Donation button at Katharine’s Second Life
Most likely the donations will pay for the AjaxLife server fees, on the basis they’re highly unlikely to exceed a total of £10 ever.
Heh. Hardly. Go show a talented young computer whiz some PayPal love.
SL as a “product”
Nice response by Nobody Fugazi to the recent characterization of Second Life as a “product” by Gene Yoon (Gene Linden), VP of Business Affairs for Linden Lab:
I don’t think I’m alone when I say…
I want a better product.
No, indeed, you are not alone.
Amazing trees
Kenroku 59,33,52 – Come to the Kenroku sim and see the amazing creations of brue Noel. I can’t tell if the foliage is sculpties or just tortured regular prims, but there is a lot of depth for only 11 prims per tree (the trunks are sculpties). The garden center has a demo for changing the season of the trees.
Guidance for beginners
And for the not-so-new, as well: SL Trip Tips | Cool tips, secrets, touring, and resources for Second Life®.
So you found Second Life, and you’ve started to explore things a bit.
Now, you need the scoop: the cool places to visit, fun things to do, tips and techniques for building, buying, and playing in this amazing world!
(Tip of the hat to Eloise Pasteur at Massively.)
Desmond requests feedback on Windlight
Caledon Regency 169,242,26 – Guvnah Desmond Shang has just asked in Independent State of Caledon group IM for feedback on what policy to prepare for when Windlight becomes available: Enforce standard daylength across Caledon? Nature of the sky? “Desmond Shang: well I won’t make a snap decision now, but what I’d like, is if anyone has fairly strong feelings on this, PLEASE notecard me. ESPECIALLY those with Duchy sims.”
Disillusioned creative
Katharine Berry, the creator of AjaxLife, a web-browser SL client in development, has posted in her blog reasons why she is partially leaving Second Life.
(The main one) Linden Lab continue to neglect the Teen Grid
How sad is that? Linden Lab says teens should be restricted to a teen-only (except for vetted adults) version of Second Life, but then they provide inadequate support, (They also, ironically, make it possible for teens to sign up on the Main Grid—against the rules but extraordinarily easily—thereby bleeding off even more talented and interesting individuals from the Teen Grid.)
Katharine has been doing wonderfully creative work, and like others before her, has been alienated by the cavalier way in which Linden Lab treats its customers.
Linden Lab: You have created an original, engaging, and promising new medium, but you could so easily be surpassed by any number of creative people like Katharine.
Victorian Shopkeepers Association
I am happy to announce the creation of a new group in Second Life: The Victorian Shopkeepers Association exists to enrich the 19th-century communities of Second Life—Caledon, New Babbage, Steelhead, Antiquity, and other sims as appropriate—by helping shoppers and shopkeepers alike mitigate the 25-groups limit.
For discerning consumers, a mechanism to consolidate notices of new products and specials in a single group.
For shopkeepers, a way to reach a wider audience through cooperative effort.
Open enrollment. Business owners, please IM me to be added as a shopkeeper.
The Rules
Shopkeepers may send up to one notice fortnightly (*subject to review) announcing new products or sales. No general advertising.
No chat.
Rules strictly enforced.
Group owners as of 28 October 2007: Kamilah Hauptmann, CoyoteAngel Dimsum, Otenth Paderborn. Officers: ZenMondo Wormser
Please feel free to spread the word of this effort.
Taking the pledge
Lord Primbroke sets a high bar: National Inventory Week. A worthy cause.
So each day this week, try and put aside an hour for inventory sorting.
Racial diversity
Oh. My. God! I’m contemplating updating the six-month-old “current events” on the secondlife.wikia.com (which takes a bit of searching to locate the actual source page, and which I’m not even sure I can do as a regular user), so I Googled on CSI:NY second life. Near the top of the results was this page: CSI: NY Second Life, which has choosing an avatar as the first step of registration.
The first thing that caught my eye? The clothes are way cooler than what LL starts us off with.
But the important thing to note is that they have honest-to-God African American and Asian avatars. (If I wasn’t white, perhaps this would have been the first thing I noticed instead of the clothes!) In general, the avatars look like they are supplied with better skins than the LL library options.
To reminisce a bit about race and Second Life (and me, mostly), when I first joined, almost a year ago now, I picked the boy next door. I knew just enough to know that I would be changing his appearance, and I was using an old laptop and the graphic quality was, shall we say, marginal. I didn’t pay much attention to the stock avatar options. So when I saw blog posts about how all the stock avatars are white, I thought, uh-uh, there are those urban and Asian dudes. But then I really looked at them. Sigh. It’s only because I’m white that I would ever have breezed past them thinking they adequately reflect racial diversity.
Two people of color (of each gender) to four whites (no furries, nekos, anime, or other non-humans in the CSI signup) still seems limiting, but in looking at wikipedia’s page on Race and ethnicity in the United States Census, I see that it’s not that far off the proportion of the U.S. population. But if I was black or Asian and wanted an avatar that reflected my RL race, “take it or leave it” wouldn’t seem like much of a choice when picking an avatar.
A suggestion to whoever does this next: Have more options. It’s great to have picking an avatar as the first step. It really creates a sense of identity, especially when they are well done avatars that you could actually use for a while. But if someone is going to use one of your avatars for a while, they certainly don’t want to keep running into themselves. And it seems like common decency that if you give people an option of selecting among races, that you give them actual choices. I’m sure six options are nice and tidy for the average browser window, but people are used to scrolling if it’s something that interests them.
What’s up with slhistory wiki?
slhistory.org now redirects to slhistory.wikia.com. It is not an improvement. Wikia.com puts advertising and crap in a right sidebar and at the bottom; there are missing user pages, and I can’t log in (even though it appears to be letting me). I can’t create and account at all–the popup box never fully loads.