SO! We have a small little experimental feature we want you to know about…

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So our gangs of skilled Moles are ready with the components to expand the Second Life road network. We’ll try to match the roads to the terrain, and to the existing road styles … but our eager little insectivores have some creative ideas, too.

For the first wave of expansion, we’ve identified half a dozen routes in the “Atoll” continent. Here are the proposed routes and the survey. Make your choice!

We’ll give the survey until at least Friday to run, and then we’ll put the LDPW to work. Wave when you see a mole in a distinctive orange vest, and remember to “give ‘em a brake” when you’re driving in a construction zone.

[UPDATE on 1 May 2008]   We’ve had 653 responses to the poll as of 2:18 pm SLT today. 35.9% of the respondents chose Route 1 as their first choice, followed by Route 2 with 25.8%. Route 2 had 25.7% of the second choice votes, followed by Route 1 with 20.0%.

Routes 5 and 6 never got more than 7% each in the first and second choice polls … third choice voting was spread pretty evenly among all the routes.

Our moles will begin work immediately on Route 1. Thank you for your votes and the discussion!

Looking for cool places to visit within Second Life? We are too! We’re pleased to announce that the Second Life Showcase is coming to the 1.21 viewer release, which is planned for Release Candidate in 2-3 weeks and in final form in 6-7 weeks.

For a sneak peek at this new feature, please visit Second Life Showcase on our website. The Showcase is an editorially-managed guide that highlights a variety of inworld venues and intriguing locations to new and existing Residents. For more info, read our Second Life Showcase FAQ; it includes information on how to suggest a venue for feature placement. We are currently developing an easier way to nominate inworld experiences for the Showcase from within the viewer, so keep an eye on this blog for more news!

The Second Life Showcase is all about quality over quantity. Our internal editorial team periodically selects new and/or popular venues to rotate into the various featured spots within the Arts & Culture, Fashion, Hot Spots, and Music categories. This new feature complements, but does not replace the more comprehensive Search tools within Second Life. However, it will be replacing the old Popular Places tab.

Since many of the inworld builds created by our community — small and large alike — are both amazing and overlooked, we’re introducing Second Life Showcase as an additional way for Residents to discover interesting places to visit. We hope this feature will make it easier and more effective to help those hotspots shine (instead of Popular Places). (more…)

[UPDATE 1:35pm  Pacific] Logins are open, and the asset system has returned to full functionality. Please be patient when logging in, as the login queue will be processing a high volume of requests for the next few minutes.

[1:02 pm Pacific] Logins have temporarily been restricted to staff-only as Operations addresses a slowdown in the asset system. We’ve also broadcast a request in world for residents who are currently logged in to refrain from manipulating or transferring assets. We’ll have more info ASAP.

[CLOSED 11:07 a.m. --teeple]

All regions affected have been returned to service.  Thanks for your patience!

[UPDATE 10:08 a.m. --teeple]

The vast majority of regions are back online. Operations is still working on a small number of them. We’ll let you know as soon as they’re done.

***

As a result of a recent Rolling Restart, many regions in Second Life are currently down. Our Server Team is working quickly to get them back online as soon as possible. More Updates here as information is received. Thank you for your continued patience.

Friendly greetings! I’ll start with a thank-you, and this is important because of you: Second Life Video Tutorials have been viewed a total of 2 million times on YouTube. To respond to your rising requests and flood of feedback, I made 77 in the first quarter of 2008 — not counting the few-dozen that are in varying states of completion — and more will come, I promise.

My goals (who I am and what I do) continue to focus on making Second Life learning fun, fast, & friendly, and of chief importance in Q208 is getting the word out to Residents new, old, and yet-to-be who could benefit from the vidtuts but aren’t finding them (yet).

You should know that:

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Our support portal will be offline for six hours of system maintenance this Saturday, 26th April from 6:00pm-Midnight PST. During that time, the support portal will be unavailable for chat or ticketing services.

As originally reported here, our auction pages will be offline for scheduled maintenance this evening from 9 pm until 11pm PST.

We apologise for any inconvenience this essential event may cause.

[2:43 AM - RESOLVED] The database is back and transaction histories are now viewable again. Thanks for your patience whilst we sorted it out.

Residents will find that transaction histories are not showing up when running a query on our website. This is due to an error on one of our slave databases, which is now in the process of being resolved. It’s hoped that this will be back in about 20 to 30 minutes.

Sorry for the inconvenience meantime.

Thwack…thwack…is this thing on? Oh, hi. This is Katt, one of the newest Lindens.

I’m the new Communications Manager, and kudos to those of you who noticed the position had been filled.

So what am I here to do?

A big part of my job is to listen. I will also be aggregating your comments here and monitoring the blogosphere, to follow developing trends and opinion. I’ll be working to update our communications tools. And, I’ll be doing my best to help all of us at Linden Lab be more consistent and effective as bloggers and communicators.

Linden Lab knows how important it is that we have clear and consistent communications with Residents. We know that we have work to do, and that’s why I’m here.

I’ll start by managing a facelift on the forums, and then on the blog.

As for me, I’ve been paying attention to Second Life, and reading your blogs, for a couple of years now, and like you, I care deeply about Second Life. And I’m more proud than I can say to be part of Linden Lab, “working to connect us all to an online world that advances the human condition.”

My role here is, however, a work in progress, and so I’m going to start out by saying that I’ll need to ask for your patience.

This is surely going to be evolving, and I welcome your feedback.