Second Effects

BuilderBot Is Coming: Should You Be Worried?

2009-07-20T05:39:00.000-07:00

The answer, I think, is maybe.

What is BuilderBot? It’s a new opensource utility created by virtual construction company Rezzable, who’ve recently begun moving their operations from the Second Life Grid to OpenSim.

And to do so, they needed tools to help them do bulk moves of their sims’ content. BuilderBot is their answer, as it scoops up the content in a sim and places it in a file that can be imported into OpenSim. So what’s the problem? Two things:

BuilderBot is being released as Opensource code - meaning it’s freely available to anyone who wishes to use it.
BuilderBot does not recognize any permissions on sim objects.

In other words, in theory you could quickly obtain BuilderBot, go to any SL Sim and essentially take a copy of the entire sim - whether it’s yours or not.

O.o!

It’s great if your intention is to migrate your operations to OpenSim, but perhaps not so great for SL shop owners who want to continue operating in SL. They might find a duplicate of their shop appear suddenly somewhere else on the grid. Yes, this is similar to CopyBot, which currently exists and is apparently used by the bad guys, but BuilderBot might be easier to use to capture a sim’s content.

But all is not lost.

There are a few restrictions that may make this less disturbing, at least for some SL vendors:

BuilderBot does not capture scripts. Therefore any item that is scripted would have only it’s containing object captured. Thus, vehicles, games (and particle effects, yay!) are not really affected.
BuilderBot captures the data into a file that can be imported to any OpenSim grid. But you cannot import it to SL unless you purchase their “Pro” version, that may cost around USD$100. Casual thieves may not consider this an option.
I’m not sure, but I suspect you’d have to have control of an empty sim in order to restore captured data. This also means you wouldn’t get casual thieves doing this, since they’d have to commit to paying the outrageous USD$295 per month for a sim.

For all the details (and they are quite preliminary at this stage), you might want to read Rezzable’s post on this.

Clearly, this is going to be quite disturbing for many shop owners, and probably Linden Lab as well, because they’re likely going to be deluged with content issues.

What do you think?

Are You Crazy?

2009-07-12T15:33:00.000-07:00

It's a question I ask myself now and then, simply because of all the insane and unbelievable situations I find myself in lately. If you can't explain it to your mom, is it because it's too hard to explain, or because you're actually doing crazy things? And does that mean you are crazy?

I began pondering this question after watching a rather good machinima from Pooky Amsterdam, "Shrink Wrapped", in which a typical avatar consults a psychiatrist regarding her increasingly bizarre SL behavior. The main character enters SL for typical and conventional reasons, but then as social activities increase, the avatar reacted by creating multiple SL personalities - and mayhem ensued.

Adding more personalities just makes things more confusing, as there are more opportunities for conflict between the identities. This is especially likely if you invest more personalty into your alt avatars, as did the avatar in the machinima.

I have a couple of alts, but I don't really inject any personality into them; it's as if they're made of cardboard. As a result, I can avoid some of those complex and mentally confusing social situations involving non-cardboard alts. Perhaps I'm not crazy after all?

How about you? Do you have alts that have a truly unique personality? Does the constant mental context switching drive you crazy? If so, maybe you need to see Dr. Occam too!

Armi’s Hierarchy of Avatar Needs

2009-07-05T07:11:00.000-07:00

Recently I’ve been puzzling over fluctuating revenues at my shop. One theory I had suggested recent decreases in revenue might have something to do with the unemployment rate. However, commenters provided many alternate theories, one of which involved avatars buying other types of products before “my” type of products.

I thought about this at length and realized that this could in fact be the case. The more I thought about it, I increasingly saw a connection to the classic “Maslow’s Hierarchy”. What’s that, you ask?

According to the Business Dictionary, Maslow’s Hierarchy is a

Motivation theory which suggests five interdependent levels of basic human needs (motivators) that must be satisfied in a strict sequence starting with the lowest level.

And it’s typically represented as a pyramid, where individuals must satisfy their needs at the lower levels before they can seek the benefits of higher levels.

As you can see, humans likely have to be able to breath and eat before they’ll worry about making friends and producing sculptures.

It seems to me that there might be a corresponding pyramid suitable for avatars. I suspect some of the layers might be similar to Maslow’s, but there are some differences, especially at the bottom of the pyramid.

If this pyramid of “Armi’s Hierarchy of Avatar Needs” is true, then it may explain some shopping habits. After first ensuring the basics (Physical, Safety and Belonging), avatars tend to shop for fashions, skins and shapes before seeking gadgets, building supplies and particle effects. Thus, in difficult times one might expect a store such as mine to suffer more than say, a famous skin shop.

The pyramid might also explain why people get frantically upset when the grid or PC crashes, and why teleport errors generate so many complaints. The lower levels of needs are more fundamental to avatar existence.

There’s one simple reason avatars may act according to a pyramid of needs: behind every avatar is none other than a real, breathing human. Most of the time, anyway.

A Newb. Until When?

2009-06-26T07:27:00.000-07:00

We’ve all been there. Rezzing in a strange virtual world. Avatars wandering nearby chatting about unintelligible topics. Unable to move. There’s a box on your head. How do you bookmark a location? How do I get Lindens? What’s a Linden?

Yes, it’s that newbish period of our virtual existence, when we really don’t have a hot clue about practically anything. I stayed in this pathetic state for months.

Well, it really wasn’t that bad. In fact I did eventually learn how to move, chat and take the box off of my head.

But it does beg a question. When, exactly, does one stop being a “newbie”?

Let’s consider some ideas to determine this. What if the avatar:

Can competently build objects?
Can competently operate chats, groups and land?
Can acquire and wear great clothing?
Has been around for more than two months?
Is well known by many other avatars?
Can answer questions from other newbs?

Nope, none of these will do. I know people who clearly are no longer newbs, but could not build a plain wooden box to save the universe. I know people who have been in SL for two years, but still act like newbs. Any other specific factor likely has similar exceptions.

I believe that newbishness is a trait that is very gradually shed over a long period. Successful existence in SL requires a lot of knowledge and it simply cannot be learned quickly. People take months to gain enough experience to do things competently - and even then they might be completely unaware of other activities.

And that leads to my theory: we’re all still newbs one way or another, because there are always things we don’t know. A veteran avatar can suddenly become incompetent if faced with an unfamiliar situation requiring knowledge they don’t have.

So I don’t make fun of newbs, because we’d be making fun of ourselves. Unless, of course, they have a box on their head.

2.5 Store Years

2009-06-19T04:26:00.000-07:00

It’s been 2.5 years since I opened my SL store, Electric Pixels. It’s been quite a journey, and the store has undergone several evolutions:

The first iteration was actually not in-world at all, but existed solely on the then-named SLExchange in January 2007. Started on a dare from a friend, my items sold quite well. Well enough that I quickly saved sufficient Lindens to proceed to stage two
In March 2007 I took a step by purchasing a tiny 512sm parcel in the obscure sim Lanestris for the princely sum of L$6000. I wanted to set up an in-world store because it seemed like the right thing to do. While the tier was just right (it’s actually zero for your first 512sm), I had no idea how to set up a store. So I experimented with several crazy concepts, and learned much. The important thing was the cash flow was ten times that of SLExchange. This led to stage three a few months later
In June 2007 I took a huge step by purchasing an 8192sm mainland parcel, which required my first tier of USD$40 per month. I was confident my revenue would cover that, and I built a rather different and much larger store using learnings from iteration two
Some 18 months later I took the opportunity to acquire land adjacent to my 8192sm parcel, doubling its size to a full 1/4 sim. After several weeks of rebuilding I had successfully expanded and redesigned Electric Pixels with multiple display areas with live demonstrations everywhere

And so it sits today. But I’ve survived for over two years while some other businesses have failed. What’s my secret? At each stage I’ve been very conservative and expanded only when absolutely certain my revenue greatly exceeded the monthly expenses.

That and all the customers who come by to look and purchase. My thanks to all of you!

Lemme Fly the LEM!

2009-06-12T07:18:00.000-07:00

Yeah, I was back at the Apollo simulation again. I guess I’m a little bit more spacey than usual due to the amazing things in RL space lately (the International Space Station is finally truly international, with crew from all partner countries in orbit today - and another seven to visit on Saturday to break the record for the most people in space simultaneously.)

Meanwhile in SL, Apollo simulation is a fascinating exhibit, because it is always changing as the maker implements enhancements. In this view, Radar Masukami and I have successfully flown the Lunar Excursion Module down from orbit to the surface of The Moon.

Erm, you might be wondering why there is a Joshua Tree on the barren, airless Lunar surface. Well, that’s because the landing area was (at the time of our flight) simply a sandbox below the orbital area, not yet fully moonscaped. This also explains why we are able to successfully walk on the surface without space suits.

But we had to wear our Trek outfits, of course.

Long Distance Call

2009-06-04T21:36:00.000-07:00

Long ago I watched a particularly frightening (at the time) episode of the classic TV series, “The Twilight Zone”. In the episode “Long Distance Call”, child actor Billy Mumy uses a toy telephone to call his newly dead grandmother. The situation seemed normal from the child’s viewpoint, but when the father picks up the toy phone and speaks to the dead grandmother over some unimaginable series of wires and switches, the situation becomes infinitely not normal. And pretty scary, too.

I had the same feeling as that TV father last week.

I had that feeling while testing the new AvaLine voice service just introduced for testing by Linden Lab. It’s a service that permits people (not necessarily avatars) to use their familiar telephone to call directly into Second Life and speak with a logged-in avatar. Or if they’re not logged in, you can leave an audio voice message, which shows up as an MP3 file in the avatar’s email.

AvaLine is pretty straightforward to use. After signing up and getting your AvaLine "ID", you exchange it with your avatar friends. Then you pick up a normal telephone and dial one of several strategically located telephone "portals". The portal asks you for the avatar ID, and upon receiving it, connects you to the selected avatar in voice.

I thought it wise to give AvaLine a try. Here are my findings so far:

The audio quality is inconsistent and typically worse than normal avatar-to-avatar in-world voice (assuming all are using headsets with reasonable quality mics). My goodness, it sounds like they’re on the telephone! D'oh!
The avatar sees the incoming call as coming from the phone number. For example, you might get a call from 2125551234. This does seem strange, since voice users expect to see a name, not a number. Worse, if your avatar buddy is actually calling, you might not recognize their phone number
That’s another major problem: the actual real-life telephone number is shown. For those who wish to be anonymous, this could be a big issue. I don’t know if it’s possible to block the caller ID, but the truth is that many people wouldn’t realize they could do so and thus mistakenly reveal their True Phone Number.
You must have a good memory for telephone numbers because a given person might call in from multiple telephones (imagine a cell phone, home land line, work phone, etc.) It’s the same person calling, but they show up in Second Life as different faceless numbers
If the avatar is offline, then the message goes straight to voice mail. But this also occurs if the avatar has set the “Only accept voice calls from people on My Friends list” option. You must turn this off to receive calls from your friends, because the system doesn’t know your friends' telephone numbers. Yet.
At this early stage only certain major cities have telephone “portals”. If you happen to live elsewhere, then you’ll have to call the nearest portal number long distance. This is an issue if you don’t have a flat-rate LD plan
Real life telephone calls seem to have an “I talk, You Talk, I talk” protocol. But SL conversations seem different, and involve more passive listening and pauses. Pauses, though normal in SL voice, are very unnerving when you have a handset to your ear.

Problems aside, the service is interesting, although I am still not certain of the expected usage situation. Basically, this must occur:

Two avatars wish to communicate
The avatars are familiar with voice
One avatar is online
The other avatar is offline, but has access to a regular telephone

I’m not sure this is a situation many would find themselves in, but I suppose it does occur. I’ve used it a few times and it is fun, but I am not sure it would survive past the novelty stage for me. There would be more use, I think, if avatars could call out to any outside telephone number, but that feature does not currently exist.

But back to the Twilight Zone.

In the course of testing AvaLine, I found myself in my real-life office, looking out the window at real trees, real buildings and real people walking by. I saw my hand pick up the telephone and dial a sequence of digits. Soon, ringing. Suddenly a voice answered.

A voice from another world.

And it really was from another world. My mind swam as real and virtual contexts violently collided, leaving me quite uncomfortable. I thought of the boy speaking to his dead grandmother and realized that was no boy; it was, and is, me.

A Rewarder Experience

2009-05-30T20:52:00.000-07:00

This week I happened to listen to an unusual podcast in which Linden Lab founder Philip Rosedale was interviewed by tech maven Jon Udell in his wonderful series “Interviews with Innovators”. Philip spoke on his ideas for managing a software company, and in particular some of the very unusual people management techniques he’s pioneered at Linden Lab.

Everyone knows Philip is a visionary and technical whiz, but after hearing him speak during the 44 minute podcast, it’s quite clear that he knows a lot more than simply the technical aspects. He has some intriguing ideas for motivating people that I had not heard previously.

Philip describes an internal system known as the “Rewarder” used to award monetary bonuses to deserving staff. Here’s how it apparently works:

An unspecified portion of the Lab’s profits are set aside each quarter (and yes, Philip indicates that Linden Lab is quite profitable today, unlike some other companies like Twitter, for example)
Every quarter each employee is awarded a fixed and standard quantity of “points” in the rewarder system that they can award to other employees they feel has done great work
The points cannot be kept for themselves, and must be awarded to others
Points can be assigned all to one individual or split up among many in varying amounts, with no restrictions other than staying within the assigned quantity of total points
Points can be awarded to a “proxy” who can award them on the individuals behalf (for example, if a project was successful, you could award points to the project’s manager to split them up among the project’s team members)
The profit allocation is then split up among all staff based on the point totals awarded to each participant at the end of each quarter

This is a very different scheme for motivating the staff; most companies have a traditional bonus system where managers go into a smoky back room and do battle over their favorite employees’ bonuses. Usually this approach is not particularly accurate or welcomed by staff - although I'm certain staff enjoy any money received. But Linden Lab’s Rewarder approach is very innovative and places the responsibility for determining bonuses directly in the hands of the staff themselves, not in management’s control.

It’s reminiscent of Second Life itself, where the content is managed by the users. At Linden Lab, bonuses are apparently managed by the staff, too. Who can argue with that?

If you’d like to hear the entire podcast (and be aware it’s 44 minutes in length), you can find it at IT Conversations right here.

KIssing Booth: The Aftermath, 2009

2009-05-25T18:31:00.000-07:00

I survived. And had fun, too. This year’s Kissing Booth event was a total success, raising approximately $30,000L for the Relay for Life charity! Can you guess which booth was mine in the image above?

The large donation was the making of those who spent an equally large amount of time making all the arrangements. Shawna Montgomery provided the venue and RFL vendors, Amber DeCuir organized, Natassia Nightfire provided amazing Trek Tunes and party mastermind Haley Salomon made certain it all got done just right.

There were a great many visitors, and it was hard to tell how many in total as many came to do the rounds of the kissing booths and then left.

Many notable SL’rs were present in the Kissing Booths, including blogger and punster Tymmerie Thorne above. Modest prevents us from publishing any image of her engaging in her feminine charity duties, lest she get in trouble with you-know-who.

Ultra-reporter Hamlet Au graced the venue with his periodic randy taunts at the clientele. After a confusing encounter with a four-headed monster (“which mouth do I kiss?”, and “do you pay once per mouth?”) Hamlet was clearly exhausted.

Mitch Wagner, host of Copper Robot came in a Star Trek outfit, as everyone did - but Mitch did it with a twist. Experienced trekkies will know that any crew member in a red uniform, well, kinda doesn’t make it safely to the end of the episode. Red equals expendable. As you can see, Mitch is partway there, having suffered some brutal damage during ACT 1 of today’s episode.

Delinda Dyrssen of Tonight Live was so enthralled with my amorous attention that she actually fainted and fell onto the floor. Actually, she did that after kissing anyone!

Podcast Emperor Stuart Warf took a turn in a booth, wearing a very snappy blue uniform.

The mysterious Twitter comedian SecondLie took a turn in a booth. Here we see him puckering up to administer to Gabby Panacek. Watch out for paper cuts, Gabby!

Some of the visitors, including GoSpeed Racer above, enjoyed the Star Trek displays, including a rather amazing transporter that dropped you right into the middle of a perfect replica of the Enterprise’s command bridge. Not surprisingly, every one who teleported into the bridge just had to sit in the captain’s chair.

And me? Well, I did my duty to all comers. And among the many who partook in the festivities was Codebastard Redgrave.

Can you guess who this is? It’s none other than designer Callie Cline. Note how the kiss caused her scarf to rise! It was that good!

Thanks again to all who came by!

For Sale - Again!

2009-05-21T19:23:00.000-07:00

I swore to myself I would not do it again.

But, I am.

That’s right. This weekend I am for sale. Really! As part of the Relay for Life, I’ve accepted a position in a mysterious device known as a “Kissing Booth” during this weekend’s fund raising Star Trek party. I’ll be accepting Linden Dollars in exchange for.... for, well, you’ll have to find out.

I’m not the only person submitting to the whims of Kissing Booth customers, check out these other SL personalities who will also butter up their lips:

Writer and Blogger Hamlet Au of New World Notes
Blogger and Supermodel Tymmerie Thorne of Girl Wonder Speaks
The infamous virtual comedian SecondLie Scribe
Podcaster Gomem DeSoto
Media Whiz and First Question Host Pooky Amsterdam
Songstress and Crap Mariner's Sister Beth Odets
Copper Robot host Mitch Wagner
SL Podcast Network Emperor Stuart Warf
and a real Klingon!

The theme of the party is, of course, Star Trek, and we’re hoping visitors wear Trek outfits or anything spacey. Amazing Star Trek posters wall the party site, and there is even a complete replica of the original Star Trek’s command bridge. You can ride the most realistic trek teleporter right into the bridge and sit in the captain’s chair. After visiting the kissing booths, certainly.

Truthfully, last years episode was a tremendous amount of fun for everyone, as you can see in my report. I’m hoping to have the same effect this year.

You probably want to know when and where the party takes place. It begins at 11:30AM SLT on Sunday, May 24th in Chatrez. When does it end? Hah, how much lip gloss do I have? Here’s the direct SLURL for your convenience. Hope to see you there!

Back to the Moon

2009-05-17T18:22:00.000-07:00

I received numerous inquiries regarding the secret location of the amazing Saturn V / Apollo simulator this past week, and today I’ve received permission to publicize the not-so-secret location. It's a construction of Wicked Quasimodo, who built it in and above a space-oriented sandbox.

The launch site may be found in the Space Frontier sim.

If you visit (and I strongly recommend you do), here are your astronaut tips:

The rocket launches (meaning “leaves the pad vertically really fast”) at precisely 32 minutes after every hour. You MUST be on board before this happens
Be prepared to arrive quite a bit before 32 minutes past the hour, because you’ll want to witness the various preparation activities that take place during the ten minutes or so before the actual launch. You'll see plumbing retracting and locks at the bottom releasing the rocket
At the base of the gantry, the “funky computer” on the launch platform gives you a HUD that will broadcast actual Apollo 11 audio tracks at appropriate moments during the simulation
Summon the elevator and walk along the gangway that reaches out to the rocket. If the gangway is retracted, you’re too late!
Set your world to Midnight. It just isn't the same otherwise
Another reason to get there early is to get a seat! There are only four seats in the capsule, get yours early! If you miss out, you'll have to wait another hour for the next ride
The door to the capsule doesn’t work, as far as I can tell. To get inside, simply “cam” inside and right-click “sit” on one of the seats
Do not under ANY circumstances "stand up" during the flight. You have been warned!
Turn your sound up to hear the various announcements that take place, especially during launch
Try various camera views, but remember, the rocket travels quite fast and your cam might not keep up
Once in orbit, be patient. Things don’t happen right away, so you’ll have to enjoy the amazing view. A Space Navigator is astronomically useful at this point.
The last time I visited, there was a garish nightclub floating nearby that kinda disturbed the view. It's a sandbox, after all. Recommend you look in the other direction

And that’s it - I enjoyed the trip immensely, and so can you.

UPDATED - Radar, Haley and I ran through the ride again tonight, and found that the builder has added a LEM landing now! You can move into the Lunar Excursion Module, which detaches and lands on the ground.

The Designer Showcase Network

2009-05-12T20:37:00.000-07:00

Readers may recall my periodic ramblings that tried to sort out revenue fluctuations. One theory suggested Grid-Wide Hunts suck up all the clients, implying you’d better get involved in the hunts if you want to stay in business. I’ve taken up that challenge in the past few months as an experiment by entering a series of Grid Hunts.

So far, I’ve found hunts definitely drive very significant traffic to your shop. Overwhelming traffic at times, and I can’t imagine the crowding at stores a lot smaller than mine (1/4 sim). But the question is, “do these visitors buy anything”? The answer is apparently not, at least at my store. Perhaps they don’t care for particle effects, or maybe they are simply cruising through the landmarks in a nearly endless effort to reach “the end”.

Some say “don’t worry – your gift includes your landmark, so they’ll come back later to visit your store!” Perhaps, but there is scant evidence of this in my statistics. Perhaps they are too busy doing the “next” hunt to worry about looking at the items from the previous hunt?

Another finding: on Plurk and Twitter, one now hears exhausted hunters dreading “the next hunt”. Yes, there certainly are those who enjoy hunts and are quite good at running them, but there seems to be hunt-burn out occurring too. I am not surprised, as there seems to be several gigantic simultaneous hunts underway each and every month.

As an example, I’m in the SL Discovery hunt this month, which features well over 500 stores strung together by a chain of landmarks hidden in tiny magnifying glasses. How long would it take to traverse that entire chain? For this 30-day hunt, it means you must visit on average 18-20 shops each and every day. How many gifts would you receive? Duh, over 500. How much time would it take to actually investigate those 500+ gifts? Probably over 40 hours at 5 minutes each. And that’s just one hunt for one month. What about the other five hunts also underway this month?

Hunts just don’t seem to scale up very well.

What’s the solution? Rika Watanabe came up with a very intriguing idea during a Plurk discussion several weeks ago. The notion is to automate the hunt process and relieve both the vendor and the hunter of the incredible effort required to setup and run through a grid-hunt.

Instead of actually visiting the participating stores, Rika’s brand new Designer Showcase Network merely asks that you “subscribe” to the service, specifying the type of products they’re interested in (a “channel”). Each day you’ll be gifted a random item from that channel’s many participating stores. The network tracks the gifts to ensure you don’t get any duplicates.

Designers simply purchase and set up a kiosk, and then place a box in it containing a gift and landmark. Hopefully the gifts are of high quality and attract the subscriber to the store. Subscribers can get gifts without having to spend massive amounts of their valuable time chasing through stores.

Of course, this isn’t for everyone. Some avatars hunt simply for the pleasure of finding the hidden objects - it is a treasure hunt, after all. But how many times can you do that?

And that’s it. No fuss. Free gifts. Choice. And exposure to new stores that you might have never heard of. And you can resume your normal activities. You know, the ones you did before hunts erupted?

If you want to find out more about the DSN, check out the website at CleverThings. It includes information for both hunters and vendors. Also, I’m one of the first vendors to set up a DSN Kiosk, why don’t you come by Electric Pixels and try it out?

To The Moon, Almost

2009-05-08T21:46:00.000-07:00

We bumped a very interesting build into the other day, which is an astonishing simulation of an Apollo mission to the Moon. Not only do you get to see the life-size rocket launching, but you can also ride along as an astronaut (avanaut? astrotar? cosmatar?).

The build is still being constructed, so it is definitely not complete. The builder has quite a bit done now, but the simulation currently stops at earth orbit. Future stages will likely include a simulation of the journey between Earth and Moon, perhaps including a landing!

The journey begins by climbing the titanic Saturn V launch tower and walking across the gangway to the command module.

The door is actually sealed, so you must cam in and "sit" to take your seat. Best to wear a flight suit, but on this occasion we weren't properly equipped and took a chance that the capsule would remain air-tight during our flight.

The rocket powers off the pad in an extremely realistic manner automatically every 60 minutes, and performs staging of the Saturn V sections just as the vehicle did in the 1970's. You can see the gangway being retracted, as well as the locking bars at the bottom release the rocket when it hits full power. Here we see the second stage just before it lit up.

Once in orbit, you are presented with simply the most marvelous scene I've ever experienced in SL: a highly realistic Earth, sliding gracefully under the ship as it sails across the planet. Oh, you must set Midnight for this to work properly. If you look closely you can make out continents and even some cities.You can see Africa and the Arabian Peninsula in this view.

The view is absolutely breathtaking, especially if using a SpaceNavigator to fly your camera around outside the ship. Like a real astronaut, I spent a lot of time simply staring out the porthole.

After several minutes spent gawking at the incredible view, the ship suddenly releases the Lunar Excursion module, stored above the third stage.

The Command/Service Module automatically rotates around and slowly docks with the LEM and extracts it from the third stage, which then falls away.

The CSM/LEM combination ship then orbits the earth. At this point the simulation seems to end, but one can imagine the obvious next step: transferring into the LEM, undocking and landing on the Moon's surface.

I did transfer myself to the LEM, leaving Haley alone to operate the CSM, but I found the LEM incomplete. I hope she knows how to drive!

This wonderful simulation is clearly a work in progress, but I can tell you that this ride will be one of the top destinations for any SL visitor once it's completed. I cannot tell you how amazing this experience was; you just have to see it yourself. Unfortunately, I don't want to disclose its location yet so that the builder can still work on completing this amazing destination without being overrun with visitors. I'm sure it will be completed soon.

The Linden Puff

2009-04-28T22:05:00.000-07:00

Sometimes the most interesting things happen purely by accident. One such event occurred the other night when I was putzing around in the underground Particle Lounge by myself. As usual, some shoppers were browsing in the store above me. By chance, I peeked upstairs and noticed a Linden was present!

I often chat with customers, and if a Linden was there, well, why not have a chat with them? So I proceeded up and encountered Enkidu Linden, whom I had not dealt with before. Enkidu is a new Linden, having been rezzed only on Halloween 2008.

We had a long and interesting discussion about many things during the visit. However, it turns out that Enkidu is a particle fan, and was having a great time testing the live demonstrations at the store. He liked many of the items, and said he’s been trying to build some himself.

I expressed interest in his particle construction ventures, and he wanted to show me his efforts. He proceeded to switch avatars into a Raptor skeleton with a corn cob pipe. The particles? It was smoke from his pipe.

But there was a problem.

Enkidu’s smoke was, well, pretty lame. That’s not surprising, as it takes a while to figure out how to do particles properly. But these were so lame that I just had to do something. I quickly whipped up some smooth smoke puffs for Enkidu, and gave the script over.

And that’s when I realized I had the one and only opportunity to tell a Linden directly to their face, “put this in your pipe and smoke it!”

The NEW Particle Lounge!

2009-04-22T21:15:00.000-07:00

A long-standing project of mine is something called “The Particle Lounge”. It is a place where I can hold events, parties and have people over to chill. The original Particle Lounge was kind of an experiment, where I tried various particle effects and other visual techniques to create a spooky, eerie place like no other. I think it succeeded.

But then I expanded my shop, and the Lounge had to go. I placed it high in the air, thinking that it would be just as easy to use. It turns out that it was not easy to use. Out of sight, out of mind, I suppose. So there it sat, floating up in the sky unused.

I wanted to believe I could do better than that, and after some out-of-the-box thinking, I realized I could build a new Particle Lounge - underground!

Well, it’s not exactly underground, but it is simply under the floor of my shop; the ground there is quite sloped and I realized there was sufficient space under the floor to build something big. So I did.

The new lounge turned out even better than its prior iterations. It’s larger, more carefully built, and takes into account all the feedback I received from the last iterations.

It was so cool we thought we’d better have a party to open it. On two hours notice.

That was not the greatest plan, but somehow we found an excellent DJ (Natasiaa Nightfire) on awesomely short notice. We leveraged our friends lists, group notices, conferences, twitter and plurk to send out instant invitations. People arrived and all had a great time. Here are the inevitable paparazzi photos of only a few of the distinguished guests:

Codebastard Redgrave floats above the quad-sun floor in an endless aerial spin.

Radar Masukami jigs, explodes while being accosted by those crazy brain-eating Aetherfish (made by Thickbrick Sleaford, by the way.)

First Question host Pooky Amsterdam looking great as usual.

The Slovenian Writers: iYan and iAlja Writer.

Blogger, supermodel, virtual wife and compulsive comedian Tymmerie Thorne reaches for an Aetherfish.

Good friend Bevan Whitfield in her new dress eyes the guests.

Tweeter Caliburn Susanto is suspicious of the Aetherfish.

Virtual healthcare specialist Coughran Mayo dances to the music. Was Abba playing at this point?

Queen of Green Haley Salomon ponders the not-green floor color.

I must mention that a late guest was Jene Tempura. Very late indeed, as he showed up some 12 hours after the party ended, no doubt due to some catastrophic time zone miscalculation.

If you’d like to explore the lounge and all its hidden secrets, drop by Electric Pixels anytime. But just watch out for that first step!

Leaving Linden Lab

2009-04-17T14:57:00.000-07:00

Last year at SLCC I had the pleasure of speaking at length with Robin Linden, one of the originals at Linden Lab. Sadly, she’s no longer with the company, having moved on to other pursuits. But she’s not alone. Several long-term Lindens have recently departed, most recently Ginsu Yoon and Zee Linden, the CFO. They were all pre-exited by CTO Cory Ondrejka some time ago. Today we hear a rumor that Lee Linden is about to exit stage left as well.

Is the sky falling?

By no means. I believe the universe is unfolding as it should - it is simply the transition of Linden Lab from small start-up company mode to a large-scale operation. Different types of people are needed for each mode.

In a startup company, you need highly creative, action oriented people who can quickly make useful things out of whatever they can get their hands on, making up things as they go. That’s quite different than a large-scale company that can’t do that when there are 100,000 times as many things to look after. You have to transform that creative energy into consistent business processes that can scale up to a much larger size.

It’s no different than any task you might have to do yourself. For example, It’s really easy to hang a picture on a wall once. But could you do it a million times? Nope, you’d need to hire people who could be trained to do it correctly and consistently each and every time. That’s quite different than just doing it yourself. That’s the transformation that’s happening now at Linden Lab.

We’ve all heard complaints about Linden Lab’s activities, but I read it to mean that the original organization’s approach simply reached it’s maximum capacity. The reaction by the shareholders was to begin transitioning the company to a configuration that would be able to handle large-scale activities. A new CEO appears, along with new people with new approaches. Existing staff departs. This always happens to successful companies; they grow until they need to modify their approach to handle larger and larger operations. Failed companies don’t make the transition, so I’m quite happy that Linden Lab is making all these changes.

Is this a bad thing for those who are leaving? Perhaps, but on the other hand people who like the wild ups and downs of a startup company might not enjoy working at a more regimented “larger company” that pursues consistency, so perhaps some of those leaving have gone seeking other new startups where their talents are are more suitable.

In the long run, what does this mean? I think it means that Linden Lab is getting themselves organized for a truly massive expansion in the future. You think 88,000 concurrent users is something? It is for now, but it’s nothing compared to what’s going to come.

RESET!

2009-04-11T22:51:00.000-07:00

The last few weeks have been rather hectic. I’ve been quite busy spending many hours cataloging SL blogs, coordinating the blog inspection team, researching unemployment rates, calculating revenue rates, navigating various painful dramas, preparing for several grid hunts, building gift items and rebuilding something underground. It was a seemingly endless stream of work, tasks and trouble.

And then something wonderful happened.

By chance, a friend had purchased a rather unusual object: a gigantic champagne bottle, equipped with a full glass of said fluid. When rezzed, the glass included active bubbles and was truly larger than a bathtub. I admit that in real life, I rarely get a chance to take a bath in champagne, and even more rarely in a gigantic champagne glass.

This particular glass included a dance animation. Spurred on by my alleged friends, I reluctantly sat upon the glass and began to dance.

Immediately, I noticed something horribly wrong: the dances were not exactly my style. I just don’t do sultry dips and swoops in champagne. Fancy prances with knees high around the glass. Suggestive bendy-overs across the lip of the glass. Hrmph.

But I didn’t hit the “Stand Up” button, as I’d usually do in mere microseconds when faced with such a terribly embarrassing SL moment.

Instead, I giggled. A lot.

After a long while, I felt a smile on my face, and realized something had happened. Something wonderful.

I was having fun. Fun with the unreality of Second Life, doing things that are impossible in real life. Things that are silly even in the insane universe that is Second Life. The very things that caused me to explore, learn and be amazed by our nutty virtual world so very long ago.

Somehow I’d managed to find my “reset” button and push it.

The smile stayed.

And a truth was revealed: you gotta have fun. There may be work, trouble or obligations, but none of it is worthwhile unless you’re having fun. This is true not only for Second Life, but even more so in real life. When it stops being fun, it’s time to move on.

But not this time. I’m still here, working. With a smile.

P.S. If you'd like to try out the champagne yourself and see if you can find your own reset, drop by anytime.

Falling Revenues, Explained?

2009-04-05T19:04:00.000-07:00

I’ve been puzzling over this one for months now, and I think I might have figured it out. The revenue (sales) at Electric Pixels has been dipping lower and lower for months now, but why? I had several theories, including:

Bad economy
Everyone already bought what they needed
All shoppers are tied up in Grid-Wide Hunts
Freebies are so good that no one needs to buy anything
Competition from elsewhere
Aliens from space

To counteract the trend, I’ve been conducting all sorts of different business experiments, such as different advertising, new products, and even entering Grid-Wide Hunts (which, by the way, definitely increase your traffic substantially.) However, none of these actions has significantly affected the decreasing revenue trend.

More research was in order, and I came up with the graph above. The Blue Line is the revenue. As I began operations in early 2007, the business slowly grew, and it seemed to reach a bumpy plateau through September 2007 through August 2008. From then on things just went south, with little effect from any of the business experiments.

However, the interesting part is the Red Line. It’s the United States Unemployment Rate, scaled to fit overtop of the revenue line. The unemployment remained more or less constant until, guess what, June-July 2008 and kept rising thereafter. At that moment, my revenue started to fall. It appears that there is a direct correlation between US unemployment and SL revenue, at least at my shop. Revenue seems to be inversely proportional to unemployment.

This intuitively makes sense. As increasing numbers of people become unemployed in the US (and presumably elsewhere to varying degrees), they cut back on non-essential spending, including Second Life. Thus, overall revenue decreases.

Is this the same for all SL stores? I don’t think so. Like Real Life, different products and services are needed at different moments in time. Who wouldn't want to be a repo-man these days? I am certain there are several thriving markets still going strong in SL, but in my case much of my product is (was) sold to those building new sims. And we know what happened to that activity.

Now here’s the interesting bit. Suppose we add another line to the chart, representing expenses. As I’ve said many times before, revenues must always exceed expenses. Suppose our expenses were as represented by the Green Line. We would have been losing money starting last October, and probably given up shortly thereafter.

I believe this is what has happened to many businesses in SL over the past few months. More than a few businesses were operating on a just-barely-breaking-even basis, and a financial storm such as we’re experiencing would kill off many of them.

Is there anything that can be done? Yes, certainly. In this theoretical chart we’ve realized something bad was going on and taken quick action to reduce our expenses. Notice that the Green Line is always below the Blue Line. This is the only way to survive.

In some cases the amount of expense cutting may have been too much for the business to survive, and those business expired anyway. But how does one cut expenses? That’s a topic for another post, stay tuned, dear readers.

Is this all bad news? I don’t think so. We’re witnessing in SL today a process of evolution within the business community. The less efficient businesses have either died off or must become much more efficient. The well run businesses will survive. When the smoke clears, we’ll have a virtual world filled with well-run, highly efficient businesses ready to take on anything. And that can only be good.

Active Second Life Blogs, 2009

2009-04-02T18:04:00.000-07:00

[UPDATE April 2009] I've sifted through the numerous comments and feedback and added a few missing blogs in a special list at the very bottom. Thanks for your suggestions!

After last week’s update, we received so much feedback and so many suggestions that we have prepared yet another even more extensive list of Second Life blogs. But this will be the last time.

This list is quite different from the previous lists and resolves some issues:

Our methodology is shown in the graphic above, including the findings at each stage
Two lists have been prepared: a list sorted by Technorati Rank, and separately an alphabetically sorted list of blogs not tracked by Technorati (or some who requested to be unranked)
Blogs with identical Technorati rank have been given a "tie" position
Eleven separate sources were used as input to the analysis, resulting in some 4,721 candidate URLs
Many more blogs appear on these lists than the previous attempts
The definition of “active” has been tightened up considerably

The lists include only active Second Life blogs. According to our definition, this means:

There must be at least one post within the last three months (dated within 2009)
There must be visible Second Life content
It must be a blog (and not a forum, flickr group, static website, ning community, etc.)
It must not be closed or on hiatus

The unfortunate part is that verification of these characteristics cannot easily be automated. As a result, the 2,101 unique URLs had to be inspected by hand. That’s right - we briefly examined (although sometimes for only a few seconds) each of them. And I say “we”, because this was not something anyone could (or should) attempt on their own. Our international team of blog inspectors included: Amber Decuir, Thickbrick Sleaford, Peter Stindberg, Haley Salomon, Moggs Oceanlane, Quaintly Tuquiri, Radar Masukami, Andrew M and myself who all spent many, many hours this week viewing blogs, checking results, writing/running scripts and compiling results.

When the smoke cleared, it appears we have 1,202 active Second Life blogs at this moment in time. Is this for certain? No - in spite of the comprehensive approach, it is certain we missed some. We may have also made typographical errors, which are impossible to completely eliminate while manually handling over two thousand items. Worse, based on our manual inspection it appears that every day several Second Life blogs are born, fade or disappear. Finally, the Technorati rankings, which I should emphasize are based on links and not based on traffic, also vary from day to day as links are added and removed. Our apologies in advance to anyone who’s been missed.

Know there are many incredibly useful websites that just don’t happen to be blogs or are not really focused on Second Life. But these lists include only Active Second Life Blogs.

The ranking is important only if you believe it to be. If your blog achieves its purpose, then rank doesn’t matter. You should know that in the course of reviewing URLs we discovered many truly wonderful blogs that by chance were not ranked high.

What happens next? Preparation of these lists required vastly more work than ever anticipated, and we will not do this list again until next year. Some have suggested transforming this list into a giant feed, somehow automating it, etc., but we just don’t have the energy left to attempt any of that at this time.

Enjoy!

Second Life Blogs by Technorati Rank

( 1 ) Massively
( 2 ) Official Second Life Blog
( 3 ) iheartsl.com
( 4 ) Virtual Worlds News
( 5 ) New World Notes
( 6 ) Raph's Website
( 7 ) VintFalken.com
( 8 ) Torley Lives
( 9 ) Not Possible IRL
( 10 ) Free*Style
( 11 ) KittyWitchin
( 12 ) Ana Lutetia inSL
( 13 ) Second Style Fashionista
( 14 ) Alphaville Herald
( 14 ) Shopping Cart Disco
( 15 ) Second Thoughts
( 16 ) Gwyn's Home
( 17 ) Dusan Writer's Metaverse
( 18 ) Achariya.net
( 19 ) Fabulously Free in SL
( 20 ) Kzero
( 21 ) Metaversally Speaking..
( 22 ) Slmen – How Men Dress in Second Life ®
( 23 ) PERSONALIZE MEDIA
( 24 ) Fashion Victim
( 25 ) Second Effects
( 25 ) The Click Heard Round the World
( 26 ) Rezzable blogs
( 27 ) The Metaverse Journal
( 28 ) Metanomics
( 29 ) Aviatrix :: Zoe Connolly
( 29 ) It's Only Fashion
( 29 ) Men's Second Style
( 30 ) MichaMi
( 31 ) DIP's Dispatches from the Imagination Age
( 31 ) Living in the Metaverse
( 32 ) Corduroy
( 33 ) The ARCH
( 34 ) Ewing Fashion Agency
( 35 ) maitreya
( 35 ) Your2ndPlace - Comments
( 36 ) Botgirl's Second Life Diary
( 37 ) Ch'know?
( 37 ) Closet Crisis
( 37 ) Designing Nicky Ree
( 37 ) mrtopf.de
( 38 ) casa del shai
( 38 ) CodeBastardRedgrave.Com
( 38 ) PoCarles.com
( 38 ) Vain Inc. Magazine, Inc
( 39 ) NMC Campus Observer
( 40 ) Are we not men?
( 40 ) JUICYBOMB | Be Juicy, Second Life!
( 40 ) Prim Perfect
( 40 ) The Heliograph
( 41 ) Alliance Virtual Library
( 42 ) Hibernia on the Skids
( 42 ) Ivalde's Heim
( 42 ) Kublai
( 42 ) The SL Revolution
( 43 ) Soigné: Style in Second Life
( 44 ) Geta
( 44 ) Girl Wonder Speaks...about Second Life®
( 44 ) My SLife on the D List
( 44 ) Second Arts
( 44 ) Second Stindberg
( 44 ) Tuli's blog
( 45 ) APLINK - itsReal
( 45 ) Ryker Beck dot COM
( 46 ) An Engine Fit For My Proceeding
( 46 ) Common|Sensible
( 46 ) SL Fashion Police
( 46 ) Uma's Style Diary
( 47 ) Kota's Knickers
( 47 ) SL Fashion Notes
( 48 ) :: Dutch Touch :: Outlet - Second Life® Store
( 48 ) caLLie cLine
( 48 ) Fleur Skins
( 48 ) M is for Myg
( 48 ) Phasing Grace | Social Architecture and Virtual Worlds
( 48 ) Scarborough Flair
( 49 ) adam n eve
( 49 ) Canimal.
( 49 ) CeN's Two Cents
( 49 ) ETD | Blog
( 49 ) GION PROJECT ___________
( 49 ) jokaydia.com
( 49 ) Orange Island
( 49 ) The News from BardHaven
( 49 ) _______ ______ SecondLife CAMP
( 50 ) Global Kids' Digital Media Initiative
( 50 ) SLED® Blog
( 51 ) { Zaara }
( 51 ) Fleep's Deep Thoughts
( 51 ) Koinup Blog
( 51 ) On Your Toes
( 51 ) Shiny Things
( 51 ) SL FASHION DIVA
( 51 ) SLentrepreneur Magazine
( 51 ) Studio Wikitecture: Opening Architecture
( 52 ) Reading Radar
( 53 ) Carissa's Closet
( 53 ) Kyoot
( 53 ) MAD Image
( 53 ) More Than Meets the Eye
( 53 ) SL Fashion Avengers
( 54 ) Chignon
( 54 ) Fashion Consolidated
( 54 ) MixedRealities
( 54 ) Second Life® of My Dreams
( 54 ) What's New ?
( 55 ) ~silentsparrow~
( 55 ) Around the Grid
( 55 ) Berry's Blog
( 55 ) Brooklyn is Watching
( 55 ) Caleb Booker
( 55 ) Digital Image
( 55 ) Fashion Labyrinth
( 55 ) Second Life Male Style and Fashion
( 55 ) SLWTF - A Second Life travelogue by Garth Goode
( 55 ) What *IS* Willis Talking About?
( 56 ) Discursos do Outro Mundo
( 56 ) minajunk
( 56 ) SLOG
( 56 ) Specchi e Second _M A T R I X_
( 56 ) SySy's
( 57 ) -Ana Lutetia-
( 57 ) *Edelweiss*
( 57 ) All Ears in Second Life
( 57 ) Fashion Ascension
( 57 ) Savoir Hair
( 57 ) Suffern Middle School in Second Life
( 57 ) Tenth Life
( 58 ) *___BLOG*
( 58 ) El vestidor de Julieta
( 58 ) EncoreSeraphine.com
( 58 ) GoSpeed Racer a Second Life Avatar
( 58 ) Long Awkward Pose
( 58 ) Through my eyes..
( 58 ) Wild Words
( 59 ) "anuenue._____
( 59 ) ami_blog
( 59 ) Dedric Mauriac
( 59 ) Half Arsed
( 59 ) Mo Hax
( 59 ) My Second Closet
( 59 ) Nexeus Fatale
( 59 ) Tres Blah
( 59 ) UberNoggin
( 59 ) Virtually Dressed
( 59 ) WRITERS IN THE (virtual) SKY
( 60 ) Digiteen Dream Team
( 60 ) MONTA
( 60 ) Tori's Blog
( 60 ) VIRTUAL INSANITY
( 60 ) Virtual Worlds News
( 61 ) Eladrienne's Other Life!
( 61 ) Free State of Mind
( 61 ) Ingmann Design Group
( 61 ) Second Life Update
( 62 ) Dwell On It
( 63 ) A Stroll Through Caledon
( 63 ) Arcana Noctis
( 63 ) Architecture +
( 63 ) dé signes
( 63 ) Gromike In Second Life
( 63 ) PixelDolls...
( 63 ) Radio Riel
( 63 ) TESLA FASHION BLOG
( 63 ) The Realm of the Red Rose
( 63 ) Wrath Paine vs. Second Life®
( 64 ) *ICING*
( 64 ) Couture Conundrum
( 64 ) Danni's Blog
( 64 ) Draconic Kiss
( 64 ) Looker Lumet
( 64 ) Metaverse3d.com
( 64 ) Por uma Second Life menos ordinária
( 64 ) r u n w a y + k i d z
( 64 ) Second Life Art News
( 64 ) SL Reports ||| Second Life News - Virtual World Source
( 64 ) SN@TCH
( 64 ) Who let the dorks out?
( 65 ) Alysha's Second Life
( 65 ) GuRL 6
( 65 ) Illusions
( 65 ) Koreshan Pointe
( 65 ) MANZANA QUE NO!
( 65 ) Midcourt
( 65 ) Second Life: Music, DJs, Nightlife, Art, and Creativity
( 65 ) Shiny LifeShiny Life
( 66 ) SugarCube;Memoirs of Second Life
( 67 ) ~flirt~
( 67 ) BP*
( 67 ) Fallobst
( 67 ) justincc's opensim blog
( 67 ) Mayne Line Fashion
( 67 ) Pandora's box
( 67 ) Reel Expression
( 67 ) Veyron's Adventures in Second Life
( 68 ) Ara’s ramblings
( 69 ) Brownblog
( 69 ) Joonie's Journey...
( 69 ) JUST VIRTUAL
( 69 ) Less Than 3
( 69 ) Lucas Lameth (luc) Fashion Jewelry
( 69 ) Momos Blog
( 69 ) PXL Creations
( 69 ) Second Life Community Convention
( 69 ) The 3 Fashionteers
( 69 ) Vanity Universe
( 69 ) Willowing Wisps
( 69 ) YABU SIM
( 70 ) *Honey kitty's closet*
( 70 ) _ STELLAR by Lexi Morgan _
( 70 ) Alienbear Jewelry Design
( 70 ) Constructs of a Mind
( 70 ) Dizzy Banjo - Soundtracking Virtual Worlds
( 70 ) everyday second life
( 70 ) fabulousfashiontv.com
( 70 ) iCandy
( 70 ) MG fashion
( 70 ) Moonshine Clothing
( 70 ) PERSONA's Blog
( 70 ) Ravishal Ramblings
( 70 ) SLaundry
( 70 ) SLShop-a-holic
( 70 ) The Rummage Box
( 70 ) The Secondlife Newspaper
( 70 ) Timeless Agency
( 70 ) Truth
( 71 ) *AnnaH*
( 71 ) bijouaholic
( 71 ) CronoCloud Creeggan, Virtual Fashionista
( 71 ) Cylindrian's Grace Notes
( 71 ) Daneel Ariantho's digital log
( 71 ) Exiled in SL
( 71 ) Gany's take on (any) Life
( 71 ) LaBicyclette
( 71 ) Marine's
( 71 ) Mimikri hot couture
( 71 ) Muse Fine Jewelry
( 71 ) Schadenfreude Enterprises
( 71 ) T I N Y D A N C I N G
( 71 ) Tinas Universum
( 71 ) Zippora's life
( 71 ) ずくなし・・・
( 72 ) Skoolaborate
( 73 ) AjaxLife Blog
( 73 ) Ambergris Deadly Fashions
( 73 ) Blunt Fashion Sense
( 73 ) Chey's Second Life Blog
( 73 ) Fashion Junkie
( 73 ) Kabalyero
( 73 ) MUVEDesign
( 73 ) No there there
( 73 ) PacificRim Exchange
( 73 ) Ravenelle
( 73 ) Rebel Hope Designs, Inc.®
( 73 ) She's So Unusual
( 73 ) Songs from The Nightingale
( 73 ) The Journal of Dr. Darien Mason
( 73 ) The Winter Market
( 73 ) Whole Lotta Rosie!
( 73 ) Wonderland Travels
( 73 ) Write
( 73 ) Y Me | digitally encoded genetic machismo
( 73 ) うだうだぶろぐ
( 74 ) Bryn Oh
( 75 ) Boned
( 76 ) *MilcaHolic*
( 76 ) A Second Look
( 76 ) atomic-raygun
( 76 ) Cleo Carbetta
( 76 ) Dale Innis's Weblog
( 76 ) DARK EDEN PLAZA
( 76 ) Dot in Second Life®
( 76 ) GREENE concept
( 76 ) Karla Scorbal - Imagination unbounded
( 76 ) mayaka beck_Shopassist!
( 76 ) Mischief
( 76 ) Muism
( 76 ) Passionate Neko Dreams
( 76 ) Phantom's Republic
( 76 ) Punch Drunk
( 76 ) Ramona Forcella's Day Off
( 76 ) Royal Blue
( 76 ) Sascha's Designs - Elegant Ballroom Gowns
( 76 ) Second Life English Blog
( 76 ) Second Tense
( 76 ) Shoshana's Musings
( 76 ) SL Things To Do | Where do you want to TP today?
( 76 ) SLPN
( 76 ) The Fricker Frequency
( 76 ) The Virtual Version
( 76 ) Timothy's Second Life Experience
( 76 ) Torrid Tales of a Compulsive Swooner
( 76 ) Virtual Neko in Second Life
( 77 ) Avenue Models
( 77 ) avocatio virtualis
( 77 ) Beanie Loves Japan!
( 77 ) Crimson Flow
( 77 ) Digit Darkes
( 77 ) Events In Extropia
( 77 ) Glamorpuss
( 77 ) Harajuku Box
( 77 ) Hey Girlfriend
( 77 ) Just me, dinee
( 77 ) LF Fashions
( 77 ) Metaversal Arts
( 77 ) Red-Headed Step-Child
( 77 ) Refuge
( 77 ) Tea Lane
( 77 ) The Velvet Room
( 77 ) Unique Needs!
( 77 ) Virtual Silks and Fantasy Review
( 77 ) Vitamin Ci ™ - Cause it's good for you
( 78 ) 500 Year Diary
( 78 ) Accessories by Eolande
( 78 ) amiko*amikino
( 78 ) BEWITCHED HAIR
( 78 ) CREAMSHOP
( 78 ) Diversity Hair
( 78 ) Eclipse
( 78 ) Evans Avenue Exit
( 78 ) House of Nyla
( 78 ) Imperial Elegance
( 78 ) Lady Adventuress
( 78 ) LeeZu!
( 78 ) Loki's musings on first and second life
( 78 ) Retail Therapy
( 78 ) Second Spaces
( 78 ) Sl Style Hunter
( 78 ) The Insane Life of Stuart Warf
( 78 ) The Project Factory
( 78 ) キ印無料品
( 79 ) ShopArmidi.com
( 80 ) -Analise-
( 80 ) ::eLDee::
( 80 ) A Crimson world
( 80 ) A Piece of Candy
( 80 ) Content Confessional
( 80 ) First Impressions
( 80 ) Fricka's Flights of Fancy
( 80 ) GRIDSTYLE.COM
( 80 ) KessKreations
( 80 ) Kunglers's Weblog
( 80 ) Little Gems from My Second Life™
( 80 ) My Virtual World
( 80 ) Newbe's Steam Powered Blog
( 80 ) Poid Mahovlich
( 80 ) pretty-pretty dress-up
( 80 ) SLFix
( 80 ) The Adventures of Bettye in Second Life...
( 80 ) The Fashionable Heart
( 80 ) The Secondlife Newspaper EXPLORE
( 80 ) Tonight Live With Paisley Beebe
( 80 ) Trudeau Classic Sailing Yachts
( 80 ) VTOR - Virtual TO Reality
( 80 ) Winter Moon
( 80 ) Zsa Zsa's Life is a Drag
( 81 ) Designing Insanity
( 82 ) * + Super Bonita + *
( 82 ) Alienbear Gupte Virtual Life
( 82 ) Alpha.Auer
( 82 ) Battered Boudoir
( 82 ) Beth's Second Life
( 82 ) cyberloom
( 82 ) Diamonds and Rust Podcast
( 82 ) DollyRock: Second Life Clothes
( 82 ) Honour's Post Menopausal View
( 82 ) Inspired - Kawaii Fashion in Second Life
( 82 ) LaynieWear
( 82 ) Machinations of an Evil Tiny Kitty
( 82 ) Magpie Metaverse
( 82 ) Our Blogs
( 82 ) Purely Visual - An Alternative View
( 82 ) SL© on SL™
( 82 ) SL***********************Blog*X*golB di ELEONORA PORTA
( 82 ) SPAWN OF THE SURREAL
( 82 ) Sunn's World
( 82 ) The Ortega Chronicles
( 82 ) theshadow's Alternative Second Life Fashions
( 82 ) VictoriaV Fashion
( 82 ) Vidal's Dolly Realm
( 82 ) Virtual Freebies
( 82 ) Virtual World Business.com
( 83 ) Stories from another life
( 84 ) -Veschi- (Ze Blogue)
( 84 ) ..:: JM Models ::..
( 84 ) Awesome Designs
( 84 ) Bliss Beningborough Couture
( 84 ) Chromotive
( 84 ) CONNIE in a SEC
( 84 ) Dernier Cri
( 84 ) Divas
( 84 ) DrFran Does SL
( 84 ) Experiments with Avatars
( 84 ) Gigs Shrugged
( 84 ) Hexed (Formerly Escape)
( 84 ) House Of RFyre
( 84 ) Love/Hate
( 84 ) ___*____ Information
( 84 ) nedeko
( 84 ) REZ Magazine
( 84 ) Second Sight
( 84 ) secondguru
( 84 ) Sio's Second Life
( 84 ) Strange Pixels
( 84 ) Subtle Submission©
( 84 ) The Antiquity Gazette
( 84 ) The Chilbo Road Press
( 84 ) The Connolly Telegraph
( 84 ) The DDM Collective - in the Metaverse
( 84 ) The Life of Abigail Raymaker
( 84 ) The Loft
( 84 ) The Shockwave Writer
( 84 ) Virtual Underworld
( 85 ) Jacek Lives
( 85 ) Nyte'N'Day Official Blog
( 85 ) SignpostMarv’s SL Blog
( 86 ) .: Naïve :. Officially Sweet
( 86 ) *~*HopScotch*~*
( 86 ) *UnTone Quilt*
( 86 ) +++BLUE BLOOD++++
( 86 ) ~Serenity Style~
( 86 ) AMACCI
( 86 ) Big Boob Boutique
( 86 ) Comments for Yxes Muses
( 86 ) Daltonic Gin
( 86 ) Darb Dabney's OpenSim Blog
( 86 ) EDDI HASKELL'S SECOND LIFE
( 86 ) Emery
( 86 ) Free Speerit
( 86 ) Glass Earth
( 86 ) iAlja
( 86 ) InToscana 3.0
( 86 ) Just fine
( 86 ) Kyra's Kloset
( 86 ) Livin’ La Vida Segunda
( 86 ) Lo Lo
( 86 ) Madison's Avenue
( 86 ) Mascha Boa's Fashion & Clothes Weblog
( 86 ) Nimil’s Adventures in Wonderland
( 86 ) Nouvelle
( 86 ) Pavig Lok
( 86 ) Pixel Scoop
( 86 ) Popfuzz
( 86 ) Proceedings of the Royal Society
( 86 ) Project Q/Gematria
( 86 ) Punk Shack
( 86 ) Rustica
( 86 ) Second Life 24h
( 86 ) Second Life Conceptual Creations
( 86 ) sered second life
( 86 ) SHAPES BY KIRA
( 86 ) Shep Korvin - Blog is the new Black
( 86 ) Soda - Bubbly Fashions
( 86 ) sororNishi
( 86 ) SquadVillage
( 86 ) Stone Culdesac
( 86 ) Talia Tokugawa's Blog
( 86 ) The Learning Experience
( 86 ) The Otherland Group - Blog
( 86 ) The Second Life Great Expedition
( 87 ) Woo's!
( 88 ) Lick, Dont Bite
( 88 ) Pedro Meya Marty
( 88 ) Second Life Stylewatch
( 89 ) :: Blood Royal :: @ Second Life
( 89 ) [CRAP] Fashion
( 89 ) ***Pretty Str8 Forward***
( 89 ) ~Tea Lane~
( 89 ) A2NZ : When creativity goes global
( 89 ) Adventures of Yoshikawa
( 89 ) Alphamale & Blacklace
( 89 ) AudSLife
( 89 ) Beta Technologies
( 89 ) Bluebell Fashions
( 89 ) Boris in Wonderland
( 89 ) C&S // Babyhoney Bailey
( 89 ) Calico Ingmann Creations
( 89 ) Cheen Pitney's PEACEFOOLS
( 89 ) Clio's messy room
( 89 ) Creation Engine
( 89 ) Das Creative Lab 3D
( 89 ) DEVILISH CUPCAKE
( 89 ) Digital Dragon Designs
( 89 ) Digital Eyes
( 89 ) enkythings - Virtual High Heels
( 89 ) Fashion Fruit
( 89 ) gofugyoursl
( 89 ) graceified
( 89 ) IYan Writer in virtual worlds
( 89 ) Jaycatt Nico's Ramblings
( 89 ) L o s t A n g e l . H e a d q u a r t e r s
( 89 ) Larue
( 89 ) ma vie d'avatar: ma vie sur second life
( 89 ) Machiniplex3
( 89 ) Meet the Petermans
( 89 ) Metaverse Law
( 89 ) Moggs - a second life
( 89 ) MRO SHOW ** LIVE **
( 89 ) One Girl | Two Worlds
( 89 ) Pix3lizeD Th0ughTs
( 89 ) PUDGE
( 89 ) Second Life at hand
( 89 ) Second Wave Fashion
( 89 ) SLC
( 89 ) Steamjunk
( 89 ) Strawberry Holiday's Super Special Blog
( 89 ) Streeter Scene
( 89 ) Studio Sidhe
( 89 ) Subbie Union
( 89 ) The Diary of a Caledonian Baroness
( 89 ) The Network
( 89 ) The Paradigm of Carefree Living
( 89 ) TimeForce 10
( 89 ) Tooter Claxton
( 89 ) Virtual Artists Alliance
( 89 ) Viviendo como Laila Chariot: Husmeando
( 90 ) Solange! Fashions
( 91 ) -AnaLu- by Ana Lutetia
( 91 ) !TM Hair Styles by Tami McCoy
( 91 ) *::Ume Mode::* Update blog
( 91 ) _FREEBIE______________in_______
( 91 ) Ami You’llTube ________
( 91 ) Ammon Who?
( 91 ) Angel-Dessous, Lingerie & more
( 91 ) Blog, Info, News about the Second Life (r) world & Buch
( 91 ) Digital Knickers
( 91 ) DragonFly Designs,Inc.
( 91 ) Estilo Second Life
( 91 ) I Make HUDDLES™
( 91 ) i-Anya
( 91 ) Indagatricis: Virtual World Travelers
( 91 ) Kryptonia's Weblog
( 91 ) Le Boudoir Mode d'Ambre
( 91 ) Love Soul Staff Blog
( 91 ) Mashooka Designs
( 91 ) Mela's
( 91 ) NYMPHETAMINE
( 91 ) Owly Indigo Birds SL
( 91 ) PI en Second Life
( 91 ) Posh Pride
( 91 ) Ravenwear: The Anti-Trend
( 91 ) Scripter Syndrome
( 91 ) Second News! Brasil
( 91 ) Stella's Mall on Stella Isle
( 91 ) Texas Forums
( 91 ) The Cindy Kesey Show
( 91 ) Vignette
( 91 ) Virtual Fashion Addict
( 91 ) World of IBIZARRE
( 91 ) Zagoskin Haute Couture
( 91 ) ___Second Life
( 92 ) Eloise's thoughts and fancies
( 92 ) Novamente Weblog
( 93 ) Hairapy
( 93 ) Sin Trenton
( 94 ) baker Blinker’s Weblog
( 94 ) Enjah Mysterio
( 95 ) :The Cute Institute & Crush Factory:
( 95 ) **THE CLOSET**
( 95 ) Aether Chronicles
( 95 ) Argent Eyes
( 95 ) Artesia B's Second Life World
( 95 ) BijouxOr Gold Jewelry
( 95 ) Duncans Thoughts
( 95 ) EarthStones
( 95 ) Eye Candy Designs
( 95 ) Fashion Predator
( 95 ) Freda's Fine Fashion
( 95 ) Frequency's Oscillations
( 95 ) Haven Designs
( 95 ) I'm a Gracie Girl!!
( 95 ) in forming thoughts
( 95 ) JAKES OF SECOND LIFE
( 95 ) JetDoll
( 95 ) Jolie's Boutique
( 95 ) Jon Brouchoud's Blog
( 95 ) KANADA Co.,Ltd.
( 95 ) Lost in Bananaverse
( 95 ) MAD Agency
( 95 ) Material Squirrel
( 95 ) MAU's & MEJ's
( 95 ) MoDesign
( 95 ) My Other Life - Lila Mill's Second Life Blog
( 95 ) Niki's Notes
( 95 ) October Rust
( 95 ) Ookami Ningen
( 95 ) Phantasmablogia Rock Music
( 95 ) Ribbons Learns to Swim
( 95 ) Rosie Colored Glasses
( 95 ) Serenity Mercier
( 95 ) Sex Aficionado
( 95 ) sf design
( 95 ) SLEX and the CITY
( 95 ) Sparkle-Skye
( 95 ) SubliminaLuminations
( 95 ) tara incognita
( 95 ) The Bon Mots of Phineas Matova
( 95 ) Trinity Dechou
( 95 ) Unable To Connect
( 95 ) Uncover Magazine
( 95 ) Woolly Wildcat Writings
( 96 ) Second Life >> Home
( 96 ) Second Life Games
( 96 ) simVineyard
( 96 ) Viva La Glam.
( 97 ) Metaverse Health
( 97 ) Not Your Typical Lady
( 97 ) youthtech.info
( 98 ) inRich
( 99 ) *Cailyn's* - Classic Jewelry
( 99 ) ≈ [Glow]Studio ≈
( 99 ) Bewitched Designs
( 99 ) Bring back Grimmy!
( 99 ) Chalice in Wonderland
( 99 ) Designs of Darkness
( 99 ) Discord Designs
( 99 ) Drugie _ycie Madelaine
( 99 ) First Flower
( 99 ) Goto Desoto
( 99 ) In-World and Out
( 99 ) Jana's Classic Designs
( 99 ) Low prim living with style
( 99 ) Marlys
( 99 ) Metaversatility :: Blog
( 99 ) Mirrorlabs: Skin Studio Blog
( 99 ) Oh no Crippy Oh
( 99 ) Ordinal's Cabinet of Ephemera
( 99 ) Poo Rang
( 99 ) Prissy Pixels
( 99 ) Rich Desoto
( 99 ) SurfWatch
( 99 ) TalonFaire
( 99 ) The Art of Klink
( 99 ) The Jewnas Brothers
( 99 ) Trinity Dejavu
( 99 ) Virtual World sig
( 100 ) ::ANA_Mations::
( 100 ) Anna Zwiers
( 101 ) Daikon Forge
( 101 ) Liquid Velvet Studio Designs
( 101 ) rosemary galbraith
( 101 ) Second Life News and Photos
( 102 ) Janey’s place in Second Life
( 103 ) **PANTALICA** Second Life
( 103 ) AC Store
( 103 ) Alyssa Bijoux Jewelry
( 103 ) Beats n' Pieces
( 103 ) Beq's adventures in second life
( 103 ) Burroughs Jewellery and Eyes
( 103 ) Caledon Early Bird Social Club
( 103 ) COM LAB_________
( 103 ) Confessions of an SL Fashionista
( 103 ) Dancin' Queen
( 103 ) Daneel Ariantho's laboratory
( 103 ) E.Laval Fine Clothing
( 103 ) FETISH FASHIONISTA
( 103 ) Forceme Silverspar's adventures in Second Life
( 103 ) From The Eye Of The Storm
( 103 ) Keep on Balping
( 103 ) Ki-Squared
( 103 ) Ky_ketsuki
( 103 ) Living with the me...
( 103 ) Luxurious World
( 103 ) Madame Maracas' Blaaagh
( 103 ) My Second Life
( 103 ) off-brand Furniture in Second Life
( 103 ) On A Magic Carpet Ride
( 103 ) Really Engaging Accounting
( 103 ) Silhouette :: shapes by Carissa Crimson
( 103 ) Slave Nia's Second Life
( 103 ) SLTravelChannel
( 103 ) Storm Bear World v8.0
( 103 ) The Llama's Den
( 103 ) The Second Life Adventures of a Southern Gentleman
( 103 ) Tully in Second Life
( 103 ) Virtual News
( 103 ) www.ravenlynn.com
( 103 ) ________Secondlife)______
( 104 ) Nicola Escher - Journal
( 104 ) Second Life: Low Pimpin’
( 104 ) Warm Winter Nights
( 105 ) Soliel Snook
( 106 ) : Guymon SL
( 106 ) :!:Lavish Style:!: by Katy Angel
( 106 ) ~momo~
( 106 ) Acedia Diary
( 106 ) Astrud Sands SL Playlist Blog
( 106 ) Baba Sucks
( 106 ) blog.anyMOTION
( 106 ) CACHE
( 106 ) Contest Central by Impressione
( 106 ) Diary of an avatar
( 106 ) Diva Designs
( 106 ) Elegance Hats
( 106 ) Ephemeral Creations
( 106 ) F.C. Inter SL
( 106 ) Fancyfairy's Weblog
( 106 ) Hair Solutions
( 106 ) Hasendow
( 106 ) iliveisl
( 106 ) Kefrens LOWE.
( 106 ) La Modeuse
( 106 ) LibraryTechie
( 106 ) Lilliekins
( 106 ) Lukaz Franizzi
( 106 ) mabmacmoragh
( 106 ) Machinimoo
( 106 ) Mael's Mindforge
( 106 ) MajorC - Christopher Chong
( 106 ) Mechatiki Research
( 106 ) Meow-Meow-Meow
( 106 ) Mforiero
( 106 ) monyograph ___*__
( 106 ) Moonites
( 106 ) myslhometv
( 106 ) Nada Virtual
( 106 ) New Citizens Incorporated Blog
( 106 ) Notes From SL
( 106 ) powers of creation
( 106 ) PrimForge
( 106 ) PT-CODE
( 106 ) Rave Nation Blog
( 106 ) Red Light Center ____
( 106 ) redlightcenter
( 106 ) Second Life Adventures
( 106 ) Second Life explorer
( 106 ) Second Life virtuális blogmagazin
( 106 ) secondfluid
( 106 ) SENGOKU ___ SL___________
( 106 ) Skidz Partz On Secondlife
( 106 ) SL SPIRIT
( 106 ) SLasty Fashion Picks
( 106 ) Tea Monster
( 106 ) Tinsel Silvera
( 106 ) Transmissions From TSL
( 106 ) Transylvania
( 106 ) Treasured Visions
( 106 ) Twosome
( 106 ) Views of a second life
( 106 ) Washtown Weekly
( 106 ) Worldwide Industries Store
( 106 ) www.secondlife.it
( 106 ) Your Godless Goddess
( 106 ) Zanskar's blog
( 106 ) ツキイルカノカクレガ
( 107 ) Balderdash- Bagatelle and Trinketry
( 107 ) Fashionably Dead
( 107 ) Makeda Cole
( 107 ) Mal Burns Annex
( 107 ) My Second Life is the New First
( 107 ) RaceSL
( 107 ) Really
( 107 ) Second Life Blogger
( 107 ) sezmra.com
( 107 ) SteamPunk Style
( 107 ) Through the filter of a Victorian Aesthetic
( 107 ) TorridWear
( 107 ) Truth
( 107 ) Y U L I - Virtually Chic and Sexy
( 108 ) :: Fashion Diaries ::
( 108 ) .:::: dEVOL ::::.
( 108 ) Ale’s Weblog
( 108 ) Alexia Cournoyer: Alexia in Wonderland
( 108 ) Anti Cute Clothing Second Life
( 108 ) ARF! -- Angry Ruth Fashion
( 108 ) AVANISTA
( 108 ) Avatar Planet Blog
( 108 ) Baronial Notations
( 108 ) BiancaF
( 108 ) Caliburn Susanto
( 108 ) cognitive dissonance
( 108 ) Deep Semaphore
( 108 ) DJLYSANDER.COM
( 108 ) eightbar
( 108 ) Ênfase Tecnologia
( 108 ) Essentia
( 108 ) etitsup.com
( 108 ) Feted Inner Child
( 108 ) Flower and Willow
( 108 ) Gadgets for the virtual world
( 108 ) Grace McDunnough Music in Virtual Worlds
( 108 ) Handbags & Gladrags
( 108 ) ICoN
( 108 ) Inside Second Life
( 108 ) Instructional Alchemy
( 108 ) Izzyisms
( 108 ) Larkin’s Discussions on eLearning
( 108 ) Mannon's Fashion
( 108 ) MaxUpdates
( 108 ) MIRCAT
( 108 ) Miss Cornelia Rothschild
( 108 ) Mj Stylin'
( 108 ) Mollster's
( 108 ) niciLINE
( 108 ) Nowhere but here...
( 108 ) OOpS’ FaShIoN
( 108 ) PM Blog
( 108 ) Procyon Games
( 108 ) Rezzing Beauty
( 108 ) Second Expedition
( 108 ) Second Life Bilgi Kayna_ı
( 108 ) Second Life Shrink
( 108 ) Ships of the Line
( 108 ) Sisou-Land
( 108 ) subQuark
( 108 ) The ramblings of Violet
( 108 ) Violet Voltaire
( 108 ) Writing the Sonnet
( 108 ) xackr
( 108 ) ___w______
( 109 ) Cerebrate's Contemplations
( 110 ) ..::DARE::.. Haut Couture
( 110 ) Amazonien
( 110 ) Art Galleries of Second Life
( 110 ) Brace Blog
( 110 ) celtgrrl
( 110 ) En direct de Second Life
( 110 ) Eulalie’s Affordable SL Style
( 110 ) life+death of the art virus
( 110 ) Metaverse Week in Review
( 110 ) Miriel in the Metaverse
( 110 ) Mossie Designs in SL
( 110 ) newly born
( 110 ) NPSL: Nonprofits in Second Life
( 110 ) Overheard in SL
( 110 ) Pixel Passion
( 110 ) Retail Bliss
( 110 ) Rha! Designs
( 110 ) Riven's Nest
( 110 ) Second Life et la seconde vie du Web
( 110 ) Second Life Fashion Addict
( 110 ) Second Spice
( 110 ) ShenS Blog
( 110 ) Skin Within
( 110 ) Sweetest Sin
( 110 ) Technopaideia
( 110 ) the Artists' tea party
( 110 ) The Second Age
( 110 ) TidalBlog
( 110 ) Trin's Tantrums & Treats
( 110 ) Welcome to the Train-Wreck Love Life
( 110 ) Women of Second Life

Second Life Blogs without Technorati Ranking

- Re*Myself -
-azul-
-RC- Cluster
-The.Plastik-
!_Ce_Cubic effect
!Skin love!
(Elate!)
[ pixel kitsch ]
[JE*REPUBLIC]
[PINK FUEL] Blog
[S.LOVES]
[Scarlia Inc]
* Dirty Ego *
**::Mayden.couture::**
**Ari K
**DP**yumyum
*Leafy~ :D
*SLfreebie*
/triangle\ caudron
+plus
= DeLa* =
| AXEL |
♥ Better Imagined by Abra ♥
1st Question Blog
A Second Life
A Tuppence Worth of Steam
Adam Frisby
African Diaspora in SL
Aimesi Design
Airship Misfit
Akasha's Page
Alexiaa Allen
All Dolled Up
Alphonsus’s Random Drivel
ambiant’s steampunk journey
An alter ego looks at Second Life
Ancient Homelands
AngeZanetti
AnnaMayaHouse
AOHARU
ARGRACE
Arma Virumque Cano
Arthole
Artist Mentors
ATOMIC
Audacity
AuMa
Avatar Hype
Avatars in Wonderland
AVENUE Magazine
B&T Atelier
Baking Cupcakes
beautiful things
Beauty Avatar Blog
Bedava Second Life Sitesi
Bellatrix & Ruth
Bliss Couture
BLONDE
Bluestocking
boho babe
Building Extropia
Burning Life
Byron’s Second Life
Bяค*ƒครн¡σห ƒяεε
Caledon Underground
Calla
CastleDown
Chance's SL Musings
Cheeky Girl
Chic at Phil's Place
chicada
Chikka Design sl Fashion
Chouchou
Chronicles of a Second Life
Chronicles of the AvaStar Empire
Clawtooth by Clawtooth
Clockwork heart … Pixellated soul
Closet Divers
COCO Designs
Color me, beauty; Discover me, reverie
Confessions of a Satyr
CrushRow
CsO
Cyan Blast where Cyan comes to have a Blast!
CyberTech News
Dani’s Fine Fashions
Daniel Voyager’s Blog
DarkerSide
DE Designs Blog
Debs Regent talks about...
Diva Blogs SL
Doppelganger Inc
Edward's Blog O' Freebies
Einstein: Phoenix Rising, Chloë, & Nardcotix
Eleanor Anderton
Eloquent Fashion
Emerald\
Eshi Otawara
EtCetera Furniture ETC.
ETD | Elika Tiramisu Designs
Event Calendar
Ex-Pose
Exploitation Updates!
Extropia
Farah’s Fashion Expression
Fashion 360°
Fashion Freebies for Men
Fashion slaves in Second Life
Feel Beautiful
FG Underground
Figure 8
Finishing Touches
Flavor! Designs
Focus Fashion Agency
Free Finds for Men
FREE SECOND
Free SL!
Freebie Jeebies
Frenzy Shoppers
From within Stokely’s closet…
Fun & Fashion
Galaxy
Get dirty with Mavi
Glamourazzi Fashion
Good Deals, Bargains and Sales in Second Life®
GOP Cafe in SL®
Gregleens Merlin
Grid Works
Gypsy Soul
heartattack & vine
Helix Rehula
Hirven päiväkirja
Hourglass Shapes
House of Beningborough
I have nothing to wear!
I have nothing to wear! Oh do I?
I started the joke...
Illuminati Updates
In Cold Blood
Ina Infinity
INDI Designs
Infinity Skin Blog
Insatiable Fashions
Integral SL
irkmade design
iWear
Just a Girl’s Blog
Just Joonie
kaleidoscope
Katat0nik
Kevin Oto’s Blog
Knowledge of the Gnomes
KONA Radio
Kookie
Kotalicious
L’Allegro
La Musicienne
Land of Illusion 太虚幻境
LaRosa
Le Para Club; para et base jump sur Second Life
Life 2.0 - blog sur les mondes de Second Life et d'ailleurs
Life on the [kD] list.
Lifestyles of the Broke and Notorious
Limousine Drive
Linka's Fashion
Living High and FREE in SL
Look what the cat brought
Lookr.co.uk | Reach Out and Touch.
Loser Designs Weblog
love & fashion
LOVE OVERFLOWS
Luces,Camaras,SL™Relaciones
Lucky Kitty Crew
Lux's Fashion
Lya
M o m M o n
m.fox
Madcow’s Madhouse of Building
Maduixa & Mandarina
MAIRUNO
manifest shapes
Margaux Dufaux's Freebie Fashionista
Marianne Dover « Because I like it!
MC Itano’s / Marcel Morales Homepage
Me myself and SL
Melty Britches
Meta.Live.Nu
MIMIS CHOICE
MODA Fashion SL
Murakami Steamworks
Musings By Happenstance
Must … Write … Something
My Moveable Feast
My Second Life on the D-list
Mysterious Miss Merlot
n0nSLensical !!
Namiko Surf Co. | surf second life. change real life.
Natasha's Second life
Newcomer's Hell Guide
Niji
Niqotine Poses
Nocturne Modelling Agency
Not Another Fashion Blog!
Of Deer & Dogs
oh my ohmai
OLELA ALERT!!!
OMFG….Clothes!
Omg! Not Another SL Blog!?
Ommik
One More
Ordinal Malaprop
Ornamental Life Shop
Otaku Designs
ou la la mode
Penny Dreadful Arcade
Peregrine Salon
Picture Therapy
Pididdleshop’s Blog
Pink Narcissus
Pink Outfitters - Behind the Scenes
Pixel Dust
Planet OpenSim
Polly Jean
Pop Art Lab
Posh Totty
Post-Apocalyptic Press
Pretty Little Things
Prinny's Prims
Quirky Quaintly
Reflections
reituki's Xanga Site
Relay For Life SL
Relentless Unknown
Rez And Tell
RezLibris - The Magazine for Librarians
RezMagazine
Right click… Wear
Rob Moonites
Rockit
ROLE OPTIC
RUNWAY SL: Where Fashion Begins in Second Life
Sam’s Secret Boutique
SANNOMIYA Region Fashion Express
savemeoh.tk
Second Homes
Second Life Aviation
Second Life Sailing Federation
Second Life, First Hand.
Second Spain - España en Second Life® - Inicio
secondlife - search and rescue
Secondlife Blogs
secondlifedissertation
SecondLifeIT
SEmotion Studio
Serendipity Waits
Serene Sensations by Soraya
Seven Ultra Lounge
Sex in the 2nd City
SG Fashion
Sh*t Happens
Shop With Takeshi
Skandaloose Fashion Blog
SkinTight
SL Good deals
SL Reports
SL Trip Tips
SL-à-Porter
SLCN | Virtual Television for Virtual Worlds
SLDiscovery - Home
SLstyle
SLtransfusion
Smiley’s Blog
So Many Styles
Softpaw's Fae Kitty Design
Sophtopia
Sparkle Village
Spork Designs
sprawl
Staged Skin and Fashion
Stagpoint
Steampunk Travelogue
Stella Stapleton’s Blog
Storin
Striking Poses
Strut Your Stuff
Styles of edo
Summer’s Way
Sweet Sweet Days
sweeter than candy blog
Sweetest Good-Bye
Sydd Sinister
Tact Arida
Tallie's Tales
Teen Grid Action Committee
Tempietto
Tentacolor
The Art Of Klink
The ArtWorld Market Report
THE BARGAIN BIN
THE BIG ORANGE ONE.
the boditorium
The Body Politik
The Cake is a Lie
The Clever Zebra Blog
The Confessions of a Toast Burner Disciple
The Freebie Telegraph
The Golden Fleece Jewelry
The Hallelujahs
The Metaverse Messenger
The Multiverse According to Ben
The Obscene
The Old Turnip
The Poultry Report
The Road to Deadwood
The SL Enquirer
The Steelhead Sentinel
The Style File
The Third Pea
The Twisted Perspective
The Young and The Rezless: Real Stories From Second Life™
Thimbles
This Doll Has Handbook
Threads - Kith’s Fashion and Photos
Through the Broken Looking Glass
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Timeless Journeys
Tiyuk's Second Life Adventures
Tousled
Travels with Chip
TreasureCOVE
Turtlepop
Two Lives To Live
uncle wiggily
Untamed: A Second Life Fashion Blog
Villemo`s 2nd world
VirtualJournalism.org - Reporting in Virtual Spaces
Vitage
Viviane’s Fashion Blog
Voices in the Machine
Walking the Catwalk
What Is This Crap?
What the Fug?
What the Mouse Saw
Whitenoise
Wig Wam Bam
Wizzy’s Workshop
Wolfie's World
World of SL
WSLN
Z…complete
Zak Claxton
Zanzo - The Blog!
Zinnemann
紅
黒椿の暗紅色のお話

Here are the final additions as suggested by readers:

Dressing in Pixels
el opinador compulsivo
ENCHANT3D.COM
F.A.T.-DESIGNZ
GERMAN SL STYLE
Leaves from the Livingtree
Philotic Energy
Pout... SL Fashion
SecondRussia
Second Chick
Sl Fashion - GERMAN SL STYLE
Thaddy’s Blog

Who's The Biggest? Redux

2009-03-20T20:02:00.000-07:00

[UPDATE 2] After publication of this list, I have received numerous (100+) requests for inclusion, as well as pointers several excellent blogroll and feed sources. Thanks to everyone for your feedback! It's going to be a lot of work, but some helpers and I are attempting to redo this list once again to include the missing and apply some suggested refinements. Stay tuned for the update.

[UPDATE] Due to popular demand, I've fixed up the list a bit by adding in data for missing blogs that have been requested in the comments. Unfortunately, approximately half of the suggestions have no Technorati data, so I was unable to slot them in. I have also fixed up a couple of ranking errors.

Last week I published a first attempt at a comprehensive list of Second Life-related blogs. Well, it wasn’t as accurate as it could have been, as several readers suggested blogs that were not included, and some blogs were, um, kinda dead. So I promised to make a better list and republish.

I should not have made that promise.

Why? Well, after hours and hours of programming, manually checking blogs, data cleansing, sorting, rechecking and formatting, three things have occurred:

I have a greatly improved list of blogs, sorted by Technorati rank.
I understand Regular Expressions.
I am cross-eyed.

Eye problems aside, the list is much better, although I still expect there to be some inaccuracies remaining. Here’s what I did:

Included additional sources of blogs from more feed lists, known missing items and of course reader suggestions
Manually checked every one (yes, all 1800+ of them) briefly to ensure that they still exist, contain SL-related content and are active
Removed inactive blogs - those being blogs that have not published in the previous six months (your definition of inactive might be more aggressive than mine, but I had to choose something.) While I didn’t keep track, I must have tossed out over 1,000 dead blogs. It seems that most of the published long lists of SL blogs are riddled with dead entries
Re-ran the Technorati scan to obtain current rankings
Fixed the Technorati rankings as best I could by hand
Sorted and formatted the list of 572 surviving blogs. And I removed the troublesome Technorati rank.

Wait a moment! “Fixed the rankings?” Yep, it turns out that the Technorati API that provides the rankings is notoriously inconsistent. It seems to give bad results for one out of every ten blogs. I had to manually inspect and correct many (over 100) blogs that appeared to be out of order. In the end I removed the rank from the list as it varies from day to day and cannot be trusted. Thanks a lot, Technorati! Nevertheless, I believe the rankings to be reasonably close to reality.

In spite of the many, many hours I’ve spent creating this list, I am certain there are more errors hidden in the list, and several missing blogs. If you don’t see your blog listed, I either missed it or more likely Technorati simply doesn’t return any results for that specific blog. My apologies in advance to anyone I’ve missed!

One more thing: blogs change URLs or names, cease publication, start up and disappear all the time, so I am afraid this list will be obsolete by next week. Sorry, guys!

And now, the definitive ranked list of active Second Life blogs:

# 1 Massively
# 2 Official Second Life Blog
# 3 iheartsl.com Second Life's largest community blog
# 4 New World Notes
# 5 VintFalken.com
# 6 Torley Lives
# 7 Not Possible IRL
# 8 Fabulously Free in SL
# 9 Free*Style
# 10 Ana Lutetia inSL
# 11 Dusan Writer's Metaverse
# 12 Rezzable
# 13 Prokofy Neva
# 14 Second Style Fashionista
# 15 Shopping Cart Disco
# 16 Gwyn's Home
# 17 UgoTrade
# 18 Kzero
# 19 SL iReports: Your news of a virtual world - Blogs from CNN.com
# 20 Achariya.net
# 21 Virtually Blind | Virtual Law
# 22 Alphaville Herald
# 23 The Click Heard Round the World
# 24 What Is This Crap?
# 25 Fashion Victim
# 26 Slmen
# 27 The Metaverse Journal - Australia
# 28 Mermaid Diaries: Natalia Zelmanov's Second Life Adventures
# 29 Aviatrix :: Zoe Connolly
# 30 El Opinador Compulsivo
# 31 Living in the Metaverse
# 32 Second Effects
# 33 The Electric Sheep Company: Blogs
# 34 The ARCH
# 35 Corduroy
# 36 Men's Second Style
# 37 DIP's Dispatches from the Imagination Age
# 38 It's Only Fashion
# 39 maitreya
# 40 Your2ndPlace - Comments
# 41 Closet Crisis
# 42 casa del shai
# 43 CodeBastardRedgrave.Com
# 44 Ewing Fashion Agency
# 45 Botgirl's Second Life Diary
# 46 Ch'know?
# 47 Are we not men?
# 48 Alliance Virtual Library
# 49 Verbal Stew
# 50 Hibernia on the Skids
# 51 Designing Nicky Ree
# 52 3pointD.com
# 53 Prim Perfect
# 54 The Heliograph
# 55 FUTURE-MAKING SERIOUS GAMES
# 56 Geta
# 57 Be Less Stupid!
# 58 Tuli's blog
# 59 Girl Wonder Speaks...about Second Life
# 60 Soign
# 61 Second Arts
# 62 Ivalde`s Heim
# 63 Kitty Witchin
# 64 SL Fashion Notes
# 65 SL Fashion Police
# 66 Fleur Skins
# 67 'Kota's Knickers
# 68 :: Dutch Touch :: Outlet - Second Life
# 69 M is for Myg
# 70 caLLie cLine
# 71 An Engine Fit For My Proceeding
# 72 Ophelia Drowns
# 73 Second Stindberg
# 74 CeN's Two Cents
# 75 My SLife on the D List
# 76 GION PROJECT
# 77 Common|Sensible
# 78 Canimal.
# 79 APLINK - itsReal
# 80 artilleri
# 81 Uma's Style Diary
# 82 MindBlizzard blog
# 83 Clyde
# 84 The News from BardHaven
# 85 Ryker Beck dot COM
# 86 Reading Radar
# 87 Kyoot
# 88 Ambling in Second Life
# 89 chignon - a Virtual Style Blog
# 90 Fashion Consolidated
# 91 Second Life of Dreams
# 92 Phasing Grace | Social Architecture and Virtual Worlds
# 93 SL Fashion Avengers
# 94 More Than Meets the Eye
# 95 SLOG
# 96 -Ana Lutetia-
# 97 GoSpeed Racer a Second Life Avatar
# 98 Brooklyn is Watching
# 99 GoSpeed Racer a Second Life Avatar
# 100 Through my eyes..
# 101 ~silentsparrow~
# 102 Long Awkward Pose
# 103 Around the Grid
# 104 Half Arsed
# 105 Tenth Life
# 106 SL FASHION DIVA
# 107 Dedric Mauriac
# 108 Philotic Energy
# 109 Fashion Labyrinth
# 110 Another blog!
# 111 Digital Image
# 112 Carissa's Closet
# 113 Discursos do Outro Mundo
# 114 Dwell On It
# 115 Eladrienne's Other Life!
# 116 Grid Expectations
# 117 Nexeus Fatale
# 118 Aspire Model Management
# 119 Mui Mukerji
# 120 Draconic Kiss
# 121 r u n w a y + k i d z
# 122 The Realm of the Red Rose
# 123 SiniStyle Decapitated
# 124 cognitive dissonance
# 125 My Second Closet
# 126 Radio Riel
# 127 Ingmann Design Group
# 128 GuRL 6
# 129 *ICING* Second Life Vintage inspired Fashions by Miko Omegamu
# 130 Koreshan Pointe
# 131 SugarCube;Memoirs of Second Life
# 132 Veyron's Adventures in Second Life
# 133 Looker Lumet
# 134 { Zaara }
# 135 SLimply the Best
# 136 JUICYBOMB | All the Juiciest in Second Life!
# 137 A Stroll Through Caledon
# 138 All Ears in Second Life
# 139 Alysha's Second Life
# 140 Architecture +
# 141 Lucas Lameth (luc) Fashion Jewelry
# 142 On Your Toes
# 143 starley.com
# 144 MONTA
# 145 PERSONA's Blog
# 146 Business Communicators of Second Life
# 147 adam n eve
# 148 Fallobst
# 149 *AnnaH*
# 150 LaBicyclette
# 151 Muse Fine Jewelry
# 152 Ravishal Ramblings
# 153 bijouaholic
# 154 Cylindrian's Grace Notes
# 155 CronoCloud Creeggan, Virtual Fashionista
# 156 Rheta
# 157 Studio Wikitecture: Opening Architecture
# 158 SLShop-a-holic
# 159 Songs from The Nightingale
# 160 ~flirt~
# 161 Pandora's box
# 162 Less Than 3
# 163 Whole Lotta Rosie!
# 164 Rebel Hope Designs, Inc.
# 165 My Digital Double
# 166 She's So Unusual
# 167 セカンドな日常 - livedoor Blog（ブログ）
# 168 SySy's
# 169 Tres Blah
# 170 UberNoggin
# 171 What *IS* Willis Talking About?
# 172 Timothy's Second Life Experience
# 173 Muism
# 174 The Minor Mishaps and Adventures of Skusting Dagger
# 175 DARK EDEN PLAZA
# 176 Mischief
# 177 Second Tense
# 178 Royal Blue
# 179 Shoshana's Musings
# 180 Punch Drunk
# 181 What's New ?
# 182 Red-Headed Step-Child
# 183 Just me, dinee
# 184 Alienbear Jewelry Design
# 185 MG fashion
# 186 Exiled in SL
# 187 Mimikri hot couture
# 188 Chey's Second Life Blog
# 189 Metaversal Arts
# 190 Unique Needs!
# 191 Aenea's Second Life
# 192 Harajuku Box
# 193 Refuge
# 194 Hey Girlfriend
# 195 BEWITCHED HAIR
# 196 Virtual Silks and Fantasy Review
# 197 All Things Tiessa
# 198 Fashionality
# 199 How's your world?
# 200 PixelDolls...
# 201 Second Life Male Style and Fashion
# 202 Tori's Blog
# 203 Wrath Paine
# 204 The Journal of Dr. Darien Mason
# 205 House of Nyla
# 206 Sascha's Designs - Elegant Ballroom Gowns
# 207 Diversity Hair
# 208 Lady Adventuress
# 209 Loki's musings on first and second life
# 210 amiko*amikino
# 211 Evans Avenue Exit
# 212 The Winged Girl Blog
# 213 ShopArmidi.com
# 214 Tao's Thoughts on Second Life
# 215 glamourazzi
# 216 The New Observer
# 217 Dot in Second Life
# 218 GRIDSTYLE.COM
# 219 My Virtual World
# 220 Content Confessional
# 221 -Analise-
# 222 Best of Both Worlds
# 223 Poid Mahovlich
# 224 Bitter Thorns Blog
# 225 First Impressions
# 226 KessKreations
# 227 Berry's Blog
# 228 Designing Insanity
# 229 Truth
# 230 Virtually Dressed
# 231 Diamonds and Rust Podcast
# 232 Honour's Post Menopausal View
# 233 Alienbear Gupte Virtual Life
# 234 *AC Aphrodite Creations*
# 235 Inspired - Kawaii Fashion in Second Life
# 236 It's A Scaggs Life!
# 237 Sin Trenton
# 238 Ramblings of a Red Headed Kitten
# 239 Second Life: Music, DJs, Nightlife, Art and Creativity
# 240 SN@TCH
# 241 Vanity Universe
# 242 Virtual Neko in Second Life
# 243 Willowing Wisps
# 244 iCandy
# 245 SLink
# 246 STELLAR by Lexi Morgan
# 247 The Rummage Box
# 248 The Connolly Telegraph
# 249 A Second Look
# 250 Bliss Beningborough Couture
# 251 Experiments with Avatars
# 252 Avenue Models
# 253 avocatio virtualis
# 254 #NAME?
# 255 PXL Creations
# 256 Ambergris Deadly Fashions
# 257 Imperial Elegance
# 258 Oh, hush!
# 259 Passionate Neko Dreams
# 260 ArtsPlace SL
# 261 Charity Dogsbody's Booke of Sensible Advice
# 262 CONNIE in a SEC
# 263 secondguru
# 264 The Life of Abigail Raymaker
# 265 Fallobst
# 266 Zippora's life
# 267 Nyte'N'Day Official Blog
# 268 The ramblings of Violet
# 269 The Winter Market
# 270 Y Me | digitally encoded genetic machismo
# 271 YABU SIM
# 272 Proceedings of the Royal Society
# 273 Free Speerit
# 274 Genevieve Lutetia
# 275 Nimil
# 276 Second Wave Fashion
# 277 Punk Shack
# 278 La Sylphide
# 279 Emery
# 280 Phantom's Republic
# 281 Second Life Shopping Sherpa
# 282 Beth's Second Life
# 283 Decoy
# 284 Lo Lo
# 285 overcooked
# 286 Popfuzz
# 287 Shep Korvin - Blog is the new Black
# 288 everyday second life
# 289 Miss Cornelia Rothschild
# 290 Moonshine Clothing
# 291 The Lady and The Tramp
# 292 Woo's!
# 293 Lick, Don't Bite
# 294 CREAMSHOP
# 295 LF Fashions
# 296 Pedro Meya Marty - Agentur f
# 297 Second Life Stylewatch
# 298 The Dressing Up Box
# 299 Vitamin Ci
# 300 Crimson Flow
# 301 Omega Point | A blog by Catherine Winters
# 302 Sunn's World
# 303 Moggs - a second life
# 304 Glamorpuss
# 305 Blunt Fashion Sense
# 306 L o s t A n g e l . H e a d q u a r t e r s
# 307 ma vie d'avatar: ma vie sur second life
# 308 SLC
# 309 Novocaine
# 310 Beta Technologies
# 311 IYan Writer in virtual worlds
# 312 Little Gems from My Second Life
# 313 ::eLDee::
# 314 Curious Kitties Island Update Blog
# 315 LaynieWear
# 316 ::ANA_Mations::
# 317 DEVILISH CUPCAKE
# 318 Digital Dragon Designs
# 319 Digital Eyes
# 320 imagendivine.com
# 321 Kathar.in
# 322 Meet the Petermans
# 323 Pix3lizeD Th0ughTs
# 324 The Diary of a Caledonian Baroness
# 325 500 Year Diary
# 326 Accessories by Eolande
# 327 Honey Wendt in Second Life
# 328 Ingenue
# 329 Kabalyero
# 330 Solange! Fashions
# 331 A Piece of Candy
# 332 DragonFly Designs, Inc.
# 333 Alphamale
# 334 Kryptonia's Weblog
# 335 Ai Baroque on Wordpress
# 336 DrFran Does SL
# 337 I Make HUDDLES
# 338 The Fashionable Heart
# 339 Eyana Yohkoh's Blog
# 340 Metaverse Law
# 341 Sensual Designs
# 342 Digital Knickers
# 343 Mela's
# 344 Posh Pride
# 345 Ravenwear: The Anti-Trend
# 346 Scripter Syndrome
# 347 Sio's Second Life
# 348 The Cindy Kesey Show
# 349 Eloise's thoughts and fancies
# 350 Second Life's a Drag!
# 351 The Virtual Version
# 352 Trudeau Classic Sailing Yachts
# 353 Winter Moon
# 354 Eclipse
# 355 Hairapy
# 356 theshadow's Alternative Second Life Fashions
# 357 VictoriaV Fashion
# 358 Vidal's Dolly Realm
# 359 World of IBIZARRE
# 360 Aether Chronicles
# 361 EarthStones
# 362 DollyRock: Second Life Clothes
# 363 I'm a Gracie Girl!!
# 364 Freda's Fine Fashion Magix
# 365 :The Cute Institute
# 366 The Bon Mots of Phineas Matova
# 367 BijouxOr Gold Jewelry
# 368 =^.^= Neko Gear =^.^=
# 369 The Excellent Second Life of Chartreuse Muni
# 370 [CRAP] Fashion
# 371 Awesome Designs
# 372 Catt's Creations
# 373 Gwendolyn Cassini Creations and Scripts 'r Us
# 374 Illuminati Designs Updates
# 375 Just fine
# 376 MAU's
# 377 Niki's Notes
# 378 Rustica
# 379 SubliminaLuminations
# 380 Argent Eyes
# 381 CTK
# 382 Fashion Predator
# 383 Frequency's Oscillations
# 384 Jolie's Boutique
# 385 Material Squirrel
# 386 Ookami Ningen
# 387 Ribbons Learns to Swim
# 388 Serenity Mercier
# 389 comme il faut - by Moire Georgette - virtual fashion
# 390 Hexed (Formerly Escape)
# 391 Second Life - Notizie e Commenti su Second Life
# 392 Second Life Games
# 393 Subtle Submission
# 394 The Antiquity Gazette
# 395 The Chilbo Road Press
# 396 Viva La Glam.
# 397 Comments for Yxes Muses
# 398 Glass Earth
# 399 Izzyisms
# 400 Livin
# 401 Not Your Typical Lady
# 402 Project Q/Gematria
# 403 SinSkins
# 404 SlCoolMag
# 405 Soda - Bubbly Fashions
# 406 Cala - Transgender in Second Life
# 407 2nd Lifer
# 408 Mascha Boa's Fashion
# 409 Prissy Pixels
# 410 Reaction - a Surfers Revolution
# 411 *~*HopScotch*~*
# 412 Bewitched Designs
# 413 Cailyn's - Classic Jewelry
# 414 Dings Digital's Diary
# 415 First Flower
# 416 good deeds of a sailor to be
# 417 JetDoll
# 418 Kyra's Kloset
# 419 Mashooka Designs
# 420 pixie dust and tantrums...
# 421 Rich Desoto
# 422 Second Life at hand
# 423 Second Mirage
# 424 Selling in Secondlife
# 425 Calico Ingmann Creations
# 426 enkythings - Virtual High Heels
# 427 Larue
# 428 Machinations of an Evil Tiny Kitty
# 429 Newbe's Steam Powered Blog
# 430 Steamjunk
# 431 Studio Sidhe
# 432 Taunt
# 433 TimeForce 10
# 434 Tuli's Favorites
# 435 !TM Hair Styles by Tami McCoy
# 436 Daikon Forge
# 437 Liquid Velvet Studio Designs
# 438 rosemary galbraith
# 439 Second Life Conceptual Creations
# 440 The Velvet Room
# 441 Torrid Tales of a Compulsive Swooner
# 442 AMACCI
# 443 FETISH FASHIONISTA
# 444 Beq's adventures in second life
# 445 Fortunate Productions
# 446 A2NZ : When creativity goes global
# 447 deadaswe's weblog
# 448 Interests of Isolde Flamand
# 449 Vignette
# 450 ~Serenity Style~
# 451 Beats n' Pieces
# 452 Burroughs Jewellery and Eyes
# 453 Caledon Early Bird Social Club
# 454 Dreambits
# 455 E.Laval Fine Clothing
# 456 Fetch Alternative Blog
# 457 Forceme Silverspar's adventures in Second Life
# 458 House Of RFyre
# 459 INDIRA BEKKERS - Second Life Fashion
# 460 Samantha Speaks
# 461 sf design - avatar clothing by swaffette Firefly
# 462 **THE CLOSET**
# 463 Explorations of the White Foxx
# 464 Gideon Television Superstar
# 465 Iron Raptor
# 466 Nicola Escher - Journal
# 467 Sparkle-Skye
# 468 Tamed Frustration
# 469 The Family Jewels
# 470 Virtual World Business.com
# 471 Warm Winter Nights
# 472 Woolly Wildcat Writings
# 473 Angie Mornington
# 474 For All Your Household Needs
# 475 From the Flames
# 476 Jana's Classic Designs
# 477 Make Money Online With Richard Palace
# 478 Marion in Wonderland
# 479 Mirrorlabs: Skin Studio Blog
# 480 Quarter Life Crisis
# 481 Soliel Snook
# 482 The Llama's Den
# 483 The Second Life Great Expedition
# 484 Veronique's Second Life
# 485 Wild Thing - Male Clothing
# 486 Meta.Live.Nu
# 487 Skidz Partz On Secondlife
# 488 Contest Central by Impressione
# 489 powers of creation
# 490 Hair Solutions
# 491 MRO SHOW ** LIVE **
# 492 secondfluid
# 493 :!:Lavish Style:!: by Katy Angel
# 494 [Poptart]
# 495 Acedia Diary
# 496 Asri Falcone Originals
# 497 Derek
# 498 Diary of an avatar
# 499 Elegance Hats
# 500 Goto Desoto
# 501 LDinSTL says:
# 502 Mael's Mindforge
# 503 Oh no Crippy Oh
# 504 Ordinal's Cabinet of Ephemera
# 505 Rave Nation Blog
# 506 .: Na
# 507 ~KorvinKreations~
# 508 A NEKO's LIFE in SL
# 509 AudSLife
# 510 Balderdash- Bagatelle and Trinketry
# 511 Baronial Notations
# 512 Diva Designs
# 513 Eye Candy Designs
# 514 Fae Designs
# 515 Fashionably Dead
# 516 From The Eye Of The Storm
# 517 Frontier's Horizon
# 518 Fuel
# 519 Ki-Squared
# 520 Makeda Cole
# 521 Mal Burns Annex
# 522 Moriash Moreau: My Second Life
# 523 My Second Life is the New First
# 524 Paw Prints
# 525 RaceSL
# 526 sezmra.com
# 527 Something Different
# 528 SYD: Style Your Destiny
# 529 Taffy Apple Designs
# 530 Tea Monster
# 531 Through the filter of a Victorian Aesthetic
# 532 TorridWear
# 533 trash palace - electronic music club
# 534 Treasured Visions
# 535 Tully in Second Life
# 536 Tweaktocracy
# 537 Violet Voltaire
# 538 Wildefire Walcott's Mistressy Musings
# 539 Your Godless Goddess
# 540 Anti Cute Clothing Second Life
# 541 BiancaF
# 542 Brigid Ashwood Fantasy Artist
# 543 Caliburn Susanto
# 544 Essentia
# 545 Handbags
# 546 Mannon's Fashion
# 547 Mircat
# 548 Mollster's
# 549 OOpS
# 550 Random Acts of Style
# 551 Return to Secondlife
# 552 Ships of the Line
# 553 Khaos Klub Information Website
# 554 Blog of House of Lu; Paper Couture
# 555 Caliente Express
# 556 celtgrrl
# 557 Ephemeral Creations
# 558 Flower and Willow
# 559 ICoN
# 560 Inside Second Life
# 561 Life by Proxy
# 562 Made for No Reason
# 563 Metaverse Week in Review
# 564 Miriel in the Metaverse
# 565 newly born
# 566 NPSL: Nonprofits in Second Life
# 567 Riven's Nest
# 568 Savoir Hair
# 569 Second Life Blogosphere
# 570 Second Life Fashion Addict
# 571 Second Spice
# 572 ShenS Blog
# 573 Skin Within
# 574 Stella's Mall on Stella Isle
# 575 Sweetest Sin
# 576 Technopaideia
# 577 The Agile Mind
# 578 the Artists' tea party
# 579 The Source of Power
# 580 Trin's Tantrums
# 581 Voodoo Style
# 582 Welcome to the Train-Wreck Love Life
# 583 Women of Second Life
# 584 Yoshino's Second life blog
# 585 Zagoskin Haute Couture

AvaModo Launches

2009-03-14T17:00:00.000-07:00

I’m always up for an experiment, particularly a business experiment. I’ve been hinting recently at starting up a new business venture, and today we’re launching it. It’s quite different from my other operation, the Electric Pixels Particle Shop.

The new venture is called AvaModo, and it’s business is to help new residents overcome the difficulties of virtual appearance. AvaModo will provide top-class white glove treatment through the entire process.

In chat rooms all communication is done via text, and the only aspect that distinguishes one is their style of writing and typing. But virtual reality is a different form of communication, where it’s more than just type. Your appearance is also very important.

Why? Like real life, feelings are stirred by the visual appearance of an avatar. If the avatar is of the opposite gender, you may feel and act a bit differently, for example. If the avatar is a common, default model, you may feel the personality behind it is new and doesn’t really know much about Second Life – and you automatically treat them a little bit differently without even noticing it.

New residents often arrive in the virtual world and mistakenly assume the protocols are the same as the chat rooms they are familiar with. But they’re quite wrong, and don’t realize the effects of their default avatar until much later. They could be taken less seriously than more carefully prepared avatars.

Well-composed avatars do attract attention, but preparing one is actually a difficult and time consuming task, particularly if you are a new resident that doesn’t yet know what to buy and how to arrange items. I know many readers of this blog spend considerable time working on their appearance, but those readers already know how to do this. Instead, AvaModo focuses on new residents who need a quick start to their virtual appearance.

What happens with new residents who don’t know what to do? Two possibilities: they proceed with a default appearance and unknowingly suffer silent discrimination, or they might happen to have a knowledgeable friend who can painstakingly take them through the detailed process of developing a unique and effective avatar.

But now there’s a third way: AvaModo. Our staff includes avatars with considerable experience doing just that: creating unique avatars in record time. European residents will work with Amber DeCuir, while Western Hemisphere activities will be handled by my business partner, Haley Salomon. We’ll conduct a personalized assessment to determine your precise needs, and then prepare a unique and coordinated avatar design including shape, skin, hair, animation and even a starter wardrobe to enable you to project the exact personality you want.

AvaModo is not for everyone; it’s designed for new residents who need a quick start, for example if they are to attend an important business meeting or interview in Second Life and they are not sufficiently experienced to create an appropriate avatar on their own. Even more elderly avatars could use AvaModo if they just can’t manage to make themselves look good.

If you are in need of a complete make over, or know someone who does, please send them directly to AvaModo!

Who’s The Biggest?

2009-03-11T20:11:00.000-07:00

I spend a lot of time blogging about Second Life, as do many others. How many others? No one knows for sure, but it’s at least many hundreds of avatars. While I’ve gained much personal satisfaction from writing posts and participating in the SL blogging community, I always wondered which blogs were the most popular.

It’s a difficult question to answer, because measurement of “popular” can mean many things. It could be the number of feed subscribers, total pageviews, average pageviews, number of comments, number of links to the blog or any other conceivable statistic. In fact, blog ranking is a very difficult science. So I did what anyone faced with a tricky problem should do.

I let someone else figure it out for me.

That’s right, the “someone else” in this case is Technorati, a web service that tracks and searches blogs in real time. Technorati tracks tens of millions of blogs worldwide and keeps a database of statistics, including their own definition of “rank”. It’s not exactly clear how they specifically calculate rank, but evidently it involves a combination of statistics. Even better, they expose their database to the public via a programmatic web interface (API). That was enough to inspire me further.

I needed only to write a program to send a list of SL-oriented website URLs to the Technorati API and it would return me all the available statistics! Writing the program (in PHP, as it turned out) was relatively straightforward, but where could I find an extensive list of Second Life blogs? I surely did not want to make a list like that myself.

There was only one place to look: Second Life Blogger’s NING site, where administrator Zoe Connolly has prepared what is probably the most authoritative list. You can tell by its tagline:

“Behold!...The World’s Largest Blogroll of Second Life Links”.

The blogroll was not quite what I wanted, however. It contained links to flickr pages, Google groups and other non-blogs. Some of the listed blogs were physically gone, and others merely had an empty page left, saying this blog is “closed”. Some had no visible SL content at all, and a few had no current postings – for more than two years! I made an executive decision and took these out. But I added a few notable blogs that for some unexplainable reason were not included on the list.

Finally, armed with a decent list of blogs, I fed it into the PHP program and collected the results. After sorting and more data cleansing than I’d care to admit, I arrived at the following ranked list of Second Life blogs, perhaps the only one in existence.

Some observations:

The rank is out of ALL blogs tracked by Technorati worldwide. So, for example, if the rank is 100,000th, that means there are 99,999 other blogs in the world that Technorati believes are more popular. Being in the top 50 or even 10,000 is quite an achievement.
The #1 ranked SL blog, Massively, has significant Second Life content written almost daily by Tateru Nino, but is in reality a blog dedicated to all MMO’s, Second Life being only a portion of their content. That’s why Massively is ranked so highly.
Second Life’s official blog is ranked #2, which makes sense as it is an obvious focal point for many avatars.
The #3 SL blog, New World Notes, written by Hamlet Au, is the highest ranked “independent” blog dedicated to Second Life.
Vint Falken’s #4 ranked SL blog is unique in that it is the highest ranked non-commercial independent publication. Perhaps Vint should consider some advertising?
I cleaned the list as best as time permitted; there are no doubt more errors in the list, such as incorrect blog names, probably a few more dead blogs and other miscues. There are over 500 blogs, give me a break, already!
Towards the bottom of the list you’ll notice the Technorati rank repeats in blocks. I suspect the Technorati ranking formula uses certain raw statistics, and these blogs likely have identical underlying statistics. I put them in URL alphabetical order.
A very few blogs do not seem to have a Technorati rating, including the likely popular Metaversally Speaking. I am not sure why this occurs, and I obviously could not include them.
Is this list accurate? Maybe, maybe not. But it’s probably somewhat close to reality, because the top blogs seem to make sense.

Finally, as this is a first attempt at ranking, I’d appreciate any suggestions to improve the list. If I’ve missed a blog, please add it in the comments and I’ll include it in the list next time. If there’s a dead blog in there, let me know about it. And remember, I didn't calculate the rank - Technorati did. My apologies in advance to anyone whose blog I’ve missed or otherwise screwed up!

[UPDATE] Due to many suggestions, and a deeper inspection of the list, I'll be producing an improved version next week sometime. A significant portion of the list are actually dead blogs, in spite of them having high ranks from Technorati due to other blogs still pointing at them. Meanwhile, many suggestions on missing blogs have been received and will be incorporated.

And now, behold the SL Blogosphere, ranked:

SL Blog Rank (Technorati Rank)

1 ( 37 ) Massively

2 ( 4358 ) Official Second Life Blog

3 ( 7219 ) New World Notes

4 ( 21266 ) VintFalken.com

5 ( 24067 ) Torley Lives

6 ( 45260 ) Dusan Writer's Metaverse

7 ( 47712 ) Second Thoughts

8 ( 49117 ) Shopping Cart Disco

9 ( 54261 ) Gwyn's Home

10 ( 56490 ) SL iReports: Your news of a virtual world - Blogs from CNN.com

11 ( 56490 ) Kzero

12 ( 61075 ) Virtually Blind | Virtual Law

13 ( 62074 ) Linden Lifestyles

14 ( 71018 ) The Click Heard Round the World

15 ( 74992 ) What Is This Crap?

16 ( 76161 ) Slmen

17 ( 80471 ) The Metaverse Journal - Australia's Virtual World News Service

18 ( 80627 ) Hair Fair

19 ( 90459 ) Mermaid Diaries: Natalia Zelmanov's Second Life Adventures

20 ( 92339 ) Aviatrix :: Zoe Connolly

21 ( 95781 ) Second Style Fashionista

22 ( 98059 ) Second Life News Network - SLNN

23 ( 98492 ) Living in the Metaverse

24 ( 102814 ) The ARCH

25 ( 104911 ) Second Effects

26 ( 109973 ) DIP's Dispatches from the Imagination Age

27 ( 115310 ) Your2ndPlace | Our Realities. Our Worlds.

28 ( 124453 ) CodeBastardRedgrave.Com

29 ( 131159 ) Ch'know?

30 ( 131159 ) Are we not men?

31 ( 131159 ) Designing Nicky Ree

32 ( 134449 ) Verbal Stew

33 ( 145375 ) Second Life Education Research

34 ( 146092 ) 3pointD.com

35 ( 150697 ) PARATGE

36 ( 150697 ) Geta

37 ( 150697 ) Hibernia on the Skids

38 ( 150697 ) Alliance Virtual Library

39 ( 150697 ) Prim Perfect

40 ( 155275 ) The Heliograph

41 ( 155275 ) Girl Wonder Speaks...about Second Life

42 ( 155482 ) Omniversing..

43 ( 160222 ) Kitty Witchin

44 ( 165045 ) Second Arts

45 ( 165045 ) Kota's Knickers

46 ( 165045 ) Fleur Skins

47 ( 170751 ) Ophelia Drowns

48 ( 170751 ) M is for Myg

49 ( 170751 ) An Engine Fit For My Proceeding

50 ( 176452 ) GION PROJECT

51 ( 176452 ) Ivalde`s Heim

52 ( 182459 ) Second Stindberg

53 ( 182459 ) My SLife on the D List

54 ( 182713 ) APLINK - itsReal

55 ( 189084 ) The News from BardHaven

56 ( 189084 ) Reading Radar

57 ( 195869 ) Mean Girls Guide to SL

58 ( 196126 ) Kyoot

59 ( 203197 ) Ambling in Second Life

60 ( 203461 ) MindBlizzard blog

61 ( 203461 ) Millions of Us

62 ( 210954 ) SL of Dreams

63 ( 211247 ) Phasing Grace | Social Architecture and Virtual Worlds

64 ( 219249 ) Tori's Blog

65 ( 219249 ) Ryker Beck dot COM

66 ( 219495 ) -Ana Lutetia-

67 ( 226482 ) Casa Del Shai

68 ( 226482 ) Shop Till U Drop!!!

69 ( 228326 ) Tenth Life

70 ( 237372 ) Botgirl's Second Life Diary

71 ( 237644 ) SLOG

72 ( 237644 ) Studio Wikitecture: Opening Architecture

73 ( 237644 ) Second Life News

74 ( 237963 ) EncoreSeraphine.com

75 ( 237963 ) Around the Grid

76 ( 247893 ) Westin Element

77 ( 248232 ) Dedric Mauriac

78 ( 255487 ) Second Life Herald

79 ( 259213 ) Appearance Mode

80 ( 259213 ) Another blog!

81 ( 270884 ) Discursos do Outro Mundo

82 ( 270884 ) Dwell On It

83 ( 270884 ) Through my eyes..

84 ( 270884 ) The Realm of the Red Rose

85 ( 283302 ) Wrath Paine vs. Second Life

86 ( 283302 ) PixelDolls...

87 ( 283640 ) Eladrienne's Other Life!

88 ( 283640 ) Grid Expectations

89 ( 283640 ) IDG ~ A SecondLife Design Company

90 ( 297452 ) SiniStyle Decapitated

91 ( 297452 ) Second Life Fashion Police

92 ( 297802 ) Aspire Model Management

93 ( 297802 ) Lucas Lameth ( luc ) Fashion Jewelry

94 ( 297802 ) GuRL 6

95 ( 300923 ) artilleri

96 ( 309815 ) The Daily Graze

97 ( 309815 ) cognitive dissonance

98 ( 309815 ) caLLie cLine

99 ( 312717 ) What Is This Crap?

100 ( 312717 ) Nexeus Fatale

101 ( 329677 ) Radio Riel

102 ( 347841 ) Virtual Neko in Second Life

103 ( 347841 ) Willowing Wisps

104 ( 347841 ) JUST VIRTUAL

105 ( 348256 ) All Ears in Second Life

106 ( 348256 ) Joonie's Journey...

107 ( 368511 ) Second Life: Music, DJs

108 ( 368869 ) Business Communicators of Second Life

109 ( 376449 ) Life and Times of Lapin Paris

110 ( 390945 ) The Adventures of Dolmere Talamasca

111 ( 390945 ) Zippora's life

112 ( 391354 ) Cylindrian’s Grace Notes

113 ( 391354 ) Architecture +

114 ( 391354 ) LaBicyclette

115 ( 391354 ) a virtual village voice

116 ( 391354 ) Looker Lumet

117 ( 391354 ) The New Babbage Forum Board

118 ( 391354 ) Ravishal Ramblings

119 ( 391354 ) Rebel Hope Designs

120 ( 391354 ) Rheta

121 ( 391354 ) She's So Unusual

122 ( 416553 ) Whole Lotta Rosie

123 ( 416553 ) Steelhead Anvil

124 ( 416553 ) The Winter Market

125 ( 416974 ) Livedoor Blog

126 ( 416974 ) My Digital Double

127 ( 416974 ) Songs from The Nightingale

128 ( 416974 ) Less Than 3

129 ( 416974 ) Pandora's box

130 ( 445514 ) The Minor Mishaps and Adventures of Skusting Dagger

131 ( 445514 ) Timothy's Second Life Experience

132 ( 445514 ) Torrid Tales of a Compulsive Swooner

133 ( 445962 ) Machinimoo

134 ( 478246 ) Sezmra @ Second Life

135 ( 478246 ) everyday second life

136 ( 478246 ) Vitamin Ci

137 ( 478246 ) Kabalyero

138 ( 478737 ) Best of Both Worlds

139 ( 478737 ) Metaversal Arts

140 ( 478737 ) metaversed.com

141 ( 478737 ) Nyte'N'Day

142 ( 478737 ) Just me, dinee

143 ( 497353 ) All Things Tiessa

144 ( 497353 ) How's your world?

145 ( 516161 ) Second Tense

146 ( 516161 ) The Insane Life of Stuart Warf

147 ( 516161 ) Warm Winter Nights

148 ( 516633 ) Chey's Second Life Blog

149 ( 516633 ) The Journal of Dr. Darien Mason

150 ( 516633 ) Evans Avenue Exit

151 ( 516633 ) The Winged Girl Blog

152 ( 516633 ) Loki's musings on first and second life

153 ( 516633 ) 500 Year Diary

154 ( 546134 ) Girl meets Second Life

155 ( 559640 ) ged's anti-blog

156 ( 559640 ) Trudeau Classic Sailing Yachts

157 ( 559640 ) MODA Fashion SL

158 ( 560192 ) Content Confessional

159 ( 560192 ) The New Observer

160 ( 560192 ) tu Segunda Vida en castellano

161 ( 560192 ) Poid Mahovlich

162 ( 574319 ) Veyron’s Adventures in Second Life

163 ( 574319 ) Designing Insanity

164 ( 605911 ) A Stroll Through Caledon

165 ( 605911 ) Ramblings of a Red Headed Kitten

166 ( 610516 ) theshadow's Alternative Second Life Fashions

167 ( 610516 ) Eclipse

168 ( 610516 ) Vidal's Dolly Realm

169 ( 611068 ) Battered Boudoir

170 ( 611068 ) Diamonds and Rust Podcast

171 ( 611068 ) The Diverse Adventures of Mr G. Abel

172 ( 611068 ) The Adventures of Natacha Chernov

173 ( 611068 ) It's A Scaggs Life!

174 ( 640608 ) SL Educating

175 ( 671532 ) Second Life Games

176 ( 671532 ) The Connolly Telegraph

177 ( 671532 ) -Veschi- ( Ze Blogue )

178 ( 671532 ) The Chilbo Road Press

179 ( 671532 ) Terra Aeronautics - Virtual vehicles for the metaverse

180 ( 671532 ) Second Life

181 ( 672119 ) ArtsPlace SL

182 ( 672119 ) The Ortega Chronicles

183 ( 672119 ) Honour's Post Menopausal View

184 ( 672119 ) avocatio virtualis

185 ( 672119 ) Experiments with Avatars

186 ( 672119 ) Oh, hush!

187 ( 679094 ) CronoCloud Creeggan, Virtual Fashionista

188 ( 722319 ) Jacek Lives

189 ( 722319 ) SECONDtunes

190 ( 722319 ) The ramblings of Violet

191 ( 747459 ) Second Seeker - Unofficial Second Life Reviews

192 ( 747459 ) Shep Korvin - Blog is the new Black

193 ( 747459 ) SlCoolMag

194 ( 747459 ) SquadVillage

195 ( 747459 ) Project Q/Gematria

196 ( 747459 ) Stone Culdesac

197 ( 747459 ) Stonebender

198 ( 747459 ) The Antiquity Gazette

199 ( 747459 ) VTOR - Virtual TO Reality

200 ( 748042 ) Beth's Second Life

201 ( 748042 ) Daltonic Gin

202 ( 748042 ) The News-Review

203 ( 748042 ) Madison's Avenue

204 ( 748042 ) Proceedings of the Royal Society

205 ( 825880 ) Aenea's Second Life

206 ( 825880 ) Pedro Meya Marty - Agentur f

207 ( 841571 ) SLC

208 ( 841571 ) Tooter Claxton

209 ( 841571 ) Newbe's Steam Powered Blog

210 ( 841571 ) Blunt Fashion Sense

211 ( 841571 ) Calico Ingmann Creations

212 ( 841571 ) Omega Point | A blog by Catherine Winters

213 ( 841571 ) Glass Earth

214 ( 841571 ) Talia-Tokugawa.co.uk

215 ( 841571 ) Yo no leo a Enrique Dans

216 ( 841571 ) Comments for Yxes Muses

217 ( 841571 ) Taunt - Online Games, Photoshop, Second Life, IMVU

218 ( 841571 ) Moggs - A Second Life

219 ( 842180 ) Kathar.in

220 ( 842180 ) Digital Dragon Designs

221 ( 842180 ) IYan Writer in virtual worlds

222 ( 842180 ) My Virtual Life - KaticusSparrow.com

223 ( 842180 ) ma vie d'avatar: ma vie sur second life

224 ( 842180 ) Meet the Petermans

225 ( 842180 ) Pix3lizeD Th0ughTs

226 ( 842180 ) Rose Petal Creations

227 ( 890116 ) Lady Adventuress

228 ( 890116 ) Honey Wendt in Second Life

229 ( 890116 ) miau haus

230 ( 964335 ) Kuro Neko - Marsha

231 ( 964335 ) Eloise's thoughts and fancies

232 ( 964335 ) First Impressions

233 ( 964335 ) SL Review

234 ( 964434 ) The Log of HGS Zaneta

235 ( 964434 ) Second Life Conceptual Creations

236 ( 964434 ) Space's Space

237 ( 964434 ) Sunn's World

238 ( 964434 ) Crimson Flow

239 ( 964434 ) NYMPHETAMINE

240 ( 964434 ) Extropian :: Zabrina McMahon

241 ( 965095 ) Argent Eyes

242 ( 965095 ) Machinations of an Evil Tiny Kitty

243 ( 965095 ) Eyana Yohkoh's Blog

244 ( 965095 ) Grace McDunnough's Music in a Virtual World - HOME

245 ( 965095 ) Nimil

246 ( 1052395 ) Havernator

247 ( 1052395 ) Sin Trenton

248 ( 1130271 ) Star Life

249 ( 1130271 ) Sio's Second Life

250 ( 1130271 ) Style HotLine

251 ( 1130271 ) LA 2nd Life

252 ( 1130271 ) Coffee, Cigarettes

253 ( 1130984 ) Artesia B's Second Life World

254 ( 1130984 ) Bella in Second Life

255 ( 1130984 ) DrFran Does SL

256 ( 1130984 ) Frequency's Oscillations

257 ( 1130984 ) Metaverse Law

258 ( 1130984 ) cracklin to what's happening right now

259 ( 1130984 ) Niki's Notes

260 ( 1130984 ) The Bon Mots of Phineas Matova

261 ( 1130984 ) Ribbons Learns to Swim

262 ( 1157363 ) The Life of Abigail Raymaker

263 ( 1157363 ) Charity Dogsbody's Booke of Sensible Advice

264 ( 1157363 ) simVineyard

265 ( 1285236 ) Not Your Typical Lady

266 ( 1285236 ) Casius has the Rants

267 ( 1285236 ) The Cindy Kesey Show

268 ( 1285236 ) KaI’s Thoughts

269 ( 1285236 ) Hexed ( Formerly Escape )

270 ( 1375608 ) Selling in Secondlife

271 ( 1375608 ) Second Life Future Salon

272 ( 1375608 ) Steampunk

273 ( 1375608 ) For All Your Household Needs

274 ( 1375608 ) 2E Leven

275 ( 1375608 ) Woolly Wildcat Writings

276 ( 1375608 ) Second By Second

277 ( 1375608 ) Quarter Life Crisis

278 ( 1375608 ) Make Money Online With Richard Palace

279 ( 1375608 ) From the Flames

280 ( 1375608 ) tara incognita

281 ( 1376407 ) Angie Mornington

282 ( 1376407 ) Cubik Circle Furniture Store

283 ( 1376407 ) Dings Digital's Diary

284 ( 1376407 ) Dorje's Nest

285 ( 1376407 ) SubliminaLuminations

286 ( 1376407 ) The Chase

287 ( 1376407 ) JetDoll

288 ( 1376407 ) Second Life Voyage

289 ( 1376407 ) Reaction - a Surfers Revolution

290 ( 1446376 ) The Diary of a Caledonian Baroness

291 ( 1446376 ) Beta Technologies

292 ( 1446376 ) Brigid Ashwood Fantasy Artist

293 ( 1446376 ) Johanna Hyacinth's Second Life Blog

294 ( 1446376 ) Virtual Nature

295 ( 1446376 ) What country, friends, is this?

296 ( 1655777 ) Cala - Transgender in Second Life

297 ( 1655777 ) Caliburn Susanto

298 ( 1655777 ) THE GEARSHOP

299 ( 1655777 ) Irelyn's Eyes

300 ( 1655777 ) A Real Girl in a Fake World

301 ( 1655777 ) rosemary galbraith

302 ( 1655777 ) Baedeker

303 ( 1655777 ) Starlight in Caledon

304 ( 1655777 ) Sadako Does Second Life

305 ( 1655777 ) Daikon Forge

306 ( 1761164 ) Paw Prints

307 ( 1761164 ) The Second Life Great Expedition

308 ( 1761164 ) Tsu

309 ( 1761164 ) Vicious Studios

310 ( 1761164 ) Warped Axis

311 ( 1761164 ) Wildefire Walcott's Mistressy Musings

312 ( 1761164 ) AudSLife

313 ( 1761164 ) The Source of Power

314 ( 1761164 ) Second Campus

315 ( 1761164 ) Second Life Crew

316 ( 1761164 ) Ziggy Quirk.com

317 ( 1762116 ) Beq's adventures in second life

318 ( 1762116 ) FireEyes

319 ( 1762116 ) Oh no Crippy Oh

320 ( 1762116 ) Dreambits

321 ( 1762116 ) Protected Blog

322 ( 1762116 ) E.Laval Fine Clothing

323 ( 1762116 ) In Praise of Folly

324 ( 1762116 ) Interests of Isolde Flamand

325 ( 1762116 ) Louis Ringgold

326 ( 1762116 ) myslhometv

327 ( 1762116 ) NewMedia On the Go

328 ( 1762116 ) PerimeterView

329 ( 1762116 ) RedDawn Bade - Lost in Second Life

330 ( 1762116 ) Rich Desoto

331 ( 1762116 ) Samantha Speaks!

332 ( 1762116 ) I, Hassanov

333 ( 1951828 ) Second Life: Low Pimpin

334 ( 1951828 ) Scripter Syndrome

335 ( 1951828 ) Virtually Speaking

336 ( 1951828 ) The Family Jewels

337 ( 1951828 ) Iron Raptor

338 ( 1951828 ) Maude Standish

339 ( 1951828 ) Raise the Red Lantern

340 ( 1951828 ) Smashed Explorer

341 ( 1951828 ) VALENCIA City

342 ( 1951828 ) Second Life Annotated Bibliography

343 ( 1951828 ) InkD! Tattoos

344 ( 1951828 ) Gideon Television

345 ( 1951828 ) Virtual Suburbia

346 ( 2473598 ) 2nd Lifer

347 ( 2473598 ) a simple felines blog

348 ( 2473598 ) Antiquity Grand Opening

349 ( 2473598 ) ElleCoyote

350 ( 2473598 ) Caledon Sketchbook

351 ( 2473598 ) Coyote Momiji

352 ( 2473598 ) Starr-ving Artist

353 ( 2473598 ) Cereal Killer

354 ( 2473598 ) A Day in the Second Life

355 ( 2473598 ) Laverne

356 ( 2473598 ) good deeds of a sailor to be

357 ( 2473598 ) sable

358 ( 2473598 ) Golf in Second Life

359 ( 2473598 ) Personal media in Second Life

360 ( 2473598 ) From my Second Life

361 ( 2473598 ) Soliel Snook

362 ( 2473598 ) troublehouston

363 ( 2473598 ) Vieeto Voom

364 ( 2473598 ) Gloire de Vivre

365 ( 2473598 ) Veronique's Second Life

366 ( 2473598 ) Welcome to the Combat: Samurai Island Website!

367 ( 2473598 ) Gridmarker Blog

368 ( 2473598 ) Thunderverse

369 ( 2505291 ) LUSH - Scarlet Singer

370 ( 2505291 ) secondfluid

371 ( 2505291 ) Second Life at hand

372 ( 2505291 ) Sensual Designs

373 ( 2505291 ) * ~ SLIGIRLS ~ *

374 ( 2505291 ) SL Mascot

375 ( 2505291 ) Marion in Wonderland

376 ( 2505291 ) My Second Life is the New First

377 ( 2505291 ) Tweaktocracy

378 ( 2505291 ) Your Godless Goddess

379 ( 2505291 ) The life of Stuart Warf

380 ( 2505291 ) Frontier's Horizon

381 ( 2505291 ) Kitten Lulu

382 ( 2505291 ) Virtual World and Online Game Explorations | Nigel Paravane

383 ( 2505291 ) Monergism.com :: Classic Articles and Resources of the Historic Christian Faith

384 ( 2505291 ) Thallos

385 ( 2505917 ) Acedia Diary

386 ( 2505917 ) Beats n' Pieces

387 ( 2505917 ) Manic Builder

388 ( 2505917 ) Derek

389 ( 2505917 ) Forceme Silverspar's adventures in Second Life

390 ( 2505917 ) Goto Desoto

391 ( 2505917 ) LDinSTL says:

392 ( 2505917 ) Mael's Mindforge

393 ( 2505917 ) Protected Blog

394 ( 2505917 ) MRO SHOW ** LIVE **

395 ( 2505917 ) Ordinal's Cabinet of Ephemera

396 ( 3324847 ) 2nDisability

397 ( 3324847 ) Aether Chronicles

398 ( 3324847 ) Observations from Mairead Fitzgerald

399 ( 3324847 ) Miss Ambrosia Freenote's Conspicuously Misplaced Diary

400 ( 3324847 ) Rabbit Droppings

401 ( 3324847 ) Azareth Kohime

402 ( 3324847 ) The World Through A Banshees Eyes

403 ( 3324847 ) Setori Spire Studios

404 ( 3324847 ) Caledon Early Bird Social Club

405 ( 3324847 ) Razoo Realty

406 ( 3324847 ) Chevelle Attenbrough

407 ( 3324847 ) C:SI

408 ( 3324847 ) Days of Drut

409 ( 3324847 ) The Eponymist

410 ( 3324847 ) Eros Designs

411 ( 3324847 ) explorerjusty

412 ( 3324847 ) itlp-nav

413 ( 3324847 ) Jessyanne

414 ( 3324847 ) Candi's crazy ramblings

415 ( 3324847 ) The Lapointe Square

416 ( 3324847 ) White Rabbit

417 ( 3324847 ) SteamPunk Style

418 ( 3324847 ) Mal Burns Annex

419 ( 3324847 ) Moriash Moreau: My Second Life

420 ( 3324847 ) Cybernetic dreams

421 ( 3324847 ) novalisrau

422 ( 3324847 ) PrincessNina Prefect rocking SL

423 ( 3324847 ) RaceSL

424 ( 3324847 ) Adventures in my Second Life

425 ( 3324847 ) SL Surf Side

426 ( 3324847 ) Sevvy's Stories

427 ( 3324847 ) If memory serves me....

428 ( 3324847 ) make money

429 ( 3324847 ) Indescribable... Sometimes life is Just Plain Crazy!

430 ( 3324847 ) From The Eye Of The Storm

431 ( 3324847 ) SL Victorian Post

432 ( 3324847 ) Smiley

433 ( 3324847 ) Spin Martin

434 ( 3324847 ) â„¢

435 ( 3324847 ) Taffy Apple Designs

436 ( 3324847 ) TAM'S HOUSE OF CHAOS

437 ( 3324847 ) Taras Balderdash's Avatarian News: September 2006

438 ( 3324847 ) Through the filter of a Victorian Aesthetic

439 ( 3324847 ) viktor stroganoff

440 ( 3324847 ) virtually fantastic

441 ( 3324847 ) Ties that bind

442 ( 3324847 ) Eclectic Randomness

443 ( 3324847 ) DoMoCo

444 ( 3324847 ) Home - SL Business Magazine

445 ( 3324847 ) The Diva's Diary: Life, Love, and Lust

446 ( 4776919 ) Arteer Oliva - Vox

447 ( 4776919 ) Audio Zenith | Everything You Need To Know About SecondLife

448 ( 4776919 ) Backpacking Burro

449 ( 4776919 ) Laurel Crown

450 ( 4776919 ) Nowhere but here...

451 ( 4776919 ) Galaizm - Vox

452 ( 4776919 ) Return to Secondlife

453 ( 4776919 ) Baronial Notations

454 ( 4776919 ) Accounts From A Not So kleines M

455 ( 4776919 ) Under the Mountain of Madness

456 ( 4776919 ) Miss Cornelia Rothschild

457 ( 4776919 ) Old Gravy blog

458 ( 4776919 ) MAKEDA

459 ( 4776919 ) Mollster's

460 ( 4776919 ) Parallax: The Journal of Professor Nareth E. Nishi

461 ( 4776919 ) OMG Magazine Second Life

462 ( 4776919 ) Patrice's Terraforming

463 ( 4776919 ) pwnd magazine

464 ( 4776919 ) 403 Error - Forbidden

465 ( 4778283 ) A Wandering Elf

466 ( 4778283 ) Ships of the Line

467 ( 4778283 ) Victorian Shopkeepers Association

468 ( 4778283 ) Inquisitive Mind

469 ( 4778283 ) The Tombstone Sun-Review

470 ( 4778283 ) Finding Sophrosyne

471 ( 4778283 ) Explorations of the White Foxx

472 ( 4778283 ) Tinsel Silvera

473 ( 4778283 ) Quick

474 ( 4778283 ) Technical User Interfacing

475 ( 4778283 ) Tweeze Tyne

476 ( 4778283 ) Khaos Klub Information Website

477 ( 4778283 ) avenging avatar

478 ( 4778283 ) Second Life Walker

479 ( 4778283 ) SLOz - Australia

480 ( 4978471 ) Annie Fukai Sl's Adventure

481 ( 4978471 ) Bastillion's Bastion

482 ( 4978471 ) The Sweet Escape

483 ( 4978471 ) Cats'n'Claws

484 ( 4978471 ) celtgrrl

485 ( 4978471 ) pixie dust and tantrums...

486 ( 4978471 ) Streeter Scene ( the Second Life of Chloe )

487 ( 4978471 ) L33T3r Then You

488 ( 4978471 ) Chi Lo Sa

489 ( 4978471 ) Diary of an avatar

490 ( 4978471 ) Does This Make My Ass Look Fat?

491 ( 4978471 ) Earnest Candour's Blog

492 ( 4978471 ) Eileen in Second Life

493 ( 4978471 ) Jezebella

494 ( 4978471 ) Garbage Prototype

495 ( 4978471 ) Interplanetary Expeditions ( IPX ) Database

496 ( 4978471 ) Made for No Reason

497 ( 4978471 ) Second Spice

498 ( 4978471 ) Women of Second Life

499 ( 4978471 ) Motorati Girlz

500 ( 4978471 ) My Second Life

501 ( 4978471 ) Welcome to the Train-Wreck Love Life

502 ( 4978471 ) Riven's Nest

503 ( 4978471 ) Rude Mechanica

504 ( 4978471 ) Second411 Blog

505 ( 4978471 ) Bulk Upload

506 ( 4978471 ) NPSL: Nonprofits in Second Life | Saving the ( virtual ) world

507 ( 4978471 ) Second Life explorer

508 ( 4978471 ) Second Wynd

509 ( 4978471 ) Second Life Blogosphere

510 ( 4978471 ) Chance's SL Musings

511 ( 4978471 ) My Second life

512 ( 4978471 ) Project Q Archives

513 ( 4978471 ) Arriving Somewhere But Not Here

514 ( 4978471 ) Technopaideia

515 ( 4978471 ) The Agile Mind

516 ( 4978471 ) Trin's Tantrums

517 ( 4978471 ) What *IS* Willis Talking About?

518 ( 4978471 ) Battlestar Mercury

519 ( 4978471 ) Jax

520 ( 4978471 ) Metaverse Week in Review

521 ( 4978471 ) Mossie Designs in SL

522 ( 4978471 ) Second Life Directory - Second Life Most Popular Directory - SLTopSites.com

523 ( 4978471 ) trash palace - electronic music club

524 ( 4978471 ) Yoshino's Second life blog

525 ( 4978471 ) Why everyone

526 ( 4978471 ) Overheard in SL

ArminasX Heads to Outer Space!

2009-03-08T21:07:00.000-07:00

Well, not exactly, but it does involve NASA. I’ve been asked to participate in an educational RL/SL mashup panel discussion. It’s actually for a real-life US federal government conference, but in this case the avatar panelists will be appearing on screen in front of a live conference audience of atomics.

Of course, Second Effects readers will be able to attend in SL also by simply teleporting to the conference site at JPL’s Explorer Island. We’re hoping to have a virtual audience that’s a similar size to the real life audience.

The topic of discussion will be basic, as it is an introduction to virtual reality for interested US federal government personnel. They’ll be introduced to the basics of virtual reality, with a specific emphasis on educational aspects. What am I doing there? I’m to speak on how business operates in Second Life.

It could be considered a rather dry topic, but you should know that the majority of the expected real life audience has never seen virtual reality before. I suspect many will be skeptical of the concept, but perhaps they’ll change their mind after hearing what we have to say. At the least, I believe they’ll be surprised when they realize that the in-world audience is close to the same size as the real-world audience (hint!)

Here is the actual description of the session:

Second Life is a 3D virtual world created entirely by its residents, just as Wikipedia was created by its readers. It's a wonderful world full of amazing content that supports experiences that are by no means limited to just entertainment. There are many practical experiences that create strong value for government, industry, educators and entrepreneurs. This panel, which will be conducted completely in the Second Life virtual world, will discuss those experiences from the perspectives of business, government, and academia.

What You Will Learn:
What virtual worlds are, and their applications in various organizations
How business in a virtual world can be conducted and what is the return on investment
The risks associated with using virtual worlds and what happens after the hype

If you have time and interest, please feel free to drop by Explorer Island on Tuesday, March 10th, where we’ll start the discussion at 10:30AM SLT (13:30ET) and continue until 11:45AM SLT.

A Clear Confirmation

2009-03-02T20:06:00.000-08:00

A few weeks ago I wrote a speculative piece suggesting that Linden Lab’s next move would be to implement the highly functional Clearspace Community collaboration tool.

I believe this is precisely what happened. We all have seen the big splash of the new Second Life blogs, but one telling clue is embedded within the URL of the new site:

I was not able to find an announcement regarding the technology used by Linden Lab, but yes, as you can see, they are indeed using Clearspace as the engine behind the new community blogs. A good thing? Yes, I think so, as Jive software’s Clearspace products are among the leading commercial tools for establishing and developing a vibrant online community. Good choice, LL!

Name O Matic

2009-02-26T17:49:00.000-08:00

I’ve been busy again on yet another secret project, this time creating a brand new virtual business with a friend. One of the many tasks required by a new business is the selection of its name. This, you might think, would be a straightforward piece of work.

And you’d be wrong.

The name of a business is an extremely critical step that should not ever be taken lightly. The name of the business is important because:

It is the way clients will find you; if wrongly formed, they’ll have a hard time finding you
The imagery conveyed by the name will flavor (or stain) your business’ reputation forever

Let’s talk about these two goals for your virtual business name. First, its find-ability. What we want is a name that can be easily recalled, spelled and typed. Here are some key properties to consider:

Length: your business name should not be very long, perhaps 7-12 characters. Compound names could be a bit longer, more about them later on
Spelling: the name should be spelled as unambiguously as possible. Think of it this way: anyone mis-typing your name into a search engine won’t find you. Avoid losing those customers by making it as easy as possible
Availability: Obviously, your name should not be in use by someone else in world. Make a list of competitors’ names so you can compare with your ideas. You might also consider snagging the corresponding domain name (the .com at least), and if you’re really serious you could even search (and register) the legal name with your jurisdiction’s authorities - but make sure you follow any required legal regulations
Pronounceability: As most in-world advertising is done by word-of-mouth, your business name had better be something that people can actually say aloud. Say it aloud yourself to make sure it works. How many ways can it be pronounced? Try to select a name with a single, obvious pronunciation
Positivity: Your name might look great, but what does it mean to those using other languages? Best to do a quick check to ensure you didn’t select something silly. A great tool to do this is http://nicetranslator.com
Uniqueness: Yes, we already made sure your name is not a duplicate (or even similar to another business), but you must also verify the name is not similar to any common words. Consider the search scenario again if you use the name “Fashion”. How many hits would be found? Your name would be mixed in the results somewhere. Avoid that scenario by selecting a name that is totally unique and has only one possible search result: you

The other goal of naming is the “color” of the name. Whether you realize it or not, most words carry a connotation with them. They may be positive or negative, elegant or ugly. The point is that words trigger feelings in people, often unconscious feelings. If the words conjure feelings that don’t match your business, then you are automatically at a disadvantage, because people will already feel strangely about your business before they even visit!

The name’s flavor should not only have some relationship with the products or services you provide, but also evoke professionalism, positivism, quality, confidence and of course, hipness. The best way to test this property is to clear your head, then quickly stare at the written name. Ask yourself, “What was the first image that came into my head?” and “How do I feel when I see that name?” Then imagine what your customers will think and feel when they do the same.

There’s one often-forgotten aspect of name-flavor: Expandability. While your business name might match your products and services very well today, what happens in the future when you expand your product line? Will the name still make sense? Take a few moments to consider where your business might end up, and make certain your name still fits.

But how, exactly, can one come up with a name that meets all these needs? You can stare out the window and hope for divine intervention, or use one of these awful online generators, but there are a few tricks that can help the process immensely.

Get a thesaurus, or better yet, use an online thesaurus, such as http://thesaurus.com. Think of words that describe what your business does or produces, and use the thesaurus to identify alternate words that meet the criteria above. Hopefully you’ll end up with several candidate words.

Still with the thesaurus, search for words that evoke the qualities you want your business to exude. For example, if you sell intricate clockworks, I’d search for words like “sharp”, “precision”, etc.

Armed with a bundle of good words, try producing compound names by putting the words together in different combinations. Don’t just think them; write them down and look at them. Say them aloud, and cross out the ones that don’t feel right. You will soon have a short list of pretty good names.

An alternative to a compound word is to use either a suffix or prefix. Like words, suffixes also convey feelings, so the same process can be used: write down combinations, say them aloud, throw away the lousy ones. A short list have you soon will.

Which one should you choose from the short list? You don’t. Your friends and trusted associates will. That’s right, gather up a small group of friendlies, hopefully from different backgrounds, and throw the short list at them. Don’t give them a lot of time, because you’re looking for initial reactions, just as potential customers will react. You might be surprised what they say, but trust them.

You’re done, right? Nope. Open that browser and register the name. Right now!

(image courtesy of GapingVoid)