Linden Lab’s Promotional Images Are Great But Why No Location Links?

Linden Lab have done a great job in providing the press with some good images for Second Life related articles. This was exemplified well in a recent excellent interview Ebbe Altberg gave to Dean Takahashi on Venture Beat : Linden Lab explores VR for its next-generation virtual world (interview).

Second Life Image - Island Village

I mean that looks like my kind of village and the next one doesn’t look bad either :

Venice

The main difference between the top and bottom one is that I know where the bottom one is because Ziki Questi added a comment on Flickr. The second photo is of a sim called Venexia. Now obviously this Flickr resource is merely designed to provide decent images of Second Life, rather than the old outdated ones, but for those of us who like to explore, it would be nice if at least the name of the sim appeared.

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Flickr Take A First Step On The Road To Redemption

When Flickr launched their new awesome last May I was far from impressed, indeed I pondered at one point whether Yahoo/Flickr were trolling their members. I wasn’t alone in this sort of view, as the official feedback demonstrated.

After this Flickr made more changes, changed groups, changed the layout of the photostream, changed colours, moved things around and generally seemed to be going out of their way to annoy me with their totally unnecessary bandwidth hogging designs and practices.  As someone who is used to the Second Life experience and realises how unnecessary bandwidth hogging textures can undermine the user experience I was somewhat befuddled as to why Flickr were abandoning the thumbnail.

Putting this in Second Life terms, think of the initial rollout of viewer 2 and you may start to understand the horror I experienced. The big difference has been that Linden Lab were far more responsive than Flickr in terms of trying to get back on track.

However a few iterations later and Flickr seem to be showing signs of seeing a limited degree of sense with regards to their new Photo page. The new photo experience, or NPE as it is being dubbed, has been very warmly received. Flickr staff explained some of the thinking behind this latest change :

Because of the feedback from you, we’re moving the photo page in a direction that more closely resembles previous iterations of the product, but with contemporary design and the new framework that delivers photos so much faster than before.

These are the most important issues we have fixed from your feedback:
*Moving too much information to the right rail on the side of the photo.
*The narrow space for comments on photos that have lots of comments makes it hard to scroll and read them.
*The white text on black background makes it hard to read.

Now not everyone will like the changes, just as there were some people who liked the Flickr changes last May … I suspect these people may well be gluttons for punishment or members of the Flickr FIC (Yes it does exist), but some people liked the changes. The new photo page offers a fresher look, has comments below the photo and they are easy to read, the flow of photo, discussion, information all seems to fit together better with this design.

This is all very encouraging but Flickr is still a lot more annoying to use than it was prior to the changes of last May.

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2013 – The Meme Version

When I was a lad and I used to play on Livejournal we’d do an end of year post where you’d take the first few lines or paragraph of the first post of each month and that would be your review of the year. I’ll do proper reviews of the year over the next few days or so but for now I’ll turn back to that old Livejournal meme. This won’t make that much sense but it is a bit of fun.

January

I’m about to embark on a series of posts about accounts, Linden Lab and their forthcoming interactive story of Versu. Inara Pey, with her eye firmly on the ball has noticed that websites have appeared for Dio and Versu. I’m not so much interested in Dio, although I might be once it gets going. However Versu is something I like the look of and I’ve been digging around the website for Versu. At first glance it seems bereft of information, but a closer look reveals that Versu has a cut down version of the Second Life terms and conditions, a  DMCA link and a very handy FAQ.

February

Ok so I’m enjoying playing around with dio and The Search For Hod Rumble (see previous post for details) is well under way, whether it ever goes from private to public is another matter. My intention with this project is largely to play around with the features and get a good understanding of the platform whilst having fun at the expense of Rod Humble. However, even though I’m only at the start of my project, I have picked up some tips.

*NOTE* – The search for Hod Rumble remains unpublished.

March

Draxtor Despres, of Metareality Podcast, Superflufee machinima and other stuff I don’t know about but probably should fame, has today launched a new monthly show titled: “The Drax Files“.

April

Back on March 12th Linden Lab blogged about advertising on Second Life properties. There has been no further update but the people behind Fennux breedables have managed to take advantage of Google advertising by getting an advert for their product and website onto the Second Life website, well the forums in my case, that’s where I saw the advert.

An image should be here
Fennux Advert

Continue reading “2013 – The Meme Version”

An Interview With Laura Demonista

I stumbled across Laura Demonista on Flickr. The stream is adult in the main and deals largely (but not exclusively) with erotic art, created initially in Second Life and then fine tuned outside. Unless you’re signed into Flickr you should not be able to see these images, that is as long as Laura has flagged them correctly, if she hasn’t she deserves a damn good spanking! Seriously folks, please flag your Flickr images correctly, it’s better for everyone if you do that.

Whilst interviewing Laura I feel like I’ve stepped into a Philip Marlowe story, or maybe a David Lynch one,  although I resist the temptation to don a trenchcoat and a trilby. Laura’s steam has a noirish feel to it in parts, as I settle down in a seat in Laura’s office, I notice that the blinds are closed, I can hardly make Laura out as she sits at the desk across from me, Laura manages to play the detective and the femme fatale perfectly, although she avoids smoking a cigar during the course of the interview and I’m sensible enough not to ask if she does smoke, I do note a revolver on the desk, which is enough to intimidate me into playing nicely, that’s for sure!

Pillar To Post Gallery

We settle down to the interview and Laura starts with a bombshell:

I am not an artist in any true sense of the word. I cannot paint, I cannot draw. I am always vastly impressed by the beauty, the imagination and the mastery of those who can. I have my particular favourite artists. Jack Vettriano is one example, Vargas is another. I love the power of images. I love the tales they tell, the beauty that can be created.

Am I being played here, I wonder, is this really Laura Demonista or have I been setup for a fall? Laura quickly removes my misgivings by explaining that although she is not a traditional artist, this has not deterred Laura from creating images using Second Life, so where did it all begin?

My very first image that I could reasonably call art was taken in March, 2011. Everything before that was a simple snapshot. I wouldn’t say it was GOOD art but I can call it art.

Where does Laura get her inspiration from to create the images she does, what actually inspires Laura:

The simple and rather trite answer is everything. I wish I could be more accurate but I can be inspired by anything at any time. I see a wine label that says “Room Temperature” and an image pops into my mind. Ideas come constantly and I stopped questioning it.

Continue reading “An Interview With Laura Demonista”

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