Reading Radar

No, this isn’t a blog post about some OS X Leopard feature, but it is a post to let you know that there’s still some spots open on the island formerly and technically still known as Podcast Island. I’m not sure if Itazura cares if the new name is announced or not, so I won’t announce it, but if you do a search for Podcast Island in the next few days and it’s not there, try Corona Cay instead. Just sayin.

The spots with green are still available, the ones with blue are rented. BTW, this Table Tenants functions as the rent box for the island - you “buy land” on the parcel for L$1, then you come up here and pay the actual rent on it. This keeps Itazura from having to have annoying looking rental boxes on each plot, which people apparently in the past have stated they had a hard time finding (I know mine wasn’t invisible, but hey…).

Drop Itazura or myself an IM or notecard with any questions. He’s the man to talk to, but if you see me around I’m more than happy to help.

You know, for the past few months Podcast and Podcaster Island have been slowly growing more deserted to the point where I really forgot what it was like to have a feeling of community. There really wasn’t one for quite awhile. So now it’s kind of like being dying out in the desert and having someone drop a canteen at your feet, and saying, “Oh, by the way, there’s a 5 star hotel a quarter mile from here surrounded by restaurants and lakes of water” to have people always there whenever I log in.

Itazura’s made the island more centrally organized and also more inviting and easier to explore. You can see further and it’s all accessible. It’s awesome. Over the tunnel, on a peak we call “Mt Rentmore,” the rental boxes for each plot are on a table named “Table Tenants.” If yours is blue, you’re paid, if it’s green, it’s up for grabs. It’s even got a 3d model of the destination station in the center.

What I really like though is that there are a lot of really cool people there in close now. I can usually find either Itazura, Keeme, Stuart, Danny, or any combination of the above present when I log in, no matter what time it is.

And speaking of Keeme… I need to say this. Having Keeme and Nika there is awesome. Anyone who knows Keeme knows how much fun he is to be around, and what kind of energy, enthusiasm, and ideas - inspiration even - he brings to whatever community he’s in. And Nika being around is fun too.. I tell you what. Having Keeme as a partner has made her reflexes QUICK, I could know exactly where she was going and I STILL could not hit her with the Graviton rifle most of the time. She’s been under intense munitions avoidance training!

Every day we have talks about what’s going on, ideas for events or things to do with the island, and it’s just a lot of fun. I’ve had plots on a lot of places in SL, but this is the best sense of community with a lot of active, involved participants that I’ve had.

It’s a lot of fun, with more fun things coming.

One minor way to help contribute to people’s knowledge of SL if you’re so inclined is through the SL Wiki. If you have an SL account, you can edit the wiki. Tonight, for example, I added an entry for imageSynth2 on the Texture Tools page of the wiki, and previously I put in a link to my Final Wrap Up on SL Voice Recording on the Mac post, as well as to WireTap Anywhere on the Wiki’s Voice Recording page.

I’m not pointing that out so you’ll all send me flowers and want to pick out curtains with me, but as examples of little contributions you can make to resources that people use when they’re trying to figure out how to do stuff in SL. Little helpful tips for people add up, as Scottlo Scorbal reminded me last night in a chat I had with him.

There’s actually very little as satisfying as putting a little tip or bit of information out there and then finding out later someone stumbled on it and found it useful. I never was a fan of knowledge hoarding.

And in fact, I see that on the Machinima page that I need to add a link for ScreenFlow for the Mac…

Linden Lab spend more time blogging about their blog nowadays than actually blogging about their business.

Tateru Nino talks about this on Massively, properly conveying the sense of confusion all of us have about what’s going on with LL and their blogs and other communication tools.

Isn’t the job of a PR department to break things down, make them simple, and help people NOT be confused? Ok, the real job of any good PR department is to lie and cover the company’s ass, but aren’t they supposed to do it is an easy to follow fashion? Any real problems with LL have a lot less to do with their actual approach, but rather their communication. The one major exception probably being age verification, that was just handled stupidly from the word go.

Maybe we should all follow LL’s lead and blog about our blogs for awhile. Publish something once or twice a month, and have it be metababble. Whaddya think?