Suella Ember

Yeah - I first spotted it a couple of weeks ago and meant to say somthing but kept forgetting!

Ahhhh, the wonderful Derren Brown! That guy is amazing. Have any of his shows been shown in the U.S.? He even managed to influence some people to rob a bank once (it was all set up and not a real bank obviously, but the people who managed to subliminally influence didn't know that of course!)

Janelle Darkstone wrote: Rhonda Huntress wrote: The same technique is often used to fix the "hand through skirt" artifacts. Take one picture normally and the second without the skirt. Then layer them with the normal shot on top, the erase just enough to expose the hand from the bottom layer. That is a neat idea! :smileyhappy: It never occurred to me to try that with uncooperative hair. :smileysurprised: I've also used this to some effect where there are issues with long flexi hair buried into the avatar body. Take one shot without the hair, then take a second shot with the hair. You have to drag the hair out of your body and take the shot (remember to position it back though!) It's not ideal becuase when you come to overlay the hair on the snap you took without the hair, parts of it will be out of position. With some clever jiggerypokery* with layering though, you can get it to work so that hair flows properly over the body in your shot. (*techincal term for playing around with stuff in Phtoshop until it woks how you want it to work! :smileytongue: )

"This video contains content from Channel 4, who has blocked it in your country on copyright grounds!" Slightly intrigued to know what C4 program or advert that is now though! (Which is UK incidentally).

I've always used brwoser tabs for reading forums for ages. I just find it the easiest way to work. I tend to browse through the various sub forums looking for topics I'm interested in and opening them in a new tab. I'll go through all the forums first before even reading what I've opened. Then I'll work my way through the open tabs so, if it's a good day with lots of interesting topics I can have maybe 20 tabs open at once. That's pretty rare though! :smileyvery-happy:

Bogas Delicioso wrote: i completely agree with all the replys, some more some less, but i guess that LL has the last word on it as always, just letting u know as well that my wife got 2 items permanentely removed for intelectual property infringement, and guess what, on one of them she bought templates created from a 3rd person, legal ones that alows her to sell her creations with those templates and another that was entirely her creation, starting from zero, and yet was removed and i dunno why, she reported that to LL and yet no reply from them, i guess they just removed cuz of some fake report, cuz they ddnt took some time to get proofs that she has stolen the items and was reseling it, she has all the creations on her inventory as well in the hard drive of her laptop, cuz its what creators do when create something in order to have proofs that its theyr creation. Without knowing the exact details of what the items were, it's hard to say what may have happened there. However, it's possible that they are not talking about the items being stolen from another creator in SL, but the creation your wife made from them used images that she did not own the IP for and LL recieved an IP complaint from the owner. For example, if LL were to recieve a complaint from Disney for someone using an image of one of their characters on a shirt, it would get delisted for IP infringement. Not saying that's what your wife did, but its possible even if she did it unwittingly. You need to be very careful when using textures etc on otherwise legitimate creations, becuase if you don't have the rights to use that texture it could be IP infringement (and that even includes random textures souced from Google depending on what rights the image has). ETA: With templates bought from another merchant, you also need to be careful to check and abide by any licence on the listing or from a notecard with the item. They almost certainly won't let you sell them on 'as is' without making your own texturing etc, or with full perms for example (again - not saying this is what your wife did, but it's another possibility to consider).

Bogas Delicioso wrote: i would like to see what LL has to tell bout this, but till now no reply from them Possibly not likely to get one either unless they happen to see and read this thread. If people wan't further clarification on how the process works though, it's worth raising it on the next Marketplace User Group aganda. @the conversation between Darrius and Phil - I agree that a canned email from LL when an item is delisted would help, even if just to make the merchant aware as prompty as possible. It would also be good to have some general advice on that email with a link to the listing guidelines. (which does specify not to put things in root categories unless there is absolutely nowhere else to put it). In an ideal world even some exact advice (i.e. "you should put it in category xyz"). However, I also agree with Phil that LL shouldn't really be expected to do all the work for the merchant. At the very least though, an automated email with the actual violation would help. If someone has to look at the listing and make a decision, I would hope that they could program something that can fire off an email based on the reason they select for delisting. If that violation were wrong category, the email could advise to check the available categories and choose a more suitable one. Also I should mention that, when this debate cropped up before on the old forums, Dakota chimed in to say that if anyone is completely unsure about why an item was delisted and what to do as a result, they should raise a ticket under the Marketplace category and she would respond as soon as possible. I'm assuming that advice still stands (although I'd respectfully suggest people only use it if they really are unsure and not just because they want a rant about the fact their item was delisted. Yes, support response times can be painfully slow, but if people are sending tickets all the time for a rant rather than an actual support problem, it only makes the backlog worse and messes up response times for us all.)

Phil Deakins wrote: Having read the messages in this thread, including the Dakota Linden quote, it strikes me that there isn't a problem. From what I understand, flagging an item is merely pointing out to LL that you think there's a problem with the item, but it doesn't change the item's listing or anything like that. It's like saying to LL, "Please have a look at this item because I think it's in the wrong place." or something like that. If that's all it is, it seems like a very good system to me. You are correct. Various LL staffers have stated this a number of times. When an item is flagged it is not automatically delisted. It goes to a queue for an LL staff member to check and either delist or ignore the flag if it was an incorrect flag. More to the point, Brodesky Linden once stated that if a person continually flags items incorrectly, their flags will get a lower prioirty and eventually get ignored completely. So, assuming that is true, their is no way to abuse the flagging system. Of course, some may claim the Lab are lying about this. I'll chose to believe them though as they have no reason to make such a thing up and I've personally yet to see evidence to the contrary, or evidence of widespread 'greifer flgging'. I'm not saying some people don't attempt to 'griefer flag' because I'm sure they do! I've yet to see any real evidence of it personally though. Which either means I'm lucky and no-one is deliberatly making false flags against my items (and the items of a few close friends whose word I trust and have not had any problems either) or it means if my items are being flagged, the above is true and LL are checking them, seeing they are ok and ignoring the flag. One big one to check if you get an item delisted is the category it's listed in. Be very careful of listing items in top-level categories as they tend to get delisted if there is a more relevant sub category they should be in. This was commented on a few times a while ago and I think it was Dakota who confirmed that we should avoid listing in top-level categories wherever possible.

Luna Bliss wrote: Suella...Pamela..that website link you posted (with the pie showing the reason most businesses fail is because their stuff is cr*p) is mean and untrue. I know lots of creators who make fantastic stuff but have no marketing skills and their stuff doesn't sell very well...their stuff IS NOT cr*p. That graph is one small part of a huge set of articles which include many excellent tips for marketing, and the author even points out that it is a paradoy, but she used it to highlight a point. An important point - always look at the quality of your items first. It's also probably true that a substantial proportion of businesses fail becuase of the quality of their prodcts (by no means all, but a good proportion). That's not meant to be mean. It's meant to make people stop and think about their products before they blindly plough all their money into marketing. There are, of course, some great creators out there who make great products but struggle with marketing, and they would definitely benefit from reading those articles too in my opinion. I'd like to think that, because they do make great products, they'd have the good sense to recognise the point about looking at quality first and agreeing with it. They would then go on to read all the other great advise about marketing. Of course, it's entirely up to the reader if they study and take heed of those articles or not. Some will probably disagree with some or all of it, as is their prerogative. I'm still more than happy to point people at those articles if they want marketing advice though and let them make up their own minds.

There's a rather marvellous collection of advice on inventory management here: http://sl4nowt.wordpress.com/inventory-management-101/

Thanks for the update! Brooke Linden wrote: Number of listings per page and layout are now cached between searches. This rocks! Now, if we can just get it persistant between sessions ... :smileywink: (I don't know what others think, but I think defaulting to 10 items per page is a pain in the proverbial and I always turn it up to 96 every time).

I don't have special powers, but If I did my special power would be the ability to turn anything I touched into cheese! However, I have put a direct link to that page on this sticky that Brooke started (and I'd also already put a link the the marketplace guides on the Knowledge Base there) http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Merchants/Links-of-Interest/m-p/707951#M92 Random side note: Much as I think stickies are a great thing, I think the stickies in this merchant forum are growing scarily quickly and I fear the first page might be all stickies before too long! :smileyvery-happy:

A collection of great articles with advice on operating a business in SL: http://mistletoeethaniel.wordpress.com/how-to-do-stuff/sl-business/ Recommended reading

You can read all about User Groups here: wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Linden_Lab_Official:User_Groups While they don't differ hugely from Office Hours (you can still go along and attend at any time just like Office Hours) they do have some subtle differences such as more rigid participation guidelines around them and supporting structures. The different User Groups are also more specific to business areas which makes more sense that the way Office Hours could sometimes be. Office Hours were sometimes listed under the the name of the Linden who ran them which was confusing if you didn't know what that Linden was responsible for. There is also a comment on that link suggesting you contact Amanda Linden if you'd like to suggest a new group. Have a read of that page first though because you may find that the idea you have is already covered by one of the existing groups

Ha! Great T-Shirt Keli I was forgetting you've already made some cute t-shirts and stuff so must know the template basics, so you are on the first step to making that dress. What you now need to do is start playing around with the basic t-shirt template to turn it into the dress top. You'd need to erase the neckline down and extend the sleeves, for example. The you need a simple pants base and to make the skirt, either from a system skirt or prim skirt. Here's the listing for the tool I mentioned that can help with prim skirt making: https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/LoopRez-Deluxe-Commercial-Edition-v081/264749 Note that is the more expensive commercial version which you'd need if you wanted to make items to sell. If you just want to make skirts for yourself though, there is a $L100 personal version from the same merchant. To get the flared sleeves on your dress I'd recommend using some pre-made sculpts. Here's an example: https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/Sculpted-wrist-cuff-Dress-A-for-clothdesigners/678665 These links are just a couple of examples, but there are lots more so don't necessarily assume you have to buy these ones. Once you've got that far you should have the basic shape of the dress you want. Of course, the tricky part is them texturing it to get the pattern you want. Which unfortunately is not as easy as it sounds because getting patterns to maych up across the top, pants, skirt and sculpted sleeves requires some practice! ETA: You may also want to look at things such as the dodge and burn tools in Photoshop which can help with getting the right shading and creases etc on your creations. ETA2: Oh - also meant to add that you can also use the .png format with Phtoshop which negates the need to learn the more complex alpha channels.

Pamela Galli wrote: Suella, do you know where that business advice is in some wiki, by Clover I think? Agreed. That advice Clover posted was some of the best I have ever seen. It's linked in this Knowledge Base article: http://community.secondlife.com/t5/English-Knowledge-Base/Power-tips-for-sellers/ta-p/700187 Scroll to the bottom and it's the first entry in the 'Posts and threads' section. called 'SL Business Tips from Mistletoe Ethaniel' (I think Willow said Mistletoe was her alt if I remember rightly). Here's the direct link too: http://mistletoeethaniel.wordpress.com/how-to-do-stuff/sl-business/

valerie Inshan wrote: @ Suella: :smileysurprised: Oh! No cheese??? Nice watermelon and nice pic! :smileyvery-happy: The pile of cheese is just off camera. As soon as the snap was taken I dumped the nasty watermelon and dived into the cheese. Just don't tell Torley! :smileytongue:

Interesting idea. While I agree with the comments saying that this could potentially result in the merchant making an overall loss on the item during the deal, I think the point is that you need to treat it as a loss leader. If this promotion works well it should, in theory, promote more interest in your business and generate more overall sales and profit. So I'm going to watch with interest to see how this trial works in practice. There have been deals similar to this run inworld before by other residents (with varying success). There are also a number of similar, regular programs where multiple merchants can apply and have an item set at a specified discount price on a particular day each week. I've always been in two minds about these programs - They have their pros because they can act as a useful loss leader to generate more sales but they also have their cons - the main one being that because they have become so widely used and so frequent, they encourage shoppers to simply only ever shop for items at these deals. For that reason, I think there is logic to LL running this deal on a less regular basis. Having said that, I think it would be nice to do somethng perhaps monthly with a few merchants (by application) if the tiral is successful. I think the main issue, in the long run, is going to be the nature on which the item has to be setup. If this trial is successful, I'd hope that LL would try to develop a more structured way to take part. A simple way to flag an existing item to take part, for example, rather than having to list it separately at the new price then relist it at the normal price once the deal is over.

Always happy to indulge in a bit of outrageous flirting with Torley! :smileywink:

I'll second Rhonda's suggestion to look at those guides from mermaid diaries. My advice would be to work your way through those clothing guides and get your head around the whole process before diving in to make a dress. It's boring I know, but if you start off with the simple stuff like making a basic t-shirt, you'll understand the process of how templates work and the peculiarities of how what you see on the template in Photoshop won't necessarily be quite what you see inworld! Once you play around with the basics I'm sure you'll have lots of 'eureka' moments which will make it so much easier when you are ready to make the dress you want When it comes to actually making the dress itself you are going to have a decision to make - full prim skirt, pants with small prim parts or system skirt. I'd personally start off with a system skirt. Some people hate system skirts because they don't always look right around the bum, but I find if you turn the sliders on the skirt right down it's workable. Either way - start of learing the system skirts and then move on to trying to make prim skirts. Making prim skirts requires some trial and error but there are tools to help - look up a tool called 'Looprez' on the Marketplace which might help. Basically what I'm saying is practice, more practice, pull your hair out with frustration, practice a bit more! (I'm probably making it sound worse than it is, but really ... practice! :smileyvery-happy: )

There are places called sandboxes in SL where you can go to rez and build etc. Most have an auto-return of 6 hours (but it can vary). Bear in mind that your stuff will be autoreturned to you after the specified time and it may all be as one 'coalesced' object, meaning if you rez multiple items they'll all be returned to your lost and found folder clumped together and you'll need to rez them all together again. Also note that, strictly speaking, sandboxes are not exactly intended as 'free meeting places' but more for people to build. There's not necessarily anything preventing you from doing what you want at a sandbox, but it's not exactly within the spirit of sandboxes either as you'd be using sim resources that are provided for others to build. I certainly wouldn't advise doing it if there are a lot of you meeting up and having a party as it could possibly get you banned from the sandbox. If you want somewhere to meet up with freidns, you might be better off finding a quite public location (such as a park or club etc) where you can meet and chat, or alternatively look at getting a premium account which will get you a free Linden home

What am I supposed to be raising an eyebrow at? I suppose you are referring to the fact that some keywords are referring to 'kids' right? Well, I guess LL can legitimately advertise to kids if you assume that 16 and 17 year olds are kids and if you assume that it's legitimate to advertise to 13 to 15 year olds on the basis of them being able to use SL if affiliated to a hosting institution. So not a big deal there as they aren't exactly lying. What is interesting there is that LL are also obviously using a ton of other keywords and phrases, but that link is showing that amongst the most popular searched for phrases on Google are ones that related to kids. It's not so much that LL are directly targetting kids, its just that they are one of many things they are using in their keywords. So that implies that virtual worlds for kids is a a potentially huge target market and one that there is some sense in going after. (I suppose it could also mean something more sinister too, but the LL also can't really be held responsible for how some sinister people might use Google!) As for the Tao - sounds good to me. We could probably all benefit from following it's ethos too!

Ishtara Rothschild wrote: While I reserve the word "evil" for a select few, I think it's safe to say that most, if not all, people are selfish. They'd be pretty flawed animals if they weren't. Even Linden Lab organized this fund raiser partially to promote their own business, and there is nothing wrong with that. My only concern is the question how much of the money is really put to good use where it is most needed. If residents organize their own charities, the answer is always "we have no way of knowing that". That's why people are best advised to only donate to well-known charitable organizations through their official channels. And even then your money might end up paying for the private jet of some chairman. I agree with you, to a point. It's quite likely that in the back of the mind of many fundraisers is the fact that it will promote their buisness too and, as you say, there is nothing wrong with that. The important thing is that the money gets to the charity. I would also say though, that there are people who raise money more altruistically with no real desire to promote themselves or their business. A sense of satisfaction and personal pride may also be in the back of their mind which I suppose you could still interpret as 'selfish', but that's ok too. That sort of 'selfishness' is fine by me! As for never actually knowing whether your money is going direct to the people who need it or to other overheads and fancy trappings of the chairty in question. It's an age old problem with charities and an unavoidable one. All we can do is ensure that we are donating to a charity with a good reputation. Some money may well still go to the charities overheads, but that's kind of acceptable too. If some money didn't go to overheads the charity wouldn't exist and then no money would be going to where it is actually needed. While it is a valid point that there is never a 100% guarantee your money will go direct to the people who need it, I dislike seeing people using it as an excuse for not donating to reputable charities (My dad has even used that excuse before and I've told him off and made him get his credit card out! :smileyvery-happy: )

Eve1209 Quintessa wrote: It's interesting that you just brought this up. I recently posted a question here, asking how it would be possible for me to make some of my items available for sale and have the proceeds, ALL the proceeds, go directly to a known and reputable Japan disaster relief foundation. My only motivation for this was to be able to use the gifts and talents that God gave me to help out those people who were affected by this horrible tradgedy. Of the few repsonses, the majority implied that they would be very hesitant to donate to a resident such as myself because it could be a scam, and another person implied that it was a very good reason for me to promote myself, my business and get traffic for my sim. Needless to say, I was a bit hurt. I understand there are evil people this world, but not everyone is evil and only out to promote themselves. However, I really did just want to help, and that's why I was researching a way to make sure the money went directly to a reputable relief organization. After stating that in reply to the critics, there were no more replies on the thread. Hi Eve :smileyhappy: Yeah - this kinda highlights the problem nicely! Unfortunately, because there are some scammers around, people have a habit of always assuming the worst and lumping the honest ones in with the scammers. The problem really is that the anonymous nature of SL makes accountability difficult and, because of that, I can understand people proceeding with caution (although there is no need for peole to express that caution with rudeness). As for your particular case, I think you only really have a couple of options: 1. Instead of doing something yourself, point people to the bears from LL people can buy to donate, or look at getting involved with an independent event such as that highlighted in the LL blog post. 2. Do something yourself and donate the collected funds direct to a chairty. Promise people who donate to you that you will post official proof of the payment to charity in your store / on your blog etc and make sure you post a copy of the confirmation of receipt you get from the charity. Neither is really ideal though, which is why I thihnk it would be great if LL were able to provide some official charity vendors etc that people could use (although that has problems of it's own has highlighted in my OP).

Venus Petrov wrote: It is time that we PICards start a new analogy. One that is independent from any other 'entity' basking in it's fading glory. This one will more closely reflect our spirit and intent. Since we already have a 'Prime Directive' : (this forum) should become a place where people can confidently play and disagree without being disagreeable. We seek to recruit more kindred spirits to make coherent arguments regarding the conduct of the forums to Lexie and her Mods. If we are successful then I am sure that we will be able to enjoy ourselves and develop the interest of lurkers and new joiners in participating confidently and comfortably. I propose that we embellish the Star Trek analogy with some new visuals. I propose that we use the USS Enterprise crew metaphorically to emphasize the POSITIVE of posting constructively, yet retaining enough of a sense of humor to keep people interested in reading and posting to the forums. Those supportive of this can add the image to their badge. No pressure, just fun. As we have the attention of the Moderator Team, we need to continue to demonstrate our support of the type of forum we, as residents, and they, as staff of LL, can work with and sustain for the benefit of everyone who wants the same. I am open to all suggestions; I was thinking a PICard rank image: a bald, sexy one for males, Deanna Troi deep cleavage for female - and redshirts for disposable alts. I am not sure how create these images, or if they would be effective; like I said, I am open to all suggestions. I won't be taking part for two simple reasons: 1. I think it's not neccessary to have some form of organised entity to share a viewpoint with LL and moderators. We all have channels to do that already. I may well be sharing similar viewpoints as your directive at things such as the Community Tools User Group and in the Feedback forums, and I would encourage others to do the same if they have an opinion they want to expres too. 2. I think such an organised entity (even with good intentions) might suffer from exacerbating the problem by appearing to want to force a particular viewpoint on others (even if that is not it's intention). I'd much rather actually 'play and disagree without being disagreeable' and see others do the same rather than have to have yet another 'label' to identify me as such.