Linden Lab are once again asking the content creators in second life to give their time and creativity to support their Public Relations marketing and bottom line.  The majority of which have just been told they’re to pay more for the same substandard marketing/sales service offered by XstreetSL.

https://blogs.secondlife.com/community/commerce/blog/2009/11/17/a-helpful-hand-makes-a-world-of-difference#cf

Kiva is a very worthwhile cause.  Microfinance in the developing world has been proven time and time again to be an extremely positive benefit to those who use it.  Here’s a bit of reading to give you an idea of how it works and the benefits.

However:

Are Linden Lab going to match the money raised from the efforts of their creators?  No

Are Linden Lab going to waive the fee they’ll charge to transfer the money raised out of Second Life and into the real world where it will be used?  No.

So, Kiva won’t get the full amount donated and Linden Research gets lots of good publicity and makes some money.  Clever huh?

You can support the work of Kiva directly – right down to chosing the type of microbusiness you wish to invest in. 

Do that instead.

Thanks to eloheliot for this.

Let’s take a tour of Linden Labs’ Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game, Second Life, and ask the simple question: what is it?

I need to own up here and admit to a continuing fascination for Second Life. I’ve been messing about with it since 2007, dipping in and out and wondering what to make of it. I finally created my own little office in there about a year ago, in order to shamelessly advertise my scribblings and I’m currently getting about fifty visitors through the doors a week. All right – there are places in here that get more than that in an hour, but every potential reader counts, and it was great fun setting it up. That’s where we’ll start this little tour, at the inworld offices of the Rivendale Review. Here it is:

That’s me in the suit, though I should say I’ve never like the cut of it and the least said about these flared pants the better!

I’ve written a lot about my early engagement with this place on my website, here, and reading back over those notes I’m struck by a continuing ambivalence towards it. I am by turns seduced, repelled, puzzled, horrified, and amazed,… and I suppose that’s the reason for its fascination. Anything that makes you think, is potentially important and useful because it’s by the basic engine of thought that we learn. We also like a good enigma. It’s simply human nature. I suppose the biggest enigma of them all is life itself – real life, that is. And if that’s true, then a close second has to be, well, Second Life because the latter is very much an expression of the former.

I think a lot of people try Second Life but tire of it quickly because they can’t see the point of it. They expect it to be some sort of game where they score points and enhance their status over other players, but really there’s no more point to it than there is to real life. There are areas of the game where role-playing scenarios exist, but these are like dressing up parties played long certain rules agreed by the players themselves. These things come and go like fashions but Second Life remains nad much of what goes on here is more open ended and anarchic.

There’s a craze at the moment where others will offer you an attachment that basically renders your avatar helpless while someone else’s avatar pretends to take a bite out of your neck – a sort of vampirisation. You either refuse the attachment or if you make the mistake of accepting it, you simply throw it away. There’s also a craze for dummy avatars dressed to look like novices – in the sorts of basic clothing you’re kitted out with in the beginning. These dummies are then shown impaled on spikes or suffering all manner of painful, bloody death, as if there’s an intimidating in-world vendetta against newcomers. Whilst sinister, rest assured, your avatar – new or old – cannot be killed – and I only mention these dark fads, not to frighten off potential visitors, but to illustrate the humanness of the behaviour you will find in here, which is sometimes very silly, but as I hope to demonstrate this evening, mostly harmless and potentially liberating.

The point of real life is a metaphysical question, and one cannot ask the same question of Second Life without again wandering into metaphysical territory.  Of course, you don’t have to explore the nature of reality in here, but that there is sufficient scope and depth in Second Life to enable you to do so, is a testament to its potential as a medium of human expression. In short, Second Life is not really a game at all. If that’s what you’re expecting, then you will tire of it very quickly. It’s more than a game. It’s an experiment in collective expression – in all its forms,  a place where cutting edge information technology and collective art meet.

So, to recap, there’s this online thing, and there’s no point to it, yet as I write it’s 8:30 in the evening, (GMT)  and there are 70,000 people all over the world engaged doing whatever it is they do in this pointless place. So, what are they doing? Well, let’s start with what  I’m doing.

Here I am now:

As you can see, we’ve left the office and we’re standing in a gallery of sorts, waiting for pictures to resolve. This is known as rezzing in SL jargon. You teleport into a place (another bit of SL jargon) and then you wait for everything to rezz in. The place assembles itself one bit at a time, and then the textures come gradually into focus.

This is one of the biggest problems for users like me: Bandwidth. Second Life runs on computers sitting out in California, and my existence within their virtual world is determined by the amount of information I can squeeze down a copper wire, here in rural England, so it’s a small miracle I can get in here at all. If you’re living in a metropolis; say London, Manchester, Birmingham or whatever, you’re probably getting a decent proportion of our recently much hyped 20 megabits per second – maybe even as much as half of it – and your experience is going to be much slicker than mine. However, if you’re like me, living in the second tier of the broadband hierarchy – even though you’re paying the same as everyone else, you’re lucky if you’re getting a tenth of that 20 megabits per second, and consequently, you’re going to struggle with things like Second Life.

Okay. So, we’re in a gallery, the SL Literary to be precise. What’s this place about? Well, it’s art you see? And that’s a funny thing in itself because it’s art based upon and created entirely within this place without a point called Second Life.

The models in these pictures are Second Life characters, dressed up and posed in Second Life scenes. The pictures are then composed and captured entirely within Second Life. Like much of this place when it’s at its best, they possess a dream-like quality. I can’t say why, but I particularly like the picture on the far left, the one with the girl looking through the telescope. My thanks to Elysium Eilde the Second Life  photographer, fashion blogger and clothing designer, for giving me permission to use her images. For more of her incredibly sexy work visit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ely_eilde

Other artwork here consists of dynamic – i.e. moving – textures, so I can’t really do them justice in a still frame, but the other interesting thing to me is that this is not a virtual recreation of a real life gallery. Its virtual nature defines its only reality.  Not long ago, the technology to achieve any of this was impossible. Now though, it’s moved rapidly beyond the possible to the point where artistic individuals have taken hold it – and they don’t care how any of it works – they just want to know what they can do with it.

If we move on a little now, go up the stairs and to the left, we come across this  poster for the SL Literary magazine. This in-world publication carries poetry and fiction inspired by Second Life, as well as testing the interesting boundary between Second Life and Real Life. The pieces are thoughtful, inspirational and psychologically probing. So far as I’m aware, computer games do not inspire poetry. Second Life apparently does.

Now – what’s this? We’ve got some posters advertising plays (in Second Life?) What’s this one? The Globe Theatre? They’re putting on some Shakespeare? Now that sounds interesting! Lets go and take a look. Where’s the landmark? Click the teleport and,… Whoosh!

So, now we’re standing outside as something that looks remarkably like the Globe Theatre assembles itself plank by plank. We’ll just give it a minute or two, then go inside. My radar tells me there’s no one else here, so I’m guessing we’ve missed the performance – which is just as well because if I get more than a dozen people in the same room it tends to crash my connection (bandwidth problem again). Okay – so, here I am sitting in  the theatre, directly above Her Majesty’s chair (yes, really!)

The view of the stage is excellent, not that it matters, because I can use my remote camera to go right down on-stage in the middle of the performance if I wanted to. The blurb tells me there can be as many as two hundred people in here when there’s a play going on. That would be very interesting to see, and photograph for you, though completely out of the question, because it might melt my telephone wire.

My point in all of this is to perhaps challenge your preconceptions, or even your misconceptions about Second Life. Even if you’ve never been in here, you’ve probably read about it in the press, and the press seems so universally negative about it, though in my opinion, without good reason. If you’re an ordinary, well balanced human being, your experience of Second Life will be similarly well balanced and you will attract like-minded Second Lifers to you. If, however, you’re an obsessive misanthrope, you’re not going to be any different in here, are you?

The newspapers tell us it’s a place peopled by sad, geeky losers: as well as pornographers, terrorists, money launderers, and all manner of bogey men out to steal our children. The truth is, they don’t know what it is any more than I do.  You might ask the question though, why am I in here, on a Saturday night, pretending I’ve really been somewhere? What’s the attraction? Well, my only excuse is that the telly’s rubbish, and Second Life is often much more interesting – also less predictable because you never know who you’re going to bump into.

And on that note, let’s zip over to another place I know and see if we can find some other Second Lifers we can actually talk to. Let’s go dancing! Yes you heard me: Dancing!

Whoosh!

Welcome to Midsomer – Puck’s Garden to be precise. This is a favourite little place of mine. It’s a great, sprawling, beautifully landscaped domain. It’s been here a while now, and that’s a good sign because there’s often something ephermeral about Second Life – interesting little haunts coming and going so that a sense of permanence can be hard to attain. I generally drop in here to read the profiles of others, and if they sound interesting and sane, I’ll say hello. There’s also a fair chance someone else will say hello to me first.

One thing you’ll notice about Second Life very quickly is that the girls in here are all very good-looking. And before you ask me, no, I’m not on the pull. I’m married in real life, but it doesn’t stop you from chatting.

The clothes people wear are another way in which Second Life enables its members to express themselves – sometimes in ridiculous ways but also, it must be said, in ways that take the breath away. I mean, just look at this :

This elegant lady’s dress is a computer model, painstakingly hand textured, and it flows in diaphanous waves as she moves. Isn’t she gorgeous? Already I’m forgetting there’s a real life person on the other end, pulling my avatar’s strings. I have become immersed. I really am in Puck’s Garden, listening to the music and wanting to dance. I think we’ll say hello – I’m interested in finding out if she made that dress herself: Oops, too late. She’s grown bored and blinked out in a little cloud of stars. That dress really was something!

Okay. I’ve just spotted someone I know – or rather she’s spotted me, and messaged over. It’s a fellow scribbler who’s been gracious enough to say nice things about my work, following a previous introduction we had on a virtual beach, back in the days when we were both campers (another bit of jargon, but I’ll leave you to puzzle over it). I don’t think she’ll mind my saying she behaves, as mysteriously as a character from one of my most convoluted stories, but this makes her interesting to talk to. I’ve promised her a role in one of my stories, if I can find one that does her justice – but hang on – she’s already a sort of fictional character isn’t she? How does that work, then? A fictional character based upon a fictional character? It’s getting a bit late to work that one out now! She’s messaged over again and asked us for a dance, and she’s waiting so we’d better get over there. Okay, here we go.

She’s the good-looking one, by the way:

So,… dancing! How does that work?

Well, let me explain. Curiously enough there’s a popular dancing program on the telly right now. Indeed it currently fills our Saturday night schedule on the BBC. If you’ll allow me a moment’s digression, I used to be a keen ballroom dancer, so you’d think I might be interested in the dancing on the telly, since they make such a big fuss about it, but to be honest it bores the pants off me. Why? Well, apart from me seeing it as mainly yet another a vehicle for celebrity adulation, there’s really no interaction with it.  You just sit there and it comes at you, and you don’t have to do or say anything.

It’s not like that in Second Life.

So here I am dancing. By contrast with the technical perfection my real life instructor once insisted upon, the dancing I’m doing here is rubbish, because at the moment there’s only so much you can do with an avatar, and you obviously can’t feel the dance because you’re just sitting there in your armchair – but for all of that, I find it infinitely more interesting than watching it on the telly, because you never know who you’ll end up dancing with, or where your conversations are going to take you.

Now, I don’t just come here to talk to girls – there are plenty of guys who drop in as well, looking for girls, and they’re interesting to talk to as well -though us guys tend to be a bit more reserved – it’s the girls who really know how to converse. If you’ve had a trying day, and you feel your little bit of the the real world is about to tip itself over to the dark-side, I challenge you to come in here, talk to six random strangers, and not start feeling better. Some of your encounters will be no more than polite, and your conversations will be stilted, but I guarantee at some point you will “connect” with someone and your mood will be lifted.

Don’t forget, Second Life transcends national, religious and ethnic boundaries, so you might find yourself talking to anyone in the world – and you know what? It doesn’t matter where people are from, they’re all just like everyone else? Isn’t that amazing?

Now, as a married man there’s only so much one can get up to in here. A dance and a chat, and that’s old Cuchulain’s limit. Some married men have no such scruples of course – I know because I’ve talked to them. They’d think nothing of a bit of pixel dipping, (use your imagination) or even setting up virtual house with one of these pretty ladies, and they’d excuse it as “just a game”. Personally though I’d find that difficult to reconcile, psychologically, because I have not severed the link between my real self and the persona I present in here. I sit at the interface between the real and the virtual, and am careful not to slip too deeply in. Besides my wife would kill me, and I wouldn’t blame her.

Anyway, my dancing partner this evening says she’s English. She travels and writes poetry and she’ll forgive me for saying I think she knows a little more of the dark side to this place than she lets on. Her profile suggests she has “sapphic” leanings, though I don’t know if this is genuine, or if it’s to discourage what she calls “propositions from teenaged boys who want to pixel dip with her”. Nor do I know for sure of course if she is really a “she” and not some hairy arsed bloke, just as she doesn’t know if I’m really a “he”. And to be honest once you’ve been in here for a while such definitions begin to lose their meaning. You fall over the edge, so to speak, into a kind of pure soul, into dream soul, free of gender, nationality, or any of those other labels we collect. You become whomever or whatever you want to be. That’s when Second Life can become,… well,… shall we say psychologically dynamic? Damaging, or liberating, you take your choice. It depends on your politics, I suppose. Already we’re exploring boundaries here. We’re asking questions of identity and self – you simply can’t help it.

Anyway, my acquaintance is telling me of others she’s met recently who are engaging too deeply with the place, and are basically living in it. They never log out. They put their avatars into their jim-jams of a night, put them to bed, then get them up again in the morning. I find this disturbing, and I hope she’s having me on, but it’s a tale I’ve heard before, so I’m wondering if it’s true. I have, on occasion, wandered around the residential areas looking for these sleeping  avatars, but have yet to find any, so it could just be a myth.

For an adult, the role-playing aspects of Second Life are like going back to childhood and playing make-believe. Millions of real lifer’s come home from work, switch on the telly and slob out in front of two hours of soap opera every evening. They tell me it’s relaxing, and I don’t doubt that it is. But others come home and slip into Second Life. They become someone else, and trust me, make-believe is relaxing. Have you forgotten how you used to lose yourself for hours in make-believe as a child? It’s just that the make-believe here is very realistic, and on any one evening you have a potential 70,000 playmates.

Now, I can’t be as informative a guide to the darker side of Second Life because I don’t go there often enough, and if you’re interested in this aspect you’ll have to find your own way with it. The dark side raises other questions of course and we quickly realise the main difference between childhood and adult role-play is that some of the adult role play can be of a sexual nature.

So,… it’s about now you’re probably going to ask me about all that sex you’ve heard of that supposedly goes on in Second Life?

Well, yes – there really is a lot of it  – Strip Clubs, BDSM clubs, Orgies – escort girls – really! You name it. But it’s like real life: you know it goes on, but it’s up to you if you want to partake of it or not – and I won’t be including it in this little tour, because I’ve no way of knowing if you’re old enough. Perhaps understandably, this was an area of Second Life that came in for a lot of criticism in the early days because anyone could sign up and straight away be exploring the underbelly of the place in a way they perhaps would never have dared in real life. That’s okay if you’re an adult – but what about the kids who managed to bluff their way in?

It used to be easy to set up a Second Life account, lie about your age and therefore begin exploring the adult side of things, before you were old enough not to be damaged by them. Things have changed however. Nowadays, it’s still easy to set up a Second Life account, without giving away your name address and credit card details, but unless you have credit card payments recorded “in-world”, or you can otherwise verify your age, say with a driving license number and a real world address, the assumption nowadays is that you’re not an adult and the really naughty side of things is placed off limits.  I have to say it’s a major improvement, and must have taken some of the bite out of the anti-Second Life lobby’s teeth. You can still go over to that side if you want, but if it’s not your cup of tea, you’ll no longer find yourself stumbling over it on every street corner.

This also demonstrates another interesting aspect of Second Life: it’s very much a work in progress, and nobody really knows where it’s going. Linden Labs keep the computers running, and act as a sort of benign overseeing techno-deity, but the direction is very much up to those 70,000 or so people who log in every night, and play make-believe.

So, going back to our original question: what is Second Life? Is it life? Well, the best we can say is: sort of, but definitely not as we know it!

Okay, busy night, eh? Let me invite you back to my place for a cup of tea before we say goodbye, and hopefully I can entice you to download one of my free novels or short stories while you’re there?

Here we are. Have a seat. Relax. Do you take sugar? Just kidding. You’ll never find a decent cup of tea in here! Will coffee do instead?

Now, if you’ll excuse me I’d better get all of this scribbled down and uploaded to my real-world self, before I forget who he is.

orignal post here: http://theriseofthesurreal.wordpress.com/2009/11/19/you-think-your-real-life-data-is-kept-safe-by-linden-lab-think-again/

In a nutshell:  No substantial action from LL and they claim that someone being able to log in as someone else isn’t a security breach.

The two people who were involved in it talk about it here: http://www.sluniverse.com/php/vb/general-sl-discussion/37048-new-linden-lab-account-security.html

Two things of interest.

1. Linden Research are not treating it as a security breach (they closed the bug report that was lodged in the security section).  

2. Linden Research have a reputation for a lack of attention to detail and sloppy processing of customer issues with no reason given for their actions and no recourse.  So much so that people are reluctant to ever give names of someone if they are only peripherally involved as a spectator- simply because LL is likely to take punutive action against the name by cancelling the account.

This second element is remarkable.  Despite the quite amazing sums of money people pay to Linden Research for the use of their services there is no guarantee of fair dealing by the company.  They have a ToS that effectively states they can do what they want, when they want and you have no recourse.  If they decide to close your account they feel they have no obligation to telly you why they have cancelled it, refund you any moneys in the account (they say it’s not real, despite it having been procured with real money) or allow you access to the account to remove any intellectual property you may own.

Apparently they used to have a habit of double billing people and not refunding the account when notified.  If you had the temerity to ask your credit card to reverse the second payment Linden Research would suspend or cancel your account until you withdrew the request from the card company.

These days as I understand it they still double bill on occassions and may or may not refund.  Unsurprisingly most people don’t go to their credit card providers and complain anymore – despite these double billings sometimes being anything up to 295USD.

Now of course those companies that choose to deal with Linden Research with their new standalone system will possibly not have these problems.  I would hope Linden Research are at least smart enough to behave as a professional company does rather than the way they show their distain for their entertainment platform userbase.  Sadly companies rarely make their reasons for their dissatisfaction with a company known. I suppose we’ll find out when Linden Lab stop providing statistics to support their claims of success.  Which, coincidentaly, they’ve just done with the entertainment platform statistics feed, which can be found here: http://secondlife.com/statistics/economy-data.php  note the date on the web page.  I must say I found it amusing on many levels..

Even the BBC can’t muster any enthusiasm for Second Life anymore: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8367957.stm

Some of the comments explain the lack of retention rate…

Second Life is boring! You can’t do anything without spending money, so for the person casually checking it out, there’s absolutely nothing to attract them. And despite the comment in the article about “talking to weirdos”, it’s actually quite difficult to find anyone in there to talk to at all.

~~~~~

I joined SL but it was absolutely impossible to navigate. I could barely get out of the intro area and once you did, there was no help or guidance left. I wandered round and round in circles for a couple of days and then gave up. It was a great idea but just didn’t work in practice. Shame, really.

~~~~~

Updates; that was what killed it for me. Every time you revisited you were compelled to upload more and more updates, which seemed really cool at first, until you realised that you were inflating the spec. Eventually, the technological improvements outstripped the natural upgrading budget of the average PC owner – there were a lot of stay-at-home moms, kids and freelancers online when I was there – and the experience became like wading through buggy sludge until it crashed on you. Not pleasant.

 

Linden Research have always been too busy to do any of this so far..  A couple of days ago they announced they’re getting rid of their volunteers they use to help those who are new and pushing it out to community groups to self manage and they also announced they were going to start charging people for using their shopping website to give away things free to the community.

Apparently though things are ok..  they’ve had a 23% increase in repeat visitors in the last year.  Which still means no real growth just people coming back.  It’s an interesting thought that they have accepted that there’s only 1.3 million people (approximately) who can be bothered to log at least twice every couple of months out of the 17+ million who have set up accounts.

This is the second of these “where are they now?” stories  I’ve seen on Second Life in the last few months.  This is despite them recently managing to get an article in both the Wall Street Journal and in the New York Times. 

Interesting times ahead. 

With the announcement of Linden Labs raping vendors charging new fees as a method to manage freebies (and hitting everyone up with a monthly listing fee), I am being forced to move my products to another service. Apparently, my “clutter” – as they’re directly using for unsold items and indirectly for anything not expensive – is being an eyesore to the poor, poor users who do not know how to use a rudamentary search engine.

1. There’s an ‘advanced’ option with the XstreetSL marketplace where you can set your price range to search, thereby effectively eliminating anything at the free, dollarbie, or so forth mark.

2. When the residents asked for a better search system, they were hoping that LL would actually look at coding and the mechanics, not removing listings.

3. Colossus Linden kept asserting in the XStreetSL forum thread that people could still offer their “generosity” in world. She seems to completely disregard the fact that if you a. need land to put out products, b. a premium account to own even a 512 plot, and c. if you want to be seen in the in-world search, you have to pay a fee. The only other option is to rent, which costs money. The startingentrepreneur is kicked down even before they have any stable footing.

4. My freebies are NOT, N-O-T, NOT MARKETING TOOLS! They are intended to help new players get into character for roleplay!

Anyways, I will let you know when the Apez (and any other) sites are up and running. Until then, I can be found in world.

https://blogs.secondlife.com/message/38377#38377

and because the likelihood is that Linden Research will delete this thread to hide the evidence, I’ll repost the salient post here:

The potential: “Daddy, Miss America wont share her toys.”

Obama vision could be crippled

by rich, greedy US institutions

… and commercial interests who want an arm  and two legs.

1. Sharing knowledge – The Gronstedt Group begins tour  of the SLENZ birthing unit.

The more time I spend in Second Life and  other virtual worlds the more I become convinced  that  SLENZ  joint leader Dr Clare Atkins (SL: Arwenna Stardust) is right: Collaboration and sharing is the key to success in  world education in virtual worlds.

But its not just collaboration within the United States, or New Zealand. It’s collaboration around the world.

The rich, big universities of North America and Europe might be able to afford to go  it alone, but for the smaller and the often poorer tertiary institutions of  the United States,  countries like  New Zealand, and Third World countries – if they even have reliable, affordable Broadband services – don’t have the luxury of NOT collaborating and sharing,  both at an institutional level and at an academic level.

The creation of complex builds, huds, animations and all the other paraphernalia of teaching successfully in a virtual  world, as well as aquiring the skills/knowhow to use them  can cost megabucks: to not share them under OpenSource and Creative Commons license with institutions and academics around the world would seem to be me to be both profligate and selfish. It also could regarded by some , particularly when sold at a high price or with an exorbitant  license fee attached, as both  neo-colonialist and  greedy capitalism of the kind that brought about the most recent crash of world markets.

Second Life behind the firewall

The collaboration thoughts, although first ennunciated  for me by  Dr  Atkins, were brought to mind more recently by  five things: the move by the Lindens, admitted an avowedly commercial organisation,  to  promote Second Life behind the firewall, previously Nebraska, to  commercial, Government and educational institutions at US$55,000 a pop, a princely sum for many cash-strapped institutions around the world;  President Obama’s Cairo vision, proclaimed in June;  a visit by the KiwiEd group to the University of Western Australia, Second  Life site; a Train for Success Gronstedt Group  35-avatar tour of the SLENZ Project’s virtual birthing unit on the Second Life island of Kowhai; and  finally, but not least,  the one-hour keynote address on copyright  by  Harvard University  Professor of Law Lawrence Lessig to  EDUCAUSE09 in Denver earlier this month.

2. Sharing the knowledge: Lessig’s certificate of entitlement.

Obama told  the world,  “We will match promising Muslim students with internships in America and create a new online network … ” something  which  Second Life arguably has been  doing for sometime with  the collaboration already  occurring between individual academics and many smaller institutions creating an “online network, facilitating collaboration across geographic and cultural boundaries.”

The problem with his vision is that  US commercial – and often Government -  interests  have almost always  worked against  facilitating collaboration and sharing across geographic  and cultural boundaries. Look at Microsoft software. Look at Apple and ITunes licensing. Look at software regionalisation. Look at the record industry. Look at the book industry, where rich English language publishers in the UK and the US split the world into at least two markets.  Look at the way copyright law has moved into  education – and science.

But its not a new phenomenon. Look at banana republics, created out of Boston,  as a rather ironical and destructive facilitation of collaboration across geographic and cultural boundaries.

Triumphs of reason

On the other hand there are triumphs of reason over idiocy. Look at the rise of the ubiquitous PC, compared to the Apple computer, even though using a proprietary Operating System  the rise from the “underground” of  Moodle, compared to say Blackboard; the slow advance of bilateral free trade agreements, even if not the much desired mutilateral  free trade agreements, instead of the trade siege mentality,  which  affected most of the world in the 1930s (and still threatens); the growing popularity of Linux compared to proprietary Operating Systems; and finally the astounding growth of  Wikipedia compared to Encarta or Britannia.

Despite my misgivings I have been heartened over the years by the surprising degree of co-operation and collaboration that has been happening in virtual worlds. That is despite the actions of  those  few Scrooge McDuck-like educational institutions which have purely commercial interests at heart and appear to run closed shop operations, sharing with none.

I was even more cheered recently by a visit to the University of Western Australia when I found that  university, which is in the forefront  of Australian virtual world education, was entering into bi-lateral  virtual “free trade” and/or “free exchange”  agreements with  the likes of Stanford University and others. This mirrors the agreements put in place  by  Scott Diener (SL: Professor Noarlunga) at the University of Auckland with the University of Boise; and Judy Cockeram (SL: Judy-Arx Scribe) and  her work with architects around the world;  and those “handshake”   agreements  or informal sharing arrangements put in place by a myriad of other relatively smaller institutions who have already recognised the benefits of world-wide collaboration.

3.Sharing the knowledge – KiwiEd group tours University of Wester Australia site.

And then there is the SLENZ Project, which 18 months ago adopted as its ruling credo,  complete transparency, with OpenSource under Creative Commons license for all its virtual educational products, developments and knowledge in the hope that others would be able to build on the team’s work. Even though the adoption of this credo was probably due more to the persistence and bloody-mindedness of a then non-Second Life “immersed” and relatively sceptical SLENZ Learning Designer Leigh Blackall than anything else, it has worked and is working.

One has to  agree now that Blackall was right, even though  there is obviously a place for fair payment to commercial (virtual world creators, builders, developers etc) interests, something Linden Labs has recognised  with its protection of its own virtual world product lines (and  unfortunately those created and developed by its residents, even if Creative Commons, full permissions and OpenSource) behind  the walls of Second Life.

Linden Labs is not alone, however, in usurping user/creator rights.  The way  they have covered the issue in their rather draconian and very American Terms of Service is little different from other major US on-line social networking services: if you put it up on their service, they own it.

Virtual World Free Trade/Exchange Pact?

This is despite, or perhaps in spite of “renegades” like the  onetime Arcadia Asylum, making all her magnificent “builds” available to “anyone to use anywhere,  how they like, even blowing it up.”

Like  the tyrants behind the old Iron Curtain the Lindens realise that keeping  control of their residents’ creations inside  their world (and keeping them there), guarantees that they will have to stay there unless they want to pour their creativity, time and work down the drain and start a new virtual life elsewhere.

This leads  me to the thought that President Obama, although paying lip service to “collaboration across geographic and cultural boundaries,” needs to put his Government’s money  where his mouth is and promote a world-wide free trade/exchange agreement for  virtual world education if not for virtual worlds themselves, guaranteeing rights of both personal ownership of  individual products when created or bought in a real world sense,  but also opening up US educational institution virtual knowledge and creativity for the rest of the world to freely add to, and build on.

The President  has the vision  for a better on-line world – which could lead to greater understanding between peoples through education.

If he does nothing except talk. Nothing will happen.

And, I believe, we will find the major educational institutions moving more behind their Ivy Walls – if they are not already there – and American educational institutions (and others in UK, Germany, Brazil etc) adopting  a siege mentality   even though  virtual worlds (all virtual worlds, whether emanating out of the US or China or anywhere else) will only fulfill their true potential of levelling the playing field for all educationally if they are free and open to all.

That is something America can do for the world – all worlds.

]]> http://secondlifedata.wordpress.com/2009/11/13/second-life-volar-y-moverse/ Fri, 13 Nov 2009 10:22:19 +0000 Joshy Pakula http://secondlifedata.wordpress.com/2009/11/13/second-life-volar-y-moverse/

VOLAR

En Second Life además de teleportanos, se puede volar.

Al principio puede llegar a ser un poco caótico ya que no pararás de darte trompazos contra los edificios o incluso contra otros avatares cuando planees al ras del suelo, nada que no pueda arreglar un “lo siento” o un “sorry”. Recuerda que los demás “muñequitos” son personas como tú, esto no es los SIMS!!!

Para volar lo puedes hacer de dos formas:

• Activándolo en el boton “VOLAR” del cliente de Second Life, y cuando quieras dejar de volar, pulsar en el mismo boton en el que pondrá “DEJAR DE VOL.”.

• Mediante teclado pulsando RE PAG y AV PAG subirás y bajarás suavemente.

Aconsejo la segunda opción, pues la primera se tarda más y la bajada no es descenso suave sino mas bien caida.
Además, y como podemos ver en la foto, la posición de los dedos es más cercana también a los cursores (las teclas de las flechas) que también recomiendo para movernos por Second Life junto al ratón.
Existe un limite para volar verticalmente que está en 200 metros sobre la superficie, pero este límite se puede sobrepasar con dispositivos especiales añadidos al avatar o artilugios ascensores.
Aquí tenéis un paquete gratuito con objetos que facilitarán los vuelos por Second Life. Es un paquete a la venta por 0 L$, es decir, gratis por cortesía de Irene Muni.

MOVERSE

Para moverse, como he comentado antes, recomiendo las teclas cursores (las teclas de las flechas). Si pulsamos IZQUIERDA o DERECHA, giraremos hacia ese lado sobre nuestro eje, si pulsamos ADELANTE Y ATRAS nos desplazaremos en esas direcciones.

Estas teclas, mezcladas con las de volar (RE PAG. / AV.PAG.) nos permitirá movernos en el aire.

En resumen:

- Utilizaremos para volar las teclas REPAG para subir y AV PAG para bajar (agacharnos también).

- Utilizaremos, incluso a la vez (con la otra mano, claro), los cursores para desplazarnos hacia delante, hacia atrás, izquierda y derecha.

LL have come up with the perfect solution to the first hour problem.  They’ve reduced the window to 10 minutes, well if I were a newbie and was confronted with this when I came inworld I would think 10 minutes would be about all I’d stand before going for the x and looking for something less user unfriendly.

I wouldn’t believe this report if it wasn’t Linden Research and Second Life we’re talking about here. Their behavour does seem to be one of trying to drive people away.  I know that people have been conditioned over the last 5 years to accept poor quality design for software (where is Jakob Nielsen when you need him?) but I’ve got to say that as a business plan it’s not one I’ve ever seen recommended but people do seem to be hanging in there so perhaps appealing to the masochists is a good business model.

Anyone can create the identity they want with a computer connected to the Internet. A phenomenon that has managed to grow the game world is “Second Life”. Imagine you  starting  life again. Have a different identity and no longer have any connection with the real world. A virtual world where everything is created by users, just as they want.There are a huge variety of musical genres, enough to satisfy all users. At most events is free access. For residents of Second Life is possible to participate in races with cars, private parties or classes Philip Rosedale, the man who invented the concept of Second Life, said at the beginning: “We do not build a game, but a country”. Today’s project is much more than that. Second Life has become a very popular area, where 8 million people so far have created their own universe. In Second Life there are no limits to creativity, business and social interactions

What you should know about Second Life

In total, users around the world have spent more than one billion hours in Second Life.

Second Life Residents spend an average of about 100 minutes inworld per visit.

The equivalent of more than USD1 billion has been transacted between Residents in SecondLife, who purchase virtual goods and services from one another.

Residents create more than 250,000 new virtual goods every day – from clothing to vehicles to buildings to automatic language translators, and more.

More than 18 billion minutes of voice chat have been used in Second Life since voice was introduced in 2007.

Approximately 1,250 text-based messages are sent every second in Second Life, and more than 600 million words are typed on an average day.

The total land area of Second Life is now equivalent to approximately two billion square meters – roughly the size of the state of Rhode Island.

Tell us your opinions and experiences related to Second Life

The explosion begins, Linden enters the Enterprise Server rank and file. Of course, they have a superior idea. They put their software behind the firewall. There Second Life already speaks for itself; no one really has to learn about it, or learn the software; it just works because it’s always been there on the open market. It’s so Netscape. The corporate enterprise must worry less about which ports they have open, and who is going to enter through those ports, and just get the social networking space up and running and let the users create all the content. Smart move, Linden!

Of course, there is still the issue of where is all the content going to come from. Traditionally, enterprises have thought this technology could be cool for inspiring the workforce to have meetings, maybe even do some training on-line in a new way. So, they’d contact a solution provider, likely off the Linden Lab website, or maybe from word of mouth, or even better from looking at the existing work of individual companies on line. They’d find someone, start a pilot and hit the firewall.  They’d jump to the next line of defense: the Second Life defectors I like to call them. So much like Hemingway and Gertrude Stein, the lost generation who thought Europe was a better place to be. They went off to explore other virtual worlds: Active Worlds, Power U, Unisfair, Protosphere, OLIVE, Qwaq (now gone native as Teleplace), even some have run over to the OpenSims, all agog about getting a whole bunch of islands for very little.

Yet, Linden moves forward, tripping here and there, sure, but constantly adding something new, something strong, and then they emerge as a fledgling, but a formidable solution. 2b3d recognizes Linden Lab for its innovation and its competitive spirit. We have gone to great lengths to innovate right along beside them. Creating solutions using there tools that haven’t been seen yet. We focus on what hasn’t been done yet, what the virtual world’s can do for the customer in terms of advancing their business, not so much recreating their office space, but more about delivering their service and products to customers in a more personal, high touch way.

We enable warehouses in which users can do real inventory counts, we create work flow to show how broker’s make trades with old technology versus new technology, we demonstrate the size of the component builder to assemble at a more focused detail of composition. We get into the psychology of the health club to change people from the inside first,, and we teach people how to sleep better by building their sleep behaviors right along beside them.

Virtual World Appliances here they come! Solution providers who build Power Point stations and meeting rooms to capture agenda and “next slide please”, great, standardize on those as virtual billfold components. But, if you want to keep innovating, it’s going to be better to get to know your clients production side of the business and start making money with virtual worlds with them. They knowledge management reduces costs, replaces travel, and the water cooler, but these are just the costs of doing business in virtual worlds. The stickiness is in revenue generation with innovators who work closely with their customers, instead of stepping aside for automation.

The new success paradigm: the Happiness Factor.

“Twitter is over,” my partner at work, David, constantly chides me.  Even though I point out that Twitter isn’t just about telling people what you had for breakfast.  He goes on, “Look what happened to Second Life, you thought that was going to change the world too. Now it’s dead.”  That’s not exactly what I said.  But I did say that Second Life had tremendous potential to facilitate collaboration, work processes and relationships within the enterprise.  And that we hadn’t seen the last of Second Life.

With the launch of Second Life Enterprise, I don’t yet get to say, “I told you so,” but the reliability of my powers of prediction is looking better.

Second Life Enterprise

Second Life Enterprise now enables companies to use the same interface and features of Second Life on their own servers, so the content and information they place there is secure.  This is a big step, because security issues were an important barrier for many companies to use the Second Life platform as a virtual workplace.

Conference Center Island

The package, with a starting price of $50,000, includes VOIP, sandbox regions for virtual building and modeling, media and document file sharing, two conference centers and auditorium — virtual of course — and provides enough computing power to support eight regions and as many as 800 avatars all to work happily at the same time.

Who’s using Second Life Enterprise?  According to Linden Labs, 14 organizations have already signed up for the beta version, including the U.S. Navy, IBM and Northrup Grumman.  It will be in beta through the fourth quarter of this year and should be broadly available by mid-2010.

So maybe Second Life hasn’t changed the world yet.  However, it is being used by companies and organizations for a variety of tasks from teaching and training  to product development, prototyping and testing.  And it  allows teams of individuals from different geographies to come together at a fraction of what it would cost in “the real world.”  That’s good in the best of times, and great in times like these. IBM estimated it saved $320,000 by holding a recent conference in Second Life.

Northrup Grumman has used Second Life to simulate a control panel on a bomb disposal device, allowing workers to learn how to use it safely.  The company now does development work for clients where “one hundred percent of the product and the client relationship is virtual.” And Second Life has enabled Northrup Grumman employees at opposite ends of the globe to work together efficiently.

Ted Vera, Information Systems Department Manager at Northrup Grumman confirms something that I’ve always suspected, that the game-like elements of a virtual world could actually be beneficial to real work:  “We’re conducting real business, but there’s an element of fun that enhances the collaboration.”

Conference Center A 4

Beyond the firewall issue, now resolved for a mere $55,000, the biggest obstacle to broad scale usage of virtual words like Second Life is ease of use.  I’ve enjoyed Second Life, but it was darned hard learning to use, at least the public version.  Presuming the “learning curve” gets a lot shorter, or already has in Second Life Enterprise, I think the prognosis for a long, healthy life looks good.

There’s a saying in German that has always intrigued me — “Tot gesagte leben länger.”  Roughly translated it means, “Those presumed dead live the longest.”

Near is preparing to release a 3D shopping area called Near London.  When I came inworld in 2006 , this kind of marketing and selling struck me as being the most optimal use of the platform for retailers. In 2006/7 there were a few token efforts at catalogue selling but the idea was never developed to anywhere near its potential.

Three years later Near have created their own version of this shopping experience

Perhaps in the end all Second Life has been is an incubator, generating the ideas that people take away and use elsewhere.  Certainly the platform has never been conducive to ease of use for product developers or consumers and Linden Research have demonstrated a committment to the key requirements of infrastructure, quality software and ease of use that are necessary for business to consider investing in another channel.

Another avenue for diversity in Second Life is now effectively replaced by something better elsewhere.  Opportunities missed seems to be the constant story of this platform.  Certainly it looks like the next 6 – 12 months are going to be critical if Second Life is to do anything more than move from stagnation to irrecoverable decline. There are interesting times ahead.

Occasionally I like to discuss some more serious subjects around here, this is one of those time.

I’ve been taking an increasing interest in what Linden Labs has been up to and their “Official Blog.  I will admit that this has been somewhat linked to their improved Web Dashboard, which I’m almost embarrassed to admit, I have been using quite a bit.

Here’s a recent post about thie new/upcomming “Behind the Firewall” Project.

It’s being pushed as a stand alone Second Life solution for enterprise.  I find this kind of odd on several levels and it raises some questions.  One, does it interact with the LL Asset database.  That is, can I take my virtual stuff to the stand alone server?

If no, then my next question would be, what is the benefit of this over using OpenSim?  OpenSim is free aside from Hardware, and it’ll run on some pretty old (cheap) hardware.  I’ve set up 3 OpenSim “grids” for personal use in the last year using this guide.  Granted there has never been more than one user connected to these sims at any given time, but none have been on any level of high end hardware.  They all used leftover relics that were intended for the dumpster from my employer.  My current go sits on my Laptop, which is something like a 1 Ghz Pentium 4 with 512 mB of RAM.  I run the Sim server and the Second Life Client on the same machine.

The OpenSim experience is certainly nothing like the real SL experience and my use of it is limited to testing out building techniques and textures.  However, in the interest of money savings, if you’re not getting your Second Life clothing and shapes, why not just deploy an OpenSim server in your company?  You’ll have to build everything from the ground up anyway.

I mention this mostly because this system can’t possibly be cheap.  It’s my understanding that one Second Life Region is the equivalent of one physical Real Life Server (Excluding OpenSpace Etc).  They charge $1000 USD to set up a Region then some ridiculous hundreds of dollars a month upkeep.  To deploy a system that will effectively eliminate part of what they consider a core customer base (Though it’s questionable if they actually are), that brings in these high constant cash streams, doesn’t seem like an economical idea unless they are over charging to make up for it.

On theother hand, I’m sure there are benefits and factors I’m not aware of that someone who knows better could explain.

Second Life creator Linden Lab has launched a beta programme that will offer a behind-the-firewall virtual world for enterprises. Second Life Enterprise will be launched in the first half of 2010, and will let customers extend their businesses to virtual world environments, the firm said.

Los Landmarks, como su traducción indican, son “Marcas en la Tierra”.
Al igual que cuando navegamos por internet cuando nos gusta un sitio lo añadimos como favorito y ese acceso que añadimos a nuestra lista de favoritos se llama “bookmark”; en Second Life también podemos marcar los sitios que mas nos gusten a través de los “Landmarks”.

Cualquier persona que quiera aconsejarnos sobre un sitio o un evento de cualquier tipo, podrá enviarnos un “Landmark” para que acudamos cuando queramos.
Nosotros mismos, cuando pasemos por un sitio al que queramos volver, como un club, una preciosa isla, o una tienda que nos guste, podremos hacer un “Landmark” del lugar.

¿COMO HACER UN LANDMARK?

Para realizar un landmark, simplemente situate en el lugar que quieras hacerlo y pulsa en:

MUNDO> CREAR AQUÍ UN HITO
(world> Create landmark here)
En ese momento nos aparecerá en nuestra pantalla y podremos cerrarlo, ya que automaticamente se ha guardado una copia en nuestro inventario en la carpeta “LANDMARKS”

¿COMO DAR UN LANDMARK A ALGUIEN?

Tan fácil como arrastrarlo desde tu INVENTARIO hasta el avatar al que se lo quieras dar y soltarlo, llegará en tu esquina derecha una confirmación de que el Landmark ha sido aceptado o rechazado por la otra persona. Si ese avatar no está cerca siempre lo puedes buscar con el buscador y lanzarle el landmark dentro de su perfil para que lo reciba.

I logged in this morning and my good friend Nicci Chau messaged me and off to The Cornfield we went. Years ago she told me that misbehaved residents got sent to the cornfield for *time outs* , serve your hour there and you could leave. I’m thinking today this place would be slam full but thats a whole other post.

SO …. find your Linden Treats by finding the Trick or Treat Linden Bear. The sim is all decorated and really worth taking a look.

The Cornfield

https://blogs.secondlife.com/community/commerce/blog/2009/10/22/halloween-spotlight-offers-virtual-tricks-and-treats

Am I the only one that thinks it’s a bit tacky that LL organise a marketing event for Halloween and use items in their publicity pics from a merchant who didn’t even know the marketing event was happening because LL didn’t tell him?  https://blogs.secondlife.com/thread/3791?start=0&tstart=0

The added wtf for me is that for this latest lapse in attention to anything even remotely approaching detail is that when the creator of the item found out not only didn’t they slip him into the promotion which had only started the day before nor did they publicly acknowledge on the promo picture who created the item but  added insult was they seemed to think that since one of the team had bought it as a gift for someone the creator should be happy.

Of course they only had just shy of 200 applications to join the promo and they only accepted 86 of them.  Obviously not enough of those 86 creators had items good enough for the two publicity pictures and the banner ad used.

deep cynicism moment

Linden Labs have decided that despite the evidence that only around 10% of users of gaming sites actually ever look at the blogs a blog is going to be their main method of communication for anything official.  Unless they’re trying to bring attention to their latest favourites, then they can manage to send out emails.

On October 30th, Samhain’s Nightclub will begin the three day celebration of the pagan holiday that the club is named for. This will be the most exciting three days in SL!!!!

At 6pm on Oct 30th, DJ Aalyanna will kick off the Witch’s New Year with an 80’s inspired event sponsered by Fluffy Bushy…. Doan those fingerless gloves and mall bangs and relive the days of Duran Duran and Def Leppard!!!!!

From 8pm to 10pm DJ Nawty will take over booth and rock everyone for a Stag Party.. Nawty Bits Clothing is sponsering the event and I hear the prizes are super cool!!

Beginning at 10pm up until the Witching Hour (midnight), DJ Ukyo will enrapture us with his sexy voice and HOT music in Midnight Ritual… Smelly Cats is sponsoring this event and they have SUCH great stuff!!!

To kick off Samhain day in style, our sister club Sweetest Taboo will hold a Euro Costume Party, with DO Photography offering prizes for best costume.

Following this costume party will be a LIVE performance by Rage Citron, a KICK ASS musical wonder!!!

And just to keep you coming back for more, there will ba an auction and a giveaway by Palairs, at Samhain’s Nightclub…

But before you can leave, we’ll keep you busy with anothe costume party, giving you another chance to show off that smexy costume or show off another one from 8pm-10pm, with a $500L price

Starting at 10pm and hauling on through to midnight, Vamps & Tramps will be giving away a $500L gift certificate to the winner of Best in Vamps and Tramps.

As ALWAYS…. There will be sexy, HOT dancers with dreamy, bedroom eyes, exotic voices and they are ALL hot for YOU!!!!!

Come and see us… You don’t want to miss this for anything!!!!!

Samhain’s Nightclub, Second Life’s GREATEST Club!!!!

Cuando empezamos a familiarizarnos con la interacción en Second Life podemos ver que existen tiendas y ventas de objetos. Desde casas, pasando por coches, naves futuristas, ropas, pelos, hasta joyas, muebles o camas.

Los creadores de estos objetos pueden establecer permisos sobre ellos dependiendo del fin de dichos objetos. Tu mismo(tu también puedes ser creador), cuando crees un prim podrás establecerle permisos. Estos permisos son los siguientes:

COPY – El objeto se puede ser copiado o repetido por el propietario.

MODIFY – EL objeto se puede modificar.

TRANSFER – El objeto se puede transferir a otro avatar.

Pero creo que lo interesante son las mezclas de estas propiedades:

COPY SI/ TRANS.SI/ MOD. SI    o

COPY SI/ TRANS.SI/ MOD. NO

Este es el típìco objeto FREEBIE, es decir, es un objeto gratuito por sus permisos. Si lo puedes transferir, y lo puedes copiar y encima lo puedes modificar es un objeto que pasará de mano en mano muchas veces, incluso modificado cuyo precio suele ser 0L$ ya que lo puede poseer todo el mundo.
Si deseas objetos exclusivos, que nadie pueda tener, te desaconsejamos este tipo de objetos.

Suelen ser productos descatalogados o de mala calidad que se utilizan como reclamo para atraer visitantes a un local o tienda.  Los creadores también utilizamos este tipo de objetos gratuitos para darnos a conocer.

PROS: Puede ser un buen comienzo para principiantes que quieran vestirse o cambiar su aspecto sin invertir nada de dinero. Existen muchas tiendas “freebies” que ayudan mucho al recien llegado en este sentido. Al final de este post tienes varias direcciones de interés con lugares llenos de “freebies” de todo tipo. También es una buena forma de promoción para creadores.

CONTRAS: Son productos que, la mayoría, no tienen muy buena calidad, es decir, si son ropas, suelen ser ropas con poca calidad en el diseño; si son pelos, suelen ser pelos de hace varios años y ya con poca calidad. Si eres novato y te fijas en algún residente “veterano” verás que su vestimenta, avatar, pelos o complementos son “diferentes” y parecen más realistas que cualquier novato, ellos también advierten a los novatos de esta forma además de poderlo observar en la “fecha de nacimiento” de tu perfil (claro).  Aquí la exclusividad también se paga.

COPY SI/ TRANS.NO/ MOD. NO

Son objetos con la posibilidad de ser copiados infinitamente por el propietario del objeto pero no transferidos a otro avatar.

Si este objeto es una palmera, es perfecto, porque la palmera la podremos copiar tantas veces como queramos en nuestro terreno o en terrenos de nuestros amigos.
Un ejemplo que se suele dar es que un propietario vende su terreno con palmeras o vegetación COPY SI / NO TRANS. Cuando vende el terreno el usuario comprador no puede coger las palmeras en su inventario, solo moverlas de sitio ya que no le pertenecen. Tampoco adquirió ningun permiso sobre las palmeras porque inicialmente son TRANS.NO y por ello el usuario propietario no las podría ni transferir ni vender (transferir a cambio de dinero). Para quitarlas, las tiene que devolver al usuario original (retornar).
Si es ropa, por ejemplo una camiseta, podremos tenerla copiada en nuestro inventario muchas veces con diferentes pantalones, sin embargo no podremos dejársela a un amigo.

COPY NO/ TRANS.SI/ MOD. NO

Son objetos con la posibilidad de ser transferidos o vendidos a otro avatar pero una vez que los pasemos, ya no lo tendremos nosotros.

Este caso suele darse en grandes casas o muebles.
Solo tienes una copia de dichos articulos. Si pones la casa en un terreno ya no estará en tu inventario ya que lo pusiste en el terreno, aunque te pertenecerá. Lo mismo con los muebles: los colocas dentro de la casa y ya no estarán en tu inventario.
Si por alguna razón no pagas el terreno o te echan de este, todos los objetos que te pertenezcan serán retornados a tu inventario (carpeta LOST AND FOUND).

Si te cansas de la casa o los muebles siempre podrás o darla a un amigo que le de un nuevo uso o revenderla por el precio que tu quieras. Pones la casa en tu terreno y le especificas un precio de venta. Cuando llegue alquien y la compre, ya la casa tendrá otro propietario y este podrá recogerla en su inventario o tu podrás retornarsela ya que está en tu terreno.

TE ACONSEJAMOS:

*  Si eres nuevo en Second Life, que vayas a tiendas o lugares que proporcionen FREEBIES. Esto te ayudará a desenvolverte en Second Life y a modificar tu aspecto a tu gusto sin gasto de dinero de ningún tipo. Al final de este post una lista de alguna de esas tiendas o lugares con cientos de freebies.

* Ver como funcionan los permisos creando tus propios prims  y poniéndolos a la venta por 0L$ y practicando con amigos o contigo mismo.

*Si te vas a dedicar a la creación de artículos o a su posterior venta, te recomendamos que practiques y pruebes los permisos en los objetos, ya que, si por despiste pones un objeto que creaste con mucho esfuerzo a la venta con todos los permisos (COPY SI/MOD.SI/TRANS.SI) estarás hundiendo tu negocio ya que solo venderás el primero.

ARTICULOS DE AYUDA ADICIONAL:

http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/GUIA_-_Editando_permisos

http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Permissions_FAQ/es

LISTA DE LUGARES Y WEBS CON OBJETOS GRATUITOS “FREEBIES”

[Actualizado 01/11/2009]

WEBS de FREEBIES

Linked Prim Freebies – Casas, ropa, pelo, etc.. todo freebie! – http://linkedprim.com/freebies

“Beanie Loves Japan” – Blog sobre Freebies o cosas a buen precio – http://beaniecanning.wordpress.com/

LUGARES CON FREEBIES DENTRO DE SECOND LIFE

Vistual Spain – Zona de Freebies – http://slurl.com/secondlife/Virtual%20Spain/90/141/26

Sarah Nerd Freebie Paradise – http://slurl.com/secondlife/NineInchNerds/128/128/21

The Free Dove – http://slurl.com/secondlife/Gallii/113/53/33

Freebie Dungueon – http://slurl.com/secondlife/Ecaz/3/201/54

Freebie Heaven – http://slurl.com/secondlife/Sooseunhwa/29/94/59

Noob Island – http://slurl.com/secondlife/NOOB%20ISLAND/172/48/4054

By Amanda Linden

A few weeks ago, there was a lively discussion on the Government Use of Second Life email list on the benefits and challenges around maintaining separate personal and professional avatars and everyone who chimed in was in agreement—the time for work avatars has arrived.  IBM announced their virtual world guidelines for their employees back in 2007. And, last week Jim Lundy at Gartner published a report on this topic, advocating the same position and recommending that organizations create rules around corporate avatar behavior and appearance. According to the WSJ blog on the topic, “He predicts that by 2013, most of them will have such guidelines in place.” When I twittered about the report last week, I received a slew of responses—mostly all in agreement with the basic “work avatar” premise.

Speaking as the person leading Enterprise Marketing, and the Second Life Work brand at Linden Lab, I believe that the professional avatar is an imperative on the road to enterprise-wide adoption of immersive environments as a powerful collaboration and work tool.  If virtual work is to be taken seriously, then our avatars need to look–and act–as professional as we do in a physical workplace. Of course, there are times when I want to have fun in Second Life–go to a jazz concert or shopping. When doing those activities, I have an “alt” or personal avatar–completely separate from my work avatar (SL: Amanda Linden). This concept should sound familiar. For example, most of us already maintain personal and professional email accounts and separate IM traffic streams.

Two weeks ago, Sam Driver, Principal at ThinkBalm, an independent IT industry analysis and consulting services focused exclusively on the work-related use of the Immersive Internet, and I chatted about this very topic. I’ve shared our conversation below and look forward to lively commentary on this hot button topic.

Amanda: Do you believe that people should have personal and professional avatars/personas? If so, why?
Sam: Wow, tough question. I’ll answer these questions in the context of public virtual worlds like Second Life. For immersive environments that are behind the firewall or designed from the ground up for work-related use, issues of avatar and identity are pretty much a non-issue.

Should I have multiple avatars, one for work and one for play? It depends on what makes the most sense for an individual’s career. The answer is generally yes if you: 1) use Second Life or other public virtual worlds (e.g., Activeworlds or an OpenSim grid) for both professional and personal activities, and 2) feel the need to keep your professional and personal activities separate. Otherwise, the answer is generally no. I, for example, have only one Second Life avatar. I use the same avatar no matter what I’m doing in Second Life. The same is true for the other virtual worlds I use; I have just one avatar in each.

Another issue to consider is whether avatars have to look corporate and do they need to be connected to a real professional identity. Transparency of identity is the norm in the workplace (in most situations; I recognize there are exceptions). Most organizations require employees and contractors to identify themselves by their real names for legal and financial reasons. Still, people go by nicknames or middle names at work. People customize their email signatures and outgoing voice mail messages. They upload photos of themselves to the enterprise directory and portal. These are little flourishes to add personal expression to the mix in a digital world where otherwise we come across as black text on a white background.

It’s the same in the virtual world. An avatar is, among other things, the 3D visual corollary to an email signature or recorded outgoing voice mail message. It’s a way of customizing our professional communications. As long as the way our avatars look is in compliance with organizational policy (or, if no policy in place, the avatar’s appearance doesn’t offend others with whom we’re meeting in a professional context), and our avatar is connected with our real professional identity, there’s quite a bit of room for personal expression.

Keep in mind that personalizing the way we represent ourselves in these professional communication contexts doesn’t change our professional identity. Employees’ real professional names are in the enterprise directory, and enterprise directories are tied in with the applications people use every day to get their jobs done. In the workplace, peoples’ real names appear everywhere. As more organizations deploy immersive technologies in the workplace, it will become common for people to use their real names in immersive environments, just as real names are used with other kinds of applications. It will become automatic as immersive environments become integrated with enterprise directories.

The challenge right now in Second Life is that Second Life was originally built on the premise that people shouldn’t use their real names in the environment. Second Life was not designed as a work tool. The workaround we recommend, until we can use our real professional names for our avatars in Second Life, is to list your real professional name on the “First Life” tab of your Second Life profile and wear a name tag that displays your real name and affiliation. Again: this advice is targeted at people who are using Second Life for professional, work-related reasons.

Amanda: Great suggestion. I have another question regarding corporate policies around avatar identity, appearance, and behavior—should businesses create them, like IBM did?
Sam: Yes. It’s common for employers to have employee handbooks and acceptable use guidelines, which dictate the behavior that is expected of them (or lays out the behavior that is verboten). By now, many of these documents have been updated to include employees’ online behavior. These documents will eventually be updated again to take into account peoples’ behavior in virtual worlds, when employees are representing the organization, or are on company time, or using a company computer.

Amanda: Assuming that Second Life will eventually offer the option to use real names, how will avatar identities shift?
Sam: Offering people the option to use their real names for their avatars is one of the best strategic moves Linden Lab can make to bring Second Life into the professional limelight. Second Life is already being used for collaboration, learning and training, and many among things. Second Life and other immersive platforms are attractive to business people because this technology can solve real business problems. (For more insight, see the May 26, 2009 ThinkBalm report, “ThinkBalm Immersive Internet Business Value Study, Q2 2009”). But, as I highlighted above, transparency of identity is the norm in the workplace and this will not change. As a result of Linden Lab enabling the use of real names, I expect to see people create “alts,” or additional alternative avatars, to help keep their personal and professional lives comfortably separate — the same way some people separate their professional networking into LinkedIn and their personal social networking into Facebook.

Sam, thanks so much for taking the time to share your thoughts.  This blog post is meant to catalyze conversation—so share your thoughts and let’s continue the dialogue in comments.