Monica's Blog

SL's Revised TOS

2010-04-02T09:48:00.000-07:00

The timing of the release of the new revised Terms of Service for the residents of Second Life conveniently coincided with the public release of Viewer 2.0 (which should still be in Beta from what I've seen so far), the new user client interface. It also followed quickly behind the announcement of the opening of IRS Island in Second Life. It doesn't take a master mathematician to add these things up. The new TOS had defined both eligibility and new types licensing. I strongly suspect this is for tax accounting reasons.

All user accounts now must be tied to a material world identity. When you log in for the first time to the new TOS, you have agreed that you have provided (or will update before the deadline) your account information to provide them with your material world identity if you haven't already done so. The new TOS does not go into effect until the end of April and you have 30 days from that time to complete your updates. If by then you do not have your material world identifying information on file, then you are no longer eligible to use Second Life and they can take all your stuff, including your intellectual property rights to all of the content you've created.

This could have very wide sweeping implications for the culture of Second Life. Back in the day (around 2005 or so) when one first registered their information was put into a publicly accessible database. Pretty much anyone who didn't want their private information hung out on a shingle for the whole world to see used assumed names and other created information. Hopefully the database that holds everyone's identifying information is no longer accessible to those who might want to harvest said information.

Certainly the marketing value of your personally identifying information in relation to your Second Life purchasing habits (all neatly tracked now through Xstreet and the SL transaction history) must be astronomical in material world monetary value. Should Linden Lab decide to sell this data to marketing professionals, it could be very profitable to them.

I have to add too, that I've been surprised to see so little being said about the new TOS. Maybe everyone is too busy playing with the new 2.0 viewer. Hmm?

Commercial Tweets?

2010-03-14T07:47:00.000-07:00

Today I came across an application for Twitter that offers a way to monetize you tweets. It's called Twivert. What it does, apparently, is automatically tweet commercials for itself and other pay services available on the internet. It does this every few days or so, give or take.

This might not be so bad if you tweet several times a day. Your followers might be able to ignore the intrusive unwanted advertising without unfollowing you. Maybe.
Seriously though, who wants to see commercials? I don't. Do you? Most people don't.
Other than the unwanted spam, the biggest downfall of this service is that if you're only tweeting once or twice a month or so, it takes over your twitter stream with advertisements.

In-World UI Anyone?

2010-03-07T09:40:00.001-08:00

Today I did something that may or may not be a good thing. I commented on a blog post by Prokofy Neva (http://bit.ly/d3qzxx). I couldn't help myself. The idea was like a flash of light blazing through my brain. Here is what I said:
"What I'd like to see is a UI that rezzes in-world as a 3D object, instead of one that creates window upon window on my screen. The way it is now, and even before V2, calls to mind the concept of a HUD spazzing on steroids or one of those seedy websites that gives tons of pop-ups."

This is an idea that goes back to my first weeks as a newbie on the Second Life grid, as Lara Languish, when I was struggling through the steep learning curve we all face when first entering SL. (Ah, the days of box-on-the-head. The nostalgia!)
Anything that draws us out of the 3D experience, is in my opinion an obstacle to the immersive experience that SL facilitated into being. It draws the mind out of the "world" of SL back into flat-space reminding the user that what they are viewing is actually being displayed on a flat screen. Web-on-a-prim is great because it brings brings flat-space into world in a way that doesn't draw the user out of the experience. In comparison to the click & load webpages, a big step forward. However, all the stuff on the screen when working on any kind major learning or building project, seems to me to negate this progress.
Is a practical idea? I don't know, but I think it could be if the right minds shaped and engineered it and the right hardware tech was in place to support it.

Second Life Viewer 2.0

2010-02-24T08:09:00.000-08:00

This morning I decided to check out the new Second Life Viewer 2.0 Beta with my new account, Entrepreneur Mistwood. Here is what I experienced with it this far.

If the goal of the new 2.0 SL viewer was to make the SL experience easier to navigate then I have to say that it has failed terribly in that goal. Everything that the usual viewer does that is so familiar to long time users of Second Life has been mixed around into an almost completely alien structure to accommodate the "browser-like" look and feel of the new version.

Among my complaints with this new viewer so far include the following:
* No FLY button
* No MUSIC CONTROLS (the only way I've found to turn off music is to disable the streaming music or mute all sound entirely)
* MAPS are difficult to find (Only accessible through the "World" drop-down menu at the top of the interface, as far as I can see.)
* SEARCH has been re-named back to FIND (a real throw-back there! circa 2005)

Admittedly some of these complaints are due to the unfamiliarity of the new interface and I may simply not be seeing the complete functionality of this viewer yet. I will say however, that it will definitely take some getting used to.

Webpage Creation?

2010-02-03T17:19:00.001-08:00

Words can barely convey the level of frustration I'm experiencing after spending more than four hours trying to set up a good webpage. It seems like hand coding HTML has become a forbidden craft. I have tried going through Google Sites and Comcast's personal webpage services.

On the Google site, I accidentally selected the wrong site layout template and couldn't find how to change it. Since the template I selected was for non-profit fund-raising type of site, it was not at all a good fit for what I was trying to do. They might have had an option to edit HTML there, I'm not sure. Every edit I attempted would pretty much only let me at the body of the page.

In Comcast's webpages, it would not let me use any hand written html in any shape form or fashion that I could discover. I was able to upload a hand coded page, but it would not allow me to link to it and it changed my file name to something long, complex, and difficult to remember.

I miss Geocities so much! Even Tripod had an option to create your own HTML. I wonder if that's still available or if they've baby-fied their webpage creation tools also. Where can I hire a 5 year old to make a webpage for me? Because I sure can't seem to figure out how this new stuff is supposed to work based on my decade of experience and acing two classes on webpage creation and design.

Heck, I'm probably just having a bad day. Maybe it will all look brighter tomarrow.

Virgin Mobile's Kyocera X-tc

2010-02-01T16:35:00.000-08:00

I just got this phone today. I had a lot of trouble getting it going. The simple instruction of "Turn the phone on" had me completely baffled due to the power on/off symbol having been modified to no longer include the formerly familiar circle with a vertical line in the center to simply being a red telephone-ish icon.

So anyway, I was trying to get started using the User Guide that came with the phone. I installed the battery without any problem and charged it up enough for the phone to (at least in theory) be able to turn on.

The next section in the Getting Started section of the User Guide said to Install the Memory Card.

Memory Card?

I didn't remember seeing a memory card in the packaging. I looked back through it again checking the fronts and backs of all included plastic and paper packaging. I thought I had read the packaging, but obviously not well enough. After double checking both the Virgin Mobile USA website and the packaging of the phone I determined that there had not been any kind of memory card included. The Getting Started section didn't tell me that this is an add on that must be purchased separately nor that I would also need an adapter for it to download mp3's from my computer to the X-tc which is also an mp3 player. Upon further investigation I found that the memory card, more properly called a micro memory card (MMC) or MicroSD, and the adapter could be purchased for a little bit under $30(usd). Since I didn't know this was something I'd need if I wanted to use the mp3 player fuction of the X-tc when I bought it, I didn't look around in the store for it. Therefore I don't know how the pricing compares off-the-shelf as opposed to online ordering. It turns out though, that the phone works just fine as a phone without the MicroSD.

I thought this would be a helpful topic to blog about since none of the top sites that came up on Google search seemed to fully answer my question about the memory card.

After an hour of research to track down what this memory card was, what it was for, and if I needed it for my phone to work, I finally managed to get the phone powered up with a little help from a buddy. The camera works well and seems to take clear shots even in dim light, so I'm looking forward to resuming my amateur cell-phone photography hobby.

Vague Instructions

2010-01-30T13:36:00.000-08:00

I think the reason why a lot of instructions from foreign companies are vague and have no pictures because the company is trying to keep their costs down to maintain their competitive edge. However, I think this is an area where a company really shouldn't be skimping. It sounds like they are just running the instructions they wrote in their native language through some kind of translation software program. In my experience those type of translators often make mistakes because they translate too literally and don't recognize a lot of commonly used phrases. Good pictures are another item that cost more to include in a set of instructions. Figure into the cost either an artist to draw it or a photographer to take pictures of it, as well as possibly even a graphic designer to wrangle the images around so they look best and make the most sense. Without taking the extra steps to make sure the instructions are clear and have good illustrations, the overall satisfaction that the customer has with the product suffers as they become frustrating trying to figure out how to use and or assemble it. Once all of this is figured in, that fabulous cost savings doesn't seem like such a value anymore, does it?

Job Analysis Methods

2010-01-29T14:31:00.000-08:00

The Observation Method is implemented by sending a trained observer to watch and record the actions of a job. Its advantages are that the observer can easily gather first hand information, it is simple, it verifies data from other sources, and is good for evaluating manual tasks. Its disadvantages are that it is time consuming, and therefore expensive especially if the observer is being paid a high hourly wage. Because of the time and expense involved, only a small number of jobs or people can be taken into observation. Additionally, when a worker knows they are being watched, they may modify their performance to skew the observed data. The observer must have high levels of observation skills to effectively gather data and if the job is one that is primarily mental, little to no data may be available to observe since internal mental processes are not visible.

The Diary Method involves requiring workers to keep a journal of daily activities. The advantage of this method is that it allows data to be gathered about jobs that aren't easily observable. It's disadvantages are that it relies on the writing skills of the workers, the workers may have conflicts of interests such as making themselves look good or the desire to not have extra work added to their job that will cause them to skew the data, and that they may have difficulty remembering what they did especially if the log is made at the end of a long day.

In the Interview Method, workers who have been doing the job are questioned about it. It's advantages are that it can lead to the acquisition of data that might be difficult to observe because it is of a cognitive nature and it works well for jobs with long job cycles. Its disadvantages are that it requires the questions that are to be asked to be well constructed to uncover the data sought, there may be difficulties meshing data gathered from various interviews as each interview may produce different and even conflicting data, the interviews may produce more data than was sought, and the data is colored by the perceptions, beliefs and preferences of the interviewee.

Like the Interview Method, the Questionnaire Method gathers data by asking the employees a series of questions, except the questions are asked in a written rather than verbal medium. Its advantages are that since it does not require a trained interviewer it is less expensive, data may be drawn from a larger sample population since questionnaires are easily distributed among the workforce, and the data gathered by this method is standardized and structured. The disadvantages are that effective questionnaires are challenging to create, workers may be reluctant to complete them or may only partially complete them. If the questions are open-ended (allowing the workers to write whatever they like instead of using a rating scale or other multiple choice option) the answers may be difficult to interpret.

The Checklist Method is similar to the Questionnaire Method in that is paper administered and therefore carries some of the same advantages of cost effectiveness and ease of administration. It's disadvantage is that it might not gather data in enough detail to encompass all critical components of a job.

-Resources-

University of Minnesota, Office of Human Resources (May 8, 2008) "Advantages and Disadvantages of Job Analysis Methods" Retrieved January 19, 2010 from
http://www1.umn.edu/ohr/compensation/classification/jobanalysis/advantages/index.html

Ngo (January 2, 2009) HR Management. "Diary Method" Retrieved on January 19, 2010 from http://www.humanresources.hrvinet.com/diary-method/

Midterm Fall 2009

2009-10-13T08:19:00.000-07:00

We got our first snowfall here in the Twin Cities just a day or so past. Many of the leaves on the trees had not yet changed when the first snow fell, and are now quickly catching up to complete their transition. Academic pressure is at an all time high as midterm examinations are this week. Cram time.

A Citation

2009-03-31T14:30:00.000-07:00

From "3D Game Programming All in One" by Kenneth C. Finney
p.12

Producer

A game producer is essentially the game project's leader. The producer will drow up and track the schedule, manage the people that do the hands-on development work, and manage the budget and expenditures. The producer may not know how to make any part of a game at all, but he is the one person on a game project who knows everything that is happening and why.

It's the producer who needs to poke the other developers in the ribs when they seem to be lagging. The producer needs to be aware when different members of the team are in need of some tool, knowledge, or resource and arrange to provide the team members with what they need.

Sometimes producers just need to spray a liberal dose of Ego-in-a-can to refresh a despondent developer who keeps smashing into the same brick wall over and over while the clock ticks down.

The producer will also be the interface for the team to the rest of the world, handling media queries, negotiating contracts and licences, and generally keeping the big noisy bothersome world off the backs of the development team.

From Spreadsheets Class Discussion on Familiar Software

2009-03-16T10:47:00.000-07:00

There are a number of software applications with which I am familiar. Microsoft Word, Excel, and Power Point all come in handy. I don't know how I'd manage much of anything without a good browser. I also enjoy creative software like iPhoto, iMovie, good old Paint Shop Pro 5 and last but definately not least, the 3D modelling tools of Second Life. All of these programs have had a strong influence in the way I communicate.
Recently IBM discovered they could save a lot of money by holding meetings in the virtual world of Second Life. Executives don't have to drive or fly in a plane to attend and 3D models of prospective projects help give them a fuller view. SMS programs and more advanced mobile phones are also changing the way people communicate, both in their private lives and for business. Not only is the software becoming more pervasive and complex, but the hardware is evolving as well. This is to be expected as a demand for greater breadth and versatility of communicative software also creates the demand for the lightweight super-fast circuitry on which it runs.
Another way it changes the way businesses handle information is in the way that information is stored. In the past, businesses created massive paper archives of their doings. Now a lot of that information is stored electronically, with multiple copies/backups, instead of on paper.

2.1 - Software Applications