Neualtenburg Zeitung

Well the fires in my life on the evening news have settled down now that my SL wedding is over and done, so my avaliability for other projects has drastically increased.

The idea has been kicked around of starting and distributing a weekly newsletter or newspaper and I would like take a look at this.
I have quarx experience, (granted its ancient) and a decent amount of writing talent, the primary problem would be collecting of information for stories, and distribution of issues.

I tend to be down on a web-based newspaper just because it breaks the immersive nature of SL. Im more inclined to enjoy a SL newspaper if its presented in a form I can easily view in SL. I know there exist both systems for making books in SL that have textured pages, and for distributing objects to a list of subscribers(via avkey, I believe) and I think it would be fairly simple to get those systems and set them up.

As far collection of info, Im more than happy to do legwork myself, but there should be a place for submitting stories or ideas via notecard or such. Id be happy to convert my office in Nburg as a news office, or use some other space if such were availiable.

Im a little unfamiliar with protocol, do I have to seek membership in a guild to participate in this kind of activity for the city?

this is just me putting ideas out there, I have a long weekend this weekend, Ill be able to put more thought and energy into it then. post your thoughts, concerns, admonishments, etc

Well, in order to sell or make civic improvements, you have to join the Artisanal Branch of the government (the Guild). This is an arduous process that involves going up to a master in the Guild and saying "hey, I wanna join!". (The purpose of this is, as the backbone of SL is the creators, to ensure they have a consistent and strong voice in the city government, not to control them... since beyond basic membership you don't necessarily need to do anything for the Guild if you don't want.)

If you weren't actually selling the paper (or selling advertising in the paper), or not selling it from within Neualtenburg, you wouldn't technically need to be in the Guild, of course, but that's up to you.

well I will talk to someone this week about membership in the guild.

I was looking at the thinc publishing system, and I think it will work well for what we need. with a few small ads a week, we could easily recover the costs involved (895 initial and 75 an issue for unlimited copies) and the textures involved are supposedly encrypted, HUD viewing, etc.

I bought a copy of the press to play with, I will report backon the results.

Okay, spent almost an hour last night messing around with the printing press and Im very impressed with its abilities. I think it will serve our functions very well. Im playing around with the new version of adobe indesign, trying to figure out how to make it work like I need it to, and it looks like it should do well. at this point, it looks like the infrastructure is solid, need to start dealing with the how.


Im imagining at this point a 4-8 page paper, probably 1-2 pages of ads spread through the issue. neualt news, SL news, opinions, and fun stuff, it should be pretty easy to fill that quota every week with a small staff. With the elections coming up, there should be plenty of nburg news. as far as business models go, I was thinking of the paper being free and supported by ads, with a small fee for a delivery service every week, either using or copying something like esmay rand's courier system. thoughts?

Seldon, Law Society might be an advertiser or contributor of a column, and might even hire a printer to make the Law Society Observer, the chronicles of its research.

Can the press make copies that are transfer/no-copy/no mod?

Can you provide a screen shot of a dummy layout? I'd be interested to know how much straight text one can get into each page in a readable font.

Frank

the press makes copies that, by default are no mod, so a distribution box could distribute transfer only copies off of a single paper.

as far as layouts go, Im still building a style sheet in indesign and playing with sizes that will be viewable in world. trying to fit as much on a page while maintaining legible type is the current challenge. as soon as I get far enough along to have a full mock-up, Ill gladly show it to anyone who's interested.

thanks for your interest frank

Wow, at last this project gets on the road Seldon, thank you so very much for your enthusiasm to set it up again!

I'm quite curious about that "thinc" printing press you told us about. I'm eager to understand how it works.

As for content, I hope you can sign me up to do a column somewhere — I just need to know how many words, what ideas you have in terms of themes/topics, etc.

Also, this will need a staff not only of writers, but of ad sellers. It looks like this means a lot of work But the truth is, the "lot of work" can be spread thin among several people. I guess we should have a "town hall meeting" (ie. an event for the Citizens) to discuss this over. I've got a somewhat "longer" weekend myself (no work tomorrow, although I have another presentation of SL to give on Friday) and I guess I'd be able to attend that "brainstorming session" to get this rolling

Thanks for this wonderful idea, Seldon — you'll probably get a medal or something if this works out fine

Im off friday until tuesday, and Id be open to any meeting like that. I need to play with page layout a little to get something mocked up, like I mentioned earlier its all a matter of maximizing usable space while maintaining visibility.

once the infrastructure is up and running, its a quick jump to needing writers and ad sellers.

One thought I had, when it comes to political ads, any thoughts on regulation? I was thinking that setting up some "equal time" system would probably be a good idea as the elections gear up

couple things I could use just to help me bring things together.

1) I need a name. any good ideas of a name for a weekly paper? my small amount of german is very rusty.

2) Once the name is in place, I need a masthead. any good photoshop people willing to make me a mock up of a logo?

3)I need the name of the font that all the neualtenburg stuff is written in.


thanks for any help on this.

I'd be happy to use my graphic design skills on this

As far as a name for the paper -- my vote is:

Das Huhnhut.

(The Chickenhat)

Die Rostige Deutsche Zeitung

cute

should have the first mock-ups done tonight, Ill drop frank a copy. anyone else interested in the test prints?

Sure!

okay, I know I said yesterday my ancient page layout skills have caused me to do and redo the layout several times, based on making some very basic mistakes. I will have those ironed out soon and will have a working model by the end of tomorrow at the latest

Excellent! I look forward to this.

~Ulrika~

Please send me a mock-up copy as well, Seldon

stayed up almost all night, fighting with it, and Im not entirely happy with it, but I got it to the point where I was ready to force it on others. the font is a titch small for HUD viewing, but Ill fix that in the next version, other than that, Im pretty pleased with the way it looks. those of you that got copies, Id be glad to get feed back, and if you didnt get a copy and want one, give me a shout.

I'll give it a scan if you'd like.

okay, havent heard any drastically negative feedback, so Im going to continue to work on layouts, and start laying out the contributor and advertising models. hopefully I will have it all finished and ready for the RA meeting on SUnday. would it be acceptable for me to present there? Ive been to two RA meetings, but Im not up-to-speed on the political protocol yet.

Seldon, I like the layout, and the font seems proportional to the whole book.

I tried setting it to "no copy" and sharing with a friend, but he said that he couldn't turn the pages ... it was stuck on "open," so he couldn't see the cover. That may be a side-effect of making it "no copy."

Is there a way to make it "no copy" but still have the page turning work? This would be to avoid virtual "honor box looting."

I haven't had a chance to see this but I am planning to try and get in tonight to check out the N'burg Zeitung and put the Fachwerks up for sale again. (I know I say that every day. You try having a baby. )

I'm actually quite excited to read it!

~Ulrika~

well its all gibberish at this point, its more of a layout issue, Ulrika

I believe the issues frank is having lie in the fact that the owner has to set the permissions. Ill play with passing it around when I get home.

Ok, the layout works — there is no question about it I never tried this device before, but I think it's one of the greatest things since... since... well, perhaps the Chicken Hat

One question, though. In my case, when I rezzed it on the ground, it took several minutes until I got the 2nd and 3rd pages (the front page was ok). I'm assuming that when it is rezzed on the first time, it sends a message or so towards an external site, and it's from there that the next textures are loaded, as well as some sort of accounting is performed?

Did all of you experience a long time after "opening" the newspaper on the first time, or was it just me?

yea, this lag isbecause it doesnt store any of the textures internally for security purposes. the script sets the textures via LSL based on the UUID's of the original textures.