Monday, March 31, 2008

The curtain is falling....

As explained in my previous post also, many residents are confused by the latest Terms of Service by LL.
As Tateru Nino wrote in his blog : "....The Terms of Service change in that context gives the impression of being a veiled threat. It's more than that, though -- it commands you to give up your rights to nominative fair use where that use conflicts with Linden Lab's laundry list of legalese. Or else. This pulls the matter right out of the arena of trademark law, and back into contractual law, with enforcement by the governance team...."

To me, it looks quite clear, we all must object to that ToS, although you have probably agreed by signing in after monday, when the new ToS was integrated.

Some organisations already decided not to go on, under the current conditions.
Second Life ballet is one of them. The ballet, which is very well known by now, has been promoting SL since the beginning, is a non-profit organisation, and even had the occasional participation of Linden Labs employees.
The two leading people of the ballet, Espresso and Inarra Saarinen, decided for legal reasons that they cannot agree to the new Terms of Service for Second Life, and so will not log into the virtual world. That means no performances of the Second Life ballet for the moment.
You can read the full article on "Second Life Herald"

Other blogs, as the "Second Life Crew", a Belgian blog, is urgently looking for a new name. Any suggestions are welcome.;)

That is the result when you have lawyers, who are to decide the strategy, instead of marketeers.

"Clearly, the company needs better operational management. Clearly, the company needs experienced, professional management to make it run smoothly on all fronts, tactically and strategically. Clearly the company needs better systems to ensure stability and reliability of the Grid, a better resident experience, and improved development and deployment of server and client software."Arifi Saeed wrote in his latest blogpost, which was written before the trademark affair, and was in fact an article in which way Second Life can move with a new CEO, but is an interesting post to read, especially in these circumstances.;)

Sunday, March 30, 2008

Spin Lounge is no more!!

Every sunday night there was a party at the Spin Lounge. I even advertised for some of those parties.
I had my rezzday party at the Spin Lounge, with the performance of Preciousse Moody. I think it was the only live performance at the lounge club. Well now, it is no more.
The islands Strawberry and Peachez were sold by Coolzor Courier.
The Strawberry island was sold to our new landlord, Arifi Saeed and Peachez to an SL real estate company.
Arifi Saeed is Research Director, Second Life®, for Canopus Research Inc. The headquarter is located on the Long Island sim.
The company offers industry analysis and market research on the IT industry broadly.

I met Arifi yesterday for the first time, as I own a piece of land on Strawberry and some details had to be discussed. You know, new owners, new rules, ;))

So, it will be no more Strawberry island, which was already confusing, as the name existed already, but it will be called Canopus island in a couple of days.

The near future will tell if I will still have my home there, as I was not able to do anything this evening on Second Life® ;), and I could not reboot due to maintenance (???? on a Sunday??) of the grid, or crash of one of the servers.

In the meanwhile I keep hearing confusing voices about the ® and the™. Nobody knows what the future will bring us. The more I think about it, the more I believe that they (you know who) will urgently need a new marketing adviser, where they will listen to!!

Wednesday, March 26, 2008

China girl


I took the opportunity to blog with some pictures if mine, because I was not able to make some new ones inworld due to several business trips that I had lately.

I will be back at the end of the week, maybe earlier, with some new ones..or old ones which I did not posted yet.;)
So keep an eye on my flickr stream...;))

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

A new brand logo for Second Life®

Don't panic yet, but Linden Lab has a new brand logo to promote your involvement in the Second Life world with the inSL logo.
It seems a bit confusing and complicated, but it should not be. The new logo is to help outsiders understand that you are working inworld with a product or business. But what is more, with the logo you have guidelines, what you can do and what you can not.
It is not my intention to write about every possibility, but there are some you may find interesting. And I am wondering how some blogs will change their names, or stop their activities after reading all the guidelines referring to the trademarks.

The good news comes first of course when to use the logo: you can use the logo when you have marketing services in SL, you teach an architecture course, your profile page on your social networking page shows your name, you've released on cd an album of your piano performances inworld, you publish a blog about scripting in the Second Life environment. These are some examples given by Linden Lab.
Do read the guidelines though, to know when to use the new logo properly.

But when going through all the terms and guidelines I also found this:
Unauthorized uses of Linden Lab's Trademarks
under the paragraph "No use in Second-Level Domain names" there is a list of examples which are not allowed.

"This is NOT OK:
secondlife.net
secondlife.de
2ndlife.com
secondlife-grid.com
chinasecondlife.com
secondlifesoftware.com
secondlifetutorials.com
lindenworld.com"

and further under "No Adaptation or Registration", which explains never to modify, imitate, or register any Linden Lab trademark, including but not limited to the Second Life brand name, the Second Life Eye-in-Hand logo, and the tagline "Your World. Your Imagination.", including a list:

"This is NOT OK:
2nd Life (can't shorten "Second Life")
2Life (no "Second Life" abbreviations)
Second-Life (can't hyphenate "Second Life")
Segunda Vida (no Spanish equivalent of "Second Life")
Zweites Leben (can't make a German equivalent)
第二生命 (no Chinese equivalent)
第二の人生 (no Japanese equivalent)
Your World. Your Voice. (can't imitate our tagline "Your World. Your Imagination.")"


I know and understand that there have to be rules and guidelines, but I wonder how the names that already exists for quiet some time, should change and how they will communicate this .
Also we, bloggers, will have to be prudent how to use the names and logos.
Although we only report about that virtual world, I don't see why we can not use the names and logos if it is justified.
I will now write about my third life, and I am glad that my name is Looker Lumet and not LL, or would that be a problem too?;)

Second Life® and Linden Lab® are trademarks or registered trademarks of Linden Research, Inc. All rights reserved. No infringement is intended

Monday, March 24, 2008

Last week at Portucalis

If you have not seen my exhibition at Portucalis yet, then you will have just a few days left to visit it. Indeed, until the end of the month my pictures will be shown at the gallery.

In the meanwhile, I have my pictures inworld at Crescent, in the ArtProject'08 gallery from Lily's world. Also at Belgium finest, you are able to see some of my works.
Unfortunately the sim of Magma Art has been closed, so there will be no artists there anymore, but I will have my pictures soon at other galleries. I will keep you posted on that of course.

There is still the exhibition of Daequix Scarborough till the end of this month in the Avatrait gallery, another gallery where my pictures are shown, although these are still from my early days...;)

Saturday, March 22, 2008

CosmoGIRL, There and Marketing in Virtual Worlds


From Metanomics:

This Monday, March 24th, 2008, at 11:00AM-12:00PM SLT (2:00-3:00PM EST), Robert Bloomfield and Metanomics will broadcast from There.com to discuss CosmoGIRL. We will be joined by:

- Morgan Brooks, Associate Promotion Manager, CosmoGirl! (CG_Host_Morgan)
- Michael Wilson, CEO, There.com
- Mary Ellen Gordon, Managing Director of Market Truths Ltd.

This esteemed panel will be moderated by Accounting Professor Robert Bloomfield of Cornell University Business School and will discuss:

- CosmoGIRL's plans in There, their vision for success
- CosmoGIRL's upcoming 'virtual prom'
- How There provides support for ComsoGIRL
- Marketing in virtual worlds: demographics & psychographics
- Personnel changes at Linden Labs
- Effect of Wall Street financial crisis on investment in the virtual world industry

Monday's event will take place in There.com, at the CosmoGIRL stage. It will also be broadcast in Second Life on the 4-Sim CMP Amphitheatre on CMP Island as well as by our event partners, and filmed and streamed live on SLCN.tv.

One of the event partner locations:

Venue: MetaPartners Conference Area
Host: Frans Tomsen
Notes: MetaPartners is a Belgian communications company, specialised in the B2B integration of virtual and real world communication tools
SLUrl: http://tinyurl.com/2w4ctx

Thursday, March 20, 2008

Clear your inventory items at work!

A month ago I posted an article about Ajaxlife, the web based viewer for Second Life. Back then there was the release 01.1, and I promised to keep an eye on it, which I have done.
Katharine now introduces Ajaxlife 0.3.0 with some remarkable new features.
Are you bored at your work, you don't really know how to make yourself useful? Now you can delete items from your inventory, clear your trash, rename items without logging in to Second Life. You can see some screenshots here.
Please don't tell your boss that I told you to clear your Second Life crap from behind your desk.;)
If you still want to check it out, you can do it here.
More and more it seems that this web based viewer can become valuable to some of us, as we sometimes have some moments that we have nothing to do (not me!!) and can use this time to check out and have our inventory up to date, without the need of downloading the Second Life viewer, when your not at home, and don't have Second Life installed on the PC you are working on.

Wednesday, March 19, 2008

About things....in Second life

You have probably noticed…my articles are not as frequently as they used to be. Well, the reason for that is that I am more active in RL lately, and I don’t find the time to go through all the different blogs to find interesting stuff to write about.

What I have been reading lately are more romantic related articles on different blogs, and although those articles are mostly personal, sometimes you will find some true stories about feelings in Second Life. On the other hand, you can read articles about new words, new meanings, like “polyamory”. It is ofcourse always interesting to find out about new directions, new terrains, where we did not even know about.
Well, we did already know, that for every action we do, new words are coming with it. Read all about it on Cyndy Kesey’s blog.

Some of us are or were going through difficult times in SL relationships, and found it necessary to tell the whole world about their feelings and experiences, but when all good things come to an end, those feelings remain on the internet. They are only aware of this after a while, but then realize that they had perhaps better not wrote these articles on their blog.

It is always risky to write on your blog like you would do in a diary. The diary remains secret, as long as you want to, the blog…..is public domain, and will remain on the net for always, even if you delete your blog, as pieces will always stay somewhere between this byte and the other.

Finally, Zippora wrote an article , related to all the above ones, but being rational, although realizing that she is walking on the edge, but still knowing that RL is more important and SL is more living in our brains and minds.
As long as you don’t loose that perspective, there is nothing wrong, I think.

What is frightened is a story, which I missed on television, about a mother of four, married, living in the States, being for 18 hours a day on the grid, and now leaving her husband and kids, for her virtual love in the UK. I did not see the program, but can only imagine how the husband , and certainly the children, must feel.
But as we already know, only the bad things are worth a program on television, that is why I deliberately missed it.

I apologize for this article, as it is again about romantic stuff in SL, and everybody is writing about these things already, but I still am intrigued by reading which different experiences we all have in the virtual world, and which conclusions we are about to take.

I always try to give an objective look on the different subjects on this blog, but will keep the really personal things to myself, besides experiences or events of course, as I believe it does not belong here on my blog.

My friends in SL are able to read sometimes between the lines, which I think is more than enough…;))

Monday, March 17, 2008

Will Second Life change?

Is Second Life changing? Do we have to fear for our cozy situation? Or is it for the best?Are we now going to see the real progress in virtual world?

All these questions can be asked after the step down of CEO Philip Rosedale. Linden Lab will now look for a new CEO with more operational and management expertise. And I think it is all for the best being of Second Life. It will come out much stronger and more functional with a new CEO. Not that Philip did a bad job, not at all…..but it is a normal step for a founder of a company like SL to step down at a certain point, taking over the chairmanship of the Linden board, and leave the daily work to more operations-focused craftsmen.

We have seen it coming, didn’t we? After Cory Ondrejka left the company, we all knew something was happening. The step down of Philip Rosedale as CEO is typical for technology start-ups and the search can begin for a more operations-focused CEO.

Philip Linden will not leave the company, let that be clear. He will be full-time on Second Life working on product development and strategy.

As I already wrote in previous articles, 2008 is becoming very, very important to Second Life. Things are changing, decisions are being made, and the search for a new CEO has begun.
It will not be easy to find a replacement for Philip.

“Legally, the board hires and fires CEOs,” Mitch Kapor, former chairman of the board, said in an interview to Reuters “Process-wise, this is going to have be someone Philip is incredibly enthusiastic about".

Second Life will never be the same again, but it is too early to say in which direction it will go, as the competition is also very much alive. But after we have seen what happened to the virtual world in 2007, I must admit that this step down, does not necessarily means that Second Life is going down the drain, on the contrary, it can and will come out stronger than before, as long as they find in time the right CEO.

Friday, March 14, 2008

The artist's shit

I have been asked to write for a new upcoming SL magazine, and was thinking about what I should write. It is obvious that my interest is not really in scripting, building but more in Art. Art related in SL, whether this is RL Art or SL Art, whether this is Art or not.
There was lately a lot of fuzz going on about the term SL Art, but this is not the place, nor the time to discuss this issue. I would rather talk about whether and where Art is to be found inworld.
My friend Raul Crimson, wrote an interesting piece about art, and if we can say that art exists in SL.
He took a really good example out of RL, “Merda d’Artista”, with other words, the Artist’s shit. Not that I would buy such art, but that is not to the point.

1/ “In May 1961, Manzoni collected his own feces in 90 numbered cans, which contain 30 grams of feces each. He labeled them as '100% pure artist's shit' in Italian, English, French, and German, and sold them for the price of their weight in gold. Their current estimated value stands at approximately EUR30,500 (US$25,000–35,000). On May 23 2007, an exemplar has been sold for EUR124,000 at Sotheby's.[1] (from wikipedia)

Another example:

2/ “The readymades of Marcel Duchamp are ordinary manufactured objects that he selected and modified, as an antidote to what he called "retinal art". By simply choosing the object (or objects) and repositioning or joining, and titling and signing it, the object became art. It was the the least amount of interaction between artist and art, the most extreme form of minimalism, and at least in abstract idealism, the precursor to punk. (from wikipedia)

So, the real questions are, does art exists in SL and, are there artists in SL?
I think the answers to these questions are more a personal answer than a general, common well thought answer by any writer of an article. I think you can say that if Art sells, it is supposed to be art, and the person who made it is an artist.
I have seen a lot of things in SL, that is called art, but is nothing more than a picture with a beautiful background. I have seen photographs, which are wonderful photoshopped into a piece of art, which is not even called art.
Are people, who have the skills of post processing artists, and other are not?
I think those people will have an advantage to make some beautiful works, and will have more chances that their post processing is called art. But I am convinced, that people, who does not have those skills, can also be artists.
I also think that contests of SL are not relative to call what is art and what not.
Art is something that you make of it. When you think a piece is beautiful enough to put in your living room, and you would pay money for that, if it is RL or SL, that would be art.
Don’t ask me for a definition of art, you can do so much better. You, the avatar, the person, can define art much better than anybody else, as art is what you see as art.

But, that is ofcourse, just my two pence.

There are definitely artists in Sl, and there is certainly art in SL…..

And that is where my articles in that magazine would be about.

Tuesday, March 11, 2008

The one million dollar idea!! Dedric Mauriac into the finals!

On December the 20th I posted a press release from OSRAM, who had introduced a contest for a one million dollar idea. The special feature of the contest was that the best idea will not only receive a prize, but will also be turned into an actual product in real world. The lucky winner will receive a million Linden dollars for the development.
One of the first readers who reacted on my blog was Dedric Mauriac, a colleague blogger, and he participated the contest.

I received a short message from him, just a while ago, that he was given 75.000 L$ by OSRAM, and that he made it to the finals!!

Congratulations Dedric!! And good luck in the finals!

A glowing star


article on bloghud:

"Assembling my pieces together, I created a large star as a lawn ornament in my million dollar linden idea. I even created a chunk of grass patched with dirt under it to demonstrate how the support piece is inserted into the grass for more stability. This has got to be one of the most prim-heavy models I have ever made. I had to work with micro-prims to get all the the LED's small enough to size down to the products actual size. When I was originally working with the star, I had different pieces for each angle. In the end, I made one piece that as adjustable to fit any angle. This made the star easier to assemble. A cord that powers the star can be seen behind it running along to the wall."

SL Educators have a new resource!

Okay, it might not be the latest news, but interesting enough to mention it here.
There is now a SLED blog for Second Life Educators. It seems that this community has grown over 4.700 members.
The blog, announced on the official blog, will feature and highlight EDU-oriented events, tools, bright ideas, awesome groups and locations, expert opinions, pointers to tutorials and papers, and insider views on life in Teen Second Life.
The Lindens have asked a RL university instructor to edit the blog, so we can expect some high educational information to be posted.
The first article I stumbled upon was about a bright idea, coming out of the new feature of the SL candidate viewer.
Torley made a video tutorial about how to play movies, webpages and more. Watch it here.
Now, you would also have the ability to view multiple images without having to pay for and upload each image. This would give us more capabilities for showing our images, without having to pay 10L$ for every single picture that we need to upload, but with the only exception that you would show them in a presentation, which would be nice and money saving for students, teachers etc. for showing reports or so. You can read it here.
But the good thing is, that we constantly see progress in the development of our precious Second Life

Saturday, March 8, 2008

Back on track

One week, one whole week did it get me...... I did not know that it could take so long. And still I am not 100%, but enough is enough, I will not give in on it, it has to go away now. Yes, I had the flu over these past days. And when I thought it was over, the next morning it started all over again. I hope now that the worst is over and that I can move on again.
I noticed that several of my colleague bloggers have visited my first exhibition, and not only that, they told about it even on their blogs! Great! Thank you Winter, Tym and Joonie!
And now I know how reporters are. They ask you for an interview, they ask you for pictures, and what gets to be published....not much, and a sentence that is totally out of its context. But....I am in it, in the newest edition of "The Avastar"nr.64.


So, really, I don't have much to tell you, as I did not do any research for a couple of days, but I sure hope that I can be back in business from now on.

Sunday, March 2, 2008

Looker's first exhibition.

As I already mentioned earlier, I had my first solo exhibition yesterday evening. And what I did not expected, because there were other exhibitions too, it was a success.
It was really great to hear how much everybody enjoyed my works.
Thanks to Winter Wardhani, who invited me to do this show, I was able to show more than just a few pictures inworld.
Although there were other events that I wanted to attend, I could not miss my own exhibition, could I?;)
So the evening started with a visit to the Avatrait Gallery, where Daequix Scarborough had her exhibition opening. And I was morally obligated to be present there, and saw that it was pretty crowded with beautiful pictures of Dae. After 45 min. I had to leave for my own presentation, but nevertheless, I had the opportunity to talk to several residents/artists, before I tp'd myself to Portucalis.

I did not expect to see so many people at my show, but was very pleased that they all liked my pictures. Winter told me in the afternoon, that she had a little surprise planned, Orangelife was going to perform at the opening!Orangelife is a Portuguese performer who covered some great songs from well known RL artists.
At the end, some three and a half hours later, I wanted to visit another party, the rezzday of Timothy Lilliehook, but unfortunately, he was already offline at that time.;((
But, the least I can say was, that my weekend was superb, thanks to Winter, Summer, Orangelife and their Portuguese friends, and not to forget my friends , who visited the event!!
Thank you all!!

For those who still want to see the exhibition, it is still possible, until the end of March. And if you want to buy a copy of one of my pictures, feel free to do so.;))

Saturday, March 1, 2008

Dinosaurs extincted in Second Life

I was witness of a great spectacle on the Liberty Sim last Thursday!
The Dino's were going to be extincted, and was announced in all Rezzable media. So, I had to be there, but there was a small problem...I could not get there.
I visited instead the Toxic Garden, which is a great place, but did not really visited it yet, because there was something bigger going on at the moment.

Once out in the garden, I tried to move my camera over the trees to the neighbor sim, where the dinosaurs had a wonderful life, until now. They had to be eliminated in a way: meteor showers, acid rain a colored space mothership crashing between the skeletons.
Nothing seen something like it in Second Life before.


It was great to experience that my camera could go as far as that sim. I could even make close ups of the avatars who were watching the event from the different stake outs.
Unfortunately I arrived a little bit late, and before I realized what was going on, and set up my camera for all those different things, although it was repeated several times, the show was over.
It was not easy to move the camera as I wanted, not everything was rezzed in time to take the shots, but I managed to make some wonderful memorable pictures from an already milestone in the history of Second Life.
More of my pictures can be seen on the flickr stream or also on the Rezzable flickr stream.