Oz And April Linden Summary, Last Names And Other Questions

Of the "Meet the Lindens" events last week at the Second Life Birthday, perhaps the most anticipated aside from the one where Linden Lab's CEO spoke was the one featuring Oz and April Linden. As they cover the more technical aspects of how the virtual world works, they would know the most about certain issues such as the moving of Second Life's data to "The Cloud" and when might new last names once again be an option for those with the surname Resident. They had much to say about those issues, such as the plan being to allow residents to have the option to change first names as well, and more.

Read the summary in Design.

Breaking News: Linden Lab to Make Main Grid Unuseable for Viewer 1-Based Viewers, Setting Up Separate LUsR Grid

Update *April Fools*

In a move that's been rumored of since the development of Viewer 2, Linden Lab has announced it will no longer continue to keep Second Life's Main Grid accessible to Viewer-1 based viewers, "It's been over two years since the last version of this viewer was released. Continuing to support it has been holding back the Grid," CEO Rod Humble stated in the official blog, "and continuing developments in technology are threatening to render Second Life behind the times. Residents whom do not adopt more recent Viewers will find themselves having more and more difficulty getting about the Main Grid, eventually unable to access it at all."

However, Linden Lab is giving those still insisting on using the old Viewer 1 and third-party viewers based on it's technology a continued means to access Second Life. It plans to set up another grid separate from the main one. Residents can freely move between the two, provided they are using the correct viewer. Some items in their inventory will only be able to work properly in one grid, such as Mesh objects. Residents can move their private sims and mainland holdings to the Viewer 1 grid as well, for a fee.

Linden Labs has designated the new Viewer 1 Grid the Low Use Resident Grid, or "LUsR" Grid. It is also referring to residents who will be exclusively using this grid as LUsRs, "Should a resident desire to drop their LUsR status, all they have to do is start using the proper viewers and they will be able to travel about normally and not be confined to the LUsR grid as LUsRs."

To read the official post on the Linden blog, Click Here.

FJ Linden Departs Linden Lab

Last week, New World Notes reported that Frank Ambrose, known as FJ Linden inworld, Linden Lab's Senior VP of Global Technology, had left Linden Lab. He was in charge of Grid stability and user support. His technical updates were praised by some, Blogger Inara Pey calling him an "Unsung hero" of Second Life.

Daniel Voyager brought up his First Quarter update, noting the praise it got from residents, notably about the group limit raised from 25 to 42. Hamlet Au noted FJ's departure comes just after Kim Salzer's leaving the Lab. He thought of two reasons this might not be a coindidence. One was the possibility of a continuing trend of moving away from the Lab's early idealism. The second scenerio was the two getting the hint the New CEO Mark Humble prefered to deal with people appointed under his watch. Either way, it means two major figures have left in two months.

Sources: New World Notes, Daniel Voyager's Blog, Inara Pey,

Bixyl Shuftan