It kind of feels like all the familiar places that I spend my leisure time are going through major changes at the moment. I decided I needed to read up and figure out what is going on cause I felt lost especially when I go in the build menu and see the different texture tab interface. Some of these have already happened and some are about to start.

1) flickr- When this change first happened, I did not realize the significance. I have always been a free user and never paid for flickr. That meant that only my latest 200 photos would show up and that I could only add them to 10 groups max. All of that has changed and being a free user is really amazing.

• Viewable Picture Limit: All of my pictures show up, not just the first 200. I don't know if there is a limit I have not reached yet, but so far the 200 photo limit is gone. I have 327 viewable pictures and counting.
• Groups: I seem to be able to add my pictures to as many groups as I want. I put one in about 20 groups with no problem. So the 10 group only limit is gone. 

Those are the really important points for me. Other changes like the layout and the header I have not quite figured out if I like those or not and I have yet to customize my header, although that is on my to-do list. I have a harder time seeing how many views and favorites a picture has. I think the ease of looking at my pictures is a little less for some reason, but overall I love the changes- especially being a free flickr user.

2) Second Life Materials Viewer- Ok, I read about this and I watched the youtube video, but I still feel pretty lost. I think it is more for content creators to make really amazing "specular" textures. They did look really amazing in the video. What I need to know is what I do differently on my end when taking pictures of things with materials enabled (if anything) and when I am tinting or making minor changes in the build menu related to my clothing or picture platform. I will continue to read and see if I can find more specific to me (and not content creator) information.


3) Project Sunshine- This viewer change sounds really cool for photographers. The main idea is that avatars will rez really fast, so no more blurry. I can't wait to see this work in full implementation. You need the original second life viewer 3.5.1 or later (available now) to start benefiting from this faster loading time. I wonder how many people this will actually affect because it seems like so many people use 3rd party viewers like firestorm. I use the second life official viewer though and like it best so bring on the Sunshine!


4) Second Life Marketplace- July 1st the billing system will change to the same way we are billed in the game. It does not seem like this will really affect most people, but if you do not have billing information on file for your avatar you might want to do that so you can seamlessly buy things from the marketplace. The other really important thing you want to do this week is empty your cart and/or save them all to favorites because the carts will be emptied when the billing system changes over. You can read more about this change here. 

5) Google reader- I read/ look at hundreds of second life blogs every day, but I have never used Google reader, lol. I use my blog sidebar to keep up with blogs. Blogspot lets you organize your blogroll by recent post updates, so when I open my blog I just click on all the new posts and read them every day. My blogroll is how I keep up with the blogs I want to read. Strawberry did a really informative blog post about switching to a different system if you did use Google reader. I like my system and enjoy just clicking on the blogs I want to read for the day. My blogspot blogroll lets me know which ones are updated and how long ago. I don't know if anyone is interested in my method, but I thought I would share how I keep up with hundreds of blogs. Keep it simple =)

6) FREE laptop- Not a change, but something I wanted to remind you about. You can enter to win a free laptop as part of the SLB10 celebration. Click here to enter

Love, Kirsten Corleone