I came across several interesting news items and SL events that serve as reminders that SL is a great tool for educaion, fundraising, and awareness.

Yesterday the Second Nature lecture series hosted a Virtual Conference on Climate Change. Directors and professors from Imperial College and Stanford University shared their views on topics such as ‘Technology in the Greenhouse: Research to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions‘.

Today at 2 pm SL time the University of Texas will be showcasing the work of several students who are competing for a grant from the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter Partnership Foundation. Their projects are exploring  ideas for using Virtual Worlds for community service, part of a class called Working in a Virtual world. You can learn more about their projects, as well as several other fundraising efforts, on Educators Coop island.

Glasgow Caledonian University is using Second Life as a training tool for their nursing students who can interect with virtual patients before being confronted with actual patients. They’ve also used SL to give prospective students a chance to experience their campus via virtual tours. “Caledonian Academy will lead a competition to explore how we can exploit the potential of 3D environments for learning, but in the meantime construction of the university’s Second Life site is proving to be a valuable learning experience for students in itself.”

The U.S. Airforce is using SL to promote themselves and provide information on their MyBase sim. Visitors can fly a virtual P51C Mustang, try out the challenge course, or visit a virtual Air Force museum.

Looks like the Army is getting in on the act as well, preparing a collection of sims to be used as virtual recruitment centers.

Traffic Bots suck. There’s no denying that having an army of undead avatars constantly logged into the grid puts unnecessary strain on the system. It’s obvious that something needs to be done about these kinds of bots and I think the best way to get rid of the problem is to make them obsolete. Stop tallying Traffic numbers.  Do we really need an arbitrary, easily manipulated number to tell us where the supposed ‘good stuff’ is?

I suppose this wouldn’t get rid of zombie bots altogether. Some would still constantly run bots to give the appearance of a busy sim, but I think without traffic rankings the number of these bots would be drastically reduced.

So how many traffic bots are there? Estimates range wildly – and are proposed with much conviction. In other words – lots of arguing about these numbers :) Check out this forum thread for a sample.

Linden Lab estimates that bots make up about 10-15% of the total User Hours, others have estimated up to 50% of the population at any given time consists of bots. I’m of the opinion that the number is somewhere between these two figures, most likely closer to 15%. Here’s a little experimental formula that I came up with while reading the forums tonight.

+ LL estimates 10-15% User Hours are racked up by Bots.
+ Most traffic bots probably run 24/7
+ 34,800,000 User Hours in August

So a bit of math might produce an interesting figure. 15% of the monthly user hours divided by 31 days divided by 24 hours.

34,800,000 * .15 / 31 / 24 = 7,016 full-time traffic bots?

Accurate? Probably not, but I bet it’s somewhere in the ball park.

However many traffic bots there really are, it’s too many. There are plenty of legitimate uses for programmed avatars, but clogging up the grid with thousands of lifeless zombies is not one of them.

This sensational article over at Reuters got my all fired up – and by sensational I mean superficial, inflammatory, and melodramatic. Land supply freeze extended again: Has Linden hit a wall? Comments are turned off on that article, so I will use this space to vent. :)

<rant>

This article is not the only source of my frustration. Every day It seems I read another news article or blog post that predicts doom and gloom for Second Life – while ignoring the obviously positive aspects of growth in our virtual world. Every month the total usage is up, there are more active users, we have a steadily growing economy, the client software is more stable, the quality of our content continues to rise.

I’d like to refute a few of the statements in this latest bit of anti-hype from Reuters:

“Linden’s customer base has been shrinking for six consecutive months..”
A reference to the slightly lower percentage of Premium accounts. Fewer premium members does not mean a shrinking customer base. Even Reuter’s knows that Linden Lab makes most of their money selling land. From an article on July 7th: “Linden earns the majority of its revenue from monthly charges to land-owners called “tier,” not from premium account dues.” New user registrations continue to rise as do peak concurrency numbers.

“..the total number of mainland-owning premium accounts is smaller than it was a year ago”
There may be fewer premium account holders, but that does not mean fewer paying users. Anyone who has land in SL is a source of income for Linden Lab, whether they rent directly from LL or through a 3rd party landlord. Even if you don’t rent land your money will still find it’s way into LL’s coffers when you purchase $L or trade on the Lindex.

“A migration by Second Life veterans to private islands and budget ‘Openspace sims’”
OpenSpace sims are just as profitable for LL as a regular sim. Prices are lower per region, but the purchase cost and monthly fees are equal since there are 4 OpenSpace sims per server. It’s also very likely that ‘migrating’ to a full sim will mean increasing the amount paid to LL, unless you rented more the 65,000 sqm meters on the Mainland.

</rant>

ahhh…..that feels better. :) Just a small shout in the face of the recent storm of anti-hype.

Viva La Second Life!