For Anthony, my son. Hopefully he won’t see it for awhile and I know he is more into immersive 3D-Worlds (e.g. Club Penguin scooped by Disney) than blogs. Perhaps when he sees the shortcuts you can find by paying attention to others…or perhaps he will discover them on his own as all hard core gamers (and their community) always find a way to accomplish.

Variouns Guitar Hero III Cheats for the Wii as I found them- search ease use and attention getting winner was alpha status Mahalo. Guitar Hero III is the third installment in the popular Guitar Hero series developed by Neversoft…

Known Cheats (Key Series)

1. Large Gems: G, R, G, Y, G, B, G, O, G, B, G, Y, G, R, G, GR, RY, GR, YB, GR, BO, GR, YB, GR, RY, GR, GY

2. Hyperspeed: O, B, O, Y, O, B, O, Y

3. Performance Mode: RY, RB, RO, RB, RY, GB, RY RB

4. Precision Mode: GR, GR, GR, RY, RY, RB, RB, YB, YO, YO, GR, GR, GR, RY, RY, RB, RB, YB, YO, YO

5. Unlock All Code: YO, RB, RO, GB, RY, YO, RY, RB, GY, GY, YB, YB, YO, YO, YB, Y, R, RY, R, Y, O

6. Air Guitar: BY, GY, GY, RB, RB, RY, RY, BY, GY, GY, RB, RB, RY, RY, GY, GY, RY, RY

7. Bret Michae:ls Singer: GR, GR, GR, GB, GB, GB, RB, R, R, R, RB, R, R, R, RB, R, R, R

8. Easy Expert GR, GY, YB, RB, BO, YO, RY, RB

9. No Fail: GR, B, GR, GY, B, GY, RY, O, RY, GY, Y, GY, GR

10. Unlock Every Item GRBO, GRYB, GRYO, GBYO, GRYB, RYBO, GRYB, GYBO, GRYB, GRYO, GRYO, GRYB, GRYO

Guitar Hero 3 Wii aka Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock Cheats

More Notes: There are many guitars not in the store but are available for purchase after completing tasks. How to unlock the guitar is in bold

Bat Guita- Five Star every song in Career Mode on Easy
Beach Life Bass- Beat Co-Op on Hard
El Jefe Guitar- 5-star all songs in Expert mode.
Jolly Roger Guitar- Five Star every song in Career Mode on Medium
Moon Shot Guitar- Beat Career Mode on Easy

Nemesis 13 Guitar- Beat Co-Op Career Mode on any difficulty
Neversoft Skateboard Guitar- 5 star every song on Expert Co-Op Career
Pendulaxe- Beat Co-Op- Career on Expert
Radioactive Beat- Co-op- Career mode on Hard
Risk Assessment Guitar- Complete Expert mode.
Rojimbo Guitar- Beat Career Mode on Hard
Saint George Guitar- Beat Career Mode on Medium
Tiki Guitar- every song in career on hard mode

Through the Fire and the Flames you can beat Career Mode on Any Difficulty

To unlock TTFAF, you must beat Career mode on any difficulty.
While the credits role, you will play TTFAF in no-fail From then on, TTFAF can be found in the bonus songs section.

Malware Free Game Cheats Resource Sites

NO malware or foistware, notorious on some even large “cheat sites” found.

Yes- dad checks.

GameFAQs: Guitar Hero III Cheats & Secrets
GamePro.com: Guitar Hero III Cheats
NeoSeeker: Guitar Hero III Cheats

Thanks again to Maholo billed as human search and how do I know?

Evan D made a Guitar Hero 3 Song List.

Mark B found all the best Guitar Hero III Cheats.
Adam created a page on How to Play Guitar Hero 3..

I am pleased they found nothing on me, for a change, and exactly what I wanted. Hat Tip Jason Calacanis for propogating a malware free “god mode” while even under Alpha status. I got the alpha, alpha, alpha…can’t wait to see beta, beta, omega…if you are Google everything is perpetually beta and if you are Microsoft it is called “shipped”, or a feature, or has a code name that changes three to four times coupled with twice as many skunkwork operation codenames signed in triplicate with lots of NDAs.

As a side bonus, friend and kung-fu, smack down, security ace, Chris Boyd doesn’t have to beat the crap out of any asshat with the much used “beat down stick” or my personal preference “the baton of reason”…for a nice change…

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I mentioned in an earlier post about AM Radio’s tiny plot of land and campaign. I do recall the concert featured the unique vocals ColeMarie Soleil, seen pictured here in a wheat field. I grabbed a fast moment to catch up with AM Radio via Second Life chat who told me he did indeed have plans for more “giving” opportunities and could possibly share some meta information with me in the future on how the overall campaign went.

Hopefully something tangible will go to reinforce the obvious- that Second Life, and more importantly micro transactions, are an excellent avenue not only for micro content creators, but also for charitable causes and / or ideally for both.

You make a contribution in world and grab some virtual wheat:3D social networking AM Radio charity Second Life Wheat

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I caught this on TheGridLive.com and then rolled over to New World Notes about AM Radio’s philanthropic campaign. I just went in world and made another donation staight to AM Radio. (I later met AM Radio again at the The Wall SL build covered here by Aribella Lafleur you can visit it inworld at TheWall. )

Background on The Far Away and Wheat Project

See: The Giving Fields: Real Cows Purchased with Virtual Wheat or at Not Possible IRL (In Real Life) blog for some background. Some more wheat pics at SLConceptual or more background at Ambling in Second Life or IBM’s Ian Hughes site.

Power of Pixelated Wheat

As it goes around late September of this year, avatar and content creator, AM Radio, set out some plots of wheat for sale on the land where his own virtual wheat field in Second Life sits, known as The Far Away. His goal was to raise enough in the campaign to buy a cow through the Heifer International Project. I remember it well as I attended a live concert and went on to pick up some of the “virtual wheat”, several plots actually, and they are really neat and well made. Note- if you rez them you might want to link them together or they come up one strand at a time.

The fact that Second Lifers are a pretty giving bunch doesn’t surprise me. I have been doing my own “arm-chair” (non-scientific) studies and at least among the avatars I speak to frequently (most over a year in world) answer product B when I give them the following scenario. Out of a approximately 100 queries Product B has won every time.

The 50 Linden Micro Transaction Question: A or B?

Scenario: If you are given a choice between Product A for 10 Lindens and Product B for 50 Lindens, and all things about the product are equal (prims, creator, size, permissions, color, etc) except that Product B will share 50% of the take with a charity you support and it is priced at 50 Lindens instead of 10- which would you choose?

Get some Wheat or Consider Micro lending via kiva.org

According to New World Notes the campaign is still live, visit the The Far Away and make a donation.

I just heard back from AM Radio, creator of The Far Away wheat field, and the campaign to sell plots of that field to raise enough US$ to buy three cows for people in the developing world. With $1405 raised thus far, he’s just $95 (about L$25,000) short of that goal. If you’re looking to spread some holiday warmth, why not travel to The Far Away, and make a purchase? “[T]he vendor is still on the wheat field,” AM tells me. “You can now buy a boat, and a flyable plane will be ready soon.”

It Adds Up

Some might say that raising only a few hundred dollars isn’t that big of a deal. However, when you consider the products are micro-priced on a platform that has a historical problem scaling up it is astounding how much it can really add up. Nor does it take much to add-up to an amount that can make a difference in some countries.

For example, if you aren’t into Second Life that is just fine- consider Kiva which I found via John Hunter’s Curious Cat blog after he left a comment on my own blog during a science fiction back and forth. You can learn more about my experience with Micro Lending here and it doesn’t take much to make a difference so take a moment and get involved- even on a micro scale it does matter.

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Second Life, the wild west of the “metaverse” often requires the ability to acclimate to an idiosyncratic culture and complex jargon. How do you know when you have passed into the realm of the accomplished? That you have mastered enough of the culture to blend in? One or more of the following have happened or probably apply….

1 ) Your think your spouse and children are actly strangely. Rathar than admit you have a problem, the most logical conclusion must be they have been replaced by someone’s ALTs.

2 ) A new resident pulls the most offensive object they can from a freebie box, in this case a set of realistic sculpty canine genitals, and screams. You do not even bat an eye let alone flinch and keep looking for a decent skin. Your friend, a scripter, examines the miniature build and quickly fashions it into a gun.

3 ) Ruth is no longer a name or a book of the Bible, but an unfortunate, yet curable disease where you become a pseudo-hermaphrodite with extremely poor fashion sense. The only cure is a re-bake. This operation requires no flour, sugar, or yeast.

4 ) Getting from here to there becomes a TP while AFK remains AFK, OK is and always will be- KK.

5 ) Sit and push are not activities for a porch swing, but defensive and offensive modes.

6 ) You are concerned about privacy at your private beach front property because of the recent number of invisible tortured prims named _sand_ turning up on your zero mass scanner.

7 ) You see two people dancing poorly in real life and mentally access channel one and think the word “sync”.

8 ) Your friend, an accomplished builder, complains of tennis elbow although he does not play any sports. You try to tell him it could be his reflexive item scanning habits. He doesn’t
even respond when you mention trying to cut a prim or two out of every single, rock, bench, or tree really isn’t worth the time it takes to examine them- which he will systematically do everywhere you go mumbling about “prim conservation”.

9 ) The sim owner calls you a prim whore for using Temp on Rez.

10 ) Alll Santa Claus hats or ill-made sofas left in a sand box are probably shape deformers.

11 ) As an American you begin to use the metric system for land measurement and realize it is actually more efficient.

12 ) A new and ill-informed user comes in world interrupting a conversation with a friend and demands to be taken to the “sex rooms”. Your friend yawns and asks politely- “What species?”, explaining to the neophyte that it pays to be very specific on the grid.

13 ) You can’t wait to get home to rez your gifts.

14 ) You know that people wearing boxes are the defacto cultural signal of someone negotiating a complex GUI and not a fashion statement, or they may have no payment on file.

15 ) ‘xcite has nothing to do with search, but a place where some people go to upgrade their virtual sex life.

16 ) ll(insert crude word here) is really funny.

17 ) Marriage becomes partnering and usually lasts the span of an incubation cycle of sea monkeys. From start to dissolution it costs less than 50 cents if the Linden holds at 260.

18 ) You know that the Linden is a product and not currency.

19 ) Achieving orbit is normally a “bad thing” requiring you to re-log, although you may have tried a parachute more than once just to see how long it took.

20 ) Your friend tells you he has “won” Second Life. You ask him what level did he reach?

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Obsession with Tests

Lately I have received a lot of links in my e-mail to online personality tests, compatability tests, etc. It seems that Facebook is one giant “fun quiz”. I left school because of all of the tests- still they haunt me. However for all you gluttons of punishment here is a battery of OOS tests. (Read the privacy policy.) They charge nothing and try to provide you with the results as soon as you submit your answers. Your privacy is important to them, per them, and in some cases the results are often used in research. ahem- on with the the tests. My favorite was Find Your Star Wars twin. If I found them- I would run.

Twins: An Interactive Personality Test
This site lets any two people, regardless if you’re actually twins, compare your personality and behaviors on a number of criteria. This test utilizes well accepted psychology instruments and gives you instant, free, and anonymous feedback on some aspects of your personality and behaviors. You’ll learn a bit about your personality, and optionally, a bit about some of your past behaviors and experiences.

You don’t need a twin or second person to fill our survey out: you’ll still get meaningful results in the preliminary results. The data from this site is being used for twin research.

Are you a Freak?
A psychology test which measures your need-for-uniqueness level. Take this freak test to find out just how unique you really are! Please, this is for posterity’s sake, so honesty counts — you won’t get an accurate answer unless you actually answer seriously!

The Morality Test
Discover what your morals say about your personality! This test examines those aspects of thought and behavior that relate to commonly accepted notions of right and wrong. The following survey assesses your moral attitudes, particularly as they relate to your religious and cultural background. By “moral” they mean those aspects of thought and behavior that relate to commonly accepted notions of right and wrong, and to selfish and unselfish actions.

One need not be religious to be “moral,” although religions do tend to espouse moral codes of behavior. There are no right or wrong answers to these questions, and your responses are anonymous, so please be as honest as you can.

You will receive feedback about your moral attitudes, relative to those of other respondents to this survey. You will also receive feedback about your personality, relative to other survey respondents. Read their consent form, which explains your rights as well as the benefits of this free, anonymous test. Answer these questions honestly; otherwise you won’t get an accurate answer.

Do-Re-Mi’s: What Your Music Tastes Say About You
Find out what personality traits you have based upon your musical tastes! This test reveals your music tastes on four different dimensions and explains your personality based on these factors. What does your taste in music say about your personality? Find out with this quiz! This psychology test will tell you how other people see you based on what types of music you listen to. Results are instant, free, and anonymous.

Big Five Personality Test
This test measures what many psychologists consider to be the fundamental dimensions of personality.
Take this psychology test to find out about your personality! This test measures what many psychologists consider to be the five fundamental dimensions of personality. As you are rating yourself, you are encouraged to rate another person. By rating someone else you will tend to receive a more accurate assessment of your own personality. Also, you will be given a personality profile for the person you rate, which will allow you to compare yourself to this person on each of five basic personality dimensions. Try to rate someone whom you know well, such as a close friend, coworker, spouse, or other family member.

Are you a blurter or a brooder?
…and how this affects your love life
Who is right for you? How does the way you deal with your emotions influence your relationship satisfaction? This test measures a personality characteristic that determines who you relate to most effectively. Who is right for you? How does the way you deal with your emotions influence your relationship satisfaction? This psychology test will give you information about yourself and also act as a guide to your relationships. This test, the Brief Loquaciousness and Interpersonal Responsiveness Test (hence b.l.i.r.t.), measures a personality characteristic that determines who you relate to most effectively.

The test was written by psychologists at University of Texas and is valid according to rigorous scientific standards.

Find Your Star Wars Twin

Using a standard personality psychology test, this website can tell you which traits you have in common with characters from the Star Wars movies.

Read our consent form, which explains the benefits of this free, anonymous test and your rights.
Answer these questions honestly; otherwise you won’t get an accurate answer.
This test is free; your results will be displayed as soon as you submit your answers.
The test will take around 5 to 10 minutes.
The test was written by a psychologist at U. C. Berkeley — it is well-accepted and widely used in the personality field of psychology.
Learn more about the Big Five by reading answers to commonly asked questions.

About the OutofService.com Tests

From the site and creator Jeff Potter.

OutOfService.com, created by Jeff Potter, has run personality and self-awareness tests since 1997. The tests are derived from scientific psychological research and the feedback provided to participants is based on statistical analyses of large amounts of data, unlike many other “tests” on the web.

Many of the tests on OutOfService have been developed in collaboration with several respected researchers and professors as parts of ongoing research. Most notably, Dr. Samuel Gosling of the University of Texas has provided thoughtful guidance and opportunities. [But any errors on the site are mine and mine alone! -Jeff] The site has been featured in everything from tabloids and underground zines to the New York Times, US News & World Report, CNN, the London Metro, the BBC, ABC News, Slashdot, and even the SciFi channel. In the first five years, the site has received many millions of unique visitors, and word continues to spread.

The feedback given to visitors like you is based on the average scores of tens of thousands of responses, taken from this same website. Your results are generalizations that show only how your responses compare to those of an average web surfer. We’ve done comparisons between traditional and web-based methodologies, and while differences do exist, they are very minor. This means that your results are good representations of your personality, in general.

We want to emphasize that we are talking about generalizations here, and these generalizations don’t apply to all people. To illustrate, consider the generalization that men are generally taller than women. This does not mean that every man is taller than every woman. Instead, it means that, on average, men are taller than women. This same logic applies to the feedback that is given on this site: it generally describes your personality quite well, but if it doesn’t fit, you may be an exception to the rule!

The name OutOfService can mean two things: a sign that something is in disrepair, or that the matter at hand has been done out of service for the benefit of all. Hopefully you will find the fun nature of the tests on this site to be thought-provoking and the results enlightening.

Privacy and The OOS Tests

Again from their site:

outofservice.com respects your privacy! Any information regarding you collected from this site will be treated as confidential as described in this document.

This site collects the following types of data on visitors: web log files detailing which web pages are visited and psychology data recording visitor’s replies.

Web log files are kept for my use in analyzing traffic patterns on this site and improving the site for users like you. They are not shared with anyone, nor is any attempt made to link the log data with individuals who browse the site.

Psychology test data is recorded for psychology tests on this web site and is used for academic purposes by professors and research staff at accredited universities and reviewed institutions. The results of this data is analyzed and released in aggregate statistics, usually in academic journals and conferences. By submitting a survey to outofservice, you acknowledge that your answers will be recorded. Your answers are entirely anonymous and you will never be identified individually; your answers cannot be connected with your name or identity.

- Free IQ Tests with Social Networking. Tickle offers tests on relationship, career, style & beauty, mind & body and family. Their most popular tests, per their ranking methods, include: Are You a Secure Lover? ,The Attraction Factor, How Bright Is Your Aura? , Ayurveda Body Type Test , The Influence of Birth Order, The Brain Test ,The Brainteaser Test,The Chakra Test ,Career Personality Test ,The Communication Style Test,The Confidence Test ,The Corporate Culture Test , and What’s Your Destiny?

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An interesting reflection by RoboJiannis on Torrentspy and evidence, Apple and ChangeSecret and Yahoo!, Baidu, China and infringement. Is this really all about putting the Web (the Net) under control? (ChangeMod (abbreviated from change mode) appears to be a play on words on the shell command in Unix and Unix-like environments known as Chmod)

Jiannis’ piece quotes some snippets from Barlow’s manifesto- the critical Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace written in 1996…

Snippets from the Manifesto

Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather….

…Your legal concepts of property, expression, identity, movement, and context do not apply to us. They are all based on matter, and there is no matter here….

…In China, Germany, France, Russia, Singapore, Italy and the United States, you are trying to ward off the virus of liberty by erecting guard posts at the frontiers of Cyberspace. These may keep out the contagion for a small time, but they will not work in a world that will soon be blanketed in bit-bearing media…

…We will create a civilization of the Mind in Cyberspace. May it be more humane and fair than the world your governments have made before.

John Perry Barlow, of Davos, Switzerland, penned this manifesto on February 8, 1996, A declaration of the independence of cyberspace. Barlow is also known as a former lyricist for the Grateful Dead and co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an organization which promotes freedom of expression in digital media where he now serves as its Vice Chairman.

Do you recall the words of the declaration of the independence of cyberspace- written over a decade ago? That is a long time in the computing era. (I have made some edits made for clarity based on today’s ChangeMode feedback post and comments. This shows that I am suffering from dementia perhaps…

(While we are at it I would love to find a definitive source on the lost art of netiquette.)

The Triad of Developments

The Changemod.com piece goes on to recap a triad of disturbing developments:

TorrentSpy, a Peer-to-Peer Network, according to the verdict of a California judge has violated copyrights owned by the MPAA. TorrentSpy was also found guilty of destroying evidence e.g. example deleting logs of user IP adresses. In the Blogosphere- recall the debate over Apple getting the Think Secret blog shut down- although the settlement was “amicable”. A quick stop to China which found Yahoo! guilty of copyright infringement. The rub is that China wasn’t actually serving up any pirated music. They were simply engaged in “deep linking.”

Further Reading

Chris Marshall of Gadgetell’s Torrent Spy and Guilty Verdict

Mashable’s Kriten Nicole Torrent Spy Loses Cast Against Hollywood Heavyweights

Mashable’s Andy Angelos: TorrentSpy Defies Court Order and Rekindles Hollywood Angst

Apple and Think Secret Settlement

Mashable’s Mark ‘Rizzn’ Hopkins Yahoo! China Found Guilty of Copyright Infringement

Bryan Gardiner from Wired Apple Kills Think Secret: Publisher Nick Ciarelli Talks

Philosophy behind Freenet Covers free flow of information, communication is humanity, knowledge is good, democracy assumes a well informed population, censorship and freedom, solutions, anonymity, copyrights, rewards, alternatives and new approaches like Fairshare.

Eff.org: From the Internet to the iPod, technologies are transforming our society and empowering us as speakers, citizens, creators, and consumers. When our freedoms in the networked world come under attack, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is the first line of defense. EFF broke new ground when it was founded in 1990 — well before the Internet was on most people’s radar — and continues to confront cutting-edge issues defending free speech, privacy, innovation, and consumer rights today. From the beginning, EFF has championed the public interest in every critical battle affecting digital rights.

Books on Freedom of Speech

Conclusions…

The author of the ChangeMod.com piece concludes:

I believe it all comes down to this: The cyberspace is increasingly gaining in popularity and everybody wants a piece of the pie; and control is the way to get that piece.

My own Conclusion

I found this quote from EFF’s Mike Godwin located on the The Free Network Project. Freenetproject.org provides free software which lets people publish and obtain information on the Internet without fear of censorship. The network is entirely decentralized and publishers and readers of information are anonymous. FreeNet believes without anonymity there can never be true freedom of speech, and without decentralization the network will be vulnerable to attack. Some may disagree with anonymity but I find decentralization to be technically on target.

“I worry about my child and the Internet all the time, even though she’s too young to have logged on yet. Here’s what I worry about. I worry that 10 or 15 years from now, she will come to me and say ‘Daddy, where were you when they took freedom of the press away from the Internet?’”
–Mike Godwin, Electronic Frontier Foundation

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Fleep Tuque (aka Chris Collins), an educator who I have a lot of respect for and know through an interesting string of “chain reactions” incited by micro media, had an interesting comment on the introduction of Live Gamer into the mix…it seemed like cheating. I replied back, but my blog seems to be eating comments so I figured I would expend what thought I had left looking at this and some other topics. This is not a term paper, but more “thinking out loud”.

Fleep Speaks

To quote her comment.

My first thought regarding these game goods trading or buying/selling platforms is: how does this not just perpetuate the “person with the most money wins” paradigm that already exists in the real world? This is beginning to happen to some extent in Second Life - though indie content creators and long term residents still have the edge because they know what actually works - that advantage will disappear with time as the big boys figure out how to do things right. But in a narrative game world like WoW? It feels like outright _cheating_.

Fleep how about the sixteen year old who has much more TIME in which to play a game? What are the conditions for a “win”? Is this maxim really true for the “real world”? I certainly think having a ton of money can help, but doesn’t mean you will win and winning is often subjective. I am not sure if the indie content creators will lose their edge at all. The big boys have been wrong for a long time and television is a great example. That is why we have Ask the Ninja, Bus Uncle or even the perpetuation of shock memes like Tub Girl and GoatSe Guy. Real life is simply more entertaining than the carefully prepared baby food they want us to eat.

She goes on…

What’s the incentive to play for hours to win the Flaming Sword of Super Powerz if you can just go out and buy the thing? Sure there are gold farmers and the like, but I say most people are playing MMORPGs for the fun, the camaraderie, the _escapism_ from real world pressures. Bring in a profit motive to play and then it just becomes another job where some jerk who already has more than you in the real world can now buy her way ahead of you in the game world too. What’s the incentive to actually play the game when it can just be bought?

Because one can buy the game does not mean they will derive some the core benefits you cite like camaraderie, escapism, fun and perhaps most important- a sense of belonging to a group and shared accomplishment. WoW pros tell me, and I have asked, that they can spot a power jacked character right away and typically shun them. They may have the “loot” but they do not have the cultural mannerisms of one properly indoctrinated through blood and fire. They are missing the secret handshakes, or the native linguistic touches. They are simply a noob in +5 Plate Mail.

Suggested Science Fiction Reading

Since I am so fond of science fiction I would recommend a couple of texts written circa 1970’s. They are fantastic fiction and great metaphors for Second Life.

Roger Zelazny
The Great Book of Amber : The Complete Amber Chronicles, 1-10 (Chronicles of Amber)

Phillip Jose Farmer
The World of Tiers: Volume One (World of Tiers)

In the World of Tiers we meet earthlings Robert Wolff and Paul Janus Finnigan (alias Kickaha) who through strange circumstances are “gated” into a parallel pocket universe. These pocket universes are maintained by mostly insane “Lords” who are paranoid and spend most of their time trying to kill each other to stave off ennui. The World of Tiers is just that, a multi-tiered world that spans a virtual garden of Eden and changes each level until we come to a deadly palace at the top. I won’t spoil it, but the first three are really good, old-fashioned rip roaring reads.

Farmer’s books went on to inspire the late Roger Zelazny who wrote The Chronicles of Amber. He was so inspired by The World of Tiers Zelanzy actually dedicated one of the books in the series to the main characters Jadawin and Kickaha. I have found Amber to be an incredibly accurate metaphor for Second Life. (Matter of fact you might find the quixotic Chevaliers names and behavior to be quite similar to those of Amberites at times.). In the Amber stories, Amber and the Courts of Chaos are the only two “true” worlds. Everything else, even Earth, are called or simply the byproducts of “shadows”. The royal family of Amber that negotiates the Pattern, and the equivalent Chaos nobility who have walked the Logrus, can freely travel through the shadows and alter them at will. The obvious metaphor for Second Life being that of some arbitrary static reality and the existence of an infinite number of “negotiated realities”. Furthermore we have the metaphor of a scripter or builder who can literally “create” whatever they choose- it is nothing but Shadow and really quite malleable- even the physics.

The books are narrated by Corwin who suffers from amnesia, escapes, tracks down his sister Florimel, and discovers that he is a prince of Amber. He is taken by his brother Random to walk the Pattern. The Pattern is the construct which gives the multiverse its order. Walking the Pattern restores Corwin’s memory and his powers to travel through shadow…I won’t spoil the rest and since it is late I will let the Wikipedia hammer at the metaverse concepts within.

Amber and Second Life Parallels

The series is based on the concept of parallel worlds, domination over them being fought between the kingdoms at the extreme ends of Shadow—Amber, the one true world of Order, and the Courts of Chaos. Amberites of royal blood—those descended from Oberon (and ultimately his parents, Dworkin, formerly of the Courts of Chaos, and the Unicorn of Order herself) —are able to “walk in Shadow”, mentally willing changes to occur around them. These changes are, in effect, representative of the Shadow-walker passing through different realities. There are apparently infinite realities, either found by the Shadow-walker locating such worlds or by creating them (we the readers are never sure; neither are the characters).

Within this multiverse, Zelazny deals with some interesting philosophical concepts about the nature of existence, compares and contrasts the ideas of Order and Chaos, and plays with the laws of physics—they can differ from Shadow to Shadow; for instance, gunpowder does not ignite in Amber, which is why the characters all carry swords. Other Shadows have green skies and blue suns, cities of glass and Kentucki Fried Lizzard Partes, and worlds out of our own fiction can come to life.

In short, as I have maintained, reality is what we mutually negotiate- like modems we will find a common protocol. A game is what we choose to make out of it and if left idle humans will create their own rules and games to satisfy their needs.

Metaverse History

I just finished The Second Life Herald: The Virtual Tabloid that Witnessed the Dawn of the Metaverse By Peter Ludlow and Mark Wallace. This gelled or provided a much needed history for me that is often lacking in the fast-paced world of the “synthetic”- although i am not sure they are really synthetic at all- it just makes us feel better to say that.

I would add this is a must read too. It fits together so many of the missing pieces when you see how and why the refugees from the Sims Online started showing up on Second Life’s doorstep- mostly because “skilling” (playing the game) your avatars up the ladder sucked- it was more fun to form virtual mafias and berate people, perhaps the same reason we have “griefers” in Second Life. As a bonus you get to track some of the history and birth of the more interesting personalities like Ludlow or Prok who challenges me to write on the virtual chalk board about humility- in The Sims Online known as DyerBrook a.k.a. Prokofky Neva. (Yes- it was cut and paste.)

Fiction to Non-Fiction Books

The State of Play: Law, Games, and Virtual Worlds (Ex Machina: Law, Technology, and Society)
By Jack Balkin, Beth Noveck

Play Money: Or, How I Quit My Day Job and Made Millions Trading Virtual Loot
By Julian Dibbell

They touch on the “cheating” phenomena and I was actually able to catch up with one of the major “gold farmers” in Dibbel’s book. The amounts being made are staggering so clearly people, and many of them want this. Perhaps this should be a clue to game makers? Are most people really mechanics driven Monty-haul gamers or dedicated role-players who love true immersion?

What to Do with Noobs

If we go back to October of last year I pulled and commented on this TechCrunch Gem.

i went on second life; its rather boringand most people where just running around changing their apperance…i’m not realy going to waste my time and money doing this; expecially since i know they got hacked and all their customer data was compromised.

probably tha main point of contention in this game for me is: i don’t get to kill anyone…it lame in that i have to have clothes and the appearance sucks; and i wanted a chance to start a business/make money…and i couldn’t figure it out…and i’m not going to stay up at night making polygons…so maybe the audience is limited to people who use animation software…not me….i want a game where i can go kill something and steal gold, and then use that to start a business or something.

i was fun walking around though…but if you’ve played online games before, like Arena, etc…its kinda boring.

Sad but true and really some of this moron’s complaints are probably valid. Their appearance probably did suck and a complicated GUI (which has improved) and dedicated skill set are needed to look better. Low and behold it wasn’t so easy to get wealthy and make money especially if you aren’t willing to sit up late and “make polygons”- that isn’t even a game- that sounds like work! This guy just wanted to kill people and steal gold and use THAT to start his business. Interesting. There is a major disconnect between the uninitiated and the real virtual world.

Why Can’t You Buy a Better Second Life?

Second Life is not easy to absorb at first- sort of like nicotine. Often veterans take for granted the amount of indoctrination that is needed. From idiosyncratic speech (e.g. Tier, Prim and Orbit) to a completely self-absorbed and alien culture where people often experience vertigo from initial participation. Then again that is why veterans put up with just about anything including frequent grid failure. Once you participate in the world, once you have earned the skills through experience- you don’t want to go. Clearly you CANNOT really even BUY a better Second Life like you can in say WoW. You can look better perhaps, but participation and friends are not bought. The only thing that shocks me are people who say “I’m bored”. I really believe there is little to no hope for them.

Virtual Scarcity

Back tracking to March of this year…

I find it an interesting parallel between buying virtual goods like World of WarCraft Power leveling or Second Life Linden buying and the swapping of “joost beta accounts” for tangible or intangible goods. Both are subjective in value. Both are desired by “fans”. Both would seem to have relatively limited life spans. The only prime difference is that one (beta accounts) are predestined to become ubiquitous. At least I am sure Joost hopes so

People were paying for Joost betas because they wanted to be first or they wanted to satisfy a need immediately.

Dusan Writer touches on many things I agree with in her follow-up. One being Edward Castranova’s desire for protecting the magic circle. Users will define what the magic circle will be and in the not so near future, if they wish, they will be creating the entire magic circle.. When does the game begin and end? It varies from individual to individual. Like turn of the century Quake matches via TCP/IP…you were not the best until you mastered Ping flood protection, learned to send a string of out of band data against your foe on TCP port 139, coordinated via ICQ, kept up with the birth of the Stooge bot and a host of other challenges. The game demanded players improve their security skills or suffer. The game went far beyond the game’s own boundaries- yet people played and they still play.

Second Life and Second Iteration

Conversely, however, platform owners can play tricks with virtual economies in ways that aren’t transparent to users who may be highly invested in particular virtual worlds. The example of Second Life pegging the Linden to the US dollar is an example. This is arbitrary, and the spread of the actual rise and fall of the Linden is covered by Linden Labs. But just as it’s in their power to control against a sudden decrease in the value of the Linden, it’s also in their power to remove their hands from the wheel (for financial or other reasons) and let the economy spin off on its own.

Let’s face it - with X billions of objects in Second Life, few of which deteriorate (although MANY of which are lost in someone’s inventory), surely the value of a shirt is worth less now than it was a year ago. How many shirts have been made? But so long as the Linden is pegged at an artificial rate, the illusion of an economy can be maintained. The real SL economy is in the island and off-world economy, but these statistics aren’t tracked (or if they are, they aren’t published).

Users often take it for granted, in a cycle of trust, that the platform owners are working in their best interests - they have an interest in working economies that don’t collapse, otherwise they lose their users. But as virtual worlds grow and real economic value starts to accrue to them, this might be courting disaster.

I have a lot of thoughts here on Second Life and new technologies like hashed validation of “virtual goods” to guarantee scarcity. I would love to reveal it all but I simply want to try it first. I will say as a micro-content “facilitator” that I see the exact SAME patterns I saw in performance marketing from late 90’s until now. Most of us were amateurs who organically built up from small operations- just like we see now in SL. We had the good fortune of being in the right place and at the right time and most worked hard. Some even made millions, but it was clear with each passing year that those who had not networked, had not built a brand, had not acquired disruptive technology or strategies were doomed.

Attention Still Equals Revenue

So called “social media” was another pocket of opportunity with a different attention=revenue pay off- influence. However, just as in performance marketing, and we will probably see it with micro or social media, the bar will rise higher and higher AND / OR technology will make it so simple it will no longer be a “skill” or barrier to entry. Second Life has clearly set itself up to be disrupted and I hope to help that along- I call it Second Iteration (Second Foundation?) and it is a good thing that does NOT make Second Life “bad”. However, the bar still has a long way to drop. I grant it is easy to create things but just like in performance marketing I do not think content creation follows The Pareto distribution or principle (aka the 80-20 rule, the law of the vital few and the principle of factor sparsity) like I often hear. I think it might be better expressed as a joint ratio of 96:4- very imbalanced.

It is the big players that should be sweating when amateurs in their bedroom can suddenly duplicate the work that was walled off to the elite with high-end graphics and 3D programs. They have to have noticed by now.

What is to Come

Metaplace is a taste of what’s to come. Islands and builds in Second Life are CLEARLY a sign of things to come. Games will be created by kids in their basement, companies wanting a quick new way to train staff on a new product line, and educators wanting to throw together a virtual classroom with live collaborative project and presentation spaces.

I concur with everything but I say let us dispense with the classroom. In a world where you can create or cheaply procure whatever you need I see no reason to have classrooms or ill-fitting desks. I truly hope educators don’t try to replicate everything. The game, the world, and the experience are the real classrooms and most students, like their games, will define it if you let them. You need only enable and guide them.

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Mashable reports on a new service that finally gives gamers what they want- a free economy of sorts. Backed with $24 million in VC from Charles River Ventures, Kodiak Venture Partners, and Pequot Ventures, LiveGamer went live targeting MMOGs with a platform to trade virtual goods. Andrew Schneider and Mitch Davis, (ad startup Massive sold to Microsoft) Live Gamer brings a sense of respectability to trading virtual goods. Suddenly that +3 Vorpal Blade of Troll Slaying takes on new and potent economic meaning.

It seems odd that eBay, which powers the land auctions for Second Life, missed out on this incredibly lucrative opportunity. Surely the thought of selling your Blood Rage Armor is no more ridiculous than when Ebay was a simple script designed to pawn off a pez dispenser collection. There have been speculations by security researchers (like myself) that the malware industry, to use the term loosely, finds it is easier to chop shop a WoW account than steal a credit card! Perhaps because it is hard to get the cops to pursue a case of a hijacked 60 level mage.

The centralized platform for trading has already attracted the interest of Funcom, GMBH, Sony Online, 10TACLE, Acclaim, and GoPets with more to follow.

According to Live Gamer their vision is founded on four value propositions. The biggest I see is seamless in game trading.

Created in an environment where the game industry meets Wall Street, Live Gamer provides a fully legitimate, publisher-supported virtual trading marketplace with security, convenience, and quality of service to match any real-world market. Access Live Gamer from within the game itself — to conduct transaction backed powerful security and anti-fraud measures. Traded goods become available in real time for uninterrupted game play.

Seamless In-Game Virtual Trading
Players can access the Live Gamer marketplace directly from within any participating game for uninterrupted game play and instant fulfillment.

Guaranteed Delivery
Anti-fraud mechanisms protect both sides of every transaction: buyers are assured of receiving purchased goods, and sellers are assured of receiving payment.

Flexible Commerce
A sophisticated marketplace engine gives players the option of both highest bidder and buy-now transactions.

A Level Playing Field
Live Gamer provides Publishers with a rich set of tools that allows them control and flexibility in managing the in-game economy to preserve balanced game play.

startupaddict.com notes that”

The gamer has a real opportunity to make money with only 10% of the sales price being split between Live Gamer and the publisher with the remaining 90% of the sale price going to the gamer.

I asked a die-hard gaming colleague (let’s call him The Impaler), who wishes to remain anonymous, on his take and he summed up his thoughts:

Not a bad thing by any means, but I get an icky feel from it…like it will be mostly power-gamed WoW accounts up for sale…I’m imagining lots of Korean kids wasting away in basements and becoming thousandaires. Really, I think it will be very much like SLX (a Second Life Product Exchange), but cross platform for actual professionally made games. The makers of those games don’t need people to make things for them…they already pay people to do that. This will be like people getting an extra Staff of and putting it up for sale for real money. It happens a lot already, but this will possibly help people sell more, while they take a cut off the top. I don’t see it as being a place for most to make big money, so much as a way to make the countless wasted hours of video game playing turn a small profit. Not a bad thing at all…just not sure I see it turning out to be a big business break for anyone but the folks running the show.

So, the people with their Tokens then take the time to harvest planets that didn’t get defended quite well enough, and restock them with defenses while their hard working people are asleep or at works, or being bitched at by their families to quite being a game junkie. Next thing you know, the hard working folk return to find the last two weeks of time and possibly their own Tokens have been wasted….its addictive and competitive…making them want to buy more Tokens to get back into the struggle.

I asked The Impaler if the addictive quality of games might heighten trading…

We used to call it Space Crack for a reason…

There is even a “Black Market” Token trade there….people who buy them and then wait for desperate people to come and offer up a few planets in exchange for “Just enough for some more fuel”…and they always come back, because the traders are usually partnered with skilled invaders.

The man who created the game is known as “Toonces” by the players…and usually considered to be either God or the Devil depending upon your outlook that day. We always wanted him to replace his ship with an icon of a single colonist…

Space crack indeed…no different than Evercrack? It is no wonder The Impaler was known as either TheWarg or CaptainDastardly depending upon the SGE galaxy.

To that I proffer that the future might not be “professionally made games”. That people will turn to platforms that allow them to make games and games will go independant. Just as we have now have micro content boiling all over the video and audio realms courtesy of YouTube and podcasts, we may, no we will probably, see the same in the games industry. Dusan Writer, who owns a company that does work in advertising, strategy, marketing and design working mainly in healthcare, environmental issues, and training noted my outlook on VastPark, MetaPlace and Second Life in a blog entry.

Yes Dusan I did leave out a swathe of other games and / or platforms. I do not mean to ignore them out of insignificance, but I found the counter strategies of VastPark and Metaplace so similar, and interesting, that I merely wanted to keep my scope narrow. Let’s note the observations by Dusan:

It’s a nice summary, but misses a huge swath of synthetic worlds, not to mention virtual worlds that include elements of games. Ignoring HiPiHi is like the US ignoring China, but there are other worlds with different functions as well. Some of them are glorified chat, and some of them are 3D versions of Web pages. Kaneva, Twinity, There.com, VLES.com….examples of worlds in which commerce and content have different advantages in their expression.

And all of this ignores a move by Google, whose recent move into the Wikipedia space is an intriguing and explosive follow-up to its entry into social networking and wireless.

I am not ignoring anything that Google does, already they have had an impact on intra-game land merchandising in Second Life and those with a background in SMO and good SEO architecture, who understand the nuances of single prim, multi-prim vending with stand alone virtual goods have already started quietly making the shift because they are able to translate 2D marketing principles into a 3D world.

I think anything can be a game and anything can “be gamed”.

For example, I was playing with unicode the other day on twitter and hit on an idea for TwackJack after discovering a chess set and card codes. This line of thinking was based on conversations and this link from with Sam Harrelson on an Assyrian, Babylonian, Sumerian and Egyptian hieroglyphics translation service. Who would have thought?

Sam is a respected e-commerce expert, CEO of Revenews, and an aspiring Assyriology master. We met by chance in the industry having both read the Enuma Elish. Again- who would have thought? Since then I have been wondering how the constrained spaces of services like Twitter might make us adapt our language to the point where we want or desire pictographs to express complex thought- like cuneiform. Snowcrash anyone?

Ev seemed to like the idea of betting so who knows…maybe one day (C’mon Bleys) you will be brokering out captured Twitter character spaces on Live Gamer…and when people like me have turned a handy micro-chunked communication service into a card game we have either evolved or perhaps moved in retrograde as a species.

I guess it depends on how serious you take it all. At any rate it has to beat the hell out of playing Scrabulous with Robert Scoble, if for no other reason than it underscores how creative gamers and their economies might become.

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I happened upon this excellent resource by John Rice who is an educator, author and speaker specializing in educational technology and instructional gaming, when he noted a recent entry I did on griefing. I really like his blog perhaps because I feel vindicated that spending my high school time reading TSR’s Fiend Folio and memorizing THACO tables really might have practical applications. Sorry Dad- you might have been wrong.

John has not only a great blogroll–

• Bud the Teacher
• Clark Aldrich’s Blog
• Education Business Blog
• EduGamesBlog Feed
• EduQuery.com
• Electric Archeaologist
• Future-Making Serious Games
• Karl Kapp’s Blog
• Miguel Guhlin’s Blog
• Research Quest
• Richard Carey Associates
• seriousgames.blogspot
• seriousgames.ning
• SharpBrains.com Blog
• Tim Holt’s Byte Speed
• VG Researcher
• Zone of Influence

and he also puts together some fine pieces and resources like Top 10 Education Video Games, gives us the truth about “Virtual Shakespeare”, follows how virtual worlds are spewing real life creations into meatspace, and I like his take on VastPark.

John Rice on VastPark

Educators love to appropriate existing technologies for pedagogical purposes. And so we have educational radio programs, TV programs, videogames … and instructional applications in virtual worlds (VWs) such as Second Life and Active Worlds. However, there is an unfortunate lack of control in VW environments, as griefers manifest themselves with online terrorism, and students may potentially wander into explicit adult areas. What educators really need are VWs they control completely, regulating who has access as well as the pedagogy that is covered. Dr. Greg Jones over at UNT is a pioneer of this idea. Now, the potential for teachers to easily create their own online education worlds is proffered with a new service from VastPark, which bills itself as a “distributed virtual worlds platform.” Essentially, you design your VW using VastPark’s tools, invite users to stroll your virtual realm with their avatars, and achieve your online objectives whether that be making money or teaching students at a distance.

Second Life Innovates but Will Serve Niche Community in the future

Lately I have been looking at Second Life “economics” and how to disrupt the market. Finally it hit me and I think it can be done by using modified classical models in the far more mature affiliate marketing space. I am seeing the same sort of entrepreneurial patterns I saw with performance marketing in 1996 and I think it will follow a similiar maturation cycle. Snowcrash anyone? I believe the struggles with Second Life have been based around its hyper-freedom. You cannot fit square pegs into round holes. This does not mean it does not have value, only that its value is misunderstood or misused.

Is Second Life Going to Die?

I don’t think so- it will continue to serve niche and fringe markets and attract hyper creatives. I think new worlds or platforms like VastPark will fill the gaps that Second Life cannot due to the nature of the platform. Their 9 new rules is a great read starting with their view that a contigious metaverse is not going to happen.

The vision of an organised single world (or even a world of worlds) where the rules apply throughout might fall nicely into the Second Life fan club’s imaginations, but we don’t think it is going to happen. We all owe SL a debt of gratitude for putting virtual worlds on the agenda. On the other hand, gamers generally look at SL and think it’s a lame place for middle aged furries and academics. Corporations want to run their own meeting places without fear of flying penises. Media companies such as MTV want to enable their audience to get deeper involved in a variety of media properties and they will generally run their universe of virtual worlds quite separately from external influences. There’s no need for a Metaverse.

VastPark’s Vision

From what I gather reading their blog VastPark posits a virtual world can be thought of as a collaborative wiki hence virtual world is controlled like a distributed content management system (CMS). Also the decentralization of content with portable worlds, platforms and purposes combined with the use of “atomic portable Widgets” will lead to an explosion of meta-worlds and quests that will become the new arena of layered interactivity that fosters exploration. Exploration equals immersion in my experience.

Also see Future-Making Serious Games VastPark piece by Eliane Alhadeff, who also covers two emerging genres that I think hold promise- alternate reality games and augmented reality games.

MetaPlace Rising

I do like their value proposition too even if their view is slightly counter to another potential contender for this lucrative space- MetaPlace, headed up by CEO, Raph Koster.

Metaplace marks itself as next-generation virtual worlds platform designed to work the way the Web does. Instead of bloated custom clients Metaplace enables gameplay on any platform that reads their open client standard. They supply a suite of tools so people can make worlds, and host servers so that anyone can connect and play. Thus the client could be anywhere on the Web.

They too boast some interesting business and marketplace with some unique value propositions as per Jason Hable’s blog post.

What is the Future?

No one really knows, but no doubt MMOs, virtual worlds, 3D environments and rapid content creation tools for gaming environments are poised to explode. There will be no one “killer world or platform” but diverse companies that are honed to fill the needs of certain environments e.g. workspace collaboration, game play, teaching and education, and simulation.

Ultimately what I am looking at is how the traditional Web and 3D space will collide and what kind of real world fragments will be thrown off as this happens.

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CNN ran a piece on the C-64 (I still recall our VIC-20)…Peek, Poke, Sprites, SAM, and intrepid ones might recall JMP, STP, XOR, etc and the handy Hesmon application that let you write in assembly code. For me the C-64 was the machine that really ushered in the computer age as a youngster of about eleven…that and the 1541 Floppy Disk Drive…

My children still cringe when I explain we had to use tape cassettes to transfer over programs…It was a cool computer though. Far better than the ugly Trash 80 and unlike the Apple II et all. of the time- it really was user friendly. I burned many school nights staying up with my father and working the concept of a dimensional. As an aside my kids still cringe when I explain we only had three television channels.

Or perhaps you, the reader, can relate to keying in a huge program from RUN Magazine, only to see it crash and burn…we learned how to debug and pay attention to our syntax- and after a couple of those incidences dad sprung for a tape drive. I have one here somewhere, and our old family unit is still working…now if I could remember their idiosyncratic version of BASIC.

From the piece:

C64.com visitors are mostly nostalgia seekers — men in their 30s looking to download their favorite childhood games. Emulators let them play the games without having a machine. Popular downloads include “Boulder Dash,” “Ghostbusters,” and “The Great Giana Sisters.”

“It may have not been the most sophisticated computer, but it did have a lot of personality and it was lovable and remains loveable,” said Harry McCracken, vice president and editor in chief of PC World.

Often overshadowed by the Apple II and Atari 800, the Commodore 64 rose to great heights in the 1980s. From 1982-1993, 17 million C64s were sold. The Guinness Book of World Records lists the Commodore 64 as the best-selling single computer model.

I will close with some trivia (for scott m.) the Apple and C-64 shared which microprocessor? The one it did not share was used by the venerable VIC-20 I think…

The 6510 or 6502?

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It is that time again. Personalization for those inclined to give special gifts to their virtual or “pixelated” friends. What do you give your post-human, spend-too-much-time-in-Second-Life friends? Photos, better yet photobooks, or yes- even stamps of their avatars!

The latest deals, coupons, and breaks are updated: - dotphoto promotions

- Kodak coupons
- Snapfish special offers

- Photoworks special deals

Let’s not forget Stamps.com which allows you to put ANY photo on a block of stamps…not that many people send snail mail these days, but sending one with your avatar’s snap is a classy touch.

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Saleh Lie continues to make progress on her micro-loan which started in August of this year. Since it is the holidays- consider micro-funding an entrepreur…

The business you have loaned to, run by Saleh Lie, has made a repayment
of $28.00. The total amount repaid is now $84.00. This repayment will
be divided amongst all the lenders who helped to fund this business,
depending upon the percentage each lender contributed.

http://www.kiva.org/app.php?page=businesses&action=about&id=16574

Please note that these funds will not be credited to your Kiva account
until the loan is repaid in full or when the loan term is complete. At
that time, you will be able to withdraw these funds from Kiva.org or to
re-lend these funds to a new business.
To view your Kiva loan portfolio go to: http://www.kiva.org/app.php?page=account.

For more history on this project visit Curious Cats post. Thanks John.

I am glad I found John Hunter’s information packed blog after his science fiction comment on Ender’s Game…(one of the few who read all the novels I think…ok I suffered through them all.)

While grazing around his site I found this entry on microfinancing.

Business Week has an article on Microfinance Draws Mega Players on how investment banks are getting into microfinance. I must admit that while I certainly am happy if the market can get involved in making microfinance aid development I think it might be better suited to non-profit, foundations and charities. I am happy to continue to fund organizations like Trickle Up to help people help themselves.

Kiva is another interesting organization that lets you loan directly to an entrepreneur of your choice. If fact, I have just placed $350 in loans to 5 business entrepreneurs (in Kenya, Mexico, Cameroon and Azerbaijan) - and a $50 donation to Kiva. Kiva provides loans through partners (operating in the countries) to the entrepreneurs. Those partners do charge the entrepreneurs interest (to fund the operations of the lending partner). Kiva pays the principle back to you but does not pay interest. And if the entrepreneur defaults then you do not get your interest paid back (in other words you lose the money you loaned). I plan to just recycle repaid loans to other entrepreneurs.

Add a comment with a link to your Kiva page and I will add a page to this site with links to all Curious Cat blog readers with a link to Kiva pages.

Related: Microfinance article from the New Yorker - Kiva: Microfinance Loans (posted on Christmas day 2006) - helping people succeed economically

I am interested in hearing about other places like Kiva. I know of Prosper- which is a radically different as Kiva seems to be targeting the truly impoverished- Prosper is free Enterprise taking it away from the Bank…but I like the idea.

At any rate thanks John for your comments on science fiction and I am glad (can’t quite match you) you got me moving in making a difference. In my Kiva case I was able to fund the remainder of a loan for this lady.

Saleh Lie is forty-years old and married with one child. She sells clothes and with her previous loans she diversified her business so that she now sells onions, sauce pans, tomato paste, etc. Saleh also opened a small shop in Kabala’s market and employed her nephew to run it. She is planning to expand her business and build a small family house. Saleh said she would like to save some income to build a small house for her grandchildren. She is requesting a loan of $275 to expand her inventory.

You can start with a very small amount, and it is wonderful to get updates on who you funded and how they fare.

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