Morgaine Christensen

Not heard of anything on Bday stuff, but I have been so disappointed in the past over SL Bday stuff it is not even funny. I was involved in Burning Man for a couple of years, on the periphery, and if the Bday stuff is anything like the pityness of that ....well, I hope they do cancel it. The Bday celebrations I have attended in the past were so awful...the things given out looked awful...and were mere geegaws when they could of been really nice and memorable. But, if I hear anything will let you know.

ROFLMAO...if you really think you are confident from these short answers and not exploring the world yourself, perhaps you need to supply us with the name of the head of your dissertation committee so we can speak to them directly about your suppositions you are presenting for your dissertation. You are so far off the mark comparing apples to oranges it is not even funny. If they accept and pass your dissertation, drawing on conclusions from this brief exploration, the degree can't be worth the paper it is written on. You simply cannot compare WOW and Second Life with any accuracy nor, can you draw conclusion and make predictions with any accuracy. If you do, you are very irresponsible. Also, you are not be taking into account age ranges, global and culteral diversity, gender diversity, etc you will find in SL, but not in WOW. WOW is server and region selective...i.e while I can interact with people from around the world in SL....I am restricted from doing so in WOW. WOW, while it does have older players and females playing, genereally is filled with the under 20 male crowd. You don't even have the terminology straight. SL DOES NOT have auctions unless it is for land...Even then...you can buy land and never have to deal with an auction. In fact, you don't even need to own land in SL, it can be rented. Also, SL "vendors" are real people and not NPC...there is no "pre-made product to sell" like WOW vendors that have a set buy/sell price. We have a viable real world economy, more or less, where people actually make/lose real money in the market place. Not like the Gold Farmers in WOW...it actually takes some thought, some skills to make product to sell and market. Also, you need to get your facts straight...you cannot necessarily "freely trade" created objects outside of SL...that is covered by each creator's licensure of their product. It is also a real world DMCA violation that has real world consequences. You are confusing a static game (WOW) with a social networking type environment (SL). As far as you know there are no factions in SL, you obviously are stuck on WOW's self imposed mentality of "good vs evil" notion of Horde vs. Alliance (Yeah, I play WOW...HORDE RULES...and also a long time SLer with in-depth knowledge of both environments...AND, I have a statistical research background). There are multitudes of conflict each and every day on personal and some group levels...which is way different than your supposition of griefers. You are taking short cuts and being lazy. And, you definately are not much of a researcher nor, do you have a clue what you speak of. Good Lord, what are they teaching in colleges and universities these days! Guess I need to make a few phone calls. LOL...it is a good thing I am not on your dissertation committee...you would fail so fast your head would spin.

N-Core does have demos...just found their store over the weekend. N-Core has some nice looking product but have found it mainly looks better on models than worn, but that is only my opinion. I tried on several pairs but was not impressed with any of them that required the HUD to be worn and match my skin. I found it very difficult to match dark ethnic skin for those shoes needing feet; it was laborious and frustrating and never did get a good match. As a new customer to their store, I also didn't like the fact that some displays clearly showed there were demos...and others you had to look closely to find a demo. I don't know if this was the owner not thinking when they set up their newer displays or a ploy to trick the newer customer into buying a shoe. I also tried on some of their pumps not requiring the foot in the shoes. I thought those shoes were too short and snubbed looking....like the toe area was out of porportion with the rest of the shoe. I even found that with the in foot shoes...just all seemed to be small generally and resizing didn't solve the problem. Plus, the lag made it nearly impossible to work with getting a proper fit...the odd thing was there was only 1-2 others in the store. I honestly think shoe and skin designers need to work together in regards to developing some type of relationship so there can be a better matching of skin tones and skin textures, at least from the ankle down. The expensive shoes generally have resize scripts so no manual adjust can be done of given parts, which means a texture for the foot part cannot be added by the customer. Will have to check out the other two you have suggested since I don't get out much. Most of what I buy is for building not wearing. It is apprecaited...thanks for listing them.

Call me old fashioned, JUST SAY NOOOO!!!! Seeing some guy's underwear and having to constantly pull them up or, have a hand on to them so they don't fall off in RL is just so damn funny. I don't like it anymore in SL either. I wonder if all these fasionistas that wear and/or design these thinking they look cool know this originated in prison? It is my understanding the saggy pants showing your undies advertised you would be someone's ...ummm....B% boy? I certainly will be glad when this fashion passes. I will also be glad with the shape/skin fashion of oversized lips and the innocent teen-look for females passes as well.

Nice, shoe. I sincerely doubt you are going to find them for free, maybe you can convince someone to donate their time to making these. Be interesting to see them made and how much the creator would charge since these would either need to be made as a sculpt or mesh.

Sculpts do have limitation in creation and texturing. Depending on what you are looking for and how detailed you want it you may have to go with mesh. You might try posting more detail of what you are seeking. Or, give a second look at what is currently available on MP or in-world. If you are looking at software to do your own sculpts or mesh, try looking at Blender.

I suppose you could report it to the LL. If you do, I would suggest you provide them with proof that you used this information first and if you have these "sentences" copyrighted and/or trademarked. Now whether LL can/will doing anything is a different story. You might want to speak with the other person you have issue with. Unfortunately, it is a dog eat dog world out there when it comes to enticing in traffic, and I am not aware that the same descriptions, keywords, sentences have to be different from sim to sim, venue to venue. Personally, I wish they would do away with traffic numbers in search. It is too easy for people to falsely inflate their traffic numbers. Good Luck!

I am a merchant and a customer. Generally, my homes are purchased from other merchants. First thing I look at is to see if the house/building permissions is Copy/Modify, if it isn't I move on to those merchants that do.I want and need the flexiblity to make adjustments. For this reason, when I build houses/buildings they are generally Copy/Modify. There will be an occasional build that is Copy only due to the usages of items included from other vendors. I am curious what a mesh house would be like. Am I able to easily change the textures, say from known texture vendors for walls and such? Or, would I have to make some special textures and/or alter them. If I can't use standard textures I am not sure I would be interested in buying a mesh house. But, that is my personal preference. Mesh is a whole new world for lots of folks. Educations is sorely lacking in my opinion. You might have to educate your customers too about retexturing. Will you include the UV or AO maps with your creations ? Can they use straight 3-D Textures from popular Texture merchants?

You need to join the Mama Allpa User group and check with them regarding the issues you are having. They may be able to assist you or you could contact the maker of the HUD.

Not that I know of, I have the site in a Firefox tab to the SL website...log in..then shopping. Doesn't happen any other times but between the hours listen and only the last 2-3 days. Just totally weird

Being a softy, idealistic, and willing to give everyone benefit of the doubt, I am hoping the person either simply is unaware or they have some legitimate licensure we are unaware of. I think i all depends on what your conscience allows for doing the right thing. I think you can still file a complaint via A/R on MP if the person is claiming they are his/her work as false advertising. However, whether LL will do anything from there is up to them.

The last 2-3 days I have tried getting onto MP between 9:30 to 11:00 am. SLT and each day the MP start page comes up with all the text in Japanese. If you got to SL home page, then access MP it corrections itself. Anyone else having this issue?

Since you have used this Merchant in the past, have you contacted the SL Merchant and brought up your concerns? I would ask ...maybe, there is a legitimate explanation...maybe not. I believe you can file a complaint against the product(s) sold through MP. I believe it is up to the original artist to file a DMCA.

Are you using Phoenix or a V1 type viewer? If so, you need to swap to something like Firestorm or V2/3 type viewer and see if that solves the issue.

Maybe I am confused here, which is often the case, but you should be able to download your SL transactions files (I think it downloads as a .cvs file) and open it up in say Excel (Open Office has a version that is free and open source) spreadsheet and manally track it that way. Any sales you make should show up in your SL transations. Although, you need to make sure you do this on a schedule since you are only able to access the transactions I believe for 90 day. You can do the same with MP transactions. Ooops, just checked the Transactions history and it is 30 days not 90 days the transactions are held. So, definately would need to download monthly, maybe weekly depending on how often you do analysis

I have found this to be the case with those who visit my area. I think customers have gotten savvy knowing it is "Buyer Beware" purchasing In-World. They know that LL will not really step into to arbitrate disputes. If they purchase on MP, they have at least the recourse of leaving a product rating, which in some instances prompts a merchant to quickly try to resolve an issue in order for the customer to change their rating. I know that I will look at ratings and comments before I purchase items. I also insure I leave ratings/comments when I purchase.

You are correct, Capservend allows this option. . You can also easily set up group only sales vendors and remotely change the items when needed. I am pleased that I switched to Caspervend

Is the house you copiable? If so, edit the house and take a copy to your inventory for safe keeping...or you may have a copy there already. If the house is NOT copiable, then modifing the textures with something else will lose the original textures.

Also, you are going to get some distortion in the crotch, shoulders, and chest area (may be other areas as well) when the AV moves, it's an SL thing. You could try testing it at 1024 x 1024, but it is not recommended to upload beyond 512 X 512. I would upload at 512 x 512 and see how that looks.

While I don't make skins, as a consumer, I would be interested in the face and the body detail. I also want to see a shot of the lips and eyes without makeup and see shots with make-up. Then if what I see tantalizes me, I will go try on a demo skin. I have found that often times a gorgeous skin will look like crap on my AV, and most of it has to do with how the lips are done and how much eyeshadow and liner is used in creation. Subtle is better in my estimation.

The "fancy type" is going to depend on the fonts you use for a text layer and the effects you apply to it. Try googling a tutorial for Text layers and effects.

You should be able to auto fill the banner section or, use the paintbrush function to manually paint it. If you are new to photoshop, you may want to google basic beginner tutorials. Here is a good one to get you started, http://www.photoshopessentials.com/basics/ Also, youtube has tons of video tutorials for photoshop you can search.

Agreed, the timeline needs to change. I have been waiting before I upload mine because of past LL endeavors. I saw several products listed when looking for a sculpt earlier that when touched to buy apparently were not migrated correctly. I successfully uploaded a single new item and seems to be working, but am hesitant to do a bulk upload. I don't have that many items compared to others but sill what I have is time consuming. I am not overly pleased I am forced to have to use V2/3 in order to manage MP for uploads. While Firestorm is the most palatable V2/3 viewer so far, it still is not the same especailly when it comes to building.

Nice post! Very well thought out. Sounds like you have a good strategy for your needs. Unfortunately, I don't believe it is one that will meet my needs at this point in time. I may relook at this in the future, but for now, I will need to continue to sell on MP. I recently re-opened an In-World store in January (had several others over the last 4 years) and since opening again, I have sold exactly 1 item In-World. When matching visitor logs In-World to sales on MP, most who visit In-world seem to purchase from me off MP. I firmly believe they purchase via MP because if a product sucks, they can rate it and sort of have recourse via public opinion. Not something you can do In-World. Also, we all know "search" is accurate and works well In-World. I am a small Mom & Pop operation, I cannot compete with those merchants that have a healthy advertising budget or traffic bots their venues to have a better position in search. At least on MP, the search is a bit more accurate and I can compete a bit better. I am not out to make a million, but breaking even once in a while really would be nice. I don't know about others, but MP is just too damn convenient for me. I can browse it while not being In-World and purchase what I need so when I am In-World, I don't have to waste my limited time searching for stuff, which I may not find anyway due to search being borked. And, there is NO LAG on MP compared to In-World shopping! I don't have bots in my face wanting me to change my windlight settings, join such and such a group, post my pic etc. Doesn't take forever to rezz the items. I don't have to fight with the MM, Lucky Chair, Freebies only crowd. I can be in my sim and be creative, relax, and enjoy my SL more. So for now, I will have to continue to use MP as my PRIMARY sales method since it does work for me.

I understand the arguments. I don't have a gripe with folks wanting to protect their work. I think you have to be as proactive as you can be. I do my best to protect my items and the items I purchase from others to use in my creations. But, I still want to know before I buy what the correct permissions, and if they use symbols in the animation name. I don't mind buying Copy/Transfer only animations, but I want Merchants to make me aware, as a consumer, what I am buying for my money. The same goes for any Merchant's products so I can chose what is best for me.