Kindle, Light My Words With Fire

I have just got a new toy: An Amazon Kindle. Its a really nice device, even though the GUI is rather old-fashioned compared to modern pads. No touch-screen.  No colours.  But the features that are there are well thought out and works flawlessly.

I like it so much I thought my avatar would want one too.  So I quickly buildt one. Now he can sit and read The Times like an old-school british gent, even if its a modern variety:

I have previously blogged about the PC version and the Kindle Store so I won't repeat that; it's enough to say that my Kindle has 3G access to more books than I could ever read almost whereever I am.


And even if I am out in the sun, its a joy to read because of it's electronic inc screen.  It really looks like paper, and there is no glare or reflection.  One cool feature of e-ink screens is that they only uses power when changing content.  Amazon has made use of this and made a feature that displays an image on the screen whenever you turn if off.  The image is choosen randomly from a set, and it just stays there. 

Interestingly enough, I think I like the thing precisely because it is rather limited.  When reading a book one does not get tempted to surf facebook and read email at the same time, because that's just not possible (or at least too cumbersome, LOL).  Instead, I fall into this state of natural relaxation that I get when reading an old-fashioned book printed on paper. 

And if I do sit down with the thing just to play, I end up reading much more text than I would normally do when just spending some free time on the web. 

And it got me wondering: Second Life is a highly graphical environment.  State-of-the-art 3D moving graphics and animations.  But would that be enough to make me stay and spend as much time and money inworld as I do?  Actually, the answer is simply no.  If I could not spend lots of my SL time "talking" to people, that is, creating written words and stories, I would not have found the motivation to stay. 

So, words are important, and words with people even more so.  In a world where pad-and-phone makers are duelling for the nicest icons and the most vivid pictures, it's good that someone still focuses on the words.  They make my day and my life, and I so look forward to both read and write a lot more.

Eat, Pray, Love my Ubuntu Netbook

Amazon has made a kind of a silent success with the Kindle reading tablet.  Apple has got a lot of publicity for its music distribution system, but the Kindle is a bit more anonymous.  

What I did not know until a coworker told me the other day was that Amazon also distribute the Kindle reader as an application for iPod/Pad, Mac, Android and Windows.  In effect, what Apple did for music distribution, Amazon has done for books.

The service is really fascinating.  Amazon.com has, at the time of writing, 580,208 titles in the Kindle eBooks store.  There are 6,091 titles published the last 30 days alone, of all kinds: "How to write a sentence: And how to read one", "The Day After the Dollar Crashes: A survival guide for the New World Order" and "Two to love [nights in bliss]" all listed in sequence if you wish.  It's like a kind of treasure hunt in an old book store, the only difference being these are new titles!

When you find a book that seems interesting, you can download a sample (the first few chapters) and read a bit, just like in a real bookstore.  The only difference is that you can be anywhere; on the train, bus, airport or the beach.  Never again a day with no book to read!

Sadly, both Apple and Amazon have chosen to ignore users of Linux.  But there is a difference:  Using Wine it is possible to run a lot of windows applications on Linux, and while iTunes runs badly in Wine (if at all), the Kindle reader flows like a breeze on even a slow netbook.  And when we talk about books, a netbook is really the second best thing after a real kindle tablet....

After getting a preview or buying a book, it is synchronized to your home folder in the Kindle reader.  

Lyra, my MSI Wind Notebook, is running Ubuntu 10.04 Netbook Edition.  It's a tiny 10" 1 kg thing, not very fast, but each time I try to put it away on the shelf to use a more powerful computer I find myself returning to it in within a week.  Its just so functional when it comes to surf, email and write on that I can't seem to live without it.  And I am sure that Kindle will make it even more indispensable.

Amazon has made a very functional GUI.  When you are reading, you can put the book up on full screen, so that nothing else disturbs the mind.  Instead of scrolling you turn the pages one after another, and that really makes for easy reading.

There is one major difference between iTunes and the Kindle book store:  While Apple has abandoned their copy-protection scheme, Kindle books are only usable on readers connected to your Amazon account.  There seems to be ways to break this scheme, but I guess it's not really worth it.  With books selling for less than US10, it's less than half the price of buying the same soft-cover book in Norway.

I am now starting on chapter 5 of "Eat, Pray, Love", the first eBook I have purchased on Amazon.  (Btw, the literal Norwegian translation of the title is "Eat, Love, Live"; I suppose Pray is not really as catchy here in Europe as it is in the US.)  Anyway, Lyra and me will hit the sack really soon now; I think I want at least one chapter before I close my eyes:-)

37 of 52 - Art and Arms race?

Finally back in SL - and trying to keep up with my blog, barely managing this weeks post ... I remember an old quarrel as to whether Sunday or Monday is the first day of the week. Since it suits me I am going to define that Sunday is the last day; that way I managed a post this week too!

The Emerald Viewer has taken the login page one step further. Instead of just showing a picture of some unknown beautiful place, there is a link that will bring you there when you log in - so simple and yet so powerful - that's a feature the lab should work on! But perhaps they just don't want to let the Emerald people head the development. Some more thoughts on that later.


Today the link took me to a place called Springfield Gardens. It's a beautiful garden with a gallery! Connie Arida had some nice works on display there, including a 1973 quote on the need for secondary worlds:

"Man needs a 'second' world, a world of humanity created meaning, a new reality that he can live, dramatize, nourish himself in. 'Illusion' means creative play at its highest level."

Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death (1973)

Really thought provoking!

The garden and the surrounding beaches are very well done - if you like the sea you will love the way the violent waves hits the rocks. It's a homestead; the owners welcome you to explore her art and her home. It's just such a prime example of what can be done with such a sim - it's just so sad that a homestead is just a bit too pricy for most people not aiming to make money in SL.

So what's up with the lab these days? SL enterprise is gone; educators are flocking to opensim grids, and viewer 2 gets more and more decimals: currently it's 2.1.1, but I'm still a grey cloud when I try to log in.. sigh...

The announcement of the new Display Name feature in SL made me suddenly think about the arms race between the US and the former Soviet Union during Reagan's presidentship. The tactic was to force the soviet to spend so much money on the military that the rest of the country would suffer so much that the government eventually would fail.

Now, the features Linden Lab has made lately (apart from the appalling viewer 2 GUI that is) does force the Opensim community to work on catching up with SL instead of introducing goodies for themselves. HTML-on-a-prim, the tattoo layer, new media interface and soon display names means that the lindens are again positioning themselves at the head of the race, using their sheer marked size to regain some control of the direction that virtual worlds will go.

Even after laying off the main developer, the lab claims that mesh import will come. Somehow I feel that this will be implemented slightly different than the Opensim modrex module, again forcing the OS community to redesign. Oh well. History has shown that server side, open software has prevailed. Opensim will be for virtual worlds what Apache is for the web server marked, and its success or failure will mostly depend on weather or not these kinds of immerse
environments will really be commonplace.

But back to viewer development: There is one single crucial difference between the efforts of Linden Lab and all the other viewers: Where all the rest focuses on features that are aimed solely at making a better product for the current users, LL focuses on expanding their marked. If the viewer 2.0 GUI gives them 2 new customers they don't care if they loose one. So they try to find a direction where they think these 2 new customers are. The danger in such a strategy is of course that you risk loosing the one you had and not gaining any new ones. The statistics don't show any huge growth of SL, and whenever I'm in-world using Emerald, it seems that about half of the people around me has ditched LL's viewer (for those that have not tried it, Emerald shows you what kind of viewers other people are using).

This is clearly a race. The Emerald people have introduced features like new attachment points only visible to other Emerald users that gives them a richer experience of SL than the official viewer. Now, LL is not going to stand and watch while an external group takes that kind of control over their product. My fear is that if viewer 2.0 adoption is still less than 10 percent at the end of the year, meaning they will have failed in the viewer competition, the lab will be tempted to use the TOS to clamp down on thrid-party viewer development further.

Seems there are interesting times ahead of us, to say the least. I am happy though that with Philip back on the helm, the lab is again focused on the consumer marked. I just hope they will keep focusing on the creative consumers, keeping it a world made by us, for us, and not going the Playstation Home route where everything is slick and smooth and thoroughly commercialised. Walking around there just makes me sad, because in contrast it so lifeless compared to both SL and the OS grids. No, I want worlds where Connie Arida and everyone else that finds joy in creating and showing off can do so even if there are no money in it for the entertainment industry. Luckily, it seems Opensim will make sure this will happen. It's up to the lab to decide if they want to be a part of it still:-)

31 of 52 - Movies and Virtual Worlds

Wonder what Edward will do when I take his seat? /me needs a silver chained garlic

Sitting in the dark theatre the other night, watching vampires and werewolves tearing each other apart for the sake of pure drama (a girl, a boy going steady with the girl, another boy in love with the girl, and the widow of a boy killed by the boy going steady with the girl because he tried to kill the girl, and a boy in love with the widow who is just using him to get revenge on the first boy and the girl, LOL sounds like first-class SL drama to me), I began to think of the similarities between going to a movie and logging into SL.

Both experiences are trying to create an effect of immersion. Watching Eclipse, the third film in the Twilight series, it's easy to find yourselves in the head of Edward or Bella or Jacob (depending on your orientation I guess). You see what they see, experience the situations like they do, and don't know much more of what is happening outside of their fields of vision. The only thing lacking in the experience is the actual physical contact: The feel of the cold winter night, the heat of another persons skin close to you in a sleeping bag, the softness of the tender kisses in the fields of flowers.

I discovered that the feeling was not that different from the feeling of being inside the head of my avatar, watching events unfolding in front of me. I see what he sees, experiences situations like he does, and don't know much of what is happening outside his field of vision. The only thing lacking in the experience is the actual physical contact: The feel of sand between my toes, the heat of the sun as it rises from the sea, the softness of the tender kisses in the fields of flowers :-)

Yes, unlike SL, a movie has a script. But when you view a movie, you don't know. You just observe the actors following it. Just as you observe other avatars interacting with yours; they have motives and emotions that may not be scripted, but are just as unknown to you as the future actions of Bella and Charlie.

The real difference is of cource that you are not merely a spectator. You are an actor, equal in importance to the other persons on the screen. But unlike an actor, you have no script to support you.

Some would say that being immersed in SL is not an act. It's just living out your life in a different setting. But I would say that almost everyone I meet has some kind of filter between their avatars and their real self: They don't reveal their name, where they live, their phone number or RL email address. Some change gender and almost everyone is thinner and more muscular and good-looking than irl. Lots of people use SL as an escape from their lives and therefore really wants those filters. Just as we use movies as an escape from reality: For a short 2 hours we live in the woods around Fork or walk the purple forests of Pandora.

After the Avatar movie launch, there where several reports of depressive symptoms in people having seen the move: They becamse so owerwhelmed by the beauty of the Na'vi's world that they had a hard time leaving it. Some times, when I have to click the X and close down that field of flowers, I feel like that. There have been times when I could not manage to log in, just because I knew how the end of the session would feel.

But I guess I won't miss Breaking Dawn when it opens, just because it's a bit sad when it ends. So that's more of my virtual worlds attitude at the moment: Live the day!

In addition, there are the times you just use the viewer as a tool - creating environments, scripting, taking photos. To compare that to the movie world, its more like being a director or a camera man on the set - I guess they don't immerse themselves in the movie like the audience do at the end. Just as when I poor concrete into the feet of my oil rig in RG (LOL), the viewer is more of a tool like GIMP and avimator.

But now it's a nice summer day, so I will leave the computer in the trunk and get some real sand and sun and people close.

24 of 52 - Art with a sting

Kick a noob - or a griefer?

Is this art? Very often, Second Life art are beautiful, but rather uncontroversial. When visiting Shamen Galleries the other day, I found that Miso Susanowa have created a few items that raised my eyebrows a bit.

Be advised - you don't want to make your confession here

[2010/05/12 12:16] Cristopher Lefavre: Now you are supposed to say "father forgive me, for I have sinned...."
[2010/05/12 12:16] [
(this converstation I really can't share with you...)
]
[2010/05/12 12:22] Cristopher Lefavre: You did WHAT?
[2010/05/12 12:25] Cristopher Lefavre really wanted to be part of that fun
[2010/05/12 12:27] Cristopher Lefavre: That will be 5 ave Lindens
[2010/05/12 12:27] Cristopher Lefavre: every night
[2010/05/12 12:27] Cristopher Lefavre: in a week
[2010/05/12 12:28] Cristopher Lefavre drops hustler on the floor and picks up playboy

The things you hear when taking confessions in SL!

Building this kind of installation IRL would be a much bigger hassle, so in practice the RL artworld is kind of lacking in this type of art. Its more Not Practical In RL that Not Possible.... Again, SL makes a huge possibility to create new kinds of expressions.

I'd better take my own advise...

... or I might end up here?

"Foundation of guilt"

This work really got to me; at first the dark red colour theme drew attention, but it's more than that. It's like it contains a vision, something I don't really understand. Why make such a lively depiction of the catholic teaching of hell? In the midst of installations that somehow makes fun of the church? But I guess these are just my interpretations. Go see for yourselves!

Miso has an installation called State of Mind. You can see it at the Excalibur Studios. Be warned though, I was TP-ed home by some script, maybe because I did not enter my social security number at the keypad? LOL, jokes aside, State of Mind is worth going through, there are lots of pokes at the modern internet based society, kind of thought provoking.

21 of 52 - Fuschia again

I really don't know where she gets it from. But Fuschia Nightfire never ceases to amaze me.

Yes, I've seen all-white environments before, but they have all been huge skyboxes or full sim places. Fuschia has managed to fit the entire installation inside a 20m sculputured megaprim on the ground, and it still captures the whole screen when you are inside.



I'm usually very involved when I'm inworld, that is I have a strong sense of "being" my avatar. Ener had a blog post about this that I found very interesting. Just like me, she use to position her avatar facing the one she is talking to. It feels kind of right to keep your av aligned to the actual action. When I'm around looking at art, I mostly walk around, letting my av "look at" the work, even if I use the Cam controls to zoom a bit. Somehow it does not feel right to just let Cris sit in a corner while I cam around the whole place.

It's really not just emotional either. The main difference between virtual worlds and the Web is NOT that everything is in 3D (there are 3D web apps around, and lots of 2D content in SL). No, the main difference is that everyone viewing a location is also represented there for everyone else to see. And that's really huge. Even if it's just an avatar without any Real Life info being viewable, it still breaks the normal anonymity people are used to on the Web.

So, as a courtesy to everyone else around I feel it's right to let my avatar indicate what I am looking at and what I am doing. Because a virtual world is all about participating, not just looking.

Anyway, when the SL window goes all-white I really feel I am enclosed in a bubble of white. It's like walking inside the work of art.

Again, art in SL is evolving at a furious pace. It's a great showcase for virtual worlds, because the medium offers possibilities not available anywhere else. Not just by viewing 3D art, but also by being able to participate in the art. There is a freebe white skin available inside the gallery, and by dressing more appropriate than I did, you can add yourselves to the artistic expression other gets WHILE watching it!

The installation is currently available at PiRats. She has also made a machinema of this installation, it's on You Tube.



PiRats is an interesting build btw. It's not spectacular in itselves, but it had a quality of design and build that I find rare.

@Palais Orleans Photo Studio

Coming online tonight I got an invite from Cat Boccaccio, offering champagne and a chance to look at some new works. I took the taxi to Tasogare, and was greeted by Cat and a nice lady called Chasity that looked anything but:-) The wonders of SL!

Cat showed some pieces that was new to me, and that I really liked. Stunning effects of water distortion on the detailed tattooed body:-)

madison Arnahan is not only the owner of this nice gallery, she is also an artist, and I really liked her work:

The combination of the B&W wood background and the delicate skin and lace colours was something new in avatar art (at least for me). I just love to spot creativity!


Again, one thing so great with SL is the possibility to meet the artist and talk about their work and emotions, even if they live on the other side of the world. This will certainly not be my last visit to her place.

I got to meet Peoney Feld, an artist that "...enjoy a little humor in my work...." Indeed she does, "postcard from SL" hit me right on target:-) Hmm this was a dangerous evening for my L$ account:-)


She had some sharp observations about peoples sexuality that I quite liked. I am looking forward to touring her main gallery.

Also on display by Cat was "Pnigalion", "...a scripted work that was entered (and won) in the then Perspectives 2010 competition.".


During my years in SL, I have seen several artists explore the possibilities of scripted art. It's often fancy to look at pictures with wheels turning around, clocks ticking, water flowing or blood dripping. But too often, it's effects for the sake of the effects. That does not make great art. But here, Cat has made great art. The work tells a story in a subtle way, so subtle indeed that I overlooked the effect first time I saw it.

This is truly where classic art meets modern virtual world technique in a novel and irresisteble combination (at least for me; I have a copy on order LOL) . If you have not seen this piece yet, go have a look. And if someone ever doubts that virtual worlds are a serious tool, show them this piece. In all its artistery, its also truly NPIRL, and shows us the way art is evolving.

Just some time off :-)

I really needed to slip out tonight, so I slid American Beauty into the DVD player, fired up Hagrid on the sofa table and dived into SL.

Nice new garden outside

Rune Shamen and Cierra Loxely runs Shamen Galleries - not long since I was there. But I've been getting these group messages about a new exhibit closing soon, so I made it my first stop on my list tonight.

Trasgo Beaumont has made this great classic statue - with some SL twists

Redecorated inside shows the fabulous range of artists these curators knows

I'm not really very knowledgeable when it comes to art. But every now and then I encounter works that just seems to reach some spot deep inside me.

gliding gulls in black sphere - I am enchanted

Who other than my favourite SL artist, Fuschia Nightfire, have made this innovative work? Fuschia , thanks for beeing in SL still. You give me a reason to stay too.

While looking at art I started getting group chats from Maximillion Kleene, a singer I have heard before. He was about to start a live concert at the Romantica Yacht Club. The black glass sphere was burning in my Recent Item pocket, but I felt for some music before rezzing it at home.

The one and only Tipping Cow:-)

"What a day for a daydream" is making me smile even as I write this:-) I just so enjoy this artist.

I do love watching Kevin Spacey finding his second youth, quitting his job, working out, flirting with his daughers girlfriends. But a great concert in SL is just such a nice end of the day too.

Now, this strange neighboor is throwing out his son because he thinks he's gay - and he runs away with Kevin's daugther LOL - but who did really shoot him at the end? The freak and the daughter? The wife? The poor mad gay colonel? hmm, I have wathed this movie several times, but I'm still not sure:-)

Ener wrote a great post the other day (she often does btw; she is just so productive, I can't really understand how she manages, something strengtening in the poutine?) Anyway, she wrote:

because LL is shifting does not mean it is evil

So true. LL is focusing. One may not like the focus, or the lost opportunities to make easy money (wow, I remember the fun I had, buying land at the auctions and selling it for profit, was so easy I almost got a bad concience LOL). Those days are long gone. But SL still grows. Art and music is thriving. And there are lots of places to explore.

I will add:

because competition grows in virtual worlds does not mean SL will not be able to compete in lots of areas.

Now Kevin is undressing his daughers GF, not understanding how bad he is off until she reveals she's a virgin. Now, they're sitting the kitchen, drinking coffe, he asks her if her daugher is happy. So cute.

SL's strenght is in the social networking sphere. But being strong there will keep other markets away. Because if you do education, you may want to keep the flirting and the dancing a bit distant, just to ensure seriousness. If I ever want to convince my employer to use virtual world technology to communicate, it seems much easier to use a grid that is not seen as a kind of game. That's just one reason I have faith in OpenSim grids like ReactionGrid.

The man is dying wathcing a photo of his lost family, finally being happy and content with the life he had lived.

The other reason is standardization. If you create content targeted to Second Life, it will not neccessarlily work in any other grid. If you create content in any OpenSim based grid however, it will be portable to any other grid or hosting provider. You can develop offline, just giving the provider a single .oar file to publish your complete region. You can copy your region to other worlds, or just move it. The lack of such possibilities have allways limited creators.

Yes, that thing of beauty is finally home in my living room!

"It's hard to stay mad when there's so much beauty in the world." says the dead Kevin. I guess that is true regarding Linden Lab as well.

19 of 52 - TOS and the final Rainbow Viewer

A sore-eyed avatar looking at the SL TOS documents in the background

Running on Hagrid right now is Boy Lane's Rainbow Viewer final edition. There will be no more versions, due to the Labs rather messy Third Party Viewer Policy. Boy no longer feels comfortable with the expressed responsibility LL requires developers to take on by accepting the new TOS. Really sad, because the Rainbow viewer was the only one optimized for my Wind Netbook.

Btw, did you know that the SL TOS is now almost 20 pages? And that it references 17 - seventeen - additional documents containing legalese covering subjects ranging from maturity ratings to gambling policy?

To be fair to the Lindens, they do operate a large business in a world run by lawyers, and have to make sure they have their back free. But if they want to continue to run a world with content largely being supplied by end users, they need to take some actions. To take some responsibilities away from the creative minds in this community. If it becomes necessary to hire a lawyer to interpret the TOS before you start to produce and sell content in SL, then a lot of the small suppliers will just leave in disgust. Fun has left the building.

In contrast to the ReactionGrid TOS that is a simple half-page statement.

The sad fact though is that the day that RG gets to the same size as SL, it's TOS will probably also have grown. Today, the people behind this grid has nice titles like "CEO/Developer" (a clear contradiction in terms in established businesses LOL, how great it would be if they decided to keep it so! But there are foul forces in play in the business world sigh) So I raise Cris' Theorem regarding legalese in virtual worlds: "The page count of the TOS of any virtual world is proportional to its population and size of management."

In Norway, we have a beloved author of children books called Torbjørn Egner. In one of his books, The Peoples and Robbers of Cardemon Town, he formulates an even simpler law: The Law of Cardemon:

You should not bother others,

you should be nice and kind,

otherwise you can do as you please.

I think that will be the terms of service for entering my SIM:-)

15 of 52 - At the dragons nest

Few get to witness the birth of a dragon. Ninka called me over to look at the one she has started to make. Gorgeous textures; really feel lifelike hoovering above me:-) Will be awesome when she is done, I have no doubt!

RL work is still taking its tolls, and I seem to spend more time blogging about SL that actually living an SL. Sigh; it's kind of easier having a blog editor open while working. SL takes too much attention. Buts it's a frustrating SLife atm. And I miss a lot of my friends.

Take care, all of you:-)

Server 1.38 - bigger than viewer 2.0?

LL has just announced the beta of Server version 1.38, scheduled for roll-out in April. Now, why is this great news?

One of the new features of server 1.38 is llSetLinkPrimitiveParamsFast(). It will allow a script in a root prim to control other prims in the link set, without a 0.2 second sleep as the previously available llSetLinkPrimitiveParams imposed.

The great upside of this is that for objects with moving parts (for instance, the Drama Dolls), it will reduce the need for having a script in each prim to do animations. As you can see on the illustration above, its quite a few scripts:-) /me hurts in the head just remembering all that coding.... Fewer scripts means less memory usage, and less memory usage means less load on the server, leading to less lag:-)

In the Drama Queen set, there are 25 scripts that could probably have been replaced with code in the root prim script using this function. That's 1.6 Mb of memory at rez time - not to mention all the work on creating and maintaining all those really small bits of code and the interface between them.

There are a few other nifty bug fixes too, although not revolutionary. What I really like about the 1.38 announcement is the attitude it shows: LL seems determined to fix server side stuff and script functionality to make SL work smoother. So it's not all bells and whistles and big spaceships GUI's, but grinding nuts and bolts too.

And while viewer 2.0 is highly controversial, I have yet to see big protests against the 1.38 features.

We are heading for a more flexible script environment where there will be limitations on script resources on a per parcel / per avatar basis, but where one will also have better control on these resources. It will also be possible to allocate far more resources to some scripts, which may be real helpful.

So, while Server 2.0 is still a long way into the future, its nice to get at least some attention on the server side problems too.

International Womans Day

Today is the International Womans Day, a day celebrated (at least here in Norway, where socialism is not considered a foul word LOL) by those wanting to oppose the long-time oppression of half of the worlds population.

From putting baby girls into the woods, through child porn and prostitution, rape and murder, woman are treated badly around the globe, so one can't deny the need for a day to fight womans rights. Sure, those of us living in the western hemisphere have less problems in this respect (even stock concervative US of A almost got a female president at the latest crossroad LOL), but it's still a problem. And it's a problem for us males as well, because when you oppress people to secure your own position, you will miss a lot of the things the oppressed people could have contributed to society.

An interesting news story about equal opportunities from my country: Ski-jumping is a classic sport, and until recently it was an all-male gig, but female jumpers have developed lately. However, there have been a lot of resistance among the "old-school boys" regarding this. As recent as 2004, the leading female ski-jumper, Anette Sagen, was denied jumping in our largest sky jump hill merely because the chairman felt it was inappropriate for woman.


Outside of the closed circles of the old men governing the sport this was met with amused anger. So when the newly renovated Holmenkollen ski jump in Oslo was opened a week ago, the city council (who paid for the fun, and really, if you spend USD200 million on something you really deserve a say or two) decided that Anette Sagen should be given the honour of the first jump.

But typically enough: The night before the official opening, all the major male ski jumpers was gathered to "test" the hill before the official opening, and it was actually our most successful male jumper that made the first jump. If this was merely an increadible short-sighted decision or the last attempt by the old school to take a revenge is hard to say. But it's been the main news story here in Norway for a week, culiminating in the exclusion of said jumper from the next two large jump events.

So there you go. One might say we make drama out of really nothing. We don't need the womans day anymore. Others will say that we will need the day forever, to make sure the world don't start running in reverse.

But anyhow: This post was meant to be a positive one, and a big "thank you" to all the great and talented woman in Second Life I have either met, or just admired the wonderful creations of.

Happy womans day, weather you feel a need to celebrate it or not!

Snaily day and a new peacock

PC and internet trouble forced me on to the mini PC with a cellular modem... the statistics shot above was actually nice, when I started I got a sim ping time of more than 8 seconds....

For those of you not knowing the details in this tool: FPS shows how many pictures are rendered every seconds. As you know, a movie runs at 24 FPS, if you get less than that then movements begin to look jerky. So 1.7... I will say no more:-)

Bandwith says something about the capacity for download, particularily for textures. The less this value, the longer SL takes to download all the textures in the scene. 599 is actually not bad.

Ping sim on the other hand says how long it takes the client to get a response on a sent signal. If that value is high, you are in trouble. 8 seconds means that if you press the up arrow to start moving forward, other persons will see you start moving in the sim 4 seconds later. You, however, will not see yourselves move until 8 seconds after you pressed the key. And if the server finds out you are bouncing into a wall, and sends the client a message saying "stop", it will take several seconds until it gets that message, and in between you may drift uncontrolled into space. Sometimes the message never gets through, and you crash:-( So, sim ping time is a nice thing to look up for.

Now I'm off home to debug my connection. Ninka sent me her new peacock, but I just kept crashing trying to unpack it.... Looking forward to see it for real!

13 of 52 - Send in the Clowns

Four of the olympic games last amateurs are ready for the final against Canada, and that's really cool. Yes, it's a joy to watch the girls win the cross country skiing relay, but somehow the taste is a bit dry in the mouth, because we know the size of the support organization behind it, and all the money spent just to gain those few extra seconds to get a medal. Our clowns had to pay for their own trousers:-)

Viewer 2.0's tight http/media integration promises great possibilities. But to really make use of those you actually have to have access to a web server. And you need a server that is running 24/7, communicating with your vendors or whatever gadgets you use in your store.

Even worse, if you plan to sell anything with an HTML-based GUI or HUD, the end user of your products will be dependent on you keeping that web server running. If you make a glitch, the great menu driven bed with HTML HUD you sold a lot of may die under their naked avatar skins - just imagine how popular that will make you:-)

In short, any product that is dependent on an external server is no longer a self-contained product in-world, but more of a service. This has two implications:

• A service should not be sold as a product with the customer expectations that it should run inside SL forever. Instead, it should be licensed as a service with periodic payment to cover your hosting costs. That's the only fair way to treat the buyers of your products.

• A larger percentage of SL's gross products will be services, instead of ever-lasting products. This will counter the problems of ever-lasting items that is slowing down the economy (if you perceive that as a problem)

Finally, since a lot of the best products will actually be externally hosted services, it will be even harder for amateurs to compete in SL. Just as it is in the olympics. A lot of us will avoid establishing a responsibility to run servers for our in-world customers, leaving those markets to the professionals.

I do wish that LL would start a kind of hosting program for HTML pages and images; they do host our textures now, why should they not host our media based content based on the same model: Pay once for the upload, LL provides the hosting for the common good of all SL inhabitants. I guess the answer is simple: LL really would prefer most content to be sold by professionals. They no longer care for our world - our imagination. Sad.

But I guess in the end, a clever SL amateur creator with a good idea may still succeed in this world - just as our guys in their genius idea of an outfit. So please: Send in the clowns!

Second Second Life? SL Viewer 2.0 is here!

I was just checking my account on the SL web page when I noticed the banner advertising the much-heralded Viewer 2.0. Downloaded, eager to check weather this would be the end of the world as we know it.

When logging in, the first thing I noticed was that the entire window was covered with panels LOL. After getting rid of a few, I got a screen like the one above.

There are lots of nice new features here; I particularily loved not having to click off all the blue group screen messages when logged in; they are available in a pop-up menu at the bottom.

Notice the navigational bar at top, making the view a bit like a web browser. One can click the Back button to TP to the previous TP location, and forward works too! And, a row of buttons, just like the Firefox navigational bar elimenates the need to sort through your inventory when moving around to your most-visited places. Does not seem possible to drop a folder there though, to get sub menus aka Firefox.

Lots of information is showing in the various dialogs, without the need to open new windows. And when I opened a message informing me of someone giving me an item, I could click on the name of the item and the inventory would open on that item!

The interface will take a bit getting used to, but for now I must say I really like the main ideas. Do have a try!

Dominos in Old York!

I was working a little with my booth in Old York when Roland Francis, the creator and owner of the city, came by. He seemed to like my dominoes; he actually bought a set and started to fill the open space with bricks. They will be standing there for demo purposes for a week now; I hope people will like them:-)


We got help from an attractive girl in gorgeous white leather boots to test the cannon; it worked fine, but when asked "what is this?" I really had problems knowing what to call it. A game? A decoration? A toy? Any suggestions appreciated!

Anyway, the bricks are now available in Old York, in my shop and on xstreetsl.

11 of 52 - Temple Obscurum

Got on SL the other day, not really knowing what to do, so I just opened up the Showcase window. The title Temple Obscurum cathced my eyes, so I decided to have a look (Taxi here).

Apart from a real coolish blue look, and lots of dreamy details, there are a few dogs or wolfs roaming around:


Luckily, they seemed peaceful enough, but I guess they did contribute the lag of the place.


The scenery was beautiful, but all the moving textures and scripted items made a lag that somehow took away the fun of exploring, at least for me.


I ended up walking in the river because I constantly fell off the narrow bridges:-)



Outside, the whole place is covered by green tree-top like sculpted mega-prims, really nicely done.

The pics does not do the beauty of the place justice (as perhaps did not my laptop), so go have a look for yourselves if you need a blue dreamy place:-)

HiRez SL

I usually run SL on "mid-class" hardware, that is normally powered computers with decent, but not top-of-the-line graphics cards. This weekend I got the opportunity to test SL on a friends "gamer computer" (he's a WoW addict, LOL), and that was a real eye-opening experience. Walking around the world with graphics all set on max, and still have 30fps, the Apollo Sims looked even more beautiful than I can remember them.

Still, things took a long time to rez, but I guess it's just that loading every prim within 512m range takes a while, even with the 1Mb network speed I got on the server connection.


The images are high-rez, click on them to view the full detail.

The image Steven Jobs did not show...

... but you know you want it!

As of yet we don't know enough about the graphics processor in the iPad to say anything about the possibility of an SL client app. Apple is designing the chip-set themselves, and they have not told anyone if they have found room for 3D hardware rendering with OpenGL drivers. But since even some Mini PCs that Jobs despises so much can handle SL, we can hope!

Update: Rumours have it that the chip inside the iPad is based on the PowerVR chipset, supposedly exceeding the OpenGL 2.0 specs. Cool!

8 of 52 - How to make real money in SL - LL publishes Q4 results

Linden Lab revealed their Q4 and year end statistics this week. It inspired me to put all the dollars I've earned this year in a jar and having my alt sprinkle them over me.

LOL, dream on, Cristopher!

(btw, the dollar bill emitter is on sale in my shop for the crazy low price of L$10 if you can find it in the note rain.... will put up a vendor on the wall real soon now...)

Truth is, it's hard to make real money in SL, but a few people manages really well. 50 accounts took more than USD$100.000,- in profit out of SL last year, the top 25 accounts alone more that US$12 million, that is almost half a million dollar apiece. In sum, businesses took US$55 million out of SL.

The most impressive is that these figures represents actual earnings, that is money taken out of SL AFTER tier and ads are paid to Linden Lab (since I don't expect anyone to process credit to PayPal and then use PayPal to pay tier, much easier to just let your dollar sit on your balance and let the lindens draw from that.)

How do you make that kind of money in SL? That is, half a million US a year?

If you sell clothing, lets say outfits for L$400, you have to sell 337.500 sets a year. That is 925 a day, or almost 40 per hour. And that does not cover your tier, which will be a few thousand bucks, because the kind of traffic you need to handle that kind of sale have to be spread on several sims. And not to mention the cost of ads; you need to spend tens of thousands of lindens every week to make it to the top of the search.

And since no women I know will ever buy an outfit worn by 337.499 other women in SL, you have to have, lets say about 350 different outfits, each selling 1000 pieces a year. And btw, you can't expect any outfit to sell much more than a year, fashion moves on, so you need to create at least one new outfit every day.

It's probably more than a full time job, you need a few employees for clothing design, shop design, customer support and so on. This is a big operation!

Or you could make some expensive goods, like the Kama Sutra HUD. The creator claims to have sold 100.000 copies; at L$3750 a piece thats almost USD1.4 million split on a few years. But it takes a lot of creation and marketing skill to come up with such a success. Not many people do, but at least its theoretically possible to manage it on your own.

Some people makes money on land rentals. If you were in the Homestead marked, you may make US$50/month in net profit per sim, IF you have really nice sims and support. Then you would need to have almost 900 sims for rent to make half a million a year.

As these three examples show, its very hard to set up a business doing this kind of money. Which makes me suspect that these avatars are not in the clothing, scripted gadgets or land rental marked. My guess is that they are making money from the business that is powering the web: Sex.

As I understand it, lots of males are very happy to sign off 30 US/month on their CC to watch porn on the net. SL have the added advantage of anonymity; you can pay for your movies and pictures in L$'s.

You actually just need 1400 horny males paying US$30/month to watch the same porn movies also easily available in RL to make halv a million a year. 1400 customers are so much easier to handle than 337.500,-, and you certainly don't need 900 SIMs to handle them either. If 5 percent of your customers are online at any time, you need the capacity to show movies to 70 people at a time, a feat easily handled by lets say 4 sims.

OK, thats my theory. But does it make sense? Is it actually true? Watch this space next week when I hope to do an actual survey of the sex marked in SL, to check if someone has implemented my business idea already:-)