RIP Sims Online

In a not-surprising move last tuesday (meme intended), Electronic Arts announced that, effective August 1st, The Sims Online (which at some point seems to have been renamed “EA-Land”) will shut down for good.

“We share the sadness of the entire community in writing this blog to announce that the EA-Land experiment is being brought to an end. Decisions such as these are never easy and the rationale for closing EA-Land is particularly complex. Regardless, it is hard to see the end of the collective investment of emotion, time and friendship.” said Luc Barthelet, who seems to be the EA-Land Project Manager said in a blog post.

The Second Life Times Blog (and for those veteran readers, The Alphaville Times) will be uploading our archive of TSO Photographs in the coming days.

Name changed to comply with new Linden Lab® Guidelines

Linden Lab^® dropped the bomb Monday, informing Second Life business owners that they would no longer be allowed to use the brand name Second Life in the name of their businesses. Instead, they’re asking you use the less-descriptive “SL” or “inSL” brands.

In a blog post in the official blog, Catherine Linden said that “Proper use of our trademarks is important to help you and others outside the Second Life community know which products and services Linden Lab stands behind”.

Organizations using “Second Life” in their name or domain names have 90 days to comply with the new guidelines. As you can see, the SL Times is already compliant here on the net. Those of you that have Times web kiosks on your land are asked to contact us to receive a new, compliant kiosk ASAP.

Rosedale Steps Down as Linden Lab CEO

After 9 years, Philip Rosedale is stepping down as Linden Lab CEO. In a message released on the SL Blog on (when else?) Friday.

Philip gave no clear reason as to why he is stepping down, besides that it was a “decision driven by my desire to best grow SL and match my job to both our needs and my passions.”

Rosedale will not leave Linden Lab, he will become the Chairman of the Board, and “focus on product strategy and vision, continuing to design the right kind of company, and being an effective communicator and evangelist about Second Life.” Adding that this job change will likely mean you will see him more in-world once the new CEO is in place.

The hunt for a new CEO could take “anywhere from soonish to many months.”, said current Chairman of the Board Mitch Kapor said in an interview with SL Reuters.

New Look!

We’ve updated the look and feel of the website in anticipation of re-launching within the next week or two.

We’ve also got a new version of the photo gallery online. Check it out here.

For Sale: Used Server, Has Historical Value

If you’re in the market for a server with

• Single Xeon 5160 3GHz dual-core processor, has available socket for second processor (Socket 771)
• 4gb of DDR2 PC2-5300 (667MHz) fully buffered memory in 4 sticks; 12 memory slots (8 available), to support up to 48GB of RAM
• Four hot-swappable 15,000RPM 36.7gb SAS drives configured in RAID5 (~110gb usable space)
• HP P600 RAID controller with emergency battery backup unit, connected via PCI-X for awesome RAID performance, connector for additional external storage capacity
• Redundant power supply, two total, hot-swappable
• One available slim PCI-X OR PCIe slot (adaptors required; two slots; 1 full / 1 half; RAID card uses full PCI-X)
• Integrated VGA; DVD-ROM; Dual gigabit ethernet

that costs around $3,500, look no further. According to ginkofinancial.com, the eBay listing found here is for the primary server of what was once Ginko Financial.

In case you don’t know, Ginko Financial folded after a bank run in August 2007.

The listing says that the hard drives will be erased before it is shipped to the new owner.

P.S. Look for a relaunch of The Second Life Times in February.

Ondrejka Out at Linden Lab

According to Massively.com, Cory Ondrejka (Known as Cory Linden in-world), Linden Lab’s Chief Technical Officer and the man behind Linden Scripting Language, was asked by King Philip Rosedale to leave the company at the end of 2007 after seven years with Linden.

“Cory and I have differences in how we think Linden should be run, differences that in the past few months have become irreconcilable.” Said Rosedale in an email sent to Linden Staff on December 11th.

You can read the internal memo to staff from Philip here, Philip’s Response here, and Cory’s internal memo here.

Photo via Flickr.

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SL On The TV

Second Life was on TV twice with in 24 hours yesterday.

Starting with Wednesday’s episode of CSI: NY, where it was shown that in SL, if you are hit by a paintball gun too many times, you fall into a hole and leave shoes behind. Calling cards are actual objects that can lead to terrible things, like a virus that shuts down your computer system.

Last night, when I tuned in to NBC’s “The Office” I was surprised to see one character sit down at his computer and log in to Second Life. This version of Second Life was much more realistic than CBS’ version. Rainn Wilson’s character, Dwight, created a Second Life avatar (Dwight Shelford) that resembles him and has an identical job. at a point when his life “was so great, I literally needed a second one”. He goes on to create “Second Second Life”, a place where people go “to be removed even further from reality.” Another Character, Jim, creates his own avatar later in the show. You can see the entire episode here (Episode 409 - Local Ad)

2 Years Later - A Special Report

Editor’s Note: I expect to be going in and adding information to this if I notice something that should be mentioned.

I find it hard to believe that I will have been a citizen of Second Life for 2 years tomorrow. I can still remember arriving on Orientation Island, going through all the tutorials, and then teleporting into the welcome area. The first day I wandered around the welcome area and surrounding sims, doing all the things a noob does. A few days later I had accumulated some money and went and bought a car that I later discovered to be a freebie. I promptly crashed the car off one of the roads and into a tree.

Fast-forward to October 27th, 2005. I started this publication/blog. I had one previously in The Sims Online, but I did something wrong and deleted the entire Alphaville Times blog due to stupidity the month before (I promptly asked a friend, who had been “hired” onto the team to do graphics, to head up all web services from then on).

The first story I wrote was about Linden Labs updating the Community Standards after a W-Hat attack, and a link to the Second Life Herald story about Ginko Financial. The stories to follow talked about Ginko, Anshe calling it a Ponzi scheme, and one or two more stories about her.

On New Years Eve, I held the Newsworthy awards just to continue tradition from the last few years on the Alphaville Times. The event, in my opinion, was a waste of my own time along with the other 4 people that showed up, which were just a few Ginko employees from the sim next to Pumacity, where the event was held.

In January 2006, not much happened besides changing the company that “owned” the Times’ name and a story about Ginko’s future plans at expanding their island “nation”. Sometime during this month, I found out about furries, and got my first (free) furry avatar.

In February I hired Jon Venkman to help with the editing, writing and promotion of the Times. We rented office space in Ginko Island for a week, then bought our first office on a piece of First Land in the Areumdeuli sim.(Picture to come soon, must find it). During this month, Urizenus from The Second Life Herald announced his “retirement” from the Metaverse news business.

Second Citizen Shuts Down

The Second Citizen forums have shut down. “Mother FIC”, the operator of the website had this to say in a statement made about the closing:

Short notice, but it’s better than just seeing the board is closed message suddenly, heh.

SC is going offline, permanently, before the end of the day today. It’s finished.

I can’t be a part of this anymore, and I can’t be the provider for this, either.

You can ask me why, but you probably won’t get the answers you’re looking for, or any for that matter, as it’s not really up for discussion at this point. It just needs to end.

I’m disappointed it has to be like this, but it does. And it’s not even a matter of switching hands at this point, it just needs to close.

It’s over. And I’m really sorry.

We have also learned that a new Second Citizen may be launched. By navigating your Internets to http://www.secondcitizen.org/, you get this message:

“Home of the New Second Citizen Forums”

Just a reminder, our forums are still open and ready for use!