I’ve been too lazy to work on a post, so instead I’ll point you into some interesting things I’ve seen this week, all of them with a touch of controversy.

There had been a pair of posts at Juicy Bomb (BeReal, get real and Ricko Dagostino, what’s your problem) denouncing shark-like market practices. The problem is, to be objective we will need more testimonials so… did you had an experience like that? Write about it!

There is also another post by Lillie. I am partial in so many ways, positive and negative, that I’ll refrain from giving my opinion. Still, I believe it is very interesting to read… cum grano salis.

Also, I’ve got a review! Thank you, LisaMun, not only for your nice post, but also for donating one of your pictures for this post…

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Do you think that has nothing to do with controversy? Maybe you will think different if I tell you she had no idea she was donating it? (Crosses fingers and hopes she will not mind ;-p)

It is assumed that it isn’t too bad to get a pic or two if you link to the origin, but where we should draw the line? To a scenary where everything in the Internet is consider as free, unless you defend it? Or to an extreme zeal that means nothing is safe from deletion?

Go and read Pearls of wisdom for Second Life, it is worth a smile :-)

(lazy, lazy me, stole the image from here).

New, and hopefully final (touches wood), version of Pandora POSE.

What are the changes?

As the promo shows I’ve upgraded the interface, taking most functions outside. I’ve also added an improved hide system, that will move the hud out of the screen, so you don’t stumble into invisible prims.

But the huge change is that now the hud comes with 121 freebie animations, categorized in 11 menus.

Yes, I’ve sorted my huge collection of freebie poses (including some I’ve made myself), deleting the ones I didn’t like, and arranging the rest in 16 packs of roughly 11 anims each; 163 in total. The problem is that my hud can only hold 121 (which isn’t a small number, I believe), so 42 had been left out, but I’ve set 0L$ vendors with the packs, so you can go to my shop and get the rest.

Also, I’ve set three more vendors. Two of them holds huds with around 80 anims each, so you can get the whole collection if you don’t mind to spend a bit more. The other one is an empty hud, so you can just add the animations (yours or from the packs) that you want. Since the anims are free, all of them cost the same, 195L$

Remember, POSE plays over yourself or other avatars (up to 10 can be arranged at the same time), stores permissions to avoid annoying pauses when your model goes AFK… I don’t dare to say it is the best pose holder than exist, but I am sure it is worth your money :-)

One of the items I got at my Xstreet freebie spree was the Eye of Horus, because it would fit my oooooold gold ribbon outfit from Kya Eliot, combined with Saga’s jewelry in hands, feet and nose, and the incredible Bob IV hair from Detour.

To my surprise, the charm gave me a landmark, hinting it would protect me through an adventure. So I followed it, finding a mildly amusing Indiana Jones’ temple that we (Peter and I) explored later.

I could tell you the place is one of those points of interest of SL, worth visiting once to have a bit of fun, if it wasn’t for the teleporter at the end, which showed us the temple was only one of the attractions of the sim; there where beautiful submarine scenes (Jules Verne) with spaceship included,  strange travels through the blood stream (Asimov’s Fanstastic Voyage), volcanoes, paradisiacal beaches, and even Han solo in Carbonite!

So please, find some time and visit Da Vinci Gardens sim, I’m sure you will enjoy it :-)

There had been a lot of talk about the new Xstreet policy; it seems LL has decided freebies are bad for Xstreet economy, and are trying to make them impractical. This means they will lose the casual buyer sales, that sees something he likes while looking for free items; but also it will make hard for people to find free options, forcing them to buy what they need, and improving sales.

I have no idea of what will be the outcome; by now I’ll clutter my inventory with every interesting freebie that appears at places like Free*Style or Fabulously Free in SL, and wait to see what happens.

Another thing I’ve done is check the thousand freebie pages at Xstreet before the axe falls, and I’ve found some surprises, one of the best edge grafica, which has some awesome freebies; have a look at some samples:

At the end I got around 40 boxes at Xstreet, quickly checking and deleting half of them, which isn’t bad; I  managed to keep my inventory under 6k items *winks*.

I could give you the links to them, but that would only show my personal preferences; instead I’d like to suggest you to have a peek by yourself, it is a fun way to spend an afternoon…

…at least the first two hundred pages :-p.

A friend of mine sent me a link to his new shop, NightSong Lingerie, and I was faced with a huge problem: he sells babydolls, and I don’t like them. I solved it by choosing a set and wearing it without the prim attachment, which wasn’t too fair for a review.

I used to see babydolls at old films. Maybe people who likes them feel they are linked with Marilyn Monroe (or Lauren Bacall, or even Doris Day) in a kind of soft, classic erotism? Maybe that explains why they are so popular at erotic lingerie catalogs.

If you (or your partner) are wired that way, have a look at NightSong, available in-world and at Xstreet, with prices that range from 75 (Xstreet promo) to 175L$. Pamper your erotism ;-)

(Note: the title was fun, like in the “Hunt for Red October”, but then I noticed people could think I was talking about a shop hunt… so sorry, nothing of that, only an opinion post, move along, please *smiles and waves her hands like a traffic guard*).

I keep away from Spanish communities at SL, not only because the SL “me” thinks in English, but because I like to think of my virtual self as a citizen of the world. But at the same time I have a lot of fun, seeing how surprised my friends are when I tell them I spent a sunday gathering chestnuts (roasted are delicious), or how often we eat octopus at home. So nationality matters, too.

And so, when the lovely temptress Quaintly asked where does the 4% of SL Malaysian population hide, and if they did read english blogs, I felt a glove has been thrown. After all English is Malaysia second language, so they should blend easily if they don’t want to be noticed, at least if we skip the problematic timezone; but they more or less share it with Australia and New Zealand, isn’t it?

Do we have a 4% of stealth Malaysian population?

I am not a huge fan of polls, but when I did a little one about brows, simply asking for a handful of comments, it was such a surprise. Some people use different brow shapes to express emotions, some adjusts a brow for each different skin they buy, some stay with one all their SL life, and some don’t change anything but clothes, and maybe hairdos, keeping “me” as stable as they can. Such richness of views was amazing, and I would had never learnt so much if I had simply polled for a given set of answers, because statistics are duuuuuulllll!!!!

So, without trying to make a custom of it, here you have a new poll. I really want to know:

Are you from Malaysia? If so, do you like it to be known, or you usually skip it? Do you know somebody at SL who is from Malaysia? Is there an active Malaysian community/group at SL? Would you like it to exist?

The two days of silence I got myself involved into has reached their end.

Now I can talk:

1- I believe everybody’s(even thieves)  knows the situation is hurting creators, some times in very painfully ways. 

2- Why does it keep happening? As David Friedman says:  ”The economic approach to crime starts from one simple assumption: criminals are rational. A burglar burgles for the same reason I teach economics–because he finds it a more attractive profession than any other. The obvious conclusion is that the way to reduce burglary–whether as a legislator or a homeowner–is by raising the costs of the burglar’s profession or reducing its benefits.”

3- Customers and creators don’t have the tools to stop theft so, ultimately, responsibility falls on LL because they are our “government”. LL is rational (I hope ;-p), and what we need is to make the actual situation more expensive than fighting theft. That is what it makes so silly to try to show our strength, when it is obvious we don’t have it; we need to find realistic ways to reach our objectives, even if they are limited! At least that was a positive point of Artist’s Voice event, because it managed to do some noise about the matter.

4- And that is why so many bloggers (myself included) think it was pretty stupid to ask for two days of silence, when it was the right time for healthy discussion; and even if we want to weight the symbolic value of community’s silence, this made a farce of it (please, notice it is dated November’s 5).

Remember, just now creators can’t stop theft and, while I understand their frustration, I almost weep when customers are treated as wannabe criminals. It is like when I go to a film and they put one of those Piracy is a crime spots… WTF! I am obviously paying to see the film!

We need to stop paranoia from getting the best of us, try to find realistic solutions, and start showing some customer love.

Reading around, I just saw that tomorrow and the day after tomorrow are Artist’s voice ones!

I did read about the initiative, and while I am too cynic to hope it will help, I never wanted to oppose it; so imagine my embarrassment when I saw I had just launched a discount sale (my first discount sale!) just the day before it, and making it finish the same day. It was like asking people to spend the money those days *blushes*.

I can’t undo it, but at least I can join the initiative keeping my mouth and wallet closed, and extending the sale to Sunday, 7th of November.

And apologizing, too.

While I have the social conscience of an armchair, and even if the days I choose where simply a coincidence, some coincidences aren’t funny at all. Please accept my most sincere apologize.

Sale! Sale!! Sale!!!

(feel free to add more exclamation marks if you like them)

To celebrate the new shop location, and only until this friday (11-6-2009), I am applying huge discounts to all Pandora Designs products:

Pandora FACE: 10L$ (discount: 90%)

Pandora POSE: 195L$ (discount: 50%)

Pandora HUG: 395L$ (save 200L$)

Revolution HUD: 795L$ (save 400L$)

I’ll write soon about the shop (micro-mall would be more adequate) but, if you visit it before I do, cam outside ;-)