Impressions: Frenzoo

I've done many things in my time. No, I'm not ancient (it just seems that way). I've just packed a lot of things in in the time I've had. I've been to school, I've had jobs, and I've had hobbies. It's kept me pretty busy.

There's one hobby that I've never made enough time for: fashion design. Do you draw little sketches of ideas, and occasionally develop those into full-colour plates and flats? Make your own patterns? Sit down at an actual sewing machine and construct a garment? Peruse magazines, books, and Web-sites, and any other fashion-related material you can lay your hands on?

There's a new way to share and to indulge that passion, regardless of your skill level: Frenzoo!

Don't wander off quite yet, if you're a Second Life user, because there's a chunk of awesome coming.

Frenzoo is a fantastic place to meet like-minded people, girls and guys, who love fashion, whether they be spectators, shoppers, designers, or all of those at once. Located at http://www.frenzoo.com/, the site constitutes a virtual (by which I mean, it exists digitally) world of fashion, incorporating shopping, design tools, forums, clubs and fashion shows.

Still in beta, Frenzoo is already a fine establishment, and steaming along at speed:

The web site is easily useable and navigable, with a minimalist look and feel that is pleasant to the eye.

The design tools for clothing creation are already superlative. The tool interface is simple and intuitive, while allow quite sophisticated designs to be put together. As a user with a free account, I have not yet had access to the Advanced features of the design tools; access is currently restricted to VIPs and people on the Frenzoo team. Nonetheless, the quality of the available tools leads me to expect more of the same from currently unavailable tools.

Now that design tool would be absolutely amazing in Second Life. Seriously. Imagine being able to design clothing for an avatar without reaching for The GIMP or Photoshop. It's all kinds of clever, and it's the sort of thing that Second Life is clearly missing. It's accessible, live and immediate.

Frenzoo is only to be used by those persons 13 years and older; those persons under 18 must have the permission of their legal guardian. Thus, considering that the age of many users will lie between 13 and the low 20s, the users for the most part show great maturity, and respect for each other, in all form of contact (forums, comment walls, clubs). I hope that this community spirit will continue to pervade Frenzoo well into the future, and that these users will, by their actions, encourage more people to join who will act the same ways.

Having noted that many users treat each other well, it's also worth mentioning that moderation across the site is excellent -- swift, transparent, and thoughtful, the moderators let users know where the limits are, and then stick by that fairly. I hope that they are able to maintain this standard as the number of users grows and the feature list is expanded.

Frenzoo, right now, consists of tools and stores without too much context. There's no worlds or rooms, just profiles and social networking and forums and walls to write on. It's a Facebook of fashion-designing, but the people behind it are steadily evolving it through the beta, and the distance they've come so far leads me to expect more to come.

Poll: Adult content - Both sides of the question

Alright, as you're probably aware, there's a JIRA issue (MISC-2727) asking Linden Lab to halt all of the plans, policies and changes coming for Adult Content in the coming months. That's gotten a whole lot of votes.

What I'm more interested in though is the spread of reactions from as many Second Life users as possible. Not just against the policy, but also for it and those who are simply uncaring. Doesn't it make a whole lot more sense that we try to have as much data as possible, rather than just clustering together with those that agree with our position?

To that end, I've put together a poll.

Online Surveys & Market Research

Tell your friends (heck, tell your enemies, even - assuming you have any) and spread it around (but please don't spam, because that's plain inconsiderate). It would be nice to get some representative figures from both sides of the argument -- and so far, only Linden Lab has anything like those numbers. Do you like the scheme? Do you hate it? Are you somewhere in between and see problems with it?

The poll (courtesy of Vizu) is anonymous, and frankly I don't care which individuals think what about the policy (so if you really don't want to leave a comment, that's okay). This is more about aggregate numbers and percentages anyway. But it won't be representative without your support. The poll closes May 12, 2009 12:00 am PT. Then we can look at the results and decide what it all might mean.

Worse.... or better?

Online Surveys & Market Research

I'm working on a far more interesting poll, but it occured to me to wonder how Second Life is for you this year so far, as opposed to last year. I've tried to include an option to cover everyone, so we'll see how that goes.

The fascination of decay

What's the fascination with decay, crumbling dystopias and abandoned or ruined urban landscapes?

The answer, dear readers, is mystery.

"Unspoiled" nature and everyday-use urban settings are what they are. Something abandoned or in ruins, however was something, and it may not be immediately apparent as to quite what.

What is this place? What was it? Why was it left? How did it get to be in that state? (It's called Université de Dubois, though that is a pseudonym. One of the lecture halls)

As we look at the world, the mind forms stories around the mysteries it sees to try to answer the questions. And there's no better source of those stories and that intrigue than the familiar fallen into disuse and ruin.

As a species, we love this sort of thing. So much so that we create new ruins in virtual environments like Second Life, from dilapidated buildings to crumbling cities and abandoned subways. These settings are a treat for the imagination, and a delicious dessert for our logical and speculative faculties.

Check out Opacity, Action Squad,  or Forbidden Places for a taste of more.

(Thanks to Bill Harris for publicizing this shot)

Security vs everyone

Security and ease-of-use tend to be mutually exclusive, it's said. Security is stuck in a two-front war, not only are there Bad Guys to keep out, but the authorized users will usually do almost everything possible to defeat the security measures that are intended to keep the Bad Guys out. In a sense, IT-security is generally fighting bigger battles with its customers than they are with the bad guys.

Corporate users write their login credentials down, use easy-to-guess passwords or passwords that can be cracked in fractions of a second, use the same password for everything, want unrestricted access from anywhere without any of that complicated password nonsense, install software that compromises their systems, write down login names and passwords and stick them to their laptops, leave those laptops unattended, plug in wireless access points or random modems on the network, or even just give away their passwords in the street for the asking. Seriously.

Most corporate computer users treat the IT or IT-security team as "the enemy". That's actually the word that is most commonly used when referring to them. The IT people are in a bit of a deadly bind here. The rest of the company is generally working so hard to compromise the security of the network and their desktop systems, that it can be an almost impossible chore to actually keep the bad guys out of the network. Then data gets stolen, or systems compromised anyway.

At one corporation I worked for, a company executive brought in a piece of software that wasn't licensed, and installed it on a desktop system in the warehouse. The software was made by a competitor across the street. Over the next few months, the unlicensed software (which was used for booking, labeling and invoicing deliveries and pickups of shipments) sent all of the information it handled across the street to servers at the rival company in periodic batches.

Armed with information about customers, shipments, rates and so on, the rival could offer sweeter deals and steal business away. And they did.

Business plummeted. Hundreds of thousands of dollars in regular business was lost. Of course the rogue software got removed, once it was discovered, right?

No.

The executive refused to uninstall or replace the software, because it would cost around $3,000 to replace. Also he refused to allow the firewall to be configured to prevent the data-transmissions, because that would interfere with certain conveniences demanded by the sales staff.

A solution was eventually found, but only at the cost of nearly all of the company's warehousing business. Why didn't the CTO or the IT department override him, being that it was a technology/security matter? Because he was the director in charge of them. Besides, they had their hands full, because a branch manager in another state had given another competitor dialup access to the local network and share-drives, because he "couldn't be bothered with all those email attachments."

Oh, there was far, far worse.

The thing is that when it comes to computers people want instant, they want convenient, and they want locks without keys (and ideally doors without locks - and perhaps without doors). Computers allow us to get so much done, so much faster that we want everything to be fast. Every moment typing or remembering a passphrase is an impediment - a barrier to getting the job done, or to getting out of the office at 5.

That sort of poor computer hygiene doesn't just live in the office. People's home computers, well they manage their own security for that. It's hard to find a home computer that isn't infected with something, and frequently with many somethings.

Nobody cares until they lose all their data, or their World of Warcraft gold and equipment, or their Second Life account -- and then they want to blame someone else for it. You didn't do enough to protect them.

The bad guys win more often than they lose - because we, as users, make it easy for them to win. We insist that others do all the work for us, and then we don't let them do their jobs. You don't have to become an expert in either computers or security, but if you learn just a little about how to take care of yourself, your computer and your passwords, your whole IT department can relax a little and actually allow some of the things that they're presently forced to block or prevent.

You can make things easier for you. For everyone.

Mixed interests - balancing acts in Second Life coverage

One of the tricky things about reporting on Second Life is the issue of what stuff to cover. Hey, how tricky can it be? You just write about what people are interested in, right?

Yeah, you'd think so.

What people are interested in, though, isn't necessarily what you might think people are interested in.

If a user or organization is doing something super-awesome in-world, the odds are that the Second Life readers will mostly pass it over. Human interest stories and similar all get minimal attention. Okay, except for the occasional 'Why the hell are you even covering this stuff anyway?'

Hirings/departures at Linden Lab? Now that generates some interest. Other Linden Lab doings and policy changes even more so, and speculations about which way the Lab is going to jump next are right up there.

Top of the heap - the really grabby stuff? New release candidates.

...

I know, right?

My essential hypothesis sort of works like this... Viewers and stuff about Linden Lab and their staff-lineup and policies affects everyone in Second Life, directly or indirectly. Stuff that people are doing in-world though will axiomatically only have appeal to a subset of people.

Live music, and audio/voice events for example - that only appeals to a portion of the people I know. Likewise not everyone I know is a gamer, or necessarily interested in recreational activities. Not everyone is keen on shopping or networking.

Different interests, different foci, and that subdivides the community right there.

But if you stand anywhere in Second Life long enough, a discussion will start up about the Lab, or some particular Linden, or about some new policy or some enforcement action in-world (gone right or wrong). Talking about Linden Lab seems to be the favourite pastime of the majority of Second Life users, and there's an astonishing amount of misinformation going around.

Just yesterday I walked into an argument where a bunch of people believed that all non-G-rated content was being banished from the grid next week. Earlier that morning, someone was telling me how Linden Lab was merging Teen Second Life with adult Second Life today. Simple misunderstandings and misinterpretations run through communities like wildfire and feed on themselves. Sometimes people just spread tales to laugh at how far they will go.

Still, the Lab and its doings remain among the most popular talking points with users in-world, and that's something that's hard to ignore.

Bordering on an obsession

I'm wondering what it says about a lot of writers that they can't seem to venture near a social or non-game virtual environment without spending paragraphs talking about genitalia and sex, and trying to figure out how avatars have sex, even in virtual environments that are, essentially, G-rated and technically have none.

Oh, sure. A lot of folks are interested in that sort of thing, but the propensity with which I've seen it crop up in newspaper columns and in particular in some games-writers columns, it seems to be bordering on the obsessive.

A whole host of games-writers, particularly, don't seem to be able to look at a non-human (alien, robot or anthropomorphic) avatar without immediately focusing on sex. A few writers seem to suffer some severe cognitive disconnect, where non-human avatars and a non-sexual environment are somehow completely inconceivable and nonsensical -- a combination that they can neither grasp nor comprehend.

Some newspaper columns outline the writer's visit to strip clubs in Second Life, within minutes of registration, and give no sign that the writer went anywhere other than locations focusing on sex.

Sadly, at the end, they generally conclude about the virtual environment, "I don't get it."

Maybe what they really meant was "I didn't get any",  because based on their descriptions and reported conversations, that outcome seems a whole lot more likely.