I decided that I could do with trying to earn some Linden cash, so I'm selling stuff on SLBoutique. So far it's just a couple of World of Warcraft landscapes rendered on canvas, and a T-shirt.

I intend to price everything based on the cost to upload textures or whatever. Basically, it would cost you the same to rip it off and recreate it as it would to just buy it. All my stuff so far is L$10.

I finally signed up for the main Educators in SL mailing list. Ignoring the fact that it's a mailing list (ick), rather than any sort of SL-based communications thing, there are some interesting points being discussed.

The issues that stand out the most are technical. For example, the forced upgrades you should be used to by now; Completely unworkable in a student computer lab environment. I run my college's computer labs and I should have picked this up, but I hadn't got to the point of considering the installation and maintenance of the software yet. Bascially, student computer labs are locked down to a standard "image" -- One computer in a set is setup and its hard drive is copied to all the other computers. This is done maybe two or three times a year. The weekly required updates for the SL client are a major issue. Even if there's some way to just push through the SL software after each update, I'd have to be on hand immediately after every new version is made available, and it would take hours to rebuild all the requisit packages to get the new version installed across all the computers. An interesting technical exercise the first couple of times. A royal pain in the arse after that.

Then there's the downtime, but I've mentioned that before.

At least where I am, I'm the IT department. Some of the educators on the list have to fight the IT department on top of the logistical issues of the SL software.

A virtual meeting, or teleconference, can be a handy way to hold a meeting without requiring the participants to all be in the same phyiscal location.

But it's still a meeting.

That means you have to be there at the start and stay there until the end. Well, within reason. While the discussion within the meeting itself appears to progress more rapdily than if some sort of non-realtime communication is used, are they really "faster" from beginning to end?

How many people have experienced the meeting that can never be schedulled? When you need persons A, B, C, X, Y & Z to be present at a meeting when there's no time they're all available, what happens? Typically, the meeting gets delayed for a couple of weeks before the "more important" staff call it without a couple of members. Then it appears that the meeting sorts things out, until the absent members see the minutes and inform the group that one or more decisions are no good and the process starts over (or something silly is pushed through).

While Second Life looks like an interesting platform for remote realtime communication, I'm starting to question if that's even the way to go. Should we be focussing on removing the need for realtime disucssion, perhaps (re)exploring intelligent agents that can, for example, find forums/rooms where things for which you have an interest are being discussed -- or even post your opinions for you? Should people in Second Life be focusing more on "botting" than pretty polygons?

Second Life is currently showcasing how complicated it is. A radio show called The Infinite Mind has been doing a series of shows "from" Second Life. As far as I know, Second Life is just being used as a glorified text chat channel, plus a bit of a marketing gimmick.

Owing to technical problems, it started 36 minutes late. It was getting close to an hour from the advertised start date by the time the guest was talking.

I wasn't even able to attend the first one. As far as I could tell it went from down to full in a few minutes.

I've seen a similar situation in the lectures where I work. We tested an interactive in-class technology that gave students a little remote to respond to multi-choice questions. It was dropped after the lecturer in charge decided that the delay it introduced at the beginning of each session wasn't worth the interaction it offered.

Now that the talk is going, it's actually quite interesting. But I can't help thinking that a Shoutcast stream (which is available) and an IRC channel would run a lot smoother.

The Second Life Herald current has an article about privacy in which I feature. I wear a watch written by Mark Barrett that talks to his website. It's the reason why the "My Status" thing at the top of this page works. Data that the watch collects about my activities is displayed at slstats.com. Obviously I have opted-in to this service by wearing the watch.

People who aren't wearing the watch also show up on the site.

Now, this is based purely on what I would refer to as public information. However, many people for whom SL is an escape would consider the entire place to be private. There's a discussion about this on the SL forums. I'd point you there but it's really not that interesting. It's the same "privacy in a public space" and "should something be done just because it's possible" debate that I've seen a million times before.

I would hope that we could have a meaningful discussion regarding the difference between things that are not done because they're social rules and things that are not done because they're actually impossible -- and the changes to that relationship caused by the impossible becoming possible in SL. But judging but the debate so far, that seems unlikely.

For what it's worth, when I suggested a chat-logging script to Mark, I suggested it be made into a big old-school portable TV camera; the kind you balance on your shoulder, so people who have privacy concerns would get the hint that the conversation is being recorded and could request that it isn't. Maybe the watch just needs to be replaced by something more obvious.

Update: I've just been chatting with Mark and he said the following:

"Someone actually messaged me on skype and said they filed a police report with Elyria, OH where I'm from and an abuse report with my web host, but they rejected the opt-out box I sent them."

Were previously I was interested in a discussion, now I think that there are a core group of SL residents that just need to get over themselves. I wonder if it's the same group that were so vocal about the easier registration recently implemented because they didn't want their little private world invaded by rif-raf. I think we need to see some clear and decisive action from the people running SL before we start losing innovaters because of these entrenched camps.

July archive is available here