Ciaran Laval

April 2, 2013

Fantasy Faire 2013 Call For Bloggers

Picture by Tamzin Xiglia

Design by Alia Baroque

Logo by Marcus Inkpen

A few days ago those of us in the blogging community … yes we’re all one happy family … found ourselves dumped from the Fantasy Faire group. This was due to some spring cleaning for this year’s event and a group notice was sent but I know from talking to some people that, for one reason or another, the group notice wasn’t received by all. However there was nothing malicious going on here.

Now a call for bloggers has been sent out for this year’s event which runs from April 20th – 28th and you have until April 5th to apply, which you can do by going here.

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April 1, 2013April 1, 2013

Private Sims Show Growth For First Time Since June 2012

In her regular weekly report on the state of the nation regarding land mass, Tyche Shepherd has reported that private sims grew by 13 sims during the last week. This is the first time they’ve shown growth since June 2012, a period of 40 weeks of pretty much decline has been reported since then.

The last reported growth came week ending June 24th 2012, when Tyche reported growth of 30 private regions. At that stage we had 22,864 private regions on the grid. This week’s report shows that the growth of private regions now puts private region numbers at 20,482. That’s a loss of 2,382 private regions over the period of 40 weeks since growth was last reported, around 10.4% loss by my calculations.

Whether this is a sign that grid losses are stablising, it’s way too early to tell but the decline in the number of private regions has been slowing in recent weeks, here are the recent changes

24th Feb -36
3rd March -55
10th March -18
17th March -6
24th March -23
31st March +13

Another way to look at this is to compare the last report of each month so far this year:

January -242
February -179
March -89

So there are definitely signs of a downward trend in the number of sims leaving the grid, although those monthly reports can be skewed, for example there are five weekly reports during the March period, as opposed to four in January and February, so not an exact science.

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April 1, 2013

Fennux Breedables Advertising Hits Second Life Website

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.

I’m not sure whether they’re engaged in a general google advertising campaign or whether they’ve targetted the Second Life website for their adverts.

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March 28, 2013

Breedables Needs A Food And Accessories Category

I recently posted on issues with breedables food being moved to a category outside of breedables: Common Sense Required Regarding Incorrect Category Decisions. When I wrote that post there were examples of breedables food in the breedables category, whilst other breedable food had been moved to another category or unlisted from the marketplace.

Since then, things have changed. More breedables food has been moved out of the breedables category and planted under the Animals category. This goes some way to addressing the issue of fairness but does absolutely sod all in the common sense stakes.

There is some logic to the moves, there is no category for breedables food and accessories. The marketplace team don’t like people listing items in the top level of a category, that’s what sub-categories are for but the answer here is to create a category under breedables for items that are related directly to breedables, rather than moving items out of the breedables category altogether.

Food is often directly related to breedables, if you don’t feed them they don’t prosper, you can’t usually use food substitutes, it has to be the right food and it’s food that is directly related to breedables, not other animals, so it should be in the breedables category.

The same goes, albeit to a lesser extent, for interactive items. Where an item only works with a certain breedable, it should be in the breedables category. However there are areas where breedable related items do not need to be in the breedables category.

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March 28, 2013

The Newspaper Industry Needs Micro Transactions

On my lunch break today I decided I wanted a coffee, then I decided I wanted to read a newspaper whilst drinking my coffee, so I popped to the newsagent and purchased The Times with cold hard cash. As I sat there reading my newspaper I also pondered recent debates about newspaper sites going behind paywalls to monetise their offerings and keep the quality of journalism high. I must admit that I find the political slant of many newspapers in the UK, be it left of right, annoying because they don’t stick to the editorials for their favoured political leanings, they include it in news stories too, but that’s a different issue for a different day.

The newspaper industry in some quarters bemoans the rise of blogs and self publishing and I have some sympathy with them here, my grammatical skills pale into insignificance compared to a well qualified, well trained, well experienced journalist. I don’t possess their literary skills. However instead of criticising bloggers and self publishers, they should be looking at the bigger picture, the simple fact of the matter is that I can’t pay for an online publication in the fashion I did today for a physical copy of a newspaper and that’s why online publications are in some quarters, finding it difficult to go forward.

The newspaper industry is crying out for a micro transaction system and they should take a look at how Second Life have achieved this as the template for moving forward. In Second Life, once I have my Linden Dollars in my virtual wallet, I can spend those Linden Dollars as I see fit. I don’t have to signup for subscriptions that I’m not going to use and I can purchase items on a whim, without having to enter my credit card details again and again and again.

The signup is a block to many online ventures, Second Life loses people at signup, people dither and then decide to move along. However the beauty of the micro transaction system in Second Life is that once I’m inside it, I have choice and ease of purchase.

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