UPDATE 2008-02-22 12:11pm PST: Well… we thought we had the “can’t land on some prim surfaces” problem resolved by backing out some recent changes. Unfortunately testing showed that this misbehavior still exists. We will have to do some more detailed research to locate the cause of this problem.

When we have a working fix, we will deploy the new version the Beta Preview for a day of community testing, and then afterwards re-deploy to the Early Adopter regions on Second Life. I hope that we can find a solution that will let us do a deploy by mid-week next week, but cannot be sure until we isolate the cause of the problem.

UPDATE 2008-02-21 6:44pm PST: Due to a problem found in the first hour of use in which avatars could not exit flying mode when trying to land on some surfaces, we have reverted the Early Adopter regions and the Beta Preview to the previous version. We will locate the source of this issue, and re-deploy with an updated version as soon as possible. /Sidewinder

Quick StatusThe Beta Preview and 515 Early Adopter regions have been updated to Havok4 Beta Server v1.19.0.80183. Yes, we have over 500 Havok4 Early Adopters (almost 3% of Second Life regions)!

This version resolves another set of key issues, and includes a performance optimization that we hope will make a noticeable difference for regions that have many avatars present. See the “What Has Changed In This Version” section below for the specific list of changes deployed today.

Over the next week we will be deciding on the final integration schedule for our Havok4-based simulator to become the standard Second Life simulator used across the Second Life Grid. I am sure that this statement will raise some questions - here are a few answers to questions that I have been asked in this area: (more…)

[Update 5:47 PM Pacific 08/08/07]
The last of the network issues have been resolved and the grid is now back online and fully operational.

[Update 5:00 PM Pacific on 08/08/07]
Most of the grid is now up and running with less than 200 regions waiting to come back up. Our operations team is still working on getting the last of these regions up and running. Once everything has been restored and we have completed some testing, we will update this as resolved. Many thanks for being patient as we worked around today’s network issues.

[Update 4:14 PM Pacific on 08/08/07]
Simulators are being brought back online at a pretty good clip now, and we hope to return to fully operational status soon. The operations team has also been making good progress on returning network connectivity to the remaining simulators. While we don’t yet have a solid ETA on when everything will return to normal, as soon as we do, you’ll know.

[Update 3:00 PM Pacific on 08/08/07]
Our operations team continues to move and enable banks of simulators and the number of enabled regions continues to increase as they do so. We will continue to provide updates until all regions have returned to normal and the grid is back to all-clear status. Thank you for your continued patience.

[Update 2:00 PM Pacific on 08/08/07]
We have logins to the grid shortly, but not all regions will be initially available. This means that you may need to log into a different region than you normally do. Logging in may also take longer than usual or require a few attempts as we are not yet running at full capacity.

The ops team is moving banks of simulators to get them back on the network as quickly as possible. While they have begun the process, it may take several hours for all of the affected regions to come up. Some regions will continue to be unavailable as their network connections are still down, but we will be working to get everything back online and back to normal as quickly as we can. Please note: regions are not being enabled individually and we are unable to provide status on or prioritize any particular region.

[Update 1:15 PM Pacific on 08/08/07]
The Concierge and Billing phone numbers have now returned to service. The ops team continues to work to re-enable our network access. As soon as they are able to, logins will be restored and we will update here. Thank you.

[Update 12:15 PM Pacific on 08/08/07]
We are experiencing issues with Concierge and Billing phone numbers at this time. You may experience issues reaching our personnel or experience extended wait times. We are working to correct this as well. Thank you for your patience.

[Update 12:00 PM Pacific on 08/08/07]
Logins are still disabled as our ops team works to resolve our network connectivity problems. No ETA yet, but we will update further as we get more details. Thank you for your continued patience.

[10:27 AM Pacific on 08/08/07]

Second Life is experiencing issues related to network connectivity at one of our co-location facilities. Logins to Second Life have been temporarily disabled. Our Server Team is working to resolve this as soon as possible. We will post further information as it becomes available. Thank you for your patience and we apologize for any inconvenience.

… not necessarily an extreme one, but as mentioned previously, we’ve rolled out a new design for the Official Linden Blog that we hope will make it more visually appealing and easy-to-use for you. The current layout now has not just one, but two sidebars — to better balance out important notices such as Grid Status Updates with the usual categorization.

Big thanx to Jose and Cornelius Linden for making this happen, in conjunction with Andy and the folk @ WordPress.com.

BEFORE & AFTER…

(more…)

[6:46 PM PST] Sidebar content looks better — some polish to go.

Hi! If you’ve been here before, you may have noticed the look of the Official Linden Blog changed a few minutes ago. We’re currently in the process of updating our theme, and we know there are some wrinkles with it, like too many Recent Posts in the right sidebar.

Please pardon us while we continue transitioning over to the new design! Thanks for your patience.

The last week has been host to a lot of “little things that make a big difference” on our OLB — short for Official Linden Blog.

It’s exciting to go live with all manner of visibility tweaks which help communicate with you. Like:

• Widgets such as the red Hot Notices and the easy Grid Status Updates feed
• clarified Blog Guidelines — including by the comment box
• timezone finally stated (PST)

I’m more of an AND than an OR person, so I’m happy these changes make it easier to present and understand news which needs to appear here, pronto!

Today, Jose Linden added something in response to both Linden and Resident requests: Linden comments now get highlighted, so you can see them easier when paging through a long thread.

I’ll post a sample comment here so you can see… and please leave suggestions for future blog improvements (keeping in mind we’re on WordPress VIP so not all plugins work)! =)

Friendly greetings! It’s me, Torley Linden, Community Developer of Communications. In the midst of another productive day @ Linden Lab, I wanted to take the time to answer some of your blog-related questions:
 

Q: Hey! What happened to my comment?

A: Before commenting, please make sure you are familiar with our Guidelines for Blog Comments. As it says in there:

The first time you ever make a comment here, it will be held in our moderation queue until we can manually approve it. This is because of our anti-spam measures. Subsequent comments usually go through directly. Thanks for your patience.

Also, please don’t send a single comment many times, because comments which look like spam will be flagged as such. We already have enough spam to deal with, so please stand out. As of now, 7,777 spam caught since we moved to WordPress VIP.)
 

(more…)

[UPDATE - Nov. 29 @ 9:43 AM PST] Categories confirmed fixed. Further blog improvements coming, I’ll detail them as they arrive. Thank-you.

[UPDATE - 7:38 PM PST] Pass-1 done. Going home to dance in the snow and spend quality time with my wife. Maybe I’ll build something too. Viva la Second Life! This is an ongoing process, expect to hear more from me tomorrow. Thanx graciously for your patience.

[UPDATE - 7:18 PM PST] By popular request, “UTC-8” (equivalent to GMT and Pacific Time Zone, what we standardized Second Life on) has been added next to timestamps.

[UPDATE - 6:54 PM PST] I’ve noticed some kinks, like our Categories continue to not work. Pardon for this, it’ll be remedied ASAP.

OMG I’m so excited — Jose Linden and I just spent the chunk of our day digging through WordPress‘ innards. With the help of Andy, we’ve returned — with Widgets gems! If you’re asking why they’re important, it’s simple: they allow us to dynamically reconfigure our sidebar *points to the right* and add all sorts of kewl content.

We’ve wanted this for a really long time ‘cuz it’ll help us communicate with you better. So first things first, I’m going to re-add our email subscription form, then investigate putting in notification of future Linden events, makin’ our Guideline for Blog Comments more accessible, better search, etc.

I’ve gotta check some of this stuff in quickly because WP undergoes database maintenance in 3 hours, lockin’ me out of the database.

Be watchly ongoing for progressions… YAYZERAMA!!!!

Just like the title says. In the past two days alone, we’ve had over 1300+ comments, a wealth of ongoing conversation we Lindens are having with you, the Residents of Second Life. It’s no surprise then, that I’m tickled pink-’n'-green that we have both the top Hot Post and Hot Blog on WordPress.com. We wouldn’t be here without you.

Here’s some answers to frequently-asked questions about using this blog:

(more…)

[UPDATE - 12:43 PM PDT] Thanx muchly to Barry @ WordPress for getting back to us so quickly. Looks like the problem had to do with cached copies of our pages due to the amount of traffic we’re getting. Caching on the Official Linden Blog has been turned off; the problem of seeing “stale old pages” should be solved within an hour or so. Please comment if you still notice not getting the freshest news from us, on time, in the future!

If you’ve had problems with the blog not showing the latest posts, or say you’ve been reloading a page and it appears to go “back in time” by showing less comments than the last time you viewed it, we’ve already contacted WordPress support for assistance with this issue.

(more…)

Many Residents have been having problems getting registered to comment on our blog. It ended up causing more difficulties than benefits — including concerns of name-swipers — so to such ends, I personally apologize for the sucky trouble — required registrations for commenting are again turned off.

No doubt great feedback will follow my post here.

(In the future, like has already pointed out, it’d be far better to connect your SL account to this blog automatically, as is currently done in the forums.)