Reading Radar

Crap Mariner was on episode 1 of my podcast, but of course he’s been known for a long time for his blogging and podcasting efforts as Laurence Simon. I knew him before he was the windup midget butler OR the psychotic Cee Rap Mariner. But he’s always been involved in doing stuff, and making stuff happen.

Now he’s calling for people to interview with him for an “end of year” project he’s working on. SO JUST DO IT, DAMN YOU!!!! I mean, really. Why wouldn’t you?

I knew this would happen…

And that shows to me, that Dedric Mauriac has great taste. He’s the man with the blue hair!

But what really makes Dedric worth paying attention to is the stuff he knows. His recent Blue Hair podcast episode talks about marketing in SL and has some great information for anyone selling things in SL. The tips for getting into the new search results, for example, are really helpful.

Technorati Tags:
commerce, how-to, podcast, secondlife, virtual

It should be no surprise that in our explorations, a lot of the fun is clicking things and seeing what interactive features the place has to offer. I mean, that’s the whole POINT of SL is various types of interaction, right? Otherwise we could all just pile into IRC and type the night away. So it comes as a bit of a downer when an “official” sim has little or no interactivity. The ABC Melbourne Australia sim is once such place, and it’s too bad as it could have been a lot of fun. I’m guessing that the ABC in this case stands for “Australian Board of Commerce” or something, not ABC Television as in “we need writers.”

When you tp over to the sim, you wind up at a landing point with a lot of weird, flippy triangles flapping around. Umm.. okkkay. Can any australians here tell me if melbourne is prone to having flocks of weird, flippy triangles hovering about?

As we stood in the “landing zone,” we heard some odd noises of people talking and other noise, so we turned up our sounds. Apparently they’ve recorded public sounds of people scurrying about and generally acting australian in an urban setting, and put it in place here to simulate a hive of activity in a busy city. Unfortunately… this place was totally deserted.

Sadly, walking down the alley of stores only increased my disappointment. The stores were just facades.. you couldn’t go in, and there was nothing to click on or open. The building skill level here was basically “make a large square wooden prim, and apply some textures based on pictures of a store in melbourne.” Bummer.

The only place that was set up to actually enter really confused me. It was a square building, with one large room, which was textured to look like the sides of buildings. The effect was that you were standing in space inbetween the walls of buildings. And then there were rotating, colored, semi-transparent cubes in there with you. Ok… they are promoting drug use amongst tourists.. very nice.

The only point of real interest we found in our brief visit was the part I dubbed graffiti ‘n’ garbage alley.

There was also a cafe setting, and you actually could sit at the tables!!??!!! I think the name of it was laneways. I’m not really sure. No one could be found besides the 2d waiter, and he wasn’t talking.

Past Laneways was an open gathering area, or “park”, and beyond that was a water facing section with apparently some changing rooms. Being the shy people that we are, we opted not to use them in each others company, and anyway the sim crashed at that point or something as we both got logged out and wound up back at home when we logged back in.

I just don’t know what to say to any entity that comes into second life and builds a very non-interactive build, which then attracts precisely 0 avatars (besides us, anyway) and in no way would ever bring back anyone for a second visit. Please, people - make something that people can engage with and want to come back to or at the very LEAST recommend to others. Mmmmkay?

Now in fairness, we didn’t see the whole sim before it crashed, and the rest of it might have been the most interesting, interactive, and exciting place in SL!! But I seriously doubt it.

Technorati Tags:
3d, build, exploring, secondlife, virtual

Did you know that right on Podcast Island, a tv show will be being filmed? Yes, that’s right - pickle.tv is going to be filmed on podcast island. It’s all very exciting. I mean, this should open new job opportunities, right? I could be a key grip, or.. well, you know all grips are key. There aren’t ever any plain old vanilla grips. They are always key grips. And I’d rather be key and work for free than be in the way earning pay. Okay, that’s a lie. I’ll take incompetent and rich anyday.

What was I saying? Oh, yeah.. so anyway, there’s this studio now, which Itazura built, and Podcast Pickles and Chug and I furnished up a little bit. It looks great. This is tv quality professionalism, and don’t you say it isn’t. Because it is. Uh huh. Yes it is. Uh huh. I know you are, but what am I?

If you think you’re a noteworthy citizen who should be interviewed, let me know. If you aren’t a gorean and you look like you could be dropped off a pickle barrel and survive, I’ll pass the word on to Podcast Pickles.

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3d, PodcastPickle, secondlife, virtual

Thanks to everyone who showed up at the ice skating event on Podcast Island yesterday. We had fun, even though there wasn’t a lot of ice skating taking place for the last hour or so. And wouldn’t you know, I didn’t take a single picture. Initially I was suffering from SL whacking out my computer, and then I just plain forgot. But oh, well.

The rink’s still gonna be there for a long time, so use it whenever you want. And say “hi” or IM me if you stop by the island!

PS. Thanks to Crap Mariner for at least getting a picture of us all standing around talking on ice.

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3d, PodcastPickle, secondlife, virtual

Hey! Get over to Podcast Island, there’s an ice skating event on Sunday the 16th (stop by whenever and just start skating). But you don’t have to wait until then. We’ve set up a couple automatic skating setups, for couples and solo skaters, and for that there’s free skates in a dispenser box, just click on it to receive yours. Also available are skoopf skates for the normal prices but you don’t have to go anywhere to get them. Just use the skoopf vendor right there on podcast island beside the ice.

Chug decorated the place with all sorts of Christmasy items and so on. And Rocky and Jane helped us find some great items too. I’ll try to set up some freebie dispensers or something if I have time.

And by the way, we stole this idea from Crap Mariner and his rink on Nowhereville, in all fairness. Stop by there.. not only is there the rink, but there’s the Black Tie Martini Club and … umm… other stuff.

Technorati Tags:
3d, secondlife, virtual

Look at this blog about voice on the SL Site… it’s the responses that caught my eye.

Some people think that voice has “never caught on” because there’s still a lot of situations where text works best, or because THEY don’t use it. Some people say “never used it, never will”. Some complain about how it’s used by others. Umm yeah.. ever go to a concert and hear the stupid Howl and “Hoooooooooo” gestures?

Voice works great for doing things like actually WORKING on something (building, scripting) while communicating with people, or when your hands hurt. I have tendonitis, and I also have to use different keyboards a lot for both work and home, and adjusting back and forth is hard sometimes. Sometimes it hurts, other times I just can’t type well. Right now is one of those times.. my hand hurts like a mother… beyatch, but I’m still taking the time to tell you all what a bunch of grannies and grandpas you are. Just because YOU don’t use it does not mean it does not have some really good uses for those of us who don’t think everything’s about them.

Another place it comes in really handy are the podcaster meetups and stuff. What, you want everyone there to have to add everyone else to skype, and run an external app instead of just clicking the button to make it happen? Right… I want you as the one helping streamline my meetings/business/whatever. Cause clearly you’re so good at it.

Look at this comment by Traci Summers:

Voice is only for MALES, to make sure the girls they are on top of are realy girls…

To the lindens..get rid of Voice.

No, dummy, it’s for people who actually want to get something DONE, like build or script while discussing the project with other people, or do more than just stand around chatting people up 24 x 7. I’d argue that the number of men wanting to verify their girlfriends is 0, as they’ve already used skype for that, while the number of men with female avatars who refuse to do voice is quite high. So you have it backwards. If anything, a higher percentage of the total number of real women are probably comfortable with voice than the percentage of total men. Anytime I see a woman’s profile where she says she refuses to do voice, it’s a dead giveaway that the RL person behind that avatar is sporting external junk.

I see this as more of the same old “ME ME ME” attitude where people complain if things aren’t done their way, and everyone else can go to Blaze (don’t know why that’s supposedly a bad thing, but whatever). You know? Pull your heads out, ya ding dongs. Or the chipmunk will tell you off!

Technorati Tags:
3d, secondlife, virtual, voice

The street signs are going up, most of them are now in place on podcast and podcaster island. Go check them out if you haven’t.

Here’s a very cool intersection - Chugabug Way and Larkin Lane.

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3d, PodcastPickle, secondlife, virtual