So, you know a lot about Second Life, right? You’ve got ideas, big ideas, and are tired of waiting around for Linden Lab to make it just so. The challenge of stabilizing, maintaining, and extending the Second Life Grid, and the dozens of services and thousands of machines it entails, excites you. If this describes you, you should check out our job listings!

Three of the prioritized positions are web developers, production operations engineers, and production operations developers, but many other openings are currently available.

Web Developers
Web development is where the Second Life Grid meets the world outside of the viewer. The Lindex, Land Store, registration and account management processes are all examples of services created and maintained by our web developers. We are looking to add top quality talent to any of our offices, but particularly Mountain View, Seattle, and Brighton.

Production Operations
Our Production Operations team is a high performing group of *nix achievers, consisting of 100% remote employees and 0% pager duty.  The team is responsible for the health of the Second Life Grid, and provides monitoring, diagnostic, escalation, and resolution support. We are currently focusing our search in Australia and Singapore, but are also considering candidates from the United States and the United Kingdom willing to work Asia-Pacific hours.

Go to http://lindenlab.com/employment to see all our job listings.

I show you how to play parcel music in Second Life — including Internet radio stations — in less than 10 minutes! Yes, it’s really that simple, and along the way, I highlight good things to know.

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00:17 - Setup Second Life for playing music
01:49 - Get a music URL from your web browser
02:44 - Play a music URL in Second Life
03:38 - Find Internet radio stations to play in SL
05:19 - View a playlist file to get the music URL (in iTunes)
06:29 - Get the music URL (in Winamp)
06:59 - Get the music URL (in a text editor)
07:29 - More radio stations to get music URLs
08:20 - Working URLs do not end in M3U or PLS
09:38 - Hide a music URL

Related resources:

• Music articles in our Knowledge Base
• Streaming Music wiki page
• “Media on a Parcel” - See Jeremy’s recent post if you want to show movies, webpages, etc.

-Torley Linden
     Watch 150+ video tutorials for your happier Second Life!

We’ve just updated the Quality Metrics page, and the numbers show what you already know: April was not a good month for Second Life Grid availability. Our internal outage tracking tool estimates that about 630,000 usage hours were lost to global system failures over the course of the month, which is about 1.9% of the total (up from 0.06% in February and 0.22% in March), and resident surveys clearly indicate great unhappiness coinciding with these failures. (We define lost usage as how much time Residents would have spent logged in but did not, due to Grid failures; it is meant as a global availability metric and does not cover local failures like sim crashes, inventory problems, and the like. See actual[black] vs predicted[blue] concurrency graph excerpt, right.) I’d like to address the causes for this, and what we are doing about it in general terms.

What happened, and Why?
So, on to why April was so tough: virtually every piece of mission-critical Second Life Grid infrastructure failed catastrophically at least once during the month. Here are the biggest sources of downtime; I list these not to shirk responsibility, but to illustrate the near-perfect storm:

• Intra-Grid Network By far, the largest event was the near-total loss of intra-grid network connectivity on April 4/5, caused by a line failure within the backbone of our primary network provider - who delayed, botched, and again delayed the fix, extending what should have been a relatively brief outage for many hours… and then the failure was repeated on a smaller scale on April 25. We’re working with the provider at the executive level to address the risks that allowed this to happen.
• Central Database We encountered a new crash bug in our central database, resulting in a series of four database outages. We have subsequently identified a work-around, and should be able to avoid this particular crash in the future. In general, eliminating this cluster as a scalability bottleneck and failure point is a very high priority for Linden Lab.
• Asset Storage Cluster The asset storage cluster crashed during routine maintenance; this was a repeat of the crashes that afflicted us in December and January. The vendor had previously assured us that this problem was fixed, and so we continue to work with them to investigate the cause and potential solutions.
• Data Center/Transient Data Services Our data center in San Francisco cut power to many of our most critical servers over the course of two days. We had advance notice of this one, but working around the power cuts did cause some disruptions. This was a learning process as well, and we’ve refined our processes for dealing with events like this.

For more information on the systems that make up the Second Life Grid and how, when they fail, they impact the platform, please check the Service Disruptions page. Because component failures are never wholly avoidable, our goal (and the goal of online services everywhere), is to reduce the extent to which the Second Life Grid is affected by the loss of key systems. With a platform this technologically complex, adding the necessary redundancy and failure management is a long process, but we have not been standing still: on average a database crash in April cost about 14,000 lost usage hours, vs 53,000 hours for a similar crash last August (at a time when substantially fewer people were using Second Life). We will continue to reduce the impact (on both logins and in-world functionality) of these crashes, until they cease to be significant, at which point they can come off the Service Disruptions page.

Clearly, though, there is still a great deal of work left to do. Our long term strategy includes specific plans to eliminate the risks associated with all of the failures I listed above. We make progress every day, and continue to hire the best and brightest technical staff at our offices in San Francisco, Mountain View, Seattle, Boston, and Brighton. (See our hiring page.) In the meantime, our service record is not perfect but we are confident that we have identified some key areas to improve and will continue to move forward.

Finally, I’ll mention our new coalesced status reports page, which replaces system status updates on our primary blog. Look there for all Grid-status information, including information about upcoming scheduled outages: http://status.secondlifegrid.net/

Hello everybody! This week on KBAotW, I’d like to introduce you to a little feature called Media On A Parcel. With Parcel Media, you can share your movies, music, images, and even webpages with other Residents on your land. Movie night, anyone?

As always, if you have questions about Second Life, and you think the answer should be in the Knowledge Base, please stop by Documentation Office Hours today at 2pm PDT. We love to hear from you! You’ll find our valiant and scholarly Documentation team lounging on couches at our usual pier-shaped office in Beaumont.

See you there!

Jeremy Linden

Now open for Resident inspection — Bay City! Regions intended for a vibrant urban experience, double primmed for your pleasure. Roads, parks, a movie theater and city services are already in place, maintained by Linden Lab. Close to the offices and shops of Nova Albion, with broad canals usable for travel and tourism — but with broad, clean beaches and plentiful vegetation.

Rail and water trolleys carry the Residents of Bay City about; a balloon tour provides dazzling aerial views of the city. Connections to the world at large by ship, seaplane, dirigible, road and rail are available.

In just over a week, auctions will begin for the many attractive parcels in Bay City’s first twelve Regions. Ranging in size from about 512 square meters to nearly 2000 square meters, the parcels cannot be terraformed, joined or divided by their owners. Buyers will receive a package of textures and objects to help with their building projects.

Governor Linden said in a pre-recorded statement, “We hope that the Residents of this new city will produce interesting and attractive structures, in styles appropriate to the period 1930 to 1960 when most of our buildings were erected. In any case, the Residents of Bay City will form a unique and bustling community.”

Bay City — easily reached by Route 66 from Nova Albion, or by sea via the Straits of Shermerville.

“Bay City — the City by the Bay.”  Directions Today: Bay City is so new it doesn’t show on the map yet, but it is there, and it’s worth a visit! To get there, open your Map in-world, search for Cape Haven, and teleport there. Bay City will be SOUTH of you.

You can open the Mini-Map to see which direction you need to go, just fly up above the water (in Cape Haven you land on the ocean floor) and then fly due South to visit the new Bay City — the City by the Bay.”   [Edited to add directions for today, -- Katt Linden]

Friendly greetings! Torley, enthusiastic teacher of Second Life skills here. For your ease-of-use, I’ve reorganized the big page o’ Video Tutorials so you can faster find what you want to learn. One of the new features is that when you view the lists for “Tip of the Week” (30+ of ‘em) and “Quicktips” (75+!), columns can be sorted by category! Also, I’ll be updating the main page regularly to show highlights from my most recent videos. Experience for yourself.

In addition, I’m continually working on longer-term plans for easier searching of vidtuts, including getting more of them in our Knowledge Base and plugging them in other places as-needed; it’s good to have lots of knowledge, but even better to be able to find it.

With that being said, it’s only fair I share 20 more quick tips with you! Filmed in Second Life 1.20 Release Candidate, most of these have been suggested by some of you (thank-you!), and they’re a delicious assortment of hints ‘n’ tricks that you’ll learn something new & useful from! As I like to advertise,

“Short on time? Quicktips deliver your knowledge in 2 minutes or less, guaranteed.”

Food for your Second Life:
 

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Add a webpage to your profile

Do this to add extra info or a splash of fun to your existing profile, which is useful for showing others who you are.
 

Change text and effect colors

Want to change the hue of those dots that come out of your hand when you select stuff? Here’s the ticket, and you can customize chat text tones too!
 

Click actions make using stuff easier

CLICK ACTIONS ROCK. If you’re not using them, YOU MUST. Why am I TYPING IN ALL CAPS? Watch and find out!

Get high in the sky instantly

Sitting on a cube and repositioning it is a practical, more controlled alternative to flying manually.
 

Make flexible objects

Once a glorious new feature, now the basis of hair, skirts, and more wonderful creations! Learn how to make flexiprims from scratch.
 

Make local light objects

Lights can — well, light up a scene! But remember, there can only be 6 lights onscreen at once! I explain why this is, and wear your facelights wisely.
 

Open a box

A basic skill everyone needs to know! Once you buy something, you often have to unpack it. It’s straightforward once you know how, and here’s how.
 

Prim and mesh hair differences

Another goodie for newcomers: do you know how to tell which is which and why it matters? Watch and see!
 

Rebake textures to fix clothing glitches

One of my favorite unfavorite workarounds. Someday, improved texture compositing will (I hope) remedy these glitches, but until then, here’s a tip that’s been passed on and on.
 

Redock tabs to clear clutter

A simple click helps you clean your screen of stray windows.
 

Save textures to disk

I used to get asked this question a lot: whether you want to back up some textures or edit them for reuploading, I show you what you should know.
 

Save your avatar’s outfit

I’m famed for my wide variety of avatars! How do I do it? Each one is an “outfit” within a folder which can be switched in seconds. Stay organized and express yourself!
 

Sell Original, Copy, or Contents?

If you sell stuff, you MUST know the difference between these. Choosing “Contents” removes the extra steps for unpacking boxes (see above). Make things easy for your customers and they’ll love ya!
 

Show who’s chatting around you

Another button that isn’t so obvious: click the “< <” in Local Chat or a group IM, and presto, a list of speakers. Good if you find camera controls awkward to gawk at nametags.
 

Skip popups after reinstalling

Popups — when you don’t wanna see ‘em — are annoying! Dismiss them with a single click and continue forth. Conversely, you can show all of them again, in case you missed any before.
 

Sort columns for easier selection

Tired of voice chatters in Active Participants shuffling around faster than you can click? You can click columns in this window, and others too!
 

Take a snapshot

Second Life photography is thriving. It all begins by pressing down a special key, which doesn’t play a melody… but will save a snapshot to disk! Also see my AWESOME GUIDE TO HIGH-QUALITY PHOTOGRAPHY… with, you guessed it, video tutorials!
 

Texture shortcuts

After you’ve applied 1000s of textures as I have, you’ll be keen to expedite the process.
 

The 1-prim barstool trick

Primfficiency, building wisely by economizing # of prims while maximizing visual results, has evolved greatly (to sculpties!). The 1-prim barstool trick is fun if you’ve never built before. Torley-bot guides you.
 

Use Inventory filters

Filters help you narrow down searches and temporarily hide clutter. They’re also (sadly) a cause of perceived (not actual) inventory loss, so make sure to reset them as I demonstrate!
 

I know, I know, you’ve made it all the way here… and you want to make a comment, right? Thanx in advance for your awesome ideas, because I eat ‘em up like a galaxy of Pac-People munches power-pills… and give you more video tutorials!!!!

DON’T LET THE @#$%ING GHOSTS WIN!
 

-Torley Linden
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There is a new Release Candidate available, and a shiny new format for our Downloads page to get it!

A new Second Life 1.20 (RC6) Release Candidate viewer is now available for download from the Test Viewers page (this is the bottom section of the page, not the primary installer in orange at the top of page).

Reminder: Release Candidate viewers are optional viewers that contain the latest round of bug fixes in the upcoming next version of the Second Life viewer. If you have been using the 1.20 (RC5), you will be required to update that installation to this latest version (RC6). But the Release Candidate is always an optional version that you may choose not to use — or better– to have installed side by side on your computer with the main viewer offered on our Downloads page or http://get.secondlife.com.

In 1.20 (RC6) Release Candidate, we have isolated and resolved the SmartHeap library error message that occurs on exiting Second Life. We’ve also patched the problem of property lines showing through avatars, objects and the ground. Here are the latest notes:

Changes:
* Changed the descriptor in Group Information window > Notices tab to “14 days” instead of 30
* Removed menu option Advanced > Character > Show Collision Plane
* Property lines are are now hidden behind objects, avatars, terrain, and water by default. When in Build mode, if ‘Tools > Show Hidden Selection’ is enabled, property lines will become visible through objects, etc.

Fixes:
* Fixed: VWR-6389: Runtime Library error after quitting Second Life
* Fixed: VWR-4580: Property lines are visible through avatar, objects and through ground
* Fixed: VWR-6896: Crash when selecting Advanced > Rendering > Info Displays > Lights (and other Info Displays)
* Fixed: VWR-7042: Incorrect tooltip for “Use built-in web browser” option
* Fixed: the spinners are broken in the snapshot UI when upload a snapshot
* Fixed: Create tool’s last 11 shapes are not the proper height (”sphere” looks like an “egg”)
* Fixed: Typographical error in Transfer permissions alert dialog
* Fixed: Crash selecting Edit > Land Owners with Basic Shaders disabled
* Fixed: crash on LLFloaterWorldMap::buildLandmarkIDLists
* Fixed: 3dConnexion device does not default to enabled with 1.20 RC 5
* Fixed: Settings in the Joystick Configuration window reset to defaults on each launch when a SpaceNavigator is connected

Localization Fixes:
* Fixed: XML resizing to repair truncated text in 1.20 localizations

Known Issues:

* As the first release of improved Joystick and 3D input device support, there are minor known issues with camera behavior and/or button-mapping behavior when using the 3dxconnexion SpaceNavigator in a combination of “Flycam” and Build modes.
* IMPORTANT NOTE: There is a known issue in the 1.20 Release Candidate on Macs using Apple’s USB Mighty Mouse and a 3dxconnexion SpaceNavigator. The Mighty Mouse will be erroneously detected as a joystick where the primary mouse button will toggle “Flycam” with unusual behavior. Therefore the support for the 3dxconnexion SpaceNavigator in Second Life does not yet extend to Macs using a USB Mighty Mouse.

We expect this to be the final Release Candidate in the 1.20 viewer series, barring any Showstoppers that you may find. Please of course continue to report any new issues large or small in the Issue Tracker, and be sure to set “Affects Version/s” to “1.20 Release Candidate”.

Thanks to all of you who participate in the RC cycle — posting reproducible steps and system environments, responding to questions, and clarifying and linking — your help to improve the Second Life viewer is greatly appreciated!

We are delighted to announce that the old Land Store has now been switched off, and the new Land Store made available for the puchase of normal islands and Openspaces. However, as part of our gradual rollout of this new tool, we will not be enabling it for all residents immediately. Instead, we will be enabling it for two specific groups like so:

• Those that recently ordered or have expressed an interest in ordering or who we know have been waiting for the new Land Store to go live. Those on this list will be enabled automatically and should receive an email from us once the new Land Store is enabled for them.
• Anyone who applies for access, and wishes to buy a new island or Openspace, and is comfortable using beta software.

In this way, we will be able to control the traffic hitting the new store and watch for any early problems. We will be closely watching how the early orders go and will correct any issues we find. If all goes well for a week or so, we will then open it up to all residents.

How to Gain Access to the Land Store (beta)

To add your avatar name to the LandStore Beta access list, visit www.secondLife.com/support and make sure you are logged in with the correct account. Then, click the “Submit a Ticket” button on the right hand side of the page. On the ticket page* select “Land and Region issues” and then “LandStore Beta Access”. Fill in all the fields and we’ll add you to the access list. It will take ~24 hours for your request to be processed.

• Residents with Basic accounts will be taken to a knowledgebase article and will then need to click on the “Click here to submit a ticket.” link to be taken to the ticket page. On the ticket page, they should select “Special Questions - Basic account or Guest Login” and then “LandStore Beta Access”.

Just to be clear, as the old Land Store is being disabled, if you need to buy an island or Openspace you will need to apply for and use the new Land Store. Applicants will be added/enabled within 24 hours.

Screen shots (click image for larger version) :

Land Portal Page

Land Store Map Page

Estate Listing Page

Estate Management Page

Edited for Clarity: Sorry for the confusion. The new rules do not prohibit a group from sending more than 200 messages. They do mean that if a group has more than 200 notices stored, starting with the 201st, the group can expect those notices to be regularly removed from storage in the database. 

Group messages older than 14 days or in excess of 200 can be expected to be deleted from the database (once each day.) – Katt

- - -

As part of our ongoing effort to provide you with the highest quality Second Life experience possible…we have identified and tested an issue that should help alleviate load on the databases. 

1. Starting Tuesday, 6 May, 2008, all group notices that are older than 14 days will be removed from storage in the database. (Notices were previously held for 31 days.)  The reason for this change is to help reduce load on the database. Note: Nearly *every* group that uses notices in Second Life will be effected by this change, which will be ongoing. 
    
2. Groups will now be limited to 200 notices *per group* each day. Older messages, over the 200th, will be regularly removed from storage in the database.  There are about 135 groups we expect will be impacted by this limit. The owner of each of these groups should see a message in-world Tuesday, notifying them of the change.  

Please note that in both cases this process would remove the *oldest* notices, if any. This will start on Tuesday 6 May, 2008, and is intended to help stabilize the databases.

As part of our ongoing effort to provide you with the highest quality Second Life experience possible, part of our process is to ask ourselves, periodically, if we’re working on the right things. 

Today we’d like to let you know we’re seriously considering whether Linden Lab should continue supporting Mac OS X 10.3, “Panther.” Our tracking shows that very few of you, about 1/4 of 1 percent of all of you, the entire base of Residents, are still using Apple’s Mac OS X 10.3 when logging into Second Life.  

We’d like to let the Linden engineers stop working on supporting an operating system released in 2003, and instead move on to other work which will benefit a much larger group of Residents. 

If we do stop supporting that version of the OS, it would not be until 60 days from now, to make sure there is plenty of time for the news to spread.

To briefly review the last five years of Mac OS: Panther, OS 10.3, was first released in October 2003, and updated to 10.3.9 in 2005. Apple has followed Panther with two more recent versions of the Apple OS, “Tiger” (OS 10.4,) released in April 2005 and “Leopard,” (OS 10.5,) released in October 2007 and updated Feb. 2008.

What would it mean to “stop support”? Eventually we would stop developing for the SDK (software development kit ) of that operating system, and we would also stop doing QA testing on OS 10.3.9. 

What would you notice? If you are one of the few logging in with that OS, you would still be able to do so the day we stop supporting it — for some time. Exactly how long we couldn’t guarantee, because we would no longer be testing and developing to make sure it does work.  

So, Oh Residents, what say you?