Last post I mentioned about how to give your avatar an email address with LindenPost.com. To take it another, logical step forward, you can give your avatar it’s own identity in cyberspace, separate from your own. This has a number of advantages. You get to keep your identity private, you get a semi-custom or custom email address and you can keep things separate. This is a step-by-step guide to how to do it.

We are going to leverage the wonderful Internet system we know as Google. We are going to use it as our operating system. But before we do that, we need to make sure your identity is separate from your avatar’s identity. The easiest way to do that is to run a different web browser than you run now.

This part is Windows centric, but the gist of it will work on any computer. If you regularly use Internet Explorer, the easiest thing to do is download and install Firefox. Firefox is going to have all the tools we need to use the Google Operating System anyway, so you’ll need it. Already use Firefox? You can’t really have two installations of Firefox easily. Here’s another solution, Portable Firefox from PortableApps.com. Portable Apps is a great set of free tools you can download that will run from anywhere. Usually installed from a removable USB drive. You can then take all of the software tools you might need anywhere you go. I put a USB drive right on my keychain and leave it in my purse. If you don’t have or don’t want to install Firefox on a USB drive, I believe you can install it locally on your hard drive. Another tool I find very useful is KeePass to manage passwords.

Now that you have different Firefox installed that has a separate identity from your own, we can go create your avatar’s identity. First step, go to Gmail and create an account. Let me know if you need an invite, you shouldn’t as Gmail is out of beta. If you need an email account to verify Gmail with, the LindenPost.com account would be a good choice, as your avatar created it. Gmail can also pull the LindenPost email via POP3.

Now you have a Google identity. From this point we can build up on this. Here are some Google add ons that are useful to add:

• Personalized home page is useful.
• Google Reader is very useful for reading blogs. I use it all the time.
• Google Notebook for storing notes and other bits you might come across.
• Google Docs and Spreadsheets for doing documents related to just your avatar.
• Google Calendar to keep track of those important dates for your avatar.
• Google Home Page, if you want your avatar to have it’s own home web page.
• Picasa Web Albums, 1GB of images to store online and serve up.
• And of course, Blogger, to blog for your avatar.

Next, we can integrate some tools with Firefox and Google. The Google Toolbar is a really good add-on for Firefox. If you’re signed in, it can tell you if you have Google Email, new posts in Google Reader, get at your Google Docs, make posts to Blogger, and it can store your book marks in Google History. Google History is sort of good/bad. It can track your history do a customized search and store your book marks, etc. It’s an avatar’s life, so it’s mostly harmless and fairly useful.

Another useful Firefox add-on is CustomizeGoogle. It makes a large number of improvements to the Google experience through Firefox. A couple of good changes to make is change to use https over http for a few of the Google services.

A add-on from LifeHacker is the Better Gmail extension. It adds a large number of tweaks and upgrades to Gmail. This extension might break at some point when Google makes changes to Gmail, but it should get updated as Google makes those changes.

A really useful add-on is Gspace. It makes your Gmail account a portable storage device you can use through Firefox. Gmail gives you over 2GB of storage, and Gspace lets you use it for storing files.

A more complicated upgrade is to Google Reader is the Google Reader Theme. It has a fair number of extensions to install and upgrade, but it makes the Reader look nicer.

One piece of troubleshooting advice, if you have trouble installing an extension with an error code, go in to Portable Firefox and increase the amount of cache used from 0 to some number like 16. Restart Firefox. Install the extension. Restart again, and then change it back to 0, restart and clear the cache. If you have Firefox on a flash drive, you do not want Firefox to cache to it. The reason it is set to 0, is that the flash drive is slow and it will wear out the flash drive eventually.

Lastly, you can add Google Talk. If you use Google Talk on your own Google account, you can run another copy in Firefox under a different Google ID. Go to the Google Talk page and launch it within the web browser.

There you are. Your avatar can now have a life of it’s own in cyberspace.

-Veyron

Here’s a clever idea, give your avatar it’s own email address with a Second Life related domain name, lindenpost.com. LindenPost.com is offering, during the startup beta period, 1 year email subscriptions to Second Life avatars for L$100. Which is really quite cheap. It’s not a like a freebie email account, there are no ads and it has some real webmail features. Plus you can download your email via POP or IMAP and send email with a normal email client.

Soon I’ll post a guide on how to bring your avatar out of Second Life and into the rest of Cyberspace using that magical machine known as Google. Then your avatar can play in Cyberspace and Second Life. All this without giving away your own identity.

-Veyron

One of my favorite organizations, is the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The EFF is almost always on the lookout for the little guy’s interest - i.e. you and me. As it turns out all proceeds from the sales of the Solstice GXP’s sold in Second Life by Pontiac are being donated to the EFF. I might also have something to do with one of the sponsors there, OMG Magazine…. Can you spot the blogger in the Eye Candy?

-Veyron

With the upcoming imminent demise of the Second Life ratings, there is now a review of some of the 3rd party rating systems at SLNN. I’m less than thrill with this entire situation. First, it means people who have accumulated a large positive rating will see it disappear, so much for that investment. Next there is obviously a large group of competing rating systems, all incompatible with each other. Lastly, they all have some degree of cost at some level to be useful.

I’m also not happy with yet-another-HUD to try to run, install and fit on my already cluttered screen. Or some obnoxious close to an advertisement balloon hanging over my head, screaming “rate me”.

Why couldn’t Linden Labs come up with a better solution? Or at least some sort of common API for these vendors to plug their rating systems into so that the scores would show up on avatar profile and being able to rate them through the client. But then that would have defeated the purpose that they eliminated the rating systems in the first place, they didn’t want to host the data. Fine, then extend the API to plug into someone else’s database. Seems like a dump and run on Linden Labs’ part.

Now I feel slightly compelled to try to pick one of these services out and use it. Anyone else feel the same way? Any going to use one over another? Forget ratings entirely?

-Veyron

I’m trying out something new on the blog…. some pictures. As some of you have probably noticed, I do some pictures from time to time. Vint has taken some really good pictures of me in the past. In real life, I do some of my own photography with a Canon DSLR and use Photoshop, etc, but here in SL, I’m being lazy. Vint also does a much better job on playing with post processing the photos she takes.

Anyhow, here I am, on the beach down at Apez.biz sim. It’s near my place, and a quiet sim to work in with a nice beach I can rez objects. I took this shot for SL Next Top Model, but never used it. Which is another interesting story….

The swimsuit is from Chic Boutique, one of my favorite stores.

-Veyron

I made a minor change to Blogger, I changed the feed from the default to use Feedburner which has some nicer RSS feed options and other niceties. If you have subscribed to the default RSS feed, you may want to resubscribe with the new feed URL, which should be automatic. Let me know if there’s a problem.

It’s a common complaint I heard from the guys. Maybe more like an excuse. I don’t know where to buy anything to look good. Most, but not all, of the guy’s avatars in Second Life look like a clone, or something right off of skid row. I know most of the girls look pretty outstanding and tricked out with animation overrides, accessories, nice skins and killer clothes. Comes from that disease most of us girls have - shopaholicism. It’s made worse by the easy justification of the low cost of a Linden dollar to real currency, which for some reason fogs reasoning about how much is really going to be spent.

I know there is a lot of places in Second Life for clothing and fashion for women, but boys, you need to start catching up. One of the best place to keep up on men’s Second Life fashion is Men’s Second Style blog. It’s updated pretty regularly, and done tastefully. Links, reviews, and where to get what you boys need.

So, stop looking so pathetic, and start dressing up boys! You’ll thank me later….

-Veyron

a.k.a. Fear & Loathing in Second Life…. If there is someone I have to meet and talk to inside of Second Life, it is Gideon Television. Obviously a deranged, gun crazed, narcissistic, sex obsessed sort of individual that I’d really like to have a date with. Obviously just my type. A good time, just waiting to happen.

Clearly channeling Hunter S. Thompson or at least trying to. From this blog entry, The Best Little Whorehouses in Second Life, he’s is doing a good job of it. All we need to do now is shoot him from a cannon. I think there’s one in front of Paradise Lost.

I will have to confess to meeting him from afar in the Pontiac sim. I did go down to see Gideon perform in person, but I never did talk with him. It was a bit too zoo like. But I did meet Korbin, but that’s another blog entry.

What’s missing now is more blog entries from him.

-Veyron

Fabjectory has an interesting product…. Take your Avatar to work. They build a rapid prototype of your avatar, or anything else you want, from Second Life in meatspace. They claim to be incredibly details and in full color. The model is made of layered, colored glue. It looks sort of expensive and from a L$ standpoint, it is pretty expensive, but then, I should talk about spending too much money….

I wonder if they would charge extra for working bells….

Anyone going to run out and take their avatar to work? I would be interested to hear from anyone who did this on how well their avatar turned out.

I’m testing out a new Second Life Hud. This is a Blog Hud Pro that allows you to post a blog entry directly from Second Life. The website for the HUD is at http://bloghud.com/. The one that posts to just Bloghud is free and this one that can post to other blog sites is L$900 for the time being. This could be amusing, it has photo support and extended text blogging. This could be amusing…..

Veyron, like the Narrator, has a wicked sense of humor which often gets her and also the Narrator into more trouble than they wish…. That being said, this video from Devil Ducky, while not really being related to Second Life is really too funny to be ignored. It is a technical support problem on that new fangled device, the book….

Okay, so I have a huge inventory of clothes, shoes, and other assorted items. That comes from being a shopaholic. Some people can sympathize. The unfortunate part about this large inventory is that this represents a a rather large personal investment, which I don’t really like to think about. Not only for the cost of that inventory, but the amount of time I put into acquiring it and “organizing” it. Reading about inventory loss in the Official Linden Blog sent a shiver down my spine. Removing your inventory by setting it to the default, sounds rather horrific. I think if I logged in and found my inventory missing in would probably have a nervous breakdown (well maybe not, but I’d definitely start throwing things)….

I’m even more astounded to read from Lordfly’s blog that Linden Labs does not backup your inventory. A substantial amount of my objects in my inventory are no copy, which prevents me from making a backup. But let’s just say I could make copies of my inventory objects and put them into a container and store them in a running sim. Look what happened to the Blue Note. A database crash fried the running plot of land and Linden Labs response was, should have had a copy of what you needed in… drum role… your inventory…. It seems to be a catch-22.

Linden Lab’s is going to try to defend themselves with some boiler plate terms of service, etc ad nauseum, that they are not responsible for the database. I don’t think that will work, you cannot have it both ways. It is inexcusable. My inventory has a comparatively small value, wait until someone’s inventory with a high value gets fried and cannot be recovered - send in the lawyers….

-Veyron

Once again, I’ve reached my limit on groups. It’s a rather perpetual problem for me now. Someone creates, requests I join, or I want to join a group and another group has to go on the chopping block. How I hate to whack a group. I suppose there has to be some limits at some point otherwise I’d end up being in about 100 groups. But 25 seems too small. Maybe 50, at least until I’m up to 50….

At least there is The Fashion Consolidated Group. It’s been a real lifesaver of groups and lists. Still, I’m in a few other clothing designers groups, mostly to get freebies and other news that’s not getting posted to FashCon. If you are short or out of groups, and you want to get Fashion Announcements, you need to join this group.

Last gripe is the alert… “So and So has left the discussion.” Do I really need to know this? Do I need to have a ping and a pop up on a new group to let me know this? Is this some sort of self replicating feed back loop Linden Labs has setup? I love how I can be logged in for an hour and a new group will popup an IM with only that message. I just love it for its pure annoyance factor. Anyone know how this can be turned off?

My next item on my list in my de-n00bification process was replacement of my current plastic skin that comes as the default from Linden Labs. This skin looks like it came right out of the injection mold machine. Nice, smooth, and completely lifeless. It has to go.

I teleport to a place called X2:Exotica. An interesting looking place, I go inside.

Once inside this looks like a familiar theme. And I also see naked people, as before on the walls. This time, instead of the skeleton, it’s the skin for sale. I wander over to the female skin section… okay I’ll admit to peeking a look over on the guy’s side. Then I wander up to the walls and begin shopping for skins… Hmmm…. look at those skins, they look much better, oh you can buy a demo. I buy a demo skin for L$1 and try it out.

I’m amazed, so much better. I’m like a new me. I’m in love. Queue narcissistic idolization. Now to buy the real skin I want without this demo tattooed all over it.

*GASP*

This skin is kind of expensive. This seems to be beyond what I was planning on spending on Second Life, but it is very nice I start to rationalize. And I spent what seemed like a lot on that last shape and I got a high quality item. My hand hovers over the buy button, and with a mystical motion, I hit buy. The first of many mystical motions to be sure….

Ahh, immediate gratification. I put the new skin on and complete the enrapture with myself. I start to hear melodious music in the background….

Then like a record screeching, I realize my skin is too light. How can I go out like this? I look way too pasty. I look like a geek stuck inside all of the time. I’m going to need a darker shade. Now this skin is really nice, but I should get a darker skin to go with it. I start internally justifying that I should get another shade of skin to have more fashion flexibility. Yeah, that’s it. I’ll buy another shade. I quickly slide over to another shade of skin and hit buy.

*BING* - what? Not enough cash? How could that be? The Visa card starts to tremble again. I smile at it. It will be okay, just a few more dollars will do….

Ahhh, once again, immediate gratification. The music starts up again….

Then that screech hits again…. I look at my head and I notice I have hair that looks like a wet sheep dog. Gotta fix that now. Nearly perfect now. I am close to having all that I need.

I go back to the list and start going over hair places. Next up, hair therapy….

-Veyron