Around the Grid

And the tip is:  before you rent your storefront in a mall or similar, look up the group and make sure the officers have been logging in recently.

“Whatcha talkin’ about?” you say?  Well, yesterday, I had discovered a mall that seemed to have a bit of traffic to it, with what seemed a reasonable rent/prim rate, and I plunked down a week’s rent on it, proceeding to set up my OnRez vendors.  After I did that, I looked up the group to request an invitation to join.  (Just like most rented houses and apartments, you need to belong to a land group to build anything in the plot you’re borrowing the rights to.)  Well, I got the listing for their group — and guess what it said under every visible line in the members box?  Last login:  “Unknown.”  Whoever were the owners of this place, it had been so long since they had logged in that the date wasn’t even listed!  I sent a forlorn request for membership, but I’m not expecting a reply any time soon.

The bad thing is that I lost money.  The good thing:  it was only about £250 or so.  I consider it a small price to pay, but I’m passing the words to the wise on to you.  I’ll save you the money this way if you decide to open your own store.

Oh, my store?  Where is it, you say?  Well, you could click the button in the sidebar and go to OnRez; but you’ll find my little place in Creamy Dreamz.  I don’t have tons of stock in yet, but I’m gradually growing it.

Sinnocent Mirabeau, whose real life medical problems with her dog I wrote about last week, has told me that the surgery has been scheduled for this week. However, she’s still some $300 short for the veterinary costs. And we’re talking real New-nited States Dollars here, folks, not linden dollars. Sinnocent is still running her BOGO sale at Sinsation (I finally got the acronym right), and I urge you to take advantage of it. Allow me to demonstrate some of my favorite “wigs” here for your temptation! (These photos won’t be pretty; more quick and dirty, as I want to complete it and help her; but if it helps get her that last $300, it’ll be worth the artistic sacrifice [grin].)

As a sweetener to the pot, send me a picture of you in some of your new Sinsation hair in front of the poster at the Sinsation store, and I’ll send you my current package of prints from Harper’s Fine Art. That’s 21 framed pieces of art, at least a L$2,000 value — for free. Can’t beat that, folks; you’ll be doing well, you’ll be doing good, and so will Sinnocent and myself! Come on, and give the lady a hand!!

At this press time, 23 Second Life bloggers have gone on a three-day virtual strike in protest of Linden Lab’s introduction of their new Brand Center trademark rules.

As reported here and elsewhere, LL has changed their rules from an open, easy to read and understand set of guidelines that encouraged bloggers to write about the virtual world, to a set of rather opaque rules that have left many writers uncertain what the status of their blogs will be at the end of the 90-day grace period. Many writers are wondering if they must pepper their articles with ™, ® and © symbols every time they mention the words “Second Life” or “Linden Lab” in an article; others fear being forced to change domain names that contain “Second Life” or “sl.” There have been some legal concerns that, having been compelled to agree to revised Terms of Service that include the new branding rules, any failure to comply completely will result in a shutdown of an account.

Gwyneth Llewelyn, one of the best-known SL bloggers, has demanded a clarification of LL’s new policy beyond the second article posted in their Big Blog (the official SL blog), which is considered essentially a rehash of the actual Brand Center page without any true explanation of what the Lab’s intent toward bloggers is. At the end of her article, she stated that she would “go on strike” for three days if no full explanation was given by LL. Other bloggers have now chosen to join her in this. A list to date of participating blogs can be found at Rheta Shan’s blog, Rheta’s World, along with a nice touch of humor that raises the image of a Les Misérables-like stand on the virtual barricades, raising the red flag of revolution.  A protest stand in front of the Governor’s Mansion in Clementina is planned for Sunday, at good times for both European and American participants.  Interested participants should contact Gwyneth Llewelyn for more details.

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Linden Lab is still botching its public relations with a group that has done it more good for free than any amount of paid publicity could have done. The appointment of a new communications manager, Katt Linden, is a positive step for the future; but they should address the present as well, which includes this situation.  That they have not, in a form that is clear and satisfactory to the Residents concerned, does not augur well for their future communication ability.  While it is quite possible that Second Life could have grown in similar ways from paid advertising, nothing beats the advertising of satisfied customers — the legendary word of mouth.  Someone who likes what they see will try to get more people involved in it to share the fun; they will talk it up to friends and strangers alike.

Similarly, though, a dissatisfied customer can also express their dissatisfaction — and many studies have shown that the words of a dissatisfied customer affect more people in the long run.  Those studies were done years ago, in the days before public use of the Internet.  Imagine now how much reach this powerful communications tool can have.  The current customer base outside of the concerned bloggers are mostly unworried at this time; but potential future customers can run across all the negative press generated by the controversy, and be turned away by concerns over a potentially tyrannical situation.

In their second blog writeup, Catherine Linden also seems to believe that we don’t understand why trademarks are important to companies.  She fails to realize, apparently, that there are many professionals, corporate types, Highly Educated Persons, and just general smart people that understand quite well what value a trademark holds.  Few or none of us have any objection to LL’s protecting their rights — provided that they do not step on our rights in the process.  The newly restrictive attempt at trademark enforcement, coupled with a failure or disregard to explain things adequately to satisfy our concerns, makes LL look even worse in the eyes of an increasingly estranged customer base.

The ball is in Linden Lab’s court.  How will they respond now?

A little while ago, this blog passed the 5,000 hit mark.  I am seriously amazed and delighted; I’ve written blogs before, but not nearly as popular as this one has been.  That’s 5,000 visits in just a little under five months of operation, which works out to a little under 34 visits a day.  I must be doing something right!  Or, more likely, the topicality of some of my posts, especially recently, have kept people coming in, and even returning.  (With wordpress.com, I must rely on their internal counters, and can’t see what my return-visit rate is.)  What I can see are the RSS statistics as well, on individual posts, which drives the readership even higher.  Some of these articles have been monsters, with lots of syndication reading.  Others, seemingly inconsequential ones, are at the top of my all-time list; “Meet Me at Frank’s Place,” just my second article, is the most read, with 202 primary hits at last count.

For those of you who are returning regularly, I thank you for your enjoyment and faithful visits.  I shall try to keep up the quality that’s had you coming back to check on my new material, and hopefully improve as well.  (Thus getting ever more readers, of course [grin].)

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On to other business….  If you notice a change in the look of Around the Grid, it’s because I’ve shifted themes, wanting a different look for a time. In part it’s a response to the ever-popular new Brand Center rules; since the Brand Center says the “first or most prominent reference to a Linden Lab brand name” should bear the “registered” symbol, a single appearance of that in my blog tagline should take care of the whole mess.

I’ve also wanted simply to try other templates available on wordpress.com.  Getting stuck in one look gets boring, after all!  Right now, this particular template is the best of the rest (the dark template I had originally was the best, period), and so I turned it on.  The down side to a “light” template is that my famous “signature” image washed completely out.  It was a GIF with a transparent background, which meant that a light template background would show through.  (Think alpha channel, all you dress designers.)  Since I chose a dark template originally, the lettering thus needed to be white or light to show up.  Guess what when I use a light template…?  So I redid the image in a solid color, one of my favorite jewel tones, and I’ve assigned it to a fair number of back posts already.  If I get ambitious, I’ll work through the entire 100+ articles.  The good thing about having to rework the image is that I got rid of a single pixel of solid color that was in the old image, and which was bugging me no end.  It didn’t show up against a dark background, but the light background of this template makes it stand out.  (Another inducement to reassign all the signatures….)

I’ve been writing about so many different things lately that this draft has sat forgotten in the back room of the blog.  Now I submit it to you for your approval:  a link to a machinima called Noob.  If you enjoy it, come on back and let me know; I got a few giggles from it.

(Warning:  strong language at times)