Preview of the Share Your OPML top 100. 
8 years ago: “Have the courage to laugh.”
Randall Stross: “What consumer would voluntarily buy a television designed to charge fees for using it?”
Chris Pirillo is leaking the Gnomedex discussion leaders one at a time. Smart. Tease. 🙂
I admit to being a complete novice at Second Life. I don’t even know where to begin. If you have advice, please leave a comment. Maybe we should have a BloggerCon session for Second Life newbies?
Kent Newsome is selling some of his Second Life land at discount prices to get the kind of neighbors he wants.
George Holzer sends a link to an article in German about Internet heroes. There’s a picture of me on the page, along with a lot of other people, much more famous.
Heather Green: Steven Soderbergh to Use BitTorrent.
According to the NY Post, Anderson Cooper is a dud. His numbers are actually below those of the real newsperson he replaced, Aaron Brown.
MeshForum starts tomorrow in SF.
Steve Rubel: “iTunes has started to offer PDF enclosures subscriptions in the podcast section of the store.”
Here’s one way to get a free upgrade when flying.
Posted by Shannon Clark on May 6, 2006 at 8:39 am
Dave,
Thanks for the link – for your readers – we have academc/non-profit rates available and also a single-day rate for Tuesday’s open space sessions.
Shannon
MeshForum
Posted by Don on May 6, 2006 at 9:25 am
“Anderson Cooper is a dud.”
I knew that when he was doing the reporting about Katrina, he sucked.
Another miscalculated example from CNN. They’ve had so many.
I’m not a big fan of CNN, but Aaron Brown was much better. Lou Dobbs is the only one from CNN that I watch now.
Don
Posted by Frank Jonen on May 6, 2006 at 10:49 am
The best advice for Second Life is to setup a timer that reminds you how long you’re on already.
Posted by werner on May 6, 2006 at 11:00 am
SL: getting started is not that hard, there are probably three things you want to do: moving around in a more smooth way, get to interacting with other lifers and get a piece of land and put something on it.
You can combine the first two by doing a “find” on events and go to some place where there are people discussing something. More crowded places are a good place to learn how to move around more subtle.
For buying a nice beach location you need more money and you will need to fund that by buying Lindens or or you can stick to using your initial pocket money for buying “first land”. Then go to a place like slexchange.com and get yourselve a nice little house or something to put on your land. That will keep you busy for a few hours.
Posted by kosso on May 6, 2006 at 11:21 am
all the links are out there if you look for them. 😉
but seriously, what with your enjoyment of the sims and coding and love of building things , I think you’ll love it.
The best place to get advice is from otehr people, while inside the game. There are many many helpful areas and people more than willing to show you the ropes.
SL has a scripting language which you can apply to objects on ‘the grid’ called LSL. You should be able to ‘read’ it quite easily, I would think.
http://www.kan-ed.org/second-life/using-LSL.html
I am currently looking at a way to get RSS data from out on the web in to SL.
There is a new version of the SL client coming soon which should have more of one of your favourite babies, XML-RPC.
Yes, SL has an XML-RPC endpoint :))
http://secondlife.com/badgeo/wakka.php?wakka=ExampleRPC2PHP
first thing you should do make yourself look the way you want to look.
What’s your name? I ‘bumped into’ a neighbour the other day called ‘Dave Radio’ – I thought it might be you! lol.
I’m ‘Koz Farina’ : currently building the podcast.com ‘RSS Platform’ in SL – it’s a place for parties.and cool podcasting stuff which I plan to learn to build and share.
The local property baron around our land took ‘Doctoe Schook’ and I to a LIVE gig in SL last night. The audio was REALLY LIVE – using an mp3 shoutcast stream (or similar)
There were about 30 of us in the venue, which we had to be teleported to – and the singer was on the stage (he was a big blues frog with a guitar 🙂 ) The music blasted out the speakers here and we all danced in SL.
It was weird that while chatting and listening to the music, the singer actually spoke to people/avatars in the venue in response to questions and requests for covers. A very new and fun experience. SL is full of them! 😉
Your inventory is possibly the most important thing. Find your way around the contents. People can give you landmarks (called LM at times) so you can ‘bookmark’ places. This is where you also store all your character shapes, skins, clothes, cars, houses, swimming pool, helicopters etc – anything!!
‘Find’ is great for looking for things to shop for – SL has LOTS OF SHOPPING!!! –
eg: look up ‘podcast’ and you’ll find the ‘RSS Platform’ – a place I am building on some land I bought near the CurryCastle and PodcastPickle Tower.
Yesterday, I ‘bumped into’ a few podcasters I know – Todd Cochrane, Doc Mac, PodcastPaul etc and we all, with Jo and her new friend, sat around the campfire in the middle of the RSS Platform and chatted about stuff – it was great fun. [I plan on scripting a Kum-By-Ya loop 😉 ]
SL takes chat to another level. There’s ‘proximity’. It works – when it doesn’t lag from being overloaded by too many ppl of objects (‘prims’) around.
By the way – if you want to copulate with another avatar, you need to by the appropriate genitalia and get it clicked 😉 *ahem*
There’s everything here in SL – it’s not just shopping and sex – it can be about people building communities and pooling effort (and sometimes money, for land) and creating places to ‘meet’
Linden Labs even hold their committee meetings in SL – where they all sit around a table and tkae turns getting up and standing on the scripted soapbox (The Soapbox) , which ‘Shusshes’ people who try to chat/talk/type out of turn. 😉 – i need one.
Here’s a transcript of a recent meeting, where you can see Robin Linden talk a bit about XML-RPC as well as deling with all sorts of things like privacy etc.
btw: as a premier user, you can buy land – wither some dirt vheap small plots as a new user, or you can splash out and get more land or an island (after you’ve been ‘in’ for 40 days, I think)
When you buy alot of land – which supports a certain amount of data/objects/ prims on it, you do uncur a real money $US monthly charge – but just think of it like webspace rental where you would expect to pay more for more data space and hosting/maintenance of that data.
If things take a while to render – take hands off kb and WAIT. Once surfaces are cached (second) life gets alot smoother.
so, there you go.
Have fun!! Drop us a line! We’ll fly you around.
🙂
ps: here’s my growing SL flickr set (you can take snapshots within SL)
Posted by kosso on May 6, 2006 at 11:22 am
AND what Frank said! Lol!!
SL can drag you deep down the rabbithole!
Posted by kosso on May 6, 2006 at 11:27 am
the roundtable committe chat transcript – interesting read
http://forums.secondlife.com/showthread.php?t=104936
Posted by Doctoe on May 6, 2006 at 11:28 am
While you are there, check out Democracy Island. Do a search for it and have a nose round – I think you will find it interesting.
see you in SL
Doctoe
Posted by kosso on May 6, 2006 at 11:40 am
And learn to FLY asap!!
(with the chat window closed) E for up – C for Down – F to toggle flying.
– use mousekeys you move, naturally
a mouse with a rightclick and scrollwheel is you friend 😉
Also, and suprisingly – SL runs faster on my intel MacMini running Windows (via BootCamp) than it does in OSX 😉
Posted by Kent Newsome on May 6, 2006 at 12:06 pm
Dave,
I’ve got some land I’m trying to get rid of.
If you’re looking for a place to start, I have a decent size tract with a house/castle that I’ll sell you for $1 just so I can get it off my monthly payment (in SL your monthly fee is based on your land holdings).
See
http://www.newsome.org/2006/04/second-life-update.shtml
for more information about this land.
Posted by areyes on May 6, 2006 at 1:03 pm
I think they don’t get it. http://blogs.adobe.com/deeje/2006/05/ms_yahoo_not_thinking_about_pu.html
Posted by Michael Wilson on May 6, 2006 at 5:45 pm
Or, you could try There ( http://www.there.com ). It’s been around longer than Second Life, it’s bigger (as in, twice as many members), and, IMHO, a better product.
Of course, I work there, so YMMV.
Posted by Andrew Burton on May 6, 2006 at 7:21 pm
Re: Second Life
If you want to socialize, attend a few events. If you want to learn hot to build and script, find a sandbox and play around. The “badgeo” wiki is *the* *best* scripting resource out there for programming, but the Scripting Help that comes with each client download is a handy resource for all their functions.
Posted by fox on May 6, 2006 at 8:21 pm
I’ve found the classes and tutorals at the New Citizens Plazza to be really good and I’ve found the exploring to be really fun, its an awesome place its the first MMO I’ve played so I can’t compare them but its pretty cool.
Posted by fox on May 6, 2006 at 8:38 pm
I think that the there.com site looks a little cheesy and I counld’nt see much info about the games features up front.
Posted by fox on May 7, 2006 at 1:33 am
I found some info under help part there.com it does look very similar but I did’nt think the textures looked quite as good how is it better?
Posted by Rob on May 7, 2006 at 6:10 am
I hope Dave goes with SL because There doesn’t support Mac. Me, I’m spending too much time with Minions of Mirth http://www.prairiegames.com — perhaps not quite as social, but killing stuff is fun ha ha… check it out!
Posted by Brian McNitt on May 7, 2006 at 7:04 am
Dave,
I’m relatively new to SL as well. Perhaps we could organize a Friday afternoon meet-up where some of the more experienced Second Lifers could present building skills, etc. Maybe we could get Patrick Scoble (er, I mean Robert… 😉 to show us a few tricks? Just a thought.
Brian (aka – “Mash Potato”)
Posted by Michael Wilson on May 7, 2006 at 7:23 am
Rob,
Yes, we don’t support Macs. Yet. 🙂
Posted by Pathfinder Linden on May 7, 2006 at 10:00 am
Hi Dave,
My focus at Linden Lab is working with educators and academics interested in using Second Life for “serious” applications such as education, simulation, and collaborative learning. I’d love to meet with you or anyone else interested in Second Life (my SL name is Pathfinder Linden) and show you around.
Here are some helpful links:
Great introduction and summary of innovative applications in Second Life:
http://futuretag.net/index.php/Slgp1
Philip Rosedale’s Serious Games Summit Keynote in San Jose this year:
http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20060320/carless_01.shtml
Real-Life Librarians at Alliance Library System and OPAL extending their programs into Second Life:
http://secondlifelibrary.blogspot.com/
Second Life Education page on our website:
http://secondlife.com/education
Lastly, I’ll be speaking about Second Life at the Beyond Broadcast conference at the Berkman Center this coming Friday:
http://beyondbroadcast.net
-Pathfinder
Posted by TDavid on May 7, 2006 at 3:28 pm
Dave if/when you get a premium account, be sure to buy First Land before buying any other land. You can find First Land to buy by using the Find menu at the bottom of the interface. This land is sold for L$1 per meter for 512m. You will probably not be able to find land this cheap at any time after that. It’s a one time only offer so don’t miss that one. Then you can turn around and sell it to somebody else if you don’t want to keep the First Land or get more space.
Here’s a couple things I think you might find useful, Dave:
How to link to land locations inside SL on a webpage (SLurl)
http://www.blogcharm.com/vtor/7272/
How to save your existing avatar appearance
http://www.blogcharm.com/vtor/12908/
Some Second Life tutorials
http://instructables.com/secondlife
Virtual Las Vegas sim in SL
http://www.blogcharm.com/vtor/26359/
University for learning about SL called TeasersU
http://www.blogcharm.com/vtor/21751/
HTTP support in SL version 1.9.1 (the next version of SL)
http://www.blogcharm.com/vtor/20750/
Understanding object permissions in SL
http://www.blogcharm.com/vtor/19745/
How to link together multiple prims
http://www.blogcharm.com/vtor/12767/
How to check bandwidth and other stats in SL
http://www.blogcharm.com/vtor/12063/
First experience converting L$inden to $USD
http://www.blogcharm.com/vtor/4534/
BTW, I’m TD Goodliffe in world, so feel free to to IM and say hello 🙂 Hope you find this information helpful.
Posted by Thought Plasma on May 7, 2006 at 9:19 pm
Dave
I am writing about Second Life here — http://www.thoughtplasma.com in a blog called Mixing Realities. I should have a primer done this week or next that is a thorough how to on Second Life. We are set up over on Slackstreet you can get there by clicking here — secondlife://Slackstreet/220/72/26 this is where Robert’s Scobelizer Inc. building is, the one with the blood fountain and lava, Eric did a good job on that. We have a pretty big continent of bloggers, podcasters and new media types that hang around in that area. We also can direct you to Curry castle, if you would like to leave a copy of the RSS specification highlighting the enclosures section on the door steps. It is really amazing to see tons of people that were at Gnomedex last year now in SL. I was actually talking with Chris about doing something in SL in conjunction with 6.0 this year.
You can do a find on Though Plasma in world and I would be happy to hook you up with some info.
Cheers,
John Anthony Hartman
Posted by F Dupuis on May 8, 2006 at 10:26 am
There are a number of people/groups who specialize in helping new residents learn about what is possible in SL and how to use the tools. I would highly recommend contacting Bob Bunderfeld, he holds regular newbie classes in his community (Slate).
Posted by Eric Rice on May 9, 2006 at 1:25 am
Good thing we just built a conference center large enough to hold about 20 Bloggercons simultaneously. Ping me dude, Spin Martin, I’ll hook you up. And you can get a chuckle at the temporary housing for the DSC /smirk.
Or ping Johnny up above: Thought Plasma, he co-runs a lot of stuffs around my sims.
ER