cruel to be kind

So taxes might come to incomes of virtual worlds: “IRS taxation of online game virtual assets inevitable“.

I do understand that the core audience reading this article is from the States. But please, pretty please, can ‘journalist’ at least make a minimal effort to look at the bigger picture? How to achieve this on a global scale?

Do those writers actually have knowledge about that this internet thingy is something spread internationally? You know, connecting the world? This is Cnet we are talking about and not Little town in the prairy news.

Of course if you report on such an discussion …

[This is the english version of my german entry "Das virtuelle Leben als Spielart des ersten - oder als komplette Alternative?]

I saw on Techcrunch an article about a new social software site called Rupture will have a plugin for Wow and that they want World of Warcraft Users as their beta testers. Which is a clever move: Instead of getting us beta junkies they use testers with an actual need to use the service.

But it got me wondering about something: How many people really use the net as a tool to enhance how they live / work / have fun in …

Sometimes you have to wonder if marketing and PR of a company are so out of touch with the rest of the world … okay they usually are but then again, you always hope someday they would get more clever.

As I read on techcrunch, Dell wants to make a move in Second Life but as a closed off, invite only event:

This new trend of announcing news in Second Life is generally pissing off journalists, who don’t have a lot of time to waste. But Dell is apparently going ahead with plans to host an invite-only press event inside of …

It is quite interesting to read articles from english (= US based) newspapers and magazines and how German magazines describe Second Life. The interesting difference is: Sex. Or the absence when talking about it.

Most american articles rarely mention that there is something in Second Life which has to do with Sex whereas the German articles most correctly state that there is also a lot of sex involved. Cheap sex to be precise.

If you look for most articles, SL is great because of the people, the land rentals and sales, some selling of goods and of course now the big companies …

Eric rants about an article in the Guardian where they claim Axel Springer will start the first tabloid in SL. Which of course is not true as Eric states.

It does make more sense in German – as this is going to be the first German thing in SL afaik. (make that in English – which makes a lot more sense). And just for the record: If I hear anybody using “look at me! look at me! I am first! I am first!” again I think I am going to loose it.

The *real* news in this is not that it is the first …

As not all of you may be login into the website or read the blog:

Detailed investigation over the last two days confirmed that some of the unencrypted customer information stored in the database was compromised, potentially including Second Life account names, real life names and contact information, along with encrypted account passwords and encrypted payment information.

No unencrypted credit card information is stored …

With a bad memory like mine it would probably make sense to make a directory of frequently answered things. Or use the search engine on my blog more often – as a matter of fact I like to talk about things I am passionate about more then once. But even if you have read the following topic in a posting by me (then the words “Hi I am Randy” should ring a bell) I am sure I added a new twist!

The following text of mine answers a question on the SL Forums (I thought they were supposed to be killed?) …

As I am moving to a different place, let me offer this nice little place in Antilia for you:

728 prims, 2896 sq, 1000L$ a week tier directly to protected land AND in the very nice settings of an Azure Island property meaning nice roads and trees and such as well as a nice square form.

Best of all: You don’t need to be with a premium user to have this land!

Bigger picture on flickr:

Tip: If you visit the url, right-click for about land and you will see the form of it. And building is easy as cake: The plot starts in the …

One of the most annoying things (and it will keep people from spending money in SL which is why Linden should be interested in solving this problem) is weapons.

As I was attacked over the last days several times a day, this thread in the SL forums just kicked it over for me to finally write something about it.

I had my nick registered around last year when initially trying out SL, and got back using it this year. As I now own a piece of land I wanted to go shopping.

In the last three days, I have encountered …

If you play Second Life, one of the things you notice is how ugly land can be. And how expensive buying land is. One trick is to buy land from somebody else and pay them – this way, you don’t need to get a premium user.

But, buying land is contagious with the “I want more’ bug and while I am still not sure if and how I would like to use SL in commercial way, I have set up my house in SL in Antilia.

As usual I notice that I have more fun with building things than really playing in …