding furry fundraising club dance-a-thons) w00t!

i have no doubt as to the enthusiasm of ISTE members and i do wish them the very best as they redefine themselves in SL and i also hope they consider OpenSim as an option or supplement (hmm, go from being the ISSLTE to the ISTE!)

my canadian two cents =)

past post pic - who's more committed to drinking beer?

last weeks announcement that Rivers Run Red was leaving Second Life coincided with my two year anniversary of leaving Second Life. their loss is a blow to Second Life in prestige, corporate use cases, and revenue. Rivers Run Red spent over $100K per year in tiers (heck, i spent over $35K per year)

this blog post was written for publication last friday but some wonderful OpenSim stories trumped it (the nice primary school use and that big Kitely news). my view is biased, but the loss of a good SL client and this weekend’s successes of OpenSim bespeak the larger picture of virtual world evolution

two years ago last thursday was the official last day of Ener Hax as an estate owner in Second Life (feb 9, 2010 post)

i loved Second Life and it was a great experience overall. i’ll always owe my virtual world start to Second Life and my love for building things. much of that was from Torley and he used to be “the guy” (or girl) that best represented the creative possibilities of Second Life. my “trademark” parasol is straight ripoff of his Mary Poppins outfit with umbrella. Torley made it seem like anything, truly anything, was possible in Second Life (thanks Torley!)

that was then this is now! =) *cue Party Rock Anthem*

will OpenSim ever exceed Second Life in every aspect?

talk about comparing apples and oranges! but it’s a natural question, especially for people who started in Second Life when it was inconceivable that anything like OpenSim could ever exist. somehow Second Life seemed so awesome that many people, me bigtime, never thought there could be anything remotely as fantastic (must have been the Linden Kool-Aid?)

there are many more flavours of OpenSim than Second Life (nice segue eh?). as such, OpenSim deployments have created more “aspects” than possible with SL. some tough things to top might be sheer number of accounts, but then if OpenSim becomes as ubiquitous as personal blogs, that number could be eclipsed

what do you think about OpenSim surpassing SL? is it possible and in what ways?

SL still reigns supreme over sheer amount of content - like this printing press for flip books (yes, that's me with black hair, i miss the humongous choice of clothes, hair, and shoes too!)

two weeks ago we saw the world speak up when the US attempted to pass legislature that would censor the internet and afford threatening power by big companies. while the ruling would have been an American one, it would have trickled out to the world. that fight is not over and those corporations and groups still want dominion over the web

last week an uproar occured in the US over an international group, the Susan G. Komen foundation, and their politically motivated ending of funding to a US women’s non-profit health group – Planned Parenthood. again the masses spoke up (and a few major contributors) and the Komen group reversed their decision

in both cases regular people from all over the globe spoke up and stated what was right. the masses, you and me, were not being bullies, we were just expressing outrage at clearly wrong thinking and unjust actions

i was very thrilled to read an excellent post by Tateru entitle A landmark ruling in which the Dutch Supreme Court ruled that a boy’s virtual property from Runescape was indeed his property. Runescape has a TOS like Linden Lab, and many others, which says they only grant you a license to your stuff. like Linden Lab, Runescape says they own all the data on their servers and that is one reason you can’t export your own OAR file from Second Life – the LL TOS explicitly says that you do not own it

the Dutch Supreme Court stood up for the individual, for the you and me, and ruled in the obvious and right way that what is yours is yours! way to go Holland! =)

in Runescape, you collect items and if those are deemed as legally being yours, then stuff you make in Second Life should certainly be yours, as well as anything you buy from others

thank you Tateru for finding that ruling and placing it in the proper perspective (go read her post!)

Sharespost evaluates various companies and places a value on their private shares. companies like Facebook, Twitter, Etsy, LinkedIn, and even Linden Lab are monitored and their share values are updated

private shares, similar to public shares, see their values go up and down for many reasons. at the end of the day it’s all about perception of worth and news events can, and do, impact share prices greatly

i’ve been posting on the value of Linden Lab shares since the summer of 2010. there was a certain level of volatility until last april and now the value is holding fairly steadily

the total value of Linden Lab at $311 million is about right since annual revenues are around $70 million (standard MBA formulas take annual revenue times 4 or 5 to estimate the value of a company – what that means in very general terms is that someone could offer to buy Linden Lab for $311 million - but why buy when sim-on-a-stick is free?)  =)

holding steady is better than dropping; ideally investors want to see steady growth on the order of 20% or more annually

machinima – that word intimidates me a little and it shouldn’t – it’s just a word. when i think of machinima, i tend to think of a video that is really nicely polished, has great post-production effects, epic soundtrack, clever acting, and a production crew of several people

machinima can be a little more technical than making things in-world – what with terms like CODECS, 1080i vs. 1080p, chroma keys, kbps, 16 bit vs. 24 bit, variable sampling, hdmi, and a host of acronyms that can make you turn an run (you down with OPP ? yeah you know me <- omg, that was 21 years ago!) o_O

all those acronyms do mean relevant things to making machinima, but they shouldn’t stop you from trying it out. a few basic principles can get you started – like viewer size, a way to record it (like Fraps), and a way to do simple editing (like iMovie or Windows Moviemaker). later on you can get all crazy but those few things are enough to make a video that you can upload to YouTube (two past video posts: 1 | 2)

the best way to get started is to simply give it a try and see what happens. don’t expect to be all Spielberg on your first try and the bottom line is in the content that your are delivering. if you want to make a tutorial on how to build something, then the way you explain and show it are far more important than your production prowess

YouTube is the number one eLearning source in the world and it’s not because everything looks like a million dollar movie. the Khan Academy got over $10 million from Google in 2010 to make more educational videos and a quick click over to their site shows you that it’s not sophisticated, but it teaches extremely well

if you have been looking for some motivation to make the big plunge, then maybe the call for machinima for the 5th annual Virtual Worlds – Best Practices in Education conference will entice you. and you don’t have to be a teacher to enter. here are their categories copied right from their website:

Be Epic! (1-2 min target – 3 min max)
Be creative, bold and inspiring! Shorts in this category are based on the conference theme – “Be Epic.”

Virtual World Outreach (1-2 min target – 3 min max)
Show us why you are here, your virtual community and place in the Metaverse. Are you in multiple virtual worlds? Show us that too!

How-to/Instructional (3 min target – 4 min max)
The perfect three minute machinima. Can you teach something well in three minutes? Show us how you do this.

Educational (5 min target – 7 min max)
Show us an educational machinima that is currently being used for the F2F, blended or virtual classroom.

Teen (2-5 min target – 6 min max)
Show us your best! Open to more than Second Life – give us OpenSim, Halo, WoW, Minecraft! We’re ready for it.

Digital Storytelling (2- 5 min target – 6 min max)
Do you have a story? We have an audience.

Brave Beginner (1 min target – 2 min max)
For first time producers who have never made or uploaded a machinima to YouTube before. So be honest (first-timers only) and be brave!

Other (1-5 min target – 6 min max)

don’t be put off by thinking your idea isn’t good enough or that your technique is too beginner. some of the most effective videos are done in very simple ways (like CommonCraft – their work rocks and is pretty funny to watch – like their surviving zombies video)

the due date for submission is february 15th and it’s not limited to OpenSim; Second Life, World of Warcraft, Club Penguin, and even Minecraft are okay too! =)

uber big thanks to GridJumper for bringing this to my attention, i may team up with subQuark to make an educational entry  =)

schmancy pants camera eh? =D

Daniel Voyager wrote a short but poignant post today about the one year anniversary of the Teen Grid in Second Life closing. i think he may be the only one to bring that up, i had forgotten about the date

the teen grid was always small but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t important to students and teachers. when Linden Lab removed (merged) the teen grid they changed the TOS to allow 16 and 17 year olds to access the regular grid and they also added language to the TOS allowing 13 to 15 year olds to “access Second Life through an affiliated organization and will be restricted to the private estate of that organization.”

i don’t know if any such organisations ever came into existence and suspect that the abandonment of the ed/non-profit pricing sent a clear message that Linden Lab was no longer interested in helping any such groups

i’d like to think that kids who enjoyed using Second Life may have set up their own private OpenSim network and kept doing their thing. kids are definitely adept enough to be able to setup OpenSim on their own

the only image i could find online for the Teen Grid - from an aug 14th, 2010 post i did