A quick note from Mar about adverts: please read!

Hi peeps. It’s been brought to my attention that WordPress is inserting Google Ads at the bottom of all my posts here on SL for Nowt. Since I use Firefox and the AdBlock plugin (and I have many of those ad sites added to my Hosts file, so I never see them) I was completely unaware of this until just now:

I’m not happy with this. I do not want my readers bombarded with ads when they come to my blog. I understand that this is a WordPress.com thing; that they do it to generate some revenue in return for their free blog hosting. I have no control over this. I can’t even specify what kind of ads are shown (although if I had a choice then NO ads would be shown).

Hop behind the cut. I have more to say about this. *angryface*

Mar’s ponderings: Not a happy bunny

I would appreciate it if my readers that know of the Newbie Haven on my land read this post over at Mar’s Ponderings. Thanks.

I was going to do a July 4th post of freebies today, and had all the photos taken, but this has annoyed me enough to just think f*ck it, to be honest. So no post from me unless I wake up tomorrow feeling a bit more charitable. Mar may generally be all sweetness and fun, but I do get pissed-off sometimes, and this is one of those occasions.

And Miss W? That little “That’s right Bitch, I’m back” snipe in your profile had better not be directed at me, sweetie.

Hints & Tips: Removing yourself from hippoGROUPS lists

In August 2009 I blogged about removing yourself from unwanted notice lists. This method worked mainly with stores that had added you to Subscribe-o-matics without your permission, such as when you pick up a freebie or a hunt item, or even if you simply visited their store but didn’t buy anything. Some stores use a marketing strategy of adding all visitors/freebie or hunt item-grabbers to lists and then sending them update notecards or occasional giftcards (usually for small discounts) in order to entice them to their stores, but it can be very annoying when these notices cap your offline IMs if you can’t log in for a few days, or if you’re simply not interested in what the store sells.

So what do you do about it? Well, probably the same thing I used to do: click ‘discard’ on the notice when you log in, or (if they’re really bugging you) you might mute the sender. It’s easier to click ‘decline’ than it is to do something about it, after all. However, I was recently added by two stores that sent me notices on a regular basis, both of which I had never bought anything from. I recognised one as having been from a hunt prize I had picked up (and I may have even become a customer of that store but for their daily spamming with an LM and self-promotional spiel, so that strategy backfired for them!), but the other sold something I’m not even vaguely interested in, so I was pretty peeved to be receiving regular notices from them. And the trick up above didn’t work because they were using a different form of group: the hippoGROUPS.

If you’ve been added to a hippoGROUPS list and want to get out of it, luckily it’s very simple to do. And for the persistent store owners who keep adding you back to the list there is even a way to block them from doing so. Hop behind the cut to find out how.

Hints & Tips: Removing yourself from unwanted notice lists

UPDATE: Click here to find out how to remove yourself from hippoGROUPS lists. The method listed below won’t work for those groups, so another tactic is required!

This week I have only had time to log into Second Life twice: once on Monday to pay my in-world rent, and once today. Because I am a member of quite a few groups and Subscribe-o-matics, when I don’t login for that long, my instant messages are usually ‘capped’. This means when I do eventually login, all I will see are the first 25 or so messages and inventory offers (because those are classed as IMs, too) that I have received, and anything sent to me or IM’d to me after that simply won’t get through in-world.

If you want to make sure you still get instant messages when you know you’ll be offline for a while, you can check ‘Send IM to email’ in the Communications tab of Preferences in your SL viewer (or you can log into your account on the SL website, go to the Contact Information section and check “I would like to receive offline IMs via email” button). This will ensure that any IMs you receive while offline (even when they are capped) and notices of inventory offers (although you won’t know what has been offered) will still reach you at the email address you registered your SL account with.

But there is a slowly-growing trend in SL lately, of some stores adding you to their subscriber lists when you buy something from them on XstreetSL, or when you receive a sample from them via DSN (the Designer Showcase Network)*, or even when you pick up their prize item in a gridwide hunt. The store owners in question seem to be looking through their transaction history and adding to their subscriber kiosks anyone that has either visited their store, picked up a hunt prize, etc etc. This isn’t like a Subscribe-o-matic, where you click the kiosk to opt in to receive notices from the store owner; this is done without your knowledge, and the first thing you know about it is when you start getting messages from them and wondering when on earth you clicked their sign, because you can’t remember!

*Please read the comments of this post, where Peter Stindberg of the DSN says that adding DSN subscribers to a random mailing list is NOT encouraged, and what to do if you think someone has done this to you.

Not every store does this, by any means, and you shouldn’t let it stop you from doing hunts, buying on XstreetSL, or joining the DSN. It’s a rare few stores that will do this to you, and they do it because it’s part of their promotion strategy. The trouble is, these sorts of strategy tend to backfire. I only want to be a part of lists of my own choosing, regardless of whether I have bought an item from a store, got it in a hunt, or whatever. If a store bugs me without my requesting it, I am very likely to make sure I never visit them, purely because they have annoyed me!

Of late, I was added without my knowledge or consent by one store that sent out a notice and a free giftcard every single day. That’s all very nice, and I’m sure that some people would appreciate the giftcard (although items in the store cost quite a bit more than the giftcard, so it’s not as though you would be able to buy one thing cheaply using it. And no, you can only use one giftcard per purchase, so you couldn’t add them all up and get something free, before you ask!). But in the five days that I was offline, this store’s two messages/giftcards per day added up to 10 ‘instant messages’. Since the average amount of messages you receive before they are capped is 25, that was almost half of my IM quota used up already, and on something I didn’t want and hadn’t asked to be part of!

I had also been added (again, without my knowledge or consent) by another store that sent out another couple of messages, so you can imagine that I was a bit peeved when I logged in today, only to find my IMs capped. I only knew that I had lost personal IMs from actual people because I had checked to receive them into my email inbox!

There is a solution, and a way to get out of these unwanted offers, but I have to admit that it bugs me no end that I am forced to visit these stores in order to do it. (And, on visiting the stores, I didn’t recognise them at all, so I knew immediately that I had never been there before, to click the boards and opt in, which made me even more angry!)

Hop behind the cut for the solution, if you are getting these unwanted messages, too.

A heads-up for all Xstreet SL traders and customers

Do you use XStreet SL? Have you (like me) been wondering why you have to continually keep logging in now? Yeah, it’s bloody annoying, isn’t it?

The reason why, as posted by Calyle Linden on the XStreet SL forums, is this:

In order to improve security for our customers, we’ve begun making a series of changes to the way security and account logins are handled at Xstreet SL. Since much of our service is money-related, it’s imperative that we tighten things up to keep your funds and your accounts safe.

The first of these changes went live yesterday. Previously, cookies stored in your web browser were used to keep account logins persistent for up to a month at a time. Now you will be required to login whenever a new “session” is started. Furthermore, if you use multiple browsers or multiple computers and log out of your account on one computer, all of the others will be logged out as well.

Over the next few days and weeks we’ll be making your accounts more secure, but this generally won’t involve noticeable functionality changes. Once we’ve reached a certain point we’ll review options for making security less intrusive by requiring logins less often.

That’s going to get really old, really fast…

Oh honey no: Professional begging

When I made my post about 30 things every newbie should know before starting Second Life, number 22 on the list was:

Don’t beg. It’s lame. There are few quicker ways to getting banned from groups and muted by large amounts of people, as asking them for “just 10L$ so I can upload a profile picture”.

The same person (not a newbie account) just popped up repeatedly in three large groups that I’m in, asking the same question each time. Now, I’ve not named-and-shamed since my money tree-hopping days, when I saw oldbie avatars taking money from glitchy trees: money that should have gone to newbies who needed it. But I’m going to do so now, and at the same time I’m going to warn you all about the Second Life Professional Panhandler.

Ravenglass Rentals Group (membership 630) – [2009/02/01 9:11]  Jordynn Bade: hey guys can anyone lend me 10l it would really help

Kurotsubaki Update Group (membership 1297) – [2009/02/01 9:28]  Jordynn Bade: hey guys can anyone lend me 10l it would really help

Ivalde, Embla & Ask Update Group (membership 4977) – [2009/02/01 9:29]  Jordynn Bade: hey guys can anyone lend me 10l it would really help

This avatar is a professional Second Life panhandler. The avi was created on July 18th 2007, so this is not a case of some poor newbie who really does need a few L$. Reloading her profile continually shows her with membership in different groups, and groups she was previously a member of just minutes before she is no longer a member of. The professional panhandler avatar joins several open-join groups (the larger the better) and asks for “just 10L” and says it’ll really help, or that they need to upload a photo for their profile.

It’s pretty much guaranteed that in such big groups, at least several people will fall for this. If the professional panhandler asks in enough groups with large memberships, they could easily ‘earn’ a couple of thousand L$ in a few minutes.

Easier than camping, non?

Don’t fall for it.

Lucky Chair etiquette – saying ‘thank you’

Excuse me if I’m textually gnashing my teeth here, but I’ve spent a short while today, hovering around the three Shoe Fly Shoes lucky chairs at Sarah Nerd’s Freebie Paradise. For those not in the know, Shoe Fly Shoes are offering a fabulous pair of superb designer quality monogrammed red leather shoes in these chairs. The letters don’t change all that regularly (around every 30 minutes or so) so while I was there, I kept scanning my radar to see if anyone with the current letters was in range.

Four times, people were. And so I sent four IMs: one to each person. The IM consisted of something that could be understood hopefully by most languages: Shoe Fly Shoes Lucky Chair at Sarah Nerds = ‘T’ (or whichever letter the person’s name began with) followed by the SLurl of my exact location in front of the chairs.

The first person I sent the IM to didn’t reply, even though I could see her eyeline moving (I had ‘show look at’ enabled), so I knew she wasn’t AFK. The second – who was standing about 10m away from me teleported out a minute later, was still online when I checked her profile, but didn’t bother to reply, not even to say ‘thanks but no thanks’. The third, again standing close by, said, ‘OK’ and didn’t move, then teleported out (to be fair, I don’t think English was her first language).

The fourth, however, walked over to the chairs, sat down and received her prize, then got up and walked away again without so much as a ‘thank you’. This was not a newbie avatar; she was created in 2007. She had English as a language spoken in her profile. I had cammed across the entire store to find her so I could send the IM.

People, if someone helps you to win an awesome lucky chair prize, a simple ‘thank you’ costs nothing.

There IS such a thing as ‘too close’

We all love a lucky chair (especially when it comes up with our letter!) and the best lucky chairs are the ones with ‘?’ in them (which anyone can sit on and win the prize for), and that change regularly.

Some of the best lucky chairs in that respect are the ones at Sn@tch. Ivey is incredibly generous to her customers, and sometimes the area around those chairs gets packed out. (When it does, check out the riot vendor right next to them, btw. I got a fab outfit there for just 50L$ yesterday, because there were so many people in the store!)

BUT. Yes, there’s a but. Ladies (and gents) please adhere to a couple of simple unspoken ‘Lucky Chair Etiquette’ rules.

1 – When you’ve won, move away from the chair as soon as you can.

2 – DON’T stand so close to the darn chair that you might as well be sitting in it anyway. In many cases (not by any means all of them), people do this in the mistaken belief they’ll be the first to jump on a wildcard round, but I’ve seen people leap from the other side of the room to get those, so don’t think that by standing with your shins banging against the chair you’ll be the first to get the prize. It’s also not going to ‘block’ the chair for other people.

This?

That’s way too close.

Yes, it could have been a mistake, or a simple case of a newbie not knowing what to do. But if you’re so close that you can smell the upholstery cleaner, then you’re too close.

OMG, please kill the lights n’ bling!

Hi, guys. No, I haven’t forgotten you. My in-world time has been severely limited lately. So when I do manage to finally log in so I can write a post that I’ve been wanting to make for weeks, the last thing I needed was to be blinded.

Some of you may have already read my old When is a facelight not a facelight? post. This one continues from that (and don’t worry; the freebie post I was at this place to make will follow shortly) and it’s a plea to everyone, in simple words: DON’T OVERDO IT!

So, someone landed close to me (not a newbie; this avatar was over a year old), and out of the corner of my eye, I saw sparklies:

These were no ordinary sparklies, though. For one thing, they were vicious. Not for this glitter-lovin’ lady the gentle *bling* *bling* or the subtle *plink* of occasional glimmerybits. Nope. This was full-on, eyeball-assaulting *WHAM!* *BAM!* with each bling script set to repeat as fast as possible. Ever tried to take a screenshot of someone wearing bling items, and ended up having to take several pics before the screenshot didn’t capture the bling every time? No such problems here; it was that continual.

But it gets worse…

Don’t fall for it

I’ve been sent an IM containing what looks like a scam hoping to pull in newbies with the promise of stupid amounts of free L$. The IM (which seems to have been sent to a LOT of people at random) reads thus:

[0:35] Gilchrist Kwassmann: Want some free lindens? we got a new system for you to make fast lindens upto $L5000/day, just go to ******************** <- check it out

I have, of course, excised the web address from the IM.

Newbies, if you get this IM, or any other like it, don’t fall for it. If it seems too good to be true (and this is too good to be true) then there’s a high chance it’s a scam.

(Yes, I searched for the avatar’s name, too. It doesn’t exist.)