some people like to take a break and explore being anything they want to be – from blue flying bears to little beavers to pink-haired winged emo wannabes to robots, others like to share their music and play for VW concerts and clubs, some like to create fantasy lives with wild houses, flying machines, and great wardrobes. some people love to make clothing, hair, buildings, animals, vehicles, and plants while others use it as a collaborative real-time meeting environment or as training tools

there are umpteen reasons to do virtual worlds and umpteen yet to be done

whatever it is that you do, chances are that others would too. the difference between you who have found virtual worlds to be a great whatever and the person that has not yet is simply exposure

the more exposure virtual worlds have, the more they will grow. the flying blue bear above only discovered virtual worlds after seeing a Swedish-dubbed TV show called CSI featuring Second Life!

most of us probably don’t have access to sharing what we do on TV but we have the web

if you don’t put snapshots online, maybe start doing that. if you don’t upload videos, maybe try it out

many tools and sharing sites are free (or reasonably priced and you could do a free WordPress for a photo/video blog – no need to write a word)

if you already do pics and/or vids, are they under a Creative Commons license?

the default license for most sharing sites is not Creative Commons but it is usually something you can change to be your default

share what you do and allow others to share it too! sharing is caring! =)

create your own license and decide what others can do with it – i allow full use, even modification for commercial use, but that’s up to you

Linden Lab makes serious scratch with an estimated $5.86 million USD per month from private and mainland tiers (from Tyche Shepherd’s Grid Survey). add to that membership dues, Linden Exchange fees, and even texture upload fees – back in 2008 they were making $90,000 USD a month just on those uploads!

how much of an impact is the loss of about 1000 private sims since the beginning of 2012?

that 1000 fewer sims means $225,000 less this month than in January (math below). $225k is a big number to me (it won’t all fit in one pocket) and it’s about a 4% dip in their monthly revenue

is a 4% dip a big deal?

i’d hate to lose that from my monthly income and if the trend continues, the end of the year would see a 7 to 8% dip. is that a big deal?

since Linden Lab no longer publishes quarterly economic reports, using Tyche Shepherd’s numbers might be as close as we’ll have to measuring the economic pulse of the Lab

so why should anyone only using OpenSim care?

there are several reasons – Second Life still generates mainstream awareness of virtual worlds (albeit, some of that carries a negative connotation), third-party viewers are driven by SL to an extent, and there are content creators who make money, even earn a living, from their Second Life endeavors who also make their content available to the open world

at around $6 million a month, it’ll take more than the loss of a few hundred thousand to have a big impact on Second Life

.:*~*:._.:*~*:._.:*~*:._.:*~*:._.:*~*:._.:*~*:._.:*~*:._.:*~*:.

from Grid Survey -

• Jan 1, 2012: 23857 private estates & 7221 Linden owned
• May 14, 2012: 22851 private estates & 7117 Linden owned
• total change: -1006 private estates & -104 Linden owned
• 58.5% are full, 40.8% are homesteads, and 0.7% are openspaces
• therefore, 589 are full, 410 are homesteads, and 7 are openspaces

$173,755 (full @ $295)
$51,250 (homestead @ $125)
+ $525 (openspace @ $75)
————
$225,530 loss per month for private sim revenue vs. january 2012

a handful of people have tried to create a Mac version of sim-on-a-stick but have run into various impasses. i even tried, which is laughable because i might have a total of 20 minutes Mac experience, and came across an issue when trying to get MAMP running

MAMP is Mac, Apache, MySQL, and PHP and is equivalent to WAMP (Windows, Apache, MySQL, and PHP done via MoWeS for SoaS). MAMP and WAMP basically turn a USB stick into a server (not the same as a live USB which contains an entire operating system)

past attempts have gotten close but never quite made it – that may change now with Kat Prawl!

she’s quite talented and very persistent which makes for an awesome combo!

there’s a wiki page up that might serve as a great collaborative place for Mac experts to put all their apples in one basket (sorry, couldn’t resist)

here’s the wiki page!

good luck, there are many out there, especially teachers that would love it and thus benefit a whole bunch of kids! =)

on Mondays (and most mornings) i take a look at my Yahoo reader (an RSS reader like Google) and this morning i read soror Nishi’s friday post Obama Admits Earth is Round….

it’s a fun look at current news events and places them in their rightful context of pretty much being absurd and that we humans tend to be doofuses often. i certainly am a doofus on many occasions and i thought i’d offer a retort to her first paragraph from a highly-caffeinated science g33klette perspective

note: this post is intended to be light but may be a bit heavy for a monday morning =p

okay, prove to me Earth is a sphere (oblate spheroid is fine)

tell me in as many words as it takes that it is round

did you know it takes about 64 pages to mathematically prove that one plus one equals two? maybe we should have stuck with Roman numerals where there is no concept of zero . . .

Einstein’s work on space and time tell us that space is heavily warped by huges masses and that the universe itself is like a basketball with everything being on a plane (the material part of the basketball) and that the centre is empty – a void (this is what allows for wormhole theories)

so the universe itself is a plane that is formed into a hollow sphere by its own mass

the Earth may look like a sphere from space but is it?

Sol (our sun) warps space around it and we “know” that because we can measure how much it bends lights coming from behind it – so if it bends that light and makes things appear curved, maybe the world is flat?

a good scientist has an open mind to that; they may casually dismiss it, but they never entirely do

now onto your second paragraph – virtually all quantum physicists, and certainly many Nobel Laureates, are searching for God – it’s that open minded dealio =)

lol, my two cents =)

and something else Einstein said in 1931 to help us all maintain perspective

I don’t know, I don’t care, and it doesn’t make any difference!

the other day we gave a tour of some of our virtual world science activities and usually a visitor likes what they see and “understand” how OpenSim stuff is created

the understand part is something i bet everyone in our community can identify with whenever you have been in a situation where you are explaining what you do with virtual worlds to a mainstream, non-virtual world person

in my opinion, mainstream folks are not a creative group – not because they aren’t creative because i believe we are all creative, but because everyday life doesn’t allow time to be creative. on top of not having time, western culture doesn’t promote creativity once you become an adult. we are taught to be consumers, that celebrities are uniquely gifted, and that creativity is relegated to where you place your barn in Farmville or what weapons you choose in a shooter game

OpenSim and Second Life allow for an entire creative spectrum – from pulling together other people’s work to build your own club or home to making everything yourself – it’s completely up to the user as to how much creativity they want (and perhaps one reason virtual worlds are not mainstream activities). even if you buy everything, you probably change colours, terraform, and landscape which allows for a lot of creative freedom (or maybe your creativity is expressed in how you deploy OpenSim – like Mera and her awesome garbage PC! Mera epitomises some of what we want to teach with Enclave Harbour – full use of resources & less waste)

helping outsiders understand – you know how it goes when you are excited and explaining to someone how you make things – the person you are talking reaches a point where their eyes glaze over and you become an overzealous nutcase (okay, i’ll reserve nutcase for me, i can’t speak to how people view you!) =p

people have different levels of understanding they need – most do with a short explanation and simply want to check off a mental box that they understand what you do in the virtual world. but . . . every now and then you run into someone that wants a deeper understanding, it doesn’t mean they want to get into it for themselves, or that they want a dissertation, they just want to know more and maybe even understand why it makes you passionate and why you enjoy making time for it

our visitor wanted to understand the creative process, not so much about prims and rezzing, but about the overall process. it’s easy to get lost in explaining how prims can be manipulated to create things and that’s what probably glazes people over, but explaining the journey to the end goal might be more meaningful. after all, when you think about writing a book you don’t think about commercial digital printers, typography, Amazon pricing policies, and ISBN numbers, you think about what you’ll write and if people will like it. getting an ISBN number, choosing a font, and all that stuff is critical, but it isn’t what makes someone want to become an author

just like thinking to write a book, our Enclave Harbour started with a holistic but vague idea – to teach science through field trips that can be done from home or school. then that “big” idea was divided down into locations like a landfill, deep-sea oil platform, or weather station. for me the detail of making a landfill compactor was exciting but to a mainstream person, they don’t care about prim counts and textures, mainly because they don’t have a framework to understand if that is important. the proverbial big picture does the trick and for some people, like this latest visitor, they wanted a little more detail such as the landfill being equipped to do waste-to-energy (WtE) and not how many prims, client-side overhead, blah, blah, blah

i think of Sarge’s work with his Excelsior Station – it’s for combat rpg but it’s the story of the place that draws me in – regions like a shipyard with housing (PortSide) and alleys and a medical dome - none of it having to do with how many prims or texture sizes. Excelsior Station piques my curiosity – the notion of it entertains me by telling a story – what’s the history of the place, what’s going on now, what other places are there to explore within it, why is there combat, what’s being fought over? it’s the story and not the details he has toiled over that make it what it is

painting a big picture and then adding only the relevant details – and knowing which ones to omit – help outsiders understand and even become interested in it =)

the “secret” details are what many of us enjoy spending our time with, but we are the insiders and it’s meaningful to us

okay, onward to retrofitting this waste-to-energy dealio . . .  

© ecomaine

i know sim-on-a-stick can run on a Mac but only from others telling me so. it’s one thing for me to say “hey, sim-on-a-stick will run with Parallels on a Mac” and a different thing to read directly about someone who actually does run sim-on-a-stick on a Mac

enter Dot Macchi and an article about actually getting sim-on-a-stick up and running as well as loading a really creative build onto it (second pic). i think that build is pretty cool but probably even cooler is the first hand account of getting it going including some initial issues

Who needs SL? Playing with SoaS

very well done Dot and thank you for sharing this online, there are many who will benefit from your experience! =)

© Dot Macchi

© Dot Macchi

my answer would be yes . . . and that’s just an opinion based on the “vibe” out there and the reviews on Glassdoor. also my opinion is that when companies get to be of a certain size, that “love” which was possible with the early employees and a small company size simply get pushed out of the way by formal Human Resource departments

i’ve worked at a place that for its first 10 years had half-day Fridays with a keg of beer – unfortunately, i started there when they were 15 years old . . . no more beer . . .

the love factor makes a big difference and i was reminded about how Linden Lab was in 2006 – it felt very loving and like everyone was in it together. i remember one time phoning in to support just to thank them for doing a great job. the Linden i spoke to put my name and my thanks up on their scrolling love board (i don’t remember if that was its actual name). that night i had several Linden’s give me their bears – that was such a wonderful time and those bears were very cherished by me

When someone recognized another’s hard work, “It made you feel wonderful,” he said. Plus, since the messages were public, it gave upper management a clear sense of who was out (and under) performing. link

Philip commands big dollars to speak at conferences and even though he hasn’t been very involved in Second Life for four years, he still talks about the importance of that love

to a certain extent, i believe that Philip really believes in that love stuff, and maybe that’s what is missing from LL these days

right after i got “disabled” by facebook, i ran across an interesting (as in disturbed and obsessed) character who was making it his mission in life to get fake facebook accounts banned. the irony is that he himself is a fake person (unless his parents were Satanists) with a name of Lucifer Midnight (i should give him the benefit of the doubt – what if that really is his name?) =p

i even engaged in a few online conversations with him on his blog and tried to understand his reasoning. what a waste of time that was! he (or she) is just an angry person that probably has a crappy life and rather than elevating himself with constructive creativity, finds some measure of solace in hurting others

hurting may be too strong of a word – it’s only facebook accounts but those can represent a lot of work. i had about 4,000 friends and always played hearts back with anyone that played with me and i always participated in conversations and likes. facebook was a good channel for this blog because some people only commented there. Lucifer didn’t have me banned, i was just one of many that got culled out and it probably didn’t help that my info blurb said i was a fake person! o_O

the other day i ran across his blog and he’s still at it! Ban Fake Facebook Profiles

we all know that facebook isn’t a safe option for avatars and we also know that facebook is all about making money but it also continues to be an important way for people to communicate in ways previously not possible (as does twitter, youtube, and other social media for real changes like in Egypt last year)

facebook is about to test how much money the world thinks it is worth with its IPO in one week (may 17th)

some people think it is over valued and a recent drop in ads served per day to users is being blamed on mobile devices

time will tell . . .

related: how to permanently delete your facebook account

i came across the article below because it used one of my pictures, which is a good reason to set a Creative Commons license if you want more online presence (presents?), and a Google Alert sent me the link

the article is interesting because Google sees that the video game look works and they are investing millions in promoting the Machinima YouTube channel (link to the Machinima YT is wrong in the article and the link to the company site is http://www.machinima.com/)

the numbers that the Machinima YouTube channel has are impressive – 4,467,855 YouTube subscribers with 3,299,963,317 video views! That’s over 3 billion views! they do have a lot of videos posted (almost 20,000)

clearly a lot of people are okay with the look of games (and a large number do play games) and we all know that game graphics vary from simple isometric like Farmville to super sophisticated like Call of Duty. with that in mind i am always a little surprised when a non-virtual world person is turned off by the graphics of OpenSim/Second Life and by that i mean they completely dismiss their use as a viable 3D platform (either for corporate use or even as video for things like training)

of course, there is a range of 3D graphics “quality” from Minecraft to Unity plus “real” 3D apps like Maya and Blender for 3D video but what is it about OpenSim/Second Life that causes such a strong negative reaction for this group of people?

with the sheer numbers that Machinima has and the money Google is tossing at them, clearly there is mainstream acceptance and tolerance for a wide variety of 3D graphics

is it simply an easy way for some people to dismiss virtual worlds because of their internal negative perception of VWs (like SL is for reclusive sex perverts) by blaming the virtual world look?

Facebook discrimination. It’s stupid, plain and simple.

It’s like looking down on someone because they don’t have a smart phone or cable tv (I have neither, by the way). Or not hiring someone because they don’t like your favorite sports team.

I would be MORE likely to hire someone who understands the potential dangers of putting personal information on a website that shares it with the world, and who therefore shuns social media or at least uses it responsibly (is there such a thing?)

~~~

(from MSNBC Political Cartoons)

FB, in my own opinion, is probably the worst offender in the history of the Internet when it comes to privacy violations (if you don’t believe me, spend some time with a search engine and look at the dozens of lawsuits and millions of dollars in settlements that FB has paid out).

And Google, by the way, is headed in the same direction, though I still use their search engine occasionally. Their old slogan of “We’re not evil” may or may not still apply.

If you DO have a FaceBOO account, it behooves you to place little or no personal information on it, due to the fact that it is searched thousands of times a day by would-be identify thieves, scammers, and even the CIA and the FBI. No, I’m not paranoid. I’m just reminding you that FB is basically a freakin’ huge billboard about as big as the sky, for all to see. And it can be used against you by predators, identity thieves, employers, insurance companies, etc.

(I used to have a Facebook account, which I used mostly to help keep in touch with soldier friends overseas. It is now deactivated, and shall remain that way. I’d “close” it, but we all know FB keeps the data forever, so what’s the point?).

I think FB has its place, for SOME people in SOME circumstances. For me, the risks (and wasted time online) far outweigh any supposed benefits.  I refuse to be a participant, for the above reasons, and because they want me to post personal information, which they often sell to 3rd parties, while paying me exactly zero dollars.

Be very wary of any site or platform that has a privacy policy longer than 100 words or impossible to understand without a team of lawyers. How hard is it for a company to just say “We will NEVER share your information with ANYONE, in any form whatsoever, unless you expressly opt-IN.”? Wow, wouldn’t that be refreshing?

I also don’t get the insane-ness (is that a word?) of giving OTHER websites your FB login and password so you can “LOGIN HERE WITH YOUR FACEBOOK ACCOUNT!!!!” Yeah, like I trust them any more than I do Zuckenboy.

~~~

Did you see a while back that France has banned the mention of Facebook on all news stories (unless the story is about FB itself)? They said (and I paraphrase here)

they refuse to give free publicity to a billionaire corporation that gives them nothing in return,

and that spouting FB-this and FB-that is NOT to be used in the place of real, actual reporting. And, after all, is saying “go the their Facebook page at….” at the end of every news story a good thing? NO.

Go, Team France!

Ever notice that when someone is arrested, found murdered, etc., it’s usually their FB photo which immediately gets plastered all over the media? (Better make sure you have your best photos on there, I guess!) What happens when someone dies? Does their FB page remain up forever, a kind of surreal reminder of them (the answer to that question is complicated, but FB has this form: http://www.facebook.com/help/contact/?id=305593649477238 )

~~~

I think it sucks that FB discriminated against Ener and other “avatars.” I thought the Internet was the last bastion of (responsible) freedom of speech? And how can you have that without some degree of anonymity? FB and social sites know all about YOU, but what do you know about their employees who have access to your data, on multiple redundant servers? Having said that, a company has the right to exclude anyone they want (“We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone”), just as you can opt not to hire someone or not hang out with them. But FB’s explanation of avatar-discrimination is a bit nebulous and self-serving, says I.

As Ener and others have already said, who cares what your “real” name or address or age or eye color is? That information belongs in Real Life, F2F (Face To Face), meat-space, or whatever you call it… not on the Internet, where it can be potentially abused by Very Bad People.

But, not to worry. Remember when personal home pages were all the rage? Or an AOL account? Or Yahoo chat? When was the last time you visited MySpace? FB one day will fall into relative obscurity. Unfortunately it will probably be around longer than its fallen predecessors, so be careful out there. And do be careful of The Next Big Thing That Swallows The Internet and Your Free Time, lol.

I’ve already blabbed too long, and I apologize. We already have perfectly good “identities,” based on our Avatar names, looks, and speech. What more do you really need?

Oh, by the way, LinkedIn is also a big target for identity thieves, so be careful there, also. When you post your past employers, schools, graduation dates, etc., that is a gold mine for the baddies. *Giggles*

The meek might inherit the earth, but the paranoid will outlive them.

i know i am a snob on many things (i’ll blame the french of french canadian on that) and i was almost humbled at how snobby i must be regarding virtual worlds with this post’s title! =o

by all accounts, what i’m mentioning here is 3D and a virtual world – just different than what i have in my head (the little cogs are jamming up in my head and a tiny bit of smoke is coming out my ears) =p

i can feel a bit secure in my snobbery because when i think 3d art gallery, i think of Beacara’s kick butt art catalogue-on-a-stick! to me her work is the epitome of maximising a new media and pumping up the traditional one of a printed catalogue

the art exhibit that has my little world off kilter is here: http://vgwb.spinningwire.com/

there are two versions – one uses a 68 mb viewer (might be bigger, all kinds of stuff downloaded, like several DirectX updates in my case) and i was unable to connect (probably firewall issues).  the other version is a browser-based one via Flash

i must admit, it’s pretty cool that they offer two ways to participate in this art exhibit and even though Flash means it won’t run on a lot of tablets (latest Android doesn’t have flash with it), it is available to a wider audience (like me, since the full 3D one failed)

the Flash is nicely done and a bit novel – i’m not sure it makes the art any nicer than if it was a more traditional online image gallery (i’d argue that you would have significantly higher quality images in the latter) BUT as an alternative to the more immersive 3D one, this is a well thought out alternative =)

all in all, it is very nicely done and, in my case, the browser-based alternative was the only option i could use which speaks nicely to the benefit of something like that for OpenSim worlds!

YouTube video of the 3D art exhibit

the flash version was fast and easy

i loved the minimalist environment which allowed the art to be the focus

i saw somewhere that the average facebook user is worth $3.96 USD per year. facebook and google think they can determine who is real and they have no use, and thus no place, for anyone that does not have a real name (so is Lady Gaga worthless?) . our community sees that when facebook purges “fake” accounts or when google plus says you aren’t real enough to have an account

one thing i have learned from the virtual world community is that it doesn’t matter what your real name is, it doesn’t matter if you’re tall or white or a Jew (but do stay away from french canadians, yikes!). i have run into some really awesome people who have helped me grow and who have given of their real time to help me with online conundrums

it’s what you add to the whole that is important

and for sure not what some algorithms determines your value is. along that line i found it interesting to see what Quantcast thinks of you – the readers of this blog

i don’t know if they think you are worth $3.96 per year – i know you are priceless to me  =)

phew, what a pain it is being so OCD! yesterday i mentioned why i’m doing a blog make over and once it is done, there should be very little different from the way it’s been for the last two years. it’s not so much in how it’s laid out that is being changed, it’s the workings of the HTML and CSS behind it all

and . . . i’m not starting from scratch – i found an HTML5 theme i like very much and am simply tweaking it. part of that OCD tweaking is rewriting the CSS to be neat and tidy (like placing the rules in alphabetical order – that’s OCD!) but a lot of that is done with free online tools like CSS Tidy Online and PHP formatters

there are other tools to use as well, such as an HTML validator (omg 166 errors! the last site only had 6 – so many errors to tackle!) and a JavaScript validator

so what motivates me to take hours upon hours (like all friday night, all saturday, and most likely most of sunday)?

you do! yep, it’s all your fault – actually you are the rationale i use. cleaning up and properly formatting one CSS file created a 29.4% efficiency in that file! your PC/Mac/iPad/tablet/smartphone has to read/interpret all the files associated with a website and for a WordPress blog that’s a lot of files! bunches of PHP files, some CSS files, and a couple of HTML files PLUS the actual content (text and images) all carry overhead with them

i’m not trying to go all minimal, just efficient with what makes up this blog (and without becoming a super tech geek in the process – thank God for free online tools!) :-@

it’s not just prims and textures i obsess over! and thanks for bearing with the changes =)

thanks to Beacara of sim-on-a-stick art catalogue fame, i am thrilled to get some links out to the latest version of the awesome New World Studio automatic OSGrid region launcher!

windows | mac | linux

and here’s the facebook link for reporting any issues and easy instructions =)

…or maybe a stylized/cartoonized USB stick with a cute globe (or city or OpenSim logo) on it, to represent SOAS. Not that I don’t like Ener’s logos *swoon!*

this is very crude (2 clips arts stuck together), but maybe a stylized version of it:

Maybe with a PINK globe ;p