gdp's Comments

Hypergrid Business : Five ways make money with a viewer

Mon, 26 Sep 2011 14:51:57 +0000

hi Ener Actually, Astra viewer already has direct account creation which is as simple as adding any name not currently used on the grid and add new password for it. And it logs you in with the new name and thereafter its all yours. This only works on Aurora grids which are set to allow it though. Not a lot of people know that *grins* Gaga

Hypergrid Business : Five ways make money with a viewer

Mon, 26 Sep 2011 04:37:53 +0000

I agree with one thing for sure. Open Sim urgently needs it's own viewer and perhaps one can be set for several modes even. Mode 1 to access Open Sim worlds with a greater array of features and mode 2 to access Second Life and it's seriously limited feature set. There is now another sister project to Aurora sim apart from the Imprudence/Kokua one. The new project is based on Astra viewer and the developers are working to give better support to Open Sim in general and Aurora sim in particular while still being compatible with Second Life content. I had been pushing the Imprudence devs for a long time to include an improved grid list feature but nothing came of it although it was acknowledged. I wrote an article about all this on my blog back in April here... http://metaverse-traveller.blogspot.com/2011/04/o... However, I had better luck with the Astra devs because I became more directly involved and, already, Revolution Smythe did some preliminary work on the grid list function in preparation. I had asked Rev to improve the listing window to include options for owners to add their own grids so users can search for grids that better meet their needs. This, I hope, will be a feature of the new Astra viewer where you can find a grid and add your login info to favourites before you even login to a grid. I think it could be developed much further too to actually have search focus on a wide range of individual sims as well as grids so one can find places to visit and content to buy right there in the viewer splash pages when you open it rather than wait to login to open search which is limited to a single service associated with the grid you enter. It just needs the viewer developers to be willing to maintain a back end database server to support the viewer. The viewer developers could stand to actually make money from this kind of service in order to meet costs too while the viewer remains free to download. Adding your grid or sim should be free but only a simple description at most and the login address of course. But the developers could charge a fee to owners who want to add a picture and a more detailed description as well as key words to aid search results. Perhaps there could even be bidding for placement results and this would increase revenue to fund more development. Anyway, the current version of Astra is for development and testing so is not suitable for public use. A lot of work is going on however but I will cover it soon on my blog once I get more information and a public release becomes available. I should say though that this is my personal vision of what a viewer should be able to do to support the open Metaverse better. Maria gives some good ideas above that could also find a solution in the viewer. We just have to break out of the limited Second Life framework and get a bit more cutting edge. Gaga

Hypergrid Business : A modest proposal for hypergrid security

Wed, 14 Sep 2011 02:59:31 +0000

@Miguel. In an ideal world everyone is giving and everyone is receiving but Open Sim is not an ideal world. If HG is left with no content protection then there will never be any of the high quality content that you find in Second Life and until there is the traffic will not grow. Second Life was built on user participation which means people have been able to build, create content and make money from their efforts. Like it or not, Open Sim has to follow the same economic model as SL while advancing in new ways. Second Life is over priced, out of date and Linden Labs is out of touch with their user base but there is nothing wrong with the basic model. It has been proven to work but take the security out of it and it would quickly fall apart the same as the walled garden grids built on Open Sim would. The security of SL and closed commercial OS grids is based on the crude security of an iron curtain. Open Sim and Hypergrid has to rise to the challenge of openness with protection if the open Metaverse is to grow.

Hypergrid Business : A modest proposal for hypergrid security

Mon, 12 Sep 2011 16:18:20 +0000

Great article Maria and full of good sense. It is hard to say what the future holds for Open Sim but if HG is to work for the good of the open Metaverse and progress then, I agree, security solutions need to be built into the core. I think these blog articles have some effect on the thinking of developers so they are important in that they give insight into what people want and hope for. Revolution Smythe, lead developer of the Aurora team, has said a lot about Open Sim security (or lack of it) and it is given utmost priority in the work they are doing. IWC (Inter Worlds Connectivity) works similar to HG with added layers of security but, even so, as you pointed out, there can never be a perfect solution unless there is a fundamental shift towards advanced technologies like Mesh Networks which I touched on in an article on my blog a while back. None the less, an extra permission for HG dose seem to me to be a good short term solution. Short term solutions, though, usually leave problems behind when something new and better needs to be implemented - like a whole lot of content tied into the outdated permission if it all changes. The one thing I hear a lot in Second Life is "I can't go try Open Sim because all my stuff is in Second Life and would cost too much to replace if I could even find any of it for sale." I can't ever see a day when Linden Labs changes that and allows content to travel to outside grids but, in any event, I think extra permissions in Open Sim would make it impossible anyway. Whatever happens though, I think the last thing anyone wants is to have ill-thoughtout short term solutions to long term problems. BTW, what's good news for some with Kitely pushing billing back to November is bad news for "Nymphets" like me that care not to use real names or Facebook. Still, my promised KC must be starting to add up which makes it not so bad I suppose. Gaga P.S. I know what Nymphet means but I use it in the sense of @Nymwars (no saucy comments please).

Hypergrid Business : OpenSim needs a installer bundle

Wed, 31 Aug 2011 09:55:41 +0000

The part that caught my interest was "Distributed inventories" and I wrote about this recently on my own blog here... http://metaverse-traveller.blogspot.com/2011/07/a... I had a long talk with Revolution Smythe, lead dev of Aurora Sim, and he told me that, ideally, Mesh Networks would offer the best chance of content security across the Hypergrid Network where nothing actually leaves the grid in which it is sold or given away. Mesh Networks acts as a relay - or rather, every grid acts as a relay for distributing data. All grids keep their content regardless and only distribute data about it through the network so no matter where you travel your inventory is drawing on data in the network rather than directly from your home grid. What you create is always stored on your home grid database and you can sell access to the data distributed in the network rather than selling copies that are transferred to some other database. In theory this makes it impossible for content thieves to steal the original items.

Hypergrid Business : Panel: Experts pick Second Life for community, stability

Tue, 30 Aug 2011 11:41:17 +0000

@Lawrence Just a case in point, Tateru Nino has published an article that, to my mind, sums up the current state of Second Life, it's shoddy customer service and the huge problem of lag... http://dwellonit.taterunino.net/2011/08/29/so-goe... I agree with you that Second Life has a diverse culture and large economy but, seriously, most of the work creating that was done by residents while Linden Labs fumbled along from one bad mistake to another. Customer service use to be far better when Lindens had their feet inworld and listened to the residents. In recent years they have simply lost any real connection with the people that pay the bills and Ron Hubble said it all when he said "Second Life is a success but he doesn't know why" What he should have said is Second Life is in decline and we need to find out the reasons why and address them urgently. But, of course, you can't expect them to admit what the metrics are saying. Gaga

Hypergrid Business : Panel: Experts pick Second Life for community, stability

Tue, 30 Aug 2011 00:20:32 +0000

@Lawrence. I have a Q4, 4gig ram Windows OS with NIVIDIA GForce 8600 GT and high speed Internet so I shouldn't really have any problem with Second Life. I have been a resident in SL for over 4 years too and I have known it to be better than it is currently and with weekly server updates and constant issues with scripts failing there after that worked fine in the past. Every week I have to go check teleporters to reset them and find other scripts failing. And I have lost track of the times objects have been lost to the scene and from my inventory. All this and plenty of other issues dose not lead me to describe Second Life as a fully developed product. To be honest, I also have a two virtual servers running Opensim on one and Aurora sim on the other. Of all three products, Second Life I rate as weak on performance. Opensim marginally better and Aurora sim considerably better than both. Linden Labs charges $1000 to setup a sim and $295 a month service and for that you have very little control while putting up with a product in constant development just the same as Opensim and Aurora which both cost a lot less to operate and you do have considerably more control. And Linden Labs don't let you connect to the rest of the open Metaverse either. There are advantages and disadvantages in all three platforms and I have substantial investment both in money and time in all three. I think that makes me at least an informed users if not an expert. I do the footwork you see and experience the good and the bad so I can make the comparisons. Using Opensim and Aurora I expect to encounter problems - I accept it is alpha software and I don't use it commercially anyway. With Second Life I expect more given the high cost and, from an ordinary users point of view, I do not consider it value for money but, like so many others, I am hopelessly addicted to experiencing virtual worlds and working with them. I have made many friends in SL too so I know how they feel and believe me everyone complains about lag. It's a lot of money to pay for a laggy experience and, while I might try to understand the problems, most just want to have some escapist fun. Lag is not fun for anyone. @troymc. *laughs* I stand corrected! I pulled that word from the back of my head and, your right, I know nothing about horses other than they make me sneeze when I go near one.

Hypergrid Business : Panel: Experts pick Second Life for community, stability

Mon, 29 Aug 2011 01:10:59 +0000

I agree, Second Life suffers terrible lag and is worse now than ever it was. I visited two well-known sims this weekend and, on the first, my avatar was the only one there and it took ages for the over-primed region and all it's textures to download. Even when I could move it was slow - really slow! On the next sim it was pretty much the same but there was about five avatars plus mine and someone was sailing a boat. I would agree that some sims using Open sim can be laggy too but these are usually standalones on home PCs with home-use DSL (there are a lot of those connected to OSgrid) but venture to commercial grids like InWorldz and Avination and there is a marked improvement. I agree business users need to consider what they get for their money and a well resourced private label grid running Open sim where you control everything is still better than expensive Second Life where you have very little control of anything - least of all content. I have two sims in Second Life where I keep prims to a minimum, take great care with textures and keep scripts down too using low-lag items wherever possible. And yet I still find the sims laggy even when only a few avatars are present. What SL has got going for it is traffic (discounting bots, alts and campers) and a lot of content. But, with content, one has to remember a lot of it is either badly scripted or over-scripted with re-sizers and such which contributes a huge amount of lag to the sims. In terms of what works, yes, Open Sim lacks decent physics and some of the features we are use to in SL but consider group chat as an example; it's broken and has been for years despite LL recently claiming it has been fixed. My usual advise to people asking about SL is to forget it. It's expensive, laggy and full of griefers. If you hope to make money in SL then you need to be original because most stuff has already been made better than noobs can ever hope to do the same. However, if you want to be scammed or find gambling then SL has pretty much everything you want including some of the sickest adult content imaginable. Oh, and that's not to mention all the spamming that goes on. But there is one big downside to SL any business user should consider, Linden Labs has never been terribly good with customer service and their policy decision making tends to ride rough shot over community opinion. The "experts" appear to have conveniently neglected to mention all of that.

Hypergrid Business : SpotON3D leaves questions unanswered

Wed, 24 Aug 2011 07:45:02 +0000

Well said Alexandro. Keep up the good work. Hey, I shall have to visit and see what you guys are doing. Gaga

Hypergrid Business : Roleplaying grid for sale

Wed, 24 Aug 2011 07:25:29 +0000

That is sad to learn Maria. I did that review for Chapter & Metaverse last year. The grid owners are a great bunch of people and very welcoming too. And Breezie is a great builder there.

Hypergrid Business : SpotON3D's five PR mistakes

Sat, 20 Aug 2011 16:52:27 +0000

Personally, I've a mind to agree with Vanish, SpotON3D have gained enough publicity out of this and, as the saying goes "Even bad publicity is good publicity" So, when the dust settles it may not be the issue of the patent that the wider community remembers but they will remember there is some grid called SpotON3D. On the other hand it may not do them that much good though as potential customers are not the mass of users. Customers wanting to set up a grid will probably do some research and likely come across the negative blogging on Google or whatever search they use. They will then be faced with the choice to go with a company that has a bad rep or prefer to go with hosting without strings. I mean, who really wants to be tied into a closed walled Metaverse when the majority are moving towards an open, inter-connected, Metaverse? As security gets better, which is on the cards as the open source community finds solutions, I can't imagine even the walled garden grids would want to be left out of the mass market the open Metaverse will become.

Hypergrid Business : SpotON3D's five PR mistakes

Sat, 20 Aug 2011 15:19:00 +0000

Real Life is hectic for me right now so I missed SpotON3D meeting again. They really do kind of spring them on the community and some of us can't be online 24/7, sometimes for days at a time. Still, by what you have written here, Maria it appears I didn't miss much. Pretty much the same bad PR and no answers. Like politicians I guess but just what you expect from lawyers. Lieberman really doesn't seem to understand the Open Sim community which, for the most part, are refugees from Second Life trying to escape everything that SpotON3D represents to them. Tessa and Stevan just don't get it. In comments on my own blog Tessa made some statements about "NOT APPOLOGIZING" (in caps) repeatedly. To me that was shouting at the community and telling them where to go. I didn't really know that much about SpotON3D at the time and wanted to give them chance to explain themselves. They didn't do very well at that an, after a little research, I began to understand where they are coming from. I think now they have a Cat's chance in Hell of winning over anyone if they continue on their present course. Being a patent Troll is probably all they will have left to make any money out of. But it's never to late to try and turn this around. I think they need to spend some of their money on professional PR and be willing to take a similar route to Reactiongrid. Sadly, it's probably too late even for that if they aren't willing to explain those patents in detail, modify them or drop them. Gaga

Hypergrid Business : SpotON3D forum ends in tears

Sun, 7 Aug 2011 22:44:30 +0000

As you know Maria, I did attend the meeting late just to make my apologies and note the notice had been too short for me. I tweeted the notice soon after it appeared on my blog comments so anyone who was interested at least had access to the details. For me, Sunday is a family day and I was due to travel to make a visit with no certainty I could be back in time. As it happens I did get back but really too late for the meeting. I did want to be there to get first hand information and I appreciate Maria's coverage in the article here. I am disappointed that the issues about the patent was still not really addressed but glad SpotON3D did at least say they would contribute code back to Open Sim once the foundation was fully established. I don't agree with Tessa's claim that Ilan of Kitely are bullying them into releasing their code. That is absurd. Many, myself included, are seeking answers to questions SpotON3D refuses to give clear answers to. They accuse Kitely of not releasing their code but Kitely are not seeking patents so others can, if they work out a way to code it, develop similar methods to deliver cloud-based sims on demand. SpotON3D could have done this with their code - simply demonstrated the technology and kept the code secret without seeking a patent and this controversy would not have erupted. Quite the opposite, in my view. In fact my own review was fairly balanced and I found the method to be very useful and polished. The problem is the patent and until SpotON3D gives the number and/or a full explanation as to what it covers then no amount of PR meetings on their grid is going to satisfy those apposed to it. I have been trying to gage opinion on this issue by speaking to people who have not posted comments and the reaction I get is one of general disgust at SpotON3D's actions so the views expressed in comments to my blog, here on Hypergrid Business and a number of other blogs is by no means an isolated reaction.

Hypergrid Business : SpotON3D responds to patent concerns, will license plugin to other grids

Thu, 4 Aug 2011 16:23:31 +0000

Maria has it in a nutshell. It's cool, it's usable, it's for noobs - and Facebook noobs at that. Good luck to SpotON3D. Clever slight of hand trick to get noobs downloading a viewer when they thought they were getting just a plugin apps. Sounds like a recipe for hard work if the PR disaster on the patent issue were not enough. Imagine all those noobs with hardly a clue what they are getting into trying to figure it all out? Perhaps the good thing is they will all be inside SpotON3D's very own closed Metaverse and no way out to the free Metaverse.

Hypergrid Business : SpotOn3d releases browser plugin for OpenSim

Sun, 31 Jul 2011 04:22:14 +0000

Oh well. I have posted my view on it with pictures of my travels in a browser to my blog... http://metaverse-traveller.blogspot.com/

Hypergrid Business : SpotOn3d releases browser plugin for OpenSim

Sat, 30 Jul 2011 17:09:29 +0000

Hi Ilan I picked up the links from New World Notes and did the reading. Thanks. I tend to agree that if this thing has been done substaintially the same before then you have to question if a patent is justified. But I think Maria has written on this subject before and the threat of copyright and patents to the open Metaverse. However, if the inDuality people didn't seek a patent then what is to stop Spoton?

Hypergrid Business : SpotOn3d releases browser plugin for OpenSim

Sat, 30 Jul 2011 12:44:11 +0000

Whatever, the woes of patents - and I think I saw there is a patent pending - it's quite an amazing achievement regardless. If it were so simple I am surprised no one came up with it sooner. I got the plug in which basically downloads a version of Hippo viewer with SpotON3d's features added and the launching plug in for the browser, in my case firefox. I had to register a name with SpotON3d which was fine and I logged into their grid with no trouble at all. I even got freebies and tried everything. It was great! Then I logged out (not quit which takes you back to the SpotON3d page) so I got the splash screen up and accessed the grid list. I added loads of grid addresses including my own Open sim then even went to Nova grid which is Aurora Sim. Perfect! it worked great but, of course, Hippo has not the features needed for Aurora's variable regions. So, I went to second Life and it was perfect there too. It finally froze when I started building and moving large prims around linking. Camming worked fine for me. So, I think this is the beginning for sure of the 3d web. It certainly felt like it but I didn't actually try Hypergrid. I forgot that but I will later. I think SpotON3d could do well with this if no one can come up with an alternative. but they will probably get a lot of users after the plug in who don't stay on their grid. But they should gain some from it. If Kitely had something similar then really they would be flying away with it I think. So, it will be interesting to see how the legal part turns out. I will be writing something up for my blog later with pictures of my walkabout.

Hypergrid Business : Kitely calls for a push to the web

Fri, 17 Jun 2011 02:23:56 +0000

While I admire Ilan of Kitely's vision I personably think Unity is the best bet currently for a browser based Opensim viewer, albeit a limited one. I can't really see any alternative to getting a full viewer to experiencing Opensim and using it's full feature set properly. A browser-based viewer is certainly good for an introduction that, hopefully, will encourage the visitor to get interested enough to take more time and trouble to download a viewer. I agree with ilivesl, getting the bugs fixed in Kitely and opening up the system to more registration options is what I think they should consentrate on.

Hypergrid Business : Intel increases OpenSim avatar capacity 20-fold

Wed, 8 Jun 2011 06:57:44 +0000

Thanks Maria. What caught my attention in this article was "Magic Mirror". I can imagine one day shopping for real world clothes in a virtual store and with improved avatar being able to represent my real body shape and appearance. Having the clothes fit right for me with lighting effects and shadows that respond to movement is a must and this technology seems to promise it. For the busy person, professional or anyone really that might want something urgently with little time to spare this could be a great way to shop by mail order. Better than just looking at static pictures or flash videos of perfect models on web pages. This is exactly what the 3D web of the future could do well. Just saying. Gaga

Hypergrid Business : OpenSim grids reach record high

Fri, 27 May 2011 17:51:16 +0000

Hi Maria Matto destiny shows how to load 4 normal OARs into a 512 var-region at his site here... http://www.mattos-world.co.uk/joomla/index.php/au... Matto is on the Aurora team and has been working on the webUI. More help and info about Aurora's webUI on his site. Gaga