Month: June 2009

Adult Changes – getting yourself ready

Posted on by Inara Pey

Thought I’d drop a quick note in case anyone is having problems vis-a-vis search and the adult content changes, or in accessing adult-flagged sims.

The new Adult controls are contained within the Second Life Viewer version 1.23.4, which is currently optional. Earlier versions of the viewer, and viewers based on earlier versions are not affected by the changes and can continue to be used “as normal” until such time as Linden Lab force all users to update to 1.23.4 (or later).

Note that to be fully “Adult enabled” with 1.23.4 (or later), you need to complete both sets of actions below and ensure you are either Account Verified or Age Verified.

Set Your Content Rating

In 1.23.4 (and later) versions of the SL Viewer, log-in to Second Life and:

  1. Select EDIT from the menu bar at the top of the screen and then click on PREFERENCES to open the Preferences window.
  2. Click on GENERAL at the top of the tab list, the GENERAL tab will open on the right of the Preferences window.
  3. In the GENERAL tab, locate the RATING option. This has a drop-down menu next to the words “I want to access content rated:”
  4. From the drop-down make ure you select “PG, MATURE AND ADULT”
  5. Click on APPLY at the bottom of the Preferences window, followed by OK to close the window.

Set Search Preferences

  1. Click on the SEARCH button at the bottom of your screen to open the SEARCH window.
  2. Click on the ALL tab to select the All search window.
  3. Make sure the Adult Content checkbox is ticked.
  4. Repeat step (3) for all the search tabs that have a Adult Content option (e.g. Classified, Events, Lands Sales, etc.).

Account / Age Verification

To access Adult rated locations (private sims or Zindra), you must be either Account or Age verified (possibly both, depending on the land settings).

Account verification means you have either payment information recorded against your SL account OR you have deposited US dollars into an XStreetSL account in your avatar’s name.

Age Verification requires you use the Aristole Integrity age verification process. Log-on to the SecondLife website and select MY ACCOUNT from the top right of the page. When your Account Summary has loaded, click on the AGE VERIFICATION option on the blue menu to the left of the page. You may wish to read some notes on age verification before doing so.

Did I mention….?

Posted on by Inara Pey

Fallingwater is back!!

We’re no longer on our own sim (nor can I ever see myself trusting Linden Lab sufficiently to actually run the risk of “buying” land in SL ever again) – we have found a home for the house in a sim run by a very good friend our ours.

FW at QEAs you can see from the picture, the tropical environment is a little odd for the house, but with a few small tweaks to the place, we’ve found that it actually fits in quite nicely – certain, it blends-in well with the other builds on the sim, such as the tropical-styled house behind our parcel.

We’ve also been able it incorporate one of the waterfalls that gives the place its name!

We’ve grabbed a seafront view, on the north side of the sim, which gives us a nice uninterrupted outlook & adds to the feeling of homeliness about the place.

Ohiophella is still missed, but it is really wonderful to have Fallingwater back, at least!

Zindra unveiled

Posted on by Inara Pey
Zindra-2
Kama’s Civic Centre, probably inspired by a ferry terminus

June 15th marked the arrival of two new features in SL: the 1.23 “Adult enabled” Viewer and the new “Adult” continent, Zindra.

Both were announced within an hour of one another, the first by Dessie Linden and the second by Jack Linden.

Despite the trumpeting, both left people decidedly underwhelmed. The viewer in particular is stunningly unusable & inherently unstable. If you’ve not swapped to it yet – DON’T. Even bugs Dessie lists as “fixed” turned up for many of those who downloaded and installed the Viewer. Equally as bad are the pointless changes to frequently-used pie menu options and the arbitrary removal of camera functions used by the likes of Machinema creators.

Zindra-1
Prim glow, prim glow, everywhere prim glow

As to Zindra…well, while it may not (yet) be a ghetto environment, it is hardly something to leap for joy over. Here, in summary are my reactions:

  • Buildings in Kama City are so-so in terms of build quality and are blandly unimaginative in form. Many appear derivative of builds found on private islands; and why offices in what is supposedly a retail environment?
  • Prim glow in the city is totally over-the-top and completely lag-inducing
  • Roads (particularly in the city areas) straddle the sim boundaries around the city rendering them almost completely unusable when there is more than a dozen avatars on-sim
  • The countryside is boring and shows little imagination terraforming-wise. It is all largely uniform an uninspiring
  • Despite statements from LL that the continent covers some 256 regions, the number is actually 154, of which 45 are protected waterfront, and numerous others are 50% protected land – things could get very cramped, very quickly…
  • As the waterfront land is under Linden maintenance and unavailable for public rent, it’s going to be impossible for those with waterfront land on the old Mainland to get “like-for-like” exchanges.

The biggest issue I had with the new environment, however, was lag. It was noticeable when I arrived in Mosh (at the heart of Kama City), when there were around 18 residents there. By the time the sim was full with 41 avatars, the lag was intolerable – not just in Mosh itself, but in most of the surrounding sims.

Zindra-3
Not a wise move

Another cause for concern (for others as well) is why child avatars are allowed in Zindra?

Zindra is a continent promoted for “extreme adult” content. By allowing child avatars access to the continent ([2009/06/15 20:05]  Blondin Linden: No WOrries Chand. CHild avs are allowed on Zndra [sic]) Linden Lab are opening themselves to the accusation by others that they tacitly condone ageplay, regardless of whether said child avatars engage in it or not.

But to return to the land issue. For those who have to move to Zindra and were hoping this “preview” would help them select land options, I can only offer my sympathy. Information on the move is still grossly lacking, and there is absolutely nothing in Zindra itself to either identify available parcels or which informs people as to where to go and what to do in order to identify parcels they’d like, other than for people to random fly around, prod at the ground for About Land and note lot numbers.

So much for the promise that Linden Lab would make the transition “painless”.

Viewer 2009

Posted on by Inara Pey

Tateru Nino over at Massively got a sneak peek at the new SL Viewer that is due to be heading our way later this year. This Viewer is apparently the baby of 80/20 Studio (a company that has a depressingly bland and uninformative website considering their goal is to “conceptualise, research, design, develop and deploy solutions that set new standards in user experience”) based on initial work apparently undertaken by Big Spaceship (hired amongst much ballyhoo last November).

Designing a new Viewer cannot be easy. One of the appeals of SL is that it is used by many people in many different ways, and the Viewer needs to accommodate all of them – casual users, gamers, builders, educators, etc., etc. So trying to develop something that is going to please everyone is clearly going to cause upset somewhere.

Then there is the fact that the Viewer as it stands, with one or two tweaks, is remarkable similar to the Viewer that was around 5 years ago. Oh sure, some menu options have moved; the rendering is better, it is less prone to crash on you as soon as you look at it, and so on; but none of these changes (well, apart from the arrival of the God-awful Communicate catch-up pop-up) have fundamentally altered the way we use the Viewer.

And let’s face it, it is and old and trusted friend; we know where everything is, we know what menu is going to pop up when we right-click something; we like our pie menus…

So again, it’s going to be hard for anyone to make substantial changes to the Viewer without causing mass upset and confusion among established users. I don’t envy anyone the task: it has got to be akin to dousing yourself in petrol and then juggling with lit matches.

Even so, the response to the new Viewer has been less than stellar – which is probably why Howard Linden stuck his head above the parapet within hours of Tateru’s blog post appearing to utter words of reassurance on the matter – even going so far as to suggest what Tateru reveals is so “early” in the development cycle as to be meaningless (“We’ll share a sneak peek of the “real” Viewer 2009 later in the year”).

Even so, his platitudes have failed to quell the growing concerns of users – again as evidenced by the comments posted alongside his blog. In part, this is unsurprising. Whenever a senior Linden gives assurances that there will be  “plenty of time to receive and incorporate feedback” eyes do indeed roll and hackles do rise. Let’s face it, Linden Lab’s track record on listening  to user feedback and “incorporating” it is well, abyssmal.

But, even if this sneak peek isn’t anything like the “real” version that will ship later in the year (in which case, why leak it to Tateru?) – one has to question some of the changes evidenced in the build as seen. In fact more than one has questioned the changes, particularly like the loss of the pie menus.

Others are also asking why the Viewer, some 8 months down the development road, is still lacking features that are now available in other grids, such as an in-built AO (ironically, OpenLifeGrid introduced a built-in walk animation that does away with the Linden Waddle around the time this project started) – and why these features don’t appear to be anywhere on the roadmap.

To be sure, there are some apparently nice features: the new nested Friends option looks particularly useful. The question at the moment is, just how much of user feedback will Linden Lab actually address?

An outsourced Viewer development is obviously not going to be cheap. Despite Howard’s assurances, by the time it gets to RC status and is available as a First Look, one does rather suspect that the only user issues that will be considered and altered will be those of a cosmetic, rather than functional, concern.

Martini in the Morning: stirring stuff!

Posted on by Inara Pey

I’ve posted previously about my love of music. Well over a year ago – probably nearer 18 months – I was looking for a suitable audio stream to play at Fallingwater. Until that time we’d had a couple of channels we alternated between; one was classic rock standards, the other more contemplative New Age stuff. Both went out the window when they went commercial.

So Ina, bless her, dived into the search as well, and came across an Internet-based broadcaster, Martini in the Morning, hosted by Brad “Martini” Chambers and Michelle Briddell. Describing itself as “Rat Pack Music”, the station had me hooked from the start.

I grew up hearing, among other things, the great songs of Porter, Rogers and Hart, Berlin, et al, sung by some of the greatest voices of the 20th century: Julie London, Ella Fitzgerald, Nat “King” Cole, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Junior and, of course, The Voice himself, Frank Sinatra.

Martini in the Morning (MITM) brings this marvellous world to the Internet, featuring not only the greats mentioned above, but also the likes of Michael Finestein, Michael Buble, Harry Connick Junior, Barbra Streisand, ….even Rod Stewart!

And MITM isn’t restricted to the Internet – it is perhaps the most popular music stream within Second Life – and this is unsurprising. MITM is ideally suited for playback both and home and within any business. The music is bright, uplifting, soulful, moving and sung by some of the greatest artists spanning more than 60 years. It is utterly timeless and pleasing to any ear.

When so many vendors seem to opt for the most bizarre choices of music that would – if actually listened to – send customers teleporting right back home hands clapped over ears, MITM provides a stream that is guaranteed to the get customers tapping their feet and humming / singing along – if not in the store itself, then certain under the desk as they sit with their computer – as they shop.

Brad and Michelle themselves are also active within SL; once a week they pop in to a selected MITM venue to host 2 hours of music and dancing in the Two Martini Lunch. The station even has its own loyal following in the Lounge Lizards In Exile Group – an extension of the station’s real-life fan club.

If you’ve not taken the time to listen-in on MITM you are simply missing out. Simply set your media tab and have a listen to http://209.51.162.162:23384/ – you won’t regret it. To join the MITM Group, look up Lounge Lizards in Exile in search.

And if you’re away from SL, don’t forget you can tune-in to the music via MITM’s website.

Double standards

Posted on by Inara Pey

Just over a week ago, I published a commentary in the official SL blog accusing Linden Lab of double standards. At the time I was heavily critiqued in private by a member of Linden Lab for doing so.

To be fair, the LL rep concerned had a point: in making my comment, I had been overly critical of one person, where the problem is more endemic to Linden Lab as a whole. I duly modified said post to make it more generic.

But… the crux of the post remains valid. The Adult Content changes do smack of double standards. For example:

  • People repeatedly ask why Linden Lab won’t engage on open communications with the user base to ensure everyone is properly informed of the upcoming changes ahead of time – say by putting out a mass e-mail of the subject….but Linden Lab respond that users don’t like receiving “spam” emails from them…
  • ….yet when it comes to the “good news” on Homestead prices, or putting the word out about the Land Expo, LL has no hesitation in sending out “spam” e-mails to users far and wide…

(I use inverted commas around the word “spam” because that is the precise term used by a member of Linden Labs when defending their position of not informing the user base about the AC changes in a more open manner.)

At the start of the AC farrago, LL made a big play of the fact that the changes were aimed at extreme sexual and violent [my emphasis] content within SL. Yet as time ticked on, the “violent” element became more and more of a passing mention, while the “extreme sexual” term seemed to somehow come to mean almost any sexual activity within SL. And if you want proof of that, just check out the words known to have been restricted by LL.

Now we get another demonstration of the double standards – and where do we find it? Well, none other than at Linden Lab’s own “Land Expo”, which features, among other things, combat roleplay, and where the following picture (with thanks to Prokofy Neva) was taken.
secondlife-postcard.jpg.scaled.1000
Extreme Violence promoted by LL?

Yup, a “body” sliced in two and trailing blood and entrails. This to me is extreme violence. It is also something (even tho pixelated) I’d rather not come across in my “predictable” SL wanderings – but to Linden Lab, it is perfectly acceptable and apparently needs no safeguards – unlike sexual content, which by-and-large completely avoids such graphic and violent depictions but which is still censored nonetheless.

Two words: double standards.