Today in Second Life we had:

• 33,975 new signups bringing us to 10,458,688 signups total.
• A peak concurrency of 52,439 at 2:40PM, and a minimum concurrency of 28,867 at 1:40AM. Median concurrency for the day was 41,201.
• Concurrency remains much higher than usual.
• The Grid Stability Index for the day was 2.05 (lower is better).
• The Support Portal was offline for maintenance between 6PM and 10PM SLT (US Pacific) this-evening.

As you'll know if you read my earlier posts, I use Barney Boomslang's Mac-port of the Nicholaz patch. (You may know that I also use the Release Candidates, at least when they're vaguely stable.) Barney was moved to comment on why he makes the effort to write open source material - and he has a long history of it. You might not agree with him: you might think he's stupid and giving his work away for free; you might think he's some kind of wicked communist; you might think he's a hero.

Personally, money isn't the be-all-and-end-all of my life. You can read some of my thoughts about the American drive for money and the English class system from an online class if you want. Obviously for open source coders money isn't the be-all-and-end-all either. I'd just like, again, to say a big THANK YOU to all the open source bug fixers for their work and efforts. Some of us, I'd like to think almost all of us, appreciate what you do. The world is a better place for it.

Kelly Services, a human resources employment resource, has opened its own island in SL, making it part of what seems to be a growing trend of such businesses attempting to shift around the way we think about seeking work.

I started to wonder, though: isn't part of the evaluation process how someone presents themselves, how they perform? Or is it all taken on faith after receiving an applicant's resumé? How much of this can be done virtually? I'm sure Kelly's a worldwide business, but is there an expectation of physical presence at some point? Do papers need to be signed? I've been extremely fortunate to have had a fairly steady job for the past few years, so I've not been keeping myself up-to-date on job seeking practices. Is this the new way?

(Via CNN)

Daniel Terdiman of CNet has always done well by SL. He writes with honesty and compassion, which is always refreshing when it comes to SL. So, in the deluge of new books coming out on SL, I'm glad he's taken the time to write one of his own. It's called The Entrepreneur's Guide to Second Life: Making Money in the Metaverse. It's geared toward analyzing businesses that work in SL, and how you can create a business that will become successful.

In the referring article, Daniel says that while it's true he's not an SL entrepreneur, he does qualify to some degree in being an authority on his subject. In fact, I'd argue that by not being an entrepreneur himself, he brings a much-needed perspective to the subject. And in seven months, too; that's pretty damned quick. Go check this book out here, and its related blog here.

Alcatel-Lucent, the networking services provider, has opened an island in SL. To celebrate this, they're offering 50,000L to the winner of a new contest that asks residents to design the applications and gadgets of a future time when high-speed access to always-on networks is readily available.

To this end, Alcatel-Lucent is providing use of their sandbox, which, according to the referring article, will feature " ... application development tools and simple user interfaces to help contestants bring their ideas for 4G services to life." If anyone's going to give this a shot, do let us know what these tools and interfaces are. The deadline is December 1st, and three runners-up will be awarded prizes of 20,000L. Good luck everyone! Bring us the future!

(Via sys-con.com)

Canada Post, the shipping and delivery company, will be opening Maple Grove, a city of commerce within SL that will hold many of the RL stores and brands that Canadians know and trust, including Toys'R' Us, Sears, The Shopping Channel, Brookstone, SkyMall, Red Canoe, Everything Olive, and Hudson's Bay Company.

"Today's net savvy consumer values convenience and relevancy in today's market," says Laurene Cihosky, senior vice president for Canada Post's direct marketing division. "Maple Grove is our way of meeting those expectations; a virtual place for friends to meet, shop, and enjoy the culture that Canada has to offer."

On Saturday, November 3rd, Maple Grove will officially launch in Second Life with a six-hour virtual live music festival, from 3 to 9 PM SLT. On the bill will be Grace McDunnough, Montain Gulruth, Juel Resistance, Rosedrop Rust, Shiger Seattle, and Louis Volare. You can get more information about the event here.

(Thanks, Schuyler!)

Six of Second Life's top brands Eros Designs, RH Designs, Le Cadre Network, Nomine, PixelDolls and DE Designs are filing suit against Thomas Simon (known as avatar Rase Kenzo), and ten other as yet unidentified avatars. The suit was filed in Brooklyn, New York by attorney Frank Taney, a partner with Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney who is representing Eros Designs against Volkov Catteneo, for similar copyright violation.

As long-time SLI readers are doubtless aware, there is no technological means that exists to guarantee prevention against copyright violation. Indeed, most such measures are usually bypassed or broken before they are even released into the wild. That leaves one forum for copyright violation - the same one that has always been there. The RL courts and the legal system.

Yesterday in Second Life we:

• Spent US$1,170,000 at an exchange rate of L$267 to US$1
• Exchanged US$257,000 at an average of US$10,700.0 per hour.
• Market buys were US$184,000
• Market sales were US$72,000
• Limit-limit buys were US$1,300
• The busiest time was at 5am when about US$18,000 was exchanged.
• The quietest time was 8am when about US$6,000 was exchanged.

Today in Second Life we had:

• 43,383 new signups bringing us to 10,423,964 signups total.
• Median signup rates are lower today, but we're still pulling about 1,465 signups per hour.
• A peak concurrency of 52,439 at 2:40PM, and a minimum concurrency of 28,867 at 1:40AM. Median concurrency for the day was 41,201.
• Concurrency is still riding to close to record levels, which is quite unusual, and well over what is normally expected for a Friday.
• The Grid Stability Index for the day was 2.05 (lower is better).
• Login and search services had something of a cow today for approximately 90 minutes this-morning.
• The Ed Wood Festival Highlights of Yesteryear as a part of the Ed Wood Machinima Festival.
• A non-release-candidate release candidate. Yes, that's a little tricky to explain.
• Announcement that the downtime scheduled for October 31 has been postponed. You can all put down your blazing torches and pitchforks, now.

There's a new release candidate available on the optional downloads page. It's one with known problems and it isn't actually a candidate for release. The previous release candidate turned out to have some pretty severe problems, and it seems some people just won't quit using it anyway. So this release is a roundup of fixes for the folks out there who are eating bees.

So, we get the impression that, esssentially, bee-eaters this release is for you. Not eating bees? Give it a miss, and wait for the next release candidate, which might actually be a release candidate.

At 8:30AM SLT (US Pacific) all Second Life login services ceased responding.

At the time of the fault, 41,337 users were online. With users unable to log on, concurrency numbers have been falling rapidly since that time.

[UPDATE: 8:45 AM - Linden Lab acknowledges the problem, and promises further updates]

[Update: 9:05 AM - Logins are back up]

[Update: 9:15 AM - Logins remain up. Search has failed]

[Update: 10:00 AM - Search started responding to queries again about 5 minutes ago, and is hanging in there.]

Assuming CSI:NY had not aired their program featuring Second Life on Wednesday this week, projected signups for Wednesday and Thursday were expected to total 47,434. Actual signups for Wednesday and Thursday this week exceeded that projection by 74,412 signups, with 122,846 new registrations taking place in that 48 hour period.

The incident was marred, however, by the failure of the webservers for the CSI event, preventing many from registering via the CSI registration portal or downloading the OnRez viewer, both provided by the Electric Sheep Company.

This October marks the third year anniversary of the creation of Alt-Zoom Studios, BuhBuhCuh Fairchild's answer to the growing phenomenon of machinima. The Ed Wood Festival was set up to celebrate machinima that's so bad it's good, an homage to the famously awful movies of that director who gave us Plan 9 From Outer Space.

In that spirit, this weekend will see a couple of events that aspiring machinimists will want to check out. Friday night at 7 PM SLT, in Lukanida, Alt-Zoom Studios will present the Ed Wood Festival Highlights of Yesteryear, showcasing the 13 past entries into the contest. That will give people an idea of the kind of quality that wins dubious awards. Saturday the 27th this year's contest theme will be announced, giving creators 48 hours to film their movie and submit it to Moo Money before 11:59 PM, for inclusion in the contest.

Finally, at 7 PM on Halloween, contestants will gather to watch all submissions, and the winner will be announced shortly thereafter. For more information, contact Moo in-world, or go to the website. Filmmakers, don your angora for inspiration and prepare yourselves!

(Thanks, Moo!)

Cube3, creators of the CubePODz, have updated their recreational vehicle line with the new Sunfish, a 2-seater, and the Albatross, a 10-seater. I loved the Syd Mead-esque design of the CubePOD, and these new additions have some of that going on, as well as a sleek retro feel to them. From the press release:

"We should take this opportunity to make the virtual worlds we'll live in optimistic and suggestive of a new frontier. Many of the tired cyberpunk visions that made good fiction 20 years ago are horrible places to really spend our time in. To me that's maybe fun for an RPG, but not for a world we're spending hours in daily now" says designer Larry Rosenthal.

The three vehicles sell within SL for base prices of 600L, 1200L, and 2000L based on the model and style. To see some screens of the new vessels, check out this gallery; for more of a look, go in-world to Theta.

(Thanks, Larry!)