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“No Deal With CB,” Sez LL; Purple Land’s “A Bug”

By Prokofy Neva, Dept. of Virtual Estate Linden Lab did not encourage Coldwell Banker (CB), the real-life real estate company, to come into Second Life, John Zdanowski, LL’s chief financial officer, known inworld as “Zee Linden,” told the Herald this weekend. Asked if there was any contact, encouragement, or special tier breaks, Zee replied, “Absolutely [...]

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Sign-Extortionist Masons Help Coldwell Banker into Second Life

Mason and sign extortionist Chrischun Fassbinder, notorious for the Mr. Lee’s Hong Kong signs, and Ancient Shriner, another spinning sign-griefer, bring RL real estate firm Coldwater Banker to SL. Prokofy Neva, Dept. of Virtual Estate Oh, no, here we go again. Remember how Philip told us that when big business came to Second Life, that [...]

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Picking the Toaster with Pella Tully

Prokofy Neva, Tech Talkback Dept. Limbering up to cover next week’s Virtual Worlds 2007, a conference in New York that promises to be a kind of 1964 World’s Fair, I dropped in on CNET after getting one of GreeterDan Godel’s group messages. Pella Tully (Caterina Fake is her RL name), co-founder of Flickr and Yahoo [...]

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Big Business Ads Blight Second Life

Prokofy Neva, Dept. of Virtual Estate and Inworld Business Remember how Philip Linden used to tell us that big business would never put up billboards in Second Life? That these wealthy corporations coming into SL wouldn’t be *need* to put up billboards because they’d just stay on their own islands? Remember how he said in [...]

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Bad Business

Kids playing “Better Business Bureau” always picture themselves as the chair of the board. Prokofy Neva, Consumer Watch Goddamn, here we go again. Yet another stupid, misinformed attempt to create a “Better Business Bureau”. And yet another “ratings” system that styles itself as a “Better Business Bureau” even though, unlike a better system, slrealreps.com, it [...]

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Is LL Breaking Inworld Business?

By Prokofy Neva, Dept. of Broken Toys Repair & Doll Hospital Three things came together today that sent a number of inworld business people thinking clearly: the Lindens are breaking inworld business because they don’t need it anymore. Or…are they? They don’t need the handful of “positive Linden flow” inworld businesses that used to make [...]

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Pathfinder Linden Levels Up?

By Prokofy Neva, Kremlindenologist Photo swiped from Pathfinder’s site. Some odd news today: Pathfinder is moved out of Linden Lab’s Community Team and is slated to open up LL’s new Boston office, where he will continue to serve as “evangelist and general resource” to the educator community, reports Blue Linden. We’ll leave for another day [...]

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Can U Kaneva?

At the mall in Kaneva, this is about as risque as the public content gets in the WA. By Prokofy Neva, Dept. of Worlds, Planets, Universes, Metaverses, and Virtual Estate Galaxies with NPC Land Barons So I finally get an invite to this much-anticipated Kaneva beta virtual world, even though I had only like a [...]

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Simone’s Account Hacked

Prokofy Neva, Community Affairs Prominent Second Life designer Simone Stern reported to the Herald today that her work account had been hacked this morning and L$400,000 stolen (an estimated $1500 US) from the account. In a heist similar to another large theft two weeks ago at DarkLife, the hacker first transferred funds from Simone’s work [...]

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LL Ageplay Shocker: The Company Rules

Prokofy Neva, Dept. of Community Afffairs In a reversal of their usual hands-off policy toward inworld lifestyles of even the most extreme type, Linden Lab has unexpectedly come up with an ageplay policy today, which it has chosen to articulate not on the official Blob, but in notecards delivered to some inworld businesses. A notecard [...]

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