Ciaran Laval

March 22, 2013

The Drax Files Episode 2 – 1920’s Berlin What A Good Place To Be

So what happens when someone from Amsterdam is a fan of the 1930’s to such an extent that they dress and decorate their home in the style of that era? That’s right, they come to Second Life and build a 1920’s Berlin roleplaying location with future plans to build a sim in the style of 1940’s London….. wait, what? Well all is revealed in The Drax Files episode 2: Jo Yardley (embedded at bottom of post) which takes a look at 1920’s Berlin and the voice of the 1920’s Berlin Project, the very enthusiastic Frau (Jo) Yardley. The result is yet another stunning example of good promotion of Second Life by Draxtor Despres.

The epsiode is largely narrated by Jo Yardley, who doesn’t have a television or mobile phone in her own home, but does have a computer from where she brings her vision of 1920’s Berlin to life. Draxtor Despres and those involved in this production have done an excellent job of bringing 1920’s Berlin to video, to such an extent that initially I didn’t realise it was Second Life!

In this episode Draxtor once again uses inworld footage as well utilising already made outside footage of Jo in Amsterdam to show the person behind the wares in their real life environment, which brings home the message that the person behind the avatar is real. I’ve mentioned before how good a medium this is for promoting Second Life and how it would be good if Linden Lab got in on the act. I’ve also pointed out that there are issues such as editorial impartiality for Linden Lab that Draxtor and others don’t face, so it’s trickier for Linden Lab but I hope they are taking note of the positive nature of these videos. They are at least aiding the promotion by blogging about it.

In this episode Jo talks about her love of the era on which her sim is based, the style, the architecture as well as how she’s a fan of such dress sense outside of Second Life too! Jo also does look scarily like her avatar, no no no, stop right there, she’s not seven foot two with gravity defying double D boobs, neither is her Second Life avatar, which probably explains why her RL self looks so similar to her Second Life self.

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March 21, 2013

Incident Reports Almost Make A Comeback

For a brief, all too brief, period of time it looked as if the incident report/Police Blotter had made a stunning return to Second Life. There were reports on both the official forum as well as a thread over at SLUniverse. Indeed not only were incident reports back, they were back with names!

Now you may be wondering what the bloody hell the incident reports/Police Blotter is, well quite simply, it listed bad behaviours and punishment. Tyche Shepherd still has them available over at GridSurvey.com. Alarmingly the last report shows an incident in LindenWorld A, for: Harassment : Defaming individuals or groups This is regarding your picks page for: “EPITHET AND SYNONYM” Your local LUNATIC ASYLUM. A warning was issued for that! That’s most worrisome!

This got me delving into the wayback machine, where you can see the old Second Life site and get all nostalgic, it’s also interesting to see what got people in trouble back in the day, for example if we go back to June 2006 we can see that the following would get you a warning:

Blocking acccess to another parcel on all four sides.
Quoting from chat logs in profile.
Posting mature classified thread in forums
Using registered trademarks on items in SL.
Nude avatar picture in profile.
Offensive and annoying remarks.
Providing fake casino script device for fraudulent use.

There are a few violations there that still come up today, but does anyone get a warning? Then there were the more serious issues

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March 17, 2013March 17, 2013

Tyche Shepherd’s Awesome Mainland Census March 2013

Tyche Shepherd has published the results of her mainland survey for the first quarter of 2013 over at SLUniverse : Mainland Census For 2013. The results reveal that three mainland sims have disappeared from the grid, all homesteads and all bordering The Blake Sea.

Unlike private region surveys, mainland doesn’t change much in shape or size unless Linden Lab launch something like Linden Homes or they auction off new sims, which doesn’t really happen these days, so the figures don’t change much in terms of the number of sims. There are currently 6,726 mainland sims on the grid, in December 2011 there were 6,723 so not much change over the last year or so. Tyche’s census also doesn’t include around 360 sims which are made up of help islands or Linden Realms.

Where the mainland census does see changes is with regard to things such as the total number of parcels, the number of owners and the amount of abandoned land. This survey reveals:

Number of Parcels – 14,5238 (Down 2.2%)
Unique Owners – 67,405 (Down 1.8%)
Abandoned Land – Between 51,388,816Sqm and 55,615,680Sqm or 11.7% to 12.6% (Up from 10.6% – 11.6%)

Abandoned Land has increased by somewhere around 66 to 70 full regions since last quarter’s census, giving an overall total of 784 to 840 full regions. Abandoned Land has been on the increase since September 2011.

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March 14, 2013

LL Offer Tier Discounts To The Select Few Educators And Non Profits

Hamlet Au over at New World Notes has broken a very interesting story regarding Linden Lab offering discounts to selected educational and non profit customers: Linden Lab Quietly Offering 50% Discounts to Select Non-Profit & Educational Groups Who’ve Given Up Their SL Sims.

Inara Pey has excellent additional coverage: LL offer discounted regions to educational and non-profit organisations on the QT.

I have a deep and passionate interest in education, both professionally and recreationally. This is not a good way to go about encouraging educational institutions to come back to Second Life, but I suspect Linden Lab know how badly they dropped the ball when they removed those discounts and that many wouldn’t come back even if hell froze over. The reason it’s not a good way of enticing educational institutions back is due to how vague the qualifying criteria for educational discounts is, indeed the criteria is almost non-existent, this isn’t how business planning works and at this stage of the year, many educational institutions are deep into business planning for the next academic year.

I suspect this is why Linden Lab are apparently targetting the recently departed, rather than the long departed, the recently departed are more likely to be able to make a business planning argument for keeping a Second Life sim if the costs are reduced by 50% or not being increased by 50%. However for the longer departed, they will look at such news with scorn and it’s hardly likely to improve their mood over the tier change Linden Lab made.

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March 13, 2013

Bring Inworld Items To The Marketplace

I’ve largely been supportive of Linden Lab’s efforts to bring advertising to their website. One area where I remain unconvinced is with regards to the dashboard, which I feel should remain unhindered. Another area where I’m not convinced it’s a good idea is the SL Marketplace.

One reason why I’m not convinced the SL Marketplace is a good fit is because people are already paying to advertise their wares there. However I do welcome Linden Lab’s blog post wherby they announce their intention to allow Second Life residents to be able to buy advertising space on their properties, Second Life related adverts are a good fit for any of their pages really. The devil will of course be in the detail, but the concept has potential. Inara Pey has a good blog post about LL’s announcement: Linden Lab Comments On New Advertising Moves.

However I often read people suggesting they use the SL Marketplace like a catalogue and teleport inworld to buy items. I think there’s potential here for extending the marketplace to have a catalogue section, such as an inworld items category, whereby a merchant would pay a listing fee for a limited time inclusion in this category.

Now you may wonder why they wouldn’t just list said item on the marketplace in the first place, well, when it comes to no copy items, they’re problematic, Direct Delivery doesn’t support them for a start, you’re better off buying the no copy item inworld and picking it up really, which is how sales of breedables often work.

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The 1920s Berlin Project