Over the edge

I have a strong feeling and thought that I have to quit Second Life.
Yesterday evening was supposed to be another fun moment on the grid, but it turned out in a world of doubt and uncertainty, not to mention anger.
The irony is that I wrote about it in my previous post, that my main goal are friends. Well, I found out that SL is even worse as RL.
I don't need it here. Getting accused by so called friends, while there is no reason too, just because this" friend" has a quarrel with another friend. Pffft, I think they should ban "childplay";), let's grow up people. What do they seek in here? Why accusing people of something, they even don't know anything about? I will save you the details.;)
And at the end of the evening, I got the message that another friend is in risk of being accused by the Lindens of something that has never occurred.
What is the meaning of all this? I am getting really angry, by reading all this stuff.
I don't need that in Second Life, that is over the edge.

PS. I am not leaving right now, I still love the things I do in SL....but......without this.

Linden Lab settles lawsuit

According a blogpost, Linden lab has reached a settlement with Marc Bragg, who sued the company for having terminated his account, with the loss of virtual business as a result of that.
I had a few months ago already a blogpost about this lawsuit, that started back in 2006.

"Linden Research, Inc., Philip Rosedale, and Marc Bragg have agreed to settle the “Bragg v. Linden and Rosedale” lawsuit currently pending in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. The parties agree that there were unfortunate disagreements and miscommunications regarding the conduct and behavior by both sides and are pleased to report that Mr. Bragg’s “Marc Woebegone” account, privileges and responsibilities to the Second Life community have been restored. For the benefit of the Second Life community, the Parties have mutually agreed that the terms of their resolution shall remain confidential. The Parties ask that this confidentiality be respected. "thus the Linden blog.

As I also wrote in other articles, the main reason for discussions in Second Life always appears to be miscommunications.
With this article, I also want to ask all of you, first try to talk things over, before getting angry, blocking friends, ending relationships etc. because most of the time it was just a misunderstanding or interpretation. We are typing most of the time, and can not express our feelings in typing words. Now with Voice this should resolve a great deal.
Second Life has to be fun, there is already enough trouble going on in RL.

Beautiful SIM in Second life.

I took these pictures of Veyron Supercharge at the Crimson Shadow Rezzable. I did not check the whole sim out, but it seems worthwhile to get back there. I only was there for half an hour to do this shoot at the request of Veyron. The original pictures were submitted to Veyron for a contest, without post processing.
These snapshots, in this blog and on my flickr stream, have just a small adjustment in brightness and Gaussian blur.

Another Marketing move in Second life: Evian's skin Giveaway

Evian, the French mineral-water people, are conducting a pretty good marketing initiative in Second Life which shows the company, or at least its ad agency, understands how to promote effectively to residents. Basically, it’s a RL-SL match-up with low overhead for the RL brand and a good traffic booster for the SL company.

Marketing responsible Jeff Caswell :” Evian always had its hand on the pulse of what’s hot. With build-it-yourself virtual worlds, fantasy lands and video games increasing in popularity, we felt that Second Life was a fitting platform for Evian to make its virtual debut. The initiative puts an “unreal” twist on Evian’s 2007 ad campaign tagline: “The most important body of water is your own. Fill with care.”

They have asked RealSKIN to make 6 free avatars skins and shapes, male and female, Caucasian, Asian and black, and are distributed at next locations:

• Brussels Mega Mall
• Freebie Planet
• France 3D

This is again a step into Second Life from a major company with a remarkable strategic and marketing move.
Do you remember your first day to arrive on the grid? How did you look, what was the first thing you wanted to change? That was that awful newbie look, isn't it?
Well now, and the subscribers to SL are still growing, newbies have the chance to have a pretty neat skin and shape to explore the grid.
If this is a profit making marketing move or not, I will leave that to the specialists, but at least you can say that the entrance was noticed and that thousands of newbies will have there possibility to have an upgrade of their skin, without making extra costs in the very beginning of their second life.

Friends online

"Friends Online is temporarily disabled due to technical difficulties. We'll re-enable it as soon as possible. Thanks for your patience."

Have you tried lately, to see who is actually on the grid, through the official site of Second Life ?
Then you must have noticed that that feature has been disabled for several days now.
It was handy to check, if the friendlists did not work online, if your friends were there or not. But now....even when you are off the grid, you have not all the abilities, you once had before.

Should we have an update for that as well? Is our account still accurate?

And yet, we still keep returning to our beloved grid. How come? What is it, that makes Second Life so attractive, so addictive?

Its must be a "goldmine" to the creators and inworld business, having us, so addictive to a "game", that has his daily, not weekly, problems to solve.;))

VAT applies to all payments to Linden Lab for European residents.

There have been some discussions lately around the VAT that European residents have to pay to Linden. I did not want to put it on my blog at first, because there were so many Second Life blogs already commenting this news. But reading some of the comments, I found it interested to put someone in the spotlight, just because of her insight on various subjects.

Veronique Kaminski, has commented some articles of mine, but now I was reading Vint Falken’s blog on this specific topic, and thought these comments should not stay in the shadow of comments, but should be a main article, knowing that she doesn’t have a blog to express herself. I hope she will forgive me…

Mostly, she was responding on another comment, but the total view of this topic, is quiet correct how we, Europeans, feel about this matter. It is certainly not an attack against Linden Lab, it is just an observation and a way of expressing how we see things from the other side of the ocean.

“I am not begging for a price reduction for Europeans here.. just saying that if LL wants to comply with the European law, they should take care about complying with ALL laws.. and state how much their service will cost us, VAT included.
One is supposed to assume that the announced price includes it.
And jurisdiction tends to protect the small ignorant consumer..(they are allowed btw to show ADDITIONALY how much it costs when you can recuperate VAT, but only in a non-confusing way… clearly stating that it is without VAT, and, e.g. not in bigger sized characters then the full price)

If the Lindens want to sell something to me, a European customer due to VAT, they must include the VAT in the price they are charging me.
But, also the product must be advertised stating the full price.I am not saying that I only want to pay 82.6. But if a seller tells me that his product costs 100, I only have to pay 100, and I only will pay 100.
The seller is responsible for deducting the VAT from the sales price and pass it to the state. It is a tax on the added value. And it aren’t the consumers who add value to the base materials.
Any company therefore includes the 21% BEFORE announcing the price to his customer.
(unless, as car salesmen sometimes tend to do for promotional reasons, the seller takes the cost of the VAT upon them..)
Now this VAT doesn’t exist since yesterday, nor since 2003.
Therefore, since LL always told that the product costed 100, and they never told that they paid the VAT for us as a promotional gift, we always HAD to assume that VAT was included. Its not up to the domestic consumer to verify this.
(its a bit like in criminal law.. your are innocent until proven the contrary)

So, coming up with this now, it leaves people here surprised.. and wondering:

*Was LL all these 4 years tax-evading? If you do that as a private person and you are caught, you get fined..

*Was LL that ignorant? Not knowing that for doing business in Europe they had to count with VAT?? Really?? an American company, the country where they know all about doing business?? Having hundreds of thousands subscribers in Europe (not all paying, I know..) I guess that, before entering a market, one does do some research, don’t you? Especially if you are offering a product where one of the basics is about commerce..

*Or is this just a way of raising the bill??

Anyway.. being in favor or not of all the VAT taxes, fact is that it isn’t a correct way to treat your customers.
Suddenly start charging some extra costs on the excuse of applying the law.. while, according to the same law, you were already charging these costs.

Now, besides the fact that this practically will mean that most EU residents will have to pay more for playing the “game”,
I wonder what the effects will be now VAT is introduced in SL.

Because, next statement at first sight sounds fine :

“Transactions in L$ between individual Residents are not subject to VAT”

and it is true, from the LL point of view. LL has nothing to do with the transactions between the residents, or between a SL shop and its customers. So it is logical LL doesn’t have to take care about the VAT issue for this transactions..

But, fully applying VAT legislation, and taking in consideration that many businesses, be it shops, rentals or even prostitution, are registered as companies and convert the Lindens back into real money.. should they (the small or big businesses) also start charging VAT to the EU customers?
Applying different prices if the dress is bought by a EU resident or a Mexican? And maintaining the bookkeeping that goes with it??
Theoretically, in that case, it will even affect the rental business of our beloved PN, who‘ll have to charge some of her customers extra in order to maintain our “socialist” systems..
Oh irony of life…”

New Bloggers

I am glad to say that I have add two new bloggers on my favorite links.
Sand Posthorn, with her blog Lost in-world & Staggering Nekos, has a nice view on the daily happenings in Second life. She has a talent of writing the right words and sentences, in short stories, which makes it interesting to read. Thanks Sand, for joining the blogworld.
The second one is Tymmerie Thorne, with her blog Girl Wonder Speaks. Her stories about her whereabouts in Second Life are most amusing. She is looking for a real job to make some Lindens (who's not?;)) in SL, and willing to go far...
But the main reason why I picked her site to put in my favorite list is because she has described my blog just as it is: Photos & Insightful commentary. Maybe I should take this description and put it in the header of my blog. Thank you Tymmerie.;))

The Spin Lounge

A view of the re-opening of the Spin Lounge last Sunday in Second Life.

Oops, Linden Labs did it again!

What was supposed to be a nice evening among friends, became again a struggle for staying on the grid, pffft.
After I was logged in, and was having a chat with some of my friends, we received a message that our sim was closing down within 5 minutes.
With the experience we had, nothing to fear, just go to another sim, and everything should be solved. Nothing was less true.
After a couple of minutes, the message of 3 minutes left, showed up. We were joking, and saying who is staying here the longest….?
But I did not wait till the last minute, I was playing save, and tp’d myself to my home. I had still the message on my screen of the last 3 minutes, that I deleted, and what did I see underneath that? Another message saying we still had 30 seconds to leave the sim. Haha, not with me, I thought, I was safely back at my place.
But what happened…….exactly, we were thrown off of Second Life. Apparently Linden labs were having a master clean up, with all sims at the same time.

Reading in the meanwhile on the official blog: “The rolling restart is a little more aggressively scheduled this time than in times past. Logins for some residents may be slow until the restarts are finished. Also, the nifty trick of wave-jumping the restarts by TP’ing to the Northwest is unfortunately no longer supported - the restart order is no longer dependent upon map location. In exchange for this inconvenience, the restart should be finished much sooner.”

This was of course the best timing to do that, for the Europeans, at approximate 22.00 hrs.. Probably, Second life is meant to be amusing only for Americans. No taxes, no problems with rolling restart, as it happens in the middle of the day, when everybody is at work..;))

After this inconvenience, I was trying to log in again, but you can guess what happened. Exactly, …..nothing. I rebooted my whole system, and tried again. Sometimes the screen was hanging, without doing anything, another time I got the message that the servers were not available, or not connectable.

It took me almost half an hour to get back on the grid, but by then, my evening was almost finished. Perhaps I was better stayed in my seat before the television, and fall a sleep in the middle of a movie ;))

First Belgian bank in Second Life.

Finally, Belgium has his first bank in Second Life, The Keytrade Bank, that is a part of the Crédit Agricole. Keytrade Bank opened in the virtual world his own island and has an innovative tool to extend their marketing views in SL.

A lot of companies have realized that visual advertising in Second Life does not pay off, but to add some value to their company, you have to offer something else. The Keytrade Bank has found a way to answer this need. They offer to every SL resident a HUD or heads-up display. With this tool you can easily convert Linden Dollars in every known currency.

According to the Sales and Marketing Director, Thibault de Barsy, Second Life users are complaining that all prices of the products are only displayed in Linden Dollars. Until now , users had to do the conversions themselves to find out the real value of goods or services sold in a Second Life shop. Our currency converter now saves users this task, making virtual shopping easier. Moreover, the conversion is carried out in real time in relation to financial market fluctuations, no matter currency chosen.. In the continuity of a spirit of permanent innovation, Keytrade Bank wants to be the first to explore the new territories of a tri-dimensional Web. Therefore, we felt important to provide a tool potentially useful to all present and future users of those virtual worlds. Our island in Second Life is to be considered as a field of experimentation for future products and the proof of our will to be at the cutting edge of web-based financial services.

Besides the conversion, the HUD gives you a permanent range of financial information, coming from Dow Jones Newswires. Finally, there is an information board on the Keytrade island, where you will be able to find the daily fluctuations of the Linden Dollar against all currency of RL.

“The Keytrade bank Belgian’s first 100% Internet bank, explains Thierry Ternier, CEO of Keytrade Bank. We are also the first Belgian Bank to becom e active in Second Life. Ou ambition is to bring real value all over the globe, not only to Belgian residents of this virtual world.”

This project was realized by the agency Emakina and The Bluepillgroup, who has done such a project before, by offering a HUD tool for Belgian Airlines. These companies are giving a lesson to others of how managing marketing tools in Second Life, in a innovative and interactive way.

(Also read on secondlifecrew.be)