As previously announced, Linden Lab has been hard at work on an all-new way to search Second Life. Today, as part of the 1.18.5 Release Candidate, we are excited to announce that the new search mechanism is live and ready for you to try out! This change should improve both the search experience and the quality of your results.

We understand that many of you may have questions about the new search, so we’ve compiled a Search FAQ in our Knowledge Base. We’ve also got a video tutorial available. Want more? Listen to a clip from our upcoming Search Podcast with the Linden Lab Search Team here and here - full podcast coming soon!

The points below highlight the key things you should know about the new Search:

• The new search is additive to the current search
• The new search returns information about land, profiles, groups, wiki documents, events, classifieds, and some individual objects
• You have the ability to choose what you want to include in search
• Classifieds are returned both within and next to the search results

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As many of you read in last week’s blog announcement, we’re currently developing a new inworld search mechanism. Based upon your feedback and other discussions happening within the LL Search Team, I had a few updates to pass along.

New Search Design Mockup
We also wanted to share the newest iteration of the new Search UI, seen below.

Updated! New Search UI (click for larger image)

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(UPDATE: more information posted here)

Linden Lab is pleased to announce that we are in the process of extending our inworld search mechanism which should improve the search experience and results for all Second Life Residents! The primary goals of this project are to both make it easier to find places to go inworld and to make it simpler to find objects to purchase.

Before this project launches, we’d like to explain some of the changes to you and hopefully get some feedback before it moves into production. With today’s 1.18.4 release candidate (download 1.18.4 or read the blog announcement), we will be incorporating a new check box option to allow Second Life Residents to opt-into the new Search. For the initial population of the search, we’ve made some assumptions for the default settings of each type of result (explained below). Also, read about the planned future of search in Second Life here. You will have time to change all of your default settings before the actual launch of the new Search, which we’re hoping will happen in the next few months, please watch this blog for updates! We wanted to give you several weeks to prepare and choose your settings before the change.

If you’re curious about the Release Candidate process, please read more about it.

Technical Details
The biggest change that you’ll notice when the new Search launches is that the “Search All” dialog box has been dramatically changed and improved (see images below). We have built a system that creates ordinary HTML web pages out of data from the Second Life system. We upload these web pages to an ordinary web server. We have purchased Google Search Appliances to perform the indexing and the new search results. These servers are an off-the-shelf product which Google makes available for purchase by an individual or organization, and the servers and data are hosted at Linden’s co-location facilities. We have not entered into any working partnership with Google.

What’s Included in Search?
Land parcels, Residents profile, Groups, Second Life wiki articles, Events, and some individual Objects present on public parcels are all included in the search results. Keep reading for more information on what’s included.

New Search UI (click for larger image)

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Today, we are launching the new Second Life Auction system. Our new system will be powered by eBay’s private marketplace technology.

As noted in our previous post, only Linden Lab land auctions (mainland and a small number of abandoned parcels) will be placed into the new system. In the future we may also allow other types of auctions and sales through this new service.

You can get to the site through the “Land Auctions” link in the Land Information page on the Second Life website, or go directly to usd.auctions.secondlife.com

For details on access, eligibility, bidding or tracking your bids, see the auction FAQ.

Happy Bidding!

A new, voluntary voice viewer is available for download – please use the below links to download it:

Windows 2000/XP
Mac OS X

It includes changes to the voice code that will improve audio quality on slow or congested internet connections, older Macintosh hardware, and some kinds of analog microphones.

There is a new optional Voice First Look viewer available! You can download it here. We’ve made a lot of changes based on your feedback over the past few weeks, particularly to the voice user interface and the Communicate window.

We’ve added ability to hide and show the Participants List in the Communicate window, changed the icon on the Push-to-Talk button, and added new icons in the Participants List. Speaking of the Participants List, it now defaults to closed, and opens after voice has been engaged. You can also open or close it at any time. Finally, text from objects can now be muted in the Participants List in the Communicate window.

By popular demand, you can now accept incoming voice calls in one click instead of two (i.e., by clicking only the Accept button instead of the Accept button + Call). Voice UI elements are grayed out until voice is enabled in the viewer, which has been a significant request from those of you who love voice and those of you who don’t. The Say, Shout, and Send IM buttons are also grayed out when there is no input text.

New keyboard shortcuts have also been implemented. Ctrl-T toggles the Communicate window, Ctrl-W closes the selected tab the Communicate window, Ctrl-H goes to Near Me (Chat History), and Ctrl-F goes to My Friends.

We thank you again for all of the feedback that led us to make these changes, and encourage you to continue to provide bug submissions and UI requests at Voice Jira (link corrected, thanks Drew Dwi!).

Relatedly, there is also a new Beta version of Voice available for download here.

Voice is moving from the Beta Grid to the Live Grid! The Voice First Look Viewer is now available for download to use against the Live Grid. A “First Look” viewer is a publicly available test version of the SL Viewer, designed to enable testing of new client-side features by Residents. (Read more about the First Look Viewers here). The Voice First Look Viewer is optional, and we encourage you to download it from the First Look page.

We plan to run the Voice First Look Viewer on the Live Grid for a month or two, and will incorporate your feedback and develop iteratively during that time. We expect voice to be a standard feature of the Second Life Viewer at the end of this process.

We describe the key features and functionality of voice in the remainder of this blog post, but more detailed information on voice is also available in a voice article and FAQ in the Knowledge Base of our customer support portal

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We previously announced that we would be releasing Second Life 1.17.0 tomorrow, Wednesday June 6. Due to the need for further testing, 1.17.0 is delayed until next week (6/13) . We are still planning on a short downtime for tomorrow, to complete some database work. Therefore, Second Life will still be down for maintenance from 7am until 9am PDT.  During the update the Second Life Grid will not be available. Please note, a viewer update will NOT be required.

Thank you all for your patience while we work to make Second Life better.

We are planning the release of Second Life 1.17.0 on Wednesday, June 6 from 6AM – 12PM PDT. During the update the Second Life Grid will not be available. Please note, a viewer update will be required.

Release notes will be available on Tuesday, pending final verification of all issues.

Please watch for a blog post about an update to the Beta Grid shortly.

Thank you all for your patience as we continue to improve the Second Life experience.

The new Voice feature has been live on the Beta Grid for the last two months. We’re very excited about this very cool new feature, which has been in design and development for over a year now, and can’t wait to release it to a wider audience, so that everyone can experience it. (Read the initial announcement about Voice here.)

As you can imagine the coordination involved in the release of a feature as big as Voice is complex and we want to make sure to release it with the least possible complications. Our current plan is to release a First Look version of the voice client within the next few weeks. Then, after we’ve gathered good feedback on the First Look release and fixed any remaining bugs, we’ll release Voice as a required viewer. When we do release Voice, we plan to do it right and in a way that incorporates as much of the Beta feedback we’ve received as possible.

What is the First Look Viewer?
The First Look Viewer refers to a publicly available test version of the Second Life client. It is designed to allow testing of new client side features by Residents against the Live Grid. This viewer connects to the Main Grid, so that you can test it in your everyday Second Life. This is a test viewer connecting to the live grid which means everything you do is for real. We want you to use this test viewer for your normal day-to-day activities, but please be aware that it might be buggier than normal.

Need a Headset?
Looking for an affordable headset so you can check out the new Voice feature? We know that headsets can be expensive, so we’ve made an effort to help you keep costs down by creating a special partnership offering new headsets at a deep discount. We’ve made arrangements with GBH, an audio/video product supplier, to supply a range of high-quality, pre-tested headset options that work well with Second Life Voice. Please visit our partner site for more information on these headphones. 

Thank you all for your patience while we work to improve Second Life. We’ll be sure to post more information as the release date for the Voice First Look Viewer approaches.