It's been widely grumbled about that Linden Lab has stopped publishing some key Second Life economic and service statistics, such as the number of non-mainland simulators (that is, those that are privately owned). Well actually,as it happens, that isn't entirely true, thanks to the wonders of automation.

The data was culled from the Second Life Web-site, where these things go, quite some months ago but automation is a funny thing. Linden Lab's systems kept publishing the data, and my own automated systems kept collecting it. So, despite a months-long blackout of the data it all continues to pile up in my databases, with the reliability and patience that only machines possess.

While most actions people take in the flesh are ephemeral – performed fleetingly, and unmarked – MMOGs and virtual environments keep that data as a rule, usually most or all of it.

Three social researchers from the University of Michigan obtained data from Linden Lab about the possession and acquisition of 'gestures' (preprogrammed sequences of text, avatar animations and/or audio) and data about account creation dates and friends-lists, and studied how gestures passed from user to user.

Some consider him a kook or an eccentric, while others think of him as a technological visionary. Either way, the accomplished Raymond Kurzweil will be taking the stage to keynote the Second Life Community Convention in San Francisco next month, a spot traditionally afforded to a Linden Lab executive.

Kurzweil, a famous futurist, author and inventor, is notable for his many inventions (from the first CCD-based flat-bed scanner to reading machines for the blind), his notions about transhumanism and technological singularities and a significant number of awards and honorary degrees. He has strong opinions on virtual environments, and it will be interesting to hear what he has to say.

The Second Life Community Convention 2009 will happen in San Francisco, on August 13th - 16th, 2009 at the Westin St. Francis Hotel. Registration for the event is open and attendees can register at the convention's Web-site.

	Are you a part of the most widely-known collaborative virtual environment or keeping a close eye on it? Massively's Second Life coverage keeps you in the loop.

Since the rollout of Second Life server 1.26 the already unreliable Second Life group-chat system showed an almost crippling drop in reliability, compared to the previous 1.25 release. Linden Lab have estimated an overall 60% drop in the number of group-chat messages successfully delivered, and the problem skews towards the larger groups, prompting many group owners to completely disable their group's chat functions to avoid online members from being spammed with error messages.

Linden Lab is reporting that server version 1.27, currently in quality assurance, represents a 300% improvement in group chat reliability over version 1.25 (or almost 1000% more reliable than what is currently operating on the Second Life grid today). As yet, no deployment date has been announced, but for many, the update cannot come soon enough.

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There are several sets of rules for users of Second Life. The Terms of Service (TOS) and Community Standards (CS) which combined form your explicit service-contract with Linden Lab, and assorted implicit ones, like following any additional conditions the owner of whatever land-parcel that you are currently on may have chosen to impose.

Well, the Linden Lab have updated the Community Standards for the first time in, well, perhaps forever. While the Lab has said that it has updated them in the past, the document has remained unaltered since at least 2005. What's new, however, isn't necessarily as interesting as what's missing.

Stratim Capital, an institutionally funded secondary-market private-equity firm, is reported to have bought into Linden Lab by buying out most of the holdings of one of the other investors. "We bought almost the entire position of an existing shareholder," said Stratim managing partner, Zach Abrams. Which shareholder, and how much was paid remains a mystery. A previous sale of less than a 5% share in Linden Lab sold for approximately half a billion US Dollars in 2007.

There is no primary private-equity market for Linden Lab. The company does not seek investors, and by all accounts is making enough money that it doesn't need additional investment capital. There's also no sign of an IPO on the horizon, nor indeed, any compelling reason why the Lab should want to have one.

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Linden Lab has released the new viewer, bringing Second Life up to 1.23 a few days earlier than expected, off the back of a very short release-candidate cycle.

The new viewer brings three things with it: The new Adults-only continent (formerly Ursula and now Zindra), user-verification by documents or payment-status, and a new Adults-only content rating that opens up Second Life to more extreme sexual and violent content.

This week we managed to get a look at an early build of what calls itself Second Life 2.0 – though the final version numbering is up for grabs and it could wind up being called 1.24 or 1.25 yet but Linden Lab has been amending their Second Life trademarks to allow "2" to be added. The only really major changes in 2.0 revolve around the user-interface that interactive design agency Big Spaceship has been working on for the last 6-8 months.

And quite a change it is. We're under no illusions that the new user-interface is entirely set in stone. A few parts are confusing, and it has a ton of rough edges and little quirks. It's fascinating to see the direction that it's going in, however.

Linden Lab have made a new Second Life viewer release-candidate available. RC4 is the fifth release candidate in the 1.23 series (Linden Lab starts counting from RC0). It's looking increasingly like the objective is to release before the Second Life sixth anniversary (23 June).

Barely any changes this time around, so either Linden Lab isn't really aware of any showstoppers or doesn't perceive them as such. The context menus have had one small reversion, there are updates to the Mac crash reporter, and a fix relating to object updates that affected poseball visibility.

Linden Lab have made a new Second Life viewer release-candidate available. RC3 is the fourth release candidate in the 1.23 series (Linden Lab starts counting from RC0). The 1.23 series is being fast-tracked, as it is scheduled to go live by the end of June.

We're expecting this one or the next one to be the last before official release -- because frankly, there's not a lot of time-left before the Lab's self-imposed deadline. Probably the biggest reason you'd want to try this one out, is that it fixes a bug introduced in an earlier official viewer where cached information was discarded too aggressively, leading to things that should have been cached having to be redownloaded.

Oh, there's a bunch of good bug-fixes besides that, but that's really the one you want. Read on for the rest.

The store is a fairly ordinary store in Second Life terms, except that it appears to sell objects that are mostly available for free elsewhere in the virtual environment. Reselling 'freebies' in Second Life is generally considered to be a reprehensible practice, but it does happen. This particular store is one of the places we routinely check out to evaluate the effectiveness of Linden Lab's harder-line policies on gaming traffic (and thus search-rankings) within Second Life.

In front of us are a row of 53 avatars, camping out. The provision of such camping facilities being one of the things that are prohibited under the new policy. We tried for a little while to get the attention of one of the camping avatars to see what they might think, and finally succeeded. As it happens, the avatar who responded was a bot – actually one of 70 bots being controlled by a single user who declined to give us a name. The bot-operator was, however, happy to answer a few questions for us, through the remotely-controlled avatar.

The 1.23 Second Life viewer with the necessary support for Adult content is still being rushed to meet a June deadline, the exact reason for which seems a little unclear. There's some outstanding issues with the viewer release-candidates, but it seems fairly low on actual showstoppers and looks likely to make an official release in the roughly one fortnight remaining.

Definitions for the content ratings have been finalized, though they show little noticeable deviation from Linden Lab's originally proposed drafts. It appears that all the changes have been simple explanatory wording changes. The PG rating holds a couple of surprises, though.

Linden Lab has set up a group of test regions for the new three-way content-ratings system, but the reactions we're getting from users indicate that many are less than pleased with the setup. Featuring electric fences, warning signs, barbed wire and floodlights, some feel that the setup evokes more of a wartime German feel than anything. An avatar approaches the fence, gets zapped and comes away trailing smoke.

"So, which way are the showers," he quips.

"It's like some wry commentary, hoax or rick-roll," observes another.

Some say the Second Life 'killer app' is meetings, some say weak-ties, some say it's art, creativity, live music and other related forms of content publishing, and some consider it to be as simple as the micro-transaction economy, where sums smaller than most payment organizations are willing to handle can be exchanged for both virtual and non-virtual goods, as well as services.

That would be from the consumer end. From Linden Lab's perspective, the 'killer app' for them is closer to what Blizzard's killer app is for World of Warcraft: Your friends and your inventory.

As we come up to the time of year when the long-awaited Second Life Homesteads price-rise is due to hit, Linden Lab has announced that any Homestead simulators owned before 1 July, 2009 will continue at the old monthly rate of US$95 instead of US$125, before the price-rise finally kicks in for those too on 1 July, 2010.

The deal essentially saves owners of Homestead products a once-only total of US$360 per simulator, if the simulator is owned or purchased before 1 July this year (a bit less than the cost of a new one). If you've abandoned your Homestead simulator this year, you can have it reinstated at no extra charge. Homesteads have a limit of 20 agents (avatars, if you prefer), and 3,750 prims, and will still be subject to as-yet-unspecified script-limitations before the end of the year. Homestead simulators cost US$375 each to purchase.

	Are you a part of the most widely-known collaborative virtual environment or keeping a close eye on it? Massively's Second Life coverage keeps you in the loop.