Spinning the wheel
Two years of Second Life, two years… Sometimes it feels like a whole life, time into Second Life has some kind of distortion and seems to run much faster than in RL, maybe because is a really dynamic world, always changing.
In this two years i learned a lot, not only about the use of the Client, i learned specially about myself and about human being. I learned about other cultures and points of view, about what’s important for me and for others.
Saw technical evolution of Second Life. When i first logged in “flexible prims” were quite a new thing, i saw the birth of “sculpted prims”, of Windlight, the birth (and death) of cheap OpenSpace sims. Lived really bad performance times, and better ones too. Saw the evolution of “SLFlickr”, of all the social networks related or that we connect with Second Life, like Twitter, Plurk, Koinup, …
Meet wonderful people, creative people, dorks, slaves, animals, men who are a woman, women who are a man, alts, masters, Lindens, dancing bananas… well a really wide rainbow of people. Saw their creations, felt amazed by them. I loved, played, had fun and get bored.
After this two years, after living all that, i still think i don’t know nothing and have everything to do and to learn. After two years i still think the wheel must keep spinning.
Image in the post by Andromega Volare, published under a Creative Commons license.
Openspace sims, another Linden mistake
After all that time, after all the mistakes, i think we never will get used to the “weird” commercial policy and crappy customer service of Linden Lab.
Yesterday Jack Linden posted some “small” changes on Openspace sims pricing and policies, you should go and read it, basically it says some stuff about how Openspaces are technically set, then he says people are using them in ways Linden Lab didn’t expected (or “overusing” them), then says the prices will be increased on a 65% from next January.
Well, i think Jack is right and some people is using Openspaces in the way not planned by Linden Lab. I remember a conversation in Torley’s office hours when he said (Torley i mean) that one of the most fascinating things in Second Life is that the Lindens can’t plan what will be the use of features because they are always unexpected… maybe that is the problem.
Maybe Jack (and Linden Lab) is right but what means overuse? If they sell a sim with 3500 prims (is just an example) and i’m using 3000. am i overusing? No, that is not overuse. Of course some people is overusing Openspaces with “temp-rezzers”, that is a real overuse and a quite silly thing due the incredible lag it produces.
Under my point of view what happened here is that Linden Lab just was wrong with the technical configuration of Openspaces and now that mistake is causing performance issues, so the solution for the Lab is just to increase prices… sorry but this is just stupid and wrong. The Lab is making the residents pay a Lab mistake.
I think banning “temp-rezzers” would be a solution, i would support Linden Lab if that was the solution proposed, but no, just treating bad their customers seems to be the way Linden Lab works. “CUSTOOMER SERVIZE… UR DOIN IT WRONG”.
Some residents are trying to find ways to protest about this, there is a JIRA issue, a Flickr group, Vint Falken has an interesting post and seems she is trying to list all the actions.
Image in the post: edition of an image originally made by Vint Falken, protected under a Creative Commons license.
Two years of Second Life (for me… of course)
Last sunday 26th was my 2nd rezzday. Oh, man! Two years of Second Life!
Is almost unbelievable! Two years of wonderful experiences (and some dramas 
), two years of wonderful people (and some dorks), two years of self-knowledge and exploration (and some silly moments too, lol).
Last rezzday, my first one, wanted to celebrate it visiting again my “birth place”, the Temple of Iris in Mainland, this time wanted something a bit different…
Some time ago the delicious Moggs Oceanlane shared the idea of “naked free falling” with an umbrella (read the full story and “phylosophy” here, in the Flickr group).
I totally agree about the symbolism of this, coming to SL is someway like jumping naked falling from the high sky…
I’d like to say thanks… i have so many reasons and so many people to say thanks after two years here… so Thanks!!!
The "art gallery rush"
In some other posts (if you want to see them take a look at the Second Life® Art category of my blog) i talked and even joked about the growth of art galleries inworld.
This time this won’t be an “opinion post” just the show of some facts that i found really interesting. First you can see the graphic in this post (is not up-to-date, is based on information of Sep 2008).
The lastest updated information (Oct, 20th 2008) says they are registered 428 Art Galleries, 88 Photography Galleries and 37 Erotic Galleries, that means 553 total galleries inworld. Anyway, the source for this information is a public Live Database created by Sasun Steinbeck (she is doing a great work with it). Last time i checked the database there was 609 galleries.
Anyway that 609 galleries are only the ones in Sasun’s database, so we can consider there are some more running right now outside the database inworld. Of course i can’t give a right number about it, but i think they won’t be much more, that database is really complete. Maybe we can consider a number between 700 or 800 galleries inworld.
Source of all information and graphic: Art Galleries of Second Life by Sasun Steinberg
Freebies… are them for free?
Today i was reading a couple of posts in the blog of Prad Prathivi and Ana Lutetia where they express some concerns about the use of freebies as marketing tools. They have interesting points of view. Anyway, was a bit difficult to explain my point of view in a post comment, and i wanted to know other’s opinion too (there is a pool at the end of the post), so i prefered to post too about this. Of course this is just my two euro-cents.
I saw around two kind of freebies, the ones some creators just give for free in welcome areas, new residents areas, infohubs, or even in their own places or stores, like the resident Four Yip does (she has AWESOME stuff for free or for 1L$). The other kind are the ones you can find in some stores as a Marketing Tool, some directly to anyone, some for Group members of the store.
Personally i don’t see differences between the two kinds, i mean practical differences. The reason why they were built is different but the result is the same actually: some people who can’t afford (or just don’t want to buy) stuff has access to products of different qualities to make their Second Life better or funnier.
Thanks to freebies i had my first stuff, learned a bit about how to make particle scripts, had fun or even helped me to look good. Some creators complain about the freebies because they consider that is damaging their business but i think that idea is wrong. If someone goes to a store and just pick the freebies and nothing else that means he won’t buy the products for sale there anyway, because that person doesn’t wants, or because that person doesn’t like the products for sale or because he thinks they are overpriced. The freebies themselves are not lowering the sales of the merchant. If someone wants quality and exclusive stuff they will pay for sure (meanwhile the prices are reasonable).
The freebie thing is a theme that comes and goes from time to time, this was my opinion but, what is yours?
Image in the post by Torley Linden, published under a Creative Commons license.
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