While SL is in uproar, Linden Labs announces a 10′000 USD contest

“O tempora, o mores”. More then 2′300 posts on the Official Forum about the unjust increase in tier, there are protests all over SL and the Lindens announce a contest. In which world are they living in? Not in mine it seems.

Meanwhile, no answers in the forum they opened for discussion with Jack and M, but it’s no discussion, since no (almost no) Lindens are showing up.

Let me quote Ciaran Laval on the forum:

They’re too busy deleting posts in the Linden prize thread to look at this one.

Meanwhile join the protest at www.slmembers.com and www.saveouropenspaces.org.

Can communication really be managed so badly?

Yes it can. Another bug by Linden Lab: Katt Linden, the Communication Manager of Second Life, posted “Where to find updates from Linden Lab” at the official Second Life blog. It seems, even Linden Lab recognized that it was very hard for their customers to find the necessary information on their many sites.

OMG, Katt failed again. The first link is supposed to link to the status page of Second Life. But what did Katt? She linked to https://status.secondlifegrid.net/ instead of http://status.secondlifegrid.net/ which is the correct address. She was told so in a comment by Garth FairChang at 10:38 AM:

Your attempts to hide bad news are amusing. LOL

BTW. one of your links just gives a 404 error. If I was feeling helpful I would say which.

At 10:55 AM, Winter Ventura took pity with Katt, as she apparently was unable to locate the missing link and she gave her detailed informations:

first link.. 404′d

Alas, more than 24 hours later, this error is still not corrected. People, especially Newbies using the link provided by Katt will experience Linden Lab quality work first hand – SNAFU.

We all do mistakes, and this error with http and https has happened to myself more than once, but after being told twice (correction: thrice) one should be able to correct it on such an important page. Maybe the whole manpower of Linden Lab is concentrating on censoring the forum and blog entries at the moment. No time for such mundane things as de-bugging blog entries (sounds familiar, doesn’t it?).

Second Life at war

♥ Greetings, seekers of romance ♥

I have written less in this blog during the last weeks than planned, because I was fully occupied with creating and preparing romantic stuff for christmas. Just when I felt ready for a post telling my reasders what lovely things to expect from Love me Tender for this christmas season, I found out

WE ARE AT WAR

How? Why? In short: The Lindens plan to raise the tier for so called OpenSims by outrageous 66% in January 2009. Read the post at the Official Linden Blog or at the Forum, but if you want to get an excellent overview, read the post of Vint Falken at his blog.

This last maniac move of the Lindens is ruining our business as it is ruining the business of many others. But it’s not only bad for business but making a lot of other people living on such sims homeless as well.

While this war is going on, I will post nothing new here and I will stop creating any new things, because I am not sure, if I want to stay in a Second Life like this.

A snapshot by Alesha Destiny

Tears are in my eyes while I write and even my friend Cupid with his words “Spread the love” can’t cheer me up at the moment. As much as I despise Hate, Violence and War , I know this is not the time to stand back and watch, but I feel the duty to stand up and fight for my Second Life, for your Second Life. My online time is dedicated to the resistance movement in SL at the moment and I urge you, to become a member of one of the many resistance groups, too. Even if you don’t own or live on an OpenSim, this move of the Lindens affects you as well, because Second Life will be another Life (and a poorer one for that), if they succeed with their plans. One of the in-world groups is “+SOS+” (Save our OpenSpace Sims). If you can’t find it in Search, as the Lindens are censoring and cheating like wild at the moment, just search for Villain Baroque under people, click my profile and click the group “+SOS+” in my profile.

Yes, we fight back. No griefing, but we protest at the Welcome Centers of Second Life and other places where we get a chance too meet Lindens, since they don’t answer our questions in the forums.

Let me end with a few lines of the song “Do you hear the people sing?” (Les Misérables):

Do you hear the people sing?
Singing a song of angry men?
It is the music of a people
Who will not be slaves again!
When the beating of your heart
Echos the beating of the drums
There is a life about to start
When tomorrow comes!

Will you join in our crusade?
Who will be strong and stand with me?
Somewhere beyond the barricade
Is there a world you long to see?

... and maybe I have a chance to listen to my friend Cupid again some day, since he has fled from my side while I wrote these lines. Seekers of Romance, I leave you alone for a while, since Romance has fled my heart for the time being as I see the Lindens knowingly and willingly destroying the Second Life I love.

Once again: JOIN THE WAR!

Hide Me Body Pumpkin

♥ Greetings, seekers of romance ♥

Halloween is near. As you know, our site is dedicated to romance. What is a romantic halloween? I am still pondering. Meanwhile I am trying to cultivate a pumpkin in heart form (no success so far) and I made another FREEBIE available to the public that isn’t truly romantic but it’s funny at least.

Seekers, I give you the “Hide Me Body Pumpkin“.

[Update] A star for Second Life on the Walk of Fame

♥ Greetings, seekers of romance ♥

This is an update to a prior post I did in April 2008 (Click here to go to this post). While only 12 people voted on the subject if Second Life should get it’s own star on the RL “Walk of Fame” in Hollywood, our FREE “virtual star” was taken hundreds of times on SL Exchange and in-world.

It was time to “update” this star, so we enhanced it with a nice effect. When someone stands on this star, he gets showered by golden stars. We even did a little video of this effect …

More than 20′000 L$ to win

Subject of the contest
Develop the idea for a sandwriting to congratulate FREELIFE MAGAZINE on it’s first birthday.

1st award:     15.000 L$
2nd award:      5.000 L$
3rd award:       2.000 L$

every participant gets a voucher for a sandwriting in the value of 150 L$.

♥ Greetings, seekers of romance ♥

FreeLife Magazine just celebrated it’s first birthday (Click here to got to their anniversary issue). We want to congratulate them since they are the magazine that discovered us last winter. Therfore we  initiated this contest with it’s very attractive prizes.

Participating is easy

and

everyone can win.

Just give us a good idea for a sandwriting to celebrate this birthday. This contest ends October, 1st, so hurry with your idea before someone else wins the prizes.

Here are the terms and conditions for this contest:

Recommendation from Wonderful Evenings

♥ Greetings, seekers of romance ♥

“If you do not find something at Love Me Tender that you want to give your date then you are not a romantic.  Here you will find gifts atypical of other shops.   Near the landing area you will find talking towels for him and for her <209, 126, 24> and sand writings, <194, 118, 24>  a Love Me Tender original.  There are sand writings available in other languages <183, 132, 24>.  Express your love in shells with writings made from them <167, 116, 24>. “

Quote from: Wonderful Evenings, Nuba (40, 32, 21)

A nice recommendation, isn’t it? Their complete review about “Love me tender” is much longer and you can get a copy of it at Cupid’s Palace.

If you don’t know WONDERFUL EVENINGS, you should give them a try. They have a wonderful idea, they sell guides with the best places in Second Life to bring a date. Their guides are priced at 5 L$ per recommendation, which seems a fair price to me, considering that this will save you hours of looking around on your own and spares you and your date the frustration of wasting  time with visiting places that are worth no visit.  They strive to become a kind of Guide Michelin for Romance in SL. So, if you ever wonder again “Where shall we go tonight?“, use the recommendations of Wonderful Evenings, I do.

And as my friend Cupid says: ♥ Spread the Love ♥

Villain Baroque

Oops!…We did it again

♥ Greetings, seekers of romance ♥

Unbelievable, but we made it to the cover of “FreeLife Magazine” issue 24. They liked the things we creates as you do (and as we do). Go to www.freelifemagazine.com and read this article for yourself.

This business success was made possible through the inspiring nature of Rockje Cortes, my beautiful muse. Go read the article and afterwards pay our sim Rockje a visit. And maybe you will find Rockje and me sipping champagne and celebrating with our friend Cupid there.

As our friend Cupid says: ♥ Spread the Love ♥

Villain Baroque

How contests work in SL – Get THREE free sand-writings

♥ Greetings, seekers of romance ♥

I don’t know, if you know, how contest work in SL. I didn’t until a good friend of mine recently participated (and still participates) in such a contest.

It’s a sham right from the beginning!

This is how it works:
You put your picture somewhere on a plate at the place of the contest. The contest organizer puts a script in this plate to “count” the people <touching> or <paying> it. This script prevents that the contestant himself or another avatar touches the plate many times thus giving multiple votes. Usually, you are only allowed to “vote” once a week or once a day. So far the rules seemed quite fair to me, but …

The Second Real Estate Crisis

♥ Greetings, seekers of romance ♥

This isn’t such a romantic posting, but since it affects a lot of us in Second Life, I thought to post it here anyway. Anshe Chung’s virtual Real Estate Imperium Dreamland seems to be dwindling.

No wonder – when Linden Labs lowered it’s prices (not the tier) for land, everyone owning land found himself in a situation where the value of his land had diminshed dramatically over night. The more one had, the more one lost. And I guess, Anshe Chung and her company Dreamland had a lot of parcels that were not worth the money anymore, she herself had paid for.

I own 8′096 sqm on one of her residental sims, but since I didn’t plan to sell my parcel, I just didnt care at that time until …