Social Networking – Page 11

March 14, 2014

Draxtor Despres – A Dish Best Served Independent

Second Life’s public image could be revolutionized through a PR campaign with stories like those in the Drax Files. http://t.co/niVgJRBx66

— Botgirl Questi (@botgirlq) March 12, 2014

Botgirl Questi recently tweeted the above and whereas I wholeheartedly agree that Second Life’s public image could be revolutionised via such a campaign, I would hope it would be one done without Draxtor Despres and I say this for totally selfish reasons.

The Drax Files and The Drax Files Radio Hour are absolutely superb mediums of promoting Second Life. However one of the reasons Drax can reach the parts other mediums cannot reach is because he’s editorially independent. I doubt this would be the case were Draxtor working on behalf of Linden Lab, rather than working on behalf of his love of Second Life.

An example here is that Drax will soon be talking to Emily Short who was a lead developer of Versu. Linden Lab have of course, very disappointingly ditched Versu, but I would certainly fear that a Linden Lab sponsored Draxtor Despres would be unable to engage in an interview like that or with any other former Linden due to a conflict of interests.

This works in other ways too, for example on The Drax Files, Drax has interviewed content creators, would he be able to do this were he sponsored by Linden Lab? I ask this question because I feel a lot of content creators would cry foul about Linden Lab playing favourites by promoting certain content creators if Drax was endorsed by Linden Lab. However as Draxtor is independent, he can interview who he likes, when he likes and not be questioned over his choices. This allows for some superbly positive interviews and Draxtor delving into all sorts of areas.

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March 6, 2014

Price Comparisons For SL Go Are Difficult, But Please Leave Coffee Out Of It

Often when people are debating costs of online services, such as MMO’s or SL Go, the coffee argument will be trotted out. On the face of it the coffee argument is a good one, the cost can be compared to buying a few cups of coffee a month, which is true. The problem with the coffee comparison is that coffee is a consumable product, with little investment opportunity. I mean you may get a coffee loyalty card which can earn you free coffee, but you know that each cup is going to be disposed of in one form or another.

People who spend time in MMO’s and virtual worlds such as Second Life are investing in their avatar, there are various different ways of doing this but people generally don’t think of this avatar investment as a disposable product. They see it as an ongoing cost in developing said avatar.

That avatar investment is extremely important for developers of MMO’s and virtual worlds, it’s the hook, it’s why people are prepared to keep logging on, there’s progression. This is why in MMO’s a hardcore mode where you lose everything if your character is killed is not the norm, some have it as an option, but it’s not the norm because if that were the norm, people would see their character as disposable, like coffee.

Coffee is not a good comparison, nor is Pizza or even a trip to the pictures. This of course leaves one in the awkward position of trying to find a good comparison. In terms of something like The Elder Scrolls Online, it’s other MMO’s, and there are plenty of them with different pricing structures.

In terms of SL Go, it’s a lot trickier because there’s nothing really like it. Lumiya is a mobile client for Second Life, but it doesn’t deliver its service in the same way as SL Go and it won’t provide the same levels of performance. However Lumiya will provide a means of logging into Second Life on a mobile device.

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February 23, 2014

Greyville – A Writer’s Colony In OpenSim Part Of The Hypergrid Stories Project

With many thanks to Talla Adam who is a member of the Opensim Virtual Community on Google+ I have discovered a writer’s colony in OpenSim. I had never been to OpenSim before so the first thing I had to do was to figure out how to get there.

Fortunately for the purposes of this visit, Nara Malone has an excellent blog post on the matter : An Author’s Guide to the Metaverse & How to visit Greyville Colony. After following those instructions I found myself at the Writers and Readers Colony at Greyville. Those who know how to use OpenSim will need to create an account for Naras Nook or go to world.narasnook.com:8900. I’m not sure how this works with Hypergrid.

The welcome centre has a very useful notecard, which is so useful that it basically writes this blog for me! Now the first thing to note is that this is a work in progress. Nara Malone is the brains behind this, she’s the lady whose blog post I linked to above. The notecard includes details of the mission:

My mission here is to introduce authors to the power of the metaverse and all the ways it can inspire stories and assist in creating and promoting their work. I welcome suggestions and content from authors and readers. I expect to see lots of characters interacting with avatars and roaming all the regions here at Nara’s Nook. I have 16 regions for experimenting, exploring and inspiration. I don’t imagine I’ll ever be finished adding to them.

Inside the welcome centre I noticed notice boards for the following authors : Marilyn Campbell, Tracey Livesay, Nara Malone, Shannon Emmel, Leah St. James, Shara Lanel, Sofie Couch, Alexa Day, Siobhan Muir, Elvie Howard, Tina Glasneck, Kelly Jamieson, Denise Golonowski and Brandi Evans.

There are a number of buildings around and again I’ll use the notecard to describe some of the buildings there.

Writer’s Resource Center: The big brick building is the writer’s resource area. There is a classrooom for workshops, a self-guided tutorial area, and a library. I’m adding content as fast as I can. On the right, as soon as you walk through the main door, you will find information on all the authors currently a part of this grand experiment. There a few freebie objects in the library you might find useful.

Internet Cafe: Directly across the street from the landing area is the Dungeon Gourmet’s Internet Cafe. There are laptops there with internet access. Drop in and work on your novel, the page is set to yarn.me, a cloud wordprocessor that works here inworld. It will also allow you to save work to your computer. Try your hand at Yatze. Have a nice couple chat by the fire.

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February 22, 2014

Ebbe Linden Needs To ….

One of the things about being a blogger is finding something to write. A lot of the time a blogger finds the material to base their post on elsewhere, … actually this happens a lot. This post will unashamedly use material from someone else. The reasons for this are because the material is cutting, funny and relevant. I’m heading off to Twitter for this.

There’s a lot of advice going around on what Ebbe Linden needs to do to make Second Life awesome. Both SLUniverse and the official Second Life forums have threads full of advice. However one brave soul has been collecting this advice from Twitter users, adding their own, putting their tongue firmly in their cheek and creating a Twitter account of @EbbeNeedsTo.

Now some of these are funny, some of them may not tickle your fancy, you may found the whole thing a bit silly. The first thing to say is that you should ensure that you have your sense of humour turned on if you read that Twitter feed because some of the posts may be about one of your important issues or pet favourites.

For example:

Bring back Versu! Because… um… okay, you got me on this one. (What the hell is Versu, anyway?)

— Ebbe Linden Needs To (@EbbeNeedsTo) February 21, 2014

I mean come on, Versu is a brilliant project … that Linden Lab decided to ditch because they don’t think it’s so brilliant and they have a lot more information about it than me! Pah, but hey I can take it, healthy disagreement is good. I mean it could be worse, the account could be poking fun at SLUniverse, which is a site I think has a lot of good information on … oh wait …

Join SL Universe! Because nothing works better than following the advice of hundreds of jaded ex-customers who will never come back!

— Ebbe Linden Needs To (@EbbeNeedsTo) February 21, 2014

Noooooo! However this poking fun at suggestions and ideas is actually quite brilliant in so much as it brings issues to light and also brings to light the fact that we don’t all agree. Healthy disagreement is good. There are many more issues raised, far too many for me to post about here, but I will cover some more.

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