Rethink InforNet plans

Unless you are going to provide equal opportunity for all resident businesses to put information kiosks on Linden land, upon closer examination, it is completely unfair to the community at large that the InfoNet pay system is being sanctioned by Linden Lab. While there is nothing wrong with the InfoNet system, it is hardly some critical piece of infrastructure that should be placed at every former hub, especially when LL has no control over the editorial content within it. If the purpose of the kiosks is to provide public information (a vague term in and of itself - since a lot of it is classified advertising again, which is redundant), then the information should be free of charge to use and publish, and open to all.

It would be far better to wait until the implementation of HTML and have Linden-hosted web pages that residents could submit information to, not a proprietary system of notecards that one resident business is profitting off of and controls the content of ultimately. If Linden Lab has public information they need to make available, build it into the UI - otherwise it is just another specialized information channel, like the forums, that leaves off a portion of the user base.

What he said ...totally agree and, I repeat.. ELIMINATE THE BEST OF SL list that is part of infonet while it is a Linden sanctioned entity.

If infoNet terminals are allowed there, then why not M2 newspaper vendors? I really don't see any difference between the two.

fic


you guys sound like someone else

I think it would be cool if telehubs developed into a kind of news stand where all kinds of resident publications are available. Whatever information LL distributes through infonet should also be provided to anyone else who wants to publish it. Or, maybe LL should just make a deal with Squagmire to buy their own network of terminals that doesn't carry any of infonets regular editorial content.

Agree.

Why not SLExchange, Ginko, SLB, Gigas, hell I will even make some kind of crazy Snapzilla ATM. I am sure any business would love the exposure. What "info" is so important that it needs to be at these hubs anyway, and why is InfoNet the only thing that can provide it?

...among other things...

Plenty of room, never enough information.

*sings*

The infohubs are for porn.. the infohubs are for porn... attach your dick and double click for porn.. porn... porn...

Damn you, I have had that song stuck in my head for days.

Interestingly enough, "someone else" predicted they would.

I am not upset by the picks part to be honest. If done as they claim, it will highlight lesser knowns, and I am all for that.

I do think, however; that if there are going to be pay services on Linden land, selection for that privilege needs to be bid out, lotteried, or something along those lines.

Yup, what they all said. Please, Linden Lab, rethink this move.

I wish someone would produce this more fully into a musical number a la Family Guy.

ROFL! What is that from originally? I stopped watching television like... ten years ago.

A bit off topic, but ... Gigas terminals actually exist? I thought they were mythical, like the FIC, or the Easter Bunny.

ok here's what i'm grappling with, and i'll post here rather than the other thread ingrid started because I'm curious to hear cris' response.

i've never been one of those people up in arms about LL's use of snapzilla on the home page. It's a free service to all SLers, Linden Lab doesn't have their own version (yet ). And here is a service where cris can put "best of snapzilla" and charge for advertising.

InfoNet also charges for ads (business listings) and has a best-of. And heck, I don't even know if they're getting an exclusive or LL's planning on promoting a ton of different resident info sources at the hubs.

So why does snapzilla not bother me and InfoNet does?

Is it because InfoNet is being distributed in-world, and all the snapzilla stuff happens outside of world? Maybe... from one perspective InfoNet is getting free tier that other businesses would love to have. Is it because Snapzilla's primary purpose is not advertising but visual sharing of second life, while I can see InfoNet (whether squagmire likes it or not, even if gnat is making money off of it) becoming a yellow pages. Is it because I think it will shortly be replaced by html-on-a-prim?

is it because, as someone else just wrote, it offers ads in hub locations that lures away visitors to other locations and away from local sites and local businesses. That's a pretty valid point, although local businesses can advertise too... enough ads and the list becomes unusable and this isn't an issue, and everyone will have spent money for ads on gov linden land that doesn't go to LL and to the improvement of the game, but to another resident.

I'm having trouble resolving this one, which is why i keep posting on it to get a read on your opinions and hear other perspectives.

*runs screaming from the room with the song running through his head YET again* !!!

o...m...f...g

Priceless.

Yeah, i agree.

There seem to be two potential perspectives afoot.

One: that the former telehub land will be visited, useful, desireable and possibly a destination of some sort.

Two: that nobody will go to them - SL's version of urban decay, surrounded by rings of devalued, unattractive properties.

Which do we think it will be?




In the first instance, it makes sense to quash any sense of favouritism over distribution of the coveted resource.

In the second, anyone willing to lend a hand may be more akin to Mother Teresa than Donald Trump.

Isn't this exactly the same thing that Prokofy Neva was saying about Snapzilla when only pictures sent to it were eligible to appear on the SL front page?

It seems that exactly the same thing has happened here. In fact according to Second Thoughts, the chap behind InfoNet didn't even know it was being placed in telehubs.

It's a valid question, I asked myself that before posting this thread, and here are what I consider to be the main differences. Linden Lab has very clearly stated they are a "customer" of InfoNet, which I assumes means they are in some way paying for the service. When Linden Lab added pictures to their home page that were bound for Snapzilla, I had no involvement in that decision, was not paid for it in any way, and was not even credited initially. I am also not credited now - there has been no reference to Snapzilla on the site in close to 6 months or more.

You do not have to use Snapzilla to put pictures on the front of SL.com - the check box on the snapshot form determines whether or not the image is public (and only if it is from a PG sim). You can send a postcard to your aunt in Arizona and have the picture also appear there. That check box was something I suggested after they started utilising pictures bound for my site because they had a tacit authorization already to be displayed in public. It took quite awhile for it to be implemented - it was finally put into 1.7. Snapzilla is free to use and anyone can submit pictures to it.

The advertising on the site is also new - it has been there for less than 4 months, and came awhile after the direct connection between my site and secondlife.com was removed. Advertising on the site is purely to offset the enormous bandwidth costs which continue to grow exponentially. November topped 130,000 visitors and 110 gb of transfer - up from 100,000 in September and 60 gb of transfer. (Mind you, this traffic is more than triple what it was when there was a link on SL.com). Snapzilla is not an advertising platform, in fact, advertising image submissions as part of the service are against the TOS of the site.

Finally, there is no presence of Snapzilla in world, except for the gallery currently under development in Sistiana. No advertising. No kiosks. Hell, I didn't even put it into the wiki, though I very well could of along side other FAQs in there. Snapzilla is free standing, and user supported - Linden Lab is not promoting it at all.

In short, there is a big difference between Linden Lab taking the shortest (and uncredited) route possible to put snapshots on their home page and what they are proposing to do with InfoNet, where they are a customer and anyone who wants to have information in the system must also be a paying customer. If they are going to choose a company to provide a service in SL, then the process should be open.

Does anyone even use InfoNet, really? I know the creator describes himself as a visionary, but what does this add to SL that makes it so critical to be at every former telehub? The experience of reading a bunch of notecards is hardly ideal or intuitive by any sense of the imagination. Combine that with having to pay to be in it (and it having an editorial board), and the whole thing just doesn't seem particularly open or accessible.

It is an unnecessary addition to the open spaces they are creating. If they are going to put in Linden information kiosks, then it should contain Linden information only, or the ability for anyone to put information (a la the wiki) into the system. The kind of free local advertising they had at the telehubs also makes sense, though I know the Lindens seem to be frowning more and more upon free ads. Thus, the reason why waiting until we have HTML on a prim and an information wiki for this purpose of information sharing is adviseable.

See my response to Forseti on that issue. The person behind InfoNet is not being criticized for this decision, Linden Lab is. I was personally criticized by Prokofy as if I had anything to do with Linden Lab piggy backing off of my site, which I did not. I also received zero in the way of compensation - can those operating InfoNet say the same?

I just went and looked at an InfoNet terminal.

One of them didn't work at all. Just completely frozen. Its name included "no update" so I guess it had broken.

The second one that I saw worked. It uses a bunch of graphical menus which all have the same design, yet every one loads in about 10 different textures (that's going to be fun in telehubs.. grey boxes ahoy..) when it could have just been done with a couple of standard textures for buttons, XyText and loadable icons. I presume it's also using Email to retrieve items (unless there's a server network somewhere) which again is likely to be fun if the load gets high.

Oh yea, did I mention that every one contains about 16 active scripts, because it doesn't use llDetectedLinkNumber()?