Ryan Schultz

PERSONAL NOTE: I’ve been meaning to write this blogpost for a while, but my life has been rather hectic lately, and I simply haven’t had time. However, today I am off sick from work with various aches and pains, and my worn-out 60-year-old body is telling me that I need to rest, recharge, and heal a bit, so I decided that today is the day I will finally write this review (that, plus I learned

FIRST, AN APOLOGY: My work life and my personal life have both been rather hectic, even chaotic, lately, and I have not had much time to blog. Often I come home from work, and I just lie on the sofa, absolutely exhausted. (Sometimes I escape into my beloved Second Life for an hour or two, as a welcome refuge from the sometimes-overwhelming changes taking place in my real life.) Among the many changes that have

I want to make it clear that, while I agree wholeheartedly with the changes Linden Lab have made, which are discussed in this editorial, I disagree with HOW these changes are being implemented by Linden Lab, and particularly with the June 30th, 2024 deadline, which I feel does NOT give businesses and individuals enough time to prepare for the impact of these changes. I also feel that Linden Lab has failed to provide sufficient details

If you want even more news about fabulous freebies and bargains in Second Life than what I write about in this blog, may I recommend the Second Life group I maintain, called the RyanSchultz.com Steals, Deals & Freebies group? The group costs only L$50 to join; more information here. It’s May again, which means that all month long, the Second Life Syndicate will be running their annual Scoop ‘n’ Score hunt, which offers many fabulous

Many people are already talking about the death of the Apple Vision Pro…what’s the real story? Four days ago, I blogged about a widely-circulated report by an Apple industry pundit, speculating that the computer maker was making significant cuts to the number of Apple Vision Pro (AVP) units it was planning to ship this year, and stating that demand for the brand new, high-end VR/AR headset had “fallen sharply beyond expectations.” This report ignited no

So, it’s a very lazy springtime Sunday morning, and of course, I have my main Second Life avatar, Vanity Fair, slow dancing with my main male SL alt, Heath Homewood, at the LOVE romantic dance club, dressed up as a medieval queen and her knight—you know, as one does. 😜 It sure beats just turning on the radio while you’re doing laundry! (Hey, don’t judge me; we all have our obsessive little hobbies to help

On April 22nd, 2024, Meta (the company formerly known as Facebook) made an announcement titled A New Era for Mixed Reality: Today we’re taking the next step toward our vision for a more open computing platform for the metaverse. We’re opening up the operating system powering our Meta Quest devices to third-party hardware makers, giving more choice to consumers and a larger ecosystem for developers to build for. We’re working with leading global technology companies

People are often mystified as to why I continue to write about the now-twenty-year-old virtual world of Second Life, when there are so many other, newer metaverse platforms which I could discuss and dissect on my blog. I attempted to answer that question in 2019: Editorial: Why Second Life Is the Perfect Model of a Mature, Fully Evolved Virtual World for Newer Social VR Platforms to Emulate. There’s quite a lot to learn from Second

One of the virtual reality labs being used to train nursing students in the College of Nursing at the University of Manitoba As many of my readers already well know, I am the computer science and agriculture librarian at the Jim Peebles Science and Technology Library at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, and I have been writing about “news and views on social VR, virtual worlds, and the metaverse” (as the tagline

The Glue website Glue, a corporate collaboration social VR platform I first wrote about in November 2019, has declared bankruptcy. In a post dated April 10th, 2024 on the Glue website, Glue’s CEO, Jussi Havu, writes: We regret to inform you that the company responsible for Glue has been declared bankrupt on 8 April 2024 by decision of the District Court of Helsinki. Despite our best efforts to prevent this outcome, we were unable to