How to do…. « The Torch: SL Guide

So You Want to Own a Business in Second Life – Part 3

April 28, 2012 by jwarrhol 1 Comment

In this installment of So You want to Own a Business in Second Life, we tackle the business of Affiliates/Franchises. Think about all of the items you have in your inventory, you will probably find many by the same one or few content creators! Often these very same content creators that you love, may have affiliate/franchise vendors that you can either purchase or at time’s get for free and set up your own Second Life business! Below are a few tips to help you get started with this type of business:

Selecting an affiliate/franchise-this may be the hardest part with this type of business, as there are many affiliate/franchise opportunities in Second Life. You can often find such vendors on the Second Life Marketplace, by looking in the business category. As of 7pm slt (4/23/12), there are over 3200 affiliate/franchise opportunities in Second Life! To help yourself narrow them down, think of items you like to purchase or services that you use a lot in Second Life, then do a search on the marketplace. Of course if you are within a budget limit, some of the costly affiliates/franchises may be out of your reach and you may have to choose one or several of the freebie ones.
Read the terms, rules, and instructions-this is very important as affiliate/franchise businesses often have their own terms, rules, and instructions that can affect how you set up your business. Often such businesses may require that you join their update or merchant group, so make sure you have group space available. Some may have requirements such as how many can be located in a particular sim and where you can place the vendors. You should also check to see who is the customer support or your first line of contact in the event that items are not delivered to customers or if you have a problem with any of the vendors. You should also read the commission split, as this may determine if it is cost-effective to even rent property to set up the affiliate/franchise. Some affiliates/franchises pay more than others, some pay very little. Lastly read the terms to see if you can even use and set up the affiliate/franchise business, since some vendors have avatar age restrictions—you have to be a certain age for the vendors to actual function for you correctly.
Location, location, and location-land rental can be costly in Second Life the same is for shops. You will have to have a location to rezz and set up your affiliate/franchise business. If you buy a complete affiliate/franchise that has many vendors, then you may need a much larger piece of property, shop, and prims to get set up everything. Of course there are many affiliate/franchise businesses that just include a single multi prim vendor, that can be prim heavy. Choosing a location is never easy either, you may not want to set up an affiliate/franchise that contains the same business that you have within the same sim. You also would want to look for areas that are less laggy but busy enough so you can get some traffic to the shop. Always look around a location before making a selection.
Advertising, promotions, marketing-after you set up your affiliate/franchise, you have to promote the shop’s location. You can do things such as looking at promotional rental groups, if you are leasing property and send out notices announcing the shop’s opening. You can also hit social media or ask the sim where you happen to lease property, if they can do a profile on your new business. Make sure you promote your business in any groups that you own or groups where this is allowed. You should also put your business location in your profile picks and take out a small classified ad, if it is within your budget. Also make sure the business is listed in Second Life search via the parcel. Another idea is to talk to the creator of your affiliate/franchise to see if they have any advertising or promotional material that you can use to set up your store or if they have any events that tie into the business that you can be a part of.
Update, update and update-if you have a good affiliate/franchise business, then you should receive product updates or notifications that vendors have been update. It is important that you make updates to vendors or place out new items as they become available, this helps your store to stay up to date and you can have new material. If you have an affiliate/franchise that does not offer much support or updates, you may want to contact the creator to see when updates may occur. Remember when someone purchases an item from your affiliate/franchise vendors, they will always message you first if there are failed deliveries or the item does not work correctly.

If you love this type of business, then you may want to consider leaping into the world of content creation, which will be our next installment of So You Want to Own a Business in Second Life.

Filed under How to do...., Newbie Advice, Uncategorized Tagged with business, help, newbies, second life

So You Want to Own a Business in Second Life – Part 2 (Clubs)

April 2, 2012 by jwarrhol 3 Comments

On our second segment of this series, we will focus on the club business in Second Life. In case you missed the first part of our series on business owning in Second Life, you can view that story here.

If you are new to Second Life, it will not take you long to hear about clubs, events, or djing! Owning a club in Second Life can be fun and rewarding, but it also takes a great deal of time, planning, and organization.

Since owning a business in Second Life, mirrors business owning in real life somewhat, I am going to employ a real life business concept—the SWOT Analysis. No this is not MBA 101, but you should analyze your own capabilities before jumping into what can be a costly venture in Second life. I have streamlined the concept of SWOT into four categories. Please consider these five things, as they are the key to making or breaking your club in Second Life:

Budget- Decide from the beginning, how much of your real life money you can put into a club. You will need money to pay for property for the club, as well as for events if you decide to hold contests, and for advertising the club. There is also the possibility of paying for special events, dj’s, or event hosts. You also have to budget for club equipment and the actual club building.
Theme-Will your club have a theme? Is it going to be a rock, pop, top 40’s, country, etc type of club? You can also make your club appeal to a specific community in Second Life, such as goth, vampire, furry/neko, steampunk etc to name a few. What will the rating be? Adult, mature, or pg?
Location-do you want your club located on the mainland or will you rent private estate land? Each type of property has it’s plusses and minuses.
Staff-How will you find DJ’s and hosts? Do you have the time to host or dj yourself? Will you used managed DJ’s or will you simply send out in DJ groups?
Time-Do you have the real life time to devote to the club? This is very important, particularly if you cannot find enough staff to keep your club going, you may end up hosting or DJing or at times doing both.

If, after considering the five things above and you still would want to own a club in Second Life, then keep reading! So let’s imagine you have a club set up, fully staffed, and you are ready to open for business. Before you throw open the doors, consider the following tips:

Consistency-It’s important that you have a consistent schedule, not only for your staff, but for our VIP’s. People have routines in Second Life and if they know their favorite club is opened a certain time, they are more than likely to plan to go to your club. Try to narrow down days and times that work for your staff and your VIPs.
Advertising and Promotion-this is important so people know you even have a club in the first place! Make sure your location parcel is listed in search, take out a classified ad, and put your club on your picks. Encourage your staff to do this as well. You should also strive to put events in the Second Life event’s listing daily. Of course promote your events in your group. Consider setting up a blog and tweeting events using the Secondlife tags.
People-keep the drama out of your clubs, ensure that your club staff and the VIPs are happy! This means listening and paying attention to their wants and needs to ensure that your club can function without any real hassles.

Once you are ready to open and have considered everything on this list, the next steps is to keep your club fresh and a great place to be in, this means reevaluating things such as times, themes, genres, and even the location of the club. Of course paying attention to the trends of Second Life also helps. Remember owning a club can be challenging and a lot of work, but it can be as fun as you want it to be!

Filed under How to do...., Music, Newbie Advice Tagged with club, help, Newbie advice

Raid the Mark- Um How Do I Open Items From The Marketplace?

March 21, 2012 by IzzieM Leave a comment

Opening packages that have been delivered to you through Second Life’s marketplace is really hard, right?

Nope. It’s quite easy, although a lot of people have troubles with it, especially when you end up with a massive box attached to your avatar’s arm or whole body. Here is a step by step guide to opening a package delivered to you from the marketplace.

Step One: Drag the Item from your inventory on to the ground. This is known as Rezzing. Most items delivered from the Marketplace be transferred in the ‘Objects’ Folder in your inventory.

Step Two: Right click the items and go to open. Some items allow you to click directly on the package to open them. Vendors call the act of clicking on the box to open, ‘Touch’.

Step Three: When a box is ‘touched’, or right-click and opened, a window of content will appear on your screen. This will show you all the items within the package. ‘Copy to Inventory’ will transfer the items into your inventory.

Step Four: Your new items are now in your inventory ready for you to wear or rez. Remember clicking the Recent tab will show you all the items that have recently gone into your inventory. This tab only works from the time you log in until the time you log out. Once you’ve logged back into Second Life you will have to go Inventory diving for anything you need. If you remember the name of the item, you can use the ‘Search Filter’ bar to help.

That’s it, I told you it wasn’t hard.

Oh, almost forgot, to delete the package after you have transferred your items, just right-click and delete, it will place the empty box into your trash folder. Keep rezzing areas prim free and clean for other residents!

Filed under Fashion & Freebies, How to do...., Newbie Advice Tagged with marketplace, Opening Packages, Raid The Marketplace, second life

Age Verification

March 1, 2012 by IzzieM Leave a comment

Oh boy, well, we knew this day was coming and we knew you had to grow up sometime. So let’s have ‘The Talk’…. about Age Verification.

If you haven’t notice already there are some regions in Second Life that are adult themed, and protect the “innocent” minds of its users Linden Labs have put through the Age Verification policy. You must prove that you are 18 or older in real life to enter adult regions. To become age verified you must log in to your Dash board at www.secondlife.com, click on the Age verification tab and follow the instructions.

A Few Words of Warning

DO NOT TRY TO BECOME AGE VERIFIED IF YOU ARE UNDER THE AGE OF 18. If you are under the age of 18 and you are caught in Mature or Adult regions, the sim owner ( and his/her employees) have the right to remove you through banning, ejecting or kicking. They also have to right to report you through abuse report (AR). Once reported the creators/ administrators of Second Life will remove your account from the game completely and permanently, There are places in Second Life made specifically for residents who are under the age of 18. Don’t believe me? Read the Terms of Service:

2.2 Age Requirements for Use of Areas of the Service.

(i) Users 13 to 15. If you are at least 13 years of age but less than 16 years of age, you may only use the Service if you are affiliated with a Sponsoring Organization, and your Account in Second Life is referred to as an “Affiliated Account.” A “Sponsoring Organization” means a User Organization (as defined in Section 2.4 below) that (i) maintains on the Service a “Teen Estate,” which is Virtual Land and Content that is appropriate for users between 13 and 16 and complies with the General Maturity Rating; (ii) has been approved by Linden Lab, in our sole discretion, to register Affiliated Accounts using our "Registration API" tool; (iii) limits the access of all Affiliated Accounts of users between 13 and 16 to the Sponsoring Organization’s Teen Estate; and (iv) requires all visitors to the Teen Estate to comply with the General Maturity Rating and any other rules that the Sponsoring Organization may impose as long as they are consistent with this Agreement. By accepting this Agreement in connection with an Affiliated Account, you represent that in addition to the representations of section 2.1, you are at least 13 years of age and less than 16 years of age, you agree that you will at all times comply with your Sponsoring Organization’s rules for the Teen Estate, and you acknowledge that you are only permitted to access your Sponsoring Organization’s Teen Estate and no other areas of the Service.

(ii) Users 16 and 17. If you are at least 16 years of age but less than 18 years of age (or the legal age of majority in your jurisdiction, if it is greater), then you may only access areas of the Service rated General in accordance with our Maturity Ratings. If you have used the Service under an Affiliated Account, you may continue to access your Sponsoring Organization’s Teen Estate, provided that the Sponsoring Organization permits you to continue such access upon reaching the age of 16.

For users 13 through 17 years of age, we have created Teen Safety Guidelines that we suggest you review with your parents.

(iii) Users 18 and Over. If you are at least 18 years of age (or the legal age of majority in your jurisdiction, if it is greater), then you may access areas of the service that are rated General, as well as Moderate and Adult, as provided in our Maturity Ratings and Section 2.3 below.

Your Accounts may be suspended or terminated immediately without warning or any refund or other compensation if we believe that you are under 13 years of age, if we believe you are under 18 years of age and you represent yourself as 18 or older, or if we believe you are over 18 and represent yourself as under 18.

To read the whole Terms of Service click here. If you would like to find out more about age verification check the Second Life website forums as well as the Age Verification information centre in world.

Filed under How to do...., Newbie Advice Tagged with age verification, how to do, second life, Terms of Services, TOS

So You Want to Own a Business in Second Life – Part 1

February 13, 2012 by jwarrhol 1 Comment

HandshakeWithBorder by Z - edited version of the handshake by Nathan Eady As a multiple Second Life business owner, I am often asked the following questions: How can I start a business? What would I need to start a business in Second Life? What are types of businesses in Second Life I could own?

To help answer these questions and to contribute to the Torch SL Guide, I will post a series of articles on the subject of starting a Second Life Business. Each series will focus on a specific type of Second Life business and give you tips on how you start, grow, and try to sustain your Second Life business. In this first segment, I will give you an overview of the types of businesses in Second Life:

Clubs: Everyone wants to be a club owner in Second Life! This type of business requires a lot of time, patience, but can be fun and rewarding to grow a club from the ground up.

Content Creation/Merchants: If you have a skill such as making clothing, furniture, or event trees, then this type of business may be for you! This type of business will require you to be familiar with some third-party design software programs and to have great customer service skills when dealing with potential customers.

Affiliate/Franchise Owner: This type of business is related to the Content/Creation Merchant’s category., except you are not making the actual content. You can find many popular brands in Second Life, that will allow you to be a franchise/affiliate owner. This type of business requires you to have property and the ability to scout out great locations.

Land/Property Rentals: This type of business can be time-consuming and very costly and involves you owning land directly or renting out private estate land to others. This type of business involves much customer service work, time, and effort to sustain a reputable land/property business.

Everything Else: This is the pot luck category. Second Life is full of people who provide services, such as photographers, bloggers (such as myself!), event planning, modeling, and contract services for scripting or even building. There is much to cover in this category and we will try to review all the possible options.

Look for Part Two of “So You Want to Start a Second Life Business” next week, where we will tackle the complex and fun business of owning a club in Second Life.

Jessi

Filed under How to do...., Newbie Advice

Become a DJ in 8 steps

February 1, 2012 by morphmantheclown 1 Comment

So, you’ve all seen the DJ’s, you’ve all heard them play. Have you also secretly wanted to be them?

Here are my collected “wisdom” (a term I use loosely about myself ) from my time as a DJ, both in SL (for about a year) and RL (about 10 years).

1) The player! This is essential, you need something to play on. There are many alternatives, but the main ones are SAM Broadcaster (pricey, but one of the best), Virtual DJ (Mid-range, but reliable) and Winamp (free, but rather unreliable and a bit clunky, you also need a plugin for it to work with Shoutcast)

2) The stream! You need a stream, which is basically a web address that you send everything you play to. You set up your player/plugin with the address and some additional info (like what you want to appear on the DJ board, if the club has one and the format that the songs should be displayed in in the chat on Phoenix/Firestorm viewers), Many clubs in SL have their own streams that you can borrow, but that limits you to that club. You can also use an apache server to stream from your own computer, but unless you have around 100MBPS up on your broadband, this is not an option. The best option would be to rent a stream, either directly from SL in one of the many stream rental places or over the internet. The former is more convenient and you have everything already set up for SL, but the latter gives more control and can be a bit cheaper if you know what you are doing. Steams in SL can be as cheap as 100L$ for a day (great for auditions or events) or 800L$/month (great to keep on a subscription if you get a job at a club).

3) The music! As a beginner, pick a genre and stay to it. Throughout your whole career you should think of mixing up the songs, so you don’t play too much from the same artist. Every genre have great mix-collections (either on CD’s or as downloads) that give a good, solid foundation. A mix-collection is usually about 2 hours long (the length of most sets in SL clubs) and have all different artists. You can then start to expand by getting more from the artists that you notice people are liking. A good start is to have enough songs for 8 sets of 2 hours, that’s 16 hours worth of music, all of different artists, so you don’t play the same artist twice in a set, but the latter is the DJ’s preference.

4) The workplace! Clubs around SL are many, and it might be hard to find the one YOU like, and DJ’s are plentiful. Even with that, I can assure you that ALL clubs in SL are looknig for DJ’s. The DJ business is hard, you WILL be playing for empty dancerooms a lot in the beginning, before you get a following. Once you get fans, your reputation will rise and you can expect more and more crowd. Just give it your best and you’ll make it in SL club circuits. The mistake many DJ’s do is that they try it out for a month, notice that noone is there and quits. The thing the great DJ’s of SL, the legends, did when they started was to play for the sake of music, not for the crowd or tips. Playing for a club so full the sim crashes is a wonderful feeling, but it takes time to get there.

5) The following! That brings us to your identity. I know this might seem counterintuitive, but before you even get the stream, create an identity. What do you want your host to call you? Once you have that, create a group named “DJ X fan group”, where X is your identity. Invite your host to the group and give him/her invite rights, put the group as free to join and open enrollment and make sure your crowd knows you have the group, so they can join it. Send notices before EVERY event you’re playing at!

6) The Host! The hosts job is to work the crowd, to get seats filled and take care of them. Your job is to play the music and make sure you get the right music for the moment. IF you have time over, you can join the chatting, but that is the lowest priority. That’s why you have a host there.

7) The Mic! Even thou it’s not a necessity, hearing a DJ talk over the music hightens the emotions of every visitor. Get a mic, get used to talking in it and use it while DJing. Don’t use it too much thou, use it after a song when you got tipped, other than that, just use it for announcements every 4-5 songs at a maximum. Remember that people are there for the music, not the talking.

8) HAVE FUN!!! This is the most important part! If you’re in a bad mood, it will reflect on your performance. The transitions get sloppy, your voice will sound harsh and you won’t pay as much attention to the crowd. If you’re not happy at any of your sets, there might be something wrong at that particular club. Don’t be afraid to tell the club owner or manager(s), that’s what they are there for. If it’s the music that gets too repetetive, they might allow you to do a few sets outside the clubs genre, if it’s a problem with a person, you might get some help sorting it out. If all else fails, try working at another club for a while, there is nothing preventing you from working at several clubs at once. Be careful thou, know your limits. When doing something you love, you risk overdoing it and I’ve seen many DJ’s go down by being overworked. When you have a timeslot at a club, it’s easy to get stuck on the idea that you HAVE to play then and there, every week, indefinitely. Then you get to another club, get an offer to play there, and suddenly you’re stuck with more sets than you can handle, but don’t have the heart to say no to any of them. Don’t be afraid of telling the owner or manager that you feel overworked, they might consider pulling you down to one set every other week instead, or give you a leave of absence for a month or two.

Filed under How to do.... Tagged with advice, broadcast, broadcaster, DJ, free, how to, how to become, howto, mix, Music, SAM, stream, VDJ, virtual, winamp

Building Tutorial – Scripting

December 23, 2011 by IzzieM 2 Comments

Scripting is a function used in building, that allows users to receive or give information to objects. These are usually used in items that can be bought on the marketplace, from moving clothes, the shoe walk sound, re-sizing scripts, and others.

We will today create a simple floating text that will show a message in a color on the helmet we built last week. Put on your helmet and right-click it, select Edit and go to the Contents tab. Click New Script and a new object should appear that’s named New Script. Right-click it and select Rename. You name it whatever you want, but a name that says what the script does is the most effective, so for now, name it “Floating Text”.

Double-click on it and the LSL Script Editor should appear. This is actually a program within SL that is made for programming in LSL, the Linden Scripting Language. All objects you see in SL that you can interact with, from the dance balls, to the HUDs, to the vendors, are programmed in LSL, just like you’re about to do.

If you notice in the Local Chat, it should say that your helmet just said “Hello Avatar”. This is the first part of the script you see. You can delete that line for now, so it doesn’t say that every time you rez your helmet. Further down you should see a method named touch_start. You can delete everything from that line down to the last squiggly-bracket (}). We’re only interested in state-entry here, so within those squigglybrackets, where it said llSay(0,… before (should be line 4), just click to put the pointer there. You could type, but since you don’t know what to type yet, there’s an easier way.

At the bottom you should see a drop-down menu with the text Insert…, click this and you should see a lot of commands starting with two lower-case L’s. Look for llSetText and click it. It will type out llSetText for you, and this might seem a bit redundant, but when you start out, this menu will show you all commands you can write, so it’s great for experimenting.

If you hover your mouse over the text, it will show a box with information about the command, how you write it, what it does and what you need to know. This one will say “llSetText(string text, vector color, float alpha)”. The things within parenthesis are called named variables, what it tells you to do is to write a text within quotation marks (also known as a string text), a comma, a three-number-sequence (known as a vector) that will state the color (in red, green and blue) and a decimal number (known as a float) that will give the alpha, or transparancy of the text.

After llSetText, type the following: (“This is a text that will float”, <1.0, 1.0, 1.0>, 1.0);

If you hit save now, you will see a white text over your head that says the text we put in. Now within the angle brackets (<) , instead put other numbers, starting with 0., like 0.5, 0.2, 0.9, to create other colors. Experiment to see what colors you can get.

You can type any text you want, up to (I think) 64 letters, but more than a few words will look crowded. There’s a fix for this, and that’s the line break. Where ever you want the text to split to a new row, just type \n, like “This is\na text”, that will come out as:

This is

a text

That’s all for now, write what you feel or what you want others to know, and wear that helmet with pride, you’ve made it yoursef!

Oh, one last thing, the text will remain, even after you’ve removed the script. To fix this, just edit the script and remove the text within the quotation marks and save the script.

Filed under How to do.... Tagged with building, floating text, scripting, tutorial

Building Tutorial – Simple 3-prim Helmet

December 16, 2011 by morphmantheclown 1 Comment

Christmas is just around the corner and with it comes the pressents. I usually relax from all the stress by building some, so why not build a pressent? This projects takes around 10 minutes and is completely free. Let’s build ourselves a helmet that can be a part of a space suit as it is, or easily modified to be the helmet in a fancy steampunk diving suit.

The finished product, or my version of it anyway

We’ll start with some basics. A prim is a primitive shape, everything in SL is basically prims (some are special thou, such as sculpties or mesh that are prims modified in another program, we won’t go through them here). It can be a basic box, cylinder or sphere or a modification of any of these three. A pyramid is a modified square, a ring is a hollowed out cylinder and so on.

To create a prim you need to be in an area that permits building. Sandboxes are perfect for this, as they let often gives you building tips, you always have people around you that you can look at for inspiration (remember, inspiration, not copy or plagiarize) and you can build really large or primmy things without having to worry about a prim limit.

This project is small enough to build just about anywhere thou. If you have a premium account, you get a free Linden Premium Home that allows 117 prims. If you have nothing in it, it’s actually a good building workshop.

The basic prim, all builds start with it

Alright, with that over, lets start building! Start by right-clicking the ground. In the pop-up-menu select build/create and select the sphere. For now, leave it as it is and click the magic wand in the edit menu to open the create menu again. Select the tube (that is basically a hollow cylinder). Left-click somewhere near the sphere and move the tube so it’s centered over it, touching the ground under it. Hold ctrl/cmd and shift simultaneously and move one of the top colored boxes down to resize the cylinder, so the sphere looks like it’s resting on it.

In the edit dialog box, look at the Object tab and in the three Size boxes type in these values: X 0.12, Y 0.47, Z 0.47 (notice the full stop instead of a comma).

Click on the sphere, so it becomes selected. In the Rotation boxes, make sure all numbers say 0.000. In the Path Cut (on the top-right part of the edit dialog, right under the drop down menus) type the fullowing values: B 0.25 and E 0.9. In Hollow, type 100 and you should have what looks like a wooden Pac Man and a thick, short tube. Select the tube and look for Hole Size in the edit dialog. Change the Y value to 0.05 to thin it out.

Next, click the sphere and hold down shift while dragging one of the arrows sligtly, then release both the mouse an shift. Move it back (without holding shift) and you should have two overlapping, identical spheres. In the edit dialog, change the following values: Rotation X 320, Path Cut B 0, Path Cut E 0.375, Hollow 95. Hold down shift and move it to fit in the hole on the pacman-esque sphere.

This is all the building we need to do, so let’s make everything into one single object by holding down shift and click on the Pac Man cylinder and lastly the tube and select Link in the build menu. Now when you modify anything, all three objects will be modified, but we don’t need to do that now. Instead, check the box Edit Linked in the edit dialog and go to the Texture tab.

Click on the visor and in Transparacy type 75. Click Texture and click the button Blank in the menu that pops up. Click ok and then click the back part of the helmet. Again, click the texture and select blank, do the same with the collar tube. Now you can click Color and select the color you want, click the back sphere again and select the color you want. Uncheck the Edit Linked box again and all three objects should be selected. Go to the General tab and give it the name you want, then exit the edit dialog, right-click the helmet and select Take.

Look in your inventory, in the Objects folder and it should be there. Right-click it and select Attach To and browse to Nose (if you want it to follow your head) or Spine (if you want it to follow your torso, like a divers helmet). It should end up somewhere on your body, in an odd position and angle. Right-click it and move and rotate until it’s on your head and you’re satisfied. Right-click it again and select Detach to put it back in the inventory, and the position, attachment and rotation should be saved.

You’re all done, now you can double-click it in your inventory, or right-click and select Wear to wear it as any other items you have.

Filed under How to do.... Tagged with building, helmet, prim, space, steampunk, tutorial

Back to Basics: Changing Your Avatar in Second Life

December 7, 2011 by IzzieM Leave a comment

The Different Avatars Choice given to you when you sigh up to SecondLife

Second Life have been as given its users a lot more variety to choose from since its start in 2005. Over the years Second Life Residents can choose from User generated content and their own starter avatars. It very easy to switch between the two. From Vampires, Werewolves avatars, Cars, and the normal human avatar.

So how do you change to these new avatars? It fairly simple actually. In the current Second Life up dated viewer, you have a Sidebar, which is located on the left side of your viewer. It has your avatar choices (as shown above), outfits options, your inventory where items go when you buy them, the search button where you search for second life content, Places where landmarks are saved when you are given them, your voice settings, and your mini map which is a small that shows you the area on the sim you are in.

While it is important to learn about Search, Places, Voice Settings and Your mini map, that will have to come sometime later. For now it will be the first three buttons we will focus on.

Avatars

Second Life is filled to the brim with different kinds of avatars, this is part of SL’s creative freedom, you can be anything you want to be here and Linden Labs is showing you this by adding on new avatars that step into the different kinds you can be in this virtual world. Don’t believe me? Check out our Awesome Avatars Section. Think of your avatar as a way of expressing yourself. Whether you want to be a human, a car or a furry, you have the freedom to do so.

Outfits

If you want to change your appearance and you don’t have clothes, you can always use the outfits given you for another avatars. Just right-click on the item and Wear, Add to Current Outfit, or replace Current Outfit. This is automatically add anything you click to your avatar.

To remove items, you can either: Right Click and then click Detach this item. You can also Click the wearing tab, as soon in the picture, this will list every item that you are wearing, to remove them, once again you have to right-click and then detach this item.

Your Inventory

When you start buying items, whether free or not. Anything you receive in second life is placed in your inventory. To wear clothes from your inventory you can double-click the item and it will appear on your avatar.

Nice and simple. Have fun.

If you any questions about Second Life and Avatars, don’t forget to visit the Torch SL Guide Group in world: secondlife:///app/group/c9805496-74de-d093-f3af-5b9dbec426de/about

Filed under How to do...., Newbie Advice Tagged with how to, Newbie advice, newbie friendly, newbies, second life, Second Life Viewer, sl destinations

Beating The Lag Monster – Teleporting

December 3, 2011 by Steam Engineer Leave a comment

Google “Second Life Lag” and you will find any number of hits describing various ways of reducing lag and improving your second life experience. The second life wiki can give you a quick run down on what it actually is and a few ways to help combat it – however one area that very few residents actually know about, both experienced residents and new arrivals alike, is how important it is to properly manage your inventory and to pack away into boxes items you are no longer using so you can’t teleport quickly. Personally, I have over 9000 inventory items of which around 40% are boxed, now if I hadn’t re-boxed items I wasn’t using I’d have almost triple that many items sitting in my inventory. I spend a little time every day sorting through my inventory items unpacking, repacking and organising.

So what I hear you ask, well follows is an excerpt taken from a notecard written by inworld resident Brian Engel that explains it better than I ever could:

Quote:
The design of SL is such that your inventory impacts the speed of your teleports and region border crossings in vehicles, walking, or flying. Your “unlimited” inventory is maintained on asset servers. When you leave one region and travel to another the asset servers have to move not only you but your entire inventory to the new region. You have noticed at logon the rather slow sequence of events that culminates with the loading of your clothes. This is the asset server moving all the necessary components of your AV from disk storage into the memory of the region you are logging onto. A smaller series of events is associated with the Teleport process but it can be a significant amount of time depending on general arrival region activity, asset server traffic, the number of attachments (hair can actually be a hundred or more separate pieces) you are currently wearing and the number of items in your inventory.

Think of your inventory as a long freight train of goods that is attached to your AV (the locomotive). The more things the asset servers have to associate with your destination region, the more time it takes to get there. The simple inventory storage box helps reduce arrival lag in a very substantial way and it is a step in the right direction for getting your inventory organized.
Unquote

Of course this does raise the question of how you get the boxes in the first place, well its pretty easy, you build them – this is pretty neat guide with loads of links to other resources that will get you started. Here’s my quick tutorial as well, shows both building a prim box and them packing away inventory items: