Truth & Beauty Lab Answer Board

The latest creation from the Truth & Beauty Lab, the Answer Board, was released yesterday 18-March-2012. The Answer Board is a Pandorabot based rotating sign that provides answers to just about any question or topic one can think of. The board responds to local chat and provides its answers from, first, Wikipedia if it finds a matching article then Wolfram Alpha if no Wikipedia article is found then AI chat from pandorabots.com if no Wolfram Alpha answer is found.

The Answer Board is preconfigured and requires no setup other than rezzing, positioning, and resizing if desired. It uses a shared Wolfram Alpha Application ID which gives the board access to Wolfram Alpha but on a shared basis with a limit of 2000 queries per month. Therefore, it is recommended that the owner of an Answer Board register for their own Wolfram Alpha Application ID at http://products.wolframalpha.com/api/

Although ready to use out-of-the-box, the Answer Board can be extensively customized. A detailed Owners Manual is provided and available in PDF, Office, and OpenOffice formats. Non-owner users who touch the Answer Board receive a User Guide which is also available in PDF, Office, and OpenOffice formats.

The Answer Board can provide information on just about any topic due to the wealth of information available via the combined resources of Wikipedia and Wolfram Alpha. Based on the recently released Pandorabot V7 technology, the Answer Board can automatically detect the user's language and query that language Wikipedia. Language detection is provided for Nihongo, Russkiy, Nederlands, Português, Polski, Italiano, Español, Français, Deutsch or English. It is the smartest scripted agent in Second Life.

In addition, the Answer Board can be enabled as a Greeter to detect and greet new arrivals, deliver notecards and landmarks, and emit a wide variety of particle displays. There is an extensive command set available to the owner and an easy to use dialog menu. The Answer Board is available for L$395 on the Second Life Marketplace at https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/Truth-Beauty-Lab-Answer-Board/3304679

Here's what the Answer Board looks like:

Five of My Favorite Second Life Blogs

Recently Hamlet Au at New World Notes posted five of his favorite SL blogs. Hey, I can do that too :) I follow dozens of Second Life blogs so these are just 5 I follow. It's a little surprising to me how few people seemingly follow SL blogs since the number and quality is high. I guess Second Life is still primarily an inworld experience but I find a lot of products, clothing, events, and pretty interesting socio-political-wtf drama in the SLogosphere.

Here are 5 blogs I find extremely informative:

1. New World Notes - Hamlet Au was formerly an embedded journalist for Linden Lab and now runs what is arguably the best Second Life news blog or anyway, the one I plurk/tweet most often.

2. Daniel Voyager's Blog - Ok, well, maybe Hamlet's isn't the best SL news blog since Daniel's is arguably better. Daniel is also a contributor to the History of Second Life wiki article. Both of these guys seem to have excellent insider LL connections or anyway they are right on top of official announcements, events, and trends.

3. Living in the Modem World: Thoughts on Virtual Living - Inara Pey maintains one of my favorite technically oriented Second Life blogs. Inara's is not strictly a technical blog - she also posts on fashion, design, devices, events, and more. However, her tech savvy is excellent and she provides detailed easy-to-understand explanations of breaking technical news.

4. StrawberrySingh.com - Berry is another eclectic SL blogger, posting on fashion, tech issues, lifestyle, travel, and providing excellent tutorials. One of SL's best photographers, Berry's posts almost always include stunning pics. I copy her fashion advice often.

5. Shopping Cart Disco - this collaborative fashion and gossip blog is the home of SL Secret and the What I Like series, two of my favorites. SCD is a full service blog with posts on all topics written by a group of bloggers and contributors.

If you find it too time consuming or tedious to visit a bunch of blogs then you might prefer to use an RSS reader. I use Google Reader so that all the blogs I follow are aggregated into a single view inside my reader. It makes clicking through blog posts from all over much easier.

Kirsten's Viewer Discontinued

As every major Second Life blogger has pointed out today, Kirsten's Viewer will no longer be maintained due to personal issues. Kirsten's Viewer is a 3rd party viewer favored by many of Second Life's best photographers and machinimists.

• Here is the official announcement
• Strawberry Singh, an excellent SL photographer and blogger, posted this farewell
• Second Life blogger supreme Daniel Voyager covers the story
• Hamlet Au at New World Notes published a post on the demise
• Inara Pey at Living In A Modern World bids farewell 
• Bixyl Shuftan at Second Life Newser posted this
• Nalates Urriah posted this
• Bryn Oh bids farewell to Kirsten's Viewer 

On the plus side, Kirsten's Viewer is licensed under the GPL and hosted on SourceForge which means that the project could be picked up or forked and continued. Alternately, code from Kirsten's Viewer could be integrated into other viewers (e.g. Firestorm/Phoenix) - I would think the shadows implementation would be extremely desirable as other TPV's I have tried implement shadows poorly (meaning they really just don't work).

The Problem of Prim Chest Attachments

Last week I found some really nice sculpted nipples I decided to try. They look wonderful, were fairly easy to fit, and I was able to satisfactorily adjust the color to match my skin. You would think all is well and I can proudly wear beautiful 3D sculpted nipples. That is, until you view them in the Phoenix viewer with breast physics enabled. Any bouncing movement and it appears my nipples are coming off of my breasts :(

There is a lot of confusion about this problem. It's a problem that applies to any prim attachment worn on the chest or moved to cover the chest. And it's not a problem you can deal with. People think they can solve this problem in two erroneous ways:

• I just won't use Phoenix
• I'll use Phoenix but disable breast physics

These two "solutions" only mean that you will not see the problem on yourself or others. Others running Phoenix with breast physics enabled will still see your breasts bouncing through prim attachments. Half of the residents of Second Life use Phoenix and a good percentage of those residents enable breast physics (it was the number one reason for the dramatic increase in Emerald users). So, maybe 1 in 3 avatars will see the problem on you and others.

What is a real solution ? The only thing you can do is to edit the prim attachment so it is positioned slightly off of your chest and then thicken it as much as possible without distorting the look too much. My post on J's Lace-Up Bra has instructions on how to do this with J's hud. Other items will need to be edited manually. It is tricky and difficult but the only thing you can do aside from just not wearing prim attachments on your chest. This solution works well for my bra, corset, and bikinis but does not work for sculpted nipples as they really must be positioned close to the breast.

The only time I can wear my 3D sculpted nipples is when I know I will not be bouncing much - posing for photographs, sitting, etc.

Why You Should Use Phoenix Viewer Public Beta 1.5.2.977

I downloaded and installed the newly released Phoenix Viewer Public Beta 1.5.2.977 for a couple of reasons. First, 1.5.2.908 was frequently hanging and crashing. The beta is largely a bug fix release to address this issue. Secondly, and equally important, the beta contains a media filter feature which allows the user to select which media url's to allow/disallow. Why is this important ?

I viewed the recent RedZone scare with a sort of detached interest until I read the Alphaville Herald article on how the RedZone creators are tracking failed login attempts as possible SL passwords of their own users! Ok, RedZone is evil. I'm on board with those who have been trying to get it banned. How can a resident avoid RedZone and similar IP detection schemes inworld ?

The IP detection systems use the fact that a user's IP is exposed when opening a media url - e.g. the radio on a parcel. LordGregGreg has a pretty clear explanation of the issue. Users can choose not to play media but that significantly reduces the SL experience. Happily, the Phoenix Viewer Public Beta 1.5.2.977 media filter feature allows the Phoenix user to selectively allow/disallow parcel/sim media. You can still enjoy the media at places you trust and ignore media at other locations. Most places play crap anyway!

So, way to go Phoenix dev team. I appreciate the quick bug fix for the crashing 908 and the media filter feature rapidly deployed.

Play With Your Own Group Tags

So you think limiting yourself to 140 character tweets on Twitter is hard ? Try using group tags in Second Life to communicate your state or just have fun. With group tags you are limited to 20 single byte characters - now that's a challenge. Here's how you setup your own group and configure the group tags.

First, create a group. This costs L$100 so it isn't free to play this game but it's a one time cost then you own the group forever. See the SL Knowledge Base for instructions on creating a group. You will need at least two members in the group, yourself and one  other, so either get a friend to join or create an alt to join your group with you.

Once your group is created you can activate the group and wear the group tag by opening the Communicate window, clicking Contacts then click the Groups tab. Click on your group and then click the Activate button. This is now your active group and you should be wearing the group tag over your head. If you do not see the group tag above your name above your head, check Edit -> Preferences -> General to make sure you are not hiding your group tag.

To create a new/different group tag for your group open the Communicate window, click Contacts and then the Groups tab. Click the Info button then the Members & Roles tab then the Roles tab. Select the role name for which you wish to set the group tag. For you this will be the Owners role. Now type in the group tag you wish to use in the Title field. Careful! Only 20 single byte characters allowed! Once satisfied with your new group tag click Apply. Ta-da!

You can also set the other members of your group's tags by selecting the Everyone or Officers roles and following the same procedure.

Somebody says something funny or stupid and you want to subtly call attention to it ? Set a new group tag for yourself! Just as long as it is 20 single byte characters or less. Set nonsense tags or just use punctuation characters for fun and confusion. Copy and paste Chinese phrases from Google Translate for even further consternation. Put something up there that highlights today's big current world event as if your group is way on top of things.

I find it all kinds of fun and a much more difficult challenge than Twitter.

How to Raise the Group Limit to 42 in Phoenix

Linden Lab recently announced they have raised the group limit from 25 to 42 for those Second Life residents using Viewer 2.4 or later. People using "Viewer 1.23, or a third-party viewer based on Viewer 1.23 code, then you can add more groups in Viewer 2.4 and they will still be accessible when you switch back to Viewer 1.23". That is, the workaround for those of us using Phoenix was to log in using Viewer 2.4, join a bunch of groups (up to 42), log out, and log back in using our Viewer 1.23 based 3rd party viewer.

Switching between Viewer 2.4 and Phoenix is a pain. First, I don't want to have to logout, login, join a group, logout, and log back in just to join a group. Second, Phoenix still shares a cache with Viewer 2 and my outfits, appearance, shape, etc all get messed up when switching. The two viewers really have poor compatibility right now.

No worries! Phoenix 725 and 818 already have support for up to 40 groups. To enable this feature in Phoenix use the debug menu to set  the phoenix40GroupsSupport to TRUE as follows:

1. Enable the advanced menu in Phoenix by clicking "Phoenix -> Show Advanced" at the top of your viewer window
2. Enter debug settings by clicking "Advanced -> Debug Settings"
3. In the debug window type in phoenix40GroupsSupport
4. Set the dropdown below that to TRUE
5. Log out of Second Life and log back in

When you log back in after completing this procedure the Communicate window Contacts tab -> Groups tab should now say "You belong to XX groups (of 40 maximum)" at the bottom of the window. Note, this raises the group limit to 40, not 42 as that was the original LL stated new group limit. Future versions of Phoenix will support the full 42 group limit.

That's it! Enjoy the ton of new notices, spam, discount offers, inane chat, and tp invites you will now receive!

Pandorabot & Actorbot Add-On

Disclaimer: I am reviewing my own products in this post. They're cool relatively inexpensive products though so I forgive myself :)

The Pandorabot from Restless Studio is not your typical chat bot. Yes, it chats with you in local chat using an artificial intelligence programmed at pandorabots.com in the AIML programming dialect. However, the Pandorabot will also query Wikipedia for appropriate responses, check your spelling, send email, greet new arrivals, and deliver a notecard, landmark, and user guide. All for L$245 and consisting of only a single prim (the perched 3D sculpted parrot Pandorabot is 12 prims). If you don't have a place to rez objects there is a wearable 3D sculpted parrot Pandorabot (11 prims).

For an additional L$150 the Pandorabot can be integrated into an Actorbot to create a realistic 3D animated avatar bot that includes all the Pandorabot features as well as the programmability  of the Actorbot from Sine Wave. The Pandorabot Actorbot Add-On kit consists of a Pandorabot V4, an Actorbot integration script, and a script that can be used to position your Actorbot on a prim and animate it according to what is in that prim. Watch a demonstration Pandorabot Actorbot in this short YouTube video and visit the Restless Studio demonstration Pandorabot Actorbot.

Both the Pandorabot and Actorbot Add-On come with extensive documentation available in PDF online and plain text inworld. Here's a few photos to give you a sense of the Pandorabot look:

Pandorabots are available on the Second Life Marketplace (search for "Pandorabot Missy Restless" or just "Pandorabot"). The Pandorabot Actorbot Add-On is also available on the Second Life Marketplace (search for "Pandorabot Actorbot").

The PDF documentation for the Pandorabot and Actorbot Add-On is available online at http://www.scribd.com/missyrestless . There is also a Pandorabots Blog with lots of How-To's, many more pics, and updated info/links.

Second Skin Labs Windlight Presets

Second Skin Labs has a free download of many excellent Windlight presets. The installer can be downloaded at:
     http://www.secondskinlabs.com/Downloads/downloads3.html
After downloading this Windows executable, open it and select the installation folder. For instance, using the Phoenix viewer you would browse and select the folder:
    C:\Program Files (x86)\Phoenix Viewer\app_settings\windlight\

Once installed, login to Second Life and select one of the newly installed presets by navigating to the Advanced Sky Editor:
    World -> Environment Settings -> Sky Settings
Click the pulldown menu to the right of "Sky Presets" and select one of the entries. I am particularly fond of the Barcelona preset.

Unfortunately, the selected preset does not persist over login sessions so you have to do this every time you login to restore your favorite preset. Let me know what your favorite presets are!

Phoenix Second Life Viewer (Emerald Succesor)

I am trying out the newly released Phoenix viewer for Second Life. This viewer project was hastily formed when the Emerald project self destructed, hopefully leaving behind the individuals whose actions resulted in the project's demise. Read about that all over elsewhere.

Emerald users will be quite pleased with either Imprudence or Phoenix. Both are based on Emerald source code. The Phoenix viewer, however, is nearly identical to the final releases of Emerald and contains all of the features Emerald users are accustomed to. On the other hand, some users may prefer to grant their trust to the Imprudence team which has not been involved in any way in any of the questionable activities that resulted in Linden Lab banning the Emerald viewer. Imprudence is also very "Emeraldy".

Support for ogg vorbis audio streams in Phoenix is the principle reason I am using Phoenix as my primary viewer. Imprudence 1.4.x may provide ogg vorbis support in the final release at which time the choice between 3rd party viewers sanctioned by Linden Labs becomes more of a toss-up.

[UPDATE] Phoenix 1.5.1.225 was released containing fixes, performance improvements, and the ability to display friends' chat in a different color. However, the team also lost a couple of developers including lead developer Dimentox Travanti  over "a difference in opinion on how the project and team should be run". It would appear the Phoenix team continues to suffer from a fractured and possibly unstable team dynamic. Perhaps we will learn more in the next few days but for now the promised "transparency" looks like nothing more than corporate double-speak to me.[/UPDATE]

I configure the Phoenix viewer with the following preferences:

Main Menu at top left of Phoenix window

Edit -> Preferences

General ->
    check "Show Start Location on Login Screen"
    Rating "PG, Mature and Adult"

Network ->
    Maximum Bandwidth to 1050 kbps
    Disk Cache Size to 1000 MB

Web ->
    check "Use external web browser"

Graphics ->
    Quality and Performance to Ultra
    (this setting depends on your system's graphics capabilities)

Audio & Video ->
    Enable Streaming Music When Available
    Enable Streaming Media When Available

Text Chat ->
    Chat Font Size to Large
    Chat Color -> You -> cyan, Chat Color -> IM -> green
    check "Color text in chat from my friends in a different color"
    uncheck "Play typing animation when chatting"
    check "Use machine translation while chatting"

Popups ->
    uncheck "Automatically view after accepting"

Skins ->
    select "Silver" from the drop down menu of skins
    (I tried "Dark" but Silver is a lot more readable)

Phoenix ->
    TP Login ->
        check "Double-click Teleport"
        check "Make name Tags of the same client be the same color"
        check "Disable Teleport Screens"

    IM ->
        leave "Enable Autoresponse" unchecked
        check "Autorespond to non-friends"
        compose an autoresponce message
        check "Send an item along with the response"
        drag an inventory item you wish to send to the bar
        check "Vertical IM tabs"

    Chat ->
        uncheck "Hear typing sound when people type"
        check "When 'Receive group notices' is disabled ..."

    Misc ->
        check "Always rez objects under the land group if possible"
        check "Disables minimum camera zoom distance"
        check "Show a message when someone takes a snapshot"

    Build ->
        check "Embed an item into the newly created object"
        drag and drop a information notecard to the bar

    Page 2 ->
        Effects ->
            check "Enable enhanced physics on avatar breasts"
            Breast mass:      84
            Breast rebound: 11
            Breast max vel:  85
            Breast friction:   11
            Breast min vel:   15

        SpellCheck ->
            check "Show misspelled words in red"

Apply -> OK

File -> Quit
Run Phoenix again, login and check your preferences

Main Menu at top left of Phoenix window

View -> uncheck "Movement Controls" (who uses them?)

Phoenix -> check Show Advanced
    check DoubleClick Teleports
    check Enable Autoresponse

Advanced ->
    check High-res Snapshot
    check Quiet Snapshots to Disk
    uncheck Limit Select Distance
    check Disable Camera Constraints
    Character ->
        Character Tests ->
            make sure "Go Away/AFK When Idle" is unchecked

Toolbar at lower right of Phoenix window

Inventory -> Sort -> uncheck "System Folders To Top"

Finally, I would like to thank all the talented, dedicated, and hard working volunteers that create, distribute, and support these 3rd party viewers. Emerald, Imprudence, and now Phoenix have enriched my Second Life experience. My only question to these teams would be why the ex-Emerald development teams do not collaborate on a single Emerald based viewer. Why does there need to be Emergence, Imprudence, and Phoenix ? Seems like an inefficient and triplicated waste of effort. Anyway, Enjoy!

Imprudence Second Life Viewer

I'm trying out the Imprudence Second Life viewer after the Emerald "team" hit the self destruct button. FYI, read some really juicy Emerald comments by Nelson Jenkins. At this moment (4-Sep-2010) Imprudence is my choice of viewer since Emerald, Emergence, and Phoenix are not on the approved 3rd party viewer list. The only problem I have found with Imprudence thus far is an annoying chirp which sometimes occurs with the audio stream.

Anyway, Imprudence is based on Emerald source code and Emerald users will find it nearly identical although lacking a few features and some settings moved to different places/names. Still, it is an excellent replacement for Emerald and even has breast physics! About the only Emerald feature missing that I used a lot is the avatar radar. UPDATE: Imprudence has avatar radar in the Mini Map - just click the down arrow in the lower left corner.

A cool Imprudence feature is some sort of song id thing. When I teleport somewhere that has media playing and I have my media player turned on then I see the song and artist identified in local chat. Neat! [I am told this was also in Emerald but I never saw it]

You can read a detailed list of Imprudence features on their wiki as well as a list of features entering the experimental releases.

Here's my first round of instructions/recommendations/settings for Imprudence:

 Install Imprudence 1.30 or later
    http://imprudenceviewer.org/wiki/Downloads
   
Edit -> Preferences ->

    General -> check "Hide my name on my screen"
    Input & Camera -> check "Disable camera constraints"
                                 check "Disable minimum zoom distance"
                                 increase "Camera transition time"
                                                (when slow    pans desired)
    Network -> increase Maximum bandwidth to 2048
                                  (or as appropriate for your connection)
                     increase Disk cache size to max (1000)
    Web -> click "Use external web browser"
    Text Chat -> click "Large" Font Size
                        (never seems to do anything but I keep hoping)
                        uncheck "Play typing animation when chatting"
    Communication -> check "Vertical IM Tabs"
                                              (requires restart to take effect)
                                 I turn on logging of Local Chat
                                    (if you do this be sure to clean your logs
                                     regularly as Local Chat logs grow quite
                                     large very quickly)
    Skins -> I click the Silver skin
    Advanced -> check "Disable teleport screen"
   
Debug Settings
============

1)  Make sure View -> Advanced Menu is checked

2)  Advanced -> Debug Settings

3) In the Debug Settings window type in the following:

    EmeraldBoobFriction
    value 14.000
    EmeraldBoobHardness
    value 17.000
    EmeraldBoobMass
    value 83.00
    EmeraldBoobVelMax
    value 86.000
    EmeraldBoobVelMin
    value 16.000
    EmeraldBoobXYInfluence
    value 0.100

Make sure EmeraldBreastPhysicsToggle is set to TRUE
When setting these parameters it is not necessary to press ENTER after entering values, the settings take effect immediately when typed. Also, after initially typing in EmeraldBoobFriction the subsequent parameters can be easily found by clicking the little down arrow to the right of the parameter name in the Debug Settings window.
    
See http://imprudenceviewer.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=621 for a discussion thread on Imprudence breast physics settings.

Further Settings
===========

Advanced -> Quiet Snapshots to Disk
Snapshot -> click "Save to your hard drive"
                    check "High resolution snapshot"
                    check "Keep open after saving"
                    check "Auto-refresh"

Imprudence 1.4.0 and later (experimental)
=============================

Advanced -> Main -> check "Increase rez speed via draw distance stepping"

Advanced -> SpellCheck -> set Base Language and add additional dictionaries if needed; configure AutoCorrect Options

Emerald Enhanced Physics

Want to view more realistic breast movement in Second Life? Note, many residents I have talked to about this are confused. These settings control what you see, not what others see. If you disable enhanced physics on avatar breasts in your viewer that is no guarantee others will not see your breasts bouncing - that is solely dependent on their viewer settings. Similarly, if you enable breast physics it does not mean others will see yours jiggling - it just means you will see theirs.

To enable and configure enhanced physics on avatar breasts follow these steps.

1. Download, install and use the Emerald Viewer http://emeraldviewer.net/
2. In the Emerald Viewer, edit your preferences "Edit -> Preferences"
3. Click on the "Emerald" tab on the left
4. Click on the "Page 2" tab at the top
5. Click on the "Effects" tab
6. Check the box "Enable enhanced physics on avatar breasts"
7. Adjust the physics settings (the default settings did not work well for me). The following settings are similar to what I use but are probably toward the "too jiggly" end of the scale - you may wish to experiment:

• Breast mass:       90
• Breast rebound:  11
• Breast max vel:   85
• Breast friction:    11
• Breast min vel:    15

   8. Click "Apply" then "OK"

You may need to relog for the updated preferences to take effect.

Come watch me dance!

Hahahaha!

How to Make Money in Second Life

Money, Money Everywhere & Not A Linden To Drink
There are a lot of sites out there that try to give you the lowdown on how to make money in Second Life. That is, how to get Lindens, the virtual currency used there. Most of the tips you will read are aimed at new users (noobs, newbies) and include things like camping and picking money trees. Rarely, if ever,  will you find a site that provides advice on how to actually make any real money beyond the maybe 50L a day you can make camping and picking. Working for tips as a dancer or host is hardly any better at somewhere between 300L and 1000L per day (that's like $1 - $4 per day, U.S.). Let's do a quick overview of the various money making activities a Second Life resident might engage in. The actual tips are at the end.

Camping & Picking Money Trees
New residents find themselves with a generic avatar, few clothes, no dances, no animation overrider, stiff hair, few accessories, and zero Lindens with which to purchase any of these. A common way to bootstrap up as a newbie is to camp and pick money trees. Camping is becoming more and more difficult to find as Sims mature - you basically get paid a small amount for registering with a camper board and being there for some length of time. Money trees are exactly what they sound like - trees with money in the branches. Young avatars can locate money trees and pick the bills from the branches. These activities can earn you enough to at least get started purchasing low priced items plus you get to explore looking for money trees or looking around the Sim where you are camped. It's kind of a neat way to start and I got a feeling of satisfaction having bootstrapped from nothing and finding cheap affordable fairly nice clothing, hair, animations, and skin. But you will never make anything appreciable camping and picking plus once you are over 30 days old the money trees are no longer available.

Dancing, Hosting, & Escorts
Clubs are all over SL, closing and opening frequently. If you've improved your avatar looks sufficiently and have an engaging personality or know how to "emote" then it is not difficult to find a job in a club either as a dancer or host. These jobs, as do most every job in SL, have no salary and you work for some percentage of your tips - usually around 80%. Escorts can make even more in tips if you are willing to provide those services. All of these activities can make enough per week to sustain a rental and buy higher end clothing, skin, etc. Escorts who are willing/able to provide voice and cam services can make significant hourly tips but once you are doing this you may as well be working in an RL webcam service making 10 times as much. Working as a dancer in a club can be a lot of fun. Pick a club where you enjoy hanging out with clientele whose company you do not find abhorrent. Club jobs make a subsistence level of Lindens in tips (if you're good at it) and afford you the opportunity to meet a lot of people, make friends, and have fun.

Slave Market
There are actually slave auctions in Second Life. You can sell yourself for a fair market bid, pocket the Lindens, and do the bidding of your new Master. This, to me, seems like desperation but I am willing to entertain the possibility that for some it might actually be enjoyable. However, I would not recommend it. If you really do want to become a slave I recommend creating an alt for this. I subscribe to the philosophy of Kurt Vonnegut Jr. expressed in the opening of his novel "Mother Night" - you are what you pretend to be. I have known more than one friend who went from dancer to slave and none of these stories have turned out well. I would say the risk far outweighs any benefit and the benefit is meager unless slavery is your pleasure.

Virtual Real Estate Speculation & Event Planning
There are many ways to make money in Second Life. The primary big-time earners buy, develop, lease, and sell virtual real estate. This takes a significant investment and considerable effort but can potentially produce an excellent profit. Another highly profitable venture can be event planning but here we are not talking about the kinds of events most of you are familiar with (live music events, art gallery openings, rez day parties, weddings, ...). The money is in event planning and coordination for the Big Boys like IBM, Carnegie Mellon, University of Texas, etc.

DJ Premo Pop & I'm A Genius Skin Designer
For the overwhelming majority of us - those that do not have $50,000 laying around to invest in virtual real estate speculation and those of us who are not super-connected with Big Boy event planning - it's really very difficult to earn any appreciable amount of Lindens inworld. Perhaps you could become a really good DJ at a very popular club or design high-end skins but again, not something most of us will find ourselves doing.

Shopkeeper, Resell Vendor, Xstreet Products
One accessible route to money in Second Life is the sale of products. It really only takes a little time to learn how to create products in Second Life and the only limits are those of your imagination and SL scripting/building tools. Alternatively, you can simply resell other people's products for a hefty commission. Unfortunately, it seems most residents do not purchase what I have thus far created and the vendor reseller market has been over-saturated. Add to that the weekly cost of maintaining a storefront and you have a formula for Linden loss rather than profit.

I will say that the only SL activity that has created a steady profitable revenue stream for me personally is my Xstreet product sales. This requires some effort setting up but very little maintenance overhead and zero cost. Even though Xstreet sales may seem slow to zilch even one product selling infrequently can create a profitable revenue stream. Creating content is intrinsically worthwhile - you are contributing to both the evolution of Second Life and your own skills. It seems to me that content creation is the activity of choice in Second Life. However, unless you are creating high-end content like ultra beautiful skins, luxury vehicles, particle generators, battle huds, etc. then your revenue expectations are likely to be little more than that of a good dancer. Content creation, for me, is an end in itself and not a road to riches.

Photographic & Publishing Services, The Arts
Many residents with photo editing skills, desktop publishing backgrounds, or experience in the arts attempt to leverage these skills in Second Life. Competition in SL photography is fierce. It seems everyone thinks they are a photographer and the ease with which snapshots can be taken creates a fairly low barrier of entry. I managed to make about as much as a photographer as I made dancing but had to work a lot more at it. Turns out that photo editing skills in real life that pay upwards of $60 per hour make as little as 500L for a week's work in SL. Clients will contract for services then simply lose interest or not pay. I get a lot of kicks out of doing couples photo shoots, spending a few days editing the photos then by the time I return to the client with her beautiful partner photo spread they have broken up and she doesn't want the photos.

Publishing is even harder since most publications are distributed freely and the call for portfolios, catalogs, brochures, and other publications is thin. Generally publishing services can be considered an augmentation of a photography studio and not a source of revenue in and of itself but rather a way to offer your clients a full set of services. One way to utilize publishing expertise is in the creation of stand-alone books for sale on Xstreet which can potentially provide a long-term source of revenue.

Artists abound in Second Life and there is a wealth of fine art produced inworld. However, of all the activities reviewed here, being a Second Life artist probably provides the least revenue/worth ratio. It seems SL residents just do not support the arts to the extent that a valid business model can develop out of the arts. If you run a gallery don't count on making money.

The Tip
So, here is the tip. Don't try to make money in Second Life! Basically, it's a feudal economy with a few very rich land barons and a mass of peasants working for a percentage of tips at various menial jobs designed to draw traffic to a Sim in order to rank higher in search results in order to create traffic for the malls which generate revenue for the land barons.

The Real Tip
Here is the real tip - the best way to get Lindens in Second Life is to purchase them with money you earn in Real Life! I can spend 15 minutes finding loose change around my house and buy more Lindens with that than I could earn in Second Life in a day's work. The exchange rate is usually somewhere around 275-285 Lindens for $1 U.S. so maybe 2800 Lindens for $10 or approximately one hour's work at a San Francisco minimum wage job.

Second Life Premium Account
If you do end up deciding to purchase Lindens then you may want to consider the Premium Annual Second Life account. This is $72 per year and comes with a one-time first-time signup bonus, a 300L per week stipend, 512 sq meters tier free, a free Linden Home, and premium Support. That's about $56 per year of Lindens with a premium account. So, you are really paying about $16 per year for the other benefits. If you plan on owning or renting land and putting up a house this makes a premium account an excellent deal especially if you can manage to live on 512 sq meters since then you avoid all monthly tier fees.

Reduce Lag, Remove Scripts

Lag or latency in Second Life can be reduced by residents diligently removing resize/recolor scripts from hair, shoes, boots, jewelry, and other attachments whenever possible. Most apparel or attachments that enable the user to resize or recolor the item include scripts which, once used, can be removed. This reduces Sim latency and can provide the user with a better real-time experience in Second Life.

Before deleting scripts, make a copy of the original script enabled item. Most vendors provide items like shoes and hair with "Modify/Copy/No Transfer" permissions. This allows the user to make a copy of the original as a backup in case you ever need to go back and resize/recolor/reconfigure the object. Unfortunately some vendors provide their products with "No Copy/Transfer" permissions which makes it impossible for the user to make a backup copy. In the case of "No Copy" items the owner is forced to decide between keeping the script functionality or reducing the lag induced by the item. Vendors who do not provide copyable items should read my Request to Second Life Vendors.

Once a backup copy has been made (if possible) and the product has been resized or otherwise configured to taste, you can delete the script(s). This is usually accomplished by simply clicking a "Delete", "Delete Scripts", "Remove", or somesuch button in the item's resize/configure menu. Most vendors will include a notecard with specific instructions for how to remove any scripts. Often this entails issuing a command on a channel the item is listening on. For instance, scripts in Kalnins shoes can be removed by issuing the command "/76 deletescripts" in local chat.

Inventory Management - Cleanup

As I approach my first rez day I realize that almost everything I accumulated during my first 6 months in Second Life is rarely, if ever, used. The clothing I got mostly sucks. I've replaced the AO with a better, more sophisticated, unified AO/Dance Hud. Pretty much everything I use I've acquired in the last 6 months or more recently.

It's probably a pretty good bet that the average avatar could delete everything in their inventory over 6 months old and never miss a thing. Of course, I am not suggesting that but I would suggest a regular and thorough purge of all inventory items no longer useful. SL inventories, especially for us avid shoppers, grow quite rapidly.

My current inventory contains over 16,000 items and I would guess I may use or refer to less than 5% of that. I like to keep all my landmarks (organized hierarchically), many of my notecards (for reference), animations & gestures, etc. but regularly delete as much as I can. Honestly, I wish I were more ruthless in my inventory cleaning. If I were starting all over again I sure would not have picked up so many freebies but I guess it's all a part of the great big learning curve that never ends.

One other aspect of this inventory cleanup tip is to get a good backup system. Invest a little time and money into storage boxes of some sort. Offload as many intentory items as you can into an out-of-inventory storage system, preferably one that can be accessed out-of-world. I use the OD Inventory Management System but cannot really enthusiastically recommend it. The cost is a one-time L$2600 with no monthly fee and a web-based out-of-world access/search system that is pretty cool but the actual process of creating the boxes is tedious and error prone.

Other systems are available, most expensive and some with a monthly fee. The Bright Inventory Box and aptly named Inventory Box look like two less expensive alternatives that might suit most people's needs.

Getting Dressed - Camera Focus

To easily see yourself from all angles as you dress, focus your camera on the center of your avatar. To do so,  hold Alt and left-click with your mouse on a point near the center of your avatar. To zoom and rotate your view around that point, hold the mouse button down and continue to hold Alt while moving your mouse; move the mouse up and down to zoom, left and right to rotate. Alternatively, you can use your viewer's camera controls. You can press Esc at any time to return your camera view to behind your avatar.

This seems like a simple tip and it really is but I have saved so much time dressing since I learned and put this tip to use. I really appreciate a very simple but useful trick and I hope you do to. Here is a fairly useful list of Second Life keyboard shortcuts. Enjoy!

Getting Dressed - Use a Pose Stand

Use a nice pose stand with a pose that reveals all angles and pieces of clothing well. I sell a pose rug I created for L$25 but any good pose stand will do and many are freely available.

Why did I create my own pose stand ?

• I didn't like the goofy looking pose almost all pose stands come with (the 180 degree turn with arms out)
• I found it often necessary to turn off my AO to use a pose stand as the pose stand script would simply try to override the standard sit animation and not the one my AO was using
• I wanted a pose stand available at all times in my home but I didn't like having the stupid pose stand sitting there looking like maybe it was a teleporter so I wanted something that looked nice in my room

So, get a good pose stand (or pose rug in my case) and use it. A pretty simple tip.