SLIMChat no longer working

Hi there,

I bought SLIMChat some weeks ago for 5000 Linden and it worked fine so far. Since yesterday I cannot login any longer. The "logging in..." screen keeps going forever.

It seems that the family of the author Rin Redgrave has taken the whole website down and I suspect that this may be the source of the problem. If I go to http://www.rinredgrave.com/ I get this message only:

"Due to the unexpected need for hospitalization, Rin Redgrave will not be able to log on to Second Life for a little while, we will try to keep you updated.
-Rin's Family"

Even if it's very sad that Rin is having health problems, it's very annoying that his family just took down the website and disabled all chances to get the lates version download or being able to use the software any longer.

I hope, Rin will recover soon. In the meantime I just want to warn everybody NOT to buy his programm until this is settled. If you pay one of his vendors, you will loose your 5000 Linden and don't have a chance to get the software that you have paid for at the moment.

This is not a simple rant about a bad product. His SLIMChat was working fine before it stopped working and I really hope Rin will continue the development in the future. But I don't want that he will loose reputation in SL because people pay for the software and can't contact him any longer about the circumstances.

So if anybody know him, his family, or anybody who uses a vendor to sell SLIMChat it would be nice to ensure that they all make sure to put an "out of order" sign on the vendors or maybe get the website running again in the old version so that downloads and logins will be possible again.

Jim

Sorry... if anyone is my family would have health problems that are so serious that the person has to be taken a hospital... SL and everything connected to it would be my least concern. RL always first....

Morwen.

I agree, Morwen. I lost a familymember recently and I was at her side, not online.

Mandy C

Of course, RL comes first. But I also understand that a customer expects a working product. That's the price of doing business in SL; you either have to be available at least a few times per week to handle customer service issues or hire shop personnel with sufficient permissions to handle such things.

I think in this case the latter would be a good solution, but in the case of sudden illness it's hard to judge on what the person in question should or should not do. If it was me, I'd hire a good staff to step in when needed so I could concentrate on developing and improving.

Mandy C

I think Mandy here is right.

When I real life suddenly have to leave my work because of a very sick family-member, there is kind of backup. It may be though, because I did build with my customers over the years a very good relation. I know them, they know me. People will manage if I am away suddenly (it happened).

But I think that most SL companies don't have a such a backup. Specially not the smaller ones.

And... as I say "RL first" concerning SL, I also say "Family first" concerning my RL work (and SL ^^). Luckily I have a boss who thinks the same way.

Morwen.

The latest update (1.1 included a number of protocol changes, which need to be incorporated into any third party software such as SLIM. Whilst Rin's family could have left the website up, I doubt they could have made the required software changes, so you would only be able to download the May version of the code which would only work with SL 1.17 and not 1.18, so wouldn't really help.

If anything the web page his family has put up is more helpful in that you no longer think that Rin is being slow in bringing out the update (he brought out the previous version within 24 hours of the update of SL which broke it) or had deliberately neglected SLIM.

Ironically, one of the new features in 1.18 is something called capabilities which reduces the risk of an SL update breaking thirdparty software or requiring mandatory viewer updates!

Matthew

That's one of the big problems in SL.

What if you can't pay your monthly fees, you can't renew your rental boxes, ...

You come after a long stay in hospital back and you have lost everything:
LindenLabs or Landlord has claimed you land, sim(s), ...,
mall owner has returned your items, ...

I ran a relatively successful chat room in irc.bondage.com for two years. Unfortunately real life circumstances (being broke) meant i had to give up my internet connection for a few months and so with great regret and concern i left the chat room in the hands of a deputy (a good friend) who told me he was as committed to keeping it going as i was. Sadly, his real life circumstances changed too, but instead of doing what i did and doing his best to ensure things kept going, he just abandoned it and let it die. You can imagine i was very very unhappy about this, but i had no control over the situation from then on. The room is now pretty much dead, and on my return to the net i pretty much left irc and came here to SL.

The relevance of this little sad story is...

I wonder if the person mentioned by the OP knows what is being done in his name by his family (who i am sure mean well, and seem to have done as much as they know how, to tell people the situation). I feel sure that if I had gone into hospital and been able to explain to my family what they needed to do to keep things going, I would have. This makes me wonder if he is NOT actually able to communicate properly to his family, which is very sad and i hope for his sake and his family that he gets better soon. However, when he does, he may be very upset that the circumstances of his illness mean he has inadvertently let his customers down. I feel sure he never intended this.

May i suggest that all business owners, or people with commitments here in SL or anywhere online (which tend to be something you do mainly alone) communicate with someone they trust real life to take certain steps if anything should happen to them. I have done this with my sons, who know who to contact inworld, what to do and how to keep things going for me if i should get hit by a car one day and be out of it for a while. 'What to do in the event of my death or incapacity'

I know its not something that we like to think about, but it does happen. SL and my friends here mean enough to me to think ahead in this way, and i am not a major business person.

love
Imogen