Mergers & Acquisitions (Updated)

"Linden Lab, the makers of SecondLife, announced today that it is in discussions with High Fidelity over merging the two companies and thus consolidating in anticipation of a future collaboration with or takeover bid from Facebook", the Financial Times reports, citing sources.

As Philip Rosedale, a.k.a. "our creator", Philip Linden or "my beloved Philip", has a major interest in both companies it is assumed that the discussions will go smoothly and a deal will be made before the end of the week.

According to the article  it is probable that Philip Rosedale will become the Chairman of the Board of the new company, while Ebbe Altman, a.k.a. Ebbe Linden, will remain as CEO.

Read the full article Financial Times: Linden Lab & High Fidelity to merge?.

More updates on this will be posted here, as soon as I learn more.

UPDATE April 2, 2014
This entire post is of course a fabrication, it was my attempt at trying to fool you on April Fools Day.

Eddi: "SecondLife Is Now Relevant Again"

My buddy Eddi Haskell, SecondLife blogger, photographer and techguru extraordinaire, has some interesting thoughts today on what yesterdays sensational news, that Facebook will be purchasing Oculus VR will mean for SecondLife.

Oculus VR are the developers of consumer-ready Oculus Rift, a 3 D headset for virtual reality applications.

To quote Mark Zuckerberg: Mobile is the platform of today, and now we’re also getting ready for the platforms of tomorrow. Oculus has the chance to create the most social platform ever, and change the way we work, play and communicate.

Read Eddi's interesting and compelling thoughts on this development Eddi & Ryce's Second Life: "Second Life Is Now Relevant Again..."

As I am afflicted with an almost complete one-sided blindness since childhood, this development will mean nothing to me (I remember the many times spent I spent in movie theaters or in front of television sets with green and red glasses and listening to the others ohhhhhing, ahhhhhhing and wowing), but the more fortunate of you will certainly get a kick out of this.

I Signed Up With Philip

After reading about this on my bosom buddy Apmel Goosson's blog "My Avatar's Name is Apmel" I signed up to become an alpha tester on Philip Rosedale's new project High Fidelity.

The man, the myth, the legend Philip Rosedale (previously a.k.a. Philip Linden), as you all should know, is the original creator of SecondLife, who after leaving Linden Lab has now go on to create another wonderful new world.

Where my Philip goes, I follow! (This by no means implies that I will ever leave SecondLife before they pull the plug on it in San Francisco.)
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The Idea
We're building a new virtual world enabling rich avatar interactions driven by sensor-equipped hardware, simulated and served by devices (phones, tablets and laptops/desktops) contributed by end-users.

The Matter
Voxels. We're making a strategic bet that rich computer rendering is heading there. Imagine an experience with cubes of many different sizes, with the ability to scale them down to a seamless molecular fabric. Now imagine these building blocks manifesting complex physical properties.

Finally, imagine that world extending visibly to vanishing points like our world does today, enabling you to see your house, your neighborhood, distant mountains, and other planets in the sky. We believe computing power and network transmission speeds are evolving to make such a world possible, represented by a sparse voxel octree data structure.

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Read all about the new project here: High Fidelity
And when you visit that webpage, please, oh please, make sure to click the sound players under each of the team members, especially Philip!

What My Philip Is Up To!

As you may remember, I posted awhile back that "my Philip", a.k.a. Philip Rosedale in first life and Philip Linden in SecondLife, had completely dropped out of the leadership of Linden Lab (both the management and the board).

Well, I put my dear friend, attorney and sleuth Diana Gilderoy on the track and she has now reported back with some exciting news.

My darling Philip has actually started work on creating a new and improved virtual world for us. Philip and Mitch Kapor and some other imaginative people have started a company named High Fidelity. On the company's blog the first thing they declare is this:

"The Idea

We're building a new virtual world enabling rich avatar interactions driven by sensor-equipped hardware, simulated and served by devices (phones, tablets and laptops/desktops) contributed by end-users."

Take a look here for more, High Fidelity blog and this interesting post on TechCrunch by Leena Rao, which was posted on April 4, 2013, Second Life Founder Raises $2.4M For New Stealth Startup, High Fidelity 

It is not yet known what Philip and his friends plan to call the new world but I should imagine that we can safely assume that ThirdLife is out of the question.

P.S.I have been thinking about this and have come to the conclusion that it is a really smart move by Philip to create a new and improved world from scratch, because that way he circumvents and avoids to have to deal with the usual crowd of loudmouthed residents in SecondLife who yell, kick and scream about any and every - minor or major - change that is made.