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When Linden Lab instituted the banking ban within Second Life this year, I said it was 4 months late. Being critical of Linden Lab has been quite easy over the last year, with Linden Lab seeming to be very far removed from its very own reality. But since 2008 began, there have been some visible changes. It is almost like there is a new company under the hood of Linden Lab.

When I did a survey on Voice - which I personally do not like - I was surprised that there were questions about transcript creation, and so forth. In discussion with the person who sent out the email, a Linden, I expressed my surprise and - yes - pleasure. Despite the podcast/talker demographic, there are lots of people who do not like voice or maybe cannot use it. One could even say that it is insensitive to the hearing impaired when it is used exclusively - and I know at least one person in Second Life who is hearing impaired. So working to include those people is good.

The new policy on ad farms, which some people are a select few are whining about (me think they doth protest too much), is probably the next best thing to dealing with unethical landbot usage (as opposed to the majority of ethical landbot usage). No one in their right mind wants to deal with these things. I have dealt with ad farms personally - enough so to have gotten the title of 'Sim Destroyer' from one of them. Tyrian Camillo, who is protesting the new policy with his own spin, has had his hand caught in the cookie jar. I know. It was my cookie jar. Still, be nice to Tyrian. His banking business is over, and now his ad farms are done. Yes, I would expect him to make loud noises - and one could make a case that the inaction of Linden Lab over the last years has allowed him to build an income on this foundation of distasteful stuff, but... We all make choices. And choices are like boomerangs.

Mono, which I don't think is really a great move, offers some worthwhile advantages such as speed (though the memory by the same scripts is reportedly higher when using Mono's virtual machine). Upgrading the scripting engine is great.

Where is the Linden Lab that was so easy to criticize? Did they take their New Year's Resolutions so seriously? It all coincides with the departure of Cory Ondrejka, but I doubt that Cory was directly responsible for any of these changes. Maybe the reorganization that followed his departure rattled some things in to place? I don't know. Is OpenSim a factor?

But I must admit: I am very pleasantly surprised with the direction Linden Lab suddenly seems to be heading in. And I'm curious - what's next?