I decided to join the Waze traffic map game on my new iPhone last week, after reading far too many stories moaning about how Apple should never have dropped Google Maps from the new version of iOS.  The general tone of the Apple Map coverage has been along the lines of ZOMG!!! My iPhone is ruined 4evah! the Apple Maps are wrong in some places! How will life be worth living without Google?!?

This coverage overlooks certain troubling aspects of Google, the wardriving WIFI snooping Internet ad agency that keeps telling itself don't be evil - then quietly overrides web browser privacy protections. I've been limiting my contact with all things Google after that unfortunate Google+ suspension that locked up my e-mail and data until Google eventually decided I was real after all.

GPS-enabled roleplay leads to live traffic and police sighting reports

So I'm fine with leaving Google Maps behind - especially now that I'm experiencing a whole new form of role play. I have spent most of the week playing the part of an autonomous techno-communist node in a network of mobile GPS sensors roaming real life's highways.

It's great! Not only do I get to play an open ended augmented reality MMORPG and contribute to the improvement of the human condition, I'm being rewarded with points and a rising ranking among the other players. In return for being tracked by my phone as I drive, I can level up and marvel at how my commute has been gameified.

Best of all, I am almost past the Waze noobie avatar look - a baby with a pacifier.

a selection of waze avatars - after your drive 100 miles

I've got my eye on some much more fashionable outfits, and hope someday I will be able to earn even better virtual clothes as I drive to work and report accidents and traffic backups - the fundamental form of gameplay in Waze. Why grind in WoW when you have to drive work anyway? If you are daring, you can text chat with other players, although I'm not sure how that could work if you are also supposed to be driving your car.

While the realtime traffic condition reports are quite good, I do think Waze could use a few of Second Life's fashion designers to help with the avatars. Aren't all avatars supposed to wear impossible spike heels and skankolicious outfits?

noobies with pacifiers and fashionistas on the mean streets of Durham, NC

Setting aside the virtual fashion scene and game play, Waze has an interesting business model that is something like a traffic oriented version of Wikipedia -- crowd sourcing both map updates and traffic reports. In contrast, Google throws money at the mapping problem by running dedicated Google cars wherever it can, but there are practical limits to how many cars Google can put on the roads. Waze should be able to compete with Google for at least map and traffic information at lower cost by crowd sourcing reports from people who were driving anyway.

I expect to be joined by quite a few more players, after Apple's Tim Cook mentioned mentioned last Friday that Waze is an alternative to Apple's iOS Map while the Foxconn smartphone and tablet reseller redraws their maps.

Now if we just had a real money trade for Waze points, I might be able to get that crown the cool players have a little sooner.

"Turn off your TVs for a start"

Featuring a healthy dose of pepper spray - which sources on the UC Davis campus recently learned is basically a food product - the latest Rap News release from TheJuiceNews continues Robert Foster's grand tradition of "turning bollocks-news into socio-poetic/comedic analyses which everyone can relate to and understand".

TheJuiceNews regulars Terrence Moonseed and General Baxter are interviewed early in the coverage followed by an unforgettable Anonymous human megaphone mic check. But the highlight of the coverage is likely to provide a near religious experience for linguistic students as we learn that Noam Chomsky is capable of a doing a very good Chomsky impression. Who could have guessed?

Roo sim - the home base for in-world access to vital Meeroo food supplies - is now encircled with a quarantine corridor in hopes of blocking scammers from using an exploit to create objects in unauthorized areas. Will this novel parcel configuration become a "best practice" for those concerned with controlling object creation on their virtual land? More important - will Linden Lab discount land tier fees to compensate landowners for loss of full use of their virtual land?

Starved Meeroos wander off into the wild - but pay again and they might return

Saturday, I stopped by Roo sim, and discovered the landowners have divided the sim into two parcels. The central parcel is publically accessible, but a 10 meter wide strip encircles the entire outside edge of the sim. Access to this strip of land is limited to the Roo sim administrators - a virtual cordon sanitaire.

ban lines around the edge of the island

This unique land configuration has a certain logic - while it sacrifices 15% of the land area, it also keeps scam artists away from the edges of the sim where they can create objects at will and overlay legitimate food vendors with their own devices.

It is not surprising that some players are sacrificing a part of their land. Consider the glacial progress of the Lab in patching the well-know rez-on-no-rez land exploit and how the Lab hid behind a "privacy policy" after the Meeroos nearly starved.

Now consider that the Lab reportedly had revenues of over $75M for each of the last three years, and is bragging on taking in $7M/month currently. You would think fixing these sorts of exploits would be a high priority. Think again.

Perhaps the Lab should discount the land tier fees by 15% for island owners as a show of good faith and compensation for loss of use. The Lindens should be able to afford it after one of their best quarters ever and record revenues - unless the god's game is now focused on cost cutting and milking the platform for cash.

no entry for sim edge case exploits

by Debbie

two sisters live free in Second Life

On April 13, 2010 the Alphaville Herald posted a story about how to squat on virtual land, written by my genius hero, Pappy Enoch. The next day I went soaring over the mainland looking for abandoned land, and found two huge parcels adjoining a small piece of land that allows me to rez items. It is heaven. I have been squatting on these parcels for well over a year now, and I wanted to thank the Herald by sharing some pictures of my sister and I on our (borrowed) land.

living the good life on borrowed virtual land

The abandoned land, besides the small parcel with full permissions, is also surrounded by regular folks who have built businesses and such at ground level. One of them contacted me several months after I started squatting to ask about all my junk in the sky, but I played dumb and haven't heard from him since.

questions about junk in the sky? just play dumb

Because we have two abandoned parcels, we have lots of prims to play with. I have used the smaller of the parcels for a house, complete with stripper poles on the front deck, where my friends and I like to party.

stripper poles are a cherished amenity in many upscale SL homes

On the other parcel I've built a giant platform, complete with another house, and I use this for examining some of the larger freebies I find on the grid, such as the awesome sewer system by Arcadia Asylum, which I have set up on the parcel as well. (Like I said, it's a big parcel).

Thanks again to the Herald for being so awesome, and to Pappy for giving us the keys to the kingdom. Thanks also to the Lindens for making a world that is being abandoned so fast they can't keep up with the foreclosures.

I know I'll probably take some heat in the comments for this, so I'll just say that if I make it another year without being run-off this land, I'll send topless pictures.

Happy squatting!

Second Life players feel controlling the objects created on their land is serious business - for good reason. Linden Lab holds landowners responsible for "broadly offensive" images found on player's plots, even if the content was not created by the landowner.

Rez in No Rez HUD sidesteps Second Life land controls

Another consideration is the limited object carrying capacity of the Lab's virtual land.

Second Life's economy is largely based on creating an artificial scarcity that ties the number of simple geometric objects - prims - which can exist on a plot of land to the overall size of the plot. Prims are used to create buildings and other props in the virtual realm, so landowners jealously guard their prim allotments and link virtual land rental/resale prices to the prim capacity of the imaginary land. In light of this, how is it possible that prims can be placed in restricted areas by unauthorized avatars?

When I first heard of this exploit, I was skeptical, but my source - who wishes to remain anonymous - was willing to demonstrate how one might overcome the Lab's object permission system. The exploit has continued to function since early May, and almost certainly existed well before my source came forward.

After observing the exploit in action and speaking with several experts, it appears that the Lab is not handling an edge case properly. As best I can tell, objects can be created by an LSL script command just outside the sim - where no user creation limit applies - then immediately moved into the sim.

According to the experts I consulted, parcel level controls are used to limit when objects can be created. Since the parcel coordinates end at 256, but sims need to be able to hand off objects between adjacent regions for vehicles in transit across sim boundaries, there is the possibility of objects being created just outside the sim and then entering the sim after avoiding the no-rez restriction.

How might this news might affect the land baron class in Second Life? Here is a transcript of land baron and metaverse media maven Crap Mariner's reactions to an impromptu demonstration:

Pixeleen Mistral: ok - this is no-rez land, right?
Pixeleen Mistral: can you verify that?
Crap Mariner: it appears so
Pixeleen Mistral: so - allow me to rez a cube on this no-rez land
Crap Mariner plays back a drumroll
Pixeleen Mistral: courtesty of a certain HUD
Pixeleen Mistral: ready?
Crap Mariner: yes
Pixeleen Mistral: here we go
Crap Mariner: i see a cube
Crap Mariner: not attached to you
Pixeleen Mistral: right
Pixeleen Mistral: if you watch really carefully
Crap Mariner: it appeared at the corner
Pixeleen Mistral: it rezes the cube just outside the sim
Crap Mariner: then popped over to there
Crap Mariner: yes
Pixeleen Mistral: then pulls in in
Pixeleen Mistral: an edge case
Crap Mariner: does it require linden water on the border (unused grid space) or can it be done where there is a sim there?
Pixeleen Mistral: anywhere if you are near the x or y coordinates > 250 ii works
Crap Mariner: impressive
Pixeleen Mistral: doesn't need a void sim or anything like that
Crap Mariner: quite... remarkable.
Pixeleen Mistral: this has been known in certain circles for at least 2 months
Crap Mariner: thank goodness it's in the hands of responsible, outstanding citizenry who'd never think to abuse such great power.
Crap Mariner smiles
Pixeleen Mistral: well - I was planning to write a story
Pixeleen Mistral: but I needed a skeptical witness
Crap Mariner: if you don't mind, could we test this on a sim i know you have no rez rights on?
Pixeleen Mistral: sure
Pixeleen Mistral: TP me
Crap Mariner: just in the extreme case that you actually can rez here
Crap Mariner: ok
Crap Mariner: heading to piper point

[we arrive at Piper Point sim]

Crap Mariner: x = 250
Pixeleen Mistral: ok
Crap Mariner: (welcome to the southernmost island in my neighrboor.)
Crap Mariner makes a note to take typing lessons
Pixeleen Mistral: ok
Pixeleen Mistral: how was that?
Crap Mariner: now i will turn off rez rights
Crap Mariner: ah already were turned off
Crap Mariner is quite the dimwitted landbaron
Pixeleen Mistral: right
Crap Mariner: ok, you have me convinced
Crap Mariner: at this point, james randi would be cutting a very large check
Pixeleen Mistral: so what this means is that you really do not have control of your land
Pixeleen Mistral: since there is an exploit that allows anyone to rez objects
Crap Mariner: at some level, there's a flaw with the security.
Pixeleen Mistral: well yes
Pixeleen Mistral: this is the story of SL
Crap Mariner nods
Pixeleen Mistral: flawed security
Crap Mariner: if the security flaws in SL were pancakes, not even Vin Diesel could eat them all.

Crap Mariner: so, does this HUD allow for other things to be rezzed?
Crap Mariner: and do they resist auto-return if not in group?
Pixeleen Mistral: auto-return still works
Crap Mariner: ah ok
Pixeleen Mistral: of course, most people will screw up their land if they turn auto-return on
Pixeleen Mistral: since they were sloppy about group ownership
Crap Mariner: we're a bit more careful than most. either a parcel has group only, or if they clean up, a-r is on
Crap Mariner: but this busts the group only block

My enormus fan klub at the Herald will know that I gits me a heap o’ mail thru them-there Internet-tubes.

I done writ about this befo’ but I reckon it are too good to omit when it happens again. In fact, I done got this-hear same letter a year ago from a different dyin’ gal.

I gits me one o’ these-here “please-help-me-cause-I-are-falling-to-pieces-from-cancer-and-my-husband/son/dawg/boyfriend/chikkin-left-me-a-bazillion-bucks-in-Kenya-but-I cain’t-git-it-so-give-me-your-bank-account-please” letters.

Whew. I been a-tryin’ to help these po’ sufferin’ folks for years but they ain’t bit, yet.

Here am the latest attempt to help.

Dear Miz David,



You done writ to me about the horrible-terrible situation what done befell yo’ famberly.



Now I are just a poor, lonesum, woebegone feller who done landed in The Big House (what am called "prison" in the United States) but I done beat that-there rap and am a free man.



I gots me a bank account so’s I reckon I kin help you out sum.



You done said:



our only son died in a ghastly motor accident last year 2010.
I have been battling with both lung cancer and stroke.



Oh my gawd that am awful-terrible. I done lost folks thataway, as well as in explodin’ stills, manglin’ by junkyard dawgs, shootin’ dead by my sister Jezz, alien protology experiments, and Bigfoot-rape.



My late husband deposited the sum of (2.800.000.00 Dollas) Two Million Eight Hundred Thousand Dollas with a Bank here in Cote d’Ivoire and my name as beneficiary of the funds. 



Do tell.



After his death I decided not to remarry or get a child outside my matrimonial home.



That am rite smart. I don’t believe in marryin’ at all, if’n I kin help it, or gettin’ no chirren inside o’ no home. The woods am better or behind the smoke-house for knockin’ up sum gal.



According to the doctor, my medical report shows a have very short life sperm due to my health status presently. 



Ain’t you a gal? Why in Gawd’s name am you a-talkin’ about sperm? Maybe the cancer done mutated you into sum’fin shemale, but that am beside the point. We needs to talk about that-there 2.8 million.



Maybe I may still have another 1-3 months to live, that I do not know but God can say. That is just my faith as a deteriorating cancer patient. 



That are a-startin’ to sound like a country song and I are all ears.



Knowing my health condition I decided to donate the above mentioned funds to an individual Muslim/Christian or any faith



Hoo whee. I are part o’ the First Church o’ the Bleedin’ Heart of Snake-Handlin’ Jesus H. Christ on a Crutch, so I reckons that will do. If’n you wants me to turn Muslim, howsoever, I will do it. Where do I sign up?



The Bible/Qur’an made us to understand that blessed is the hand that giveth.



That am rite original. My Pappy, Pappy-Pappy Enoch, done telled me "boy, that-there hand what taketh are mo’ blessed still."  I done lived by that-there wisdom ever since.



I took this decision because our only son who is suppose to inherit this money and properties is also late



Well, he’ll show up then and don’t worry yo’ poor cancer-eaten heart none. Heck, I are always late.



Ma’am, I plans to watch over that there 2.8 million tighter’n a tick on a cow’s belly till that son o’ yours gits home.



You just git me your bank account number with them 2.8 million in there and I will do the rest. If’n you needs some killin’ done, or just kneecap breakin’ done, my sister Jezz am first-rate muscle for them jobs.



We will be to Coat Divorce or wherever the hell you lives in no time flat, if’n we kin git there by pickup truck.



Yours in God,

Pappy Enoch, Recently Reformed Sinner

Nicholas mafia download page

This development is not a total surprise. The Herald was contacted last week by a shady individual who pointed out the Lab’s third party viewer policy threatened the mafia meta-game and was driving the gang wars outside Second Life and onto various web sites, where individuals who are not part of the family might be harmed – and real life information shared with unfortunate consequences.

Meanwhile, the latest developments in the gang war between the Nicholas Mafia and the Sephora Mafia resulted in the Sephora gang web site being torched and left empty save for a few 404 error messages – a stark reminder of the power of the Nicholas clan. Who needs Facebook for mafia wars, when you can trash real life web sites?

While the Herald staff admired the Sephora Mafia’s musical selection in their YouTube video challenge to the Nicholas family, the Sephora gang may want to spend more time on security before challenging the Nicholas clan again. But attitude is important, and we do have to give Sephora some style points – and suggest that it might be better for everyone if the fun stays inside the game – a lesson Kalel Venkman and the Justice League Unlimited may have learned recently.

Before their site was trashed, a Sephora gang member sent this message to the Herald:

Like I posted to you before, the war has started, we have released Real pictures of members of Nicholas mafia…threats have been passed to us of simple DDOS on our website and simple **4chan** skiddie hackers trying to break through our security. Post bets on whose website goes away faster? Stand By For Rickroll Of Nicholas Mafia’s Website…

We know Nicholas Mafia has ties with Lindens and the lab, And we also know that they are exploiting Second Life viewers Such as Nielife and Cyrolyfe to use as there own for full copybot permissions, allowing them admin controls such as ban/kick/log out/ and also steal land. Sure they use these for there own uses for there enemies such as us. It is just a matter of time before it is released to the public and groups such as PN and other griefers get a hold of it allowing them total chaos within Second Life.

-Sephora Mafia

The Netflix “Find Your Voice film competition” is a great new game where everyone can participate by forming gangs to vote for the independent film maker that best represents their community and interests. Consider this a more positive version of the gang abuse report used in Second Life to get the Linden Governance team to ban enemy players. However, instead of helping bring the ban hammer down, in the Netflix Find Your Voice game, you can help a few lucky filmmakers receive some financial and in-kind support for filmmaking.

To play the Netflix game, you’ll need a working e-mail address – but Google, Yahoo, and Hotmail and others are happy to hand out spare alt account e-mail addresses for a reason — so you can play games that want e-mail addresses! What are you waiting for? Vote early and vote often.

Here at the Herald we are partial to SARAHN_12 – an entry from Sasie Sealy with a plot that should strike a chord among the Second Life players. The director’s statement tells the tale:

They say he raped them thatnight. They say he did it with a cunning little doll, fashioned in theirimage and imbued with the power to make them do whatever he desired.They say that by manipulating the doll he forced them to have sex withhim, and with each other, and to do horrible, brutal things to theirown bodies. And though I wasn’t there that night, I think I can assureyou that what they say is true, because it all happened right in theliving room — right there amid the well-stocked bookcases and the sofasand the fireplace — of a house I came later to think of as my secondhome.

      -Julian Dibbell,“A Rape in Cyberspace” 

Julian Dibbell published hisarticle  “A Rape in Cyberspace” in 1993, just one year afterNeal Stephenson’s Snow Crash first described the idea of a“metaverse” and ten years before the founders of Linden Lab wouldbring that idea to life. It was a fascinating piece that described therepercussions of a “cyber rape” within the virtual community, astory that stayed in my head months after I read it.  And whatfascinated me most was the reaction of the players – the emotionaltrauma created by an “imaginary” crime and their pursuit of vengeancein the real world.   

Dibbell’s story was consideredgroundbreaking at the time, but it has also proven to be remarkablyprescient in the issues it raised, issues that are still populatingthe headlines: a MySpace suicide, divorces filed over Second Lifeaffairs, a woman in Korea jailed for virtual murder.  I am fascinatedby the growing extension of an alternate  “cyber world” –whether made up of merely a collection of web pages or more sophisticatedonline and gaming spaces like Second Life – and its effecton the “real” world.  Entire generations are growing up online,creating communities and identities in virtual space, while the rulesand morals of this brave new world remain unclear.  Issues of privacy,identity, and accountability are still being determined as we struggleto understand and establish rules in spaces like Second Life. When does what we say or do online cross legal boundaries?  Ormoral boundaries?  Do we have the right to stay anonymous in cyberspace? Are our fantasies and curiosities on the web able to condemn us? And if they are, will the establishment of rules and regulations, notto mention commercial interests, end the free expression and exchangethat was the ideal behind the birth of the Internet?  Driving allof these questions is the very human desire to create a place to liveout our fantasies. 

SarahN_12 is my attempt toaddress some of these questions in a human story.  Sarah is a womanwho is trying to find answers after her boyfriend is brutally murderedin their apartment.  And so her search for answers into his unsolveddeath only leads to more questions, as she discovers that the man she thought she knew led an entirely separate existence online, – asecret life that may hold the key to his murder.   For Sarah,someone who has always had answers, this brush with unruly, messy realityleaves her reeling, and her journey towards acceptance that there maybe no easy answers provides the heart and spine of the story.  

As a director, I am excitedby the aesthetic possibilities of the story and the chance to portraya virtual world in unexpected ways.  Too often, virtual realitieshave been depicted as highly stylized cartoon versions of what audiencesexpect “computer games” to look like – some neo-futurist slickvision that can actually separate the viewer from what is happeningemotionally in the story.   What I am interested in doingis creating a vision of Alt Life that is visceral and immediate,more real that the real world.  Gamers can have an intense,emotional connection to their lives online, and this is what I wantto convey.  Alt Life scenes will be stylized live action,paying homage to the camera work of the Dardenne brothers, while realworld scenes will be much more formal and distant.  I have outlinedsome of my visual ideas in the pages that follow, but primarily I aminteresting in creating something in the footsteps of Pi or Primer,a film that melds form and function to create something that peoplehave never seen. 

Like both Pi and Primer, myconcept of Sarah_N12 falls into the space between science and sciencefiction, which is fitting considering the origins of virtual worlds. The founders of Linden Lab, the company behind Second Life, haveexpressly stated that they were inspired by Neal Stephenson’s novel Snow Crash and other cyberpunk works, and leaders of the emergingtechnology like Ian Hughes of IBM refer to themselves as “metaverseevangelists,” borrowing Stephenson’s term.   Yet whilescience and technology have long chased the dreams of science fiction,the reality of our evolving “cyber worlds” has led us to questionsyet to be tackled by the likes of William Gibson.  Whether we aretalking about MySpace or Facebook, Second Lifeor Maple Story, we are merely dealing with the first iterationof our science fiction fantasies.  The rules are still being written. And the human implications of our imagination have yet to be determined.

by Roby Core

I was reading some Google news the first time I’d ever heard about the Second life virtual world, and I thought it would have been childish stuff, but I got curious, and now I’ve picked a very basic avatar available on the subscription page and I’ve logged in. I wanted to move a bit around, see what kind of population lives in second life so I had to face an unexpected matter – how to do the very basic things.

I’ve spent several hours to understand how to walk properly, look around reading menus and tutorials plus being in the place where everybody starts where you find people who are going to ask you help instead of teaching you.

Things start to be interesting, so I decided to work a bit on my avatar – upgrade a bit the basic appearance and try to make a cooler version of myself out of it. After several more hours I’ve realized that couldn’t do much. I’ve decided to look for help and I quickly learned few things: 1st: that a man avatar can’t get easy help as a looks like all the community is after female avatars. 2nd: that finally, when in the avatar island, I found a female avatar giving me some tips and free shopping landmarks, I found out that even if you can get a lot of stuff for free you still would want to make some money to buy the coolest staff, participate in events and more.

A this point from what’s supposed to be a quick look, I already had a full day playing around the virtual world, and I’ve decided to stick here for a while. On the second day I decide to try to find a job and make some money, (unless you want to pay for virtual stuff with real money as a it’s offered by the system) and get confident with all those menus and functions.

Ehhh…. Not so easy again, businesses in SL are taken seriously and nobody will give a job to a “newbie” as everybody was able to immediately identify me. I was trying to talk to someone skilled to get any kind of advice but again, male avatar will not talk much to another male avatar, and female avatar will think you are try to pick her up, I was almost thinking to give up when at VooDoo Lounge club, probably the first place anybody will find as it’s close to the starting point, I saw a redhead standing and just watching around, so considering that I had just learned to animate my avatar to dance I ask her to dance.

She agreed, so I took one more chance and I’ve gone like: “do you know how to move around in this world?” she told me that she was an old player so I told her my effort to upgrade my look and find a way to make money, well….. after short conversation she not only give me some advice but actually offered me a job and some money as advance to upgrade my avatar. Yes, she was Pixeleen Mistral, the managing editrix for Second Life Herald, we have gone talking and “dancing” for a long while and she offered me a job to write about the efforts that I’ve made during my first few days in SL.

Now, after a week or so I am still a “newbie” but things are going better, even because with the confidence I got by the events so far, I’ve finally decided to create a female “sexy” avatar which gets easy help, both from female and male avatars, and it’s actually impressive how people are interested in making sex with a cartoon just clicking here and there, maybe can be just a safe way to explore hidden fantasies but is it actually fun???

By the way I don’t think I will buy even a 5 L$ in a penis for my male avatar which for the moment will have to survive without one, but I will try to get one of those super sexy body with realistic pussy for my female avatar, that seems more useful here.

Jungle Voodoo’s Leopard skins, “Neko style” (click any of these photos to enlarge)

One of the questions I hear most often is where to find good skins for Nekos. While it would be easy to provide the names of the most popular Neko stores that sell skins, I prefer a challenge. And so my fellow Neko friends, I have compiled an extensively researched list of Neko skin stores, categorized and complete with SLURLS for your shopping convenience.

However, before you click the link at the bottom of this page to see the full list, you might want to take a moment to read a few notes about what information I included, and why:

Atomic Kitty’s “Hope” skin… one of my choices for a Neko-appropriate “human” skin

Hey! What about…..

Yes, it’s highly possible that you’re going to know of a skin store I’ve missed, which is why I rely on comments from my loyal readers to help me fill in our collective Neko knowledge.

Simply drop me an email (contact information can be found on my “About This Kitteh” page) along with an SLURL to the store if possible, and I’ll be happy to check out their skin options personally.

Please note: This is not a post about all the great “human” skin stores in Second Life with goth skin tones. I did however select a few human skins that I felt had some unique characteristic(s) that might appeal to Nekos.

Frick Skins… adorable and affordable!

Just bear in mind that the definition of “unique human skin” is based entirely on my very own (usually subjective but not necessarily humble) opinion. ^_^

A sampling of Neko skins at Hybrid (click photo to enlarge)

It’s All About Genetics

Because we Nekos come in a variety of genetic variables, my skin reviews required some form of categorization:

Several of Nikita Fride’s “human style” skins would make a sexeh grrl kitteh…

Human Skins: Some of us are very nearly human, the only difference being our lovely ears and tails. Sometimes however, the scrappy alley cat genes come through, as evidenced by the occasional scar, black eye, or bloody lip on what is technically a “human” skin.

Neko Skins: Still others of us are further along in our transformation, and prefer skins that come complete with tiger stripes, calico spots, furry bellies, or other more “Neko”-like markings.

In this category, options abounded… from the range of skin tones (whites, browns, blacks, and even blueberry), to the detailing in leopard spots, to the amount of textural “fur” apparent on the skin itself.

Just a few from Curious Kitties (click photo to enlarge)

Often, as in the above example from Curious Kitties, you’ll find the option of buying a whole avatar (shape, skin, ears, tail, and eyes). Some stores even offer “spotted tattoos” if you like the skin you’re in, but want to “cat it up” a bit.

PixelPaws’ unique ‘Sylvana” skin — think tribal spots

Time to Shop…

Hopefully these two categories — Human and Neko — will help you select a skin that best reflects your true genetic heritage. Oh… I’ve even indicated whether the store sells male skins (M), female skins (F), or both (yes guys, I’m always thinking of you). : ahem :

Okay… without further ado… click this link to see the full list of skin stores and SLURLS:

Take me to the Virtual Neko Skin List!

=^..^=

this article is reprinted from virtual neko and appears by permission of the author