http://blogs.computerworld.com/16905/second_life

same rhetoric but actions will speak louder than words . . .

for some reason, when i read this, it makes me less confident in any recovery and new growth =\

you judge

                          

so we all know that internet speed is uber important for virtual worlds and i like using SpeedTest to see what mine is and to check up on my isp every now and then

ctrl shift 1

but speed is only half of it, well i don’t know if that is right, but just as important as speed is ping!

ping is how fast the round trip of a packet is. what’s a packet? err, i’m not sure but it’s data. when my avatar moves on my screen and bumps into something (what a klutz!) that data goes from me to the server back to me. that round trip time and “cleanliness” of that signal is really critical. when you are on a sim with a lot going on, you may lose some packets (you can see this with your stats – ctrl shift 1)

it’s not a big deal to lose some packets and pretty normal in laggy situations (that’s what lag is)

you can only do so much about ping time. buying faster and better quality broadband can certainly help but how can you measure the quality part? well with PingTest!

if you can get true fiber optic broadband that can give you a clean signal. even with the fastest speed you can have ping issues and vice versa

the next time you look at changing your isp, maybe run both SpeedTest and PingTest at other people’s homes that have different providers. time of day affects this as does traffic, so testing is best done on the same days at around the same time

what else can be done to help your ping?

server location! for things like Second Life and hosted OpenSpace, you can’t really control where the server is that you are hitting but if you install your own OpenSim (or have a third party do it) then you can control where the server is

the closer to you, the better (generally)

if you are a school or university, then your district’s server would be ideal. you could even install OpenSim on a very modestly priced box in your classroom or department (under $500 or maybe less, i don’t know that side of this very well but know of someone that set up OpenSim on a laptop and used a router to allow workshop peeps to hit his grid)

if you are having someone install OpenSim on a professional host, then having a host in your country might be ideal

so if you are in Australia, someone like SimHost would serve you well because they have servers in Australia (and Houston Texas too)

it may not seem like a big deal but the image below gives you a rough idea of how that ping time gets longer and longer the further away you get. you can see that for me, it would make a ten fold difference between something 100 miles away and a zillion miles away in the land down under (plus all my prims would be upside down i think) =p

and in that Oz example, other things are also affected – like VoIP – so if voice is critical, there’s yet another reason to know about this!

ping – something else to consider for doing your own grid or in choosing an internet provider

                          

my ocd self always gets the better of me. i obsess over small things like shadows. in Second Life i really loved Straylight trees and i wish i could buy some for OpenSim from Kris. i also loved Corn furniture. both creators are truly talented

made by Ikea Hax =p

both creators also include shadows with their products and i always thought that added a lot of realism. even a simple chair looks better with a shadow

naturally, when i started making trees (lol, one tree) and furniture i added shadows

but since real (native) shadows are possible and actually add very little overhead with Imprudence (now with spell checking!), i am revisiting my use of shadows. my video card is no beast by any means, it’s a two year old Nvidia 9600GT with a gig of onboard memory and it is slightly overclocked. the rest of my machine is three pluse years old . . .

turning on shadows in Imprudence adds so much realism, it almost messes with you (it’s really weird to build with shadows turned on). personally, i think making shadows mainstream would have a larger impact than mesh imports because everyone would see them right away (i think mesh imports should become a reality too even though i am very happy building with regular prims and think there are benefits to that)

i did a “time lapse” shadow post sometime back and a tree test two weeks back (prim versus sculptie trunk) and now have mashed the two together in my head to create something new to obsess about!

for trees, i *think* i have decided to go without shadows. most people don’t place shadows with their trees (they are a pain to place unless your ground is uber flat)

for furniture, well i suppose i will dump the shadows too . . . nothing else in-world has them and, eventually, shadows will be the norm in viewers . . . =)

what are your thoughts on shadows?

do you include them in your builds?

do you think shadows might become mainstream in a year?

                          

yay! finally, after 4 years in virtual worlds, i get my own home! it’s like that saying about a cobbler’s kids having no shoes. while i have built several home-like places, none were just my home. the iliveisl estate inSL had several social places that were open to the public that were meant to be homes and lounges, but none were built just for me. that was fine, i stayed busy enough and never had time to hang out in any of them regularly anyway

i’m not sure what i am going to do with my home. i know i need to build furniture! all i have is office chairs and that is hardly homelike. i also need to make a stove and fridge plus a bedroom and bathroom. i’ll make everything with normal prims, no sculpties

sculpties intimidate me, i don’t know why. i can build in blender and do boolean intersections, subdivide meshes, path a camera, set motion blur, and all that baloney but i have never even tried to make a sculptie

i think it’s also a snobby thing in my head. i kind of feel like i should be able to make what i need to do with what i have in-world

i also think it’s important to show that many things can be built with normal prims – both because they are pretty easy to work with and highly accessible. as i focus more on education, i think of new students (and teachers) that come in-world and that building with normal prims is a great start =)

if you had to teach someone new about Second Life or OpenSim, you’d stay busy enough without tossing sculpties into the mix. i have seen students get the hang of it and be building in 15 minutes, i like that aspect of normal prims very much. nothing is there to stop them from learning blender but i figure it is better to let them get going with building and worry about this stuff later on

maybe one day i’ll do sculpties and knowing me, i’ll get all ocd over them! =p

in a volcanic caldera (actually it's too small so it's really a crater) =)

the entry is curved to prevent Qi (C'hi) from running out too quickly

                          

i have blogged a few times oh the “value” of Linden Lab in SharesPost but what does that number mean? this is not like trading a public company’s stock

so how can you tell what it means?

first off, since there are several companies listed, you can use those as barometers. it’s interesting to see that LL is a significantly smaller player than the others just in their overall value

we all know facebook is growing and SharesPost’s evaluation reflects that. CNET said that SharesPost’s information “is valuable and interesting data, and gives a pretty good insight into the realistic value of many private tech companies.”

TechCrunch looked at Facebook and LinkedIn and compared what they thought with what SharesPost indicated. they found that the valuation for Facebook was pretty close but were not sure how solid the number was for LinkedIn

SharesPost has nothing to gain by portraying the value of companies as better or worse than they really are. they don’t even collect any sort of commission on sales made based on their data

the only people that can buy these shares have to be accredited under the Securities and Exchange Commission’s regulation D. these are not just regular investors. shares do get a commissions of $2,500 on both the buyer and the seller collected by US Bank. i would imagine this means that the buyers are pretty savvy

so what does it mean that Linden Lab, as Wizard put it, has lost 35% of its value since March? i don’t know but it could help explain some of LL’s actions this year

                          

i blogged about SharesPost back on July 19th and LL was valued at $345 million in the first week of July. then i checked in on that value in mid-August and they had dropped to $271 million

now they are valued at $248 million, oof, that’s gotta hurt!

                          

wanna be a smartie pants? or maybe need some virtual world research info you won’t find in Google?

try Google Scholar!

it searches published articles like you would see coming from universities and also legal opinions. some stuff is free, some you pay to access, but there are tons of things on Second Life and OpenSim - stuff like:

• Coming of age in Second Life: An anthropologist explores the virtually human (it’s an entire free book in Google Books)
• Multidisciplinary experiential education in Second Life: A global approach
• Building an interactive science museum in Second Life
• Development and evaluation of a virtual campus on Second Life: The case of SecondDMI
• How to Compete in the Metaverse: The Business Models in Second Life
• Using Second Life to enhance classroom management practice in teacher education
• Licensing Considerations for OpenSim-Based Virtual Worlds (journal of Virtual Worlds Research)
• Collaborative Learning in OpenSim by Utilizing SLoodle
• Learning with Web Tools, Simulations, and Other Technologies in Science Classrooms
• Serious playground: using Second Life to engage high school students in urban planning
• Marc Bragg v. Linden Lab and Philip Rosedale
• Just Age Playing Around? How Second Life Aids and Abets Child Pornography
• EBay’s Second Life: When Should Virtual Earnings Bear Real Taxes? (Yale Law Journal)
• Help-My Intellectual Property is Trapped: Second Life, Conflicting Ownership Claims and the Problem of Access

and one “must read”:
Networked Collaborative Group Cheerleading Technology: Virtual Cheerleader Experience

yay team =p

                          

i am not sure what has been going on the last two weeks but i have not spent much time building in-world. i guess life got in the way – that and setting up the new grid. even though i am doing very little as far as the grid goes, just some time here and there dealing with smaller issues. you know how it goes – lots of plans and good intentions . . .

it was nice to plug away on two things today – redoing the wind turbine nacelles (no joke – the housing behind the blades is called a nacelle just like in Star Trek) and messing with the cargo zeppelin

both are environmental science things with the wind turbines being a reality and the cargo airship being something that might be here in 10 years! one airship company is starting the planning stage for this. the thought is that for some things it is okay to have slower transport – like delivering containers of produce in Europe. if an airship could cruise at 50 miles per hour (maybe more – i think they were shooting for 78) it could be effective

the solar powered aspect is also fairly realistic. i suppose you need decent weather though =)

the cargo zep was outfitted with 6 electric turbine-like engines today (not same as wind turbines, this could get confusing) plus two bow thrusters like a ship would have. i’ll actually sit down and calculate if my small engines could work by looking at total load (14 containers at 7 tonnes each = a lot of force and buoyancy needed! it better be super sunny out!) =p

hmmm, sounds like a heinous math/physics/my-head-hurts exercise for students to me! =D

they look kind of small once mounted ="

wind turbine nacelle

                          

someone asked how the breakdown was on Second Life sims. using the numbers from Grid Survey for september 4th you get the chart below

Tyche Shepherd goes even further with server type and percentage by largest estate owners here with 1,594 regions owned by Anshe!

                          

it’s funny, but up until today, i never felt like i had my own home in virtual worlds. in Second Life i had bunkers but they were always set as public places too

and for the 10 months in Reaction Grid, i also did not feel like any parcel was mine

but today i took a part of a sim next to Dream Walker and planted my flag. well, i built a photobox that i did not delete after being done. when i need a pic for the blog, i rezz out some white prims and make them full bright, then delete them when am finished, but no more! =) i

it’s a different feeling having a place that i can call my own. the entire estate in OpenSim has been subQuark’s and while i have carte blanche, none of it felt like it was mine. now i have my little part of a sim and am gonna leave prims out and make a big mess =)

a photobox is really easy to make and works very well. make the colour full brite and add some lights and voila! can be made in any colour you need and if you want a soft edge, apart from doing anti-alias in preferences, you can turn on a bit of glow on the lightbox walls

super simple, super effective

big prim holds me at proper height, little ones are lights

monkey bars!!! =) (and lots of starch on my skirt!)

                          

in OpenSim, some objects will remember their script and thus their script can be deleted (does that actually help performance? or is it still the same whether the script is in it or not?)

assuming it does help, i delete omega and sit scripts BUT . . .

since i have such a hard time setting my x,y, and z up in sit scripts, i copy the script i am going to delete into a notecard and place that in the object

because i decided to make all the furniture i use and wanted to be able to give/sell/let steal/whatever my chairs to others, putting in the script as a notecard helps me ensure that regardless of how they get the item (as a direct purchase, an exported XML, or as an IAR file) that they will be able to use it as i had built it. if you have your own server you can access, getting items as an IAR file (inventory archive file) is a great way to share things (something our James of SimHost does with me that works very well) =)

it helps me a lot because i fuss with these simplest scripts a lot initially. even the simple Omega script in these wind turbines. because i want them to appear “more natural” they all differ slightly so that they don’t all turn in unison (very OCD, i know) =)

actually, my avatar is afraid of heights (makes my shoulders tense)

                          

this pushed me over the edge – the new vp of marketing post

i love the “marketing aspect” of online stuff but not when it’s money, money, money!

the new marketing person says: “an X  Factor that helped people get into the game and helped them discover all  the rest of the possibilities there”

well derr, i think those residents that have not yet been chased off kinda have an idea of the possibilities, that’s why they hang in there. Second Life is wildly creative and all you need to do is listen to the 1000s of online voices yelling every day at you. they are all yelling about being creative! the possibilities are already well known, just listen to the customers that love you!!! sheesh

“I’m excited about the prospect of helping to build a product that  really empowers people to express what they’re about, and that can make a real difference in their lives.”

she already does not get it! people have felt empowered (i did) and it did make a very positive difference in my life. so get out of the way, listen to residents that give a sh!t. ugh, makes my blood boil . . .

“I think we’ve only just started to see  what can be done here”

is she from frigging Mars? get in-world and you will see some of the most creative people in the world and the amazing and beautiful things that have been made.  more beauty and creativity has come and gone in Second Life than she will ever see first hand . . .

and she does online learning, give me a break! my subQuark has spoken at more conferences about the use of SL as an eLearning tool than the number of times she has been in-world so far . . .

and her bent is gaming focused, too bad Second Life is not a game, seems a poor employment match (unless . . . )

i think what set me off is that it seems that Linden Lab has been going on and on about becoming more profitable or about money (the teen grid doesn’t make enough, shut it down – fire them all, we need to be more solid)

i love what marketing can do (share a message) but not what its focus typically is (make more money) and just sharing a message effectively (marketing) will make more money if your message is true (Guy Kawasaki did that for Apple and made them incredibly profitable, but they never went on and on about making more money, they made a product that people think is cool and works well!)

maybe i am overly sensitive to it, but i get enough of the profitability crap in my day job, i don’t need my creative joy and escape to be so outwardly focused on making money all the time

i need a shower . . .  =\

                          

i like OpenSim a lot and for some things, it is superior (or the only option). improvements are coming faster and faster but . . .

there are lots of little quirks that i don’t pay attention to anymore and have learned to work around

however, if you are new to OpenSim or about to try it, the cumulative effect of lots of these little quirks might spell S – U – C – K =p

my only reference for anything virtual world was Habbo Hotel and Second Life. lol, Habbo Hotel is so totally different that it’s not really anything i equate to virtual worlds (but it does rock, well it did when you were a young teenager) =)

so these little things that you take for granted in Second Life can be a pain in the prim when you first start in OpenSim

do you remember how like three years ago you had to use pose balls for any seating you did in Second Life?

then some magic happened and more than one avatar could sit on a prim and it even knew to orient you with your head up top! (hint to Philip: that’s the type of small thing that people notice and see as an improvement, forget stoopid things like display names – do less better!) =p

i had a little low prim stage in Second Life that was part of one particular companies “avatar pack” that they gave to all their employees

it was only 12 prims and could sit like 20+ people. it could have been fewer prims but i had two invisible light prims to evenly light whoever was on stage

with the added whatever that Linden Lab did, bunches of people could sit in a way that you would expect to sit

in the old days, there would have been a pose ball for every seat, but thanks to those changes in Second Life, they were no longer needed (for a simple sit)

with OpenSim my low prim stage is no longer so low prim! bah! o_O

now that is not so major because you can have more prims, but it becomes major when you don’t realize this and have to retrofit whatever seating you may be exporting from Second Life

this one example is a fairly minor issue but knowing this in advance helps you deal with that cumulative suck that sometimes makes you cry (awww, poor ener!)  =(

add to that the fact that your sit position on a prim is not the same, so you can’t just toss out a ball and have someone sit on it when touched – you have to add a real sit script to it! (past post: Simple Sit Script: deconstructed)

once a sit script is in a pose ball, you can delete it – the ball will remember the sit and you won’t have extra scripts running

so be ready for many small things to not be identical and your transition will be smoother and maybe even kleenex-free (or at least you won’t end up with a snotty sleeve – not that i know anyone that would wipe their nose like that . . . ) =D

                          

the other night i made a single sim suggestion for those wanting to try OpenSim. it is affordable and offered by someone with a very solid reputation. Snoopy’s price point is about 15% the cost of a full sim in Second Life or about what you might pay for 1,500 prims in Second Life. her single sim offering should provide a near SL experience

with the Teen Grid closing, educators are looking for solutions that may not fit well with a single sim solution. in fact, a rather large online education journal, THE Journal, posted an article yesterday entitled K-12 Groups Stranded in Second Life Teen Grid Shutdown. like it or not, educators are pretty dinked on this one =(

with an educational discount a Second Life sim was about $150 a month, so what is out there similar to this?

single sims from many OpenSim hosts are not as “powerful” as Second Life sims (i suppose we should start calling them “regions” because that is really what a Second Life sim is). once you understand that with OpenSim you look at it from a server perspective and not a “sim” perspective, you’ll be able to make a better decision and meet your expectations more closely

when i first came over to OpenSim, i thought a sim is a sim is a sim. and it just ain’t so  o_O

it’s all about RAM (imo). of course, other factors are critical as well. as Snoopy pointed out to a quote of mine on another blog, a “sim” really needs its own cpu core and a gig of RAM. disk space is pretty minor and most multi-sim options are not lacking in disk space

in my first go (really “our” first go, but hey, i am the boss of me) we tried doing 16 sims on 2 cores and 1.5 gigs of RAM. i simply underestimated what we needed for our purposes *fires herself* =D

with under 15,000 prims (14,180 to be exact) and a total of 311 scripts (most very simple like spinning radars with the omega function, sit scripts, zip line script, and so on) i had hit 1.4 gig of RAM. the cores never spiked much and seemed to hum along under 10%

what happens when you get near your RAM limit is poor performance. i often would rez without a body and i crashed a lot. i rebooted the sims and restarted the server almost daily in order to try to be stable. and if a few people hit our grid? forget about it! i crashed like mad. so running out of RAM, in my experience, is very bad

RAM is also needed for concurrency (number of avatars) and the ability to have many avatars also does impact the cores you have

one good thing about OpenSim is that if you get a true dedicated server (not a virtual machine) your sims share the server’s resources. in Second Life when i had 19 sims, if i had a big event i would need to have it on a sim border to get the maximum number of avatars possible (that’s why Linden’s winter festivals and such occur on a four sim intersection). for my events, the unused resources of an empty Second Life sim a few over did not help me. in OpenSim, if a group meets on one sim or is spread out over all 16 sims, the load is very close to the same. all of your server’s resources are available regardless of where you need them

in comparing what is out there and needing to have more resources for what we are doing (virtual fields trips with many “learning activities”) it was clear who had an offering that could provide what we needed

SimHost, hands down, has a package that seems unbeatable (i have not seen anything close from other hosting providers)

budget was important (our money tree was stolen, dang) and for close to the educational cost of a Second Life sim we have a pretty powerful setup

a true dedicated server that uses our domain names (enclaveharbour.org and enclaveharbour.com), so we are not just a subdomain (not sure how important that is to anyone else, but it means that we can keep all our “stuff”, like the support website for the science activities all under domains we control 100%) and 4 cores, 8 gigs of RAM, and 500 megs of disk, plus some incredible bandwidth (32.4 terrabytes with a 100Mbps port) that i frankly don’t know anything about except that it’s a lot! see their package here (and the setup cost is only $50 too!) =)

we do have 16 sims on this but if you were looking for a near Second Life experience, i’d suggest just doing 4 sims (maybe 9, but that’s the beauty of this, you get to decide). in a four sim configuration, this would really scream and i think be more powerful than 4 SL sims! but the 16 sims works very well because i treat it like 3 full sims and then the rest as openspace sims (in general)

PLUS . . . getting a private grid with someone is also about developing a partnership and trust. after getting yanked around by Linden Lab (policy changes mainly affecting my residents which in turn affected me) i for sure don’t want to be yanked around and have little tolerance to it (read – i am an educated adult)

the SimHost guys are also OpenSim developers and very much into what OpenSim can do. James has been developing our server from scratch. i say developing because he is doing far more than just installing a grid for us. he has carte blanche with the server and doing things that i suspect others would not (or could not) do. he set up a hack that allows for us to burst to 4 gigs of RAM per sim if need be, has developed some kind of streaming television dealio that sounds very useful. he is currently coding our “get grid info” dealio so that it grabs from the Enclave Harbour URL so that we can put anything we want for the splash screen (like i mentioned the other night). he is also setting us up with their home grown registration system. their registration system does something that will be very handy for us – you can make it require a sign-up code

edumacated ener =p

for educational use, this sign-up code could serve as a layer of security if need be. i believe our main access will be via people hypergridding and not via account creation on our grid. many people already have an account on OSGrid or Reaction Grid and will be able to simply use that account to reach us (no need to force you to create an account for use only on our grid). the hypergrid protocol is a large focus in OpenSim development and will allow for access control also

this partnership aspect with SimHost has been much more action than lip service. James is a person of action and has been invaluable for what he brings to our grid

i simply can not say enough of the benefit of having someone so passionate and so talented who has a deep understanding of OpenSim and web technologies (plus he is a Texan and i have a very fond place in my heart for Texas) *hook ‘em horns!*

so that’s it! i am posting about this a lot because it’s crunch time for educators

the timing by Linden Lab is absolutely horrible

they should have announced this a few months back, not when school is starting! trying to move before the end of the year is a Herculean task for active educators but Linden Lab absolutely could care less. at least extend it a month so that teachers can use winter holiday time to move! (it’s not like they would be giving anyone a month for free!)

                          

i know people think i bash on Second Life (maybe because i express the way i feel about them *shakes fist about cancelling account*). but for years i praised them to high heaven

for those looking for hope, here is an anonymous Linden Lab review from august 29th on Glassdoor.com

“There is hope.”
Pros
Even with all the recent turmoil, Linden Lab still has some of the best people to work with, and one of the most interesting and challenging projects as an engineer.
Cons
Still way too much chaos. If you’re not highly self-directed you’ll find it difficult. Some of the senior management was terrible, but it looks like many of them are leaving now.
Advice to Senior Management
Really focus on the transparency, and make sure that you give middle management the room to actually shape direction.

there is no doubt that Linden Lab has some really sharp people. nothing else can touch second life for how well it works at the moment. if this is an honest review, then the bit about chaos certainly is seen externally by some of the decisions lately (seriously, display names as a project?)

i have no ill will against Second Life – i won’t ever go back to Second Life (i can’t since my account is gone), it’s just not right for me anymore

but it is “right” for many people. maybe if the right people (the wrong ones) do leave as this person says, things will turn around

Second Life is 99% there! it just needs that last one percent

                          

fully free to use in any way you see fit =) click for originals in flickr

                          

a month or so back i mentioned the book The Tipping Point. it’s a great book and the phrase is now part of everyday conversation. a blog called Cafe Bucky has an article about this and outlines the tipping point for virtual worlds

btw, i am going to claim myself as a poster child for this

i *think* i was pretty much every companies wet dream of a great customer. 19 sims, daily blogging proclaiming the awesomeness of SL, volunteer Mentor, 8000 flickr pics all tagged second life (helps their SEO), and my virtual partner doing lectures at conferences about how great SL is

i would flip out if i had a customer that paid me nearly $3000 a month plus was a total spaz online saying how great i am! (even if obnoxious, darn straight and come on!!!) =p

but Linden Lab seems hellbent on peeving people off. one of the latest things is the stoopid display names. first off it seems really dumb because imagine the increase in ARs they will be getting

“waah, some meanie is using my name as EnerWiener HaxSux and you have to cancel their account”

anyway, this and stuff like the teen grid makes it seem that LL is kind of clueless on what they need to do and just trying this, that, and the other (like snowstorm – first off, if you live in the north – snowstorms suck, especially if you have to drive home after work in one)

is that kind of behavior on LL’s part bringing us closer to the tipping point?

it was enough to make me seek an alternative – OpenSim. i was very entrenched and heavily invested, time and money, into Second Life. leaving Second Life was very hard for me to do. but it was also hard to keep getting obstacles thrown in my way

eventually, the tipping point was reached for me

more and more people are making the move and this makes it easier for others. one BIG hassle when i moved was that there just was not the amount of content. so things that had been very important to me, like the Eville Atomic Lounge with its great retro furnishings, took a back seat to finding an alternative

with so many people coming over to OpenSim – content is growing atn  aexponential rate

if we are not at the Tipping Point, i believe we are very near to it

even virtual martinis were not enough to keep me inSL

                          

with OpenSim, if you have a private grid and want registered people to visit, you have to supply grid information (unless you are hypergridded). our very talented Micheil Merlin commented on how to do this, but it’s too good to leave buried in a comment! btw, Micheil is rather passionate about OpenSim and contributed code to the latest version – that is pretty friggin’ cool in my book =)

~~~~~

Here is a link to the wiki page on the GridInfo service. The GridInfo service can be used to enable the ‘Get Grid Info’ button on the Grid Manager fill in the grid information.

http://opensimulator.org/wiki/GridInfo

And for v0.7, here is an example definition for iliveisl. According to the doc, it would go in StandaloneCommon.ini for standalone grids or Robust.ini for HyperGrids.

[GridInfoService]
; These settings are used to return information on a get_grid_info call.
; Client launcher scripts and third-party clients make use of this to
; autoconfigure the client and to provide a nice user experience. If you
; want to facilitate that, you should configure the settings here according
; to your grid or standalone setup.
;
; See http://opensimulator.org/wiki/GridInfo

; login uri: for grid this is the login server URI
login = http://iliveisl.enclaveharbour.org:8002/

; long grid name: the long name of your grid
gridname = “I live in Science Land”

; short grid name: the short name of your grid
gridnick = “iliveisl”

; login page: optional: if it exists it will be used to tell the client to use
; this as splash page
; currently unused
welcome = http://iliveinscienceland.com/

; helper uri: optional: if it exists if will be used to tell the client to use
; this for all economy related things
; currently unused
economy = http://iliveisl.enclaveharbour.org:9000/

; web page of grid: optional: page providing further information about your grid
; currently unused
about = http://iliveisl.com/

; account creation: optional: page providing further information about obtaining
; a user account on your grid
; currently unused
;register = http://127.0.0.1/register

; help: optional: page providing further assistance for users of your grid
; currently unused
;help = http://127.0.0.1/help

; password help: optional: page providing password assistance for users of your grid
; currently unused
;password = http://127.0.0.1/password

                          

i get asked a lot (well, a few times a week) about what i recommend for a Second Life alternative. i don’t consider myself an expert and actually consider myself just persistent (maybe if i was an expert i would get to bed earlier!)

at least i alternated the colours =p

i’d like to think of myself as pretty average for virtual world stuff. now i do have the perspective of having had sims in Second Life but a fool and their money are soon parted, so that is not a reflection of expertise! but i do have loads of everyday experience – just doing those things that many of us do in the virtual world – just being a resident =)

i love to terraform and build but am horrible at making clothes (i will be in my current outfit forever i think!). i did get all crazy and dump my leather bracelets for some neon coloured wrist bands! talk about lack of originality! just a tiny torus duplicated and coloured with solid colours!!!  that kind of proves that point!  =D

but as an “average” avatar, i think my perspective can help others see a bit through my eyes and maybe learn from my mistakes (and sometimes successes!) \o/

when i do make recommendations, they are from my heart and truly what i think fits the person’s needs who is asking

like most people, i have loads of opinions on just about anything – but like most people,

they are just blah, blah, blah =)

one thing i get asked is what to get as a single OpenSim sim. if i was clever enough, i’d install it myself on my own machine, but techy stuff like that makes my eyes roll into the back of my head. i do find it very interesting but don’t have the aptitude to do it (read –> ener gets frustrated, throws tantrums, and has a cow!) good thing i like beef . . . .  =D

so if you are even a bit techy, try installing it yourself. Maria has great instructions on how and the Diva Distro is also well documented. at least with your own installation you won’t be out any money and can get a sense of what OpenSim is like

okay, for the rest of us . . .

a hosting company is a great alternative and what you look for depends on what you want to do. since i am doing the virtual world stuff for a set end goal, my purpose is strongly defined. i am to build 50 plus activity points for science education stuff. so we need multiple sims that can handle 20 concurrent people to start (it probably will not need to handle that many because these are self-paced activities). but who knows, maybe subQuark will want to rent out this stuff to teachers, but that is a ways down the road. for a mini grid of nine to 16 sims, i don’t see any deals out there that even come close to what we have with SimHost. i’ll beat that horse later in another post . . .

many people don’t need something that robust, but they also want something that is close to a Second Life experience

if you want a sim where you can have a home, an art gallery or store, make cars and vehicles, and have a few friends hang out in a residential/workshop setting, then you need something very similar to a Second Life sim

Snoopy Pfeffer is an uber OpenSim expert and has a strong Second Life background (plus she has an MBA from URoc, so she is no slouch). i mention this because she has an excellent online reputation and does not BS about this stuff

she understands that many people looking to try OpenSim are just like me – coming from only knowing Second Life. if you read this blog, you know that i had a really hard time making the transition. had i understood the differences better or had my expectations better matched the reality of what i was getting into, it would have been way smoother

it seems that Snoopy really gets that part. her services include groups (omg, you have to have groups), money (PayPal), voice, hypergridding, and even a search that works! sounds minor eh? but that stuff is not always there or as smooth as you think it should be. Second Life does run very well, despite all the moaning and groaning

for a single Sim, Snoopy seems to have something that would be very close to Second Life and for a heck of a price! $45 a month and no setup fee! that is pretty cheap by SL standards and i would trust Snoopy enough to say that what she claims on her website is true (she is not a short timer by any means). see her hosting details here

i base this on looking around online, reading lots of blogs, the actions Snoopy takes, and keeping in mind my past experience. for $45 it’s a pretty safe way to try what should be representative of a good OpenSim experience

if you want to try to judge her with one click, take a look at her twitter stream – she is pretty hardcore about what she does!

shop around, this is just based on my observations and Hypergrid Business has an up-to-date hosting directory that sums up services very well – good luck! =)