Donations

This is a kind of continuation post from my last blog post entitled The Greenies Problem. This entry is going to be about Donations.

If you ask me, it is entirely reasonable for any place in Second Life that offers an event to the public to have a donation / tip jar area for offering events or resources. When we look at something like the Greenies, they would likely make a lot more money from donations than charging an admission fee.

One example of an area in Second Life that offers free entertainment but gets donations is the Music scene. Every musician makes a good sum of money for doing the music and also the venues make money from it as well. The venues could easily say “You can’t get in without paying L$1000″ and in some cases they do when it is a big musician like Louis Volare.

Another place in Second Life that offers a service to residents is the Destination Station. Itazura recently added a tipjar for people to donate to. Again entirely acceptable because they make no money for promoting these places free of charge and is a hell of a lot better than any standard telehub.

Soon enough SLPN will be getting a donation jar as well and we have some cool stuff coming down the pipeline.

Harper Berseford made an interesting comment on my last blog post on the Greenies that I completely understand the point of view of.

“They have to insure the survival of their business so they can provide MORE content and pay the electric bill to keep the server running.”

Again, my argument has always been, If they people like it, they will be more than happy to donate. If I ever see a donation jar at a sim that is fun, helpful, informative, entertaining etc. then people will donate. Combine that with Merchandise (Greenies sells merchandise already!) then THEY will surely make money.

Biography

Currently…
I am Stuart Warf. An avatar who was born on the 2nd of May 2006 in Second Life. My avatar is an evil timelord who’s TARDIS was left stranded in this world remaining in the current timeline until I can escape this virtual world (In case you don’t know, Heres a Doctor Who Wikipedia Page). My hobbies include Physical Prim tricks, building and podcasting. I currently live at Podcast Island where the SLPN Studios lie.

A Brief History of Stuart Warf
I originally joined Second Life in 2006 when alot of the podcasting community discovered Second Life and thought that it had amazing potential, which they were correct but failed to see it and left when the eighties has-been left. During 2006 I, along with Gomem Desoto, formed a group called The Podmafia (the actual group name is The Pod Mafia), which later in August - September had 5 episodes of a podcast called The Podmafia Podcast, which originally was aimed at going around places in Second Life and teaching the masses about podcasting.

Then came 2007. In the early beginning I was partnered but that soon ended. So became my life of living. For a month I resided in SoHo, but for some reason I just didn’t like renting there. So I left but still hung out to see the crazy and wacky stuff going on there. It was around this time when I temporarily brought back The Podmafia Podcast for 3 episodes. Then came Life, Living in Nowhereville. From around March until August I rented land under Madison Carnot while hosting the Take it or Leave it at Nowhereville. This however stopped for me when Take it or Leave it ended. But that was short lived when Crap Mariner injected new life into Nowhereville shortly after the Second Life Woodstock event that took place in the Five Islands. During August Podmafia Podcast came back after troubled times and stayed strong with Yxes Delacroix as host. I re-rented at Nowhereville under Crap Mariner and continued to live there.

So in comes 2008, When I launched SLPN, a network dedicated to podcasts for the metaverse. During the year I continued to work on SLPN by bringing in new shows and new challenges such as live podcasting in Second Life. Up until July 2008 I had continued to live at Nowhereville. However after some thinking and a polite request I decided to leave Nowhereville and move to Podcast Island…

That’s the story so far…

Last Updated on the 18th of July 2008

Sport Relief in SL

Every two years, the UK holds an event called Sport Relief. This is a telethon charity aimed at bringing an end to poverty. Now it seems like it has entered Second Life. One thing that I enjoyed about the sims were that you could camp on some treadmills and for every 10 minutes L$100 would be donated to charity. This is far better than the standard L$1 every 60 minute rate that you get in boring lag-filled places. I’m not sure how long these sims will exist but if you go in to your world map and search WeAreHere (all one word) you will make it to one of the four sims.

Extending Podmafia…

Each week I get together with my friends Gomem Desoto and Yxes Delacroix and we just spend about 1 hour talking about the crazy virtual world that we all live in, Second Life.

However…I’m starting to want to give the Podmafia fans more than just 1 show a week. In December we did a Live talkshoe episode of The Podmafia Podcast. I would like to do more live episodes and so I am thinking of bringing a fortnightly podcast called Podmafia Live! which wouldn’t necessarily include Gomem and Yxes on each show (since they aren’t alway’s available) but feature people who listen to the show.

Is this a good idea? bad idea?

Also I am working on another video podcast…which would be monthly called PodmafiaTV which would just be a little video highlight reel where all the places that we have mentioned…or some of them just get shown around visually.

Again… Is this a good idea or a bad idea?

… I am now expecting Sougent to write an essay on this LOL.

The Flashback VIP Club

As we all know, in the search area there is a “Popular Places” tab. Now most of these “popular” places are either gambling / money / sex related. Cue the teleport to the Flashback VIP Club where you can get L$6 for 60 minutes worth of camping!

OK so it’s not that great and I even donated cash to these people and didnt get a word of thanks for my L$10 worth of generosity.

Scapoli Mall

After reading about a Mall in Scopia on Dedric Mauriac’s blog, i decided to check out this place for myself. Heres a video of what i saw.

The Problem with places like these in Second Life is that they sell on freebies that creators in Second Life offer for a profit and do not pass any cash to the creators. This in a sense then is theft which sucks. I have a feeling this place may get shut down soon though because they offer Zyngo (a SLingo rip off) and that falls under the Gambling ban since they are charging people to pay into a game and then offer a cash prize for a winner.

Christmas sim

Earlier this week I had an IM from Yxes to visit some sim called Christmas. Me being who I am gladly accepted to travel to this sim. Yxes told me that this sim was sculpted to be like real North Pole where Santa lives!

oooo, Gingerbread buildings, you don’t mind if I take a bite out of this do you?

That crane puts the presents in to the sleigh…However with a little bit of hacking around i’m sure I can get it to give me the presents instead!

Age Verification will still not work!

This is another rant but also i don’t think that the new voluntary Age Verification may work in preventing minors from accessing the adult content of Second Life.

Lets come up with a theory that due to the large size of Second Life is a plausible idea. Lets say there are two sisters/brothers who are in Second Life and one of them is overage (ie. 18-21) but her sister is underage and is roughly 14-16. Now the older sister created her sisters account but as an alt but the older sister could indeed own either an escort club or a strip club to attempt to make some money in real life and the younger sister wants a piece of the action or help her sister out in her venture.

When this verification comes into play the younger sister will be cut off from this community because obviously the older sister will have verified the account. What will it look like the older sisters dancers at the club now that the younger sister has not verified the account. It will look very suspicious indeed , So the older sister has two choices. Class the strip club as mature and risk getting flagged by the Lindens…OR verify her younger sisters account and continue what the younger sister was doing.

Am I crazy for thinking this idea up? perhaps i am a little but then again I do know of places with situations like this. So when this method of verification comes into play i will be interested in seeing what happens.

Personally, even though i know its going to look odd, but I am not going to be verifying my account. I have no need in my Second Life to look at sex clubs within Second Life because the industry doesn’t interest me one bit. I do not see the point of seeing a texture based on these polygons dancing around on a poseball. It just seems like a waste of time to me so I will not verify.

Sure there may be a trust issue with me then but in my opinion but I don’t think that just seeing Mature content will affect me at all.

Forbes Guy…

Everyone is talking about this idiot at Forbes who seems to be moaning about the “economic crisis” in Second Life. So as i write this i am going to be watching this video and telling you my thoughts on this.

After Post Note - WHY is there so many advertisements just to watch one freaking 300 second video

Note 1 - Gambling was NOT shut down months ago, only the advertising of it

Note 2 - It is not one of the only ways to earn an income in Second Life, theres clothing, building, entertainment such as Live Music, DJing, sadly the Sex industry which may become a target next as everyone is rumouring. Theres owning land and profiting from that along with rentals. Theres all sorts of other methods for earning an income in Second Life.

Note 3 - Why is “most of things going into sex”. BECAUSE THE MEDIA HYPED IT TO BE A SEX CRAZED WORLD!!!!

Note 4 - You may have spent a lot of time in the world but WHERE DID YOU SPEND TIME (sorry the rant mode is ON)

Note 5 - I think the corporate businesses are already losers because they ultimately have made their purpose boring and dead. Sure the openings are filled but they offer absolutely nothing after it. Stuff like Woodstock which was a homegrown effort gained popularity for what it was and has shown that sex and gambling is everything when it is not. People tipped the artists like crazy and because i was once married to someone in a sex club i can tell you the artists EARNED up to 10 times more in one fucking hour than those sex club workers. L$1000 for an hour night in some cases compared to L$10,000 for an hour shows the POWER of other places.

Note 6 - Of course its stupid to have a washing machine in Second Life. You don’t need to wash your clothes in Second Life and also it does nothing. Washing machines that eat an avatar up and spins them round for 10 seconds is far more intresting than that

Note 7 - World of Warcraft firstly is a waste of time. I spent about 10 hours and was more bored of the newbies going around saying stuff like “TRAD WTIH M3 B4 I KIL YOU” on a server which people don’t fight each other…only the monsters/creatures. Also do you hear live music in WoW? Do you actually have fun? Has anyone died playing Second Life on a 57 hour spree? No is the answer!

Note 8 - How is Mario Kart and Second Life related? Pre - Made cars which you can change a color to blue, red, white etc. ?

For a Video to this detailed and obviously smarter guy than I am click this link

That felt good to rant, I don’t do that often

Some Housekeeping to do…

Well lets see what have i been doing this week. Well you could say that i have not done too much this week or have done a lot depending on your definition. So i want to take this time to talk about some stuff that is coming up and what’s been happening.

Take it or Leave it
Just in case you haven’t read the blog “New World Notes” i was recently mentioned in the blog and was very pleased at what was said. I am still sort of modest about my hosting skills but people keep saying that i’m great so im inclined to believe them . Also i am pleased to announce that I will be hosting Take it or Leave it on Tuesdays at Nowhereville at an earlier time of 1PM SLT. This event is really for the Europeans because they never get a L$2,500 game on at that time which is kind of upsetting so I offered to do it. Also I will be hosting at the Audiocourses “ACHUB Spring Festival” on Sunday at 1PM SLT. That will also be L$2,500 top prize so fans of my work have a two for one deal as I will be heading over to Nowhereville pretty much straight after the event.

New World Notes Entry
ACHUB Wiki

New Blog Theme
I decided that Kubrick was looking a little old for me now and so i switched to another theme and I am currently in the midst of redesigning a lot of the work to make it more eye-appealing including easier ways to subscribe to the blog.

RL : Eazy Computer Help
Finally, I have teamed up with Louis Ringgold in a blog called Eazy Computer Help. Sure this isn’t Second Life at all but i promised him that I would plug it at places so I thought that I would start here. It is really good if you want some tips although its more aimed at computing novices

Eazy Computer Help

I am going to the Bucket event tonight as a …. You will have to come and find out and I hope to see you there, Bye!