Yesterday, some discussion sprang up on the metered vs unmetered status of Second Life bandwidth to Big Pond users. Telstra/BigPond is Australia's largest ISP, and for a variety of largely historical and political reasons, bandwidth in Australia is metered - essentially charged by the number of bytes received (this is the case in more countries than not). That makes any site or service that is unmetered unbearably attractive to local Internet users.

Due to some confusion with conflicting statements on the Big Pond website about what is and is not metered bandwith insofar as Second Life is concerned, we contacted the Big Pond staff to get a definitive answer, and got one quite promptly.

Major Australian Internet Service Provider Telstra/Bigpond has expanded their already large Second Life presence, The Pond. Formerly weighing in at 11 sims, The Pond has expanded to 13, adding Pondagon and Pondi Beach.

Pondagon is designated for residential rentals (since The Pond opened up a rentals program a few months ago, it has proven to be very successful). Approximately half the lots in Pondagon were leased in the first 12 hours. Currently rentals in Pondagon are only open to members of the Friends of The Pond group, but that will open up shortly.

The Pond's three orientation sims have been converted to also support some rental-commercial plots, although at a slightly higher cost than residential.

Pondi Beach doesn't officially open until the beginning of December, so we'll be hearing more about that soon, along with additional plans for expansion.

This is the 13th in a series of interviews that are being conducted with new residents, in order to gauge the effectiveness of the orientation process, and to gauge disparities between the preconceptions and the realities of Second Life. The questions may be tailored slightly for each interview; responses may be edited for purposes of clarity.

Jiwagirl Jie has come to Second Life for reasons other than those mentioned by other new residents: she comes to explore, but hopes to find forests, parks and nature reserves instead of the urban crush of buildings that is the norm for Second Life.

Having gotten a ton of messages today asking me what, exactly, a community registration portal is, here's the deal. Various non-Linden groups in Second Life have their own orientation facilities. Many of these are already using the third-party-registration interface to bring in customers/communities.

The signup page now features a choice of places. The first step looks like this (at least for some of you. Not everyone is seeing this):

Those sites listed are Azure Islands, Mainland Brasil (in Portuguese), The L Word, Big Pond, NMC Campus, and Anshe Chung's Dreamlands (in Chinese). These are intended to completely replace the orientation island/help island/welcome area experience that new users would otherwise experience.

This is cited as an experimental trial to to study orientation processes and to examine the effect on resident retention rates. Since retention metrics go out to 90 days, I don't expect we'll have the results quickly. With Linden Lab very tight-lipped about retention metrics, it's uncertain as to whether we'll find out the results at all.

Uluru (formerly known as Ayers Rock) is considered to be one of the great natural wonders of the world, as well as one of the most sacred sites of the native aboriginal peoples. For a long time after Federation, Uluru was state property before being returned to the traditional landowners on 26 October 1985, on the condition that for 99 years it would be leased back to the National Parks and Wildlife Agency, who would jointly manage it with the native landowners.

Telstra Big Pond's presence in Second Life contains a replica of Uluru, and this is raising some objections. The native peoples of Australia have specific religious and philosophical beliefs about certain land and sites, and about images of those sites and of deceased people. Images of parts of the northeast face of Uluru are not permitted, and all images of Uluru must, in theory, be submitted to the native landowners for approval.