Unreasonable Resident

Well, it’s been a full and interesting week in the Metaverse.

First, Display Names... something I wrote and ranted about back in August ( a , b, c.) have been realised and those who don’t read blogs have finally woken up to the nightmare... well, nightmare may be a bit strong as some think it’s wonderful, but then, there are always some people who think things are wonderful because they are of a sunny mindset... good for them. ...finding out who ???????? is, is gonna be fun...maybe I should register that as a name.

For those of us who realise that our names, which we were assured would be unique, can be hi-jacked, warped and bastardised, the prospect is not so great. The simple minded idea that this will increase sign-ups is... well, I am almost lost for words.... suffice it to say that sign-ups are not the problem, and never have been. Retention is the issue, and making all new comers “Resident” is just crap. I would hate having that as a surname.

Loads of existing users are signing up to make sure their name...i.e. sororNishi Resident is booked for an alt account. Personally, I tried too, but the sign-up page decided my email address wasn’t good enough, tho I tried with 3 different email accounts.... go figure...

Anyway....I tried for quite a long time, both sororNishi and sorornishi were taken as names (hopefully by me?? or a griefer...)... I tried Nomadic Resident, Incoherent...and many others before finding one that hasn't been taken. So....pictured above my new alt...her name is Unreasonable Resident. I wouldn't spend too much time talking to her, she won't be online much....

...soo...hundreds of oldbies signing up... that’s a bit dim, not of them, they are trying to protect what they understood as a unique feature of their identity online, it’s dim of LL to make this necessary.... but, it’s all about money. The Facebookisation of SL necessitates that the avatar name can be linked to the FB name and the credit card name before the money for advertising can start rolling in and LL can finally give up this complicated business of running a grid and settle down to creaming the % points off Marketplace and advertising.

Phaylen even suggests that the Lindex may be farmed out as it’s a pain in the butt for LL to manage...

I got a nice email this week suggesting that I might like to try the Boys new advertising scheme...

"Be one of the Adportal Beta Testers!

Dear soror Nishi,
You have been invited to participate in a beta test of advertise.secondlife.com! This self service advertising system allows the purchase of targeted display ads on Linden Lab web properties such as the Marketplace and Auctions. Our goal is for it to provide more cost-effective options for Residents wishing to advertise products and services.
Among other things advertise.secondlife.com allows:

• Banner ads are per default displayed evenly over the time period you select
• 

• Ads targeted to specific Marketplace product categories
• 

• Ads targeted to viewers of Adult products on the Marketplace (coming soon)
•
During the initial phase of the beta, participants will benefit from heavily discounted prices on all ad bundles. Please send us all of your feedback, requests or suggestions to sladsbeta@lindenlab.com.

Go to advertise.secondlife.com to create your account now! Check out Torley’s video tutorial on this wiki page and get started using them today!

Kindest Regards,
The Second Life Advertising Team"

NB the Self Service Advertising Scheme....that’s par for the course.... I guess they are planning ahead for the day when we run everything and they retire.
I have always claimed that all the new features are about Advertising income.. but banner ads??....pleeeaaase.

In other news the Boys are looking for a new Artistic Director, hopefully to manage the interface between SL and the Public, providing better vids to attract newbies....tho again I would suggest that retention is the problem not the sign-ups..

I have it on good authority that, despite my personal belief, the Artists Endowment for the Lindens is not dead. Some news may be forthcoming this week... well, it is about time, tho I am reassured that work has been ongoing in the development of the ideas and framework...we will see.

Lots, well, a few, people are thoroughly enjoying Viewer 2 as it is almost usable now, 7 or 8 months after it was first introduced...well, I’m very happy for them. They can now do their Facebook stuff of a prim in SL, the added lag must be a joy. Apparently 2.3 is slower than 2.1... this from LokiBoy...




Scripts have been driving me nuts, well, they always do... I am not precise enough and spend a good hour looking for some darned sound script where I had written “Sleigh” instead of “sleigh” as the sound name... sooo picky..
Talking with Maeve I had the idea that a new bit of code should be invented for slack people, like me to, insert in their script...

llGetGistOf.....

Great Idea...??... just spend your hard earned leisure time filling in a Jerka (great name Miso)....and the Boys will ignore it...like usual.

...and to end on a cultural note/press release.......

Subject: Zeitgeist Saturday Schedule
Happening Saturday November 20 and Sunday November 21, 2010 simultaneously at Odyssey in Second Life
and live at the MuroGallery – Genève, Switzerland:

ZEITGEIST
by Nora Furlough

Performance schedule for
SATURDAY NOVEMBER 20

9 Am SLT - 'On Recognition of Antonin' - by pixel Reanimator

10 AM SLT – "Don't Feed the Poor" by Sca Shilova

11 AM SLT – Performance by Man Michinaga

12 Noon SLT - "Homology" (2010) by Selavy Oh and Qiezli Hixantapo

1 PM SL – Performance by nnoiz Papp

2 PM SLT – Performance by lizsolo Mathilde and Fau Ferdinand

3 PM SLT - "Fundamental Environmental Roadshow" by SaveMe Oh

I don’t have a SLurl...but I’m sure any one of the participants will be happy to send a taxi.

Have a GREAT weekend...

:)))

Nordans Gallery Show

I have put together a little wintery sort of installation at the Nordans Gallery...

along with...

Trill Zapatero
Typote Beck
Feathers Boa
Syn Beresford

and Igor Ballyhoo has some permanent pieces at the gallery.

The show opens at 2pm today, Saturday and you are very welcome to pop along and have a look.

Flora Nordenskiold is the curator/owner and has a blog here.. She asked me to show after having seen The Companion and so I thought a little ice skating and seasonal feel would be in order...


:))

Second Life Explained...

Many thanks to Miso for pointing this out, I'm still laughing...


:)))

My Virtual Future..

Now, it's a good thing to have a bit of competition, up to a point...
..the point where it starts to falter as "a good thing' is where one grid cannot enjoy the success of another.

I have no particular people in mind, I am simply speaking generally, having seen some friction and some plain bad feeling over the last few months I thought it would be well to realise that the success of Virtual Worlds is no longer dependent on one grid, but one grid's success is good for the others...we are in this stew together...

As I have said in my previous grid-hopping posts, niche or Boutique grids are growing up and a wide variety of service providers too giving us a huge range of possibilities compared to a couple of years ago. This gives us each the possibility of asking "what do I want from my Virtual Future?"

I have now the ability to design how I would like to interact with the rest of the Metaverse, as do you.... and the walls, eventually will come down, as Meadhbh tried to give voice to here..

It's a bit of a revolution for me even to be thinking this way, but it is how things will be....

So...to other stuff.......



The Copper Beech has, by popular demand, landed in InWorldz....




...and high above Rainbow Country I have just started on a chill-out area for folk to hang out if they so choose...eventually..

UWA... my little forest there (SL) is undergoing a rebuild..... and I'm doing a little something at Nordans Gallery..(SL)...details to follow...

The big news this week has been the Web browser thingy...see previous post.... and more than a few people are a bit annoyed at being invited to the party and refused permission at the door...

Viewer ???? has caused a few comments, seems like Display Names and friends are all Jokers.

In the old days while your friends list was loading it used to say Hippo, which was cute, I missed it when it went.

In totally unrelated news Reaction Grid has a new Director....."ReactionGrid Inc. welcomes aboard Dave Schwartz creator of http://musicacademyonline.com as Director of Cultural Development" seems like they are gonna be taking the Arts more seriously alongside Education. It'll be interesting to see how this new push (Pathfinder as Community Development Director announced last week) is gonna maybe shape RG into something more.... hmm... formed (not sure thats the right word).

I guess I really don't have an emotion I relate to Reaction yet, and that's what I'm looking for.

Guess I need to visit more.

Guess I need more lives...

:))

Head in the Clouds

Well, if anyone thinks that cloud-based SL is gonna change the fortunes of the ailing Lab they are mistaken...well... maybe not. Maybe if someone who has more money than sense gets a very good sales pitch from one of the Boys they MIGHT buy into The Myth of 100 Million Users.... but it is unlikely.

The following is my first 7 minutes in SL on the back of the cloud....




I landed in the middle of a deserted shopping area and managed to find my way into a shop...




...only to find I had no money so couldn't buy anything...




...so I picked an avatar from a set of 20 odd....didn't count exactly...




...and chose London from the destination guide...lots of people want to visit London, afterall...




Hmm...*thinks* not much like the London I was imagining...





....still no hair... v dodgy outfit and I'm walking like I have something inserted....

Ok...this SL isn't for me, I think.....but if you wanna go see a poor version of SL without a download....its here. The video clip you see at the top changes ... sometimes its declaring the wonders of music, sometimes lots of people in a pub doing typing together....

Tateru has more technical info ...here... with a good set of comments following..

Now there has been a few people on Twitter retweeting a post that expresses the view that people who hate Viewer 2 have held back the development of Second Life.

The logic, or lack thereof, goes like this.... IF more people had used Viewer 2 it would have been fixed faster.

IF it had have been fixed faster we would be a step nearer to the 100 Million Users...

A 100 Million Users is what any REAL business person wants, (the rest of us are fools)...

Now, the flaws in the logic, and the emotional language used, point to a rant style frustration which is easily recognised. The frustration comes maybe from the dawning of the awareness that viewer 2 is not a silver bullet, cloud technology is not the killer app, and that not even a great mesh implementation is gonna save SL from its own self-destructive tendencies. Repeated references to media on a prim and Display Names is not gonna impress anyone as these features pale into insignificance when put alongside poor customer care and costs.

OpenSim has now 130,000 users according to Maria .. here. The exodus continues, these are not people looking for media on a prim, or display names... these are people who are fed up of Sucking Life, and the Boys.

You have just to read the LURV coming the way of the Founders of InWorldz to know EXACTLY what people want from a service provider... you don't need a degree in rocket science..

So, The Cloud..... well... there have been a total of over 20 million sign ups to SL in the course of recorded history, so... getting people to sign up has never been the problem. Will a poor graphix, dumbed down version of SL improve the future outlook for the Boys... nope.... and their current decision to hide their figures does nothing to inspire confidence either. My viewer 1.23 no longer shows concurrency.

So... let the fanboys rant at me for not using Viewer 2, as Brinda (I think) said... "you like it, you use it"... it's really not my problem and the delusion others suffer is hardly of my making. I feel your frustration but, to paraphrase your own attitude.. "Deal with it"

Peace..

:))

Inworldz Community and other bits and pieces.

Whiskey Day, a girl who claims to have committed avicide in SL, (yes, she has a good s.o.h.) leaving her bulging Invent for the wilds of InWorldz, has thrown down the gauntlet to the bunch of people who blog about InWorldz, either totally or partially ...

"There aren’t nearly enough IW blogs yet, and the majority of them are creator’s blogs. Not that there’s anything wrong with that; my best friends are creators. Southie Allen (of {AND}) and I were banging around the idea of a blogger’s challenge. Why not? There may only be a couple dozen IW blogs, and of those only a dozen post regularly… maybe we can stir it up a bit! I’m all about stirring it up."

Now, I do believe that, over the last while I have tried to give some idea of why I have put my money and time into IWz, but, because many people don't read blogs I am still often in the situation where I have to tell people about IWz. Then you have the few loud people who think they know better and try and tell you how crap IWz is...well... I thank Whiskey then for collecting this group of articles about this new grid, so that people can read the stuff themselves and don't have to take one persons word/views into account...

So...to read the results and links to The various posts.. go to Whiskey Shots...here..

or...to read the odd one...or two..

In no particular order.... Lalo, a seasoned blogger and new(ish) sim owner... here..

{AND}.a blog by Southie Allen..

Meta Fret a blog by Mermet has used photos of my island... :))

Walking with Avatars however, has to be my favourite entry so far in this competition, Alex has done himself proud....here.

.... anyway....for those of you too busy to read this partial selection of posts, I can sum up a few of the points which contributors have made... basically, those that posted liked the following..

The Community and the feeling that, like any pioneering venture, we are there to support each other in as many ways as we are able..

The Freedom that comes from taking the financial pressure off, i.e. reduced tier and a plethora of prims (and for me the freedom to build at whatever size I choose) which leads to a richer environment...

The Founders are people who like to come inworld when they have a chance and reply to IMs...

.... and, of course, the builds by talented folk who can really show their stuff.


In other news... well... as I mentioned before the guy building an easy to use Mac version of the local sim download is calling for help, but has made some progress...here..

The most expensive virtual build has been sold recently for $600,000 odd ...more here..

...and I've finished a new tree with a very autumny feel...



....I love the copper birch in a clients garden so I just had to... can be seen at UWA this month.




Soki Darwin became the 2000th visitor to Tree of Trees just before it migrated to my Lost and Found. It had 2010 visitors, 5 of whom were Lindens, and many of whom came several times.. some bought their children...nice.

I'm on to my next project which is a little build for a mixed show opening soon with a Christmassy feel.... details to follow.

Have a good weekend...

:))

Tree of Trees... last 24 hours

Last chance to see, or revisit..
















I'll be sad to see it go, but that's the nature of VWs

:((