SL Newser Archives: Fourteen Years

 

Each of the articles the Newser has done is easily accessible. Just go to the year and month in the archives. The archive display on the front page often looks like a jumbled mess with the months and list of articles. But every January 1st, there's a "reset" or sorts in which all the months of the previous year are neatly tucked away, and there's just one or two in the new one so far. It's kind of neat to see, at least in my opinion.

And lately, it shows how far we've gone. Fourteen years of reporting, with hundreds of articles, announcements, cartoons, videos, etc., sometimes over a thousand, each year.

 

And very soon, this year will have many, many articles as well.

Happy 2024

Bixyl Shuftan

"Board of Directors" Added to Lindenlab.com's About Page

There's been a change at the bottom of the "About" page of Linden Lab's website. In addition to nine of Linden Lab's senior staff, at the bottom has been added "Board of Directors." There are three people listed there, Brad Overwager and Randall Waterfield, the two leaders of the investment group that acquired Linden Lab, and Raj Date.

Brad Oberwager

Brad Oberwager has spent his entire career in technology and consumer focused companies as an entrepreneur and board member.

Currently, he sits on the board of two public companies, Asure Software (NASDAQ: ASUR) and Better World (NASDAQ: BWACU). He is the chairman of two companies he founded, Jyve and Sundia and is also on the board of TEGSCO (aka AutoReturn). He owned Bare Snacks, acquired by PepsiCo in 2018.

Brad was Vice-chair of YPO International, a global organization of 25,000 CEOs.

Brad received his BS from Georgetown University, his MBA from the Wharton School and lives in San Francisco.

J. Randall (Randy) Waterfield

Mr. J. Randall (Randy) Waterfield, is the Chairman of Waterfield Holdings, which traces its origins to 1928. After selling the largest private mortgage company in the US and largest Indiana based bank in 2006 and 2007 respectively, he diversified into technology, manufacturing and other industries.

Randy holds the Chartered Financial Analyst designation and is a graduate of Harvard University. He currently serves on the Board of Directors of Red Oak Partners, Waterfield Technologies, Linden Research, Inc. and has previously served on the boards of YPO (and was the 2017-2018 Chairman of YPO), Asure Software ( NASDAQ: ASUR), SMTC Corporation (NASDAQ: SMTX), RF Industries (NASDAQ: RFIL), among others. He is also the Co-Chairman of Missouri Cobalt, LLC, the largest cobalt mine in North America.

Randy supports various education, environmental and community development charitable causes through the nonprofit Waterfield Foundation and J. Randall Waterfield Foundation.

Raj Date

Raj Date was the first-ever Deputy Director of the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). As the Bureau’s second-ranking official, he helped steward the CFPB’s strategy, its operations, and its policy agenda. He also served on the senior staff committee of the Financial Stability Oversight Council, and as a statutory deputy to the FDIC Board.

Before being appointed Deputy Director, Raj acted as the interim leader of the new agency, serving as the Special Advisor to the Secretary of the Treasury. He led the CFPB for most of the first six months after its launch.

Currently, Raj is the Managing Partner of Fenway Summer, an advisory and investment firm focused on financial services and financial technology. In that capacity, he chairs the investment committee of Fenway Summer Ventures, a fintech venture capital fund, and works with clients of FS Vector, the fintech advisory firm. He also serves as a Director for a number of innovative firms in financial services: Prosper, the marketplace lender; Green Dot, the bank holding company; Circle, the digital asset firm; Grasshopper, a de novo bank; and College Ave, a private student lender.

He is a graduate of the College of Engineering at the University of California at Berkeley (highest honors) and the Harvard Law School (magna cum laude).

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau came about in 2011 as a response to the financial crisis of 2008. Before Fate joined it, he was a senior vice-president at Captal One and as a managing director at Deutsche Bank. He was also on the Board of Directors of Prosper Marketplace. He left banking work in 2009, and started the Cambridge Winter Center, which was "devoted to promoting the regulation of financial firms." His being apointed Deputy Director of the CFPB came with some controversy as it was reported that he was active in the discussions over the the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, which led to the CFPB's creation. But he "was never found to be in violation of any laws and he had always recused himself from rule-making regarding peer-to-peer lending." It was after he left the Bureau he founded Fenway Summer. 

More on Oberwager and Waterfield can be read in our first article about the acquisition.

Sources: Linden Lab, Wikipedia

Hat Tip: Daniel Voyager

Linden Lab Launches Second Life Merchandise Store Through Redbubble

Numerous companies sell, or grant licenses, brand-name merchandise of products of theirs. This includes multiplayer games, such as World of Warcraft. But there's been no merchandising of products with the Second Life brand. That is until now. On Friday September 25, Linden Lab announced they had a Second Life merchandise store, through the global online marketplace Redbubble.

We heard your requests, and we are very excited to announce the launch of the Official Second Life Merchandise Store, which will be available through RedBubble. The store offers Second Life and Linden Lab branded clothing and accessories, with a very inclusive range of sizes. Don’t worry, we will have both the classic and new logos, so everybody wins.

As the store grows, we will also be adding various collections of designs, some of which will be limited time seasonal offerings. Our first collection will feature Linden Bear-themed merchandise, and will have new designs trickling in throughout the year. Stay tuned for Halloween!

 

We are so excited for our diverse spectrum of Residents to be able to show their Second Life pride IRL, as well as thankful for the opportunity to let people know that SL continues to grow, adapt, and evolve. 

Taking a look there were a number of products available, from t-shirts, to backpacks, to bags, to logo pins, masks, and more. What was on the front page wasn't all that was available. The water bottle could be in either the Linden Lab logo, the Second Life logo, or have a picture of one of several Linden bears. 

When ordering, one should keep in mind the shipping charges. Ordering both a mask and a water bottle comes to 32.15. But the shipping charges on them are $8.82, more than a quarter of their value. There's also increased charges for getting the items shipped over faster.
 
The idea of a Second Life merchandise site isn't new. It had been suggested on the forums a few years ago. The thread was promptly revived on the sight of the blog post. Comments were somewhat mixed. One criticism was the size of the shipping charges. The reviews confused some people, thinking they were for this particular kind of cup and brand instead of the cup regardless of brand. Another observation was the lack of any actual real-life Linden bears. Prokovy Neva commented, "The thing I'm puzzled by are all those 'bear collector' items. Why wouldn't they then have the bears themselves? Imagine if you could get little Linden bears in RL!"

The blog entry asked residents to keep an eye on the online store as there would be new items for Halloween. Will there also soon be Linden-themed teddy bears for real life? Time will tell.

Bixyl Shuftan

Eye on the Blog: Wishlist, Share Options in Marketplace

You see a cool item on Marketplace that you'd like to have, but you don't have the Lindens you need to get it. In the past, you'd write down the name on a piece of paper somewhere and hope you don't lose it. Now there's another option: Marketplace Wishlists. This was added in an update last week.

The "Add to Wishlist" option is in the lower right corner. To view your own wishlist, go to https://marketplace.secondlife.com/wishlist . You can also add an item to your favorites to show to others later. To get to your favorites page, head to : https://marketplace.secondlife.com/favorites . You can also follow a certain merchant by adding them to your favorites on their store page, and return to the page quickly by going to your favorite stores page : https://marketplace.secondlife.com/favorite_stores . You can also "Like" an item for Facebook (this feature may not be brand new), and there's a button to quickly share the item on social media.

More on the Marketplace update here: https://community.secondlife.com/blogs/entry/2431-your-favorite-marketplace-update-the-wishing-edition/

Hat Tip: Matoazma Kazyanenko

Bixyl Shuftan

Sunbeamers Relay Team Has a Facebook Page

For those interested in the Relay for Life in Second Life, here's some news. Rita Mariner, the captain of the Sunbeamers RFL Team, stated this weekend that the Relay team now has it's own Facebook Page. So far, she's posted a number of pictures. No doubt there will be many more, as well as many stories, to follow.

The Sunbeamers are the Relay team of the Sunweaver/Angel community, where the Newser makes it's home inworld.

https://www.facebook.com/SL-RFL-Sunbeamers-991021537730329/

Updating the Crew Page

We've been so busy writing about Second Life, well, it took the return of one of our founding writers to update our Crew Page. Besides Grey Lupindo out of the hiatus list, Deaflegacy Darkbloom now has her (overdue) entry among the staff.

Project Sansar Login Page, CNN Article

With the public viewing of Linden Lab's "Project Sansar," it's next generation virtual world, later today, A German blogger, Echt Virtuell, posted a link to what looks like it's login page, along with a screenshot of it, at www.projectsansar.com. The page is not a static one, the white outline of various objects morphing and changing with the passage of time against a wilderness backdrop.

Project Sansar has been making real-life news, one article appearing on CNN's website a few days ago on September 15 by Heather Kelley. She describes Second Life as "an aging virtual world" that while still used by "hundreds of thousands of loyal users" and profitable, "but it's not the future. ... Starting fresh gave Linden Lab a chance to rethink how a virtual world is organized and how it makes money." She describes a few things what the Lindens have been building, "They've made a desert scene with crazy big machinery, weird futuristic lounges and a famous landmark. They've even created an exact replica of a conference room in Linden Lab's San Francisco office, down to the objects on the desk." And it seems the release date, once described as "sometime in 2016," has been moved back to "by the end of 2016."

Hat tip: Daniel Voyager, Cristiano

Want to Work For the Newser?

Since the beginning, the Second Life Newser has been open to new talent coming in. We have had a few people who've asked us if we could be a little more clear about it. We thought we were, but we've gone ahead and added a page about contacting us for employment. Click the link at the top, or (Click Here).

Wesley Regenbogen made a contribution to the page, which you can see (here).