Second Effects

CopyCornered!

2009-11-05T19:19:00.000-08:00

Today is a special day - it’s the Step Up! for content creators day. It’s a grid-wide protest, attempting to bring attention to the ongoing issue of content theft. You’ve heard about it before; rip-off artists show up with advanced tools that instantly nab perfect copies of virtual creations, then set up shop with cloned items at discount prices. Or worse, they give away full-permission copies of the stolen goods, thus destroying the creator’s business forever. I wish this protest succeeds.

Many ask Linden Lab to fix the problem. Get rid of those thieves! Ban those viewers! Delete the stolen copies! But it’s just not that easy.

There’s a fundamental problem in the design of virtual worlds.

As everyone knows, you run a viewer on your workstation, and it communicates with the servers back at the Lab. But what does that mean, exactly? At it’s most basic level, it means that the servers send descriptions and locations of objects to the viewer so that it can draw them on your screen. Yes, you guessed it: object designs and the textures to paint on them are sent directly to the viewer.

A viewer with a criminal twist could simply record those descriptions and textures for later use, regardless of their original permissions. A special command could later “replay” the recordings and thus create exact duplicates with new permissions. That’s how copybot, builderbot and other such tools work.

As long as the viewer respects the original permissions, things are not so bad. But there’s really nothing stopping a viewer from ignoring permissions other than the intentions of the programmer.

Why can programmers do this? It’s because they have the source code to build new viewers. Linden Lab gave everyone access to the code (open sourcing) in an effort to spur original feature development and experimentation some time ago. But the price for doing so was to enable nefarious feature development, too.

Some say the Linden Lab should restrict the viewers able to connect to the grid to ensure only well-behaved viewers have access to the object descriptions and textures. I suppose that’s possible by issuing special digital keys for authorized viewers, but the notion that Linden Lab would have to certify each viewer by examining every line of code seems impractical. That’s what they’d have to do to ensure nothing bad could happen. Worse, they’d have to do a line-by-line code inspection for every new version as well. I just can’t see that happening because it would take so much effort. Even if it was attempted, it could only be done for a small number of viewers, meaning that the original purpose of open sourcing the code (many experiments and new feature development) would be severely compromised.

Probably the only course of action that could practically work would be to allow only Linden Lab-built viewers to access the grid. Then copy functions would be entirely controllable. But you’d lose out on all the very interesting open source development.

Even if that were done, copying would still take place, just not quite as automated. One of my shop owner friends was a constant victim of manual copying. Each week she deployed new and original items, and each week a competitor would come by to see what was built and then duplicate it as best they could. There’s not much that can be done about that.

Because it’s pretty much the same in real life.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/biwook/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

Spurt!

2009-10-29T20:57:00.000-07:00

I attended Tymmerie Thorne’s amazing Halloween party the other night, where I saw many totally amazing costumes. I believed mine to be pretty good, but it paled in comparison to most of the others, especially Tym’s iron cage skirt, which must have been rather heavy.

A key theme of the party was, of course, blood. It was smeared all over the floor, walls, oozing from various body parts lying about and especially on clothing. There was even a kind of blood-sprayer on the floor wetting everyone down with the red stuff. By the way, if you haven't yet seen this build, I strongly recommend you take a look before Tym and Jerremy take it down. I especially liked the giant ants that devoured noobs, limb by limb.

While I had blood dripping from the corner of my mouth, I felt more was required in that scene.

Taking initiative during a dance, I managed to create a rather realistic and terribly gross blood spurting effect. It looks like you managed to sever a key artery, and is quite shocking.

If you’re seeking a unique and totally horrifying item for your Halloween outfit, you might consider the Blood Spurter from Electric Pixels! (It's in the very dark Vampire section)

Anatomy of a Box

2009-10-24T06:06:00.000-07:00

In an attempt to increase sales, I’ve been fiddling with my product boxes, and thought readers might be interested to see what I’ve done.

But first, the problem: In this case, sales were low, and my new theory is that shoppers get most of their information about product simply from the visual on the box cover.

In the past (and currently) I’ve tried live demonstrations, which are pretty much mandatory for moving particle effects that cannot be properly shown on any box picture. I’ve also tried notecards: every box at my shop delivers an explanatory notecard upon touch.

But the images on my boxes were previously quite simple, having only an action shot and the product name. It occurred to me that the nature of the product was not clear by merely looking at the old boxes. You had to either run the demonstration or read the notecard to "get it". I believe the demo and notecard are extra steps that some shoppers wouldn’t bother to do, and that they’d rely only on the box image.

My strategy was to replace the box images with something much more informative. But what to put on them? Here’s what I did:

(Click on the image above for a more detailed view)

Consistency: Every single box has exactly the same style, size, fonts, layout and colors. The idea is that once people get familiar with one box, they will much more easily read other boxes. This is the same way grocery products are labeled.
Information: The familiar “i” icon can be touched for immediate delivery of an informative notecard. If shoppers don’t recognize the “i”, it says “Click for Info!” as a reminder.
Quantities: The number of prims and objects is stated. While this doesn’t make much sense for particles, which are most often a single invisible prim, shoppers often ask this question. Answer it here before they can ask.
Permissions: Another question that is frequently asked is the object’s permissions. Unlike clothing or skins, particles are often sold as Transfer, no-copy.
Description: This is a very important feature, I believe, as it may be the only way some shoppers find out what the item actually does, because it is faster than reading a notecard. The trick is to clearly capture the essence of the product in as few words as possible.
Colors: I used colors to help people understand the permissions scheme, with green and red helping to convey the meaning.
Titles: While the product name is an obvious inclusion, it should be prominent and not confused with anything else. Also, I've added my store name as a bit of extra advertising.
Image: The most difficult feature is the image, as it must carry a vision of the product at a glance, much like a book cover. The image has to accurately portray the product in a setting that matches the product’s intent. The background must complement the product, and the viewing angle, model's "look" and model’s pose must also match the theme. This turns out to be fairly difficult to do, and took me the most time to do. Above you can see an image of one of my particle effects that tries to show the feeling of the product's motion in a still frame. These are very hard to do.

What did I not do?

Price: I did not put the product price on the box, even though this appears to be a common practice. My reason was simple: once on the box, you kinda have set the price permanently, unless you redo the box texture and upload again, at your cost. Imagine trying to have a sale where all 200 products suddenly must have new textures! In any case, the price is available by simply mousing over the box.
Language: You’ve probably noticed that all wording on the boxes are written in English, yet many customers speak other languages. I debated whether to have multiple box covers, but in the end felt that it was far too much work to do, and the information portrayed would be much greater than before in any case. It's my belief that most people are accustomed to seeing English products - and my monitors tell me that by far the majority of visitors to the store have set English as their language.
Fractional Textures: It’s possible to save a bit of money by creating textures that hold 4 box images in a 2x2 matrix. You could, for example, fit four 512x512 box images into a single 1024x1024 texture. By adjusting the offsets on your boxes, you can display the desired image only. This could save you 75% of your upload costs, and visitors would have a simplified texture rez experience (fewer, but larger textures to load). I didn’t do this, but could have if I had the time to do so (it’s more work to do this). One issue with this approach occurs when you need to change one image - you might end up redoing the other three, or at least must keep track of several versions of the multi-texture.

It was a terribly large amount of work to redo all my boxes, as I have around 200 different items for sale at Electric Pixels. The better part of two weeks was spent designing, shooting, photoshopping and uploading. But in the end, I believe it was worth it, as sales have significantly improved since the new boxes went out. The most interesting effect was that different items are being sold now - proving that box images are indeed very important for shoppers.

Collaborating Outside Second Life

2009-10-17T14:25:00.000-07:00

Like most virtual designers, I am often collaborating with other designers or clients in efforts to build something or other. Initially this was pretty easy, as Second Life is a pretty decent environment for collaboration: You’ve got voice, text and can exchange images via textures, or even build small prototypes for visual demonstration. Often I’d use email to send material to and fro. Nevertheless, I’ve found the SL environment is often insufficient for certain types of collaboration.

So what do I do? Simple: I make use of several free or low-cost web services. There are the obvious choices for sharing information, such as Twitter, Plurk, Flickr and YouTube, but there are several other highly useful services you might not use:

Google Apps: If you haven’t tried Gapps, you should. It’s free and provides some amazing services. Imagine being able to build and access a spreadsheet from anywhere you can access a web browser. Further imagine being able to invite others to “participate” in the spreadsheet, and watching them changing cells in real time. Now try that with documents and presentations, too! Gapps is well thought out and indispensable.

Skype: The ubiquitous voice service now provides more than just voice, but now includes video, file transfer, instant messaging and other great features. Get it now if you haven’t already! You’ll find it most useful for discussing projects with team members when you are not in-world.

Dropbox: Dropbox is a wonderful tool that provides a completely free 2Gb virtual disk. What’s the big deal? The disk appears just as if it’s installed on your machine, but is in fact somewhere far away on the Internet. You can put this virtual disk on several machines - I use it to share files between my laptop and desktop machines. The best part is the ability to add others to your disk - and thus you can seamlessly share files between people simply by drag & drop into the shared folder and it’s automatically updated on shared dropboxes. Indispensable! If 2Gb is too small for you, you can certainly buy more.

Delicious: The biggest social bookmarking service is Delicious, where you can share a stream of URLs with others. There are also several browser plug-ins that make creation of bookmarks a breeze.

Etherpad: It’s an incredibly simple multi-user shared text editor. What’s that mean? A page you can edit with others in real time. Different colors show you who’s changed what, as everyone types at the same time. Cut and paste the resulting text into a notecard and get your collaboration done much faster.

YouSendIt: Files too big for email? YouSendIt will come to your rescue, as it enables direct sending of bulk files. It’s not quite instant, but one of the best ways to get a lot of data moving.

Tinypaste: It’s another instant service for storing a chunk of text. Again, very useful for keeping notecard-style information in a semi-permanent state. As long as you can remember the obscure URL, that is...

Are these the only services to use? Not at all - there are dozens, perhaps hundreds more, and those above are simply the ones I use. Which services do you use? Tell us in the comments below.

Seasonal Stuff

2009-10-12T13:39:00.000-07:00

I haven’t done any shameless advertising on this blog for quite a while, so I thought I’d mention a few items in my shop that you might find very appropriate for the season. And that season is of course Autumn (at least in the Northern Hemisphere) and Halloween (in both Hemispheres).

For Halloween I have several particle effects involving bats. Bat Hair Day, seen above, produces teeny-tiny bats around your face. It’s on sale in the “Pretty” department at Electric Pixels.

If you need more bats, the Batty effect makes your own personal flock of bats. For room-sized clouds of bats, the BatMaker or BatMaker Thick effects can be installed for your Halloween party and have bats buzzing around all your guests.

CandyGiver is a Halloween basket that you wear on your hand. When you do, it scans the area and asks you to whom it should give candy. Once you select someone, a stream of rather sweet candy items flows to them. It and the Bat effects are available in the “Occasions” department at Electric Pixels.

You might also find something spooky in the “Vampire” department, which has a variety of demonic and evil items.

One of the items I’m very happy with is LeafMaker, which produces a scene of beautiful falling leaves. They’re several different colors and based on real leaves, but the effect works because of their motion. It really feels like you’re standing in a forest at that special moment when all the leaves are falling down around you. I also have several species of falling leaves: red, yellow or brown, in both “thick” or not-so-thick packages. Just place the emitter in your tree, and leaves fall gently the ground.

Have a great Fall and Halloween, everyone!

Lennon in the Sky with Diamonds

2009-10-07T19:49:00.000-07:00

The amazing SL artist Eshi Otawara has done it again: she's built a work of 3D art that's quite amazing in a way I haven't seen before. This time it's a tribute to the late Beatle John Lennon, entitled, "Anamorphosys of John Lennon". The work has a beautiful flower base, an element typical of her designs, and has several classic Lennon icons floating above. The icons are not simply a texture upload, but are in fact three-dimensional and built from many twisted prims.

She's built this amazing display as a tribute to Lennon, as it is the musician's birthday on 9 October. The main tribute to Lennon will of course be the Peace Tower, commissioned by Yoko Ono (details here).

I asked Eshi about this work:

John is an artist who was always ahead of its time. I am thrilled with life to have been honoured with being able to make my little expression for this exhibit.

Eshi is relocating the exhibit at the moment, so I cannot provide a SLURL for you to visit. But if you get the chance, definitely take the time to see it. Tip: make sure you cam under the water and look up.

[UPDATE] It appears that the new location is right here.

ArminasX Gets Upset

2009-10-04T11:33:00.000-07:00

This is a tale of Real Life, but it’s also a tale of Second Life.

It starts in Real Life, where I happened to be dining with a couple dozen folks, and by chance I was sitting across from an older fellow. As with many of his age, his viewpoints on most things were very traditional. But he was also quite outspoken and freely told everyone his thoughts.

Meanwhile, I am a very open and tolerant person, and have been my entire RL. I believe others should be able to believe what they wish, so long as it doesn’t harm anyone else.

During the course of the evening, the older fellow began saying things that increasingly bothered me. Things like: which cars were "definitely" the best; that he knew better than the authorities; that certain lifestyles were “not normal”, and immediately discounting any views different from his own. Some of the things he said, I am quite certain, would have caused some readers of this blog to leap across the table and physically engage him.

I’ve encountered this type of person before, and usually I just write them off as uninformed and intolerant and then ignore them. They are free to believe what they wish, and I ignored him. But there was something different about this encounter. It just bothered me, much more than previous incidents.

But why did it bother me more this time? My theory is where the tale ends: Second Life.

In SL one is constantly exposed to the amazing, the fantastic, the creepy, the unusual and rarely, the traditional. I believe that after almost three years of virtual life seeing anything and everything, and realizing that everyone is indeed a real person with real thoughts and feelings, regardless of what they think, what they do and especially what they look like, my level of tolerance has grown significantly. I’m hypertolerant.

And then I encounter this guy at dinner. And I’m shocked. Shocked at his level of intolerance, because it is now so terribly far away from my new level of tolerance.

Some say Second Life is good for education, to make money, to collaborate or to create. Maybe there’s something else.

Something... necessary. And that’s more tolerance.

SL Bloggers at the Particle Lounge

2009-09-30T19:50:00.000-07:00

As promised, the semi-regular SL blogger's get-together went down at my lounge this past weekend. It was terrific fun, thanks to organizer extraordinary Tymmerie Thorne, Haley Salomon and DJ Alicia Chenaux. There were a great many bloggers present, some I had not met and others who were old pals. I did manage to snap a few pictures during the busy event. Well, actually over a hundred, to be honest. Here's just a few.

Space Alien Tymmerie Thorne presided over the event by go-go dancing on one of the floating platforms far above everyone else. She handed out prizes and issued various quote-worthy statements, but I am sworn not to publish them.

Builder/Blogger Prad Prathivi found it most comfortable under the floor, here seen chatting with Guenevere DeCuir. The elusive Prad chatted with party-goers who kept looking for him, but could not find him.

DJ Alicia took part in the spacey theme by wearing a rather unusual hat. Or is it a hat at all?

Bone Mosten was completely weaponized, wearing almost nothing but guns!

Veyron Supercharge made an extremely rare SL appearance and thrilled everyone with her usual amazing attire. She wasn't the only rare visitor, as Night Morrisey and a few others also made appearances.

Codebastard Redgrave and Lillie Yifu chat amidst the blue fog. Watch out for those tentacles, Codie!

As the party progressed, things got a little crazy.

Everyone wore spacey outfits, but my favorite had to be Rosie Barthelmess, whose polar bear avatar wore a space helmet and jet-pack. I can't tell you how amusing it was to dance with a space-helmeted polar bear, bobbing her head up and down in tune with the music. It's not reality, it's SL.

Second Life Blogger’s Party - Fall 2009!

2009-09-24T19:36:00.000-07:00

Yep, that’s right, it’s time for another blogger’s party. They are supposed to be monthly, but somehow that never actually happens. Much like consistent blogging, it’s hard to do. This time I’m hosting, for the first time ever! But please don’t think it’s due to my efforts - the real magician behind this event is master organizer Tymmerie Thorne, who makes things happen for SL bloggers.

The event takes place in my store, Electric Pixels at the secretly located Particle Lounge. It’s a rather strange place, as you will see. When? It all goes down on this Sunday, Sept 27th from 12-2PM SLT, and you can get there via this SLURL.

There will be conversation, dancing, music (courtesy of DJ Alicia Chenaux), controversy (perhaps, it IS the bloggers, after all) and a lot of fun. The theme for this event is “Spacey”, so you might want to wear a spacesuit, helmet, jet pack or a 22d century outfit.

Who’s invited? Certainly any member of the Second Life Bloggers in-world group or the corresponding Ning group. These groups and this event are open to anyone who blogs about Second Life or even posts Second Life pictures on Flickr. Or anyone else, for that matter - if you want to meet up with your favorite blogger, please drop by!

Oh! One more thing: when you arrive at Electric Pixels, just follow the signs and take the dangerous step...

Hide Your Products!

2009-09-19T21:16:00.000-07:00

I performed an interesting experiment this week at my store, Electric Pixels. Like most SL business owners, I’ve experienced a downturn over the past year, and it’s still not great. However, by keeping my expenses low I’ve managed to survive. But there’s still a concern over how to grow sales. I’ve tried various strategies, including completely rebuilding my shop in a new way to be more inviting to visitors.

The original philosophy of the shop was to make it easy for visitors to shop. I had experienced visiting many stores where products were scattered across several rooms, resulting in awkward situations:

Having to find out how to move from room to room (might require opening doors, navigating difficult stairways, or even - argh - teleports!)
Fighting with camera controls to scan the area
Not realizing there was yet another room around the corner

I felt that the segmented shop design might be a detriment to sales because impatient shoppers would not put up with the troubles of locating items within the store and quickly move on to other places. After all, the next location is merely a click away.

My approach was to make an open store, where all “departments” were visible; no surprises, everything clearly marked. However, sales never were quite as good as the previous store design.

Friend Peter Stindberg suggested (more than once) that one issue with the new design might be texture rezzing. Because all my departments are visible, the SL viewer must load all textures within view - and this takes time. I didn’t really notice this effect since my computer and network are pretty good. However, those with less than adequate equipment could have been presented with a scene full of anonymous grey boxes. I wasn’t so sure, but thought this was worth an experiment.

My approach was rather trivial: I simply placed a obscuring wall in front of each separate department, closing off the view of the product boxes. This would eliminate a ton of texture rezzing for any visitor. Of course, once the visitor entered a department by passing through the obscuring wall, they’d have to rez the textures for the relevant product boxes. But there would be far fewer to rez at one time.

What was the result? Strangely, sales actually doubled for the days following the wall change. This means that Peter’s hypothesis was correct! My thoughts:

Visitors with poor equipment saw grey product boxes and impatiently left before purchasing
There are likely a great many people with poor equipment. Perhaps the majority? (Hm, what does this imply for Blue Mars??)
Visitors are drawn into the now hidden departments to see what’s there because the wall obscures everything

There may be other effects happening here, but in any case it seems to have improved things. Experiments are a Good Thing.

Is It a Real Mouse?

2009-09-13T21:25:00.000-07:00

There’s many builds in SL that are a representation of a real-life area or building. Some are very precise, and some not so. But regardless, they are always a lot more fun when you’ve been to the real location first, and then encounter its virtual equivalent.

This week I bumped into a region just like that: Mouse World. It’s intended to be a replica of Walt Disneyworld (or Disneyland, they’re pretty similar). No, it’s not built by Disney at all, as screams the signage as you enter:

Mouse World is not affiliated with, maintained by, or in any way officially connected with the Walt Disney Company or any of it’s business units.

This site has been created for Disney fans, by Disney fans.

Our views and opinions are not endorsed by, nor are they associated with The Walt Disney Company in any way.

All Disney character images and some photographs are Copyright The Walt Disney Company.

It turns out to be a very close replica, nevertheless. Having been to Disneyworld in real life several times, I wondered whether I would be disappointed upon visiting “Mouse World”.

Upon arrival, I found myself on this monorail platform, which is actually one of the main ways to arrive at the Magic Kingdom (it’s one of several actual Disneyworld parks and Mouse World is modeled after it).

I then followed the tortuous sequence of ramps, stairs and hallways to arrive at the main entry area of the Magic Kingdom and gazed out at the shops. At this point the eerie feeling began. I somehow knew this area. I’d been there before, in real life. Yes, somehow the entry path from the monorail “registered” in my head in the same slot as the real area.

As I traveled through the park, I mean region, there were many rides and exhibits, and they were in just the right places, through the right corridor and around the right corner. Among the rides was the Haunted Mansion.

Hah, I thought - they duplicated everything except the food, which is all over the place in the real life Disneyworld. But no, there it was, the “Lunch Pad” in Tomorrowland, just like it was in real life. You can get burgers and hot dogs there, but unfortunately none of those wonderful mouse-ear-shaped ice cream bars.

Another very entertaining ride was the Jungle Cruise. As you awkwardly float past kitchy and stereotypical displays, your tour guide explains with jokes so bad they began to be hysterical. Some examples:

Skipper whispers: That's no house cat over there on your left. Bengal Tigers can jump over 20 feet, and we must be at least, well... 15 feet away! Don't worry, he'll jump right over us.

Skipper whispers: Since we are in an area filled with rare tropical foliage, I'd like to take a moment to point out some of the plants to you. There's one over there, and there's one over there, and one over there...

At that point, I realized how much fun this area truly is. It’s not the greatest build, but somehow the designers managed to capture not only the Disney layout, but a touch of the Disney entertainment magic, too. You can visit Mouse World here.

Keywording

2009-09-04T19:24:00.000-07:00

I read a very interesting post by friend Alicia Chenaux (and linked by New World Notes), in which she inspected her blog stats to discover the hysterically funny keywords readers had used to find her blog. There’s comedy gold hidden in those keywords, which are literally the text people have typed into Google, Bing or other search engines and led them to your page. I decided to take a good look at mine. (Note to self: don’t commit to reading over 4000 keywords ever again.)

Much of the keywords are quite obvious and directly relate to popular posts. But then there are some strange ones. How these led to my blog is a matter of conjecture:

"famous french blogs"
2009 email in haskell 81+358 ''yahoo.com''
bar graphs on movie ticket sales for 2009
effects of ick
tooter claxton is the name of the fist's
where can you get new effects for cheese

There were a great many “vanity” searches for avatar names. Yes, I saw them all. You Know Who You Are. And then there was this, perhaps an unusual type of advertising?

sine wave the biggest store in second life

Some were variations on my more popular posts, such as the avatar naming series:

badass avatar names
cool ass avatar names
need a cool avatar with my name on it

Hm, maybe I need a “cool ass” name?

Some were a bit ominous:

second life saiman passwort
builderbot download
how to copy textures with copybot
how to scare renters into leaving
linden lab employee bonus

Some revealed deep inner torment:

forgot avatar name second life
"nobody reads my blog"
why can't i find my name on plurk?
i am glad you are having fun

Apparently many people see search engines as a close friend who can help or confide in:

i see myself as a separate person
what are good things to say at confirmation
am i engaged?
number to call for long distance call
ive been busy
help! i need a cool avatar name
my name can't be that tough to pronounce

One of my good friends is Radar Masukami, but I am now wondering about him:

my name is radar
second life away from radar

My favorite two keyword searches were kinda personal:

armi linden
slcc 08 blog armi is cute

Keep ‘em coming!

Tonight Again!

2009-08-28T21:51:00.000-07:00

Quite some time ago I was honored to be a guest on Tonight Live with Paisley Beebe, one of SL’s most popular in-world shows. On Sunday I’ll be appearing on the show again due to an unexpected invitation from host Paisley.

What’s the occasion? I believe Paisley wants to quiz me about the recent SLCC held in San Francisco, California, which I (and she) attended. Not only did we both attend the convention, we hung out in Real Life several times and even managed to grab a wonderful midnight dinner together.

I’ll be appearing with two other amazing guests: Musician Gregg Huet with Machinimeister and 1st Question host Pooky Amsterdam. By the way, if you haven’t had the chance to attend Pooky’s show, I suggest you drop over to see it live sometime; they record almost every week (and if you’re not careful, Pooky will have you appearing on her next episode!)

The Tonight Live show starts at 6PM SLT on this Sunday, 30 August. Yes, it will be recorded, but there’s nothing better than watching live in the audience, and you can do so by teleporting to Paisley's Northpoint Studio.

I hope to see you there!

1000 Days

2009-08-23T16:09:00.000-07:00

It is hard for me to believe, but I am 1000 days old today! My virtual existence has so permeated my life I cannot believe it can be measured in mere days; centuries are more what it feels like, as the fast paced activities in Second Life make events seem they occurred a very long time ago.

The main thing to consider is that I survived. Most people, probably greater than 90%, never make it this far. I am pretty certain on a wall in Linden Lab there’s a chart that goes something like this:

The bluey areas represent the mass of people that survive each state. Going from left to right:

The Second Life website has piles of visitors, but only a few actually bother to register
Of those who register, only a small percentage login to the grid, create an avatar and survive the dreaded orientation without giving up
After orientation, avatars are unceremoniously dumped into typically hostile “welcome areas” where they are immediately beset upon by louts of various species. Many give up at this point
Emerging from the welcome area usually occurs when avatars find something useful and fun to do, like socializing, running a business, displaying their art, furthering a cause or playing a game. Those who don’t find something to do usually fade away

If you’ve made it all the way through those stages, congratulations! You’re one of the very, very few. And the most talented, too, because that seems to be a prerequisite for traversing all those stages.

My chart’s figures are only a guess, as we’ve seen only hints at these statistics from the Lab. But I imagine the shape of the curve is something like this. It may even be a lot thinner at the right-hand edge.

We now can also understand why the Lab spends time on the website, registration and orientation process - because if those stages are even slightly more successful, the latter stages will be flooded with many, many more avatars. And that’s just good business.

The Impossible Touch

2009-08-18T19:04:00.000-07:00

The Second Life Community Convention of 2009 has now concluded, and I’ve returned back to my normal existence, if it can be described as normal. My sluggish posting habits mean the details of the convention have already been reported elsewhere, but that’s not what I wanted to talk about anyway. Instead I want to describe the feelings and emotions that so strongly permeate SLCC.

Certainly there were some issues, but aside from the intermittent WiFi, cardboardish box lunches and the terribly confusing session schedule, my experience was identical to 2008; magic things happened constantly that made me and everyone else smile.

Some of those smiling moments can be seen in my photostream and others, but there were many, and here are some of them:

That profoundly special moment when you first lay eyes on a stranger, someone whose face is completely new, never seen before; whereupon you suddenly realize it is the atomic version of a very dear friend you’ve spent many hours with in-world. Handshakes, hugs commence, and frequently screaming, too. But mostly hugs, and very long and intense ones at that.
Chatting with the talented and the successful, be they well known like Anshe Chung, Hamlet Au, Beyers Sellers or those I’d not heard of previously like Zinnia Zauber or Elizabeth Zeno. And how could I forget a memorable midnight dinner with Paisley Beebe and Yxes Delacroix!
Meeting the amazing Ms. Bettina Tizzy, who reluctantly attended SLCC for the first time only after massive arm-twisting. But during the event she came to realize how powerful and important it is to be physically with other avatars and bravely admitted so in front of the crowd. I think this event won’t be the last time we will see her.
At the musician’s ball, when Mariis Mills leaned over, and with wide blue eyes, she whispered into my ear, “Armi, I have only a small blog. But my blogroll has your blog in it. And his (points at Dusan Writer sitting beside me) and hers (points at Bettina on the other side of the table) and his (points at Crap Mariner beside Bettina) and his (points at Hamlet Au standing nearby)”. Although Mariis didn’t mention them, Anshe Chung and Metanomics’ Beyers Sellers also sat at our table, with Paisley Beebe standing near. It was awesomely surreal.
The amazing talent that exuded through every pore of the convention, be it Cylindrian Rutabaga singing in the lobby, Eshi Otawara whipping up Swan sketches in seconds, Jopsy Pendragon flying miniature virtual Sopwith Camels, Filthy Fluno continuously arting for hours, Ina Centaur’s brilliant observations, Persephone Phoenix describing Slam Poetry at 4AM or Dirk McKeenan composing lyrics on a napkin at a street cafe. How talented? Those talents were not limited to their normal skills - who knew Eshi and Beyers were tremendous singers?
Attending the astonishing Virtual Relationships session, attended by the most varied combination of people I’d seen in any of the sessions. The courageous presenter, Pamala Clift, deftly drove through a series of highly embarrassing topics that would challenge even the most seasoned public speakers, while audience members told tales of woe that shook everyone.
The laughter that accompanied everyone, everywhere (although especially near Bevan Whitfield and Sloan Skjellerup for some reason). I didn’t really notice until a gang of us were waiting for a table in the lobby of a very posh Italian restaurant, where we laughed, sat on each other, fell down, giggled and talked loudly of matters incomprehensible to non-SL’rs. I observed nearby staid restaurant patrons staring at our strangely dressed hysterical party and realized the strength of the emotions carried with us, as if a bubble of fun and fraternity surrounded us.
Talented though everyone was, no one can know everything. The spirit of the community meant that help was being dished out in every direction by everyone. Tips, demonstrations, fixes and instructions flowed constantly. In fact, during Hamlet’s SL Blogging Panel session, on which I participated, we helped questioners with some difficult blogging situations. Helping makes me smile, too.
The ebb and flow of people in the hotel lobby represented the respiration of the convention. Whether at high noon or 4AM, the lobby always had a group of avatars discussing, pondering, playing and especially laughing. As I left the hotel on the last day, the lobby was empty, confirming that the convention had truly concluded.
The mixed reality Musician’s Ball, where a live video/audio feed was piped in-world to Molaskey’s Pub for home-based avatars to enjoy. The in-world participants could see us; we could see the in-world avatars. And their local chat too.

But something strange happened. Many people present in the auditorium could not take their eyes off the local chat as it was displayed on the big screen. I stared too. Why, I asked myself, would we do that? It was as if we atomics wanted to reach out to those in-world.

And that’s when it really hit me; what this thing is really all about. Why emotions run so incredibly strong.

It’s about touching.

We spend time in-world with others, working, helping and interacting. So much time that for many of us, we become terribly close. But there’s a barrier, that being distance. Sure, we can “see” the other avatars, but we can’t smell them. We can’t see their body language, and sometimes we can’t even hear them. And we certainly can’t touch them.

But when the avatar is standing right in front of you, bridging that impossibly wide digital gap is as easy as reaching out with your hands. And so we did it, over and over again. We did it with handshakes, arm touches, kisses and especially hugs. Men and women, women and women and even men and men. Hugs so long and tight they were the most intense experience. The touch, always the touch, as if it would never occur again.

For a brief moment the impossible touch became possible in real life, and I’ll cherish that forever.

SLiding Into San Francisco!

2009-08-10T14:48:00.000-07:00

Last year was the first time I’d ever attended SLCC (the Second Life Community Convention), and in fact was the first time I met avatars in real life. It was shocking, exhausting, enlightening and endlessly fascinating. I gained many friends who’ve stayed with me ever since, and strengthened many existing virtual friendships.

Yes, I’m going again to SLCC 2009, this time located within the short-range proximity sensors of Linden Lab itself in the heart of San Francisco. I’m expecting the same kind of fun and amazement, with all the incredibly talented folks in attendance.

This year I go with a bit more knowledge of how such a convention works, and even have some friends going, too. Well, at least fifty, according to my list.

I know that some of you wanted to go too, but for financial or other reasons, were unable to make it. I wish you were there too. However, I’ll do my best to tweet/plurk during the event, and most likely will have an extensive writeup afterward.

Just don’t expect me to live-plurk Philip’s entire keynote from my iPhone like I did last year. My fingers never recovered.

Come to think about it, there were quite a few highly amusing plurks, all of which actually happened in real life. Hopefully no one gets arrested this year.

If there's someone attending you'd like me to say hello to, drop a comment here!

A Fleshy Encounter

2009-08-01T23:36:00.000-07:00

Many avatars remain just that; virtual people who communicate with other virtuals. Some reveal clues about their atomic identity, while others remain entirely hidden behind an identity firewall.

Sometimes that firewall can be breached, if one takes a chance. I first did so at last year’s SLCC in Tampa, where I actually met many atomics. Strangely, it turns out many of them do not actually resemble their avatar’s appearance.

Taking that big step across the virtual to atomic void can be filled with emotion. Fear, anxiety, happiness and curiosity are only some of the feelings that occur. But it’s always exhilarating.

I recently had the opportunity to do it again. This time I happened to be in London, UK, where I took a chance and asked my long time friend, blogger and artist Vint Falken if she wished to get together. She agreed!

Then there was the usual awkward first moment, when you think you recognize the other atomic and approach them. After all the online time, the blog posts, tweeting and plurking, the comments back and forth and projects we’ve done, we were finally together.

She doesn’t look like her avatar, either.

After a wonderful dinner we landed in Trafalgar Square watching zany amateur performance art. Soon we ended up talking with a photographer, who seemed interested in us. And that’s when things got weird.

Photographer: “So what do you guys do?”

Vint and I looked at each other and chuckled. How could we possibly explain our strange and unknowable virtual life to someone who's never heard of virtual reality? We tried our best, and I think we managed to convey some sense of the magic we all experience in a world that can be anything.

Photographer: “And what are your names?”

More chuckling. I was in “avatar mode”, and had to explain that we don’t have real names, or something like that. And also that in fact this was the first time we had met in real life.

Photographer: “This is the first time you’ve met?”

Us: “Yes!”

Photographer: “I hope it works out for you both!”

Sigh.

Virtual worlds still have a very long way to go, it seems.

Hunting for the Answer

2009-07-25T15:20:00.000-07:00

Over the past few months I’ve been conducting a business experiment. It has to do with those ever-spreading grid-wide hunts.

You probably know all about them, but if you don’t, they’re simply very lengthy treasure hunts, made a whole lot easier by extensive use of teleportation and landmarks. You start at the first landmark, and by finding the potentially impossible-to-find hidden item, you get the clue (and a free gift) to proceed to the next hunt location. It continues through a long string of locations, sometimes numbering hundreds of stops.

Those stops are, of course, SL stores. Participating in a hunt as a vendor takes some effort; it’s more than just dropping a goofy-looking sombrero in an obscure corner of your carefully designed shop.

There are usually a lot of things for shop owners to do during the hunt. Typically torrents of group notices flow by, usually to rearrange the order of the hunt due to dropouts or ejections. Policy matters evolve or dramatic incidents occur. Hunters themselves sometimes require assistance when they get lost or give up. And you have to create a truly unique and interesting gift to attract people back to your store.

So why would a shop owner would bother to take on this extra work?

The theory is that the flow of hunters will result in increased sales: while they’re frantically searching through your shop looking for that pink-ribboned halibut, they’re certain to be amazed by the top quality of your for-sale items and snap up a blingy purseful.

But is this true?

I had to know. I entered a series of hunts over the past several months. Today I examined the stats from such three hunts, including one of the biggest: the May-June SL Discovery hunt, which involved over 500 SL stores across the grid. I also examined statistics for the OMG and FITS hunts.

Aside: 500+ stores is a tremendous number, and traversing the entire chain would be an unbelievably momentous feat. Even more astounding would be the effort required to sort through 500+ gift items, which I suspect almost no one actually does.

The analysis is straightforward: using the SL transaction log, capture the names of all unique avatars who purchased the SL Discovery hunt item. These individuals were clearly in my store, at least briefly. Then compare these names to the names of those who purchased any other items during the same period.

This should catch any hunters who happened to purchase something while hunting, or even those who returned afterward to shop. There is a possibility that someone may have purchased something before they were hunting, but as you’ll see, that’s highly unlikely.

And here’s the results for the May-June 2009 SL Discovery hunt:

2854 unique hunters visited
38 hunters purchased at least one item

In other words, only 1.3% of the hunters actually purchased something. I must say the traffic was fairly large, but even so the amount of sales was tiny compared to the traffic.

How did the two other smaller hunts fare? Even worse. The conversion rate for the FITS hunt was only 0.9% and the OMG hunt was an even lower 0.7%. Total sales were reasonable from the high-volume SL Discovery hunters, but dismal for the other two hunts due to far less volume (346 and 536 hunters, respectively).

What does this mean? Several possibilities:

Hunters just want to hunt, and have little interest in shopping
Hunters are freebie-types who typically don’t buy anything anyway
Hunters are overwhelmed by the size of the hunt and don’t have time to shop
Hunters are overwhelmed by the size of the hunt and can’t remember to come back
Hunters are not interested in the type of products being sold
Hunters have too many free gifts to bother buying anything more

Some conclusions:

Hunts are a fair amount of work
Hunts tend to provide minimal value to the vendor, at least in my case
Hunts are popular; many people enjoy doing them
The only hunts really worth participating in are ones with very high volume

Will I be doing further hunts in the future? Possibly, if the hunt’s theme is more directly related to my product line and it’s high-volume. But how to find them? That’s a whole other story.

Oh, you’re wondering what the chart is at the top? It’s the frequency of visitors for the SL Discovery hunt over two months by day. More than half of the traffic comes through the first week and then it drops off quite drastically, but that’s likely because I was #23 on the hunt.

Good thing I wasn’t #532.

BuilderBot Is Coming: Should You Be Worried?

2009-07-20T05:39:00.000-07:00

The answer, I think, is maybe.

What is BuilderBot? It’s a new opensource utility created by virtual construction company Rezzable, who’ve recently begun moving their operations from the Second Life Grid to OpenSim.

And to do so, they needed tools to help them do bulk moves of their sims’ content. BuilderBot is their answer, as it scoops up the content in a sim and places it in a file that can be imported into OpenSim. So what’s the problem? Two things:

BuilderBot is being released as Opensource code - meaning it’s freely available to anyone who wishes to use it.
BuilderBot does not recognize any permissions on sim objects.

In other words, in theory you could quickly obtain BuilderBot, go to any SL Sim and essentially take a copy of the entire sim - whether it’s yours or not.

O.o!

It’s great if your intention is to migrate your operations to OpenSim, but perhaps not so great for SL shop owners who want to continue operating in SL. They might find a duplicate of their shop appear suddenly somewhere else on the grid. Yes, this is similar to CopyBot, which currently exists and is apparently used by the bad guys, but BuilderBot might be easier to use to capture a sim’s content.

But all is not lost.

There are a few restrictions that may make this less disturbing, at least for some SL vendors:

BuilderBot does not capture scripts. Therefore any item that is scripted would have only it’s containing object captured. Thus, vehicles, games (and particle effects, yay!) are not really affected.
BuilderBot captures the data into a file that can be imported to any OpenSim grid. But you cannot import it to SL unless you purchase their “Pro” version, that may cost around USD$100. Casual thieves may not consider this an option.
I’m not sure, but I suspect you’d have to have control of an empty sim in order to restore captured data. This also means you wouldn’t get casual thieves doing this, since they’d have to commit to paying the outrageous USD$295 per month for a sim.

For all the details (and they are quite preliminary at this stage), you might want to read Rezzable’s post on this.

Clearly, this is going to be quite disturbing for many shop owners, and probably Linden Lab as well, because they’re likely going to be deluged with content issues.

What do you think?

Are You Crazy?

2009-07-12T15:33:00.000-07:00

It's a question I ask myself now and then, simply because of all the insane and unbelievable situations I find myself in lately. If you can't explain it to your mom, is it because it's too hard to explain, or because you're actually doing crazy things? And does that mean you are crazy?

I began pondering this question after watching a rather good machinima from Pooky Amsterdam, "Shrink Wrapped", in which a typical avatar consults a psychiatrist regarding her increasingly bizarre SL behavior. The main character enters SL for typical and conventional reasons, but then as social activities increase, the avatar reacted by creating multiple SL personalities - and mayhem ensued.

Adding more personalities just makes things more confusing, as there are more opportunities for conflict between the identities. This is especially likely if you invest more personalty into your alt avatars, as did the avatar in the machinima.

I have a couple of alts, but I don't really inject any personality into them; it's as if they're made of cardboard. As a result, I can avoid some of those complex and mentally confusing social situations involving non-cardboard alts. Perhaps I'm not crazy after all?

How about you? Do you have alts that have a truly unique personality? Does the constant mental context switching drive you crazy? If so, maybe you need to see Dr. Occam too!

Armi’s Hierarchy of Avatar Needs

2009-07-05T07:11:00.000-07:00

Recently I’ve been puzzling over fluctuating revenues at my shop. One theory I had suggested recent decreases in revenue might have something to do with the unemployment rate. However, commenters provided many alternate theories, one of which involved avatars buying other types of products before “my” type of products.

I thought about this at length and realized that this could in fact be the case. The more I thought about it, I increasingly saw a connection to the classic “Maslow’s Hierarchy”. What’s that, you ask?

According to the Business Dictionary, Maslow’s Hierarchy is a

Motivation theory which suggests five interdependent levels of basic human needs (motivators) that must be satisfied in a strict sequence starting with the lowest level.

And it’s typically represented as a pyramid, where individuals must satisfy their needs at the lower levels before they can seek the benefits of higher levels.

As you can see, humans likely have to be able to breath and eat before they’ll worry about making friends and producing sculptures.

It seems to me that there might be a corresponding pyramid suitable for avatars. I suspect some of the layers might be similar to Maslow’s, but there are some differences, especially at the bottom of the pyramid.

If this pyramid of “Armi’s Hierarchy of Avatar Needs” is true, then it may explain some shopping habits. After first ensuring the basics (Physical, Safety and Belonging), avatars tend to shop for fashions, skins and shapes before seeking gadgets, building supplies and particle effects. Thus, in difficult times one might expect a store such as mine to suffer more than say, a famous skin shop.

The pyramid might also explain why people get frantically upset when the grid or PC crashes, and why teleport errors generate so many complaints. The lower levels of needs are more fundamental to avatar existence.

There’s one simple reason avatars may act according to a pyramid of needs: behind every avatar is none other than a real, breathing human. Most of the time, anyway.

A Newb. Until When?

2009-06-26T07:27:00.000-07:00

We’ve all been there. Rezzing in a strange virtual world. Avatars wandering nearby chatting about unintelligible topics. Unable to move. There’s a box on your head. How do you bookmark a location? How do I get Lindens? What’s a Linden?

Yes, it’s that newbish period of our virtual existence, when we really don’t have a hot clue about practically anything. I stayed in this pathetic state for months.

Well, it really wasn’t that bad. In fact I did eventually learn how to move, chat and take the box off of my head.

But it does beg a question. When, exactly, does one stop being a “newbie”?

Let’s consider some ideas to determine this. What if the avatar:

Can competently build objects?
Can competently operate chats, groups and land?
Can acquire and wear great clothing?
Has been around for more than two months?
Is well known by many other avatars?
Can answer questions from other newbs?

Nope, none of these will do. I know people who clearly are no longer newbs, but could not build a plain wooden box to save the universe. I know people who have been in SL for two years, but still act like newbs. Any other specific factor likely has similar exceptions.

I believe that newbishness is a trait that is very gradually shed over a long period. Successful existence in SL requires a lot of knowledge and it simply cannot be learned quickly. People take months to gain enough experience to do things competently - and even then they might be completely unaware of other activities.

And that leads to my theory: we’re all still newbs one way or another, because there are always things we don’t know. A veteran avatar can suddenly become incompetent if faced with an unfamiliar situation requiring knowledge they don’t have.

So I don’t make fun of newbs, because we’d be making fun of ourselves. Unless, of course, they have a box on their head.

2.5 Store Years

2009-06-19T04:26:00.000-07:00

It’s been 2.5 years since I opened my SL store, Electric Pixels. It’s been quite a journey, and the store has undergone several evolutions:

The first iteration was actually not in-world at all, but existed solely on the then-named SLExchange in January 2007. Started on a dare from a friend, my items sold quite well. Well enough that I quickly saved sufficient Lindens to proceed to stage two
In March 2007 I took a step by purchasing a tiny 512sm parcel in the obscure sim Lanestris for the princely sum of L$6000. I wanted to set up an in-world store because it seemed like the right thing to do. While the tier was just right (it’s actually zero for your first 512sm), I had no idea how to set up a store. So I experimented with several crazy concepts, and learned much. The important thing was the cash flow was ten times that of SLExchange. This led to stage three a few months later
In June 2007 I took a huge step by purchasing an 8192sm mainland parcel, which required my first tier of USD$40 per month. I was confident my revenue would cover that, and I built a rather different and much larger store using learnings from iteration two
Some 18 months later I took the opportunity to acquire land adjacent to my 8192sm parcel, doubling its size to a full 1/4 sim. After several weeks of rebuilding I had successfully expanded and redesigned Electric Pixels with multiple display areas with live demonstrations everywhere

And so it sits today. But I’ve survived for over two years while some other businesses have failed. What’s my secret? At each stage I’ve been very conservative and expanded only when absolutely certain my revenue greatly exceeded the monthly expenses.

That and all the customers who come by to look and purchase. My thanks to all of you!

Lemme Fly the LEM!

2009-06-12T07:18:00.000-07:00

Yeah, I was back at the Apollo simulation again. I guess I’m a little bit more spacey than usual due to the amazing things in RL space lately (the International Space Station is finally truly international, with crew from all partner countries in orbit today - and another seven to visit on Saturday to break the record for the most people in space simultaneously.)

Meanwhile in SL, Apollo simulation is a fascinating exhibit, because it is always changing as the maker implements enhancements. In this view, Radar Masukami and I have successfully flown the Lunar Excursion Module down from orbit to the surface of The Moon.

Erm, you might be wondering why there is a Joshua Tree on the barren, airless Lunar surface. Well, that’s because the landing area was (at the time of our flight) simply a sandbox below the orbital area, not yet fully moonscaped. This also explains why we are able to successfully walk on the surface without space suits.

But we had to wear our Trek outfits, of course.

Long Distance Call

2009-06-04T21:36:00.000-07:00

Long ago I watched a particularly frightening (at the time) episode of the classic TV series, “The Twilight Zone”. In the episode “Long Distance Call”, child actor Billy Mumy uses a toy telephone to call his newly dead grandmother. The situation seemed normal from the child’s viewpoint, but when the father picks up the toy phone and speaks to the dead grandmother over some unimaginable series of wires and switches, the situation becomes infinitely not normal. And pretty scary, too.

I had the same feeling as that TV father last week.

I had that feeling while testing the new AvaLine voice service just introduced for testing by Linden Lab. It’s a service that permits people (not necessarily avatars) to use their familiar telephone to call directly into Second Life and speak with a logged-in avatar. Or if they’re not logged in, you can leave an audio voice message, which shows up as an MP3 file in the avatar’s email.

AvaLine is pretty straightforward to use. After signing up and getting your AvaLine "ID", you exchange it with your avatar friends. Then you pick up a normal telephone and dial one of several strategically located telephone "portals". The portal asks you for the avatar ID, and upon receiving it, connects you to the selected avatar in voice.

I thought it wise to give AvaLine a try. Here are my findings so far:

The audio quality is inconsistent and typically worse than normal avatar-to-avatar in-world voice (assuming all are using headsets with reasonable quality mics). My goodness, it sounds like they’re on the telephone! D'oh!
The avatar sees the incoming call as coming from the phone number. For example, you might get a call from 2125551234. This does seem strange, since voice users expect to see a name, not a number. Worse, if your avatar buddy is actually calling, you might not recognize their phone number
That’s another major problem: the actual real-life telephone number is shown. For those who wish to be anonymous, this could be a big issue. I don’t know if it’s possible to block the caller ID, but the truth is that many people wouldn’t realize they could do so and thus mistakenly reveal their True Phone Number.
You must have a good memory for telephone numbers because a given person might call in from multiple telephones (imagine a cell phone, home land line, work phone, etc.) It’s the same person calling, but they show up in Second Life as different faceless numbers
If the avatar is offline, then the message goes straight to voice mail. But this also occurs if the avatar has set the “Only accept voice calls from people on My Friends list” option. You must turn this off to receive calls from your friends, because the system doesn’t know your friends' telephone numbers. Yet.
At this early stage only certain major cities have telephone “portals”. If you happen to live elsewhere, then you’ll have to call the nearest portal number long distance. This is an issue if you don’t have a flat-rate LD plan
Real life telephone calls seem to have an “I talk, You Talk, I talk” protocol. But SL conversations seem different, and involve more passive listening and pauses. Pauses, though normal in SL voice, are very unnerving when you have a handset to your ear.

Problems aside, the service is interesting, although I am still not certain of the expected usage situation. Basically, this must occur:

Two avatars wish to communicate
The avatars are familiar with voice
One avatar is online
The other avatar is offline, but has access to a regular telephone

I’m not sure this is a situation many would find themselves in, but I suppose it does occur. I’ve used it a few times and it is fun, but I am not sure it would survive past the novelty stage for me. There would be more use, I think, if avatars could call out to any outside telephone number, but that feature does not currently exist.

But back to the Twilight Zone.

In the course of testing AvaLine, I found myself in my real-life office, looking out the window at real trees, real buildings and real people walking by. I saw my hand pick up the telephone and dial a sequence of digits. Soon, ringing. Suddenly a voice answered.

A voice from another world.

And it really was from another world. My mind swam as real and virtual contexts violently collided, leaving me quite uncomfortable. I thought of the boy speaking to his dead grandmother and realized that was no boy; it was, and is, me.