Your Take - New Website

Linden Lab has completely overhauled the Second Life website, adding a dashboard, a new layout, and other features. What's your take?

John42 Netscape user	Coolguy25 Twitter addict	Bunnypet Hugsalot Facebook whore
Does the dashboard make Second Life drive faster? I think I'm doing it wrong.	Websites are so 2003, dude. The future is crowd-sourced tweets scraped from the Cloud, man!	So it's got emails, blogs, shopping, my friends list... So why am I going in-world again?

Philip Linden's Twitter Updates

The Twitter-verse has not fully embraced Second Life's sandy-haired former CEO, Philip "Philip Linden" Rosedale, and frankly that makes me as angry as a podcaster on Zindra.

How is it possible that our fair-haired golden boy, the Apollo -- nay, Prometheus -- of virtual worlds, with his pop idol looks and Web 2.0 lifestyle, has a mere 1,000 followers?

How is it possible that Mitch "mkapor" Kapor, with his drab avatar and somniferous Tweet-stream about metanomics and 'socially responsible engineering', has amassed a massive army of 11,000+ devotees? Argh! Go build a bridge out of teddy bears, Yawn-Boy!

Confronting this injustice, I point the Bat-finger of blame squarely on you, the SL Twitter users! But I am sure you will immediately correct your mistake, once you have been exposed to Philip's pithy observations and charmingly disarming insights about life in and out of the Lab.

To aid you in your penance, I have created a screen-capture. Click it for detail:






A larger image is supposed to open correctly in a new tab or window. If not, you'll need to go to the Microsoft and get the patches.

Shoestring Marketing, Linden-style

It's not everyday I get an email from Linden Lab that isn't about an outrageous "Incident Report" (I was so not aiming at that guy), so I was quite curious as to what this was all about:



For those of you who can't click the graphic to read the whole spiel (probably because you are in Australia and this unrated gaming content is BANNED), I will give you the gist of it:

You can win 10,000 Linden dollars if you post the URL of your favorite XstreetSL item (from the Home & Garden category, only!) on the Linden Lab Facebook wall!

Yes, that's right you have to go from their virtual eCommerce site to their social media networking page if you need to buy more blood packs for the blood fountains in your virtual dungeon. They couldn't have hit on more Web 2.0 memes unless they made you Twitter about it first and plurk it up afterwards.

So much for you Immersionists, or those thousands of profiles that read "Keep RL separate plz k thx bai!" We avatars now must get out into the larger metaverse and tackle the dangers, the perils, the colossal cacophony of redundancy that is Second Life 2.0! Get ye to Facebook, avatar, and Twitter too!

The rewards are huge, all of 10,000 Lindens. That's about $40 U.S., a truly massive show of marketing muscle in this era of weekly layoffs and economic panic. It's good to see the Lindens being frugal, but maybe they could've thrown in some free "Power Idling With M Linden" t-shirts.

So how do I you win this plum cherry of prize? Enough have people have to click "I like this item" on the Facebook Wall when they scroll through all the other, uninteresting entries and choose "GIANT KITTY COUCH CHAIR WITH 6 POSE SIT ANIMATIONS NEKO" which is clearly the most exciting item of all.



Just keep scrolling down the wall until you find it, and choose "Like" with your Facebook account. What, your Avatar doesn't have a Facebook account? Your Avatar's been banned from Facebook for not being a "real person"?

Sorry then, you're not eligible for this contest!

Second Life Users Fleeing in Droves for Third Life

Growing waves of virtual world users are leaving the familiar, established world of Second Life for a new meta-virtual experience, collectively called "Third Life," a new study suggests.

"Given the lag, the software conflicts, and the general emptiness and lack of purpose in the public spaces of Second Life that we have seen of late, it's no surprise that more users are retreating to a safer, if more solitary, existence," says Professor Rayburn Happysocks, founder of the Virtual University Roleplaying Group's Department of Metanomics.

"For these users, occasional emails, random Twitter updates, and other tenuous connections with their Second Lives are a safer social venue than actually venturing into an alien and hostile 'grid.' "

Dr. Happysock's thesis, funded by tip-jar donations and underground poker games, shows that more than 45% of the avatars on his friends list are now forgoing all primary virtual world contact, instead favoring a more ephemeral connection with friends through email, blogs, and social networking sites like Ning.

"These users don't have a reason to actually go into the metaverse anymore," he says. "They feel more secure with a meta-relationship to their former metaverse status," he explained. "Twitter updates and Flickr pictures are less threatening than actual in-world experiences. It's all about re-establishing a comfort zone against the alien external world."

Other scholars see a dark social trend. "This malaise is far deeper than Happysocks in his usual technophile Extropian libertarian optimism would suggest," says Doctor Killbob45, Human Paladin Level 70. "Let's step back and remember: Many avatars fled the first world for the virtual world precisely to escape the bonds of social obligation, status, and hierarchy.

"Once we become enmeshed yet again in those same hierarchies, the inevitable result will be panic and further retreat."

"Then comes the Predator drones," he whispered, in his penultimate podcast.

Shortly after posting his thesis, Doctor Killbob45 cancelled his WOW account, stopped answering his avatar's email, and abandoned his 4028 sq. meter Mainland estate, the "Erotic Pegasus Encounter Zone."

It is rumored that he now devotes all his waking moments to modding up stories about Linux distros on Slashdot and Digg, while saving up bus fare for Akihabara.

Try Smirkies.com!

The Talking Friend to All

Romance 2.0

I first saw her facebook on twitter,

I gave her a yelp and a plurk.
She joined my family on flickr,
We started im-ing at work.

I confessed I wanted to blogger,
She tweeted my ning with movable type;
I pinged her xbox until she shoutcast,
We burned up a feed on skype.

The third day we were married in warcraft,
Epic wedding: orcish man, elven wife;
The fourth day she caught me cheating
with a catgirl in second life.


Now myspace is a deleted entry,
Where my wikipedia used to be.

No matter how much you google it,
there's no such thing as eharmony!

Twitter-twat!

I think my twitter has tweeted its last. For those of you who don't know, Twitter is this thing where you do an update to quickly let all your friends and stalkers know when you are going potty.

You can even update from your mobile phone with a short text message: "Sitting in traffic, stuck behind another Twitter-related accident."

For me however, it is an experiment that has failed after one day. Even I don't care that I am sitting here editing photos to post, making this post, all while standing in-game looking at kawaii uniforms and gothy dresses.

And even when I am only doing one thing at a time, I can't imagine anybody would even care enough to constantly refresh twitter.com/kanomi just to read:

I am going to the kitchen.
I am opening a bottle of wine.
I am being reamed in the ass by a Bigfoot in a garter belt.

So say goodbye to the Twitter widget on this blog! Maybe I'll bring it back if I actually *get to know* some other SL twits, but right now it is about as useful as Second Life sandwich shop.