I like humorous names, myself, but was unable to find one that wasn’t taken after about 40-50 tries. It seems that some of the more generic English-style names have been on there for quite some time. Are they still being dropped after 100 or so uses?

My co-worker, one of the ones that has been waiting to find a good name, suggests using more nouns for last names. I said, “You mean like ‘Fusebox’ so I could be Rusty Fusebox?” and he said yeah, that sort of thing. It’s not a bad idea, and I know we’ve had a lot of names like that in the past. They were quite popular. I suggest that names that have been on the list for a month or three but haven’t yet reached the closeout count, should be closed anyway. If no one is using that name, it’s probably just not that popular.

Another option is to categorize the last names. I know that names often come online together as part of a pack of similar origins, just as sim names are often part of a group. Categorizing the names on the Join page would make it easy to look through only the categories that the aspiring player finds comfortable.

And that has happened.

In the early days of Second Life, fun new features were added every couple months. But soon the bugs that come with new features started to build up, and public opinion swayed towards “stop adding new features and fix the bugs”.

They did, mostly. (Long-term feature projects continued to trickle in, adding a few new bugs even as the older bugs were being tackled.)

But then the fans hit the grid, and “scaling” became the new watchword at Linden Lab. Second Life just couldn’t handle the hoards of new people. Major and fundamental changes needed to be made, and pretty much all new feature development (or at least, releases) ceased.

And that’s where we stand now. The few new features that show up are mainly geared towards the mid-level activities.

(Quick aside for definitions of my private terms: High-level activities are the fun stuff, stuff just about everyone does including basic building and avatar customization. Mid-level activities involve the management of groups or land, things done by fewer people, but people that have a strong influence on how Second Life evolves. Low-level activities include heavy scripting, big interactive projects, and external interfaces that involve fewer people, but add sometimes revolutionary value to the Grid.)

There haven’t been many new low-level features for a while, and pretty much NO new high-level features since flexi-prims.

Now, I’m not complaining since the scaling issues are the most important problems to address. Without being able to handle the number of people banging on the door, there’s just no point in adding new bells and whistles to play with. But the time is coming where the Second Life model will start to be imitated, and it is coming soon.

It may even be the PS3 that provides the competition. A fixed hardware platform would give a very even and guaranteed experience for virtual world travelers. It may be highly seductive if it can hold a candle to Second Life (which still remains to be seen).

Voice is coming in Second Life. I got to test out the beta just this morning. That is definitely a high-level feature to add, even without voice masking (which will have interesting side effects among the cross-gender avatar players out there). On the Mac, its a little broken (incoming voice sounds like a clone army with the hiccups singing rounds of Row, Row, Row Your Boat) but the promise is there.

I’m still hopeful that Second Life will thrive and grow… I just would like to see the scaling issues get solved soon so that client-oriented features can blossom once more.

2) Recruit well-respected players to scout out and review locations in Second Life

3) Collect multiple reviews for each location and total the positive and negative viewpoints

4) Publish reviews and total score on website for each location

5) Provide lists of locations based on scores and individual reviewers

Bonus) Allow populous to rate reviewers. Use relative reviews to create 2nd, weighted scores

You have 30 minutes. No talking. Raise your hand if you have a problem.

UPDATE: Well, I gave you all over a year to do this. Time’s up! Turn your papers over. I’ve just registered the name.

It would be nice if, in Second Life iteself, you could go into a Position Editing mode where your avatar freezes and “handles” appear at each joint. Selecting a handle brings up the normal rotaion edit locus we use to rotate prims, but it rotates that joint instead. Once done editing all the joints you want, and your own actual avatar is in the position you desire you can save this pose as an animation.

This would just be a one-frame pose, but with the addition of a window to track multiple frames, I can see the possibility of doing full animations. All we lose this way is reverse kinematics, but that usually causes more problems for new animators than it helps them. (But it could still be added, as a toggle option later.)

If you are playing a moddable animation when you trigger this Position Editing mode, you are editing that animation (but like the Appearance Editing mode, you can Save… or Save As… when done).

If it’s no mod, or you aren’t playing anything, the avatar reverts to the standard starting pose before you start to edit. (And you can only Save As…)

But what about a third use?

First, I guess I need to suggest a possible feature of this new incorporated browser. When you click a link, the browser interprets the URL and does what it needs to. If the URL starts with “http://” then it loads the indicated web page. If it starts “ftp://” then it connects to the indicated FTP server and lists the files in the window. There are other types of URLs, and it’s possible for new ones to be added. In fact, Second Life already makes one new URL type available now. URLs starting with “secondlife://” can be used to launch SL (if it’s not already running) and indicate a position to be teleported to.

With an incorporated browser, this sort of thing is even easier to do… AND it can be expanded upon. With all control of URL parsing contained within the SL client, any number of new URL types can be added and reacted to. For example, maybe the URL “slcmd://say/Hello%20World!” would, when you clicked it, make you say “Hello World!” out loud. (The %20 is URL-speak for a space.)

But why stop there? Anything you could tell your client to do, you could potentially tell it to do THROUGH a built in web browser: start animations, trigger gestures, map a location, send a command to an attachment, speak a string…

But there’s more than just those. Anything in the current UI could have its own equivalent URL to trigger it. In fact (and now we start to break some ground) the entire UI could be replicated with a web page. Every command you can give you client, from setting yourself as (Away) to the most esoteric debug command, could be replicated in a web page.

But who would want to? One more jump here… Make a browser window that has a transparent background, no frame, and that fills the whole screen.

Remove Second Life’s current UI. Rebuild it in CSS and DHTML. Release the source to the public so anyone can alter it. Custom, interchangeable user interfaces for all.

It won’t be easy to get it all together, but once done it would be very powerful. Along the same lines, HUDs as we know them can be replaced with smaller versions of this transparent browser window.

HTML on a prim will be nice, yes… But THIS, this is where the potential is.

(But this is off-top-of-head rambles, as I am prone to. The might be flaws in the idea. I’ll think on it more…)

In second life, we have no production costs either. Make one, and from then on it’s pure profit. The problem comes when you realize it’s all just data…

Music first became a physical thing in 1877 with “Mary and her Little Lambs” first hit single. For over a hundred years, even while the physical shape changed many times, that tie to the physical world was unbroken.

And then (if “then” can be used for something that, viewed locally, was quite gradual) music became data. And without a physical presence, it became knowledge… For what is data without the mind to experience it? (This isn’t to say that minds are all that great, just that data is pretty worthless without them.)

Oh, music wasn’t first. Words were the first to exist as pure data, usually while moving from place to place in semaphore, telegraph, or smoke signals. It’s easy to reproduce words from memory, so copying is a snap.

But few of us can recite an entire novel word-for-word from memory. Passage through a brain isn’t a valid copy option for longer works. The same goes for music — While you might “know” a song, you probably couldn’t reproduce it, in its entirety, from memory.

But now we have mechanical minds, and they CAN “know” a whole set of encyclopedias and recite it on command by heart. They CAN know the most elaborate orchestration and recreate it perfectly.

In the beginning, words and music were free. No one could buy or sell them except perhaps to pay for their initial creation. Then they became physical things and there was a market for them, same as for pottery, swords, or 10 penny nails.

Now they are ephemeral again and new ideas are being worked out to hold onto those slippery markets. Apple’s iTunes made it easier and faster to get your ephemeral music than hunting the track down on P2P and waiting for the download to trickle in from Timbuktu.

Shelly found her niche, eventually. She imported shells from other beaches (often in exchange for her own) so she had some that couldn’t be found on the beach outside. Coupling that with her sideline of buying up middle school shop projects and hotgluing shells to them, she was keeping herself in SPF 30 and mai tais just fine.

But still, people WILL come in off the beach to buy, for 39 cents, the very same Trapdoor Murex they could pick up out of the surf themselves because A) they don’t know any better, or B) it’s more convenient.

Okay… There’s nothing about permissions here. In fact, I’ve made little mention of Second Life at all. If there’s a connection, it’s just to say that Second Life is WEIRD. It’s unlike anything else. It’s data masquerading as physical objects. And the illusion is so complete, that people insist on sticking with physical concepts of ownership and marketing and even space, when the “reality” of what they are actually dealing with doesn’t fit any of those models.

Not that I blame anyone for this. It’s not like there ARE any models that DO fit. Oh, there are some that seem to at least lean in the right direction. But if they lean anymore they’ll just fall over. They still don’t fit this wacky “world” we find ourselves in each time we log on.

No… I think we really need to let loose the bounds of what we know and step out into the void to think new thoughts. Because new thoughts are needed for a new environment.

But that person reading over your shoulder (not YOU good reader, never YOU) is probably too scared to let the Shore of the Known slip from view. “Throw out ownership,” I cry, “and replace it with Creator, Possessor, and Permissions!” To which Mr. Backseat-Blog-Reader shouts, “You can’t do that! Someone will walk off with my stereo!”

But it’s just one idea of many, all of which will be tried somewhere by someone in the fullness of time. I know, because I’m full of it them!

Oh look! A Trapdoor Murex! I just saved 39 cents!

So if you’ve been following the examples in this blog, you may have gotten the feeling that those dummy permissions I was using may not be so dummy. I did try to keep them self-consistant as I went along, even to the point of going back and tweeking them a bit. I’ve been trying to find a system of encoding permissions that is compact and clear, while retaining the ability to design-in more later. “More” both in number and in variety.

Here are a few that I’ve used so far (with small updates):

• Land Access – Unlimited
• Group IMs – Can Start and Use
• Group Inventory – Can See and Take Only
• Rez Objects – 100 prims
• Teleport Other Here

Notice that most are composed of two parts separated with a dash. The general idea is that some permissions will have extra parameters or settings that can be adjusted when the permission is added.

Oh, but first: adding permissions. You’ve seen the little symbol next to the Permissions header in the examples. Clicking that is how you add a new permission to the list, through a New Permission window that pops open. In it will be a list of all permissions in outline form. Why an outline and not just a bunch of fields and checkboxes? So new permissions to match new features can be easily added. Each entry in the list will have a sub-list of one or more options. Let’s try the examples from above:

• Land Access
• Unlimited
• With Ticket Only
• No Access (disabled)
• Group IMs
• Can Start and Use
• Can’t Start, Can Use
• Can’t Start or Respond
• Can’t See (disabled)
• Group Inventory
• Can See and Use
• Can See and Take Only
• Can See and Give Only
• Can See, Can’t Use
• Can’t See, Can Give (Drop Box)
• Can’t See (disabled)
• Rez Objects
• Unlimited
• Parcel Max
• Prim Limit: [ 100 Not Allowed (disabled)
• Teleport Other Here
• Can
• Can’t (disabled)

As I wrote the above example, I started with checkboxes instead of radio buttons. So Group Inventory had only three sub items: See, Take, and Give. The problem with that, however, is that certain combinations, namely “can’t see, can take”, are invalid. The list could be coded to gray-out the “take” if the see isn’t checked, but then you are putting interrelationships in there that aren’t visible to the user until they stumble across them.

Also, the general idea is that the title of the permission changes to reflect the options set within it when it closes. If checkboxes are used, then some internal mapping would have to create this string based on which options were checked. Then you have a dissimilarity between the collapsed and expanded permissions.

Overall, I thought radio buttons would be the clearer option, even if they can get to be a bit more wordy when expanded. What you see is what you get.

For the inline values, clicking them would either open a dialog box with an editable text field or edit the value in-line, depending on the whim of the interface coder. Accepting the changes in a dialog box changes the value in the outline.

The options are listed most-permissive to least-permissive, and the option marked with “(disabled)” is the one that will remove that permission completely. It will no longer appear in the Role we are editing in the Group or Land or Object permissions list.

Any permission that can’t be easily summed up in a single list of radio buttons would be split into several different permission entries. Hopefully, there won’t be any inter-related permissions that are too complex to be combined.

Now just to clarify the whole picture… You only see the non-”(disabled)” permissions in a Role. When you click the little to add a new one, the window that opens lists all of the permissions, including the ones that are already set. The ones that are set will have the same extended name (after the -) as they did in the Role’s list, and when expanded show that option as selected. The items that were not visible in the Role are red with no extended name. You would expand one of those and change its option selection to enable it. While in this dialog, you can edit any of the existing permissions or even add more than one.

I’m going to add the edit icon next to all future Role mock-ups along with the remove icon so the permission dialog window can be opened directly to that particular permission for editing (or removal), expanded.

That seems to cover how to add, edit, and remove permissions from a Role… At least, all that I’ve thought up so far.

I’ll be adding more funtionality to it as I think of it. It would be totally cool to have a complete simulation running!

Next: Advance on My Allowance

I have a plot of land. I parcel it up in chunks and do a bit of decorating and I end up with this:

I want to rent the two lots out and perhaps make a bit of money. I make a group called “Tiger Tenants” to keep the operation organized.

Now in the Olde Seconde Life, I’d put the land under the group’s control and invite people into the group when they rent a lot. They can then build on their lot, but they can also build anywhere else on my land, including the other lot. There is no limitation on the number of prims they can use, beyond the hard limit imposed by the size of the total land. Also, adding them to the group gives them other abilities unrelated to simple land rental, such as getting a portion of the dwell bonus for the whole area, among other things.

But, thankfully, I live in Nuevo Second Life, where groups work much better!

I open my new group and see:

• Members (all members)
• Permissions
• Land Access – Unlimited
• Group Communication – Full IM
• Group Inventory – Take Only
• Members
• Tiger Crossing
• Founders (founders)
• Permissions (all)
• Members
• Tiger Crossing
• Add Role

First things first, I rename my default Roles and then I need to add two Roles, one for each lot…

• Tiger Tenants (all members)
• Lot 1 Tenants
• Permissions
• Members
• Lot 2 Tenants
• Permissions
• Members
• Landlord (founders)
• Add Role

Now I need to add permission for the Tenants (when I get some) to build only where they need to…

• Tiger Tenants (all members)
• Lot 1 Tenants
• Permissions
• Rez/Build Objects – 100 prims
• Return Items – All But Land Owner’s
• Members
• Lot 2 Tenants
• Pemissions
• Rez/Build Objects – 100 prims
• Return Items – All But Land Owner’s
• Members
• Landlord (founders)
• Add Role

The land in question still belongs only to me, and isn’t associated with the group yet, so it’s time to do that. I select Lot #1 and open the About Land dialog to bring up the Permissions tab page…

• All Visitors (all visitors)
• Permissions
• Land Access – Unlimited
• Run Scripts
• Make Landmark
• Teleport Other Here
• Members (all)
• Owner (owner)
• Permissions (all)
• Members
• Tiger Crossing
• Grant New Permission

Hmmm… Looks familiar, doesn’t it. Just like a group, with only slight changes. In this case, the “membership” is anyone standing on the plot, and the “founder” is the owner. Lets add a new permission set to it to denote what else our tenants will be able to do above and beyond what anyone that visits can do…

• All Visitors (all visitors)
• Tiger Tenants Lot Tenant
• Permissions
• Rez/Build Objects – 150 prims
• Return Items – All But Land Owner’s
• Members
• Group: “Tiger Tenants” / Role: “Lot 1 Tenants”
• Owner (owner)
  
• Grant New Permission

So I named the new permission “Tiger Tenants Lot Tenant” and give it the same permission that the group needed for building. Notice that the prim allowance here is 150, but in the group permissions it is just 100. I did this deliberately so that if a tenant needs more prims, they can pay more and I will increase the limit on their Role. There is a cap of 150 on the land, however, so increasing the Role’s limit above that will do nothing. I also gave them permission to return items they find on their land (but not that belong to me).

I then added a new member. Doing so brings up a list of all my groups and their Roles. I picked the “Lot 1 Tenants” Role of my new group, and it was added. I do the same for the second lot, though this time giving it the member “Lot 2 Tenants”.

And now we’re all set. If Bob Bobson comes along and wants to rent lot 1, I send an invite to him from my group, indicating the “Lot 1 Tenants” Role in the process. When he accepts, he is added to the group and to the Role. The group then looks like this…

• Tiger Tenants (all members)
• Permissions
• Members
• Bob Bobson
• Tiger Crossing
• Lot 1 Tenants
• Permissions
• Members
• Bob Bobson
• Lot 2 Tenants
• Landlord (founders)
• Add Role

So Bob is now all set, and can go ahead and build on lot 1, but ONLY lot 1.

Next: DHTML Experiment

What if, instead of granting further permissions, a sub-Role took some away. If being in multiple Roles wasn’t forbidden, then it wouldn’t be possible to tell whether a person could or couldn’t do something if they were in one Role that allowed it and one that didn’t.

By going flat, not only is the whole layout easier to see and manipulate (a list instead of a tree structure), but you can go with purely additive permissions, since you never have to take one away that was granted in a higher Role.

I thought I’d give an example of a flat group with members in multiple Roles, just to give a taste of how this would… Well, not look per se, but feel. Here it is, fully expanded. (Normally, each section would be closed until you twiddle it open.)

(I went with an example that didn’t use Second Life permissions, just to keep things clear and abstract.)

• Family (all members)
• Permissions
• Allowed in Living Room
• Members
• Daddy
• Mommy
• Teen
• Toddler
• Cat
• Dog
• Small Ones
• Permissions
• Allowed to Sit in Parents’ Laps
• Members
• Cat
• Dog
• Toddler
• Cats
• Permissions
• Allowed on Couch
• Members
• Cat
• Dogs
• Permissions
• Allowed Outside
• Members
• Dog
• Kids
• Permissions
• Allowed on Couch
• Allowed to Watch TV
• Allowed to Play with Toys
• Members
• Teen
• Toddler
• Teens
• Permissions
• Allowed to Stay Up Later
• Allowed to Borrow Car
• Members
• Teen
• Parents (founders)
• Founders (all permissions)
• Members
• Daddy
• Mommy
• Add New Role

.

And here’s the list again but with just about everything collapsed except the first section. The items with comments in parenthesis next to them are special entries. One is the “(all members)” list that always exists and always contains every member of the group. Removing someone from this Role would open a confirmation box asking if you are sure you want to eject that person from the group. The other special Role is marked with “(founders)” and always exists. When created, only the creator of the group is in this Role, and there always must be someone in it. It has full permission to do everything.

[ I thought about letting the founder permissions be edited, except for the permission to edit the founder permissions themselves, which must alwasys be on (or the group would seize up permanently). This would let the founders turn off certain abilities as a "good faith" gesture to the group's members... But it would be a hollow gesture, since they could always re-grant such permissions, use them, then turn them off again. Best to keep it clear that they can do anything to the group at any time. After all, SOMEONE has to be able to. ]

Clicking the toggles what’s under that item open, and clicking the closes it again. Shift-clicking a closed section opens it and all of its sub-sections, so you can expand everything quickly. Clicking a will add a new item to that section, either a new permission or new member — each opening a menu to pick from a list. Clicking a will delete that item.
.

• Family (all members)
• Permissions
• Allowed in Living Room
• Members
• Daddy
• Mommy
• Teen
• Toddler
• Cat
• Dog
• Small Ones
• Cats
• Dogs
• Kids
• Teens
• Parents (founders)
• Add New Role

Next: A Lot to Go On

]]> http://www.tigercrossing.com/blog/?feed=rss2&p=9 1