Virtual LandMarks - My Proposed Idea to LL

[Rival Destiny]

Toy - You've put a lot of thought & effort into this idea & I hope it goes through.

 

[Toysoldier Thor]

Well No one (not even LL) can say that I didnt do everything possible to explain and promote the new feature.  If (and more likely when) this JIRA ends up falling into the abyss as do all JIRI items I create for LL, I can personally feel satisfied that I did everything.

I moreso need fellow merchants - whom this would benefit greatly - to help make sure  that LL is fully aware of the value of Virtual LMs for oru community as well as so many others to expand / improve the SL experience.

[Poenald Palen]

But, you can give someone a business card (with an alt called "Storename Here Manager" and have him also do all communications and events. I mean, sounds silly but would work in a way, if it was a normal culture.

So far, they end up rezzing something you gave them and checking profiles. I mean, at least I do. I think this is normal, the checking of an items profile...in fact, these days they make that little pop up with the "i" there to click and see who made it and so on...I get all mixed up but know the locations and do it this way. For all the words I read all day, the words I type and the words I hear....I do many things visually as my eyes and hands dance in a duet in my brain...or is that a triet for three....two hands...but I have two eyes....so, maybe a quadet? Not sure...oh, arms and body balance...not to mention different parts of my brain....thousands of things happening there....yeah, only thousands...I am a bit slow, uh?

People could make server based landmark cards, no LL needed. There are even some being advertised, though I have not checked them out. It is pretty simple. They get a prim card object and attache or rez it.

Someone could also make a HUD that allows a note to be made. A small object or notecard added with info on how to contact the server of the owner. The owner could attache the server and teleport to new store location and drop it, or a web backend could be made with a website or appserver thingy (google has one that is free up to so much usage...appengine? as well as a possible solution via custom OS made with linux, bsd or whatever running on amazon offerings...if they are still around) so...uh, yeah, it is not so hard and a neccessity. So much so some people are doing it, one guy advertising for some help and such is rolling out one I assume. Virtual busines card is what he is calling it.

[Toysoldier Thor]

Thanks Poenald,

I do know there are many ineffective partial solutions that could be deemed workaround and alternatives to the perfect grid-wide solution that LL should have put in place in the early days of SL.... but many of your suggested ideas do not go near far enough to solve the larger problem that LM's should have been virtualized long time ago.

The non-LL server / service solution is not effective since it is not wide scale and universally recoginized by all SL residents.  Everything tyou suggested are customized one-of solutions that attempt to reduce or get around the root cause issue - that LM's from SL are not virtualized.

We can all keep finding work around solutions or we can get LL to come up with a SL grid wide universal solution.

The good news for your solution workarounds are that chances are good LL will handle this JIRA proposed solution like they do most SL resident ideas...  the Jira will go into perpetual work backlog or in review and never be serously considered.

As such, your work arounds are viable small scale solutions.

but again... I was not looking for non-LL alternatives... I knew they existed... I am trying to tackle the root cause problem.

[Rival Destiny]

I think like rl, biz people in sl have their methods & systems that they prefer to use.  Putting lm's in product pkgs has been a part of product sales in sl for a long time.  Many people still do this some don't. 

I did this myself until I had to move my store from one quadrant of my sim to another.  Having the MP as well as my profile, I no longer feel the need to rely on this method.  I note my store location in my profile as well as referring customers to MP to get my store location. 

Landmarks are one of the first things I delete in my inventory together with unnecessary notecards as these accumulate so quickly.  If I want to visit a creator's store, I always go to their profile.  I have been doing this for a few years now as I am aware of stores that are always moving and landmarks are often no longer valid.  This can occur not only via a store relocating to another sim, but the owner simply moving the landing point.  It's much more convenient for me to shop using the 'see in world' in MP or visiting the owner/creator's profile. 

Keep in mind that I am in no way negating this jira, I think it's a very cool idea.  Even though I use other methods and this is not something I would use, I know other's would find a use for it. 

I do remember moaning when I moved my store and thought, man, I have to replace all those landmarks so I can surely see that those still using this method, will be tickled pink if this goes through.

 

 

[Toysoldier Thor]

Hey Rival,

First of all I didnt take your post wrong at all about dissing the value of the JIRA. 

In fact your posting and that of a couple others enforces the the value and argument about the concept of the VLM JIRA.

Let me take your posting and interpret it ...

When you started your SL merchant business, you did what I am pretty confident the vast majority of new SL Creator-turned-Merchants did, you saw there was an additional value in your packaging & distribution of your products during sales to include a LM asset in each product you package for sale.  I did that and countless others did that.  For the same reason as countless Merchants also include informational notecards about the respective product and they might even throw an LM in the notecard. 

You did this at the time when you werent concerned or maybwere not initial aware of the ramifications related to the the HUGE functional limitation that LL never addressed and has left lingering since inception of the LM design in the early days of SL's evolution.  The fact that LL's developed a critical LM solution  whereby each created LM (both the master and any copied instances of the original) were 100% designed to stand as point-of-creation stand-alone assets with a hard-coded grid location.  This major limitation and its eventual ramifications to a Merchant that widely uses LM's as a marketing tool didnt hit home to you (nor most of us) until the first time that you are forced to change this LM's coordinate.

Each Merchant at their own pace and/or when the situation hits them will realize this major weakness in the strategy to distribute as a mass scale a Store, mall, club, venue LM.  At the point each Merchant painfully realizes it, the easist new strategy that 99.99% of merchants will execute is one of three approaches:

 

1. Accept the LM limitation and painfully transition all OLD LM distribution assets to new LM assets and continue using LMs as a marketing tool.
2. Realize how painful the LM limitation is (i.e. not having a Virtual LM function in SL) and take a new approach of abandoning the marketing value of handing out LMs all your products and LM givers etc. because as much as there is value in handing out LMs - its not worth the risk and future pain in having to refresh/update LMs as well as the limit on your business's ability to be flexible on when and where you want to have your store's LM.
3. Realize the LM limitation and come up with work-around solutions, technologies, approaches, way to promote your LM in a way that at a small scale (specific to your business) you address the SL-wide LM limit or avoid the LM limit.

Regardless of which ever of the 3 approaches you follow after your first painful realization of the major LM weakness in SL, you fully understand that there is a fundamental flaw in the current LL SL LM solution / technology.  There is no dispute about that.  But for 99.9% of merchants or club owners or whomever....  the thinking is "I understand that SL's LM solution has this major weakness but there is nothing I can do about the limitation so just make business decisions with this understanding"

Well I am the 0.1% of SL Merchants and residents that has decided to take an additional approach.

I have decided to create a proposed solution that would effectively address this long standing major LM limitation and try to convince LL that they should have resolved long time ago.  Solving the LM limitation is not rocket science.  Its actually based on an extremely well known and used technology approach of VIRTUALIZATION.

To be fair on LL, when they first developed SL in the pre-beta stages, I believe they didnt even have the concept of LMs and TPing between sims.  When they realized that there was a critical need for the concept of LMs and TPing to specifc spots on the grid, they likely at that time did not see just how far the SL' grid and its eco-system would come to rely upon the LM solution.  So the idea of virtualizing the hard coded LMs did not dawn on them.

BUT, they should have realized this huge limitation way back in 2005-6. 

Well, its time for someone to seriously ask LL why they havent addressed LM Virtualization and try to convince them that this long standing huge limitation needs to be addressed - to improve the SL Experience for all.

 

So here is a question for you Rival.  If we could go back in time when your SL business started and there was a concept of VLMs in place and as you stated already you deployed LMs in all your packaging etc.  If you would have deployed VLMs back then and 2 years later you were forced to change the VLM location to another part of your land and it only took 3 minutes to make the change in the VLM-MS interface and POOF all your VLMs across the entire grid was instantly updated.....

WOULD YOU HAVE ABANDONED THE STRATEGY OF PLACING VLMS IN ALL YOUR PACKAGING?

I would suspect not.

[Czari Zenovka]

---

Toysoldier Thor wrote:

 

I moreso need fellow merchants - whom this would benefit greatly - to help make sure  that LL is fully aware of the value of Virtual LMs for oru community as well as so many others to expand / improve the SL experience.

---

An idea in this regard - There is currently a jira to bring back last names.  Some person made a sign that people can rez in their stores, clubs, etc. that when touched will give a notecard describing the issue and pointing the person to the jira.  One sign is very catchy, it shows 3 SL avatars, a tiger, a human, and a child, iirc with the words "Please Sir, may I have a last name" a la "Oliver Twist."  I have one in my store.  If you created something to this effect, I would be most happy to display it in my store.

Another idea is to add it to our profiles.

As fate would have it, this morning I received notice that my shop landlord is selling the sim.  So, I'll be going through all my products and replacing lms soon.  And I have a relatively small number of items.  It's still a major PITA!

 

[Czari Zenovka]

---

Rival Destiny wrote:

 

I did this myself until I had to move my store from one quadrant of my sim to another.  Having the MP as well as my profile, I no longer feel the need to rely on this method. 

I note my store location in my profile

as well as referring customers to MP to get my store location. 

Landmarks are one of the first things I delete in my inventory together with unnecessary notecards as these accumulate so quickly.  If I want to visit a creator's store, I always go to their profile. 

 

---

(Emphasis mine.) I like to keep a small, neat, organized inventory, thus I quickly delete duplicates and extraneous items and, as you said, lm's and notecards are two of the worst inventory clutterers.  I, too, always go a business owner's profile to tp there; for clubs I bring them up in search and tp that way.

I also have the lm to my store in the majority of my profile picks, especially the ones referencing my business.  You know what drives me nuts?  If I am talking to someone, let's say for example I meet someone out dancing, and during the conversation they say, "Hey, I'd like to come to your store, can you give a lm to me?"   This happens to me regularly.  I used to say that it was in my profile picks for my store listing, but several people still insisted on a lm.  I have no idea of the psychology of this...but now...I just hand them a lm.

I do think when I delete all the current lm's from my products (I have them embedded in the notecard instructions), I am going to go sans lms and just list my MP location, which has "see item in world" in the listing.  Or I may even say something like, "My in world shop location can be found on my profile pick #x."

I definitely like Toy's idea and do think it would make life way easier for business owners, which wasn't the point of my response - I'm just dumbfounded why people ask for lms after I tell them my store location is in my profile.

Something did just occur to me - the lms I did keep were to places that maybe I discovered on a hunt and wanted to remember it in case I wanted to return.  Since I would see maybe 100 stores on a typical hunt, I couldn't remember their names so I would take a lm and put them on notecards with each notecard being the category of the shops.  This kept the lm inventory clutter to a minimum.  I recently purchased "Travel Agent" sold by Zanara Zenovka and LOVE IT.  It is a much cleaner way to organize the lms I do want to keep as well as providing a snazzy way to easily tp to the locations using the HUD.  Maybe that's why some people request lms.

 

[Toysoldier Thor]

Great idea Czari on the Merchant store JIRA promotion.  Let me see what I could come up with and maybe I can create a link giving "Get involved to lobby LL to develop VLMs for SL" posters.

 

As for your past post on frustration on inworld local avi's asking for your LM when its in your picks....   happens to me all the time as well.  But again - this is why it is so important to address the problem of non-virtualized LMs since you cannot resist the culture in SL that residents very often want an LM - even if they get it from your picks they will end up with an LM of your place in their inventory.

I could only completely guess at the millions (if not 10's of millions) of invalid, out-dated, abandoned LMs that are sitting in everyone's inventories and in vendors and packs and anywhere else that something references a LM asset.  I have about 700 LMs in my inventory right now... i can tell you that if I deleted 650 of them I would not notice any negative impact to my experience inworld.

[Czari Zenovka]

Let us know when you do that.  I'll be first in line to post it in my store.   And then in my new location since I have to move soon...thus, as you did recently, recognizing the genious of your idea.

[Poenald Palen]

I think it would be cool to never have to worry about moving to new land. It could allow anything from scaling to roving or concert type of things. I mean, if I had a band or other act it could be found no matter where it roams. But, I think LL is more interested in other fixes and that is why my mention exists. People can solve it now, so maybe they should? I don't know, I don't bother with it. I learned people find my stuff in search. If you think about it, SL makes money of classifieds....why would they care to not have people slip through teh cracks of customers busy memories and leave them up to search and the lucrative enough classifieds?

They have nothing compelling in this system and have even annoyed the heck out of some with search AND classifieds by changing or tweaking it. So, I simply look to other offers and point them out. I was not sure all where aware and my post is sort of a vote to move on because LL makes money and has so many bugs and improvement to deal with that it may be an uphill arguement with them to prove they need this feature.

I think part of what LL does is just try to host and leave much up to the residents. Sort of a hands off approach that leaves a few obvious solutions for those looking for a problem to solve. You could argue it is pro business or merchant to leave it to the public to provide. Vendors are an obvious solution. BUT, why would LL make a item that makes a person use LESS prims! They sell land with a prim limit! They don't stop people, but still....why input hours to reduce your income!!! Which reminds me of why I avoid posting much anymore! lol. To much time wasted here I feel, plus a few other things that go on leave me wondering why I bother.

But, interesting technology! I moved my store like 3-4 times at least...it must be a few more than that. I don't bother know so much, but never had a huge following or tried that approach. I relied on visable locations at venues (sort of a philosophy and thank you to those places) and then search....now it is just the marketplace website for me. Maybe soon It will change, and yeah....I am thinking about these solutions because...well, I doubt it will be the last locatioin I will be at lol. There is always a reason to move, always a change or two that makes me move to another plot of land.

[Toysoldier Thor]

FURTHER UPDATE:

Friday Aug 3rd at 4pm SLT I formally introduced and presented the VLM JIRA and concept to the Lindens that attended and run the SERVER / SIM / SCRIPTING User Group.  The following Linden were in attendance to hear and ask questions about the VLM concept:

 

• Andrew Linden
• Simon Linden
• Cheesey Linden
• Baker Linden

I also want to mention and thank several of my fellow Merchants that attended the meeting to be there to support the concept and participate in the discussion about VLMs and how it impacts them as a Merchant.

I want to say that my impression on the discussion and the Linden's responses to the concept was very position.  They asked several questions about the details of how it might work and who can create VLMs and a lot of conversation on how the concept of VLM's could be potentially used as a greifing tool.  There was good response on these questions but by the end of the conversation Andrew Linden said it was an interesting concept and that both he and Cheesey would take the JIRA back and bounce the idea around with other Lindens.

At the time of this posting the local chat log / transcripts had not yet been posted on the UG's webpage, but keep your eyes open on the following page for when the Aug 3 transcripts are posted.

http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Server/Sim/Scripting_User_Group 

Thanks again to the Linden team for taking so much time to discuss the topic and ask valuable questions.  Thanks to all the other attendees and specifically to the Merchants that showed up to provide support and valuable input to the conversation.

Lets cross our fingers that the Lindens like the idea enough that they will consider executing.

[Czari Zenovka]

That's so cool that you actually got to sit down with some Lindens and present your idea!  Great work!

Really hoping this gets implemented.

[Poenald Palen]

Ah, maybe I am wrong (again! surprise lol) and they might be actually interested!

I just assume search = money from classifieds revenue meansd negative income. So, this si sort of not helping them justify thier work to investors.

Not only that, but right now I have heard Rodvik is looking to hardcore users to help figure out what they feel would work to make people stick around. It seems like they are positive about making things run smoother.

Plus, slowely but surely the US gets faster internet. An example of this is Googles new offering in...oh...kansas? Not sure, but they are starting a internet ISP offeringwith TV and all that. Highbandwidth, perfect for SL? Not sure, but major cities might have some very quick net access 5 years or so from now and it will be lower cost. This can only be negative for SL IF competition offers more with the new found uneed for such highly compressed streraming and so on. Prims where meant to be streamed fast, but we see LL already switch to mesh. Not only that, but collada offers animated objects, the bvh animation may be tweaked to offer something that streams a users movements and plus there are a few other things that might be easily worked into a very modern and highly interactive virutal world of the future. So...maybe this virtual land mark idea can work inot helping create community, people don't like losing thier favorite hangouts and people like to rediscover old spots. In fact, if there is a effor to attract old users back, this is one thing that would have helped that! So, maybe this fits into what rodvik wants, in a small but significant enough way to be considered?

 

[Toysoldier Thor]

Well I tend to be a bit of a GEEK and my explanation of the new feature of Virtual Landmarks was geek talk in the JIRA as I was sorta directing the talk to LL.

BUT today Nalates did an awesome no-Tech Human blog posting of the new Virtual LandMarks concept as well as provided a very level fair talk of the possible challenges brought up by LL for consideration.

If you thought the JIRA was too GEEK for you ... I would strongly suggest you read her blog - it makes a lot of sense.

http://blog.nalates.net/2012/08/04/virtual-landmarks/

Thanks Nalates

[Toysoldier Thor]

As per yoru great idea Czari's good idea...

To help promote the support for VLMs and send a message to LL that not only is a good idea but one that the general community of SL supports and wants LL to make a development priority, I have created a SUPPORT VLM poster notecard, and texture kit that any resident can get a copy of inworld and place on their store, mall, venue, art gallery, HUNT, etc.

You can get a free copy of it at my inworld store or just IM me and I will send you a copy of the poster...

 

[Czari Zenovka]

Got it in my store now!  Great work, Toy!

[Toysoldier Thor]

UPDATE from the August 3rd "Server User Group" meeting, I was able to get Andrew Linden to post the August 3rd meeting transcripts that included the disucssion on the new concept of VLMs....

The transcript is for the entire meeting - so to help you all out, the topic of VLMs started at my [16:22] local chat message...

AUG 3 Server UG Transcripts

 

Thoughts?

[Czari Zenovka]

Thanks for posting the link to the UG transcript.  Very interesting reading and VLM seemed to be met with a positive response from the Lindens in attendence.

I had another thought I'm throwing out there to those following this thread/proposal - to try to get the word out to as many SL residents as possible, in addition to posting the sign/notecard giver in my shop, I plan to also put the texture and info about VLM in my profile.  Anyone who has some extra space in their profile picks who loves this idea may want to do that as well.  Just a thought that came to mind earlier today.

[Toysoldier Thor]

Update on VLMs...

I went to this Friday's Server Usergroup meeting to make sure the Jira is being looked at and as a couple questions to the Lindens.  Here is the dialog on the VLM topic....

[16:42] Toysoldier Thor: Since last Friday there has been an amazing flurry of multiple articles and discussions on VLMs as well as the JIRA for VLMs has jumped from 15 to over 80 in just 1 week. The response on the idea of VLM's has been overwhelming & extremely positive from the SL residents that have heard about VLMs or read one of the many articles written about it. (I can post the 3 main VLM articles if you want to read them Lindens).

[16:42] Toysoldier Thor: So my questions to the Lindens are: 1) when might we see a Linden response on the VLM jira (it is still officially untouched)? 2) Bigger question is if there is such a strong nearly unanimous strong support for a VLM service being developed for SL... honeslty... is this a factor for LL to consider it as a development priority or am I am the other SL residents wasting our time trying to see VLMs coming to light?

[16:43] Cheesey Linden: Toysoldier we are investigating the idea. When we have a better idea of the technical cost we will update the group/jira.

[16:43] Toysoldier Thor: that would be great

[16:43] Toysoldier Thor: have a lot of watchers wanting to see LL's response to this

[16:45] Toysoldier Thor: So Cheesey - is there anything I can spearhead for the Lindens on this VLM jira? I want to help LL out if they need help.... I dont want to see this jira die as do tons of other residents

[16:46] Cheesey Linden: nothing right now. its a good idea, we just have to see if we can fit it into our schedule

[16:46] Toysoldier Thor: kk

[16:46] Cheesey Linden: which requires some research to see the extent of actual work involved

[16:47] Toysoldier Thor: please keep in mind that the VLM concept can be a phased in approach.... it does not have to go in as one whole end-to-end solution... the VLM-Mapping Service is the key

[Toysoldier Thor]

there is one person from these forums that I know what have a ton of great technical feasibility input and ideas about the VLM-MS and VLMs and yet I have not heard a PEEP from her.....

What up Sassy ?!?!?!??!

I know you would have great insight on the type of DB and DB Table structure from the new VLM-MS as well as the type of webservice interfact - I suspect HTTP/XLM but....

Where is ya Sassy

[Toysoldier Thor]

OK Folks !!!  Some sorta Awesome news related to the concept of VLMs on Friday and even followup info....

 

At the SL User Group I poked the Lindens for and update on VLMS (like I have been doing almost every week with the answer we all normally would expect - "we are looking into this idea").  Well this week I was shocked to get a different answer from Cheesey and Andrew Linden...

LL has finished the phase of investigating the idea of VLMs and they have determined that VLMs are feasible enough to warrant moving it to the next phase of determining DEVELOPMENT PRIORITY !!

I asked if this is good news and Cheesey said "yes - that is progress".

After the meeting I did some further investigation and asked a Linden if he/she seriously saw VLMs having a legit hope or am I wasting time pushing this idea.  I was told that he/she was surprised how much traction the VLMs got internally.   The LL techs grasped the concept and value very quickly and that the VLM solution could potentially help LL with several other functions (especially the centralized VLM-MS service).

So it sounds like VLMs might see the light of day some day ..... now comes the problem of development priority at LL

 

BUT THIS IS GREAT NEWS considering the level of hope most of us - including me - thought the idea would have. zero.

[Toysoldier Thor]

I will update the VLM JIRA to inform everyone about the progress of VLMs.....

Ohhhh Hold on !!!  Wait !!!

Rodvik took that capability away from us SL residents.  We cant use JIRA's to keep the community up on new features and bugs.

 

Thank Goodness Rodvik hasnt yet removed the Forums.    That will be our Christmas present.

[Czari Zenovka]

Great news on the updated info...thank you for sharing that, Toy!  Due to the new jira issue, those of us who have the VLM info sign posted need to revise the notecard that the sign gives to refer people to this forum thread rather than the jira.

Would it still be feasible to ask interested parties to vote for the jira?  Considering the mess  new system, more than one person submitting a jira for VLM will basically be thrown out  integrated with the others and could have the result of annoying the person doing said integration.

[Toysoldier Thor]

Yes this is great news to know that VLMs are not longer an  "IF" it hits the SL Grid but now a "WHEN" does it hit the grid.

And you are correct about the JIRA link on the VLM Awareness LOGO/POSTER.  I mentioned that in my blog that thanks to RODVIK's bonehead move to this week to gag the JIRA system - the ability to look at and get updates on the VLM JIRA are not possible any longer.

I can update the logo to remove the JIRA link.... but the good news is that the need for the JIRA is not as important as it was since LL has already reviewed and agreed that VLMs should be developed. 

related to this issue on not being able to see JIRAs, at the Server User Group, the Lindens themselves believed that a lot of the issues tracking and discussions should move to the Forums now.  I suggested LL create a new main Category on the community forums called  "The forums formerly known as JIRA" and create categories like viewer issues, server, marketplace, etc.

Here is the transcripts of the meeting....

http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Simulator_User_Group/Transcripts/2012.09.07

I actually felt real bad for the attending Lindens as well as the Linden staff (cough cough - are you all believing what I am actually saying here ? ) because it really became clear in the meeting that shutting down the JIRA was not their idea at all.  This stupid idea was created right at the top by Rodvik.   And even during the meeting we were not able to even point to existing JIRA issues to talk about nor could Linden staff ask residents to update the JIRA follow the jira.  Closing the JIRA will hurt the LL staff as much as its going to hurt us.