Profile Problems
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By Selby Evans
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I am finding a few problems with profiles. For one thing, I click to get somebody's profile and I get mine instead. That is a familiar problem because I use
llMapDestination()
a lot in my travel posters. And about 20% of the time, the function delivers the map for the local sim rather than for the destination sim.
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I think that is probably from network congestion. If the request times out, the system is probably just delivering the map nearest at hand, the local map. My guess is that the same thing is happening to profiles.
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This is not a big deal to me. I try again and usually get the right profile on the second try. I am glad, however, that I am not in the business of helping a RL business do something in second life. The business people I used to worke with expected 5 9's reliability from their equipment. I don't think I could convince them that the network-generated error rates I see in SL are OK.
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(The network problems are the elephant in the living room for SL. Nobody mentions those problems, but they probably mean that the current SL architecture will not scale up.)
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Meanwhile back at my profile, I recently found that all the content I had put there was missing. My picture and the descriptions of me (RL,SL) were gone.
My reaction: No problem -- I needed to update those things anyway.
That shows how accustomed I have become to Second Life surprizes.
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When I tried to update my picture, I found another defect. I followed the standard procedure, expecting to see the picture appear. But nothing happened. No picture. No even a polite "Your update has been received and your picture will appear eventually." Other people have had this experience and asked what they did wrong. I just went on to other things and, when I checked later, the picture was there. My guess is network lag again.
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The person who programmed this probably assumed that the picture would appear immediately, confirming the user's action. Network lag adds another layer of problems (cost) to development.
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The good news
I have seen/heard some complaints about the size of the profile display and how it covers too much screen. Profiles on the web offer some advantages. A profile can open in a browser. Then it would take no screen real estate. An independent window. Something I have been advocating for a long time.
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You can open profiles with your browser now. Depending on how LL uses the system, they could transfer all the profile traffic out of the SL network and onto the general internet. That is probably just a matter of having the viewer open the browser with the appropriate security codes. They are already doing part of this.
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If fact, If I wanted to look at people's profiles without taking up screen real estate, I could do that right now. It would be less convenient than having the viewer open my browser the person's profile page, but I could do it manually.
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If you want to see somebody's profile, just put this in your browser address bar.
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my.secondlife.com/(their.username)
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As of now, the profile on the web page does not offer the actions panel that I find with the profile I open in the viewer. That's the one I need to start an IM. But that feature could be added.
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You really would not want to have the external IM connect to the Second Life network, though. Now that you are on the web, you could connect to an external network. Like Facebook. Take that load off the Second Life network. Get away from that lag. (Yes, I know Facebook IM can have its own lag. But that problem belongs to Facebook, not LL.)
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I did find that I could edit my profile on the web page--I had to sign in to get to my web page, so that was a protected access. Of course, since I am identified, Second Life could let me do other things I do in the viewer--if they put the technology there.
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Second Life to the browser. A different view. Thinking out of the box. The Second Life box, that is. I see potential advantages. And not just for profiles.
- Pull some loads off the servers.
- Let people work on some things with only web lag.
- Let people work on some things with a smart phone and no ap.
- Improve integration with the light social sites, such as Facebook
I'll get back to this topic another day. For another view, see
Why A Purely Web Feature Based Viewer 2 Will Always Fail
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