I’m looking at doing a little experiment and this will require a bit of assistance.

As some of you know, I am in SEO/Internet Marketing by ‘real life’ trade. I work with people in all sectors on their websites but, as you would expect when you consider the potential returns versus the investment required, I don’t really have “virtual worlds,” businesses on my books.

SEO, for anyone not familiar, involves carrying out work both on a website and off of it (relating to how the site is linked to from other sites) in order to make it rank better in the search engines for certain keywords.

Let me totally up front. I am looking for data. Lots of it. But in order to get it, I’m putting up some free SEO in a few areas.

The keywords I am interested in are:-

“Second Life Land,” “Second Life Real Estate,” “Second Life Fashion” and “Second Life Music/Musicians.”

They are relatively small keywords in terms of how many people search for them each month (anything between 300 and 1200) but I am interested in the beaviour of users who land on a site after searching for those keywords.

So here is what I propose to do:- I want to find people with websites in these areas who would like to (or would benefit from) ranking in the top ten in Google for those keywords. In exchange for carrying out work to help them to rank for them, I would like access to data about their visitors and visitor behaviour. It’s that simple.

I don’t want money, commissions, performance based pay… none of it. That’s not what I am interested in. I want numbers

I am only going to take on one website in each area. Basically, the following criteria will apply:-

1. You must already have a website in this area.

2. The site must be on your own domain (not a subdomain of .wordpress.com or .blogspot.com or anything like that).

That’s pretty much it.

If you want to get involved, drop me an email to josue [@] pixelscoop.net detailing your website address and whether it relates to anything you do actually in world.

Thank you muchly.

Another shameless plug, I’m afraid. Well more of a, ‘hey check this out.’

Some of you I’m sure have come across Dannah’s Blog, Real Life 2.0. It’s a great blog and if you hadn’t, you should read it. And here’s the bit where I blow my own trumpet.

Dannah asked me recently if I would be interested in getting involved in the blog, which covers RL and SL, in order to take it to a more ‘debate-like’ forum level. The posts will be on RL and SL and will involve mine and Dannah’s posts on the same topic, with comments and further discussion actively encouraged.

This will be something I am doing in addition to Pixel Scoop (Pixel Scoop is my baby I can’t quite bear to part with, after all), but is something I think could be potentially very interesting!

Check it out. Please. Pretty please?

Mobile usage is accounting for more and more internet usage. I myself  ‘surf on the move’ with my iPhone (I love my iPhone more than my dog)! One pet peeve though is the non mobile friendly pages. You spend way too long scroling back and forth and zooming in and out to get any enjoyment. However, I can’t very well bitch about the state of websites that don’t cater to the mobile market when mine doesn’t!

Until today!

I came across a pretty nifty plugin called WP Touch, which (in one click) makes your site iPhone and other mobile device friendly. There are a lot of plugins out there that do this, but most of them require you to do some element of designing of the “mobile theme” yourself and then arse around installing it in the relevant directories. This one is one click.

Essentially, when someone accesses Pixel Scoop now, it will detect whether they are on a mobile device and if they are, it will display the mobile version of the site. It’s less colourful, to say the least, and it’s a generic theme that they use for any site with the WP Touch plugin, but it’s much easier reading for mobile web browsers. Plus, if readers don’t like it, there’s an option to turn it off at the bottom!

Here’s how Pixel Scoop looks from a mobile:

Plain, indeed.... but so much easier!

No 'scroll, zoom, scroll, zoom,' required.

Clear image display...

And the option to turn off the mobile view for those who like scrolling and zooming!

If anyone else is interested in creating a clear, iPhone friendly version of their blogs, you can get the plugin from here. Sorry, non WordPress-ers – this only works with WordPress blogs!

Yes, you read the title right.

Violence really is a terrible problem for the thrifty. The cost of weapons in Second Life is leaving those who just want to be frugally vicious in something of a pickle. Does Mr. Thrifty-Blood-Thirsty satisfy his need for gore or his bank balance?

Fear not people. I have searched the metaverse high and low and I have found ten ways to commit horrific acts of violence in Second Life that will not cost anything (ok, some of them are L$1 but whatever). Oh and I enlisted the help of two semi naked women in a wrestling ring to help me showcase them. So not only am I giving you action packed violence, I am providing semi naked women as well. How much do you love me right now?

Let me introduce my super sexy, lean, mean (half-naked) fighting machines.

In the blue corner……

She’s tough, she’s hot, she’s unbeaten in the pixel kick boxing tournament that I just made up….. it’s [insert cool boxing introducing person voice] BUBBLES KOMACHI!!

Smell my armpit.... no really, go on!

In the red corner….

She’s sexy, she’s cool, she’s the current virtual world naked mud wrestling champion… it’s [insert cool boxing introducing person voice] SKYLAR SMYTHE!!

Nooo.... smell mine!!!!

I can wait here a moment, guys, if you need a few seconds to perve their pixels some more.

And now for the weapons. Got a boyfriend you need to assassinate but running short of Lindens? Pixel gangsta blinding you with his bling? Why should have to spend your hard earned Lindens on violence? We, at Pixel Scoop believe that virtual worlds violence should be free to all. So here’s to freebie weapons and the best ones we found!

1. Poking Stick

It’s a stick. You wear it. You click people. You poke people. It makes a cool poking animations and an even cooler poking sound. This is created by Altometric Backer. We tried the poking stick out on our scantily clad toughies….

Whose is bigger?

Evidently, pointing sticks make Bubbles very happy.

2. Anvil Dropper

Created by Lex Neva, this anvil dropper allows someone to drop anvils on someone else’s head. In this case, Bubbles became the victim of Skylar’s anvils!!

Bubbles felt a headache coming on....

3. Couch Bazooka

I’ve blogged on the couch bazooka before. Following that blog post, Livio Habercom (creator) sent me a copy and trans Pixel Scoop branded version. Woot! You can IM me for a copy, by the way. The couch bazooka is a bazooka that shoots couches. Imagine that! But seriously, this is a like a riot in Ikea on cocaine!!!!! Awesome, awesome weapon.

Hey it's Christmas... you always need extra seats at Christmas.

4. Sperm Popgun

The creator of this is somewhat anonymous, it seems. It’s a modification of Eric Linden’s original popgun, offering both violence and potential pixel pregnancy in one sperm shaped bullet. Oh, only in Second Life…..

Two semi naked women chase one another around a wrestling ring shooting sperm.....only in SL!

5.  Chicken Gun

The chicken gun is created by Maezy Magic and advertises itself as shooting eggs at people. In light of the chicken fetish plaguing Second Life at the moment, I thought this might be a light hearted means of violence. However, I did not anticipate just how much damage a pixel egg could do…

Bad egg?

6. Pipe Thrower

Take a giant pipe, an arm stretch animation, a decent throw animation and turn object physics on. What do you get? Rather violent semi naked virtual ultimate fighting. This is cool – very much so. It’s a pipe, you throw it at people or even put people in it and throw them too. Simple? Perhaps. Funny? You bet! This one’s created by Aina Yoshikawa.

No prizes for guessing who won this round then?

7. Broken Beer Bottle

Is any night out complete without a good broken bottle fight at the end of it? We sent our two sexy little wrestling champs out to get drunk and then we stuck them back in the wrestling ring (still in their undies) and watched to see what would happen. Call it a social experiment, if you will.

Bouncer for Hire. Call Bubbles Komachi.

8. Hand Gun

“Wait a minute, Josue,” I hear you cry in unison, “Shouldn’t ‘hand gun’ be all one word?” Well boys and girls, sit tight. There’s an exception to every rule. It’s not a handgun, it really is a hand gun. And it shoots fingernail clippings. Grossly wonderful. This comes straight from the imagination of creator Minda Magic.

"Seriously... like this thing totally has the skin tone issues of a newbie wearing a freenis."

9. Smashable Guitar

Emo and musician in the same sentence? Never! But for those days when being a musical genius gets all too much, at least you can take it out on your drummer now by cracking him or her around the head with your guitar. This one was created by ShortPieceOf String.

Skylar calmly explained to Bubbles that she was a little out of time on that last run through....

10. Snow Turret Hat

Nothing says “Merry Christmas,” like pelting everyone in your virtual vicinity with Second Life snowballs. Wear this super cool and uber festive hat and that’s exactly what will happen. Created by QD Muggins

Now, I did think about showing you a picture of this hat in action, but I thought instead that I should talk to the ladies and get them to make friends after all that wrestling. So I umm, undressed a little and got them to sit with me and talk it out. It’s a hard job, this blogging malarchy….. but someone has to do it

Merry Christmas )

So there you have it. Ten spot on Second Life freebies that make violence affordable for all. Who says you can’t have fun during a recession?

A note on the freebies

I have not included XStreetSL urls here because, following the recent fucktarded decision by Linden Lab to try and rip off freebie sellers, a lot of people are taking them down.There’s therefore no guarantee that links would be active for long. What I suggest, then, if you want to get your hands on any of these, is to look up the creators on XStreet or in world. There are some of these that I do have copy and trans and if you drop me an IM in world (Josue Habana) or an email to josue [at] pixelscoop [dot] net with your avie name, I will pass the ones I have. I have the couch bazooka, the santa hat snowball launcher, poking stick and sperm popgun!

Yes, I know I’m generous.

Side note: anyone considering IMing me about how inappropriate it is to make a joke about violence, save your breath and my time. No, I don’t condone hitting people with guitars in real life – real life guitars are waaaaay too expensive. Yes, I have a warped sense of humour.

This is a Second Life blog…

I set it up exclusively virtual worlds… not a crossover type blog. I therefore don’t post anything that does not in some way relate to Second Life or virtual worlds.

But…. but…. but…. I have to post this.

Cheryl Cole Fight For This Love from wowwowme on Vimeo.

(I would have embedded from Youtube but they have embedding disabled on all versions of it).

This is Cheryl Cole’s new single, Fight for this Love

She is FIT. Like proper fit. I therefore excuse myself this non-SL related post.

What?? Still complaining. Fine…. I will relate it to SL.

I WISH CHERYL COLE WOULD COME IN SECOND LIFE TO HUNT ME DOWN AND REQUEST TO HAVE MY (NON-PIXEL) BABIES.

Though, you know, Cheryl… if you ditch the dumb footballer, you can just ring me… don’t have to log in if you don’t want!

`Ok, well it isn’t on a stick. But it’s free. And animated. And rather random.

Get it on XStreet here!

Freebie!

Here you go. A random free light house. Because… well because I like building but I am too lazy to offer any form of support on anything I create.

So it’s FREE.

Also available in world, with all the other freebies at Hemingways.

Click here to teleport in world….

…or click here to get it on XStreet!

I’m an avid Second Life loyalist.

This could largely be due to the fact that it took me long enough to learn to walk in a straight line in Second Life and therefore, learning all over again elsewhere holds little appeal to me.

My first experience of any type of virtual world was Second Life. I did not, like many of the people I have met in Second Life, come from either There.com or from World of Warcraft. After a year or so in Second Life, I was persuaded by a friend to try out There.com and I hated it. It was so…. primitive…. by comparison.

But I am open to trying new virtual worlds. I signed up for Twinity when it was closed Beta (and used it like twice before uninstalling), I signed up for Entropia Universe and spent several hours trying to decipher how the hell it worked before logging out, uninstalling and never going back and I have tried a number of, what I like to call, the ‘Second Life copies’. Those hold slightly more appeal for me because I am so used to the operation of Second Life and these work just the same, though are generally all very unpopulated.

But in terms of the virtual worlds that are nothing like Second Life in operation or technicals, I have been hearing a lot about Blue Mars. So a few days ago I signed up for the closed beta. I got access yesterday and here’s my first impressions….

COMPLICATED BUT PRETTY.

Ok, so bear in mind that it is in the beta testing stage at the moment. But Blue Mars requires a monster of a machine. Second Life runs like a dream on my machine… it really does. I run all my graphics on uber high settings and rarely experience any lag. This is also assisted by a super fast broadband connection. But Blue Mars made my PC want to hurt me. In fact, even as I loaded it up I could hear my laptop crying a little… “No, don’t do this to me, it hurts!”

I won’t go into full details about this…it would make little sense to those who had not yet been in and would bore those who have no intention. I will say that you can sign up for the closed beta by clicking here. And I will sum up the good, the bad and the ugly from my couple of hours in there.

The Good

It is absolutely beautiful, like really beautiful. The graphics are stunning. They have dynamic shadows, which Second Life has not yet incorporated into its own viewer (though they are available on alternative viewers).

Venice in Blue Mars

Blue Mars

There is entertainment provided by the developers of the game actually in world too (Avatar Reality). This takes the form of a golf game, which, when I had learnt houe to do it was actually a lot of fun and like a vehicle based game that I absolutely could not work out and so I gave up. The other good thing I note was that, despite only being in beta at the moment, everything functions pretty much as it should. The Blue Mars equivalent of teleportation works a treat every time, for example. Also… it’s free. There is (as yet, at least) no paid option and there is no mention of incorporating one. Of course, this could all change when Blue Mars comes out of beta.

The Bad

Ok… the terrible thing about this is just how high its requirements are. Such massively high minimum system requirements mean that a LOT of people are going to be alienated from playing this unless they can improve on that. In fact, even downloading and installing was system heavy by comparison of some other virtual worlds. The setup file is 1.2Gb and I had to try three times to download it before I got a setup file that would actually run. I have an amazing gaming laptop which runs every other virtual world I have tried like an absolute dream. It was in pain in Blue Mars. Like really in pain. Those amazing graphics come at a cost, you see. But, unlike Second Life, you cannot adjust your settings here. At least, not yet. So you have to have all the shadows and pretty things on. I also think that the bubble chat thing (yes, everything people type appears over their heads in bubble form) is annoying. But that’s just a personal preference of mine. One big negative, in my opinion, in Blue Mars, is that there is no built in building tools. You can create content by joining their Developer’s Programme. But, they claim to support external content creation tools, such as Daz 3D for the creation of content. That, for me, is what leaves so many of these virtual worlds ‘lagging’ behind (pardon the poor pun) Second Life. I really believe that in order for a virtual world to experience anywhere near the success that Second Life has, there has to be that in place in order to futher the possibility of developing a real economy.

The Ugly

Ok, so call me vain, but Josue Habana is much prettier in Second Life. I don’t like him so much in Blue Mars. He has frequent bad hair days and wears bad clothes.

Josue was having another bad hair day....

I would say this is one worth visiting if you are a virtual world enthusiast. For me, I don’t think I will go back until I find out that it’s a little easier on the machine. I am impatient. I don’t like lag. And I don’t like waiting for things. But I do think that the virtual world of Blue Mars certainly has huge potential.

Gag Reel!

Well sort of…. just a sample of the backstage giggles from the production of Hypatia of Alexandria.

Thanks, guys!

Misinformed journalists, this is your warning. This post contains POSITIVE PRESS about Second Life™. For those of you unwilling to check out all sides of Second Life, for those sensationalists who are only interested in placing one or two extreme freakin’ psychos up on a platform and dictating to the world that these people represent the average Second Lifer, stop reading here. I would hate to piss all over your hate parade.

Today I was reading around at Second Life related articles again, as often I do and, as is always the case, I came across several of the usual hater style articles. You know the sort. The ones written by some wannabe journo who signs up to Second Life for half an hour, visits a newbie sex region, takes some snapshots of a freenis-wearing weirdo and reports in the national press that all Second Lifers are therefore sex addicted hermits, often morbidly obese who only ever leave their parent’s basements to retrieve more pizza.

Well… as a community of wasters, nyphos and hermits, we did pretty well for Relay for Life this year. In fact, to date, 2009 has seen residents of Second Life raise a staggering L$ 60, 324, 956. This, in real terms, equates to $ 263,361 (yes, US dollars). These were the the totals when I last checked the page but they are increasing all the time as more donations fly in and you can see the latest here. Second Life Relay for Life is becoming a bigger and better event with every single year that passes. And this achievement is something that anyone who took part, whether as an organiser or as someone donating to a random box they passed, can be proud of. That is over a quarter of a million US dollars raised for the America Cancer Society that would not have been raised were it not for Second Life and its residents.

Second Life Relay for Life is something that even a search on Google brings back little ‘real life’ press for in comparison to the stories about women leaving their husbands for their pixel partners. Such a shame really.

But anyway, enough gloating about the achievements of Second Lifers. I have pizza to gorge on, hermitry to partake in and general nymphomania and freakiness to be getting on with.