2012 SL Year of the Mesh

Mesh is here and here to stay! According to Charlar Linden from the January 30, 2012 Content Creation/Mesh Import User Group meeting (http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Mesh/Archive/2012-01-30) 70% of SL residents have updated to viewers that let them view Mesh.

Like the adoption of any new technology growing pains are to be expected. After the hurdle of simple adoption the next on the list is issues with rigged Mesh. Rigged Mesh is a special use of static mesh where parts of the Mesh are associated with the bones used to size and animate the SL avatar. One use of Rigged Mesh is the creation of 100% replacement avatars that move just like the default Avatar. There are already many examples of amazing new avatars that would be hard if not impossible to make without rigged mesh. The other major use of rigged mesh is in the creation of clothing.

Rigged Mesh clothing moves with your Avatar in ways not possible with other types of prim clothing. The issue with Rigged Mesh clothing is that it only moves and sizes with your bones. Avatar girth (Fat and Muscle settings) are not taken into account causing sizing issues across the diversity of SL avatars. Currently 2 solutions to this situation are being looked at. The first is Karl Stiefvater’s (A.K.A. Qarl) Mesh Deformer project; currently in Alpha. The project changes or “Deforms” rigged mesh to take into account Avatar girth. You can view a demo of it here… (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoOywmSKG2k&context=C31014deADOEgsToPDskL3EhbvDblEk2t6upcQKzA2) Unfortunately with a project this complex it will be many months before it is ready and adopted by enough viewers to be considered a solution. The other solution involves coming up with a range of sizes.

To this end, on Feb 5^th 2012 I announced the start of my “Open Sizing” project and started taking Girth numbers from ANY avatars that cared to give them. Number collection is still going on; you can send me, "Roblem Hogarth", your mod shape(s) in world, a notecard with numbers or submit your numbers to one of our online surveys.

Male - http://www.zoomerang.com/Survey/WEB22EQRV33VEV

Female - http://www.zoomerang.com/Survey/WEB22EQS6342WQ

Numbers collected will be used to create statically balanced sizes representing the wide range of avatars both male and female. These sizes will be released for free for anyone to use as they see fit. Sounds like a great idea right? Well…

Overall my efforts have been well accepted in the spirit that I thought they would be. Of course a vocal minority doesn’t see it that way. There is another size range in place known as “standard sizing” that includes a woman’s sizes XXS-L, and… that’s it. You can get the sizing set for free on the Linden Marketplace here. (https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/Standard-Sizing-Package/2894727) How creating a different system for designers to use that covers larger sized female avatars as well as male, when there is nothing in place for them now, could be considered a bad thing is beyond me, but there it is.

I have been told that creation of my “Open Sizing” system will cause “consumer confusion” when right now, 75% of avatars are not addressed by the other system, many stores have resorted to creating their own systems, and some clothing is only available in 2 sizes while others have put out as many as 11 sizes. I still like to think one open unbiased system will be of use to designers even if it is used only to supplement other systems already being worked on. Again all sizes will be made available for free for anyone to use as they see fit, once they are finished. Hopefully this clears up a few technical questions as well as any ego/drama questions. (ok I don’t think the drama will end, LOL)

LLgiveinventory Throttle info

I’m seeing enough disinformation in both directions regarding the new “LLgiveinventory Throttle“ , I have decided to document what it is and what it does here. DISCLAIMER: This is based on the best information I have to date on this issue as of 2/3/2012. I do not work for Linden Labs (LL) and have not been able to find any “official” documentation from LL other than comments found in the Jira (https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-7631) “New rate throttle on llGiveInventory”, started by Fred Allandale.

LLgiveinventory is a linden script function used in many devices to give an item to you. LL is putting a limit on the rate items are given out. Go over that rate and the function fails to give any items for a set period of time. This choke is not limited to one offending device but rather is cumulative across all devices using LLgiveinventory rezzed by the same avatar on the same sim.

As an example: A store in SL has a scripted mailing list, scripted product vendors, riot vendors, info givers and the like. The store announces an event (sale, new release, etc.) in its mailing list and customers come to participate. If all the calls to LLgiveinventory go over the limit all use of LLgiveinventory fail, the mailing list continues to run but stops giving announcements, you pay for an item from a scripted vendor that takes your money but fails to give you your item, even simple LM givers fail to function for a long as 90 minutes.

My partner and I tested this with her Sn@tch scripted mailing list and saw all LLgiveinventory functions fail on the sim on devices owned by her at 13% into a 20,000+ list, or about 2,500 names into the list. LLgiveinventory functionality did not return for well over an hour. Luckily we ran the device on a different sim from her main store so her info givers, lucky boards, etc. were unaffected.

Reasons given for this change include back end infrastructure performance as well as preventing “griefing” by spammers. Why this was change was made without any notice or documentation change is anyone’s guess. The Jira was started by Fred Allandale when he found it on the Magnum group of sims, when I heard about it, it had already been rolled out to the entire grid.

Kelly Linden from the JIRA stated “throttle is 5k per hour per owner per region; the maximum burst is 2.5k” but later started sighting a “rolling window” of where old calls to LLgiveinventory would continue to be counted with new calls well after hitting the limit, possibly extending the overall down time of the process.

Solutions to this issue will vary from situation to situation. In our case we obtained a newer slower version of the scripted mailing list device from the creator that we are running on a sim separate from the main store so its use of LLgiveinventory is not added to that of other devices.

Hope this helps.

-Roblem Hogarth

No 2011 Predictions, BlueMars Down, SL up!

Again, no silly predictions for this year either.

I have always found “Top ten predictions for blah whatever” to be a fool’s errand. High profile SL/VW blogs have already had some predictions proven dead wrong barely 2 weeks into 2011. So what is the point really?

For whatever reason, of course, the downfall of SL is on every list. When I went “all in” with SL back in 2006 that game had been going on for years already. For the life of me I can’t understand why anyone would stick around with anything and rant about how it is just about to fail. When the Wired magazine article about SL came out in 2006 and I checked it out, I dropped all my efforts in There.com with no fanfare or ranting. SL was exactly the VR system I have dreamt about for years before, and I haven’t been wrong about that choice since. I have said it before and I will say it again, If you can’t figure out why you hate SL but can’t leave, just go, you are wasting your time and helping no one.

The lights go out on Blue Mars, mostly.

So the dust has yet to clear over at Avatar United the company behind Blue Mars. Early word is around 50% layoffs of a very small development team including CEO Jim Sink. From everything I have read and heard, you have to feel for him, his dream was cut out from under him and he is trying his best to put a good spin on it all on his way out.

Word is development on the PC is dead; focus is now on I-phone and I-pad with eventual port to Android. A lot of talk about Twitter and Facebook integration, so it sounds like the investors are after that elusive Farmville rabbit, good luck with that. To accommodate the lesser power of mobile devises they are going for smaller rooms, rather than sprawling worlds, the very thing that killed Google’s Lively. So investor stupidity kills another idea with potential. We can only wait and see if BlueMars lands on its feet, but for now, another “SL killer” can be dismissed.

Good News for SL already.

We didn’t just get our group limits bumped up from 25 to 40, they went all the way to 42. (Thank DNA for the extra 2) Despite early reactionary reports to the contrary, it works fine with all viewers and is not some LL conspiracy to force you in to the LL2.X viewer space. (Worse thing you will see is hardcoded text stating 25 or 40 group limit with no effect on your ability to get up to 42)

New internetwork compression has cut sim crossings lag at least by half. Your inventory and worn prims are still the overall crossing limit, but you will sim cross in about half the time and far fewer failures as well.

Promised “Soon” are Viewer 2.5 with minor enhancements, New group chat system, and random grid infrastructure enhancements. Frustratingly, still no date on grid wide Mesh release.

It's Time To DIVE!!!

It's time again for our 4th Annual Halloween Horror Haunted House! In DIVE you take the role of a Paranormal Investigator trying to Discover the Secrets to the Haunted Hyperion Hotel. Running NOW thru November 14th.

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Snatch%20City/30/56/29

Here are just some of the comments from our opening week:

My friends and I did Dive tonight and we had the best time. We've done your Halloween build for the last two years, so we were really looking forward to it. It was too much fun and extremely creepy. We were talking about how LL should be giving you a grant or something because you're contributing actual gaming content to grid.

Wow that really blew my socks off thank you so much for Dive, its the best thing I've done in SL in a long time! I hope you guys keep making more of these.

Ok, the bathroom with the creepy mirrors in Dive was just enough for me to stop for the night.

We come every year to your Halloween events and they just get better and better every year. It's so creepy and the prizes are so fantastic. Thank you for making SL fun again!

Finished Dive, and omg! Got so freaked out at one point, I actually screamed a little. The maze, omg! That place.... I can't even think about it.

I had an amazing time going through this! I was scared the whole time!

Just wanted to say thankies once again for another awesomely wickedly devious haunted event this year... I've done them since you started and this one by far kicks the most butt... Thank you to you and everyone else who put time and effort into it, and thank you for all the prizes!

I Just finished the DIVE adventure at Snatch, that was A-W-E-S-O-M-E!!!

*****************************************************************

Free stuff? Prizes? You betcha! Scattered Everywhere are gifts from...

Sn@tch
!ReTox!
[Gauze]
Nomine
Fierce
Dreams
Crimson & Clover
Moonshine
Elymode
Weather! Or Not?
Acid & Mala
Rara Avis
Extempore
Blackberry Jam
Tainted Desire
Infamous
It's Cake
Eat Me COuture
Old Dirty Bastards

*****************************************************************

So now that I know you are coming, Here are a few tips. No Spoilers, Promise!

#1 Go with a group if you can. There is so much to see and do it's almost the only way to not miss everything.

#2 Click everything!

#3 Read the notecards

#4 Read the notecards? YES read the notecards! Most of the info you need are in them.

#5 Cheat if you like, we could care less. (I have seen a couple of the cheat notecards already and they will make you miss a TON of fun and prizes)

#6 PLEASE do not shout or give out hints in open voice in the DIVE build. Please keep that to your Private IM's or Private Voice chat. It wreaks the experience for others that want to do the puzzles on their own.

#7 Do #6 too much or randomly give out cheat notecards and find yourself sim banned.

#8 There is NO CASH PRIZE, that is only part of the back-story. (If you can find and get the fictional "Winthrop Institute" to pay you, go for it!)

#9 Remember this is Game with hidden Prizes, Not a hit and run hunt. Looking for a quick and easy Hunt? DIVE is not for you.

#10 Have Fun!

Hope to see you there!

Direct Link to DIVE!

...and thanks for all the fish.

So this and my next blog post about what is going on in the Gulf of Mexico and How SL is helping, are likely my last “serious” blog posts for a while. Sorry but the “new black” today seems to be fast and stupid rather than researched. I don’t expect citations and references in blog posts; it’s not that kind of medium. But come on!

How does describing someone’s efforts as “fail” or even a derogatory usage of “tranny” pass for a maverick well thought out review? How does 5 years of blog posts about how a corporation is about to fail every next month pass for insightful? Not even getting the actual meanings of words like censorship? I love that I have a voice and that you ALL have a voice on the Internet but THINK PEOPLE THINK! Give your brains 2 minutes to process what you just heard before you feel the need to react it to it. If something is really important to you, maybe take the time to look into it yourself, before you overreact?

Ok to cover what I promised I would and sweep over the things I wanted to talk about deeper. Yep there was this small spike in the exchange rate over on the Lindex. It’s all over and it is obviously Again due to overreaction to the layoffs. Funny thing is it didn’t happen over on the Xstreet exchange that has much larger exchange rate sways all the time. We take cash out of SL almost daily and we have seen much larger rate spikes than this freak-out all the time. It’s actually odd that an exchange like the Lindex is so stable day to day normally.

Of course also, Philip Rosedale is coming back as CEO of Linden Labs, so what does that mean?!?! Not a damn thing. What matters is what he does going forward. Now personally, I think he is one of the smartest people in the room, he more or less took Neal Stephenson's novel “Snowcrash” and brought it to life. Linden Labs virtual world Second Life is arguably the most successful Virtual World ever created. Even the eggheads over at Google couldn’t make a go at a Virtual World with its Lively back in 2008.

Don’t get me wrong there are some very interesting things going on in the virtual worlds of Blue Mars, Rezzables, InworldZ and others. However they are all in more or less Alpha/Beta mode and while I watch in interest, they are just not there yet.

As I care to glance at my chosen home Second life, 65,401 people are in right now with well over a Million active residents. The home to America, Apple pie, Baseball and the Red Soxs, Fenway Park seats a maximum of 37,402 people at once. You know what that means? Not a damn thing. But Rob 82 Million people play “FarmVille” doesn’t that mean something? LOL Of course not! Look SL is unique, it’s not going to be the next Facebook, Twitter, or whatever. I will say, I don’t see people playing Farmville ten years from now. ;-) Hope to see you in world.

A couple of things…

The First thing: Ok the elephant in the room is the 30% layoffs over at Linden Labs (LL). I decided I would wait about a week to say anything about it. Obviously it’s very sad for everyone involved, it really is. Of course the usual “the sky is falling” bunch is using this event as proof that the lab is closing up any time now. Ok but Rob, why else would a company layoff so many people off without doing it because they are so desperate for cash this is the last gasp? Nope sorry that’s not the case at all. OK two points here, #1 LL is reasonably valuated at 650-700M $US privately owned company. You think a company that big is off the Federal United States radar? Let alone the Hyper Liberal US state of California that they are based in? Sorry they don’t get to lay that many people off and make announcements about why without justifying it to severe scrutiny. That is a fact. Prove me wrong that there are no consequences to laying off that many people.

Ok so what is going on? Why drop that many talented people? Because, as LL has stated they are restructuring. But Rob isn’t that just BS that they need to cut jobs to cut costs because they are about to fail? Nope sorry, let me make this personal, forget about what I said above. Lets say you or people you know have a baby. The need is a good, reliable babysitter that can be trusted to take charge of the job. Fantastic, someone is found that fits the bill, wonderful! Ok time moves on and needs move on, now the need is for a home health giver and not a baby sitter. So what happens? Do you retrain the babysitter as a Home health giver? Do they even want to do that? No, you thank your babysitter for a job well done, maybe give them a send off bonus and wish them the best, and move on to find a great Home health giver. That is what is going on over at LL, they have new needs and are changing members of the staff to meet the new needs.

Also I think some people are taking the layoffs a little too personally. I saw the Linden Memorial over at http://slurl.com/secondlife/Rouge/165/72/22 and that’s fine. What I haven’t seen is a conversion list of Linden avatar to alternate avatar, or even where to follow these people on Plurk, Twiter or Facebook. (Obviously hard to do with the many “Unknown Lindens” that got gavestones) Maybe SL was just a job to most of them? Maybe we were not all as close as some people seem to think. The only Linden I can say I ever talked to outside of a professional arena was Pathfinder Linden. (He was laid off a while back so I guess he didn’t qualify for a headstone) ***UPDATE! Looks like he got a headstone after all. http://bit.ly/a6nyhg *** He seems a nice guy, I follow him on twitter and he seems to be doing fine post LL. He didn’t die when LL laid him off, he moved on. So maybe don’t worry so much, these people and the lab will be just fine.

The second thing: Much like after the lindens jacked the prices around with the homestead/open sim mess, rumors are flying that people are leaving SL like a sinking ship off to other virtual worlds. Pretty obvious rumor to run with, but this time it is different. There was this one new world where all the “talented creators” in SL were running to and that was going to leave SL with a talent vacuum or something and that was going to be the end of SL. I consider my partner and myself fairly talented creators and so how did we not hear about this magical new virtual world that was better than SL in every way. Even odder, why were most of the posts I could find not including the name of this brave new world. Well I finally did my “Davinci Code” work and figured out where everyone is supposedly going.

http://inworldz.com/ is a virtual world run off the same software that runs Second Life. (You can get a copy here http://opensimulator.org and get an island running on your local machine pretty easily) So I made an account, and took a look. As I write this, here are the stats they report.

Grid Status: Online

Total Users: 4606

Users Online: 55

Total Regions: 213

I’m not going to show the SL numbers here because I don’t need to. Also I’m not going to get into just how unstable and how many issues I found in my brief visit. This is a perfectly great start for a new virtual world. However, why would so many people be leaving SL to this new and frankly unstable new world? Ok first few people are actually talking about leaving SL and even fewer are actually leaving. So what is all the fuss about? This vocal minority are generally older Avatars or “Oldbees”. (Yes even at almost 4 years in world I am considered a Noob by some) I think the big issue they have with the SL of 2010 is that is just isn’t the Wild Wild West they remember from when they first came to SL. So a new grid like Inworldz is very attractive to them. For me, let them have it. If inworldz, bluemars or any of the other growing virtual worlds gets independent cash out, a significant number of invested players and a bit of stability my associates and I will expand into it, but not leave SL.

This is not the first upheaval we have been through in SL and it will likely not be the last. Trust me most SL residents never even heard about the layoffs let alone all the rest of this drama. If you believe in virtual worlds like I do, and you are here for the long term, you must know that right now Second Life is hands down the best virtual world available to us. I look forward to the future filled with rich genuine options to grow into, even then, for as long as she is around I’m sticking with SL.

The ban-hammer vs. the Blog-hammer

So after what was a very nice day of day of shopping and getting out in the sunshine and feeling like normal people for once what do I wake up to? My Partner Ivey crying her eyes out... Why? Because of being held pretty much at gunpoint by a blogger. My strong empowered girl reduced to tears over what? This. http://pennelopethiessam.wordpress.com/2010/05/16/to-post-or-not-to-post/ The avatar Pennelope Thiessam has decided that a sim ban, a personal ban done by ME for personal reasons is such an atrocity, censorship, outrage that her and her friends needs to attack, anyone and everyone she can. My partner, every store on my sims, the operator of 69L humpdays, and as far as I can tell anyone and anything she can. I wake up to things so bad that not only is Ivey in tears but she has unbanned Pennelope Thiessam from our sims. So you know what Penn, you win. Your Blog-hammer is clearly bigger than my ban-hammer. After I post this I am going in world to clear out my ban list, and then proply throw up. I guess I just have no right to have control over the regions I pay the lindens $780US a month to. A bloggers rights to tell me I have no balls are just more important than mine to not want her around. So I hope you are happy Ms Self Appointed SL Quality Control Coordinator, you win.

Wanna be a big time RL blogger and blog about SL?

Ok this is funny but it isnt. Wanna be a big time RL blogger and blog about SL? Let me hand you the template. You get the line, after the Colon : that's my comments, ready? here we go...

Remember Second Life? : Yep reword it however you like, This is your opening gambit because you know why would anyone remember around a million and a half players active today?

Next you do a line or two about from SL from 3-5 years ago. : You know the deal, Lag, copybot, virtual sex, wild wild west, whatever tired story you want to hook your wagon onto.

Get the word "avatar" and James Cameron in your post. : Yep just do it, Hey look I just did! Apparently the work done by Howard Rheingold, Jaron Lanier, Philip Rosedale, and countless others to bring virtual reality to life never happed. Yep it all came out a half an hour before the movie.

...fading into obscurity... : Apparently if you are not on the cover of every newspaper and magazine weekly you don't exist. Funny because last time I checked newspapers and magazines were having a hard time of it.

...because "whatever my pet project is" has a home in second life its all good. : Yep thats it, now just ramble on about how SL is useful to you and your readers.

Don't get me wrong, A couple of years ago, heck even a couple of months ago it was all much much more negative. I give Linden Labs their due with the 2.0 push, us "oldbees" hate the new viewer but if you are new or "back" you will love it. However SL 2.0 it way more than just the viewer, way more than I care to get into here, and it's all pretty good. So welcome back folks, we kept it all nice and warm for you.

Six impossible things before breakfast

Six impossible things before breakfast

I think James will be OK thanks.

Love it or loathe it James Cameron’s new movie “Avatar” worldwide box office today is at $1,347,224,441 (IMDB.com) and in the end will certainly overtake his previous blockbuster “Titanic” by a very wide margin. So with profits like that it seems so strange to me that anyone would be so worried about poor James and what might be going on related to it in second life. However that what is going on over at New World Notes, questioning an apparent Avatar related SL ad campaign, and resident created “Avatar-like” avatars and RP. By itself its fine, hell it’s smart to be talking about anything related to the movie this popular. However ladies, gentlemen and genderless alike, I give you the pure definition of ironic in the form of a screen cap…

Yes on the same page NWN questions SL about their Avatar-like ad campaign and all the questionable goings on in SL, they themselves have a for-profit and pretty obvious “Avatar-like” IMVU banner ad on their site. I’ll leave you all to make your own conclusions beyond this with one final comment. SL drama aside, I think James, his stakeholders and their billions in resources can figure out what they want to do as far as that ad and all the dimes and quarters bouncing around SL on their own. ;-)

SLFashionFails etc.

I’m going to keep this quick so I actually finish and post it. Last night I was made aware of a plurk account called SLFashionFails. This little gem of an account was set up, as far as I can tell, with the simple purpose to anonymously bash random fashion designers. As much as many have called this account harmless, it included very loaded statements that crossed the line IMOHO involving suicide, racism and gay bashing. Me and my “Lynch Mob” as anyone like minded has been labeled, didn’t find this account funny at all, so some of us reported the account to Plurk for violation of TOS and I am happy to say the account has been removed.

End of story right? Well apparently no. Aside from the “Lynch Mob” baloney, many seem confused why I care about this at all. This account was what I refer to as “Anonymous Hate” one of the nastier little afterbirths of the Internet. SLFashionFails was not a mixed bag of praise and criticism, constructive criticism, or light hearted look at SL fashion. SLFashionFails was only set up to post mean and nasty often line crossing comments anonymously. Beyond this little gem, Anonymous Hate is one of the more dangerous things around on the net. Why? Inside of all of us, you, me, your mom, ALL OF US is this nasty little monster that will say, do and think the worst of the worst. What hopefully keep us in check are empathy, morals, and simple consequences for our actions. Anonymous Hate ends all of that, say whatever, no consequences at all.

Ok Rob that’s a cute opinion you have there but doesn’t this mean you are against freedom of speech and all forms of Anonymity on the Internet. Nope, I am a huge fan of Anonymity where it is needed. Live in Iran and want to talk about the sham of an election they just had and not see members of your family dragged away with bags on their heads? You Need anonymity. Are you in an abusive relationship and need to connect with others in your situation for support without getting kicked in the teeth again? You Need anonymity. Have an avatar in SL and don’t like something you see on one of the fashion feeds and want to say something about it? You know what? YOU DON’T FUCKING NEED ANONYMITY! You just don’t. Worried about what people will think about you after you say something? That’s a clue you shouldn’t be saying it.

As far as freedom of speech, give me a break. Online social networks and blog systems while free tend to have standards and Terms of Service. They pretty much all tend to be against hate speech in general gay bashing and racial references made things very easy to report this account. But doesn’t freedom of speech mean anything anywhere? NO it doesn’t. Screaming “fire” in a crowded movie theatre is the classic case, but freedom of speech does not mean you are not accountable for what you say.

-Sigh- and as I am writing this I have been called a Nazi for my efforts. If Aeon only had the slightest clue to what that term really meant. Ah the ignorance of youth, I truly miss you.

Do you "copyright violation"?

While I am THRILLED to see the birth (rebirth) of general awareness’s of copybot/copyenabled viewers/IP theft, I am less than thrilled to see its unfortunate afterbirth. Yes, the self appointed IP police/witch hunters are back with gusto! Now before I slice into them, let me defend them a bit. We have two flavors of “copyright violation” here in SL, In-World and Real world. With in-world the case is usually one SL designer, generally well known, gets copied by some bottom feeder and tries selling or giving away the copied items. In this case people that know what a designers stuff looks like can do a lot of good, spotting ripped items and reporting it back to the original designer.

On the other hand, there is now a new call of “copyright violation” by 3rd parties on anything and everything they see from the real world, and this is where it gets dangerous. Without contacting the copyright holder, you simply cannot assume you know how they intend to defend their copyright. Some copyright holders may be appalled to find that their properties are being sold in SL, others my see it as fan art and not find the SL micropayments any threat to their bottom line. Supposed random removal of Star Wars and Muppet content from inventories was brought up recently on another blog. While I’m not going to go into the issues focused on over there I will look at the assumptions that either content is automatically a “copyright violation”.

In the case of Star Wars, as others have pointed out, copyright holder Lucasfilm is pretty tolerant/turns a blind eye to most Fan Art/ Fan websites, even when these sites include banner adds, that could be generating SL levels of profit for the owners. So one might presume that Star Wars content in SL would far into that category of fan art in the eyes of Lucasfilm, something they choose to shed a blind eye on. On the other hand, and much to my surprise when I looked into it, I found that Lucas no longer owns the Muppets. The Muppets are currently copyright of the “Muppets Holding Company” a Disney owned property. At least in the past Disney is not known for being tolerant of unlicensed use of their properties in any way shape or form.

Of course without contacting a copyright owner the best you can do is guess what their intentions are. So when a Linden or any 3rd party decides that this or that is a copyright violation without contacting the copyright holder, they are wrong to do so. Some companies have no issue with fan art as it is free Guerrilla marketing for them, and isn’t a threat to their bottom line. With Lucasfilm’s general attitude and assuming they have no intent to sell “official” StarWars items in-world, they may choose to turn a blind eye to all the virtual Star Wars goods out there. Disney with regard to the Muppets I would think less so, but you never know.

An even bigger problem here is one of inconstancies with how the Lindens seem to handle RL copyrights takedowns. It seems anytime you hear about one item being removed you have no problem finding it somewhere else. A while back a friends shop received an official takedown notice for some Harley Davidson themed items. Fair enough she took the items down. Of course today I have no problem finding Harley Davidson items on the Linden owned Xstreet.com. If the Lindens intend to lead by example here they are doing a poor job of it. This in turn is causing a lot of this new wave of embolden witchhunts, from I assume otherwise well meaning individuals. I’m really afraid with the direction this is heading. We have enough of a headache with copybot and all its spawn. I hope people can take a step back, gain some perspective, focus on the real threats to the SL economy and let everyone defend their own copyrights as they see fit.

Bad blogger, bad blogger, no more

Bad blogger, bad blogger. That has really been my mantra for not blogging more, like forever everywhere. Recently I took a step back and took a look at what and how I do things in SL at the general prompting of a good friend. -winks at my good friend Shelly, the quiet angel on my shoulder- Her actual request was for everyone to look at how positive/negative you are in plurk, but it made me look at just how positive/negative and effective I am in general.

I looked and my blogging and it comes up short. I have a good/bad, OK Bad habit of over thinking a concept and never going to press with it. I literally have dozens of half baked posts that I have spent hours on that have not been posted because I never found them to be finished enough.

That ends today.

I have to rember that blogs are made for just putting it out there. While I tend to be in awe of bloggs that are amazingly and perfectly put together, an unread or unwritten blog might as well not be there. So my precious few followers or anyone backtracking to this momnet. Yes this is the moment that damn burst. Ok so enough, I have have tonnes to do, and time is never on my side. ;-)

Freebies are killing SL! All hunt items Suck! The sky is falling the sky is falling!!! What, again?

I think we all need to step back a bit and take a realistic look at what’s going on. Every year I have been in SL someone is ranting about how “This is the Year” that something or other is going to Kill SL. We have been through, Copybot, LandBot, Gambling ban, Opensim, Lively, Openspace price hikes, Onrez shutdown and we are now faced with Adult Age Verification, and we are all still here. So how on earth are freebies going to take us all down. Well they aren’t.

SL has always had free items. Nearly everyone in SL gets started with free stuff to get your feet wet. If you find you like it, you bring a bit of money in and get yourself done up right. If you’re really into it you become a SL shopaholic. It’s still true today even though there are more freebies and better quality freebies.

But we hear some shops are failing and sales are off for most places, aren’t freebies to blame? No. Most new businesses fail in the first two years in the real world and that’s likely to be true in SL as well. Also with the annual warm weather slowdown in SL and the global recession I don’t know why people need a scapegoat as to why things are a bit slow now. Then what’s with all the drama around freebies and hunts? 

First a little drama goes a long way in SL. Most people that do the freebie thing in SL are happy and grateful to get what they get for free. Most people Enjoy doing hunts in SL. They find it a fun thing to do, enjoy discovering new shops, and like getting home to see what new stuff they ended up with. If they don’t like something, no biggie, hit the delete key and it’s gone. 

Then there is what I call the “vocal minority” I’ve also seen them called “hunters in a hurry” as well as a lot of other names I’ll spare you with here. They have a high level of dissatisfaction about freebies, hunts, store owners and hunt organizers and have no problem expressing it. My best guess is that these people are true SL shopaholics, but since they don’t choose what they get and only end up with what is free they are frustrated. As far as the frustration around hunts for them it’s like going into a grocery store blindfolded and then being surprised that they don’t like everything in their cart. 

However rather than understanding that it’s their choice to “go free” in SL and that takes most of the choice out of the equation, they get angry about it. Personally I don’t do hunts, and I pay or make what I want here. So I don’t have any advice for the angry freebie hunter. However I do have a shop and run a 2 sim shopping area so I do have some ideas for dealing with what is going on. 

Solutions

No hunt hunts:

Let’s face it someone is going to make that cheat sheet. So why fight it. When you put together a hint sheet, go ahead and make that cheat sheet too.  Some people will do the hunt the fun way and the rest can zoom through it.

Designer Showcase Network:  

http://cleverthings.info/dsn/join/en/

Simple and easy, set up a vendor, put in a free item, set it to the correct category (Male, Female, Skin, Vehicles, etc.) potential customers get a random item from their category once a day. No hunting, no complaining about lag, and because its random it discourages trash talk about any one freebie.

Rethink your free offerings:

Banning freebies is silly, it’s how everyone gets their start and they can be a useful marketing tool. However if you don’t like how your free offerings are being received, change how you do it. Free items only for loyal customers or giving out demo versions of your new releases are only a few options.

Get some perspective:

There are some in SL that will only take your free items and never buy a thing from you and that’s fine. There is also a very loud very angry minority of freebee people out there, and it can feel like everyone in SL, but it’s not.  Far more people shop and pay for things in SL than don’t. Most of the ones that only pick up freebies are grateful for what they received or at least can hit the delete key rather than gripe about what they got for free.

Ban and Mute:

It’s your store or your sim. You pay tier or rent just to keep the walls and the vendors up.  Griefing takes many forms, if you don’t care about your customers’ experience you could let your place turn into a prim littered battlefield, or choose to keep the griefers out.

WalkThru Snatch City

SlDrama top ten

#10 Sing Broadway style… “There’s noooo Drama like SLDrama, Like nooooo Drama I know!!!”

#9 All SLDrama references to “High School” or “Childish” are moot, SLdrama sadly is ageless.

#8 Any anti-drama notes on a profile, means they are in it hip deep.

#7 Marking a message/plurk/notecard/etc. as private is code to spread this around as much as you can

#6 If are in the drama and you took the drama from “Private” to “Public” yourself NO MATTER WHAT you lose.

#5 If you are mentioned in the SlDrama, not responding or responding late in the game is your worse option, you will only look more and more “guilty”.

#4 If you are mentioned in the SlDrama, Responding to the drama once, right away, accurately outlining your side, then not entering it again is the best you can hope for.

#3 If you are mentioned in the SLDrama, Responding to the drama once, right away, accurately outlining your side, then not entering it again is the most unsatisfying way to go.

#2 Rehashing the SLDrama over and over and over… Fail… no matter how good it feels. Just drop it!

#1 SlDrama vultures, and other fans of it, circling around and clamoring for more, you drive the engine of SLDrama. Without you there is no real SLDrama. Congratulations. 

And the wall comes down. End of the teen grid.

If you haven’t heard, recent comments by LL CEO Mark Kingdom (M Linden)and chairman/founder Philip Rosedale (Philip Linden) indicate that second life plans to merge the current Teen Grid into the main grid. No firm plans for implementation or dates of course. As usual we hear about these things with no details so people’s minds can run wild. What will it mean? Expunging all adult content from the main grid? Thousands of lawsuits involving 13 year olds wandering into the wrong area? Reliance on the broken, and will never ever work, age verification system? Hell anything is possible right?

So why would the lindens want to merge the grids in the first place? The lindens are big on promoting education as in getting real world educators using the platform. Merging the grids makes it much easier to implement classes and makes it all the more attractive for educators. There is also some want for families to be able to meet up on the same grid. Some parents are unhappy that the teen grid is so closed that they can’t even check up on what their children are up to in world.

The other argument with merging the grids is that teens can just lie about their age and get on the main grid anyway so why bother with running two grids. While this is true I’m not happy with this as a reason. This logic leaves out the fact that some teens and certainly their parents want a level of protection. It simply isn’t right to suddenly turn the “good” teens over to the wolves. So how can they be protected from the Adult content?

Purging the main grid of all adult content is a joke. If that’s the plan then they might as just shut down the main grid and only run the teen grid. Even if they scrubbed the grid Disney clean they would have to approve all new content uploads as well as deal with chat, IMs, and Voice. So with Adult verification broken beyond all hope how can they protect minors in the new combined grid? By verifying the minors rather than verifying the adults.

If a teen with their parents’ permission wants to access a safer combined grid, they will need to give their real age and be classified as a RL teen in second life using the same methods to secure access to the teen grid now. This could allow areas of SL not verified as safe to be blocked to minor access. It could also allow a way for the rest of us to know a teen when we see one, either by looking at their profile or some sort of avatar marking like the white dot we have over people in voice chat now. 

 

While imperfect this would allow for the kind of protections one would expect in RL. As an adult you would know when they are around teens and would at least have the choice of acting appropriately.  A teen might work around the system by camming beyond where they are allowed, but at least they will not stumble into an adult area. Beyond this the imperfect nature of teen/adult interactions would rule.

More than skin deep?

Although I do not make my living in SL as a skin designer I found myself having a guttural reaction while reading Nexeus Fatale’s post “Frustrations of an Ethnic Avatar in Second Life”. It was the same type of reaction I had over a year ago when I read parts of Mean Girls Orchard’s post “SL Racism”. In her post she states that, “…content creation isn't about creativity at all - its about money. Content creators don't make things that make them happy .. they make things that the droning masses will buy. Sally Skinmaker doesn't care what color you WANT to be…” dragging skin makers in to her arguments about SL Racism and disappointment in skin options in general. 

While Nexeus does not claim racism specifically he does claim ignorance in general and believes that “…designers need to re-evaluate what they have and work on creating more items and content that is more diverse and of equal quality or don’t do it at all…” To me that feels pretty harsh considering how much work goes into a single skin. 

The biggest issue with skins and skin makers are the economies of scale. SL gives skin designers a single layer in order to all of their work. In the case of a men’s skin offering 4 facial hair and 4 skull hair styles making 16 variations for a single shade skin. If you doubled the number of facial and skull hair styles suddenly you are at 64 skin variations to be uploaded, photographed, and packaged and rezzed out, for one shade of skin. It’s the same issue women have finding a skin with makeup options they like. Until the lindens give us multiple skin layers this issue stays. Then there is the issue of vertical markets. What are you going to go after in SL? Nekos? Furries? Elfs? Demons? Vampires? Zombies? Cybogs? The SL rainbow does not begin and end with earthly humans and no designer can do it all. So choices are made limiting the options offered. 

Now are skin designers missing out on untapped vertical markets out there like targeting more specific human races and even combinations of these races? There is much talk about how glutted the SL skin marketplace is. There may be a huge market advantage to a skin designer to come up with very specific racial skins. Not just to cater to that specific race wanting to look like themselves in SL, but to cater to those that would like to Role Play as that race. 

So what is the solution here? I’m not going to suggest that anyone that can’t find what they want needs to just “make it themselves”.  Try and work with skin makers rather than just be frustrated with them. Many designers are having a hard time of it with the global recession and may be open to detailed and specific suggestions, rather than just a short list of actors, of how they can make designs to more specific tastes. Let them know that there is a market out there that is clamoring for more than what is available and show them that it will be worth the effort to go in a direction they may have never considered. 

Taxation of Virtual Worlds, Not.

Ok so the hype is on about the US "National Taxpayer advocate's 2008 annual report to Congress" because of the section called, “The IRS Should Proactively Address Emerging Issues Such as Those Arising from Virtual Worlds”. This has lead to stories from various sources with titles like Get Ready for Virtual Income Tax, Taxes Coming To Virtual Worlds?, and my personal favorite The taxman cometh? IRS urged to tax virtual worlds, economies. What all of these articles fail to mention is that there is NO actual recommendation to start taxing virtual worlds in the report at all. 

The section in question states that there is no IRS code about what goes on inside virtual worlds and that it should be addressed in some way including the statement that, "IRS guidance could improve taxpayer compliance even if it simply clarified that in-world transactions are not taxable". It would not be the first time that the IRS deemed virtual monetary systems not subject to tax. Frequent flyer miles are not subject to tax even thou they can be used to purchase real world items of value.

All the pro tax virtual worlds arguments revolve around the perceived real world value of these transactions. In the case of second life, yes there is an exchange rate between lindens and real life currency. Even then the report points out that "...statistics suggest that most transactions on Second Life are for less than $1 and would not be subject to information reporting, even if the IRS treated Second Life as a barter exchange." 

Its only the real world valuation that the IRS is ever going to care about. When I play Dead Space on the PS3 I'm in a virtual world.  There is a money system, and stores, and items I buy and sell. I generate value when I upgrade my weapons, it's valuable to me while I'm playing the game anyway. But if I can't cash out where is all this value when I eject the disk? If you play WOW all day and get this great weapon but never sell it on E-bay who cares? If you do sell it, that money is considered reportable income, and is already covered by IRS laws. Think of it like this, if you grow corn in your back yard and sell it that income is taxable. But if you just eat it yourself or let it rot, you haven't profited financially from it so there is nothing to tax so the IRS doesn't care about it. 

Of course there are grey areas like IMVU Music where you can use virtual monies to buy real MP3s and this wacky notion of buying pizza with lindens that seems to have never happened. (at least I couldn't find it in world) If things like this become the rule and not the exception it will be more likely that the IRS will really take notice. Or I could be wrong and the next update to Dead Space will include a sales tax upgrade to the ships store.