OpenSim Releases Pass the 7000 Mark
Yesterday, on the #opensim irc channel, I was pleased to see three releases in a row (which fix various bugs, implement various SL features, or introduce new ones, etc), that took the number of releases past the 7000 mark (the version now is 0.5.11.r7002), and the binary for release 0.5.11.7000 can now be downloaded from the OSGrid website, and has the new Search facility switched on.

Second Inventory is now Back Up Again
I was also pleased to see that the SI website was back up and running (I have not seen, either for the last outage they had, or for this one, any mention on their website about the same. No words of explanation, no apology to its customers, nothing. They need to be a bit more forthcoming with the PR aspects of their business.

Blue Mars
Coming soon, in April 2009, Blue Mars, the absolutely stunning new MMVW from Avatar-Reality, based on the awesome CryEngine 2.

Just take a sneak peak at this new World.

After seeing this video I really began to worry about the future of Second Life and Opensim. If Blue Mars, with its truly stunning graphics, allow content creation and an economy, as in SL, then Second Life will look quite amateurish compared with Blue Mars. I will keep a close eye on this one.

Blue Mars hopes to go beta in late 2008, and launch in April 2009 (but we all know about 'hopes' don't we?).

If they want beta testers, they can sign me up, yesterday.

Rock