1. Build type:
• Educators are more likely (say 50%+) to eschew a "corporate build" - the administration office block or similar. Of those that do have such a thing a high proportion are likely to subvert it somehow elsewhere in their build.
• Corporate types are much more likely to go for "the office block" - I'd say 95%. They clearly identify their office as their corporation.
2. Build nature
• Educators tend to focus on the results. That's both in terms of meeting the educational needs, and being relatively happy if nothing happens, nothing happens, then a finished build appears.
• Corporate types tend to want regular reports, plans, milestones etc.

This isn't about Linden Lab billing, though you might have thought so from the title. Lordfly Digeridoo has an excellent point about the whole MDC business (that's Metaverse Development Companies). Basically that the whole shebang can fall down because a percentage indulge in poor payment practices.

That is, they pay like money-juggling startups, or impenetrable behemoths. Either way you get paid late or never, which drives the creators away from the problem MDCs (because creators talk to each other), who have to fall back on more inexperienced creators, clients get bad experiences, and the MDCs who do do the right thing start starving for clients too (because clients talk to each-other too).

Granted, I've yet to see someone like Australia's Telstra, who have always paid my invoices promptly (in 4 to 8 years - I have no love for them and stopped doing work for them years ago. Still waiting on payments, however) - but when I've signed a contract which clearly states 30 day payment terms, and I'm told 3, 6, 12 months later "Oh, it takes time. that's how we do things here. There's a process." - Well, why did you give me a contract that said 30 days?

I'm comforted endlessly by the fact that there is a process, of course. As it happens I have a process too, which is to mention your payment policies to anyone I know who might be considering signing up with you.

At the end, maybe one third of the contract jobs that I've taken on have paid up, and exactly one of them has paid on time. Many of the rest are in the 30-day rinse-repeat cycle of "Golly. I can't seem to find your invoice. Could you send it to me again?" which alone can string things out for many months.

And to contrast, there's blogging. It pays. It pays regularly. It pays on time, every time. What should I spend my time on? Tough call, huh?

How many of you are in the content creation MDC-subcontracting business and have been paid late? Or paid never?

According to Robin Linden, Linden Lab started paying VAT on payments from EU residents in July this year [The source we drew this from, apparently is incorrect. Linden Lab did not start paying VAT in July], only this week passing on the tax to EU residents. While my own nation (Australia) has a similar tax, the laws don't apply in this respect (though L$ earnings count as capital gains, and when I convert L$ to another currency, that's taxable income).

In fact, one of my commercial services is getting to the point where I'll have to either refuse business to EU residents or charge and pay VAT to the EU - the fact that I'm not an EU business has no bearing.

Here's the question, for EU residents - It's obvious that the EC regulations in this are placing you at a competitive disadvantage. Are you planning to lodge a complaint with the European Commission about this requirement of the VAT-on-E-Commerce directive? Have you done so already?

I'm sad enough to have the change log of sl-jira on rss. Just occasionally you get a gem come though. If I'm reading this properly, in a soon to come release, we'll be able to choose to go back to something like the pre-voice history/friends/IM windows.

A while ago Tateru posted this piece about the new window. It's not yet clear what the new set up will look like, but hopefully we'll get something that lets us have a wide, thin IM window again and start to communicate smoothly once more. But, now we've had a while to get used to it, will you change back? I know I will, but how about you? Just Askin'

Over at Your 2nd Place, Nobody Fugazi reports on a study by researchers at the University of Nebraska, tantalizingly titled Deception in cyberspace: A comparison of text-only vs. avatar-supported medium.

The results indicate that in the text-only chat environment, subjects who were deceiving their partner experienced higher anxiety levels than those who were truthful to their partner; however, the same phenomenon was not observed in the avatar-supported chat environment. This suggests that "wearing a mask" in cyberspace may reduce anxiety in deceiving others. Additionally, deceivers are more likely to choose avatars that are different from their real selves. The results also show that the use of avatars in a computer-mediated chat environment does not have an impact on one's perceived trustworthiness.

Fugazi presents his take on things, and you should go have a look.

It's been observed in other research that the social pieces of our brains don't seem to react any differently to people online versus in the flesh, yet anecdotal evidence from Second Life users suggests that some part of our psyche seems to be impaired when we're online.

It's a bit like being drunk, in that our value-system for judgments changes, but we're not really aware of that change. Our social personas slough off to some degree and we show more of the person underneath - whether that person is kind or a complete ass. I expect to see more research along those lines in coming years. It would be interesting to get quantitative and qualitative results on behavioral changes online. We're all aware that they happen, but data on just how and to what extent would be valuable.

Anecdotally, these behavioural changes seem more common to augmentationists than immersionists, though immersionists certainly aren't exempt from them.

Penny Arcade has made it's own observations on the matter in the past (Not safe for work. Language warning). [Update: Apparently, as of today this learned theorem has become available on RL tee-shirts]

Have you noticed your own behavior/persona online presenting differently? That you are less restrained (or more restrained)? More likely to speak out or behave differently than you would in person?

1. Business decisions - raising the starting price of mainland sim auctions
2. Emergency content - OMG the grid is really poorly
3. Development issues - anything from the interface of the new communications system to the plans to totally rewrite the UI
4. Technical issues - why can't we have 100 groups?

A lot of corporate efforts in Second Life are pretty lame. They are either not offering anything interesting, or people aren't aware of them, or they give you no reason to return, or are hopelessly targeted at the wrong demographics.

In many cases the dwellings and stores of Second Life users are generally more appealing. That isn't to say that all corporate forays into Second Life are duds, or that the platform isn't any good for these sorts of things.

What top three things would you like to see from corporates and businesses establishing a presence in Second Life or with already established presences? (If you can't name three, one or two is fine) You know they're missing some important things. Speak out and let us know what you think they could do more of, better - or in some cases, do at all.

1. Business decisions - raising the starting price of mainland sim auctions
2. Emergency content - OMG the grid is really poorly
3. Development issues - anything from the interface of the new communications system to the plans to totally rewrite the UI
4. Technical issues - why can't we have 100 groups?

Depending on who you ask, the grid's been having what some have described as 'a cow' for about 24 hours now. It's worked in patches, I am assured. Lots of people are asking questions. The basic sorts of questions that should have answers on the Linden blog.

• What, actually, is the problem?
• What is being done to fix it?
• Is there any estimate on how long it will take to fix? (Hours? Days?)
• What is the likelyhood of it recurring?

"We don't know" and "We don't know yet" are perfectly valid answers to any of these. Not necessarily helpful, but far more transparent than simply not giving any information out. A few hundred thousand people would like to know. Many of them are not afraid of purely technical answers, and are able to translate for others.

These answers though are the sorts of things you would include in any outage or problem notice. It shows the users that you give a darn about them and all that.

How would you rate Linden Lab's transparency when it comes to grid issues, insofar as delivering the sort of basic information that you need? (What's wrong; what's being done; estimated restoration time; odds of recurring or followon problems)

You know what? I don't need a social networking tool. Actually, I don't think I even want one. Communications tools, now that's different. I'm using twitter and pownce (hey, Akela, aren't you supposed to pownce on things that twitter?), and about the only thing that would improve them for me (aside from them actually being, you know, reliable) is to hide away the lists of who is connected to who. That's information that I personally find to be both unnecessary and often actively misleading - your mileage may vary. I don't like misleading, personally.

I can't say as I've looked at a myspace page more than six times. I've never even seen facebook. I'm on LinkedIn, but is it actually useful to me? Not yet, no. Mostly they feel like a sort of webified way of wearing gang-colors. To associate yourself with brands, whether those are ideas, interests, hobbies or people. There are assorted third-party sites that add social-networking tools to Second Life, too. I can't say as they interest me either.

My friends list in Second Life, and my (kind of inadequate) groups list are tools that allow me to act or to communicate more effectively with than without. That's why I've got a blog, not a homepage. Social networking tools don't appear to afford me the benefits that I'm looking for, in exchange for the time spent.

Does the whole social-networks scene leave you a bit cold, or is there some sort of warm and fuzzy thing that I'm just plain missing here?

It's 7 July, 2007. Linden Lab announces today that Second Life is closed as of midnight tonight SLT (US Pacific), and Linden Lab is beginning proceedings to wind up the business. No, that's not happening, but imagine it.

Why would it happen? It doesn't matter. There are a lot of things that could cause it: The penalties or injunctions from an onerous lawsuit or from a new patent take Linden Lab out; Someone buys them and closes them down for a retooling of basic systems; Some major financial reversal caused by fines, act of god, low-grade EMP, rampant iconoclasm, or a large number of paying residents suddenly picking up and leaving.

Imagine SL closes at midnight tonight, and either isn't coming back, or isn't coming back for a long time. Where are you tomorrow, and why?