Ciaran Laval

November 29, 2014

Geeks n’ Nerds Paint A Stylish Landscape

Today I spent some time wandering around the Geeks n’ Nerds Fair. So the first thing to deal with is, what on earth is Geeks n’ Nerds? Well I’ll let the event organisers explain :

Now, what is the Geeks ‘n’ Nerds Fair? It’s an event that will be hosted by Wimey for amazing stores to showcase all things geeky, nerdy, and over all amazing that in all honesty, even though there’s a high demand for it in Second Life, There’s just not enough to meet this ever growing popular theme.

Each store will create at least one new item to fit the over all theme of the fair. It can be anything from sciences, literature, popular TV shows, fandoms, whatever you think that best represents the spirit of this wonderful theme.

The event for the year of 2014 will take place from Nov. 24th, to Dec. 10th.

As is usual with Second Life events, it’s a busy affair but as we’re a few days into it, it’s not as hectic as it would have been during the first couple of days. This means you can walk around the fair and avoid that feeling of treading in treacle.

The roll call of those who are displaying their wares was announced in a blog post on the Geeks n’ Nerds website. That blog post also tells us a bit more about the nature of the event as well as the theme :

Every designer will put forth at least one item that has to do with the theme, something magical and amazing, so there’s no doubt that no matter /how/ you see yourself, there will be something there for you! From the gamers to the scientist, to the literary book worms, we’ve got you covered.

The event itself is set in a rather stunning Sci-Fi location. You arrive in a subway, make you way through the turnstyles and up the stairs, where you find wide streets populated with skyscrapers.

However the streets are also adorned with futuristic vehicles and items, such as a Gullwing style police car that appears to have been called to respond to an airborne biohazard.

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November 29, 2014

Murder Most Foul In Olde London Town

I decided to return to the land of Britannia, after hearing that winter festivities were taking place. I have been to this strange land before. However my previous visit did not prepare me for what I would find on this visit. There I was wandering around the streets of Britannia, looking for ice skating, when I found myself in a darkened alley. However this was no ordinary darkened alley, this was a darkened alley where I discovered a covered body which had clearly been the victim of murder most foul!

There was no sign of the authorities so I decided that it was my duty as Detective Dwarfin, to investigate what had happened. I found myself outside a debt collection agency of Scrooge & Marley. Peering through the window I could see a respectable looking gentleman busily working away and so I decided to venture inside to see if I could discover any clues regarding the foul deed.

Unfortunately the gentleman was not quite so respectable in his manner once I entered. “Bah Humbug” he screeched at me, ushering me out of the building and warning me not to meddle in affairs I had no business meddling in.

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November 28, 2014

DX Exchange Enter The Virtual Marketplace Arena

Inara Pey has a post up regarding the new DX Exchange marketplace for Second Life : DX Exchange offers SL Marketplace alternative. The post details a lot of the ins and outs of the new Marketplace but it also points out some of the challenges facing DX Exchange.

The DX Marketplace has an aim :

It is our ambition to create a special place for Pro designers, who make good quality goods, of their own creation to display their collection. A place for them to stand out from the crowd of products and designers inSL.

For the customers, it has to be a tidy, well organized place where they can be sure to find only goods of ‘good standing’.

From a merchant point of view Inara states :

all goods can be sold at 0% commission for the time being (commission will eventually be 4%)

I’m not convinced that undercutting the commission from the SL Marketplace by 1% is really a selling point because commission is only due when an item is sold. I’m sure merchants are happy to pay an extra 1% commission, which in reality costs them nothing, for volume of sales. The reason commission doesn’t really cost merchants anything is because they know if they make a sale that commission is due, so therefore they build that into their pricing. Customers pay the commission in all reality, not merchants. Obviously commission will dictate pricing in many ways, but 5% for free listing is pretty low already. There’s not much wiggle room here.

This would be different if listing fees existed, but they don’t.

However Inara does point out something about DX Exchange’s Marketplace that is interesting :

There are some important points to note about this site when compared to something like the SL Marketplace. In particular, the engine used to power DX Exchange is Magento, and the stores within it are pretty much self-contained e-commerce sites contained within the DX Marketplace “wrapper”. This is important on two counts:

Merchants have access to virtually the full range of Magento e-commerce tools. These include not just product listing and sales reports, but options such as customer tracking, , creating and generating custom reports, running a store newsletter and / or blog, a range of CMS functions, setting custom search terms for product finding, and so on. In fact, far too much for a review such as this to cover.
Each store actually stands as its own e-commerce site, with its own dedicated URL (if people want to use it), its own shopping cart and its own checkout.

I believe that DX Exchange’s advantage may well be in those dedicated URL e-commerce sections rather than as a direct competitor to the SL Markeplace as a marketplace on its own.

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November 27, 2014November 28, 2014

Second Life – It Started With Da Boom

Originally, during the Alpha period, the grid was known as Lindenworld. As we were getting ready to launch the Beta, we decided we needed a name that would convey the expansiveness, involvement and complexity we hoped would characterize this world as it grew. We started by debating the merits of a ‘place’ name versus a ‘descriptive’ name. We believed a place name would give people a sense of destination, and possibly some added layer of meaning. And we thought a descriptive name would help people understand this new concept of a shared, 3D collaborative space.

We had a lot of ideas for place names — one of my favorites was Sansara, which was not only euphonic, but had an interesting meaning in the original Sanskrit, meaning roughly ‘ever changing world’. Ultimately, though, we chose to go with a descriptive name, and looked at many derivatives of Terra, Viva, and life. We kept coming back to Life2, and then landed on Second Life as more interesting, more evocative and more what we hoped the world could become as it evolved and grew to be as big as life.

And that’s how it came about! – Robin Linden, former VP of Marketing and Community Development

Second Life grew out of Linden World and it landed with Da Boom. Da Boom in this case being the first region to be born in Second Life.

This quickly grew to sixteen regions :

Da Boom, Ritch, Zoe, Stanford, Federal, Freelon, Minna, Natoma, Taber, Welsh, Clyde, Hawthorne, Shipley, Clara, Varney and Stillman. Those sims are all still there by the way and you can happily explore them.

The first resident, Steller Sunshine, was a busy bee and there’s a climbable beanstalk in Welsh.

Taber is the home of Fairchang Park which offers freebies and has a lot of old original character to it.

The park is also dedicated to Garth Fairchang and there is a bench there with his name on it.

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November 26, 2014

Visiting The Royal Courts Of Second Life

If you want to visit some of the Royal Courts of Second Life a good starting place is the Ning site of : Royal Courts of Second Life. That’s far from the only place but it’s a very good starting point if you want to explore the grandeur and opulence of some of Second Life’s more regal areas. The areas have a definite European feel to them, such as the Italian themed Rocca Sorrentina. This place is considered to be some sort of Royal Retreat.

Inside the decor is rather impressive. However these sims aren’t just produced for eye candy, there are literature events, roleplaying and where there’s roleplaying there are content creators assisting with furniture, buildings and of course clothing.

Sanssouci park captures more of these sort of themes and is a wonderful location to explore. These sort of places need to be seen to be appreciated because I certainly can’t capture shots to do them justice.

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