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How has Second Style affected YOU over the past three years? Leave a comment!
Google publically launched “Lively” which everyone and her grandmother is comparing to Second Life. This is not the right comparision – Lively is actually far more similar to IMVU than Second Life.
There’s no user generated content. There’s no economy. And while embedding a 3D space on your website is kind of fun and novel, how would you actually use it productively? Mike Elgan at Computerworld thinks it’s a great tool for remote access telecommuters. But I’m not really sure what Lively would buy a telecommuter over, say, Skype.
What do you all think? Have you tried it? Do you want to develop content for it? I changed the sidebar poll to track your opinions. Leave some comments if you have more feedback.
Loading ...To celebrate On Your Toes, I thought I’d see if shoes with walk sounds inspire love or hate among the Fashionista readership. It seems to be the newest craze sweeping through virtually every shoe designer. Bling, sounds, even animation overrides. Is it something you really want? Or just so much virtual noise pollution?
Loading ...I recently received some review copies of beautiful jewelry from Ellana, but several pieces had a bling script inside of them. If you didn’t already know, the official editorial position of Second Style about bling is “strongly disapproved.” But residents (for some reason) seem to love jewelry with bling. That means most every jewelry designer pops a bling script somewhere into his or her designs.
I decided to take 20 minutes and modify a common freebie bling script (apparently written by Lyra Walcott) and give it away free, as a means to have better (or no) bling in Second Life. I find my changes make bling much more tolerable for the rest of us.
For example, most bling scripts make the default as “bling on.” This one makes the default “bling off.” Another common trait of bling scripts is requiring the resident to turn off bling by saying “bling off” in world. This script uses a dialog box menu to turn bling on and off.
As I said, it’s free and the script inside the test object is full permission – so feel free to give it away, modify it further yourself, or just pull it from the test object and put it in your own designs. Perhaps politely encourage your favorite jewelry designer to start using it in her or his designs, if those designs include bling.
Get a copy here on OnRez for L$0.
I also started a new poll today about bling. I’m curious what readers think about bling in Second Life.
Loading ...Have you ever visited the Daedalus Project? It’s run by a researcher at Stanford University named Nick Yee. Nick runs online surveys about behavior patterns exhibited by players of massively-multiplayer online games. It’s generally more focused on games like World or Warcarft, but from time to time, Second Life creeps into a survey or two.
I know from my reader survey that almost 90% of my visitors are female in RL, and I thought Nick’s recent post about the similarities and differences between men and women in forming and keeping online friendships made very interesting reading. The conventional wisdom is that women socialize more and make friends more readily in online spaces than men, but Nick’s research doesn’t support that conclusion. The difference, he writes, is in what men and women want from online friendships.
He starts his article this way:
Earlier research had shown that men and women socialize about the same amount in MMOs – in terms of chatting and catching up with friends. What is very different among men and women is what they want out of those relationships. Women are more likely to want to form relationships where they can discuss their RL personal issues and can count on those friends for support. Men, on the other hand, are less likely to use the MMO space to form a support network (or probably in general).
Nick presents a series of graphs which show how likely men and women are to discuss RL current events/news, RL personal problems, and in-game issues. The most surprising thing to me was the final graph in the article which shows that women are about three-times more likely to answer yes to the statement, “I met my best friend in an online game.”
Nick concludes:
Where men and women do differ is the kind of relationship they want. It appears that men are more likely to draw harder boundaries between their physical and virtual spaces; men are less likely to talk about personal issues with friends they have met online. On the other hand, women see a softer boundary between the physical and virtual spaces and are more willing to share personal issues with friends they make online.
Definitely an interesting article. Does it match with your experiences in Second Life? Leave a comment and say why or why not.
I also set up a new poll question about this topic.
Loading ...I decided it was time for a new poll. I’m curious to know what your favorite Second Life focused e-commerce site is: OnRez or SLExchange. If you’re a fashion shopper, which one is a better shopping experience? If you’re a fashion designer, which one do you pick to showcase your items out-of-world and why?
Please vote and leave a comment if you like.
Loading ...Congratulations to our four diversity showcase challenge winners: top vote winner Cherry Tokyo (modeling one of her own kimonos!), Georgette Whitfield, Noelle Eilde, and Violet Xingjian. Thanks to all of our participants in this challenge. I’ll have a new fun challenge running soon (think lolneko 
. Meanwhile, our winners will get a cash prize and featured in an upcoming story about diversity in Second Life.
Cherry Tokyo
Georgette Whitfield
Noelle Eilde
Violet Xingjian
Loading ...In honor of the general release of the voice feature on the main grid, I made a new poll. What do you think?
Loading ...Congratulations to our newest Fashion Challenge sexy safari winner, Yenneffer Dielli. She wins L$250, a L$1000 gift card to Catwalk City Mall, and the right to name the next fashion challenge theme! Thank you for sending in your photos and voting. I will be working on a way to make the next challenge’s top choices selection at Snapzilla a little more resistant to “gaming.”
Yenneffer Dielli
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Here’s our newest Fashion Challenge winner, Lux Yao! Congratulations to her. Since Lux happens to be a model for Miriel, she asked that the prize be given to our runner up — and I will honor that request. The next fashion challenge theme will be set soon!
Lux Yao
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Thanks for voting everyone — the poll is closed and our winner of Challenge #2 is Betty Doyle! I will be contacting her soon to deliver her prize and ask her for the next theme. It should be posted in the next few days…
Betty Doyle Read the rest of this entry »
