second life – Page 2 – Choosing the Green Ring

What do you think?

Please comment!

My opionion about the move/merger/closing is divided in two parts. One has to do with the impact it might have or not on business in Second Life. I think that a lot of people’s shopping habits will change when the forum closes down. And the change won’t be for the better. Of course it might just have to opposite effect.

The other part has to do with the effect it will have on me personally. Those of you that has followed my blog knows that I haven’t been very lucky when it comes to SL related communities. At xstreet I was at least tolerated. Some people even seemed to like me. I’m not sure I’m up to trying to do this againg. Being the “new girl” all over again. Trying to learn all those unwritten rules. Working to being able to fit in and being accepted is tough, at least it is for me.

I’ll think this through and of course await what’s come out of it all. RL is demanding a lot from me at the moment and I’m in an emotional rollercoster that has nothing to do with Second Life or any online community. It doesn’t help though that one of my ways to forget about all the RL trouble I’m in is disappearing and that I probably lost a friend because of it. Hopefully I’ll find a way back to it all, but I can’t see how at the moment.

Very funny movie about Second Life

I just saw a really funny little movie about how to survive Second Life. If you’d like to take a look, you’ll find it here.

My Second Life – a summary

Today is the last day I’ll spend online. Well if you’ve read my other posts, you’ll know I won’t take a complete break. You’ll still find me in worlds once a week and in between that, I might pop in to fix acute situations. What will change is my focus. SL has taken a big part of my life, both socially and practically and that won’t be possible to continue. I need to take care of my self now and my RL.

I’ve met very good friends in SL and I’ve had a wonderful time during my years there. And I’ve lived my SL life as I live my RL. I care about other people and causes. A (former) friend of my said once that I’m pushing people away because I’m too serious. I don’t know exactly what she meant but I think she was right. But if that means I have to change who I am and to stop caring, then it’s no use. I don’t want to change and I don’t think it won’t be possible for me to.

My SL life has been very intense at times and at other times it can be long between my visits, but I guess you can’t stay just as interested in something for several years. First few months in SL I almost replaced my RL with my virtual one. I spent every waking our there. Of course it was an amazing world I had discovered but it probably said more about how I felt at the time. I had starting to see the first symptoms of my depression and me being overworked. Those two aspects of my RL has been following me during my SL life too.

I also discovererd SL related forums. Those too replaced a social life that I didn’t have the strenght to keep up in my RL. Being part of a community has given me so much good things and I’ve found some really good persons I can call my friends. I’ve also experienced the opposite. I know that you shouldn’t let word affect you, but no matter if it’s spoken or written words, they can have a huge impact on you. I’ve become a lot better at not letting it affect me, but on the same time, I can’t really enjoy it as much. I lose something else.

What’s always been the biggest part of my SL life is the creative part. I love playing in Photoshop and in 3D and in SL I could do both. Economically, my creativeness hasn’t been a great success. Only a few of my products sell and only at short periods of time, it’s been worth having an in world store. Except the fact that I really would need some extra cash for my RL, it’s never been a main goal to make any money on my creative work. I love doing it and that’s always been enough. Before I got my stores, I used to give away my products and I always loved seeing them used.

Now I’ve sold my land, downgraded my account to basic, got rid of my stores. All this because I can’t afford keeping it. It feel sad in a way, but very necessary. It’s now come to the next step. I need to move my focus to my RL to save what’s possible to save. That means not writing this blog for a while and it also mean I won’t be reading the xstreet forum and not post anything there. I’ll still have my products listed at xstreet. If I sell something, that’s really good, if not, that’s ok too. I’ll also still be going to the salsa dance every sunday which is hosted by my oldest and best friend in SL. Look me up and say hi if you want.

This will be my ‘I’m taking a break, but will be back’ post. The last post on this blog before my RL is taken care of. Take care everyone and thanks for reading my blog. If you want, then post some nice comments here. I will read those. See you.

Another update!

A while back I posted a help post in the xstreet forum and the response was almost overwhelming. I tried out most of the suggestions and I think I have the result of my efforts now. I posted 2 classifieds with SL and got 3 visits to my store from that. I had them a few weeks and payed 100 lindens for each. So, no more classifieds for me. Then I payed for a start box for an ad system. That didn’t give any visitor at all.

Someone was very generous to let me have a store for free. The result of that. No sales. Another one contacted me telling me about a good place to rent. I tried that and payed the rent for a few week. No sales there either. And no sales at all in my main store.

I rented a small store, very cheap before I asked in the forum and in that I actually sell a some. The profit covers the rent and a little more.

Another thing I tested was to pay extra to have one of my products to show on the first page at xstreet. I think the total views for that was 25 hits and 2 sales. And I didn’t get my money back from that.

I had land in SL that I really couldn’t afford. It’s on the main land so I have to have a premium account to keep it. And since I need to downgrade now it was important to sell the land. No one was interested so I had to lower the price more and more. In the end I managed to sell off half of it, but I almost didn’t get anything for it.

I know that other people can make a profit on the products they make in SL, but I can’t. I was hoping that I could change that when I asked for help in the xstreet forum but it didn’t. Now the only thing I have left it to lower the cost I have for SL and with that all the fun will go away. It doesn’t help that there are some posters in the xstreet forum that seem to have taken upon themselves to make me sad.

I won’t stop playing in SL, but the fun is gone and I won’t stop reading and posting at the xstreet forum, but the fun is gone from that too. I’ll have a break (yes, again, I know) from both SL and the forum. Trying to charge my batteries and hope I’ll find it fun again to be there, to create things (which was the reason I came there).

I know after all my efforts that my products isn’t what people want, so why bother.

The future is here

Eddie is only 4 years old and he spends every day in a virtual world. No, I’m not talking about the average computer game player, but the Artificial Intelligence created at Rensselaer Artificial Intelligence and Reasoning Lab. Eddie is programmed to reason and to predict other people’s actions and has also passed a few reasoning tests. Eddie or really, Edd Hifeng, isn’t yet walking around in Second Life, but it’s possible to talk to him. When I tried to contact him the other day, he wasn’t online so I couldn’t meet him “face-to-face”. Imagine meeting this new lifeform in a way, a first contact.

The researchers of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute aren’t planning to leave little Eddie in the virtual world. They are working to bring him to us in real life. But first he’ll play in the 3D world of Second Life so he can grow and learn about how to be more like us. Eddie is part of a bigger project that Renselelaer is working on. It’s a holodec project like in the scifi series StarTrek. So our “first contact” might not be in Second Life, but in a holodec and a full size Eddie or someone else. The future awaits us and it looks really promising.

Eddie is 4 years old and lives in Second Life

haley-j-o No, I’m not talking about the average player in SL, but the Artificial Intelligence created at Rensselaer Artificial Intelligence and Reasoning Lab. Eddie is programmed to reason and to predict other people’s actions and has also passed a few reasoning tests. Eddie or really, Edd Hifeng, isn’t yet walking around in SL, but it’s possible to talk to him. When I tried to contact him in SL the other day, he wasn’t online so I couldn’t meet him “face-to-face”. Imagine meeting this new lifeform in a way, a first contact.

The researchers of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute isn’t planning to leave little Eddie in the virtual world. They are working to bring him to us in RL. But first he’ll play in SL so he can grow and learn about how to be more like us. Eddie is part of a bigger project that Renselelaer is working on. It’s a holodec project like in the scifi series StarTrek. So our “first contact” might not be in Second Life, but in a holodec and a full size Eddie or someone else. The future awaits us and it looks really promising.

When worlds collide…

I have loved Second Life for a long time, for the people I met there and for the creative sides of it. Never seen the virtual world as somewhere to make money. On the contrary I’ve always felt that it’s a bit too much money and sex in SL for my taste. For those of you who have read my blog for a while knows I have a store in worlds and products at XstreetSL, but the main reason for that has always been the creative part. I love that people love my creations.

I’ve always been able to use SL as a place for recreation, where I can forget about Real Life for a while. But as RL problems got bigger, the harder it was to relax and forgot. Now I’m facing a big decision. Will I have to downgrade to a free account and sell my land or stay as it is. If I’ll do, I’ll have to find a way to earn enough in SL to keep the land. That means more work with new products, more advertising. Will I have time for that? Will it be enough? Or should I close my eyes and drive off towards the cliff that that will be there at some time.

Why can’t I just move in to SL?

”Is there something wrong with SL today?”

Grey people

I tried to log into SL the other day, but “I was tranferred to a nearby region” – agai:). A lot of other people had been transferred there too. It was there I met this 4 metres tall male – ehr I mean female AV. No one could teleport out. Someone asked this nice and polite question: “Is there something wrong with SL today?” Nah… not more than usual;).

Do you have an SL family?

Have you met anyone in SL with the same surname? I have, and even thought it wasn’t any nice encounter it was nice to know there was more around from the Mill family. We’re a small family though. You know how I know? I found this nifty database. You can find out yourself about how many of your family that are walking around in your favorite Virtual world. Click here! Just replace Mill with your surname and you’re all set.

If you want to check what’s most popular or how many names that there are only one of each, browse through them here

According to this, it seems like Allen is the most popular name with 140884 accounts. And there are only one each of Edwards, Graham and Pelletier.

Tag: second life