Jeska Linden's Blog
Product Manager, Instigator
This year we’re celebrating Valentine’s Day by continuing our annual tradition by awaking Isle of View, it’s sister island Isle of ViewToo and Hugsville for Teens (on Teen Second Life) back from their wintery sleep.
We’ve got hugging & kissing booths where you can share your affections with both the Lindens and Resident Volunteers who’ve shown so much L-O-V-E to our community! (Don’t forget to snap a photo of the occasion!)
We’ve also got lots of freebies and other Valentine’s Day goodies — including T-shirts, Linden bear collectibles located at the booths, special limited edition collectible Second Life candy hearts and more!
On Valentine’s Day, Saturday Feb. 14:
- Volunteers will be around all-day for Kiss-A-Volunteer on both Isle of View and Isle of ViewToo
- Lindens will be on Isle of View and Isle of ViewToo from 7-9 AM and 5-7 PM PST for Kiss-A-Linden
- And for Teen Residents, Lindens will be present on Hugsville for Teens from 3-5 PM PST
Never met a Linden before, or would like to thank a volunteer personally? Come on over and enjoy the lovin’! Who knows, you might even get lucky and run into Cupid Linden who has an all new look!
Related Valentine’s Day Surprises Coming Later in the Week!
Watch this blog later this week for exciting information about the 2009 Second Life Valentine’s Day golden heart contest. This weekend your inworld explorations may lead you to discover a special golden heart, which contains a prize that will tickle your heart!
It’s officially time to do a reality check on all of your passwords.
Did you see the chaos when high-profile Twitter accounts were recently hijacked and used to send out messages in the names of those folks? How embarrassing.
Creating a Great Password
So, how many of us are using passwords from the list of 500 worst passwords?
Now that you know that “password” isn’t a good choice, here are a few tips for creating a password worth using.
- No real words = important. As you saw on the list of 500 worst passwords, most of them are real words, which can be cracked by fraudsters with very little effort. Avoid real words that can be found in a dictionary (in any language) or any proper nouns.
- Long passwords = essential. The fewer the characters, the easier it is to compromise. Choose a memorable password that’s at least 8 characters long. To make it even stronger, make it a “pass phrase” instead of a password. “brownfox” is borderline. “thequickbrownfox” is better.
- Mixed case = good. This adds another level of difficulty for fraudsters to guess your password. Try changing “thequickbrownfox” to “TheQuickBroWnFox.”
- Misspelled = better. While your English teacher wouldn’t approve, misspelling your passwords is a great way to add complexity: “ThuhQueekBroWnFoxE.”
- Added numerals and symbols = best. You could mix some numbers in there like “ThuhQueekBr0WnF0×3″ or-even better-use the first and/or last letter of each word, mixed with numbers. For example, the full phrase: “The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dogs” becomes “TQbF70TLd$.”
Keep it Secret!
Now that you’ve got a worthy password, be sure to keep it safe.
- Don’t use the same password for everything. If someone happens to crack your code, you could suffer serious compromises across all accounts.
- Avoid typing your password on shared computers. Keyloggers and other programs can allow others to harvest typed data from any computer to which they have access. So, consider your environment when logging in to anything from Internet cafes, libraries, or other shared computers.
- Don’t save your password anywhere. Most of us know better than to write it on a Post-it and stick it anywhere near the computer, but some of us may save passwords on sites or in files on networked computers-which isn’t safe.
- Change it from time to time. The better the password, the longer you can keep it-but that doesn’t mean it should stay static forever. Set yourself a reminder to update your passwords on a regular basis. If it’s been awhile since you changed your Second Life password, you can do so here.
- Don’t share your password. Do not give your password to anyone. This means friends, family, loved ones or Linden employees. Pets too, you never know.
Learn More
Below are a few other sources online to help increase your password protection and general password safety knowledge.
(please note: The “blank password” option should NOT be used for Second Life.)
If you’d like to discuss this further in the forums, join in the discussion here.
[UPDATE] Auctions will go live starting at 10:45am PT on Monday, December 15, with new auctions starting Monday and Tuesday. There are 57 plots total that vary in size from 512m2 to 4000m2. Visit the Holiday Marketplace to see the parcels! Bid now!
This winter season, Linden Lab is pleased to announce a limited time Holiday Marketplace. Not only is it a holiday snowscape, it’s also a land extravaganza. For a one time charge and no recurring land fees, you can have this land for 60 days!!
To complement the Second Life Winterfaire, we’ve created a small number of parcels available only via the Second Life Land Auctions starting on Monday. Auctions for parcels on Dasher, Prancer, Donner and Blitzen will start at only L$1. In order to participate in auctions, Residents must have a premium account at least 14 days old. Keep in mind, the parcels are not connected or attached to the Second Life Winterfaire event, although it is created with the same holiday spirit in mind.
As a bonus, each auction winner will receive a limited edition holiday gift package from Linden Lab, delivered directly to your real life door.*
If you win a parcel at auction, you may open your shop and hold events and gatherings on your land. Holiday Marketplace merchants are more than welcome to direct shoppers to their larger outlets in other Regions (“If you like what you see here, grab this landmark and visit my larger store!”). There is also an ice skating pond in the center of the four Regions, to allow for larger socializing and other events.
Don’t forget to check out the Second Life Land Auctions Monday for your chance to win! If you have more questions, check out the Second Life Knowledge Base Holiday 2008 Land Auction FAQ.
The Details
Winners are allowed a rental of the parcel they win, but do not own the parcel they are given use of. Land rental is for 60 days from auction closing. After this 60 day period, all land will be returned to Linden Lab and all remaining objects will be returned to the winner. No adult content please. All builds must conform to our Terms of Service and Community Standards.
* Please note: Holiday gift package delivery requires a real life mailing address, which will be verified by Linden Lab employees before shipment.
[UPDATED 5.28.2008]
Note – the change outlined yesterday will not occur until 1.20 RC10 (the next version of the release candidate). I apologize for any inconvenience.
[UPDATED 5.27.2008]
We are continuing to iterate on improvements to the Search feature. Although the release notes for 1.20 RC7 indicated that Search>Places was moved to a web-based feature, this tab will be returned to its previous interface, which includes “Sort by alphabetical” or “Sort by traffic” options. This change to Search>Places will appear in 1.20 RC9… see VWR-7335 to track this fix.
The Search project aims to transform more search functionality to the web-based form (currently present in the All tab). This includes the switch from Popular Places to Showcase outlined below. We are continuing to research and discuss the future of ‘traffic’ with the Resident community. Together we’re working toward an improved method of providing metrics both to land owners and to all Residents of Second Life.
[ORIGINAL BLOG POST]
Looking for cool places to visit within Second Life? We are too! We’re pleased to announce that the Second Life Showcase is coming to the 1.21 viewer release, which is planned for Release Candidate in 2-3 weeks and in final form in 6-7 weeks.
For a sneak peek at this new feature, please visit Second Life Showcase on our website. The Showcase is an editorially-managed guide that highlights a variety of inworld venues and intriguing locations to new and existing Residents. For more info, read our Second Life Showcase FAQ; it includes information on how to suggest a venue for feature placement. We are currently developing an easier way to nominate inworld experiences for the Showcase from within the viewer, so keep an eye on this blog for more news!
The Second Life Showcase is all about quality over quantity. Our internal editorial team periodically selects new and/or popular venues to rotate into the various featured spots within the Arts & Culture, Fashion, Hot Spots, and Music categories. This new feature complements, but does not replace the more comprehensive Search tools within Second Life. However, it will be replacing the old Popular Places tab.
Since many of the inworld builds created by our community — small and large alike — are both amazing and overlooked, we’re introducing Second Life Showcase as an additional way for Residents to discover interesting places to visit. We hope this feature will make it easier and more effective to help those hotspots shine (instead of Popular Places). (more…)
Since the launch of the new search, we’ve had lots of Residents ask for more tips and information on how to improve their search relevance and ranking within the Search All results.
Over the last few months, we’ve compiled some of the best practice tips and guidelines to help improve the relevance and search ranking for your classified ads, parcel listings, object descriptions, profiles, etc.
[EDITED 3/31: After comments from several Resident in the below comments, we have researched how the Google Search Appliance uses "stemming" and included it here. If you're really curious about how this works, read more at Google. The top search results most closely match the search term you type. If you enter "shoes" as your search term, results for "shoes" are listed first, since they match the term entered. Results for "shoe" are not omitted; they are just listed after the results for "shoes," since "shoe" less exactly matches "shoes" as the user entered. If you look at several pages of search results, you will be able to see this. This is a difference between priority, or rank, and relevance.]
(more…)
With the 1.19.1 Release Candidate, available today, we’ve made some changes to the overall way that media is played inworld which results in a more general approach to playing media and, more importantly, allows you to display various types of Web content on your parcel! This is a great step toward further interoperability with the Web, which we’ve been discussing for some time, for more history on this, read here and here.
The current parcel media player allows you to stream audio or video (or both!) to visitors on your parcel. The parcel owner controls what is played on the parcel and visitors to the parcel control whether or not they want to listen or see the media. (Visit the Knowledge Base for more information on how media on a parcel works currently).
The new media on a parcel feature allows landowners to select and display a wide range of Web-based media content, including Web pages, movies, images, text documents and audio. This change replaces and expands the existing QuickTime parcel media feature, giving you more flexibility in your media presentations. Currently, the displayed media is entirely non-interactive, meaning you will only be able to view and not be able to click web links, use scroll bars, or press buttons on web pages displayed on parcels, although we hope to add this functionality in the future.
The points below highlight the key things you should know about the new Parcel Media functionality:
- When you arrive on a parcel with media available, you will be presented with a media display, just as you are currently and decide whether you want to “play” the media or not. You will need to click the play button to load the Web page or other media.
- Parcel owners who want to display media-on-a-parcel will generally not need to set the “type” of the media (“QuickTime movie,” “Web page,” etc.) it should automatically detect it.
- While not a shared interactive experience, it does include an in-viewer web browser (which enables viewing of web content inworld, a popular request in our public JIRA, see: VWR-5004)
Keep reading for more tips, links to video tutorials and more…
(more…)
You may have noticed we’ve been working on better analyzing and quantifying our Residents views on voice over the past few months. For example, Aleks Linden’s current survey on Voice, which is almost finished, is examining how Residents use Voice in Second Life.
We’re also looking for help on how best to prioritize additional voice features as we move forward. Voice communication has been an official part of Second Life for several months now and we’re interested in finding out what types of additional voice features you might be interested in so we can work to make Second Life better for everyone! (You may have already received notification to take this survey via email a few weeks back, it is the same survey).
Help us Out!
Interested? Please take 5 minutes to respond to this brief multiple choice survey by clicking on this link:
http://secondlife.qualtrics.com/SE?SID=SV_d0AI31Jtyq2FTZW&SVID=Prod
(more…)
We launched a survey about voice in early December in order to get your feedback on the service, and to figure out how we could meet your needs in the future. We’ve had an incredible response.
Almost 2000 people have clicked through from the blog post and from the pop-up window that appears to one in 200 Residents at the Second Life log-in screen. Now we’ve only got two weeks left before we tally up the results and report them back. If you’ve not already done so, please take 5 minutes to answer the 15 multiple-choice questions on what you think about Voice, how it’s affected your Second Life experience, and how you think you might use it in the future.
We strive to take this information to work towards releasing new features in a way that meets all our Residents’ needs. So please, we’d love your feedback! You can complete the survey by clicking on this link. It’s on a website hosted by the survey company Qualtrics.
All your responses are kept completely confidential and no third party has access to the data.
We’ll let you know the skinny in a couple of weeks time.
Take the survey here!
As previously announced, we are making several changes to the new Search All during tomorrow’s update. These changes fix several known issues and provide slightly more relevant results. Keep reading for more information on the changes:
- Classifieds: We are removing classifieds from the main body of the Search All results. They will still appear in the sidebar on the right. This change also fixes an issue where teleporting to a classified location found in the body of search results did not increase the click-through count reported to the advertiser.
- Bug Fix #1: We fixed the Google pagination error which prevented some search results from navigating beyond the fifth page. (VWR-3159)
- Bug Fix #2: We also fixed the disappearing/reappearing bug which caused certain places, groups and/or people to not appear in search if they were taken out then added back Read more about this bug here.
- Relevance Improved: Holding lots of events at a place no longer increases the relevance of that place in Search All results. (This change was made two weeks ago and should be reflected in the search results now).
Please note that the order for classifieds will not change. They will remain listed in the same order as the Search Classifieds tab (by amount paid). Also, the frequency of updates is still the same (may take 1-3 days for any changes to be reflected in the search all results). Thank you all for your patience while we work to improve finding things in Second Life.Still curious about the new search? (more…)
As previously announced, the new ‘Search All’ feature is currently in beta in two releases; Second Life 1.18.5 and WindLight First Look. We’re planning on making a few changes to how classifieds are displayed in the new Search and wanted to allow enough time for everyone to adjust their listings:
- We are removing classifieds from the main body of the Search All results. They will still appear in the sidebar on the right.
- The order for classifieds will not change. They will remain listed in the same order as the Search Classifieds tab.
- Bug Fix: Holding lots of events at a place no longer increases the relevance of that place in Search All results.
- Known Issue: There is a bug with click-through tracking for classifieds. Ads found in the body of results pages do not have teleport clicks counted. This will be fixed when 1.18.6 is released early next month (1.18.6 is the current Release Candidate)
We’re continuing to make changes to improve Search based upon your feedback. Got a suggestion? Please send it to search-feedback@lindenlab.com.
Thank you all for your patience, feedback and support and have a great holiday weekend!
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