Next On Copper Robot: It's a Lindenpalooza

Join us this Sunday when the Copper Robot talks to folks at Linden Lab about the new policies on adult content, news about voice functionality in Second Life, and some of what the Lindens are doing to foster community.

Linden Lab plans to institute a new "Adult" rating for graphic sexual and violent content in Second Life. Residents who participate in those activities will have to verify their real-world age by presenting real-world ID. Adult content on the mainland will be segregated into its own continent (although it can continue on private islands). Linden Lab says they're doing it so that people can control their Second Life experience better -- people who find adult content offensive can avoid it, while those who want it will be able to find it. But the proposal also has opponents, who state their case on this page of Linden Lab's bug-reporting, feature-request, and feedback system, the JIRA.

We'll have two of Linden Lab's legal team to discuss the new regulation: general counsel Marty Roberts and deputy general counsel Ken Dreifach (SL: Marty Linden and Ken Linden).

Later, we'll be joined by Joe Miller (SL: Joe Linden), VP platform and technology development for Linden Lab, to talk about the state of voice communications in Second Life. The company recently announced that its 18-month-old voice offering is on track to do 15 billion total voice minutes in 2009 (compared with 65 billion minutes for Skype last year). Linden Lab recently introduced AvaLine an optional service, which assigns in-world phone numbers to avatars so that residents can receive calls from outside phones. The company upgraded its SLIM client for exchanging text and voice messages inworld without running the graphical SL viewer. They say they plan additional upgrades, including voice recording and automatic voice-changing software (which they call "voice fonts") in the future.

Finally, we'll be talking with Catherine Smith (SL: Catherine Linden), VP of marketing communications, about some of the community-building efforts Linden Lab has been doing recently, from the revised Showcase to the upcoming sixth Second Life birthday.

As always, you have several options for joining us.

You can join the live audience at the Seaside Theater on World2Worlds Island in Second Life 6 pm Pacifc Time Sunday, May 31.

Watch the live video on the Web.

Or wait until afterward, when we'll have an edited audio podcast available -- look for it here or subscribe with iTunes or your favorite alternate podcasting software.

blog comments powered by Disqus