Last night at SL5B, education & orientation panel, Prokofy Neva made an interesting remark. Behold, it’s not even a complete paragraph!

Well I am grateful to Ingrid Ingersoll who took me to her friend’s store and had me spend my $500 stipend on a shirt and pants, and well, that’s Second Life. That’s how it should work. Everybody can pay something — and there should be less freebies, they clog inventory and stifle newbie initiative. Prokofy Neva

Now, although I like receiving - and creating - freebies, there’s definitely something to be said against them:

1. They INDEED clog inventory.
2. People often cherish what they have payed for more - or at least had to do effort to get -, as they consider it to have a higher value.

3. Using or wearing something selfmade gives you a sense of achievement, and uniqueness.
4. Without freebies people would ‘learn’ to spend L$ from the very start. Good for the SLeconomy, a bit less good for the retention rate?
5. A certain amount of the freebies are certainly crap, and those ‘500 freebie boxes’ are bad inventions. Clearly list what it contains, and what it does?

but…

1. Please don’t take the freebie/OS scripts away!
2. What’s the use of uploading the same i-net found textures over and over again, you might as well get freebie packages.
3. I like giving out freebies, it’s kewl to see people all enthusiastic.
4. Freebies are a good (great?) promo tool.
5. I would never pay for a dance cow, 10 different types of coffee cups, but it’s still nice to have them.

So, I wonder, Freebies, are they a ’show stopper’ or a ‘great gift to the Grid’. What’s your opinion? And which freebies do you use still/most? For me that would be my flightfeather attachment, the ZHAO AO and.. errr… that’s it. (If I think of more I still regularly use, I’ll add them to the list. Pandora HUD too, I don’t recall 100% sure if that was a freebie or gift. :/ )

Tags: freebie, orientation, prokofy neva
Categories: Second Life
31 Comments »

Yeey! As I already plurked - yeah, Vint is to be found on Plurk lately - and listened around with a few peepz - do you foresee any SL-problems with this baby - there is a new addition to the Vint-family: Mao and Deng got a little brother. Although he’s officially named Acer Aspire 8920G (934G64BN) we’re still thinking of a name that fits the family tradition better. Naming suggestions are welcome.

Acer Aspire 8920G Specs

It’s a healthy baby, with a good - although above average - weight, black body and not to noisy (but sounds great when you tell it to make noise - for a laptop, that is). More specific: NVIDIA® GeForce® 9650M-GS, Intel® Core™2 Duo processor T9300 (2.5GHz/FSB: 800MHz/6MB L2 cache), 4GB DDR II RAM, 640GB HDD (2x 320GB) and the rest of usual features that come with such beings. The only icky thing is the CineDash Media Console, which imho is totally unnecessary (maybe it can be removed without to much problems, like the appendix?) It comes with a clean Vista install (no ‘hey, try this out, it’s shareware crap thanks to nice the PC guys from the shop) which is already way less scary now I found the way to revert it to ‘old, classic windows look’. :d

It’s strange how such a thing can give you a whole new look on virtual life. From 4:3 aspect ratio to almost 2:1 surely needs a while to get used to. (Yeah, I could not help myself. First thing I did was to check how Greenies Lawn looked on this one, and how my fps was doing.)

Software. Errr. Suggestions welcome.

Now the thing is, what to teach it in his first weeks:

* = He can already do that.
? = ‘no idea’ or ‘would this be a good idea?’

1. Surfing: Firefox*, Opera, Firefox plugins
2. Anti-virus: Avast
3. Firewall: pffff. not needed?
4. Zipping/unzipping: 7-Zip
5. E-mail: Thunderbird
6. FTP: FileZilla
7. Graphics: Adobe stuff, GIMP, Adobe Reader*, Wacom drivers
8. Torrent: ?
9. 3D software: DAZ?, Blender (not that I’m good with it)
10. Second Life: Second Life RC Client*, shadow branch test files, avpainter, clothingpreview, qanimator, ?
11. Feed Reader: ? (might go web based)
12. General comfort: Notepad++ *
13. Office: OpenOffice
14. IM/chat: Skype, ICQ, MSN, mIRC
15. Capture audio: Audacity
16. Capture video/screen: any good alternatives for Frapps?
17. Fun & Various: Bryce, PacketGarden, Twinity viewer, ExifViewer, AMP Font Viewer, camera drivers, Spore Creature Creator (maybe), …
18. Music playback: ? (probably WinAmp)

Did I forget any important stuff a PC should be able to do?

What won’t make it on the new PC: lot’s of useless Intel programs, Microsoft Office, Flickr Uploader, _anything_ CoffeeCup, Nero 7, Corel Painter (unless I buy a new Wacom someday, but never actually used it), Google Video Player, AC3D, QuarkXpress, Flock, Google Earth, Flux Player, Pownce client, HentaII3D, Plopp, meet-me (never worked), AC3D, … .

Fingerprint, a bit ‘over the top’?

A final questions, that ‘fingerprint identification’ that comes with almost every laptop nowadays, does anybody use that? Is it extra safe? And what if you loose your finger? Seems kinda silly and ‘unnecessary luxury?’ (ok, so is the subwoofer in the laptop and some other things, but still. :d)

Tags: acer, gadgets, graphics, hardware, vint falken
Categories: Vint Falken
13 Comments »

The second annual ‘Hippo’ (aka Linden Lab Innovation Awards) are open for nominations. The Linden Lab Innovation Awards are a part of their Open Source - or open source, opinions may differ - project and serve to ‘honor community members who have had the most significant impact on the Second Life open source viewer project over the last year‘. Candidates are contributors who have had the most impact on Second Life open source development in the last 12 months. Got a favorite contributor, documenter, or beneficial influence whose contribution you feel was exemplary between 1 July 2007 and 30 June 2008? Nominate them for an award! More information about how to nominate your favourite contributor over at Massively.

Most famous ‘Hippo’ 2007

Most well known winner last year was Mr. Nicholaz ‘Beresford, who won the title ‘Contributor of the Year 2007′ for his huge amount of great patches - bye, bye memory leeks, or ‘lower memory footprint ‘ as Nicholaz puts it so nicely - which he incorporated in the Nicholaz Viewer. The same Mr. Beresford that almost gave up on supplying us with great ‘asstachment free’ viewers and patching the Linden’s viewer - obviously this (2007) was a different time, a time when everybody thought that contributions would continue to be readily accepted and not largely ignored - does not care much about this year’s Linden Lab Innovation Awards: ‘I’m a pretty ambivalent about this years awards, given that the Nicholaz Edition is now more of an independent viewer and given that I even stopped making submissions. I’m pretty proud of my last one about the Asstachments, which was around January, but the feedback from the Lindens (essentially calling it a cheap band aid) about was less than thrilling. Others which I’m equally proud of, actually the ones which make most of the difference between Linden versions and Nicholaz Editions, have hardly been accepted or I pulled them out after seeing them ignored for months.‘. For those who did not know, btw, there is are a whole lot of ‘alternative’ viewers/clients for Second Life in the running, most - but not all - listed here.

I hope Lindens take better care of this year’s Hippos. Send them iMacs, IM’s and most important of all: listen to them! They were chosen because they have valuable suggestions to make in the first place! ;)

How to nominate a possible Hippo

This is a rather closed ‘poll’, as Lindens don’t announce this call for nominees and votes on the Second Life blog, you need to dig through the wiki until you find a page titled ‘Linden Lab Innovation Awards. Now it’s easy you say? Nope. 1st thing you need to do is login into the Second Life Jira Issue Tracker - and we by now know that 99,19%* of Second Life’s population does not know that JIRA exists, let alone how to use JIRA and then being able to ‘add the person’s Second Life avatar name as a subtask to the appropriate category under MISC’. Not sure if I now how to do that, honestly. :p

All the best of luck to the people that got nominated already - see list below - but maybe we should have some ‘aimed at the broader public’ awards too. Best contribution to virtual fashion? To the art of animating your avatar? Most useful HUD? Best tutorials? Prime interesting news source? Best in picturing the Grid. Top metaverse social peace keeper? Most funny virtual clown? Something to engage all residents, and rewards those that make our Second Lifes more agreeable on a daily basis, not just because of their knowledge of code, but because they have other skills. No? As this is only about people who use ‘Linden Lab shared tools’ kick-ass people like Natalia Zelmanov - contributing hugely in their own way - fall out of the boat.

Anyway, the nominees (so far!) for the Linden Lab Innovation Awards are:

1. Best Documentation (misc-1301) - SignpostMarv Martin, Asuka Neely, Strife Onizuka, Gally Young, Day Oh, Saijanai Kuhn and Catherine Pfeffer
2. Best Project Organizer (misc-1302) - Lex Neva, McCabe Maxsted, Harleen Gretzky and Strife Onizuka
3. Best Contribution (misc-1303) - Mm Alder ,Ellla McMahon, Gellan Glenelg, JB Kraft, tangletwigs fairymeadow, Able Whitman, Seg Baphomet, Marine Kelley, Realxtend development team and Nicholaz Beresford
4. The Jesse Malthus Award for Best Community Influence (misc-1304) - Zha Ewry an Lex Neva
5. Contributor of the Year (misc-1305) - Gigs Taggart, Harleen Gretzky, Alissa Sabre, Carjay McGinnis, Maxwolfe Goodliffe, Fox Diller, Whoops Babii, Michelle2 Zenovka, Marine Kelley and Nicholaz Beresford

As only 8 names out of this list ring a bell to me, I feel ashamed for not spending enough time on JIRA (, but it loads that slow, sir!) although I’m almost always on the RC. To often when something bad happens to me, I just reboot and get one with it, assuming somebody else will report it so they can fix it. But also a bit for our Linden Gods, who should - imho - try harder to explain to people & avatars about JIRA and how to contribute (and maybe see some results of that).

* Vint’s best guess. But really, I won’t be that far off!

Tags: hippos, jira, Linden Lab Innovation Awards, open source
Categories: Second Life
2 Comments »