gdp's Comments

Hypergrid Business : OpenSim needs a installer bundle

Thu, 29 Sep 2011 06:50:00 +0000

Dixie -- Each of us only has so much time in the day to be creative. Creating a grid is kind of like... like cooking a meal. Do you grow all your own ingredients and cook everything from scratch? Not only does it take a lot of time, but you wind up limited to the stuff that can grow in your area -- and is in season. Though some folks do do this, and more power to them! Other times, you're rushed, and you just grab a frozen meal out of the freezer and reheat it. Boring, but it works, and keeps you fed. Or you can combine ingredients -- some fresh, some canned, some frozen -- into something unique, using your limited time and energy on the combining part, or the seasonings, or just make the salad from scratch and reheat everything else. (Okay, I'm a little hungry right now as I write...) Same thing for the grid. Are you going to make all your plants from scratch? Go outside and take pictures to create original textures? Or is the stock stuff good enough? Personally, what Linda Kellie is doing is way better than anything i can come up with on my own. Yes, the plants on my grid will look "the same" as on other grids (though I may arrange them differently) but at least they won't look worse! Similarly, does everyone need to create all their office buildings and classrooms from scratch? Or use their time when it comes - in creating unique interactive learning or collaboration experiences? Having stock plants, buildings, furniture, avatars, even entire regions available doesn't hurt creativity -- just creates time and opportunity to be creative in different ways.

Hypergrid Business : The hypergrid is not the next Web

Wed, 28 Sep 2011 06:37:41 +0000

Troy -- You're absolutely right. The Internet is the underlying communication network for everything from the Web to email to instant messaging to FTP file transfers to peer-to-peer networks -- and the hypergrid runs on top of it as well.

Hypergrid Business : Five ways make money with a viewer

Mon, 26 Sep 2011 11:13:00 +0000

Troy -- Great idea! And OpenSim doesn't have to wait for a Google to come around -- that will take millions of hypergates connecting grids. Advertising could also be sold off of a curated, Yahoo-style directory. I hope a viewer developer somewhere is paying attention to this!

Hypergrid Business : 5 tips for pro builders moving to OpenSim

Fri, 23 Sep 2011 19:24:24 +0000

Paco -- There are tradeoffs. Free regions often have a catch -- a limit on the number of users, maybe, or limited prims, or limit on scripts, or only available for a limited number of months. Or you can only get a parcel, not a full region. Or no OAR exports. Or max one free region per customer. (Each grid has different limitations.) As a general rule of thumb, you get what you pay for. For example, if you want to have 100 regions -- for example, different versions of your builds, where you would then sell the OAR files to your corporate customers -- then Kitely is a great deal. You're only paying for the time you spend in-world, and you can have your assistants working with you, and your customers can come and visit the regions to get a preview, then you export the OAR and sell it to them. If you want to have a region that you plan to use for a popular club, you're better off with an always-on region from a traditional vendor, on a high-traffic grid. If you want to have a store, and want to make sure your content is protected, you're best off on a closed commercial grid -- and pay for a region that can handle all your prims and customer traffic. Meanwhile, you have a 100% free region, in unlimited quantities, on your home computer -- but you can only get visitors if you know how to configure your ports and routers, and at most you'll be able to get a handful of visitors over typical consumer broadband connections.

Hypergrid Business : Educators save money switching to OpenSim

Wed, 21 Sep 2011 00:23:55 +0000

Tween -- Yes. Several articles a week's worth, typically. If you're interested in education in particular, check out: http://www.hypergridbusiness.com/2011/07/educator...

Hypergrid Business : Nova drops prices to $5.95 per region

Sun, 18 Sep 2011 20:54:01 +0000

Dutch -- 80,000 prims is a factor of the Aurora-sim setup -- and, in a practical sense, you'd still have to deal with viewer limitations. By the time your guests load up all your 80,000 prims, they might be too old to enjoy them. :-) But, in fact, there is no upper limit on OpenSim regions at all -- the standard 45,000 prim limit that we see is just the default setting. it could be changed to anything. ScienceSim has regions on it with over 100,000 prims. They just take a long time to load! A very long time! But, aside from complaints like Pam's about usability or customer support -- which all OpenSim vendors can use some help with, frankly -- Nova seems to be delivering what they promise, and I've talked to some satisfied customers. Nova is an advertiser -- you can see their ad on the top right of the page -- but I have no compunction against running negative articles about advertisers (and have lost one -- maybe two -- advertisers already as a result) and no problems running positive articles about companies that don't advertise. Dutch, if you have negative experience with any of our advertisers, and are willing to go on the record and talk about it, I'd love to do a story. I strongly believe that negative articles -- about backups, security, customer service, or slow upgrades -- help point out bad practices, and motivate vendors to fix them -- and also help distinguish good vendors. And that helps improve the industry as a whole and grows the market. I believe that people are more likely to buy if they know ahead of time what the catch is. A particular vendor may offer an enticing package, but if you don't know what the downside is, you might not be willing to buy. But if you know the downside -- say, inadequate customer service, or traffic limits, or a new grid without any social stuff on it yet, or what have you -- you might decide that the downside is worth it and you go ahead and take the free land offer, or the cheap region, or what have you. In the case of this particular deal, the downside is that you won't have more than 10 visitors on your region at the same time. So it's not a good deal if you want to have a store or a club, or company offices, or a meeting venue -- any place where you expect to have more traffic, or hope to have more traffic. And the other downside is that you can only get the regions on open grids like OSGrid or Nova or your own standalone. That means that if you want to put up a store and sell stuff, your customers will be able to take it anywhere they want. By comparison, regions on closed commercial grids like InWorldz and Avination go for around $60 a month. However, you can use these cheap regions as a place to build, or keep your warehouses, and then export your creations and upload them to Avination and InWorldz for retail sale. That way, you can have a lot of cheap land to build on, and can make as many backups of all your stuff as you want, and still be able to sell your creations in a secure, closed environment.

Hypergrid Business : Aurora-Sim newest option for OpenSim servers

Sun, 18 Sep 2011 15:52:59 +0000

Almo -- No problem. Anyone who has specific questions -- or story suggestions, or columns to contribute, or new grids to add to our directory can email Hypergrid Business at editor@hypergridbusiness.com or me specifically at maria@hypergridbusiness.com If, by "ambassador" you mean PR person, then I can recommend a couple of marketing consultants, but you'd probably be better off looking at someone already on your team who can be a spokesperson for the grid. Have them email me -- I have a few suggestions about how they can promote it, many of which won't cost you anything.

Hypergrid Business : Why free land is good for OpenSim

Wed, 14 Sep 2011 04:44:51 +0000

Linda -- Servers are getting cheaper all the time. Nova makes a profit with $5.95 regions of 45,000 prims each. On the web, Blogger and Facebook are profitable even though they give away Webspace. Farmville is profitable even though it gives away virtual farms. Yes, it costs money for Farmville to run all their servers. But they make it back -- and then some -- by selling all the add-ons. People will still be inspired to create. Maybe not to pay for their basic residential land, but to upgrade to premium land, or to buy virtual pets, or whatever else it is that they want in the worlds. But at the end of the day, it's all a moot point because prices are falling dramatically -- and on a daily basis, it seems. As soon as land is so cheap that grids can cover the cost by selling currency, or memberships, or premium land for club owners and businesses -- then its more profitable to give away the residential plots for free, because it brings in residents who will buy the currency, the memberships, or the stuff the retailers are selling. And that means more customers for the designers and the creators.

Hypergrid Business : Why free land is good for OpenSim

Wed, 14 Sep 2011 04:07:45 +0000

Linda -- When the price of land gets low enough, it makes more sense to offer it for free, and make up the difference in other ways (advertising revenues, currency sales, retail shops). Most of the consumer-focused web-based virtual worlds already offer their users free personal rooms. Google's Lively gave away land plots before Google decided it wasn't in the social game business. What I'm saying is that it will happen. Probably soon, rather than later. And grids need to be ready for this. Meanwhile, for content creators, this is all a good thing -- all the money people currently spend on tier, they will be spending on content, instead. And as more people are attracted by low-cost or free land and join up, the more revenues the grids will have from the ancillary revenue streams, the more money they can invest in streamlining the infrastructure -- and drive the price even lower. Eventually, I believe we'll have something like what we've got now with webhosting. You can have unlimited space with a hosted service (like Blogger or Facebook or whoever) but you're stuck with their limitations -- a small choice of templates, limits on visitors, no commerce, no scripts, no exports, or whatever the limits on free land will be. And if you want more control, then instead of hosting your own website (and doing whatever you want with it), you'd just host your own grid -- and you'll pay a fixed price every month, and get unlimited regions (and pay extra for traffic) or unlimited regions and unlimited traffic, but pay extra for processing. After all, storage is cheap -- pretty much all the Web hosting companies are already offering unlimited storage. It's good for consumers. It's good for creators. I believe it will be very good for grid owners (who are smart enough to get out ahead of the trend). It will be bad for land reselers -- unless they figure out a way to add value to the land that's worth paying extra for.

Hypergrid Business : Getting attention in a virtual world

Tue, 13 Sep 2011 19:19:52 +0000

I wasn't endorsing his product or service -- just saying that one of his marketing tricks seems to be appropriate to a virtual environment.

Hypergrid Business : A modest proposal for hypergrid security

Tue, 13 Sep 2011 04:59:44 +0000

CiderJack -- The problem will be maintaining backwards compatibility with the regular Second Life viewers. OpenSim's major advantage over all the other virtual world platform out there -- other than prim building -- is that millions of people have used Second Life and have gone through its tutorials and orientations. All those people feel a level of comfort with those viewers. Getting too far away from the core SL viewer will hurt usability -- personally, I don't think it's a good idea to get too far away from SL compatibility until OpenSim grows to the point where it's got a comparable user base.

Hypergrid Business : Unity's Flash plans to spur adoption of Web-based worlds

Mon, 12 Sep 2011 03:13:28 +0000

Troy -- You're right -- http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm. -- so total penetration of less than 4 percent. I'll update the story.

Hypergrid Business : It's time to move all grids south

Mon, 12 Sep 2011 03:04:33 +0000

Joe -- "Look and not take" is already implemented, and some grids, like Nova, use this feature. That means you can wander around those grids, but you can't buy anything and take it home with you. That feature is available in the most recent versions of OpenSim. I'm not a particularly big fan of this, since there are time when you want, and should be able to, take stuff from one grid to another -- say, if you created it in the first place. Or if you're wearing it, and don't want to show up naked after your hypergrid jump. I propose allowing only "full perm" items to travel -- everything else stays on its home grid.

Hypergrid Business : A modest proposal for hypergrid security

Mon, 12 Sep 2011 02:04:12 +0000

Whoo hoo! Two more months of free Kitely regions! I mean, so sorry to hear that you guys have all this work to do. :-)

Hypergrid Business : A modest proposal for hypergrid security

Mon, 12 Sep 2011 01:34:45 +0000

Sarge -- Would it hurt your business if, instead of selling full-term items, you sold items with only two of the perms? Or is the main issue the fact that you've already sold a lot of full-perm content, and it would then be able to leave the grid?

Hypergrid Business : A modest proposal for hypergrid security

Mon, 12 Sep 2011 01:27:29 +0000

Thanks, Ilan! I know you guys have a lot of other stuff on your plate right now. But if this isn't taken care of by the time you start implementing hypergrid teleports for Kitely, do you think you can take a look?

Hypergrid Business : It's time to move all grids south

Mon, 12 Sep 2011 01:24:11 +0000

I have to agree with Sarge here. There are many good reasons to keep identities private. For example, I don't put my whole name and home address on dating websites -- and I wouldn't want to do so on dating grids. If I wanted to join a support group for "embarrasing rashes on feet," I would prefer to do that pseudonymously, as well. Or plan a revolution against a corrupt regime. Or look for a job without my current employer knowing. Or any of a million other perfectly reasonable reeasons. It would be a sad metaverse indeed if it if was built right from the start without any potential for privacy.

Hypergrid Business : A modest proposal for hypergrid security

Mon, 12 Sep 2011 01:15:27 +0000

Jamie -- This hasn't been done yet for two reasons. 1. The OpenSim core developers have plans to implement a perfect solution -- a separate permission for hypergrid transport. That's nice, but not practical in today's world, and it's going to take a long time to implement. 2. The grid owners haven't wanted to go into the code and muck around with permissions, since the OpenSim core developers have a plan in place. But I think the situation is changing. Grid owners are getting more aggressive at just going ahead and writing code that they need. And the folks at Kitely just informed me that their addition to OpenSim -- code to check for permissions when exporting OARs -- has been already been donated to the OpenSim community, and can be downloaded here: http://opensimulator.org/mantis/view.php?id=5674 They've also updated the Wiki: http://opensimulator.org/wiki/OpenSim_Archives

Hypergrid Business : It's time to move all grids south

Mon, 12 Sep 2011 00:42:40 +0000

Sarge -- My idea is to implement a permission check so that only "full perm" items would be able to travel the hypergrid. Anything else would have to stay on the grid where it was created. Full plan here: http://www.hypergridbusiness.com/2011/09/a-model-...

Hypergrid Business : It's time to move all grids south

Mon, 12 Sep 2011 00:08:14 +0000

Follow-up note from John Rogate: First of all figuring out a numbering scheme (coordinate scheme) to be closer to something is just another example of a workaround to solve a problem that needs to be fixed at the root. As I said, as the grids begin to grow, the workarounds become more and more difficult and extensive. As far as OSGrid, I do not want to minimize the effort, but for the grids in the education consortium, all just shutdown, change the first number "6" to a "3" in the coordinates (6000 to 3000 range) reboot, and we all move (yes, must check to see if the space is available). Total time: 5 minutes tops. I say, get your prime spots while they are available. HG is a great technology and the unifier of Virtual Worlds / OpenSim. The IP issue is a separate issue. OK, thwart HG and innovation because of IP? Well, Fix the IP issue. Yes, the "stealing" in Sl is rampant. Yes, many of the SL items permeate all over OpenSim (trees, animations, textures, more). And Yes, HG or no HG, IP is an issue. The issue does not reside in HG....the issue resides in code, and with open source code like Imprudence, for example, for an good programmer it is much easier to remove the permission / owner / security checks from the code and just export at will. What do you think does the checks for permissions, Owner, Creator – Magic? NO Code and the code is open source and at everyone’s fingertips. Welcome to the movie industry, the software industry, the video game industry, and the music industry – Welcome to the Internet. From an e-Commerce / merchant perspective...I would think HG would be a BOON to business rather than an obstacle. Instead of being open to business on some small closed grid (adverse to the technology) - one can do business with the entire Metaverse (what we would want...no?). And HG makes it all happen. Again, it is not HG that is the root of IP issues. But, there will be so much free content in the Metaverse, it may make it all a moot point. What about implementing the "going south"? From a technical standpoint, all things being equal, it could happen on a long weekend. It is the coordination that will take a lengthy amount of time. Or fix the code. MOVE, and then nobody has to think of this anymore.