The Ultimate Viewer

It is has become pretty obvious recently that the Perfect Viewer is being developed whether we like it or not. The Display Names thingy is the latest in the line of seemingly pointless developments which, like a complicated cake mix will all bake out fine in the end...

...well, it does depend on your taste of course.

The Ideal Viewer from the current LL management perspective has the following features....

It allows banner adverts...

It promotes the use of Real Names alongside avatar names...

It allows you to Tweet and give Face from within SL...

It permits Marketplace shopping, and buying from sim owners...

It loads on a mobile phone..

Now, this may hack you all off enough to leave SL, but that's OK, because all white mice will be replaced by the Streaming Hoards of Millions. (yes, I was wrong, the Myth Of A 100 Million Users is not dead at all.)

Now, those that actually use Virtual Worlds have a slightly different set of priorities when it comes to developing the Perfect Viewer....but... those priorities are ONLY shared by Third Party Developers, the Lindens have their hearts set on the 100 Million scenario.... and cloud computing, (project "Skylight") for those too stupid to download a viewer.

I will certainly hang around to see what happens when the drunk fool in the pub, for example, stumbles via iPhone cursing and misspelling his or her way onto my chat list in the middle of a conversation I'm having. I declare war, as of now.

I don't really care that LL has this Display Names thing, I NEVER have names displayed, I'm odd like that, I figure I can wave my cursor over someone, use radar, look in chat, that gives me 3 possibilities of identifying who is there without having to read it over their heads in a way which would not be acceptable in a movie... but... I do hate being lied to very blatantly ....subtly is OK...it's called advertising, and I have got used to that over the years.

So...this quote has annoyed me a bit...

"Why is Linden Lab introducing the display name feature now?

Growing the SL Resident-base is a business objective that we're deeply committed to and we hope that you'll also benefit from that growth. We're also exploring ways to attract new Residents by making their registration and first-hour experiences in Second Life more compelling. We have long known that selecting a Second Life name is one of the biggest hurdles in the new Resident registration process; it is a common reason why potential new Residents abandon registration and it has consistently received very low ratings in new Resident surveys. The freedom to choose an avatar name in Second Life is something that many Residents have been wanting for a long time and it took some time to develop a feature that gave you as much flexibility as possible. This feature is an important step on our social media strategy that will ultimately allow you to connect your inworld identity to other social networks, on an opt-in basis. Again, Display names and eventually, the connection to social networks, is all about choice."

Well, excuse me, but that is a whopper of a lie.... and even if people were that stupid it does not account for all the people who manage this extremely difficult trauma of choosing a name, log on and never come back.

The lie is there to make you think that this is not part of their master plan to integrate real names and Facebook into the viewer for advertising income, which is, after all what this whole viewer thingy is about.

I don't think any one change in the viewer has been accompanied by 3 videos from the Smiling One, FAQs and pages of explanation. It makes everything more complicated, another layer of confusion for the noob (and oldbee) and another way for the griefer to escape before I have cut and pasted the name into the appropriate report. It has been developed with Facebook in mind, not the noob who can't decide on a name.

The "opt in" ..."it's all about choice"... is smoke and mirrors. It takes very little for this supposed freedom-to-choose to morph into an 'expected' or "normal" behaviour. This is how Consent is Manufactured. Those who refuse get marginalised and ridiculed over time, and eventually ejected from the group.

So What??

Well, so...nothing... it's their world, they will do what they like with it... if you don't like it, get out. They think they will manage well without you and me. They can buy in outside Content if all the creative people who want a viewer you can build with, leave.

...but... I believe Blue Mars has a basic flaw in allowing only the Elite to build, and that this flaw will passed on to SL if this is they choose to run this world. The flaw has to do with the amateur, and with Content by Committee.

The best content is supplied by the amateur, the worst by Committee.

That, for me is fact.

:))