the party is over and the sky is falling: cloud party was absorbed by yahoo & rod humble left a certain building on battery street in sf for the very last time…
is this the end? or is this just the beginning of the resurgence of virtual worlds?
well, we have one hour of audio for you and after listening you may be strengthened in your opinion either way [stitcher lovers click here!]
so here you go [and sorry we did not cover the epic battle in eve online – many pre-produced segments had to be bumped due to the above mentioned pressing affairs]:
linkage to contextualize the show:
– jo breaks the news about rod and is not intending to fix it!
– dean takahashi on sl over the years
– residents react to rod leaving, some even [seriously?] want to step in and fill the position….
– maria korolov and an open letter to ll
– syntertainment: is that where rod is going?
– cloud party = last drinks have been served….
– next time on this show: internet/online disinhibition [we disccus with peter ludlow]
– stuff that is awesome which we will cover in the future unless you scoop us on even better stuff!
– our interview guests: jaimy hancroft, tyr rozenblum, harvey crabsticks, hanno tietgens, evonne heyning [aka in kenzo] and joyce bettencourt [and their new company]
– rod’s speeches at slcc 2011 in oakland
– the drax files: world makers [episode 16 – feed a smile]
– nonny dela pena’s immersive journalism project on syria
– nick yee on avatars [and momi despres on identity in sl citing nick]
– bitcoin exchange ceo arrested
– you can sponsor a monument to the victims of the nazi regime: the stolpersteine project
the drax files radio hour [with jo yardley] is a weekly production of basicdrax entertainment.
the show is supported by weimar shop for bohemians, the 1920s berlin project, vintage retro marketstreet, yordie sands, fuz on acid, inara pey, kitty o’toole, autumn ashdene, stephan gaudio and mister x.
special thanks to flufee mcfluff for providing the station ID this week. music by bd.
contact the show via skype draxfiles, avatar draxfiles or email radio@draxfiles.com
the drax files radio hour 
great show, very informative this one nice work!
even though i’m not good interview material and make no sense u somehow salvaged it XD
Good one… good variety of perspectives, although I think the overall communication with the customers/users issue at the Lab has reached absurd levels of paranoia. Your CEO’s departure announced over the rumor mill and Facebook? Yeah, you’ve got problems.
DF #16 – Good cause, well presented.
Stones – How much does it cost to commission these?
-ls/cm
Stolpersteine costs about 120 euros each last time I checked.
http://www.stolpersteine.eu/en/
Great podcast, Drax. Jaimy Hancroft for LL CEO! (Oops, what did I say? Kiana Writer will whoop my hiney now.)
thx for having my voice on this thing [what the heck does “podcast” mean??]! I appreciate what Rod did for the mesh animal community and I pray that he is now designing a world exclusively for us [sans them humanoids!!!]
I love these podcasts as much as I love the world makes videos, I am more than thrilled that I have been allowed to be part of them, but beyond that, I love that it offers a new perspective on second life. Losing Rod makes me sad, but I appreciate that he helped pull us out of the dust and left us in a place where we are able to go forward. I really hope who ever comes in, is ready to move us forward, and focus on us, and bettering second life..more so than working on apps and side games.
Best of luck to Rod in his endeavors, Ill be keeping an eye out on his next projects!
YAY, my name appears at the end:) Interesting to hear about There.com. I didn’t know they were back. Maybe you could talk a little more about other worlds, especially OpenSim and High Fidelity.
There is also VSide!!! https://www.vside.com/app/start and Twinity..and ONVERSE….oh my 🙂
I would agree that virtual worlds like Second Life and Blue Mars “aren’t quite there yet” in terms of being accessible to the broader market, however the problem is not technology.
The problems SL faces are issues of design.
It’s too difficult to do simple tasks. SL’s poor graphics and performance (lag and framerates) are a direct result of badly designed content creation tools which fail to take into account very basic content creation concepts. Linden Lab has never provided a proper tutorial, nor developed SL’s content creation tools to the point where a proper tutorial is even possible.
Then there’s the issue of presentation, Linden Lab simply has not presented SL in such a way where it would be appealing to anyone other than virtual world enthusiasts willing to overlook malformed avatars and crude environments.
Anyone capable of recognizing these problems and their solutions should be capable of delivering a virtual world with strong mass appeal.
Linden Lab’s rendering pipeline is highly optimized, and their content creation tools are awesome, striking a perfect balance between professional content creation and casual building. No, I’m not kidding here.
So what’s causing the lag? It’s lazy and greedy content creators meeting stupid consumers.
Consumers will always choose the more detailed and more shiny and less expensive item, even if it causes more lag. Content creators in Second Life have learned to exploit this fact to the maximum extent possible.
Example: Go to any of the popular fashion shops and switch your viewer display to wireframe mode, then look at the stuff people are wearing. Some of those mesh dresses and shoes and jewelry items are so dense, they look opaque even as a wireframe! And of course each of them uses 1024×1024 textures exclusively.
Next, go to a furniture shop. Watch the mesh furniture dissolve into polygon garbage or disappear entirely beyond a distance of three or four meters. Why is that? It’s because content creators don’t bother to produce more than one level of detail per item, and since land impact is a concern with non-wearables, they cheat the system by leaving LOD 2-4 empty. When customers complain about disappearing items, they are told that it’s Linden Lab’s fault and that the viewer’s LOD distance factor should be changed so that LOD 1 remains visible all the way to infinity.
Second Life graphics are actually pretty good when used properly, especially since materials were introduced — but you can’t fix stupid, and you can’t fix greedy either.
loved to listen to my sl-hero Xon! very much enjoying the show, i do! and already missing Rod, he had this Bratwurst-factor i just would follow anywhere! may his avatar rest in peace.
Oh! castAR next time! Kudos!
A good summation of Rod Humble’s tenure from all sides, and an excellent piece with Evonne and Joyce which really puts the evolution of Linden Lab in a perspective many won’t really be aware of.
This was an outstanding mix which plumbed the depths of the central story really well. Double kudos on that!
Patience on all the other hardware goodies! We will NOT forget anyone of them….
Excellent instalment. There’s one point to which Jo has pointed that has perhaps evaded many people: Rod’s tenure brought some big improvements, along with a continuous flow of smaller ones that were (and are still) happening daily and weekly. This makes me think that Rod Humble’s mentality is closer to the mentalities of pioneers like W. E. Deming and Joseph Juran than.
Well this is my favourite episode so far. excellent interviews, diverse and differing opinions and shocking news about Jo Yardley’s brothel in Amsterdam!
As for CEO, I have it from a reliable source that alas, Robin Harper won’t be CEO. I would love to see Robin back.
I’m always the last to get the news, heh. I’m shocked at the way all this came down, both Rod and Will. Unfortunately, the truth is that Rod and Will didn’t really seem to _get_ what Second Life is really about. They mouthed words like “virtual world” but I saw no evidence that either of them ever connected with what is really happening in SL.
It’s easy to say that SL is different for each person, but again and again these managers seem to take their direction from the software technology community. No one at the Lab seems to be capable of understanding their responsibility to their Customers. They understand their personal ambitions, but they do not understand that a “Resident” is a paying Customer.
Yordie call us and let’s talk and air it on the podcast!
This episode was perfect. Keep it up!
Trying…… 🙂 Spread the word!!!!
Reblogged this on SarVana's OpenSim Living and commented:
SarVana and I are so excited about “The Drax Files Radio Hour”… a favorite!