Top earners in Second Life make more US Dollars with their Second Life busines ventures than many players in the real world. The Second Life Linden Dollars Guide is a great way to uncover the slick tricks and secrets of the wealthier players.
Highlights of the Second Life Linden Dollars Guide:
- Earn more than 3000 Linden Dollars per hour starting from scratch
- Step-by-step guides to making textures and animations
- Five advanced scripts that put your competition out of business
- Real estate for Newbies - they make the complex world alot easier
- Contains well documented ready-to-go business concepts
- Find out how to get 140 USD for every Second Life account you create
The Money Trees
Free Linden Dollars are out there if you know where to look. Especially if you are new to Second Life. A complete listing of money trees, free items and script resources are included. It’s an ideal jump start for new players. However, veterans know that money tree locations change from time to time so this is not always spot on.
Second Life Business Opportunities:
Find the right idea for a hobby business, part-time job or to incorporate your own Second Life full-time business. The Second Life Linden Dollars Guide applies SWOT analysis to many of the popular busineses. Choose the right types of products and market them like a professional. The guide shows you how to anticipate the market, the money needed and potentialy how big the market will be.
The Land and Real Estate Game
Provides a land price reference and how to get top location plots at largely discounted prices. Make the best out of your land with a compact guide to terra forming and provided rent scripts. The real estate market has been in flux lately so every edge you can get- helps.
Freelance Work and Jobs in Second Life: Find out how to learn them, the best ways to get work, how much they pay and how to maximize your income from them. This is by far the easiest way to pick up Lindens and remember Linden dollars, depending on the exchange rate, translate into real hard currency.
The Second Life Linden Dollars Guide cuts down the learning curve. Use free, 3rd party software to your advantage, employ powerful cross-selling techniques and discover the ideal locations for your shop or kiosk. These hints greatly boost your chance of making a nice score.
Markets and SKills Covered:
Becoming an Artist
Avatar Creation & Skin Development
Avatar Animations
Fashion Design
Game Development
Hair creation
Constructing Houses, Land Terra Forming & Model Furniture
Music and DJ work and how to sell tunes outside of the Second Life World.
Generating Textures and custom scripts or script editing. Scripts are always in demand.
Making Videos- also known as “machinima” which is becoming red hot.
Mastering the lucrative Weapons Market as well as popular vehicles.
Special Events from marriages to hot parties…
Tutoring and Teaching
Tutoring for new players and advanced players is a great way to collect cash. Build your business network and customer base and get paid. Giving lessons is booming and saving time is the same as making money.
Free scripts: If you are serious about making money, you need to have the right scripts at your disposal. With this guide you receive them complete and for free. Put them to work right away and generate profit instantly. Learn how to work them into your events and how to maximize your income.
Setting up Group Projects: What works and what doesn’t, what you can expect from them and what the top hints to make them work. Whether it is advice on land issues or project planning: You now have a serious manual at your hand to manage all the big and small problems you will encounter. Collaboration is key!
Second Life Resources: Need more video tutorials? Don’t want so spend Linden or real Dollars on tools? Looking for additional manuals, database and guides? The best of them are listed with explanations in the Second Life Linden Dollars Guide. Knowledge is power. (For some sample videos check out Torley’s guides or visit http://www.virtualworldsvideo.com/
Free updates: All future updates of this guide are included in the purchase price. When an update is published, you will receive a notification. Just log into your account and download the update for free! This is critical because Second Life moves fast and updates keep you on top.
Summary:
While I am normally not a huge fan of micro-guides, this particular line is cheap enough to justify the cost whether you are in it for fun, the money or maybe both. Making money is fun! It is impossible to cover every nuance of Second Life, but after reading many of the mainstream print guides I do believe this is a far more practical text and worth the small investment.
The texts are easy to read .pdf files (Adobe Acrobat Reader files) which you can get for free by downloading it here. Killer Guides is not affiliated with any game producer or publisher. The offered products are not official guides.
Second Life has taken a bit of beating lately, but don’t be fooled. Virtual Worlds are alot more than trying to sell products or mass market to avatars. Get beyond the ‘blingtardian” factor and you will find some amazing uses. For example a project I worked on, TheWallSL, was commissioned by someone who wanted to remain anonymous. I was stunned at the response, people crying over VOIP, or the fact the virtual memorial was more accurate (sans reflection.) than the real one.
Many companies are on the charge because they realize the many advantages to virtual work spaces go beyond selling trinkets or bumping up average tickets of dirt-world goods.
Let me name a few: reduced costs, enhanced presence and team building of disparate units, fast prototyping, pleasurable, exciting and novel changes to work…the list goes on.
John Chambers, CEO of Cisco is jumping right in and I am a little biased being from his homeland. I have a lot of respect for Chambers and some regional nationalism. He grew up about 30 minutes from my my city in Huntington, WV and has dyslexia- plus he liked to fish. Despite the dyslexia he pilots a true powerhouse. With a disorder like dyslexia it is obvious why someone like Chambers would embrace virtual worlds.
As I mentioned earlier a colleague had tested their telepresence technology and they were impressed. I hope to have more details for you.
Second Life is a virtual world with millions of square meters of virtual lands (server space), more than 13 million “residents,” (although how many are active is up for debate) and a real economy based on Lindens. Large numbers of colleges and universities—or, in some cases, individual departments or faculty—are active in Second Life, not only for academic purposes but also for campus visits, recruiting activities for prospective students, and fundraising. We even took many on tours to the Vietnam Memorial we created- one many had never seen because of cost, disability or lack of opportunity to name a few reasons. When you heard the reading of the names of those who lost their lives you got an idea how powerful even “virtual worlds and reality can be.”
Let us also not forget recreation. Hang gliding, surfing, horseback riding, fencing, and other things I have no inkling about. Does it replace the real world?
No.
But it can kindle that spark or that interest in new things.
SUNNY IN SECOND LIFE
Sun Microsystems, which makes computer servers and software, operates seven islands in Second Life, two of which are open to the public. The rest are used for training sessions and meetings. During its biggest event, a twelve-hour corporate meeting held in April, 14 of Santa Clara-based Sun’s top executives mixed with hundreds of employees- weird. Skiing, car racing, live jazz and a sandbox were also part of the event. …you start to get the idea. People’s race, religion, sex, etc all fall away and people interact as people. Human beings…and hey not all are dressed as humans. These things really aren’t important- being human is important.
Sun decided to hold the event after it acquired software company MySQL, which tracks its employees by the 110 airports they live near, rather than their actual locations. Sun was looking for a way to introduce the MySQL employees to their Sun colleagues, and Second Life seemed the best solution.
In our far flung world this is a big deal. Having worked with research teams in Bangalore India, Foster City, CA and Huntington, West Virginia I have no doubt that virtual interaction, be it in Second Life or another platform, would have been an important bonding experience and would have saved time and increased esprit de corp.
CIGNA HEALTHCARE
Hoping to make healthcare education hip and hot, Cigna Healthcare announced it has created a virtual environment in the Second Life virtual world to educate people on how to improve their health. I think success will be predicated on how much “fun” they let people have, but this is a good step. Imagination is a good thing. Nothing everything needs to be measured in immediate direct marketing ROI.
SECOND LIFE HAS FLAWS
No it is not perfect- far from it. It has trouble scaling and takes a certain level of indoctrination to learn the ropes…but this is just an early example of what the world we know will produce. It is going to get even more exciting and you can literally fly to the future. Yes it has flaws, but so do humans and that is one of the reasons being human is so great.
Some quick bullets, and a slide show, from Cory Ondrejka , so this post has *some* substance. I agree that Second Life has done quite a bit to further the advancement of Virtual Worlds. As technology advances (Moore’s Law anyone?) I imagine we are going to see innovation really accelerate.
Fact: I have accepted an invitation to join the Association of Virtual Worlds’ Advisory Board along with Chadrick Baker, Lori Bell, Bruno Cerboni, Dr. Sara de Freitas, Francesco D’Orazio, Michael Drew, Rahul Dutta, Cynthia Freese, Sasha Frieze, Dr. Hanan Gazit, Darius Lahoutifard, Dr. Chang Liu, Andrew Peters, Liz Ryan, Colin Trethewey, David Wisotzky and Zafka Zang. Quite a crew of very smart people and future thinkers…I am honored and hope I can make a solid contribution. Release is slated for tomorrow…
Rumor: A preview of CISCO’s telepresence application was described to me as “jaw dropping”. Hope to learn more…source- trusted.
I partially disagree with the “unique marketing opportunity” as that is only part of the equasion. As someone who spends quite a bit of time studying “virtual worlds” I think the bigger bets are on collaboration, eroding work place silos, training, fast prototyping and business interactions. Bank on it- other countries are.
Here is the slide show from Cory…lengthy yet interesting if you look at virtual worlds in context to other technological growth…keep in mind that Spore is coming down the pipe…
Virtual Worlds Projected to Mushroom to Nearly One Billion Users
$8 Billion Market Value Projected for User Services
Analytics today released its forecast of virtual world adoption, which shows that over the next ten years some 22 percent of global broadband users will have registered for one or more virtual worlds resulting in a market approaching one billion registrants and an eight billion dollar services opportunity. The study, “Market Forecasts for Virtual World Experiences,” projects a diversified global market with services targeted at children, teens and adults across a wide range of applications…
“Despite a multitude of challenges, virtual worlds present a unique marketing opportunity to target a highly sought demographic, and virtual worlds should be part of a company’s marketing portfolio,” according to Harvey Cohen, President of Strategy Analytics
I partially disagree with the “unique marketing opportunity” as that is only part of the equasion. As someone who spends quite a bit of time studying “virtual worlds” I think the bigger bets are on collaboration, eroding work place silos, training, fast prototyping and business interactions. Bank on it- other countries are.
To put it bluntly…in 2008 they are already building Teddy Bears that can interface with Twitter. The day will come (probably with the teraflop) when Virtual Worlds or 3D browsing simply dust away the web as you know it. Virtual worlds should be a part of your WORKSPACE portfolio- then worry about marketing.
A Conversation From the Future?
What was HTTP dad? Is it it an illness?
It was before your time son.
Is this about the people who thought you were a bit daft for talking about Virtual Worlds in 2006?
You got it son. Might have been the same ones that called me a retard back in 1996 when I tried to explain to them how important Internet marketing and presence would be.
Sure Dad. Can we get back and go digital fishing on our pixelated yacht?
You got it son. I love this Minority Report Interface…
According to an e-mail from the Association of Virtual Worlds they have nearly completed construction on their own virtual headquarters and, surprise, this HQ is not in Second Life although many of the members have groups or sub-HQs in the Second Life metaverse. I talked about them earlier this year and I am getting more involved- more on that to come.
Dave Elchoness, Executive Director, has been working closely over the past few months with Rahul Dutta, CEO of Trimensions Metaverse Development, the company designing the new environment, and Darius Lahoutifard, CEO of ALTADYN, the company behind 3DXplorer, browser based platform on which the headquarters is built.
The progress report is that the project is in its final phases the virtual headquarters just about ready for the 2,000 plus members. Exciting indeed…
Mappa Novus reports that average land prices have declined by 30% over the past 30 days, from 16.3 L$/m2 to 12.5 L$/m2 .
“Similar drops have been noticed in the past and have represented a good potential buying opportunity with periodic upswings allowing a sell off for profit. the amount of this decline is more significant than past trends however, which may represent a tighter economy.”
I have not experienced a drop off in spending based on analysis from our MicroPepper product (an e-commerce system designed to vend), people still seem to be spending on a wide variety of niche products- hopefully I can put out some of our own analytics soon. In addition I have not noted any land bot activity which is unusual, but I have not tested enough to validate this.
It is noteworthy that void sims, also called open spaces, are now prime and ready on the market starting at $250.00 up front to $75 a month.
An existing region can also be converted into four Openspaces, although you cannot convert your last remaining region; you must own a private region to be able to own an Openspace. They are provided for light use only, not for building, living in, renting as homes or use for events. As a stretch of open water for boating or a scenic wooded area work well, and places like Caledon, have supplemented their builds with void simsm.
I have been in Second Life for a long time now, at least in avatar years. I have been fortunate to find many, many bright people and despite its problems that is the single most important reason I have stayed and still do despite a growing wave of virtual worlds that will soon hit the Net. Whether or not Bleys Chevalier and I release MicroPepper and RegionTracker is still under consideration given stability issues.
It is these same issues that prompt this blog. MicroPepper and Region Tracker are designed to let sellers (or universities) scale their micro-vending operations, reporting, and affiliate force with a low-cost flat rate fee- in our opinion it is the best, but that is our opinion. Right now if a delivery fails on initial delivery, we make at least ten more re-attempts to deliver. Starting to get the drift of the pain digital crafters are feeling? You must be able to allow content creators the ability to SCALE and that means reducing customer service overhead.
(Note: If you want to beta test MicroPepper or Region Tracker contact Bleys Chevalier or Corwin Chevalier in-world or message me at Twitter . Currently with only a handful of beta testers the system processes about 500,000 Lindens per month and you can also track your SLEX sales, visitors, frame rates, etc, etc.)
My Timeless Mentor
At any rate one person stands out who has been a great mentor, Timeless Prototype often known for his Multi Gadget, Mookah (Sheesha, Hookah), Radio Controlled Planes, Walk and Talk and a certain couch that I spent hours writing copy for *cough*. I doubt there are few people in Second Life who do not possess a Multi Gadget. I give them out as welcome gifts. There are many knock-offs, but the Multi Gadget does it all. (O.K. It cannot protect you from Prokofy Neva, who is my second favorite person in Second Life.)
Tracking Timeless
As the lore goes, I tracked him down to his underground club, Timeless Underground, where we discussed ancient philosophy over a game of chess, but this is Second Life and nothing is out of the question- like playing chess in a club that looks like an Elder God from the Cthulu mythos was sawed into pieces and scattered about while people are experimenting with trance dance moves from the Matrix.
We, even today, continue our philosophical discussions and he was integral if not essential in collaborating with me on the Primula Rasa (here for more photos), and the Monolith 8 campaigns, and I was happy to donate island use for the 4th Annual Satellite Exhibition (4ASE) (Click to See Video). You should also catch his famous London Eye and he is also known for helping out with Relay For Life. Warning- his idea of fun is hanging out in sand boxes while dodging LOLCube attacks…in his own words:
I “grew up” in the sandboxes, and it’s always good to remember where you come from in life, even in Second Life, and show your respects. - Timeless Prototype
Time Stands Still?
At any rate Second Life has had its share of issues- as any platform does, but as of late developers are getting waspish. While I parlay with Time on a daily basis I was concerned when I saw this on a scripting list:
”…object to object e-mails failing, replying to offline IMs via e-mail
failing, and I’m srsly DONE asking
daily issues
enough!
I’ve taken the Multi Gadget vendor offline, tiered down, waiting for
island parcel rental to expire. I will treat SL as a beta game and/or
chat room until general stability returns.”
Seemed like a good time to get a few answers straight from Time.
Interview with Timeless Prototype (a.k.a. Time)
Wayne) OK Time, for the uninitiated how long have you been in Second Life?
Time) Since 2004.
Wayne) That is a long time as avatars go. So I take it you do you enjoy the platform?
Time) Yes, it appeals to me on artistic, technical and social levels. No other virtual world comes close to this.
Wayne) I can identify with that. So why pull your vendors offline as I noted in a scripters list ?
Time) If people buy stuff that won’t deliver and I can’t reply via offline IMs because I’m not always at my computer, then I’m going to get unhappy customers…customer satisfaction is incredibly important.
Wayne) What are the top three upsides to Second Life?
Time) Top three positives: Creativity outlet, shared experiences with friends and micropayment capital of the Internet.
Wayne) How about the top three negatives?
Time) Top three negatives: insufficient business and collaboration tools, intermittent stability and no shiny alpha and shadow casting (immersion is very important, anything that breaks the immersion is a big failure IMHO)
Wayne) As a long-standing and well known veteran where do you think Linden Labs should marshall their resources?
Time) Linden Labs should focus on stability, even if that is to be interpretted as adding new features such as Kelly Linden’s work to make it possible to send HTTP requests to scripts in world so that we won’t need to rely on e-mail protocols for sending data into SL. Hopefully this could also be used for messaging between scripts in world too, being careful about security implications of course.
There is currently also a glitch with rendering updated objects such that the most recent change to the objects does not get applied visually until it is either selected or further updated. It impacts the immersion factor at the end of the day, you bring your mind out of the world by one level to recognize that it’s a glitch.
Wayne) When can we expect your vendors to go back online?
Time) There is currently no planned date for bringing them back online. I guess I need my faith to be restored in the Second Life platform before I commit more time to it, at least from a serious content creation perspective.
Wayne) Any parting words of advice?
Time) Hope can be a very powerful driver. If we lose hope, we’ve lost everything.
That’s all folks…let’s hope Linden Lab get things sorted out. Next topic- Security in Second Life…oxymoron or…
This Reuter’s interview holds some major clues. Adam Pasick interviews Mitch Kapor at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. If you are old enough to remember the days of Lotus 1-2-3 then you might recall Kapor as the founder of Lotus Development Corp.
If you are a privacy and security buff you might recognize him as a co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).
A Few Highlights as fast as I could transcribe them as I was multi-tasking…
Mitch Capor admits to drinking a bit of kool-aid, per his self, talks about:
- New 3D camera project that can store massive amounts of information is on the horizon- this will change Second Life.
- Second Life is diverse, profitable (no revenue disclosure), they learned a lot of lessons, BUT their current model will have to change. (no surprise)
- Second Life is all about:
3D-Editing and…
Minority Report Style Reports (WTF?)
One important observation was that the PC market itself took fifteen years to “mature” and 3D worlds, by themselves, are as complex, if not more so.
Creation of Business Opportunities
Another interesting mention.
Major Themes included:
- Year of Restrictions including VAT, gambling bans and
- Linden Labs must scale
- Two big obstacles- Software limitations and orientation
Caught off Guard
- Second Life was caught off guard a bit by big media explosion and in some ways this new virtual world glimpse frustrated many people. (Second Life hype cycle is really a function of marketing and a natural oscillation.)
Some words from Phillip
Phillip goes on to say as Second Life matures the content gets better. I agree. This was the same for affiliate marketing industry. In my own experience you had a huge influx of new people drawn to an industry because the barrier to entry was low. How things have changed.
For a company that embraced a user-generated, user created- your world- your imagination entreprenurial spirit Linden Labs simply doesn’t seem to understand how to generate revenue from this type of content, or, to teach or model ways to empower publishers to do it.
Pick a side…as for the recent trademark police…I will get to that soon enough. I have seen ups and downs in Second Life and as an avatar who has contributed to the economy in a significant way I can tell you that selling objects intra-world is a royal pain. Fun- yes. Painful- more so.
In a previous entry I checked out Scribd. Scribd is a nifty service that lets you use “iPaper” to distribute your documents. It supports: Adobe PDF (.pdf), Adobe PostScript (.ps), Microsoft Word (.doc), Microsoft PowerPoint (.ppt, .pps) ,Microsoft Excel (.xls), OpenOffice Text Document (.odt, .sxw) ,OpenOffice Presentation Document (.odp, .sxi), OpenOffice Spreadsheet (.ods, .sxc), All OpenDocument formats, StarOffice Documents, Plain text (.txt), Rich text format (.rtf) and I probably missed some.
So far I like the service, it is more robust than SlideShare which is more focused on the diabolical Power Point. You can use the shockwave ”iPaper” above or read this document, SL Business, December issue on Scribd: SL Business Magazine 05DEC. Thumbs up!
Bingr.com has released what appears to be a time sensitive split testing service for bloggers…For 30 days - you get detailed reports about who’s clicking your links. (After 30 days, your links will continue to redirect, but will not be tracked.)
This is is how it works and it is pretty easy to do.
Take this URL for the SLExchange (New Window) where you can get a Linden-based commission for making a referral, if a person purchases. Common practice. Yeah- affiliate marketing in Second Life. Novel huh?
With the Bingr service you give the URL a simple name. If you are going to do multiple tests beyond A/B like multi-variate, etc. You might want to use a simple convention slex1, slex2, slex3, slex4. It doesn’t matter because the service is still going to return a random string.
I apologize for the late April Fool’s Joke, but I prefer being out of sync, …(Scott Jangro has a funny video on April Fool jokes and includes some of my own history around jokes). You see why I had to publish something after the day of joking around. I also liked Jen Goode’s Penguin page. However Sam Harrelson sort of blew up every possible neuron I had left for lack of a better word. Hat tip to all you pranksters and story tellers. I laugh and I cry.
So on with my story on collissions and the value of generalization in a world of specialists and why being a specialist isn’t always great…I am thinking out loud because I can. (My Isaac Asimov beard is almost ready for video.)
Attention Serves Many Masters
My recent posts on Twitter and collisions received some play as I found it Stumbled, on many social networking pages and in some RSS feeds. Neat. It also got my attention as I ran through some stats and saw an alarming change in SERPs for my own blog (e.g. Right here.). I admit that I do not pay much attention to SEO because resources are better spent elsewhere and this blog often serves as my own sounding board, or “thinking out loud” place for others I know. I run small and large experiments, try creative approaches, and sometimes just keep an eye out for who (or what) shows up. Primarily I like to explore and share observations or give an opinion. I am not a lawyer.
I do not mean one should disregard SEO best practice- Don’t Be Evil is nice but perhaps too vague or too simple for the here and now. I think best practice might be to try to add to the value of the Internet through participation, discussion, and perhaps some basic common sense.
As a marketer if your site does not follow some basic architecture rules for Search Engines you will miss out on some of the “influentials” (potential collisions) that can happen.
If you rely on “search” as your primary attention tool you are probably missing out on a number of emerging technologies that connect people to people and therefore people to information. There are lots of sources of free information, there are plenty of people, but putting it together takes knowledge, experience and time and perhaps even a bit of luck. (Makes a side note to Ev- what might have caught your attention was not Unicode but perhaps the nature of chance e.g. gambling on Twitter or it could have been pure chance, on a quantum level just about anything “could” be responsible.)
Quick Review
I allready knew that my blog was dated and I have started the processes for cleaning up and proofing it for problems. In short a “force unknown” injected some pretty nasty links into a YouTube video post about self learning and another repeat injection another entry. It was injected in such a way as to be cloaked and the content I found extremely “disturbing”. Having researched, as a trade, some of the shadier sides of the Internet economy it really has to be nasty to make me flinch. This was pretty rude.
I am still tracking down how it happened, but it did get my attention as I realize how difficult it is to make everything secure in a period of hyper-change. The charge of being the steward of one’s own blog is a tough task today. However I realize that exploration means a trade-off in security. I value exploration and the liberty to do so and believe it worth the risk. Life is all about taking risks and the outcomes from those risks determine the future. I am a skeptical optomist.
I am not the only one battling it with issues of security, stewardship and liberty as I note various search engines and large media sites have either struggled, are struggling or trying to find their own way in a very chaotic world or at least one that seems chaotic. Reality is broken to the point of being “fake”. Actually I would argue “reality is not even real”, but that is beyond the scope of this post and my understanding. Remember I am merely thinking out loud.
Quick thoughts for my friends to ponder:
- Assume new rules are in play and have been in play for some time.
- Computers are truly acting and growing exponentially in ability.
- We need to start assuming personal responsability for our actions.
- This will take some time as no one wants to be ultimately responsible.
- Technology is pacing faster than our legal system and even our human brains can handle.
- A good place to start practicing stewardship is at your home- and online your home is everywhere.
- Wayne should heed the very advice he gives, but he sometimes gets lost in exploration. (Smack- because he is only human.)
- It is ok to make mistakes and learn, but try not to keep making a mistake over and over.
The Outcome and Dust
Over the next weeks you should expect some dust here as I clean-up some things, update Word Press and the various plug-ins I have tested, and continue working on streamlining my own “work processes” for better vigilance, productivity and fun. I add fun because I know I will be a better steward if I really love what I do and I really enjoy games. Make no mistake, as much as I like Word Press, a quick search on any specialist’s sites about various security vulnerabilities and it gives you an idea of how fragile the concept of security can be.
Think about this- There is much talk in game circles about “gold farming” and World of Warcraft. What does it mean when people start outsourcing their fun?
Spammers Kindle Interests
One cannot spend all the time dwelling on the negative- much of the media will happily do this for you. This is a part of the learning process and step one is a reality check. No amount of money, formal education or mentorship can replace experience. I could spend all day, and probably many nights, talking about the nature of reality, but I won’t bore you with mental gymnastics or semantics. I will add that I firmly believe in getting one’s hands dirty. It is important not to accept everything at face value. It is important to remain as explorers and to try to understand that the very construct we operate in shapes what we do or do not do. Even technology can obscure what we do, how we think, and our intent. We are not even aware of this layer.
So a nasty spam injection on an entry about informal learning forced me to open my eyes up further to how Search Engineers might have to cope with this stuff from a pragmatic standpoint, from an engineering standpoint and from an internal and external competition standpoint. I can cite cases like WorldCup Blogspit technique, Spazbox or the Kmeth worm as prime examples of past research I have worked on and just how difficult this can be to sort out. Search Quality Assurance guards another very important ecosystem- SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages). It makes me wonder if the philosophy of “Right Livelihood” can, from a pragmatic view, be maintained and who gets to set the rules?
Quality Really is Relative
I admit years of going after spyware pushers and scummy adware makers may have left me blinded from a more “holistic view”. I go on record that I dislike spam. However, I must see spam for what it is- a key parasite that sends signals about our society and our systems.
“Although parasites are often omitted in depictions of food webs, they usually occupy the top position. Parasites can function like keystone species, reducing the dominance of superior competitors and allowing competing species to co-exist.”
To put it bluntly, as much as I hate it- spam, in certain periods, probably serves a more important function than a WII Mote.
Motivations Behind Spam and Stewardship
I would guess that quick economic gain is the primary motivating force behind a spammer’s actions, however this doesn’t mean economic gain is intrinsically “evil”, it could mean that short-term thinking is not healthy for our species as a whole. This has been rehashed over and over recently in the hot debate around affiliates (note Google’s recent moves with Performics and DoubleClick). From experience I know that affiliates are often “the patsy” for spam, lacking resources they will try and test many systems to survive. However, not all affiliates are spammers, nor are all spammers affiliates. Bad apples do exist, but to lump everyone together is a dangerous road to walk down.
It is important to remember gain can be money, influence, social capital, etc. Where and how it is converted is important. “Right Livelihood” is a philosophical concept you can look up in a basic philosophy primer or probably one of those “guides for idiots”. As I examine my own life and experiences I have come to the conclusion that at the end of the day, what I want to strive for is good stewardship. My father taught me this action by example. He maintained very complex communication equipment over a large region, yet he would never hesitate to do the most basic tasks he would ask of other technicians. When leaving a tower site he always took the time to use a broom to clean the site.
It is odd how small actions I see over and over shape my vision and even other’s perception. I am sure in ways I do not know and cannot know. (e.g. Johari Window Communications Theory)
Power of Collisions…
In my interim posts about “collisions”, and a good and constant reason to be a social collider I happened upon a real-life metaphor on how powerful colliders are being built. I found this via Phillip Lessin’s bookmark on his FriendFeed. (Note my FriendFeed and disclosure of using an Amazon “affiliate link” as a crude form of “attention measurement”. This is like caveman era measurement.)
The world’s physicists have spent 14 years and $8 billion building the Large Hadron Collider, in which the colliding protons will recreate energies and conditions last seen a trillionth of a second after the Big Bang. Researchers will sift the debris from these primordial recreations for clues to the nature of mass and new forces and symmetries of nature.
Wow. That is some heavy stuff, yet companies are spending much more on mobile marketing. That is a constant you can bank on for a little while anyway.
Yet, and I cite the New York Times again:
“The possibility that a black hole eats up the Earth is too serious a threat to leave it as a matter of argument among crackpots,” said Michelangelo Mangano, a CERN theorist who said he was part of the group. The others prefer to remain anonymous, Mr. Mangano said, for various reasons. Their report was due in January.”
Double Wow. This is the New York Times and while we are looking at weird mobile advertising figures while some physicists are potentially creating collisions that could make the earth a black hole, in theory. What next? The cure for cancer? Even if we had such a cure I think it would be important for many people to talk about it first because we probably couldn’t handle it. I would suggest printing it on the back of baseball cards in some sort of statistical code so people could find it later. Everything takes time and time is a finite resource for people. Come to think about it, baseball might not be valuable so I might use rocks or stone.
The Meme Code- Spam or Brilliance?
A game from the creator of FriendFeed…
I think it is quite interesting, yet I worry about diversity. Note how the web pages are encoded to “die”.
The meme code generates a page from a visitor who arrives from Google, the page will create a new modified and randomized version of itself via a database back-end, and creates a link to it in a visible place. The new page will continue do the same as the old page. After some time a page is taken offline or “dies” although how it dies is not made clear.
Over time several pages would be able to specialize on search niches in the Web – word combonations people are looking for that are not yet covered online are created. This makes “evolutionary pages” turn up in the top results which people will actually click on. A search phrase entered by a search engine visitor is just like food in our nature’s ecosystem. Primarily our ecosystem is full of corn- I might add as an aside. The dynamic process of the meme game means there will be specialized or niche pages to catch this “food”.
A page’s “meme code” will lead it to become a successful species with a lot of offspring, or if not popular it will die and be forgotten…this is not new as Lessig’s game has been around for sometime….even affiliates have been doing it with web services and/or datafeeds too only I doubt they encoded a “termination gene” into the pages. Limited resources and financial incentives would probably force smaller publishers to ensure all pages live and to not practice disclosure because it selects against their visability.
See Kids Forbidden to Use Google this is good food for thought. The comments are even more illuminating. As I collide along I start to make some neat connections and new ways of seeing and experiencing the world. I share them because I am able to do so. I think therefore I am.
How Can You Collide with People and Have Fun? Here is a simple and short list. Five simple concepts or exercises.
Break your pattern: This is much harder than it seems because patterns are so ingrained.
Talk with others outside of your core discipline from time to time. Exchange information. Be tolerant.
Spend some time in the humanities, music, or philosophy to find common ground or evaluate new and old views.
Understand that collissions can be bumpy, but you will grow your business and you will grow. That is OK.
Help someone out. I don’t want get into the philosphical arguments about the nature of altruism (selfish or not)- just help someone or take the time to thank them. It simply makes the experience here more fun.
Example Exercise. Think about Music and why you listen to what you do? How does it make you feel? Today my son is using the Wii to play songs on Guitar Hero. The songs or genres he finds “main stream” did not even exist when I was his age, and when I was a foolish teenager they were considered “taboo”. I am an adult, I am still foolish yet wise enough to know I am foolish, but at any age I can appreciate music.
Here is some music via a video (Semi-Random- I selected it from someone’s Last.fm feed) and it is not a band I follow: Faith & the Muse - Burning season. Do you like it or not? What do the images conjure in your mind? Who listens to this? What neurotransmitters change in the brain when you watch or listen to music? I don’t know- that is the downside of being a generalist in a specialized world. I am asking the same questions because I think they are good questions to ask and by building bridges I can find some experts.
So excuse me while I randomly select someone from Twitter or maybe somewhere else for my next experiment. I plan to use a new O/S, and a couple of dice rolls, and the room temperature to help with the randomness- there are some things in life I don’t want to outsource e.g. being random.
Posted in 3D Social Networks, Avatar Photos, E-Commerce, Gaming, Guides, Second Life, Video, Virtual Markets, Virtual Reality, Virtual Worlds by wayne.porter on July 19th, 2008 
The Unofficial Second Life Linden Dollars Guide: Second Life Linden Dollars Guide - Killer Guides
