DVD about Second Life

Some team members of the German blog Industrial Technology&Witchcraft have produced a DVD, targeted at SL newbies as their main audience. There are videos on it, showing several different aspects of the client and the world itself, presented by the avatars Molly Fellini and Case Schnabel.

The price of the DVD is 14.99€ and it is available on some kind of webshop. There is also a 3 minute preview of one chapter of the DVD available for free so you can take a look at it if it is something worth investing your money or not.

Well, I am curious if they are going to sell them or not; I for myself would just rather download the client as newbie and fiddle with it direct without buying such a DVD. Learning by doing, so to speak.

Just a little reminder

When you’re the owner of a good going business and are in the process of setting up your brand new arrived sim, better be sure that your access list is setup the way you think it should be. Why? Well, because when you’re talking about the sim’s name in public at your well frequented business, you never know who might overhear it and goes there to take a look around. Oh, and taking it in your pics is also not so good, then.

New pest coming around: banner ads

A new pest is forming up in Second Life: newbies going around with banner ads (and similar objects), getting paid for it the usual rates (2-4 L$ / 10 minutes). The benefit for them? Well, they can move in contrary to camping chairs or dancing pods, so I expect to see a drastical increase in such kind of advertisement.

The benefit for the people „employing“ them? Very cheap advertisements running around nearly everywhere.

The drawbacks? Well, for me:

  • Bad karma and bad image. I would never do business with such a store/shop/company who litters the landscape of SL with such kind of garbage.
  • It ruins many places, because the banners are something that catches your eye.
  • The people doing it do this normally without asking, just come in with it and walk around, so they are in many places in for an ejection or ban. Go figure.

And here is a nice screenshot of such a guy dancing around in the garden of Intimate Moment’s with such a banner ad:

Banner ad

I asked him two times to put this thing off, and he complied. Lucky him, otherwise I would have ejected him.

In the same league play for me guys going to an event with a vendor’s tray hooked up. I’ve seen it already twice on events of us, some weird looking guy came in with a drawn weapon and a vendor’s tray full of cigars and other stuff.  I just hate such behaviour and when I see such a guy I’m on a very short fuse.

New lottery in town: SLMillions

There is a new lottery in Second Life, called SL Millions. The driving force behind this lottery is Lederberg Investment, a group run by Mar Lederberg, who seems to live in Geneva, Switzerland.

Here is the deal: you buy one ticket from them for 500 L$ and get the chance to win 1.000.000 L$ per month. The other million will be split among several people. They spoke to the Lindens and made them crystal clear that they already have the claimed money, to make sure they are serious about it and just not want to take the money out of the peoples pockets. Well, even if still „only“ L$, 1.000.000 L$ is quite an amount of money. Right now the best selling rate for L$ is about 277 L$ convert into 1 US-$. This means that the jackpot is equal 3610.11 US-$. Still quite an amount of money in real life and you can make much things with one million in world.

They are also claming that they are donating about 10-25% of the income to RL charity projects, like the Red Cross for example.

Well, what to think about it? This is something were already big in world money is involved. They are trying to be good businessman and take their lottery for serious, so much is certain, because they want to stay.

But: if you want to be a good human being, you just can donate money on yourself to the charity organization of your choice. You don’t need a lottery to do that.

The maths is simple. To make this business sustainable they need at least 4000 sold tickets per month, otherwise they are going to be in a loss. Add the social component to it with the minimum of 10%, this makes then 2.200.000 L$ of monthly income they need or 4400 sold tickets. After this point they are going to be profitable.

These are quit big numbers they need to sell, so they need a big vendor network, which they already have. This is one point. The other point is: when I attend such a lottery I’d like to know with whom I am making business and where to catch him. Ok, I can get their represantatives in SL. On their website are even to phone numbers I can call and an email adress, terms of services and so on.

All very fine and professional, but the most important thing is missing: an adress. Yup, right. Of course I’d like to know from which country these operations are based and where to reach them with snail mail. Even in the oh so virtual times of Second Life. But there is no imprint on their otherwise very professional made side, nada, nothing. And this is, of course, a big lack for me with this lottery.

Don’t get me wrong: they talked with the Lindens and if ever there would be a serious need to reach them, you could either do it the way with Lindenlabs or trying to call them. They are doing a serious business inside the world, take it serious, so no need to be afraid to buy a ticket from them. But I am old fashioned and miss the imprint – seriously. Period.

New profile pics

I finally took the time to let take new pictures from me for my profile by a photographer. Without further adago here they are:

Profile Pic

Profile pic b&w

I’ve placed the colored picture in my profile. Those nice pictures were made at the Serenite Gardens, a very nice setting there. The photographer was Melodious Source, I can recommend her without doubt. A great artist and wonderful personna!