Last week an active member of the Second Life libsecondlife software library, Jesse Higginbotham, who’s avatar was Jesse Malthus died in an automobile accident. It is always tragic to see someone that young die. It brought up another interesting and often disturbing thought, what happens when the person behind the avatar suddenly dies or is disabled, and no one in real life knows about there Second Life? I am sure it has already happened, given the size of the population in Second Life.

I suppose the avatar just does not sign on ever again. Sort of vanish without a trace. A rather tragic way to go actually, since know one would know why they are gone. Some close friends in Second Life would never have a wake or a get together to pay tribute.

Even more disturbing, what would a family member think or do if they logged in with the decedent’s account? What might they find they might not want to find?

Interestingly, I have seen a service to address this sort of problem on the Web, MyLastEmail.com. Maybe Second Life needs something similar, but what would it really say or do? Even more troublesome, people disappear from Second Life for other reasons.

-Veyron

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

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.

There has been a lot of discussion since Linden Labs announced that voice will be added to Second Life. Akela Talamasca made some interesting points about that person didn’t sound like I expected them to. There is of course the point about the handicapped or the socially challenged having issues with voice. What I think it will really come down to is two major points, at least for me. Privacy and usability.

Information can not be un-given. Once it’s out, it cannot be taken back. Text is text, my voice is my voice and distinctly my voice. I don’t want to have what I say used against me sometime in the future, perhaps far in the future, when I’m not an being an avatar. I’ve considered using some voice cloaking software, but that seems extreme. I’d more inclined to use it if a voice was a generated part of the avatar. Makes sense, everything else on an avatar is an artificial computer construct, except who is behind it controlling the avatar. And that follows into the my next thinking.

Usability. When you’re talking with someone you are either talking or waiting to talk. Unless your trying to talk over someone, only one person can talk at a time. When texting is going on, there are multiple conversations going on at the same time. I can actually queue up what I am going to say, and I get the great advantage of being able to have a moment to reflect on what I am about to “text” before I hit enter. It’s pretty hard to remove your foot from your mouth once you have planted it firmly between your teeth.

You can also be IM’ing people left and right while chatting. We all do it. You can usually tell when someone is doing it. This would be something very hard, if not impossible to do with voice.

Oh, and let’s not forget about the possible annoyance factor…. I have not seen any real comments about how annoying voice could actually be. Think about how annoying howling and yowling in a club is as text and some basic audio is now, can you hardly wait for it to come live over streaming audio? Oh, and let’s not consider the possibilities for griefing. I will make a prognostication right here, right now. Some griefer will figure out a way to blow a 90+ decibel sound through the system and right into the headphones people are wearing. I can hardly wait for the news flash on that one.

Audio spamming, err, advertising. You think ugly spinning billboards are a problem now? Wait until they start yelling at you at 90 decibels. Buy my 16m lot next to yours for an extortionists price to stop the screaming…. I’m not naive enough to think that this will not happen. I’m sure Linden Labs has some smug plan to prevent this from happening and will be shocked when someone smarter than they are figures away around them. Or worse they have taken on the usual laissez-faire attitude and stuck their head in sand pretending that none of this will actually happen.

Lastly, two other minor points for me. I spend all day at work talking to people. When I get home to play on Second Life, the last thing I want to do is keep on talking. I also rarely turn on the steaming audio in Second Life. I like the peace and quiet at home.

Finally, I feel the immersion factor of Second Life I so enjoy might be ruined with voice. The people’s avatars I see and meet I feel are real to me. Just like the places. I feel voice might break the spell.

Within a year or so once the voice option is mainline in the Second Life software, I expect their to be a bifurcation of the user base. The percentage, and probably large at that, of older avatars will not be using voice, while the newer avatars, not knowing anything else, will be yammering away with voice. The two groups will look at each other with puzzlement…. Then the next wave will be live streaming video, but then at that point, what is Second Life? Skype?

Call me a Luddite, but text it to me baby….

-Veyron

From Wikipedia:

In Hindu philosophy, an avatar, avatara or avataram (Sanskrit: ?????, avat?ra), most commonly refers to the incarnation (bodily manifestation) of a higher being (deva), or the Supreme Being (God) onto planet Earth. The Sanskrit word avat?ra- literally means “descent” (avatarati) and usually implies a deliberate descent into lower realms of existence for special purposes. The term is used primarily in Hinduism, for incarnations of Vishnu whom many Hindus worship as God. Shiva and Ganesha are also described as descending in the form of avatars, with the Ganesha Purana and the Mudgala Purana detailing Ganesha’s avatars specifically.

The word has also been used by extension to refer to the incarnations of God or highly influential teachers in other religions, especially by adherents to dharmic traditions when explaining figures such as Jesus or Muhammad.

Wow, that sounds impressive.  Hmmm, I don’t think it fits me though.  In fact, I am pretty sure of it.  Must be something wrong with that entry.  Oh, I see.  I needed to research this further.

For other uses, see Avatar (disambiguation).

Oh, here we go….

An avatar (abbreviations include AV, ava, avv and avvy) is an Internet user’s representation of himself or herself, whether in the form of a three-dimensional model used in computer games,[1] a two-dimensional icon used on Internet forums and other communities,[2][3] or a text construct found on early systems such as MUDs. The term “avatar” can also refer to the personality connected with the screen name, or handle, of an Internet user.[4]

I suppose that’s me.  Sounds sort of degrading.  Maybe I like the first definition better.  After all, I was rezzed from nothingness and will probably be derezzed into nothingness….

Anyhow, this is the start, which is not really the start because I have to back date things.  I’m late at starting blogging my adventures because I did not know I would start blogging my Second Life.  In fact, I didn’t know I would have a Second Life.  Odd that way.  So, we have to rewind a bit and this also gives the Narrator an opportunity to inject her own opinions into how things went and what her take on my reality is.

It should be an interesting ride to say the least….

-Veyron