Barts Blog

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.

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…)

Yesterday was one of these days - out of the blue happened one important thing, about that already many rumors spreaded around lately. The client part of Second Life was released under the GPLv2 license, which means: it became opensource.

Well, some expected it sooner or later, because there were already interviews around in which the CEO of Lindenlabs, Philip Rosedale, was very open about it. So now the first step happened. We are going to see, if they are also opening up part of the server side or not. But, and this is the important message: the cat is out of the bag right now and no way to get it back - anymore!

So, the important questions to ask are: why did it happen and what can I, the user, expect from it in the future? What does it mean to me personally?

Yesterday I visited the new home of my dear friend Lu Stapleton. It’s a very nice and modern house somewhere on the mainland, which is definitely a good fit. She was quite impressed by the work of the builder and for sure is going to recommend him to others.

While I was there, some classic music played on the parcel. She told me that she bought SLTunes, a nice interface for iTunes to set the media URL on the parcel based on the radio station list in iTunes. It was a cheap buy, doesn’t get in the way and gets its job done. A well thought out piece of software, just like all software should be. A tool that doesn’t get in your way!

Well, I was curious, so I used Google to find some information about this tool and stumpled upon the website of the maker, Darius Lehane, named “Darius Lehane’s Second Life.” Doh!

Well, today was smooth and without any trouble. All was quiet in the garden, danced with several nice ladies and I found some stuff to read and to do.

Well, here’s my roundup:

• An article named “What do Paris Hilton and Second Life have in common?” from the CEO of Iron Realms, a company doing business in and with MUDs, from 10/20/06. Well, Matt Mihaly takes a very negative stance against SL. No great news there, because they are competitors. The quote “SL is famous for being famous” sums his opinion up very well! He has some points there, but the reason for a company going into SL is always first - cheap publicity. If you join there, then you’re hip, you get big press for nothing at all and the project costs are just a very minor part in your budget. That’s the way it works!
• A piece named “Relay for Life and Exploits” from Hiro Pendragron from 06/20/06. Quote: “Linden Lab loves to play this game called “Let’s release a patch befor a major release!””. About the problems of the patch schedules and that he is the opinion that the Lindens should be allowed to play actually in the world while at work to get a grip of it. Point taken there, but not all Lindens are technicians like he writes.
• The article of the day: “Politiker in “Second Life”: Der US-Kongress wird virtuell.” This was today at the frontpage of the website of the German magazine “Der Spiegel”. It’s about a new sim, in which the US congress was put into. Well, actually good PR for LL at no cost at all, since this is a biggie.

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!

There is a new wiki in town: the “Second Life Business Communicators Wiki”! To state from their first page:

This wiki is intended to be a collaborative resource for anyone interested in business and communications applications of Second Life, virtual worlds or 3D user interfaces.

It is in its infancy and is by no means exhaustive, complete or ready for prime-time. This is just a start, but it will continue to grow. Contributions or ideas on what resources you’d like to see here are most welcome!

So it is for sure worth watching if it is able to get a decent community.

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.

Here is an interesting article from a marketing company named “Online Communities are not virtual”, describing some prejudices of them and how they really are. Definitely worth a read, especially if you want to do business in them!

As the press release says:

- Press Release - Love 2.0: Four Eyed Monsters Screening In Second Life

At 8 PM EST (5 PM PST/SLT) on January 9th a very special independent film project will have its virtual world debut at the Sundance Channel screening room in Second Life. Four Eyed Monsters is the labor of love of Arin Crumley and Susan Buice, two 20-something Brooklynites who met online, digitally documented their relationship, and turned it into an art project that’s become a contemporary reassessment of love, relationships, and creative collaboration in the new media-saturated world of MySpace and digital video.

Get the rest there. I wonder how this is going to be… perhaps I am going to attend it, if I can!