We had hoped to launch the new Land Store today but unfortunately we’re not finished polishing and testing and hitting it with hammers just yet; we want it to be as bug free as possible before going live. So no new Land Store today I’m afraid. I can’t offer a final date for launch, but hopefully it’s not much more than a couple of weeks away. As soon as we have more information about how it will launch, I will post it here. This means that the Island price change will also be on hold, until the new Land Store is rea... lire la suite
Lien du post: http://blog.secondlife.com/2008/04/16/new-land-store-launch-delayed/
We had hoped to launch the new Land Store today but unfortunately we’re not finished polishing and testing and hitting it with hammers just yet; we want it to be as bug free as possible before going live. So no new Land Store today I’m afraid. I can’t offer a final date for launch, but hopefully it’s not much more than a couple of weeks away. As soon as we have more information about how it will launch, I will post it here. This means that the Island price change will also be on hold, until the new Land Store is ready. In the meantime we will switch off the old Land Store to avoid any confusion. That will happen today. If you want to order at the old price, ahead of the new Land Store launch, please contact the Concierge support team via the support portal. As stated previously, any whole mainland regions we put to auction from today onwards should have the new starting price of USD$750. We’re busily preparing the new continent, carving out Linden land and ensuring the waterways are protected. I’ll blog again when we are ready to begin offering that land at auction.
We just got word that some of T-Mobile’s upcoming phones are delayed or scrapped altogether. The Nokia 5310 Xpress Music handset which replaces the current Nokia 5300 is now slated for release in early June. It will launch in red, orange, and purple colors. The more higher-end Nokia 5610 Xpress Music has also had a launch delay and is set to launch in early July. If there was one device that was 86′d, which manufacturer would it be? Motorola, silly! Their Motorola Z6w (Z6 with Wi-Fi) was targeted for a June 23rd launch, but has now been cancelled. This is said to be due to early testing issues. Any questions? No? Class dismissed!
Despite being told the site wouldn’t launch until Wednesday, it looks like NBC News launched Nightly.msnbc.com tonight. You can check it out now. The site features a large video player with a lot of “web only” clips. I’m a huge fan of content being produced that compliments what is aired, and this [...]
As with my previous quarterly posts, here is an update on land, including supply, average prices, abandoned/defunct land and pricing information relevant to Q2 of 2008. Land Supply On average around 640,000m are traded between residents each day, with a further 410,000m traded to or from Groups. In total then, that’s around 1,050,000m or 16 regions worth of land traded daily on the Mainland estate. On the back of these numbers, we therefore intend to increase the supply of Mainland for Q2. During April and into May we will increase supply to at least 10 regions per day. Clearly we will be monitoring the market closely and adjust supply if it is necessary. We have a new continent in the wings, and will be preparing that for auction over the coming weeks. In addition, we will shortly be dropping the opening auction price for new whole regions to USD$750 from the current start price of USD$1250. That additional supply along with lower auction start price will hopefully encourage more people to take part and keeps some downward pressure on the Mainland price per meter which has been rising recently. Abandoned/Defunct Land Land can come back to us in several ways but the two most significant ones are where a resident abandons land they no longer want or when an account is closed or becomes defunct in some way, whilst still owning land. In both cases we investigate, clear the land and recycle it by selling the land at auction. Coming into 2008 we had a backlog of defunct land so we have been putting a lot of effort into clearing that backlog which improves the Mainland and keeps down the amount of litter. Current numbers show that we have successfully recycled 3,071,056m of land formerly held by closed or defunct accounts in Q1, with a further 700,000m still to work through, most of which are small parcels below 64m in size. Abandoned land has remained at around the same level, we have recycled it at about the rate it has come back to us so we have more work to do there. Right now we have approximately 950,000m of abandoned land at least some of which was a consequence of the changes to our policy on ad farming (I hope to post some numbers on this soon). Abandoned land tends to be time consuming to process as often it has been abandoned by accident, which has to be investigated. During Q2 we will continue to aggressively recycle land back onto the market. Our new Land Store is moving through testing and will be launched in April, perhaps within a week or two depending on how final testing goes. It will be cross browser compatible and will provide nearly instant delivery of a new island after completing checkout. For Q2 our Island pricing is changing. New islands will be USD$1000 and this change will go live upon the new Land Store being launched, so before the end of April. Orders placed before the launch will be at the current USD$1675 pricing. Monthly fees will remain the same for Q2. No doubt there will be lots of questions about how this affects those residents that have ordered islands very recently, and how it affects Openspaces or the Educational pricing. I will follow up with a much more detailed blog post in a day or two, so well before the new Land Store is launched; do please be patient while we get all the information finalised for you.
Best laid plans of mice and men often go awry... the new Land Store is just not ready to ship. Rather than inflict you guys with a tool that isn’t ready yet, we have decided to bring the old store back up with the new prices. All the old challenges remain (doesn’t work in IE, wait time for delivery) but you will be able to place orders as you have in the past. You will still be unable to order Openspaces via the old store, and the delays there will continue to be long as we deal with backorders. New island orders will go up as quickly as possible, and we will keep you updated on the progress of not only those orders but of the new store as well.
KingsIsle Entertainment has official opened enrollment for the Ravenwood School of Magical Arts as they announce the official launch of their card-based spellcasting battle MMO Wizard101. Choose from seven schools of magic, customize your avatar, adopt a magical pet, engage in puzzles and mini-games, and of course - take on all comers in online magical duels. The base game is completely free-to-play, with the full game offering new lands and features for the price of $9.99 a month, though they are offering a launch special year subscription for only $60, which seems like quite a deal. * Extensive magical 3D worlds, each with its own creative theme such as a feudal countryside run by Samoorai cows, or an ancient Egyptian-inspired land where the treasured relics are being carted off by dogs from another world.
I reported last week that the much anticipated, long awaited DreamWorks-Reliance deal was already done, and likely to be signed any day. But at the time I was also told there were just some other issues surrounding the debt financing that had to be wrapped up (probably because the world has been in a financial crisis). Suddenly, the Wall Street Journal comes out with a story just now saying the deal is "done". I presume what the paper means is that it was signed today. My own sources tell me that DreamWorks informed its owner Paramount within the last 24 hours that it has executed its deal with Reliance. But today Paramount waived certain provisions from the original deal to clear the way for the DreamWorks principals and their employees to join their new company "without delay". The DreamWorks principals will have one of India's largest entertainment conglomerates set up its new $1.2 billion film company. Mumbai-based Reliance ADA Group will invest $500 million equity and provide another $700 million in debt through J.P. Morgan Chase toward the new venture, which will produce a slate of about 6 films a year. The deal now means that David Geffen has engineered his most fervent wish: to give Steven Spielberg and his DreamWorks chief exec Stacey Snider enough film financing to produce independently so they can leave an ugly relationship with Paramount behind them. Next comes a distribution deal, which is why GE's Jeffrey Immelt and Universal's Ron Meyer were dining with Spielberg and Snider last Thursday and why NBC Universal boss Jeff Zucker spent the better part of that afternoon with Steven planning out the rebuild of the fire-ravaged Uni backlot. Given how Spielberg sees Universal as his professional home (he never moved his offices even after Paramount bought DreamWorks), I've always assumed he'd land there. Now, with Immelt and Zucker paying homage, it looks like another done deal no matter how much Geffen would dearly love to play one studio off of the other and mastermind a bidding war for Spielberg/Snider. And David himself? He keeps telling everyone that all he wants is to say goodbye to the movie biz. “To facilitate a timely and smooth transition, Paramount has waived certain provisions from the original deal to clear the way for the DreamWorks principals and their employees to join their new company without delay.” · DreamWorks Finds Indian Big Bucks To Form New Film Biz
· New Universal Taxonomy Now you can submit news, images, or videos to any category on Digg! Categories will be consistent across the board, which means you can view all media types in a given topic, or view one media type at a time (e.g., only images under the “sports” category). We’re also excited to support the launch with new categories. “Offbeat” will be its own category, with new topics, and we’re adding a whole new “Lifestyle” category with topics like Autos, Food & Drink, and Travel. As always, if you don’t want to see a particular topic or media type on Digg, you can click the customize button in the navigation to filter your view. · New Images Crawler We’ve added a new sort to the images section called “mosaic” view - it’s great for browsing image thumbnails. To help prevent people from submitting duplicate images, we’ve added image recognition technology from Idee Inc. The new images section has been sponsored by Intel, a longtime Digg partner — many thanks for their support. Additional thanks to our friends at Photobucket who have built a Digg channel with the Digg API. They’re adding Digg buttons to the site, and will turn on the Digg photo site after we go live with images tonight. Stay tuned for more exciting features and the new comments system. We hope you like the new features, and as always, please give us your feedback.