A gathering of twenty plus avatars assembled at the Cedar Island SIM on Saturday afternoon, the 6th of June for a Health Care Organizing Kickoff Meeting. The event had been organized by SL resident Siri Vita, who had presided over a similar meeting several months earlier. Ms Vita, is active on many fronts in SL and is known for her work with several nonprofit organizations in Second Life, most notably Peace Train where she is one of several organizers planning for this year’s Peace Festival. The organizing meetings are a component in the strategy of “Organizing for America”, which is part of the Democratic National Committee and was formed after the campaign to support the President Obama’s agenda for change. Prior to the meeting, Ms Vita had sent out invitations that included information on health care reform, frequently asked questions, her presentation and an announcement to attendees that included the following:
“We will be reviewing a new video recorded by President Obama addressing everyone attending these kick-off meetings, this Saturday. These meetings will be taking place all over the US. Our in-world meeting is not only a chance for you to actively participate in your government, but also a way of demonstrating the power of SL to bring us together as a positive force for change.”
We have simplified the paper a little after listening to feedback, you will now find we have only 5 sections these are: Main news - This section will contain almost everything with the exception of - Extra Extra - This will contain all the press releases that we think may interest you plus will continue to host the fictional columns it has always been known for. Classifieds - This will stay as always Red Light - For all adult themed articles, pictures and advertising RFL in SL - this will remain only during the season and you can find any RFLinSL events listed here as well as any articles written about RFL events. The older sections will not disappear we never delete older articles instead these sections will be available through our Archives which you can find through the left menu in main news or from the top navigation. As always we are listening to feedback both from readers and reporters feel free to leave your comments and let us know if this makes things easier for you our readers. Dana and James
The Happiest day of our Secondlife but it wouldn't have been the same if it wasn't for those friends and family that went out of their way to make the day as special as it was.
In June and July of this year, I reviewed the Official Second Life Guide and the Unofficial Guide to Second Life. Now it's time to look at a book that was published about 2 months ago: "How to do EVERYTHING with Second Life". It's actually one of the many 'How to do everything with ...' books.
Firstly I want to say that I'm eager to learn. And those books that I have reviewed did, actually, teach me something. A few hints, some key shortcuts, I even learned what 'being ruthed' means. I've been on SL for about 9 months now, and to be honest, except for some specialities such as scripting, sculpties and designing clothes, I think I pretty much know my way around SL. I know the basics, and a bit more, I like to believe. So the previous books were nice, and the Unofficial Tourist's Guide was fun because of the places mentioned there.
But this afternoon I received my 'How to do Everything', and since then I couldn't stop reading! Holy Mahony, I wish this book had been published before the other two. This book makes the others obsolete!
Yes, that's a bold statement, I know. But just imagine, this book talks about the same things as the other two, and more. Those had all the elemental stuff in it, but mind you, when do you actually buy a book about SL? Right, when you're already hooked (like the rest of us). And when is that? Yes, when you have found your Second Life. And wouldn't you have the basics under your belt by then? Yes you would.
So, that's the reason I love this book. Of course, it deals with the basics, like enhancing your appearance, making friends, all that stuff. But this book does more. It actually explains things a bit deeper and deals with a lot more topics that might actually help you get to the next stage in your Second Life experience.
Whether it's stories about people's first experiences of owning land, or how to make transparent textures with Photoshop and uploading them. On how to find items that went under water or even under the grass, to reducing lag and increasing performance. Even where to go if you're looking for medieval roleplay, to a great 101 on LSL scripting.
I don't have the space here to tell you everything you can find in the book, but I can give you a quick summary of the contents, to give you a global idea of what the book covers. And there's a free chapter available for download (see link below). And like with the official guide, they picked the chapter that deals with inventory. So if you want, you can compare the both.
Part 1 - Get a Second Life: SL essentials, communication and good manners, create your look, doing inventory, introducing the interface, advance interface techniques
Part 2 - Venture into the virtual world: sex and the single avatar, going on a shopping spree, visit exotic lands
Part 3 - Go beyond the basics: earn a living, buying good land and setting up house, building objects, texturing, scripting
Mind you some of the mentioned topics sound quite basic, but you have to trust me on this one: I am 100% confident that you will learn plenty of new stuff from this book, even if you consider yourself experienced. And if you don't? It's a fun read anyway and it's nice to freshen up on a few topics.
Factual info about the book: Full title: "How to Do Everything with Second Life" By: Richard Mansfield Publisher: McGraw-Hill books ISBN: 987-0-07-149789-3 No. of pages: 268 Order at: $16.49 at Amazon.com or $24.99 at McGraw-Hill Look inside the book: first pages and FREE CHAPTER 4
About the author: Richard Mansfield is the author of 41 computer books which have sold more than 500,000 copies worldwide and have been translated into 12 languages. He is an active Second Life resident.
My opinion: Information value for starters: 5/5 Information value for advanced residents: 5/5 Graphic quality: 4.5/5 Easy to read: 5/5 Extra's: 4.5/5 (blog with scripting resources and more)
The Jewish community has always been represented well online. Whether it's the endless number of websites, numerous bar mitzvah clips on Youtube, or even representation in Second Life.
In May of this year, a fellow named Carter Giacobini opened up a new sim to the public, called Ir Shalom. This sim is dedicated to the Jewish religion and has been a popular place for many people so far, Jew or non-Jew. Not only as a place for Jews to call home, but also to inform non-Jews about Judaism. It looks superb and the place has a really nice feel to it. Ir Shalom is actually another name for Jerusalem and means 'City of peace'.
As you can imagine, most of the things in Ir Shalom are related to the Jewish religion and things like that. And this is why they currently have an exhibition in the Jewish Historical Museum in Ir Shalom going on that I think you should see, at least if you like (or even love) art.
The Argentinian paintress Lilian Matalón-Goldhar is very gifted. Let me just quote what the welcome sign at the exhibition says about her (I couldn't have summed it up any better myself):
Lilian majored in psychology and worked in the field for 20 years in areas ranging from teaching in the university level, publishing a book and having her own practice.
At the same time, she studied drawing and painting and in 1993 she decided to dedicate herself entirely to that area. She has been sculpting for a number of years as well.
Her pieces tend to include a wide color spectrum and the create and transmit a powerful mood that reaches the viewer. She has been part of several RL exhibitions, including several of her own for which she has received a number of rewards and special mentions.
One of her major projects was a collection about the holocaust and human rights. This took 3 years of preparation and included reading a large amount of testimonies of survivors, and numerous interviews with survivors in Argentina, Mexico and Uruguay. These works were exhibited in the Riel Gallery, the AMIA (Israeli-Argentine Culture & Welfare organization), as well as throughout various provinces in Argentina.
I will not tell you too much about it. Seeing it for yourself works so much better and there is plenty of extra information to be gained at the location and on her website (although that one is in Spanish). Oh, and while you're there, don't forget to check out the other exhibition going on there, a series of portraits of famous Jews from all over the world.
I talked to the owner of Ir Shalom and the organizer of this exhibition, Mr. Giacobini, and he forwarded a few of the many responses he has been getting about the Holocausto exhibition.
"Enjoy is not the right word for what I experienced at the Holocausto exhibit, but I found it very meaningful and sobering. Thanks for your work keeping the memories of those souls alive." - Xtabber Young
"Great exhibit. I am glad to have found such a place on SL. I have my Master's degree in Holocaust and Genocide, and didn't think I would find such a wonderful place. Thank You." - Kimberly Montgomery
ps. Ir Shalom is one of the main sponsors of SL Newspaper. And while you're there, also check out the SL Newspaper coffee corner at the Ir Shalom Community Center.
On October 2nd, we posted the resident statistics of August 2007 (or, the SL Metrics as Linden Lab calls it) in a handy format. This time, I will just give you an update on the most important changes.
Usercount:
Number of 'unique' residents: + 571,881 (+ 9.3%) Number of residents: + 343,961 (+ 3.7%) Number of premium accounts: + 454 (+ 0.5%)
What does this mean? Well, the number of accounts is ever increasing. But that's not so strange with all the alts and increasing popularity of Second Life. The number of 'unique' (as LL calls it) residents seems to increase more than the total number. This could indicate that less people have extra accounts (alts), at least legal alts. That's alts that are linked to primary accounts. The group of people that have more alts than average, are griefers. So we suspect that the amount of griefing has been decreased, maybe because in September the Summer holidays came to an end, so less bored teens on the grid.
However, the number of premium accounts lags badly, compared to the resident count. This could have to do with the introduction of VAT for European Union based residents. We can probably safely say that the growth of premium accounts in the rest of the world would approximately go ahead as normal. And that would mean that more EU residents actually have gone back to basic accounts. However, Linden Lab does not provide numbers of premium accounts per country, so this is not exact science.
Activity of residents:
Number of active residents: - 24,002 (- 4.4%) Number of hours online: + 699,996 (+ 3.0%) Average hours online per month: 45.9 (42.7 in August, + 3.2%)
Obviously, the number of residents who logged into SL at least once a month decreased, but the total number of hours increased. If you look at the number of hours per user per month, spent in-world, increased quite a lot. Again, this could have to do with the Summer holidays being over, but nonetheless it seems that there is a shift from quantity to quality.
Origin of active residents:
It seems that there are only minor shifts between EU residents, USA/Canada residents and residents in the rest of the world. EU residents have broken through the 40% barrier though, looking only at active residents. And residents outside EU/USA/Canada have increased a bit more in hours online than residents within EU/USA/Canada.
Top 10 of countries:
America is still leader, although the market share of active users has gone down a bit. Japan is down by 2 places, from 2nd to 4th. Germany is up by 2 places, from 4th to 2nd. That's a swap and can be called a substantial shift. In the lower ranks, the Netherlands have dropped from 8th to 9th and swapped with Spain. Other than that, no significant changes took place.
Overall conclusion:
The most important difference between September and August is that the average numbers of hours online have increase quite a bit. Other than that, it's mostly minor shifts.
Not long ago our newspaper received a request from a Casting Director working for a show on MTV USA. They’re looking for people who have a second life in a virtual world. What better place to look for than in Second Life. Right? So here is the info they sent us:
MTV TRUE LIFE - I Lead Another Life on the Web
MTV True Life is casting for their next episode, "I Lead Another Life on the Web". We are looking for Second Life players who are entirely different online than they are offline. Players who become whomever they want and live out their ideal fantasy life in Second Life.
Do you DJ in Second Life but never had the opportunity to do so in real life? Are you a successful business owner in Second Life yet an average student in real life? Are you shy and single in real life but in Second Life you are the most popular sought out fashion model?
We want to know - how do you lead your life online? All candidates must must appear to be between the ages of 18-28 and reside in the US. Please email your name, age, photo, and phone number to acordova@leftright.tv.
You can also send the information in-world to Dixie Barbosa and your information will be forwarded to the casting director asap (full privacy/confidentiality guaranteed). And make sure you check out the website of the show: MTV True Life.
We have seen many real life companies come to Second Life. However, sometimes those companies make it possible to link the SL to RL. Like Vodafone, the worldwide telecom company.
Vodafone has launched a new product called InsideOut. With this product, it is now possible to make phonecalls from within SL to Real Life phones. Currently this new feature is only available between those people who have Vodafone InsideOut, but this might change after an initial market test period.
How does it work? Well, Vodafone links your Second Life account/avatar to your Real Life mobile phone, and makes phonecalls possible through that channel. You will need a HUD for your avatar (which will attach to your interface), and you will need to go through registration first. Not only phonecalls can be made this way, but also text/sms messages.
The service will be free until the end of November 2007. After that, charges can be up to L$ 300 per minute, or per text message. If you want to know more, or if you want to register for this service, go to the Vodafone Sim and pick up the HUD there. An introduction movie can be seen on their website or in-world in their own sim.
It's about 2 weeks ago now that Linden Labs announced that they would have to charge VAT to all account and island fees to any European Union located resident. Of course we covered this event in our Finance section when it happened, and another article about outraged residents visiting Robin Linden's office hours. Although Linden Lab (LL) has given some extra information about the backgrounds of it all, now that we have a better overview of the situation, and done some research, it is time to state some additional facts.
Who is affected?
When you created your account, you have filled in the country you live in. If this country is one of the 25 members of the European Union (EU), you are affected. The residents in the EU make up about 39% of all active accounts in SL (more statistics here).
Is Linden Lab correct in applying VAT?
Basically, yes. Back in 2002, the European Council decided that online services provided by non-EU countries are taxable in the EU state where they are consumed. The location of the servers, or statutory location, or address where the bills are coming from is not relevant. They consulted experts (and I bet they talked to tax authorities as well) concluded that if you live in an EU country, the service is consumed there. You have a browser on your local computer that is needed for the service to be rendered, or consumed as they say, and that alone is enough to consitute this fact.
Should we, or LL, pay back taxes?
The EU rule came into effect not long after the EC directive was issued. I believe it was sometime in 2003. This means that taxes should actually have been paid since then. But if we, the consumers, should have paid back taxes, LL would already have said so. Linden Lab has not said anything to date about this, so it is unknown how this works. They have probably paid those back taxes themselves (it would be a gargantuan administrative job to get all those taxes from their residents, especially where residents already have left SL. Or they might have made a deal with the tax authorities of the EU.
What effects does this have, financially?
Everyone in the EU has to pay taxes on their account fees and privately owned island fees (tier). The tax rate that you have to pay depends on the EU country that you reside in. Most of the countries have tax rates varying around 18-20%, some of them are lower (Cyprus 15%, Spain 16%) or much higher (Denmark 25%, Sweden 25%). Unless you have a company in Real Life that pays the bills (with a VAT id-number, in which case you can get them reimbursed), the prices are just increased by the applicable VAT rate.
But mind you, with the current exchange rate between the US dollar and the Euro, things are cheaper for Euro-users anyway. So that might make it a bit easier to accept.
And there is another aspect. If EU based people have to pay more maintenance fees for their sims (up to US$800 per year), they will have to get reimbursement. So the EU based sim owners will have to offer their land for resale or lease at a higher price than non-EU residents. That creates unfair competition.
Why all the outrage?
It comes naturally when people have to pay more. Especially when there is a price increase between 15 and 25%. However, what bugs most residents, is that there was no kind of advance notice. Some residents even received the email after the VAT was charged to them. And apparently, LL have been planning this for a while already.
On top of that LL does not seem to care about cultural differences between the USA and Europe. In the USA it's more common to advertise prices excluding taxes. In Europe, however, it's good custom to show prices including taxes. So even if people were assuming they were already paying taxes, it must have been calculated into the price already. Or at least should be now. On the other hand, this would pose a big problem for Linden Labs, because they would see their revenues go down a lot, and they would have to change pricing anyway, which would be unfair to the other 2/3 of the residents.
What's behind this?
Obviously, Linden Lab is obliged to do this. However, considering the lack of advance notice, and the way they handled this alltogether, seems to make clear that they don't care about their European residents as much as they care about the USA based residents. Could this have to do with the fact that European people are a pain in the butt already? Protesting the ban on gambling for instance? Or could it have to do with the fact that LL is getting Second Life ready to link to other virtual worlds? Who knows ...
Conclusion
The course of action around this VAT issue has upset a lot of residents. However, it is doubtful that a lot of people will leave Second Life over it, if any. But it will hurt the in-world economy, with the unfair competition issue at hand, as stated above. People will think twice before buying a sim of their own, or even increasing the land allowance on their premium accounts.
Other media
The Life4U Second Life tv station has already done an issue about this. I personally gave an interview about VAT, from my perspective as EU based resident, sim owner and accountant (my RL job). And of course every paper has spent at least some effort to cover the VAT changes.
... where everyone is? Or how well your country is represented? SL Newspaper gives you this info in a handy shortlist:
Representation by country/group (# active residents): European Union: 39.1% USA & Canada: 32.0% Other countries: 28.9% Total # of active residents: 540,151 Total # of residents: 9,252,781
Representation by country/group (hours online): European Union: 39.8% USA & Canada: 39.0% Other countries: 21.2% Total # of hours online: 23,300,913
Top 20 of countries (# active residents): 1 United States 29,1% 2 Japan 7,7% 3 Brazil 7,7% 4 Germany 7,7% 5 United Kingdom 7,0% 6 France 5,2% 7 Italy 4,7% 8 Spain 3,3% 9 Netherlands 3,2% 10 Canada 2,9% 11 Australia 2,5% 12 Portugal 1,3% 13 Poland 1,2% 14 Belgium 1,1% 15 Mexico 1,1% 16 China 0,9% 17 Switzerland 0,8% 18 Argentina 0,8% 19 Denmark 0,8% 20 Sweden 0,7% Other: 6.7%
About a month ago, we wrote about Windlight and one all important question remained unanswered. When will it be available again? Yesterday Torley Linden wrote something about it on the Projects Updates page. This is a little subsection of the Linden Lab site where Linden developers and other employees can give informal updates on ongoing projects. Seems logical, right?
The answer to the question is: within a couple of weeks.
Reading Torley's message, they're still working on some issues and doing some finetuning. It will be available as a FirstLook viewer at first, and after that in the main viewer.
In the meantime, you can enjoy some Windlight photo's on Torley's personal Flickr page. And as Torley writes, even the standard female newbie avatar looks better with windlight. Please note that the photo's in this article come from Torley Linden's collection on Flickr.
When logging into Second Life today, you might have found that before entering the world, you got a popup to agree with the new Terms of Service (TOS). What about that? What are the changes?
Well, of course you can read it on the official Linden Lab Blog, but we thought that it would be handy to give you a short explanation. In short, it introduces a new system to deal with disputes between you and Linden Lab.
So what is it? In the past, when you had a dispute with Linden Lab, you had to contact them, write them, and eventually sue them. You would have to go to court over relatively small issues and amounts. Linden Lab is not known for being easily approachable, so a lot of disputes were left alone, just because people weren't in the position to go to court. This could be because they live half way around the world, but also because costs of legal representation could easily rise above the disputed amount.
For these smaller amounts (up to US$ 10,000), Linden Lab now offers to solve any disputes through established arbitration organizations. We're not going to list them all, but in case you do have a dispute, you can find some examples on the Q&A on the LL Blog. Basically you can choose your own mediator/arbitrator, as long as it meets some reasonable prerequisites.
Of course, you will have to go to the LL complaint department first. That is, try to contact Linden Lab by phone or email, wait for a reply, and hope for the best. And if that doesn't work, then you can choose to go foward with arbitration.
So is this an improvement? In a way, yes. It's a more standardized way of resolving any 'small' disputes, without having to go to court. Most of it can be done through old fashioned snail mail, by phone, and through the internet. You don't have to actually travel to San Francisco and be physically there. And it's binding. So whatever the decision will be, the dispute is always resolved.
And what are the dangers of this new TOS? Well, Linden Lab has to approve the mediator/arbitrator that you want to use. On the other hand, if you and LL really can't agree on this, there's still the option to go to court, even for those smaller amounts. This new arbitration system doesn't exclude the other.
The costs of such arbitration can vary, but usually are no more than a few hundred US dollars for disputes under US$ 10k. But please mind, the new TOS and the LL blog do not say anything about getting reimbursed for these expenses if you do win your case. So if you do go forward with using this kind of arbitration, make sure you include a claim to get reimbursed in case your claim is acknowledged.
What the TOS is NOT! The Terms of Service do not deal with new issues like identity verification, although through the TOS, Linden Lab is authorized to set any rules of behaviour they like, and publish additional sets of rules, like the Community Standards. So the changes to this TOS only concern changes to the new arbitration options.
And finally, what IS the new TOS? In our opinion, the new TOS is what it was before, but the new changes are most probably to prevent small time lawsuits. This is not a bad thing, because it doesn't exclude any legal options for you, it just regulates more options that are available to you. Some say that this was long awaited, others are cynical or sceptical about this TOS, but those people felt the same about the old TOS too.
So if you agreed to the TOS before (which you did when you went in-world at least once), you can safely do it again now.
By Nazz Lane 
