General

Yesterday, 1/27/07,  Philippe Borremans wrote in his blog an article about the arrival of the Front National (FN), a right-wing party from France in SL and the possible implications of this move. He's musing about the implications like this:

Well, both Le Pen, the head of the party and some of its members have been condemned in court because they made negationist comments about the holocaust. But I guess that doesn't count in a virtual world.

Wrong; depending on the country it can count. Very much so.

How will anti-racist organisations react ? Do the same, set up a presence in Second Life and take the political battle online ? Does this mean that what is considered as condemnable by law in the real world is not in a virtual one ?

Good question;  but after some investigations you should already know the answer. Yes, those organisations are - or at least their supporters - are online too, and yes, they take this battle online. Very much so. Just take a look at this article from the German magazine Der Spiegel from 1/12/07 (Germany only, here roughly translated via Google). There already have been in world demonstrations against the FN in SL before the article from Mr. Borremans was written. So, SL already turned into another platform for this political struggle - for both sides. Where the one goes, the other follows suit in no time at all. That's the way it goes.

This is about a place called "Sinner's Paradise" in the region called Wales. It's a private island with two adjacent regions - Wales and Wales harbor. It's a very nice and romantic spot, great landscape, many different places to enjoy and discover. Short: one of the better sex places in SL, and quite a popular one, too. But what comes, when you are successful in SL? Right, griefers. They had their own share of griefer attacks and tuned down all bells and whistles now to get rid of them. But what also comes? Well, of course much traffic. Sinner's Paradise has no money paying chairs whatsoever, it generates the traffic on its own. Good for the place and also for the store. But, there was a big problem in earlier times: the entrance area, where all people landed, was way too small. So it god crowded very fast and the people were bound to move on. So what did the owners of Sinner's Paradise do? Right: they upgraded the size of the entrance area, they added much more space to it. Sounds like a good idea? At the first look: yes. At the second look: hell, no! Please click on this thumbnail to get the big picture:  . This photograph was taken today by myself, in the region of Wales were at this time 98 avatars online, in the region of Wales harbor about 29. So... this shows: traffic goes there over quality at the moment. The entrance area is way too much crowded, no one looking after the people, if they are nude or not - some just prefer to be nude. Some even had actually sex in this entrance, pimps are going around, trying to sell their escort services or escorts on her own. I konw quite a few people who were one or two months ago frequent visitors of this area, you can call them perhaps an old incrowd of this place. They have filed some complaints to the owners of Sinner's Paradise now because they find this development bothering and are not satisfied with the place any more. Or you could also say: if nothing happens, this place is going down the hill and getting less attractice for certain groups of people.

Today I stumbled about this nice quote on a notecard from Remus Zaoh:

It is amazing to me how few SL residents attempt to market themselves in-world when nearly every article written in the mainstream press focuses on Fortune 500 companies setting up shop in SL. IBM, among others, is convinced that SL and streaming 3-D technology represents the future of the Web as we know it. That being said, in my estimation we truly are pioneers in the dawning age of V-Commerce.

Guess what? He's right. Most media coverage just is about the companies, that's all and not so much about the residents actually. So we are going to see where this development leads us. Some just feel the old spirit perhaps like in the old days when the WWW gained ground. But still consider - the WWW is more like print media. SL is a 3D environment, so both have their niche.

Don Alphonso, a well known German blogger (mostly he blogs about startups, which he often criticizes and wrote articles at DotComTod and BooCompany), wrote an article about SL (German only) in general yesterday at his blog. To sum it up: he thinks that SL is overhyped. Not only overhyped, but actually some kind of virtual trash can, in which a whole industry throws herself out of free will. First he criticizes the press coverage from LL about the 2 million inhabitants in SL. Well, old story. Then he criticizes the press coverage about Anshe Chung and her being the first virtual millionaire. Well, it is actually one thing she didn't deny in an interview. The other thing he brings in as negative example is the griefer attack on her when she gave her interview to CNet. Articles about it are here and here, the video has been already removed on Youtube, but it's still available on other places in the web. He is of the opinion that no one working in public relations with a little bit of brain left would really make such things in SL, especially when everybody can film it. Well, that's the short summary. But guess what? Who cares. Anshe Chung became famous out of SL, made much money with it, and she owns a company worth more than 1 million US-$. Other's are still trying to get rich/famous, whatever, too, and at the moment SL is hip, in, whatever, so it is not going to end so soon. Also the web was something like that at the beginning.

I've found a bounch of pyramides near a good frequented club, and this time the text in the pyramides still worked. So, just for the reading pleasure (and to be complete) - here is the text:

Dear Moneymaker, So, you want to make money, and lots of it. You have come to the right place. It is really simple : 1) Right click on the pryamid and choose "pay". 2) Pyramid will appear in your inventory. IMPORTANT: The Pyramidt you get has not been validated, and will not work yet!!! 3) Drag and drop the Pyramid on the ground near the original and touch your copy . 4) Click yes to the money question which will activate the Pyamid. (If you do not press yes, the object will not work, this is needed to distribute the money that will be payed to the object). 5) If everything has been done correctly, the following text will apear above your object: "How to make money (touch me)." This means you now have a working version of The Pyramid. 6) Delete the copy of the Pyramid in your inventory while the actual Pyramid is on the ground. (not nescecary, but the one in your inventory is useless, unless you validate it). Take the validated Pyramid with you and place is somewhere where a lot of people will come. Here is how it works: After you have validated it, people can pay your pyramid L$20. Everytime someone does that, YOU get L$5 and they get a copy of the pyramid and have to go through the same steps as you have. If that person also places their pyramid somewhere and another person pays L$20, he/she gets L$5 and YOU get L$10. Just sit back, relax and make money. DisQ Hern

Please remember: DisQ Hern is not selling those pyramides anymore, in fact you can get a device in his shop for free to disable littered pyramides anywhere without being the owner of the object nor being the landowner.

• CNNmoney.com has an interesting interview with John Zdanowski about the Linden Dollar. It's from the 8th December 2006, but still worth a read.
• Also in CNNmoney.com, from the 10th November 2006 actually: "No, Second Life is not overhyped."
• Packagingessentials.com - I am linked there as an "expert source" under the category "3d graphics", "virtual reality." Well. A big welcome to all readers from over there!
• An older report in the German magazine "Focus" named "Neue Freunde, guter Sex, echtes Geld."
• More to come next time...

Don't we all know it? The famous "Pyramid system", which brings many people to litter other people's sims with it in the hope to make some cheap money without much or no effort at all? Every time I see this type of garbage I want to barf. Some people just need to grow a brain, somewhere, somehow - and very fast, too! Those types of schemes are not working! Not yesterday, not today, or tomorrow! No, no, never! The only people making money with it are in the 1st and 2nd level of the pyramid actually, the rest gains nothing. Nothing at all, well, not really true, perhaps they gain anger and want to kick themself in the ass for being so dumb to actually pay money for such kind of rubbish! If you don't want to believe it, well, take a very close look to the article about pyramide scheme in the Wikipedia. If you still want to pay money for such a scheme and are not in the 1st or 2nd level of it actually - well, better read it again. Actually such schemes are a violation of the Terms of Services of Lindenlab. So littering such a thing makes you a receptive for a Abuse Report. Well, at least the author Disq Hern got the message, he's not selling these pyramides anymore since the mid of December 2006. You can get now a device for free at his shop, called "Pyramid stopper", to get rid of this rubbish even when you are not the land owner or tenant of a parcel. Just go and grab it in his shop at Insula Inferi West.

As many might have now noticed (or not) - the implementation of the search feature in SL has changed. According to this article in the SL blog it is now this way:

You may have noticed that Search > Places returns slightly different results after today’s update. Previously if you had a place with a description like “clothingshirtshoes” a search on “shirt” would find that place. Now our searches work more like Google, Yahoo, ect. and will only find full words. Thus “clothing shirt” and “clothing, shirt” will be found, but not “clothingshirt”.

This, to say it simply, hurts business until the word spreads around under the users and still then some might not know how to do it otherwise. (Yeah, some people would just right now say: LL is to blame for using the "toy database" MySQL, why have they not used Postgres or $insertyourfavoriteenterpriseRDBMShere from the beginning? Guess what? Stick this statement in your ass, those flamewars bring nothing new...) Ah, and of course, the inevitable Mr. Prokofy Neva has written an article about it, too, using much more words to get the same message to the people like I did. I'd like to see him as a Rebel without a clue from now on.

In Terra Nova is an interesting article about potential backlashs about Second Life in 2007 by Ren Reynolds. Points one to three are:

1. It’s all just sex. sex sex sex I tell you
2. It's not just sex, it's prostitution
3. It can be used for hiding / laundering money

Well, guess what? Point 3 already has happened, there are already articles about this possibility in the web. Definitely also worth a read and some of them are just bound to happen sooner or later!

I've found the article "Second Life: Hype vs. Anti-Hype vs. Anti-Anti-Hype" from the midth of December 2006. A very well thought article from Wagner James Au about the recent developments, company side and growth in SL. Definitely worth a read, so not a short one, so take your time! [Update]: Seems the user base grows about 23% per month according to this artice based on numbers bei Philip Linden.