SLang Life - Second Life gets First Life magazine
January 6, 2008 12:48 am
Now what do you do when all the press is bad? Right, you make your own press. That’s what the people from SLang Life - tagline ‘real information at home’ - must have thought, when browsing trough the latest RL articles on our brave new virtual world. Which means? We get our first real life magazine glossy paper thingie you may put on the toilet, read on the metro or use in the litterbox. And we’ll get it for free! Sure, we are just virtual beings, but see: we can get real life tries to die for us! W00t! As far as I know, those avies over at WoW do not have such powers! :p
A bit to much irony from my side - especially if you take into account my involvement with the SLart at the Cannery book - you say?
I don’t know. It’s nice to see all these pretty photographs on paper, and it’s even nicer they will live through Flickr account deletions, asset server problems and other electronics apocalyptic stuff. But news, opinions, … on Second Life is something temporary? Sculpties and WindLight will not stay ‘hawt’ forever?
And if I look at SLang Life ’s mission statements, I can’t help but wonder:
- To be the best source of information about the Second Life platform in printed form. - Ok, you’re the first and only one. So that’s not a hard one.
- To present the views, opinions and comments of avatars and journalists in SL and RL concerning the current affairs and events taking place in ‘Second Life’. - Hmmm. I tend to be happy with the information found on the blogs & SL news sites I read. Yeah sure, more in-depth is always possible, but the SL bloggers - small, big and huge ones - are so much faster. They just need to write & press ‘post’. You guys will need to write, lay-out, print proof, print, wrap, post and then wait until it arrives with us and we decide to empty the mailbox. I prefer my news ‘breaking’, especially as it comes to a world that seems to be on double speed compared to our good old solid non-virtual one.
- To present texts and opinions reflecting the views of SL society in a wide international perspective. - See ‘2.’
Besides that they did not promise us neat and good looking graphics without diffuse glow, I also wonder about pricing. Printing a magazine is not cheap: IRL you pay lots of money for a fashion magazine that is full of ads. How will you raise enough capital out of ads, still keep the magazine agreeable to read and with content, pay your writers, pay for the dead trees, pay for putting ink on the dead trees and pay shipping fees? My full admiration if you pull this off, as I do not see not anybody pay giant amounts of RL dollars for ads which such a limited ‘public’.
Yet, I have a subscription now. And you’ll see me and my human fighting over the magazine. Just out of curiosity and to see who finishes it first. You can get your own copy of Slang Life deliverd to your mailbox by filling out the subscription form here.
PS. Why the hell would I want a ‘discreet mail (the opaque envelope without sign of content)‘?! That way I can never grab it before the human gets her paws on it!
16 Responses to “SLang Life - Second Life gets First Life magazine”
Vint, when you get it, can you tell the rest of us if the insides are as hideously designed as the cover?
One of these days, being “first” won’t be good enough to get attention - being “good” will
So exciting, I signed up! Can’t wait!!!
Sure, Kisa. Although, as people mostly stress the cover, I’m not hoping to much on a pleasant surprise. Why don’t you get one yourself at the subscription page? They even offer the ‘discreet mail’ envelopes! ;)
Skycat, neither can I. I’m just worried it will be somewhat of a disappointment. :/
I almost subscribed. My curiosity won over the feelings for the dead trees. I went there, filled the form but just a fraction of a second before I pressed “submit” my human, whose data I was giving at the occasion, asked where the hell privacy policy and the other fine print we never read has gone. So, ctrl+F4 it was and the browser’s tab disappeared. Not that I believe in safety of data privacy policies talks about, but lack of the boring lawspeak is really too much.
Hmm. Aristotle or SLang Life, pick your worst enemy? ;) BTW. I wish my human would share her date with me. Still she refuses to give me the credit card data. *sobs*
Ooo, very nice… I subscribed and selected the “discreet mail envelope” due to being shy in real life about my second life, mostly due to stuff I feel free to tell online and feel shy to tell in real life. Mostly because i’m in High School, and news travel faaaaaaaaast… Still, I look forward to reading it, and I guess delivery to Israel is available, as Canonical got through from the UK to send me 4 complimentary Ubunutu CDs for me and my friends :-D.
Though i’ll miss that experience of clicking on the little RSS icon for Brief (an RSS reader for Firefox), and reading the news. Reading through in a dash if I see “VintFalken.com (NUMBER)” ;-). Plus, blogs are faster. Engadget, for example, publish something about a gadget every 15-30 minutes, so when I get home I see *DING* “Engadget (70)“, though 90% of that now is irrelevant. Anyway, what I meant to say is that, with all those writers, and the fact that online blogs do way less impact on our real world, makes me much happier :-). Imagine sending a paper after a huge process, getting someone’s comment by mail, re-publishing, and so on… THAT’S ANNOYING! In blogs, especially ones powered by AJAX, it’s *clickity click* *click* *DING* “Comment sent!” *Comment pops up under the last one*.
P.S.: SL’ang life have an entire island of their own — I don’t think funding’s gonna be an issue…
Ok, Smiley, let’s get this clear:
You FIRST check the Vint Falken folder in your RSS reader, and only then you may go see if there’s anything in the RL inbox for you! ;)
And over time, funding is an issue. Start up capital is great, but island costs and printing costs stay as long as there is a magazine. So after a while, there should be some generation of income too. Not necessarily to make a profit, but at least to not make a loss. The best Belgian RL magazine - Deng, and first Mao - died over this. :( (And no, it was not a communist magazine. Just a mix between serious investigation, interesting subjects and a whole lot of lovely irony. *Cherishes her copy of the ‘Lijntje’ edition which had to be taken out of rotation because Mr. Dirk Bruna did not understand the difference between ‘copyright violation’ and ‘parody’.*
True, but maybe they will print out “clickable ads” :-P. Ads, including normal ones, could do wonders for funding. They could sell out ad spots to inworld merchants, and make money from it.
((I kept my reply short this time because I gotta go — Cya!))
Ah, but profits that for instance a car or clothing brand makes in Second Life are nothing compared to what for instance H&M or Mercedes make. Hence they have less to spend on ad space.
Yet the paper and printing costs stay the same, so does the time consumed if you want to put out something decent…
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Well I just got the first two editions at the same time and I’ve been poring over them. First impression: wow, slick. Layout like Time magazine. Second, more in depth impression: some features and interviews go nowhere and grammar and spelling needs work. But heck, it’s free, and it’s cool to be reading about SL away from the computer, especially for those of us battling RSI issues and needing to limit puter time anyway.
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I need to know how to cancel this magazine. I have moved and it is not forwarded and need to stop it being mailed. Thank you for your help.
See, SLanglife now a collectors item, Deb. It won’t be mailed anymore, regardless to which address. :)
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