Although it started off a bit slow, this year's Burning Life was bigger and better than ever. Second Life's annual homage to the creative Burning Man event filled 12 regions and included many imaginative builds and creative collaborations. A big thanks to all of the Burning Life contributors, it's your passion that makes Second Life a more creative and energetic place!

Calling all International Second Life Residents! If you are interested in volunteering specifically for the international community, we invite you to first please fill out the application on our website. Also, you are invited to join the Willkommen Deutschland, Welcome Korea and Welcome Japan groups (we will need help with the translation). Keep an eye on the Official Linden Blog for more updates and please feel free to join the International Mailing List here to join in the conversation.

Claudia's Tour, Part Two

Join Linden Lab Community Manager Claudia Linden as she continues her tour of the Teen Grid... "This tour begins on Rainer and Cascade, two of the six snow sims in the southeast of Teen Second Life. With Cyan Linden as guide on this part of the expedition, I landed on the 253 meter peak of the Rainier Ski/Board rezzing station just in time for sunset..." Read more.

Beyond Helpful

Live Helper Effsey Nelson has been volunteering overtime the last few Weeks. Effsey has been answering lots of questions from his fellow Residents. In his spare time, he's submitted an interesting proposal to help estate owners and groups better manage simulator resources.

Also, in an effort to showcase all of the "under the radar" helpful folks, big kudos to Jason Zeno and GoAngel Sonic, who spend much of their free time in Second Life helping new Residents. Relative newcomer Lola North referred Jason and GoAngel to us after encountering them on one of her first nights on the mainland. Lola said, "I met two amazingly kind and engaging people who helped me put on clothing that I purchased, gave me a free necklace and shoes, and (in general) made everything so much more palatable. This was after five or ten minutes of walking around with a large panel attached to my head and looking like a dork. They were very sweet to me and helped me become a real SL human."

Neo-Realms Goes Fishing in Second Life

As a game and content developer, Neo-Realms Entertainment has hooked the big one in Second Life. Their flagship game, Neo-Realms Fishing, can be played at three different fishing camps in-world. "We created the first fishing camp in 2004," says co-founder and designer Steven McCall (known as Sweegy Manilow in Second Life)... Read more.

Alt Accounts and Griefing

Since Linden Lab opened registration to allow Main Grid Residents to create accounts without having a credit card, there has been much speculation about the abuse of these free, alternate accounts to grief other Residents. Here are some of the facts we've gathered and a rundown of how the abuse team handles problematic alt accounts... Read more

Account Security

No lock in the world can keep out a dedicated thief. The recent security breach at Linden Lab goes to show that we must all be vigilant about the security of our data and personal information. The following are five simple tips for keeping your Second Life account as secure as possible... Read more

Finding Serendipity in Disaster

A wonderful thing happened this month. A security breach, compromising the Second Life database, caused Linden Lab to scramble everyone's account passwords. So what's wonderful about that?

In the week immediately following the password scramble a large contingent of Lindens took to the phones. Over 2000 calls were taken in 2 days. Without exception the Residents we spoke with were friendly, understanding, and eager to return to Second Life. Tens of thousands more passwords were changed via the website.

It's easy to throw around the word community - all it takes is a group of people gathered in one place. But the fact that so many people were willing to make the effort to change their passwords, and do it with such patience, is a nice reflection of the commitment Residents have to the Second Life community.

Thank you so much for making the effort and continuing to make Second Life a special place and community.

Agree? Disagree? Let us know - send us your Letter to the Editor - with your Second Life username - and we will publish a representative set in the next edition of The Second Opinion.

We received several thoughtful responses to our opinion piece: Blog Your Way to the Future. Below are a sample of the replies, we've also pulled a few responses from a recent Blog Entry about the same topic. Thank you for your responses!

Harder to Use
I Fully Disagree with Linden Lab for taking away the "Easy to Use Forums that even people with disabilities can figure out easily" and turn everything into complex blogs that are rather confusing. The reason I say this is because the blog is slower to load even on a T3 Line, its got so many different links that are not easily seen, the time stamps are too small and some with seeing problems can't view them, those with major learning disabilities and comprehending issues have trouble consistently with this blog and wish SL would stop making everything for the people who have some decent intelligent or at least understand how these things work.

Isn't Second Life meant for everyone not just the smart people, but also those with disabilities, so they have a place to fit in at to? I'm trying to look at every possible view about why to switch to a blog, I can understand it being easier to maintain and what not, but What about use who Find it rather difficult to "Navigate and what not" Please I'm asking out of the sweet kind heart of mine to help the rest of us out that have disabilities by making things more simpler to understand and find. For the good of "All" Residents.

Hope It Works
I can't help but feel that this is just another PR move. Forums = everyone complains publicly about anything they feel is important. Blog = Phillip Linden picks the topic and then deletes any negative feedback.

I honestly hope I'm wrong about SL being groomed for investors and eventually sold off to the highest bidder! Please prove me wrong, Linden Labs! You guys may spill coffee on the persistence server about once a week, but I'd rather have an incompetent yet benevolent master like you guys, than a competent & evil one like Ares, or AzTechnology, or Sony.

More Energy Spent Elsewhere
Personally, I don't see where a small company can afford to keep so many forums open. While this will close my favorite forum reads, it'll hopefully bring more energy to the various blogs and community groups which have been otherwise ignored since. I look forward to see more blogs and discussion groups grow out of this, as Linden Labs isn't the one who makes the content.

- Crissa (posted in the blog).