On Sunday, the Glitterati, Illuminati, Post 6 Models and all creatures great and small of Second Life gathered at Sinister’s for a houseparty for the ages. The sim filled to near capacity, but didn’t falter or crash – though it did send Post 6 Photographer Timothy Morpork and Herald Editrix Pixeleen Mistral into occasional bouts of crashiness, as per their norm. Club owner Someone Sinister and DJ Jasper Rock kept the party moving and it seems a good time was had by all.

Post 6 model Jimbo Quality rocks a sinister tambourine

Timothy Morpork has created a Flickr Group for images from the party, and if you tried to upload pictures earlier and were thwarted by the maturity settings, try again, they’ve been reset to Post 6 levels of NSFW. If the small sample here isn’t enough, check out the Flickr group, and if you were there and took a few, add them to the group! [conspiracy theorists will be studying these pictures for weeks - you don't think the tambourines are just tambourines, do you? -- the Editrix]

Do be sure and get through Timothy’s giant posting to see the great pictures posted by Saxoni Fernstalker! The flickr group is here: http://www.flickr.com/groups/1170149@N21/

Pepper Zero watches an undercover Justice League Unlimited agent connect the dots

Camov takes a turn on the dance pole

Carol Pixelmaid shakes her tambourine, Jimbo Quality busts his one move, Senban Babii rocks it

Obvious Schism rides the pole for tips

Lilli Pang wonders – what is up with all the tambourines?

Persephone Bolero prepares her comments as Cardie Mahoney lurks in the corner

This Sunday, January 9, at 11:00am SLT, Post 6 will host a “Welcome to 2011” party at Sinister’s Club in Idia. Slurl: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Idia/119/41/111/

Senban Babii dances to DJ Someone Sinister

Post 6, the longtime Alphaville Herald feature, has hosted two parties previously, both were very well attended by gorgeous Post 6 Models, loyal Herald readers, and the famous and infamous “SLebrities” of the grid.

This third party will be held at a great club, Sinister’s, owned by the renowned builder, scripter and all-around great guy Someone Sinister. The club has a gothic feel, and the Post 6 Party Location Scouting Team, seen in the pictures that accompany this story, gave the location two thumbs up.

This event is open to the public, but in the past the sim has filled quickly for these events, so be sure to get there early. Again, the party will be on Sunday, January 9 from 11:00am to 2:00pm SLT.

Party Scouting Group: Patrice Cournoyer, Jenna Thurston, Nuts Bakalava

Party Scouting Group: Patrice Cournoyer, Mairead McConnell, Jenna Thurston, Nuts Bakalava, Senban Babii

Mairead McConnell and Jenna Thurston prepare to party

Someone Sinister rockin’ the 1s and 2s

While I was browsing around the other day, something just caught my eye. According to the advertisement, it was the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade in Second Life. Now, at first I was skeptical. I thought, "Come on, the Macy’s parade in Second Life? I know almost anything is possible in SL, but wouldn’t it be more fun to watch it in RL?"

A view of the parade

But I was wrong about that! This parade was fun to watch. Perhaps it didn’t have the interesting camera angles or fun commentary of the real one, but it was still fun all the same. See, what the owners did, was set up the parade, and then built a miniature version of New York around it! It was just too much fun! Of course I stayed and watched it twice! (while I folded napkins and placed them on the table. )

The turkey balloon! *gobble gobble*

Now, not many people were playing SL on Thanksgiving – the missing were people in the U.S. celebrating in RL, I hope! – so I can safely tell you that only a handful of people were there. The owner was standing right next to me in the BEST place to watch – the VIP box. I can’t really say she was much of the conversationalist, but she looked like she could be a good person to talk to – just not to me, I guess. Back to the parade. though! There were tons of floats, balloons, and even playing marching bands! some of my favorite characters – and I hope other people’s too! – were there, including Spongebob, Charlie Brown, and the ever present (forgive the pun) Santa.

Santa’s comin’ to town!

They even had the Monopoly man, which looked very much like a real balloon to me.

Sadly, I couldn’t find the famous Snoopy balloon.

But the parade was not the only thing to do. There was ice skating, free gifts, and an Empire State building you could climb and for a great view of New York!

The famous Empire State Building – with guest

All in all, I would wholeheartedly suggest that everyone should at least go and check it out! There are tons of things to do! It’s open until Christmas, so hurry on down. Here’s your limo:

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Antiqua%20Paradise/61/210/698

by Lavinia Carver

Dean’s Vegas Club – what a Cher celebration it was! First of all, there was a pretty good turnout, but of course, I came fairly late in the day. There may have been a bigger crowd earlier – you might expect that from a Cher crowd. What I do know is this was the hottest party on SL I’ve been to in a long time. After all the drama and woes of the SL land problem, this was really a nice break – and I’m not really keeping track of the land situation. I don’t even own land! Too much financial liability; I would be so behind on payments! .

The Cher celebration at Dean’s was one of the few times I have seen people on SL in a while. To tell you the truth, it seems that a boycott of SL seems to be in effect, or at least on the sims I go to.

There was a Cher impersonator, of course, but the interesting part is that it was the club owner. They also had very impressive backup dancers, all perfectly synchronized. Not a single glitch or lag problem. Now I don’t know about you, but I’m a sucker for Cher. Sure she’s 60 or something years old, but she’s still kicking’, and that’s impressive in itself, let alone the music’s good.

Anyway, the club had a great selection of everything from her classics to her modern day stuff, and it even had me up and dancing at one point! The club was exceptionally decorated, and I got a sneak peek (it’s not that hard!) into the VIP lounge, and every part is so perfectly decorated. It could legitimately be a Vegas club! Except for the ribbon roof.

All in all, this place gets 4 out of 5 stars for the club. I found almost nothing wrong with it. It’s a perfect place to have a romantic dinner and dance, or if you just want to go and meet some really nice people. I can only imagine how good it is during its “Rat Pack of SL” performances! So head on down, and see what all the buzz is about! All I can say is DEAN’S IN VEGAS BABY!!!

Oh, did I mention they have a full casino too? Don’t forget to check that out, if you’ve got the spare cash of course! http://slurl.com/secondlife/Rolypoly/39/149/52

Starting Friday night, Money Island and the neighboring Money Tree Island and Freebie Island are holding a 48 hour event celebrating live music.

Chelseamarie Noel

While listening to the silky smooth stylings of Chelseamarie Noel, I had a chat with Throughthesewalls Moody, a promoter/manager of live musical acts on Second Life. Throughthesewalls talked about the Music Not Politics Group.

"Music Not Politics is about bringing music and fans together. Live Music is spontaneous, unpredictable, fresh. It wraps its arms around the audience and embraces them as part of whole, giving everyone the experience of belonging, a sense of ownership of the day or night . It lives, it breaths. This is what you will find at every MUSIC NOT POLITICS promoted show."

Chelseamarie’s set was followed by Shamrod Watanabe, and Throughthesewalls and I continued to talk about how the major labels are not doing enough to get these voices to their fans. But there is hope, as Throughthesewalls points out, "Through the internet, we have the ability to play to more people than any concert hall could ever hold." If you are a fan of pop, rap, jazz or even opera, check out the live music event this weekend on Money Island: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Money%20Island/234/18/22

by Pixeleen Mistral, National Affairs desk

Dollars spent in Second Life – as tracked by Reuters

Residents who play the fictional financial markets in Second Life were hard pressed to decide if the precipitous drop in in-world spending since Thursday is a rational reaction to Linden Lab’s shiny new world wide gambling ban – or a reminder that even virtual commerce requires some stability in the world. Reuters’ charts of in-world economic activity suggested a serious slowdown since Thursday – but was this triggered by a gambling ban, or a combination of factors?

Benjamin Duranske reported Friday at the Virtually Blind site that an in-world “bank” – Ginko Financial – had suspended withdrawals – then re-instated them with a cap on how much money could be withdrawn from the “bank” after 1% of the Ginko Financial’s claimed assets were withdrawn over the course of two hours. Nicholas Portocarrero – head honcho of Ginko Financial is reported to have said the SL gambling ban had “caused a panic”.

Combine jittery citizens, a lack of transparency about the state of Ginko’s investments, and on-going speculation about ponzi-schemes, and nearly any shock the the SL economy has the potential for destabilizing Ginko. Hopefully Mr. Portocarrero has found some high-yield camp chairs to help replenish Ginko’s reserves – but the Herald was unable to confirm this – Mr. Portocarrero is not returning our calls. This is a shame – we’d like to ask how he manages to earn a good return on his investments when few individuals in SL have profitable businesses – only a few hundred earned over $5000 USD last month – before tier payments to the Lab.

Dreamland points fingers at LL

But is the gambling ban the only factor in play? With the weekend concurrent citizens topping 44,000, it was no surprise that even basic metaverse infrastructure was failing – to the point that Master Quatro of Anshe Chung’s retail virtual land organization sent this message to Dreamland residents:

“Second Life is very unstable right now. In the past 2 days we have had sims down for over 24 hours. One sim lost most of the owners’ objects. several searches have been turned off. I have been crashed by regions going down 4 times today. Please be patient. These are all Linden issues that affect the entire grid. The Linden Blog has some information, but as usual not enough.”

Where should you invest you time?

So – on a fine summer day how is your time best spent? Would you rather gamble on an unstable metaverse working well enough to let you run a search, and do simple things like log in, see your L$ balance, teleport? Or does a rational economic avatar looking to maximize the utility of free time simply go for a walk outside in real life? Despite all the brave talk about Second Life being the 3D Internet – or at least the 3D AOL – SL needs to be entertainment to attract and retain players. If you can’t place a few bets on the virtual slots and the world keeps crashing when you want to go virtual shopping – perhaps reading the new Harry Potter book is a better investment?

Prokofy Neva, Walking 47 Miles of Barbed Wire/Got a Cobra Snake for a Neck-Tie/Got Me a Brand-New House by the Road-Side/Made Out of Rattle-Snake Hide

We need a music critic here at the Herald. Ever since Quentinesqe Paine, the college emo dude who used to get an expense account from the paper but never wrote anything and locked himself in his room and wrote death poetry all night on MySpace and then cut himself one too many times and went into rehab, we haven’t had anybody. So seeing as how I am not ashamed to turn on the C&W streams on the radio driving out West or down South and don’t find anything to be ashamed of in liking country, I thought I’d check out the SL Bluebird Cafe, adapted from the RL Bluebird Cafe in Nashville, TN.

When Boliver Oddfellow, CEO of IVM, Designer of the Dublin sim famous for its live-music shows, said on Twitter, “went to the bluebird cafe in SL 750L for a badly mic’d live feed. These folks have a lot to learn about SL,” I figured he might have an agenda. $750 *did* seem a bit steep, but then a RL cover charge at my local Irish pub with live bands is $5.00, so $1000 or $1350 didn’t seem like such a terrible price to pay for RL people doing the RL work of playing live, original music for our entertainment, even if we are in Second Life.

I’m surprised when I see the big spenders of Second Life giving live musicians only $100 at a show — that’s 27 US cents, and we all know they deserve more than that, because they’re better than that. So much more the professional musicians of something like the Blue Bird in RL, no?

Perhaps in response to this sort of comment — which has been common as I discovered talking to people around SL, some shows put on recently at the Bluebird have been free of charge. I dropped in on Sunday Writer’s Night tonight on Nashville Music island and didn’t have to pay anything. But I discovered Boliver may have a point.

When you are arrive at the Bluebird, you are underwhelmed by the build and wonder if you landed in a Coldwell Banker tract. That’s because it’s a modest white shingled box with a gravel roof — the kind of building you’d find in RL serving as a modest C&W cafe. This is *not* the Grand Opry we’re talking about in RL, either; it’s a replica of RL with the same kind of dim, faded teal-blue sign. We’re used to builds in SL, especially for music, being grand replicas of the pyramids of the Pharaohs or palatial Taj Mahal type of spreads or grandly landscaped open-air ampitheaters — this is more like a parking lot in Paramus, NJ or Jackson, TN — and when you’re OTR in the Big Rig, what’s the difference except for the radio? For SL, I guess the audiences just expect something grander — RL replication just flops miserably.

To get into the SL cafe, you can’t just push on a door, you have to right click on a chair that is sitting outside the cafe, in a kind of crazy virtual game of musical chairs.

It then moves you through the door inside the cafe — like a sit-pos hack of a locked door in a rentals or something!

You sit there, having to stay in your seat so as not to lose your place, with other people, and wait, listening to the room chat about people struggling to get their Quicktimes working and bitching that there isn’t any sound.

Using the Harvard Hush “/” backslash, favoured by Live Music Fans everywhere in SL, I typed that I had heard the cafe was lame, but I was coming to check it out myself. A fangirl with the very apt title of “Red Queen” immediately pounced on me, declared me to be “rude” and spent half an hour haranguing me in IMs, aggressively trying to set me straight. Another person who appeared to be either a regular or related to the ownership group set upon me as well, assuring me that yes, my tip would really go to the musicians.

The tip jar has the name of the owner Ksa Sandial, and he finally appeared, sporting a day-old newbie look which he may be cultivating to be user-friendly to all the newbies who would presumably come to the cafe’s website first, THEN come into SL. (They can also just view the video feed and hear the music without laggy, crashy, bitchy SL in the way here, registration required).

There were no dance anims in the room (?!) and several time, regulars and the owner told everybody to shush their typed chat.

Huh? I exclaimed! The whole point of live music in SL is that you talk in the room chat. Of course you do! You can’t bother the musicians, for God’s sake, they are back in RL, streaming to you with their shoutcast server.

Now, you might bother them with clattery typing sounds that the Lindens impose on us, but they can either turn off ambient sounds or you can use the backslash, which most people try to remember to do (you can no longer simply turn off this anim forever, as you could a few patches ago).

Turns out, this “sshhh” stuff is even part of the RL Bluebird culture, and is even their motto! What that means is that they see themselves as a place where you hear original C&W acts, often unknown, something like you hear Verdi in a string quartet: in the utmost silence and awed hush — you never know, you could be present at Greatness. The fellow introducing the RL act had a bunch of rules for RL, too, that weren’t what many people associate with their usual weekend pub C&W RL band experience — you *had* to spend $7.00 on food, and you *had* to be quiet and not talk and you *had* to turn off cell phones — next thing you know you’d find Hall’s coughdrop dispensers at the door like at Carnegie Hall to prevent you from coughing!

None of this translates into SL; heck, it doesn’t even translate into RL so hot. But all of that could be overcome if it weren’t for another very uncomfortable factor about this set-up: the RL act ignores the people in SL, doesn’t even give a shoutout to them, and acts if they don’t exist. So it makes you feel stupid, tipping them — especially if you are spoiled by our lovely SL live musicians, who not only thank you for your tip, but talk to you, say a few things, comment on your outfit, ask how you’ve been if they haven’t seen you, answer your lame jokes in chat, and even play your requests (and even Free Bird, imagine?! Yes, we ARE spoiled!)

If these folks want this caper to work, they simply have to find a way to give a nod to the SL audiences, at least in one line at the beginning or end, especially if we’re paying. But…it’s not that kind of scene. They ignore you; they barely pay attention to the RL audience.

Turning into the webcast version, I felt it was as constrained as the SL version, with perhaps slightly better audio. I guess if you are going to watch people on demand, live, you feel as if you need a little more interactivity with them!

As I sat trying to listen in SL, with the sound and picture dropping out due to SL lag, with people muttering about their media difficulties, chained to my chair and not encouraged to chat with others about the experience, harangued by this crazy girl who believed a thing is so just because she said so (so different than saying you believe it’s true because you’ve established it as true and are willing to unbelieve it if proven not to be true) — I finally got up, and said, “This is a sub-optimal experience.”

I flew around the grounds, trying to find a notecard or something to click on, to get more information, or experience SOMETHING about country music, ANYTHING, you know, a neat picture of Ray Orbison with some neat facts or some replica of some guy’s guitar or something. With SL, the possibilities are endless, what you could build. But nope…suddenly, there I was eating a black teleportation void, and landing my butt back home at Ross — ejected from the sim, told by the owner that I was “in his home” and “if I couldn’t say anything nice I should leave”. (As I had announced that I was leaving and left, it seemed a little lame to then boot me lol).

“But I’m not in your home, I’m in a public space, and how can you not talk in a cafe? That’s what you do at all the live music?”

Ksa began to object and pepper me with demands to make constructive suggestions on how to improve the cafe. I told him I was writing a review, and he persisted. When I had asked him about his newbie look, he pleaded “not having time” for fixing up the look. The build itself was under construction.

But…I’m sorry, if you charge the steep price of $750 for a live stream feed that you can go up on the Internet and hear for free, evidently, then you just have to do more, and be more professional and good looking. Couldn’t they have CDs of the musicians and sell those? with sample audio? Pictures? Objects evoking their lives? SOMETHING?

And interactivity! At least encourage that among the SL audience!

I got the impression that the effort wasn’t so much organized by the Bluebird itself, as by a fan from the Nashville area and scene who felt he could parlay this into something. Perhaps he can. That can only be achieved if he can hear what people are saying in SL and make adjustments.

Since the RL cafe apparently has all these rather restrictive rules of not talking, forcing you to eat $7.00 of food, and not being able to dance, why not take advantage of SL to eliminate all that and make it more free? It won’t bother the musicians, they can’t hear us. And if all they do is put up a sign behind them saying “Shoutout to SL listeners!” that would be progress.

Second Life resident Rhonda Bosen is charging that a casino owned by Hunter Noland failed to pay out on her big win of over 400,000 Linden Dollars — roughly $16,000 $1600 US Dollars. Ms. Bosen has produced chat logs and screen shots in support of her claim against Mr. Noland who is associated with SL corporation Sc Design, and claims to own the following casinos.

Sc Design City Mall & Poker & Casino
Sc Design Mall & Casino at Freihafen
The Caribbean Pearl Mall & Casino
Ocean Casino & Mall (we are informed that he is only manager of this one)

According to Ms. Bosen, Mr. Nolandhas not replied to her inquires nor to those of several witnesses to the win, and has even declined her notecard outlining the lack of payout.

According to a notecard provided to the Herald by Ms. Bosen, she “contacted Hunter about it thinking that maybe he didnt have enough in his account when this happened and all he would do was pay the money back she spent on the machine to start with, even though there were witnesses to the win, witnesses to the shouted notification of the win and a picture taken of the win.” Thus far, however he has been unresponsive. The notecard also offered the following chatlog, and Ms. Bosen claims that she has other witnesses to the event.

[22:53] Fortune Cookie 3.10: Rhonda Bosen Won 2000L$ on Fortune Cookie
[22:54] Fortune Cookie 3.10 whispers: Normal Bet
[22:55] Fortune Cookie 3.10 shouts: Rhonda Bosen Won 400000L$ on Fortune Cookie
[22:56] Fortune Cookie 3.10 whispers: Rhonda Bosen Thank you for playing Fortune Cookie.. Like to play again?

Commenting further, Mr. Bosen had this to say:

I tried to contact him by notecard because we are all busy with our businesses, but he declined the notecard, Other witnesses have even tried to contact him and get him to pay the win that obviously occured but he has still rejected it. This in my opinion is very bad business, especially from someobody that has Malls all over SL and casinos as well.”

The Herald attempted to contact Mr. Noland, but so far has not heard back from him. We invite Mr. Noland to reply directly in these pages if he so chooses. In the meantime we urge all readers not to rush to judgment in this case, but in general to be wary that scams like the one alleged here are entirely possible if not likely in Second Life, and there is little recourse to victims once scammed.

Fox Cavern- Post Sixx grrls are learning that beauty is more than pixel deep, because last week’s Post Sixx grrrl pageant seemed to come down to personality and brains as the beauties who took the stage were “really too close to call” according to pageant judge Marilyn Murphy. Now in its fourth week, the SL Herald’s Post Sixx Pageant is becoming one of the most popular events in the Second Life Week. Between the beautiful swimsuit clad models and the witty banter of judges Murphy and Jaime Wheeler, the audience and the models come prepared to be both entertained and entertaining.

“The best part is that the growth of this contest has been all word of mouth,” said Wheeler. “We’ve done very little advertising and yet every week we have more and more people here. I have a lot of fun, and I think the contestants and the audience do too and it’s that sense of fun that makes it popular. Heck, last week we even attracted a griefer, so I guess that’s a sign we’ve hit the big time,” Wheeler added with a laugh.

A sure sign of pageant success, the PN boys arrive to find out what women look like (Apparently their moms took away their National Geographics).

The pageant is held at The Shadow Auditorium in Fox Cavern (227,225,21) a beautiful theater initially built by sim owner Shadow Brando specifically to host this prestigious event. “Everyone has heard of Marilyn, and the Herald, and Post Sixx Girls, it’s an honor to have them come to my place week after week,” said Brando. The next pageant will be this Friday, April 13th , at 5:00pm SLT. With the growing popularity of the contest, people interested in entering should plan on arriving early to ensure a place.

At the last pageant, as many as fifty people crowded into the sim to watch a dozen girls compete to become the next Post Sixx Grrrl and win a free photo session with the legendary Murphy. “It really was our toughest pageant yet because there were so many wonderful girls who entered,” said Murphy.

“We had a couple of contestants who have been SL fashion models for years, who had worked for some wonderful designers, as well as some newer girls who wanted to become models and who had spent a lot of time and care in making their avatars. They’re all beautiful, how does one choose just one?” added Wheeler. “In this case, we went with the girl who had impressed us most with her interview, Aurel Miles, who ironically is not interested in modeling but who instead did the contest as a lark.”

The Post Sixx feature in the SL Herald is one of the paper’s most popular pieces, and its only weekly column. Featuring three pictures of an avatar, one clothed and two nudes, Post Sixx has generated a lot of interest over the years. An outgrowth of Players Magazine, Murphy’s in-world magazine, Post Sixx is a way for beautiful and interesting avatars to get seen by thousands of Herald readers and is thus a much desired honor. “We have launched more than a few modeling careers,” says Murphy with a laugh, “but what we’re really looking for is the interesting person who has done something unique and attractive with their avatar, whether a drow or demon or faerie or something else altogether.”

“Contestants wishing to enter just have to show up at Shadow Sinners a little bit before the scheduled start of the contest,” says Wheeler. “It’s very relaxed and we try to put the contestants at ease. They wear a swimsuit, come out on stage, and tell us a little bit about themselves. So far, it’s been either Friday or Saturday night and people have had to check the events listing to find the date and time, but we hope that going forward our real life schedules will settle down and we can get into a groove of having it always at the same time. When in doubt, though, check the events, but this week is great because it will be Friday the 13th at 5:00pm SLT.

While Azno Simons seems particularly eager to comply with the Linden lab staffers attempt to clean up at least the gambling aspect of Second Life – other metaverse casino owners have a different perspective. Mr. Simons may be a unique case, since he more interested in advertising his web-based gambling empire than running a serious in-world operation. I visited a few more conventional SL casinos to get reactions to the Linden’s casino ad-word ban.

the FBI cannot touch Anthonymark Alcott

Anthonymark Alcott owns the “Casino World” sim, and I caught up with him earlier today for comment on the Linden’s actions. Mr. Alcott said, “I am UK citizen so FBI can’t touch us”. This does raise the issue that non-US citizens are out of bounds for the FBI – although the Linden Lab servers are not.

Mr. Alcott told me that rather than advertising the casino, he will run ads for other parts of his club. When I pointed out that his sim has the word casino in the name, Mr. Alcott said, “they can’t change that. We could call it rape club. It doesn’t mean anyone is going to be raped here, it is just a name”. Fair enough – let’s hope Robin Linden agrees with that analysis.

move the servers offshore

Over at the Gold Rush Casino, I spoke with Malarwen Hall who was overseeing a large group of gamblers and asked if she thought any changes were in store. Ms. Hall told me, “I do not know, I think LL should move overseas”.

Perhaps a change of venue for the Linden servers would make sense – if the Lab intends to continue to “Your World, Your Imagination” mantra to it’s logical conclusion despite widely varying RL laws and customs. I’m really hoping we don’t all have to start wearing burhkas everywhere in SL because of some Saudi Arabian law . Maybe the Lindens can send any concerned Saudis over to one of the Gorean sims and let them admire the Free Companion’s veils? Once they are enslaved they won’t be able to leave Gor anyway – problem solved.

Jarla Lean wants to work in a “Palace”

Back at Casino World, I asked Jarla Lean – one of the escorts/dancers on duty – what she thought. Ms. Lean suggested that all the casino owners change their business name to “Palace”. This could be a good solution to the problem. Just as the ageplay community has now morphed into the “roleplay” community, present day casinos could become palaces – that ought to keep the FBI guessing. Some suspect the Lindens are still trying to work out what happened to those ageplayers – so this approach sounds promising.

packing them in at the Gold Rush