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There have been a series of grid outages lately — InWorldz was down for a day during a server move, JokaydiaGrid moved hosting companies, ReactionGrid shut down altogether. And now SpotON 3D has been down for a few days, blaming server problems. Plus, I’ve been reading about OpenSim users beingRead More →

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I mentioned yesterday in an article about Utherverse that those guys have application sharing for their virtual world platform, but that there’s nothing equivalent for Second Life and OpenSim, except through third-party services. By coincidence, I was cleaning out my in-box yesterday, and found a link to just such aRead More →

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According to virtual worlds research firm KZero, the lack of a marketing budget is the single biggest mistake made by virtual world startups. “Virtual worlds and MMOs with insufficient marketing budgets are floating around in the market and failing to ramp up,” the company said. “This isn’t because their worldsRead More →

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Let’s say you want to hold a virtual event — a class, an exhibition, a support group, a virtual tour, what have you — and have picked Kitely because it’s a low-cost, easy-to-use platform. Here are a few tips to get the most out of your Kitely events. Use meteredRead More →

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Like many folks, I started out in OpenSim using Hippo, then graduated to Imprudence when Hippo was no longer supported. Today, Imprudence is still the recommended viewer on many grids, including OSgrid. Then, because I wanted mesh and media-on-a-prim, I started using the official Second Life viewer. It took aRead More →

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Last month, Linden Lab decided to cut OpenSim off  from its viewer, and, last spring, to force third-party developers to choose between OpenSim and getting the new proprietary Havok pathfinding code. Viewer developers had three choices — turn down the new proprietary code, stop supporting OpenSim, or fork their viewers.Read More →

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As more and more people explore OpenSim, the content licensing issue comes up over and over again. It may be quite a puzzle for folks used to Second Life, where licensing is taken care of by the permissions system. In OpenSim, licensing and permissions are two different things. Permissions —Read More →

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Over my twenty-year-plus career as a journalist, I’ve helped dozens of other writers get started — as an editor, and, prior to that, as an active member of the National Writers Union and the Society of Professional Journalists and other professional organizations. For example, at the SPJ, I headed upRead More →

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The great thing about OpenSim? As much low-cost — or even free — land as you want. The bad thing? You have to have terrains for all that land. Sure, you can go in-world and use the terrain editing tools, but those take forever. And, if you’re anything like me,Read More →

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Want people to come to your grid or region more frequently? Consider this advice from psychologist Susan Weinschenk – Want To Change a Habit? Use Fun, Surprise, and a Crowd. Let’s say that you are the owner of a grid, and you want your users to make visiting your grid a regularRead More →

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Last week, I’ve been following a media storm of coverage surrounding ON24, a virtual events company. A couple of years ago, I covered the company, as well as its competitors InXpo and Unisfair (now InterCall), because — like many — I was confused by the term “virtual events.” So I stillRead More →

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My long-time readers probably know that I pretty much only use virtual worlds for work. I don’t play role playing games. I don’t go to social events. Meanwhile, I keep saying that if you want to see where enterprise technology will be in five years, just take a look atRead More →

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Congratulations, you have a new grid or hosting company. And you have 200 competitors — and the numbers are only going to keep rising. You need to find a way to get your name out there to your potential customers. There are plenty of channels you should be exploring —Read More →

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Is Second Life a game or a platform? In its early years, the question was answered — loudly and repeatedly — Second Life is not a game, it’s a platform. Lately, however, the company seems to be moving in a decidedly game-ish direction. Here are some reasons why it’s aRead More →

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So you like to build stuff in 3D, maybe do a little scripting, a little animating, and you’d like to get paid for it? And I’m not talking about selling stuff on the Second Life Marketplace. That’s a highly competitive field, with extremely low margins, high stress levels and highRead More →

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Everyone knows I’m a big fan of OpenSim. I want it to grow big, with lots of different things to do, lots of different places to go, lots of people to meet. This requires that it get easier for people to set up their own grids and regions. For theRead More →

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This week, ReactionGrid has all but abandoned OpenSim in favor of its proprietary, Unity-based Jibe virtual world platform. And Linden Lab has also distanced itself from OpenSim, removing support for the “-loginURI” feature which allowed people to access OpenSim grids with the official Second Life viewer. Both of these decisionsRead More →

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At first, it seemed to be another publicity disaster in the making. SpotON3D, a grid known for shooting itself in the foot when it comes to public relations, was spotted distributing content by Linda Kellie without crediting her for her work. SpotON3D is a closed, commercial grid that stands outRead More →

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As of today, there are 100 grids in our Hyperica directory, all accessible – at least some of the time — by hypergrid teleport. That’s over 15,000 regions. My researchers and I have visited just a couple of hundred. We try to hit the welcome region of each grid, andRead More →

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I know what I would like to see in a WebGL browser-based viewer for OpenSim — everything that current viewers have but super-easy to use and fast to load and quick to write. Well, I know we’re not going to get that, especially if we’re doing it with a crowdfundedRead More →

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I love Cloud Party. I love the responsive, 3D graphics. The cute tutorial. The in-world building tools. The free house.  I even love the Facebook integration. Most of all, though, I love the fact that it’s WebGL. It runs natively in modern browsers like Chrome and Firefox and Safari —Read More →

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If you’re a tech-savvy grid owner, there’s a good chance you’ve heard of Bitcoin, a new virtual currency that’s completely private, untraceable, and isn’t backed by any company or government. For some, Bitcoin is the future of online payments, an alternative to our current, outmoded, failing financial system. But before youRead More →

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I frequently want to know if some far-away region is up or not.  Say, for example,  I have a blamgate up to my favorite shopping mall. I want the gate to be nice and bright when the destination region is up, and go dark if the destination region is down.Read More →

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If you work in Second Life, you don’t have to worry about provenance. The Lindens take care of it with their permissions system. Or, at least, that’s how it’s supposed to work. And you already know that you can’t bring anything from Second Life to OpenSim unless you’ve checked withRead More →

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There’s an old saying that 90 percent of new businesses fail within a year, and they fail because of a lack of capital. Fortunately, that’s a myth. According to the U.S. Small Business Administration, 70 percent of new businesses survive at least two years, and more than half were stillRead More →

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Tor Books, the largest science fiction publisher in the world, just announced that it will be removing digital rights management — DRM — from its ebooks. “Our authors and readers have been asking for this for a long time,” said president and publisher Tom Doherty in the announcement. “They’re aRead More →

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With the recent explosion in new OpenSim grids, it will get harder and harder to get noticed. I’ve been talking about this to new gridmasters, and thought I’d share the advice a bit more widely. While I’m specifically writing for hypergrid-enabled grids, some of the same advice will apply toRead More →

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The premise: As the number of grids proliferates, so does the number of destinations not safe for children. Schools and parents can install software that protects children from inappropriate websites — similar software designed for the hypergrid could protect children from grids dedicated to gambling and adult activities. The business TheRead More →

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[CORRECTION: I removed a line about bottlenecks that specifically mentioned the InWorldz asset server. See discussion in the comments for the full details.] InWorldz is celebrating it’s third anniversary in Las Vegas this weekend (livestream here, schedule here). I’m listening to the keynote presentation right now by grid founder BethRead More →

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I am going to build my dream woman. Or maybe a man. Someone who will greet me warmly when she sees me. She’ll take messages for me, tell me if there’s someone waiting for me in my office,  send me a teleport request, greet visitors by name, give landmarks toRead More →

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For the longest time, I avoided the official Second Life viewers like the plague. There was always some update they wanted me to do when I had the least time to do it. There was no grid selection at startup, and, compared to Hippo, everything was in the wrong placeRead More →

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The premise: There’s something addicting about putting together a virtual train set, getting the scenery just right, assembling the train itself. Even better is when you get to share it with people, or see how your set stacks up against others. This creates a business opportunity for a company —Read More →

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When asked about the difference between Second Life and OpenSim I frequently explain that, for enterprise users, having a region in Second Life is a lot like having a page on Facebook — and using OpenSim is like having your own website. This was recently underscored for me by myRead More →

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I’ve been listening to Vanish Seriath’s interview with OpenSim core developer Justin Clark-Casey today and I was struck by Clark-Casey’s pessimism about the growth of the hypergrid. He was worried about scalability, security, and whether or not it even serves any purpose. He expressed surprise that people would want to useRead More →

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Running OpenSim on your home computer in, in theory, a great way to have as much virtual land as you want — for free. In practice, it can take quite a bit of time and effort to set it up. I normally have my teenage daughter do it, but withRead More →

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I regularly hear that virtual worlds — and OpenSim and Second Life in particular — are too hard to use, or that the bandwidth and computer processing power isn’t there yet, or that the graphics aren’t good enough. But, as I pointed out before, all these things were true ofRead More →

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A few weeks ago, I posted a script about how to add data to a Google spreadsheet from inside an OpenSim world (or from a Second Life region). But what if you want to go the other way, and bring data from a spreadsheet in-world? It’s not too hard. First,Read More →

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It’s been years in the making. Literally. I’ve been slowly collecting scripts and destinations — with the help of a lot of other folks — and Hyperica is finally open for business. The hyperport, not the website. Here’s how it works. There are three regions. Hyperica Lower is at 4025,Read More →

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With some help from scripters, designers, and other hypergrid travelers, we’ve been bringing the Hyperica directory up-to-date. As part of the process, I travel to a lot of grid welcome regions — there are about forty grids that are on the hypergrid that are already in the directory, and we’reRead More →

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Today, Hamlet Au wrote a column suggesting that the OpenSim user base is shrinking — and used Hypergrid Business numbers to support his position. The short answer to his question is: No, OpenSim usage is not falling, and the numbers do not support this. In fact, it is growing quiteRead More →

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There’s been a lot written lately about how SOPA and PIPA would affect virtual worlds including Second Life. The legislation would allow copyright holders to shut down access to Internet domains where pirated content is published — or even where there are links to other sites that have pirated content.Read More →

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My son wants to design space stations for a living. But he also wants to raise cows — he will inherit the family farm. My son wants to follow in the footsteps of both his grandfathers — the aerospace engineer and the dairy farmer. But the kinds of hands-on engineeringRead More →

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A few days ago I saw a Tweet, that said something like, “I looked at OpenSim, but some guy said he would steal all my stuff. So, no thanks!” In fact, that attitude comes up a lot on discussion boards and in other forums. There’s a perception that OpenSim isRead More →

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Last night, hanging out on OSGrid waiting for the ball to drop on New Year’s Eve, I resolved — among other things — to exercise more. But I’m the kind of person who thinks of herself less as a fitness freak and more as a … bookworm. Couch potato. DeskRead More →

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I’m tired of naysayers complaining that Second Life — and, by extension, OpenSim — has no mass appeal. That it’s too hard to use. That regions take too long to load. That there’s never anybody there. Or if they’re there, they’re rude and annoying. That it’s all sex and gambling.Read More →

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We’re running a survey today about OpenSim hosting providers, and I’m getting the sense that there’s a lot of confusion about OpenSim hosting when it comes to renting land on a grid, versus buying hosting from a third-party vendor. Part of it is understandable — there are a lot ofRead More →

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There are a lot of stargates floating around OpenSim. Most are copies of one of the gates that show up in the StarGate movies or television shows. Others are unrecognizable as gates — they’re disguised as teleport boards, spinning globes, and weird shapes. After all, a hypergate is just a script — it canRead More →

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Now that Vivox voice is available for free to small grids and to non-profit grids, there’s going to be less pressure on the OpenSim developers to finish integrating Whisper voice. And that’s a shame, since only two major issues need work. One is that Whisper isn’t currently integrated into existingRead More →

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Note: Vivox now has an online form that OpenSim grid owners and hosting providers can use to request access credentials. Merry Christmas, grid owners — Vivox is now available, for free, to any grid owner. You get the same voice as in Second Life — with lip synching and directionality and speech indications.Read More →