It has been a crazy day setting up the Winter Magic scene (<- SLURL - Launch Fashion Show tonight starting 2PM SLT!) but who cares when you are looking that fabulous at the end of the day. So yes we keep everything a bit quite to the last minute but its all worth it. So many designs to choose from. So just to give you a little hint what is waiting for you I have chosen dear Zaara Kohime's dreamy, magical dress called Hansika Gown , wonderful hair by Aemilia Case called Odette  and the sexiest skin I have ever seen by Obscene skins.

This is just a little tease more to come ... But do join us for the Fashion Show today at 2pm It fills up quickly so be there early

It's this time of the year where everyone and everything is a bit hectic. I can tell you in RL I have done an angel costume and a star costume for my little ones and had way too many mince pies already and its not even Christmas yet :P Yes you have seen many red and green stuff in the feed and can't wait till all this is over.

Winter Magic in Black Swan (<- SLURL TP) is a bit different then all the rest . We have again managed to gather a nice selection of different styles under one theme and hope to put a great show for you starting this afternoon at 2pm SLT. We have got many surprises from all of the participating designers.We have got not only amazingly beautiful dresses, skins, hair and shoes we even got Giraffes. So come and check out the winter scene in Black Swan and see all the great designs. The Fashion Show starts at 2pm SLT.

Rezzable presents you Winter Magic at Black Swan. The event will start with a great big fashion show and an after party at 2pm SLT on December 15th. So many great designers and loads of magical designs for you to choose from.  I have not seen any of the designs yet but I know all of the designers participating have had many sleepless nights to get you the best. So mark your calendars for the fashion show you know it gets full very quickly so be there early but if you  miss the first one don't worry there will be two more and you can find the whole Winter Magic Collection till the the 9th of January in one spot in Black Swan.

Here's a little wake-up call for all us that think being inworld is kinda cool, from the venerable London Times Online we get this snarky insight into the future of virtual/online experience: "Of course, avatars are dolls, which must be ventriloquised by their cyber-parents."

Roger Scruton continues this line of reasoning with: "But the dolls are getting more realistic, and who knows, maybe soon they will be able to read each other’s body language, and begin to respond directly, presenting their watchful parents with moral dilemmas that they had never foreseen. The new “dream children” may soon possess all the attributes which their creators wish for but do not possess, and will be able to copulate in cyberspace with the dreams of other people, in a sterile caricature of erotic passion."

hmmm...maybe Roger is a Gorean?

Sky News reports "Woman Divorces Over Virtual Lover":

The couple spent hours having fun together in Second Life - her avatar, or alter ego, in the 3D virtual world was Laura Skye, and his Dave Barmy.

But her dreams were shattered three months later when she went for an afternoon nap and woke to find the jobless 40-year-old having sex with an escort girl in the game.

Says Amy Taylor (RL Woman)

"I caught him cuddling a woman on a sofa in the game. It looked really affectionate," she said. "He turned off the computer monitor, and I turned it back on and demanded to look at his chat history."

Thanks to Mark Kingdon for reminding me to downgrade my premium account -- is like $USD 108/year when I was paying quarterly. I guess only reason to have this is to be able to have a parcel on Mainland? Anyway, there is a nice little feedback form that pops-up when you downgrade. So I suppose another chance to let the Linden Lab team know about why I am not spending more money with them.

Looks like someone hacked the SL email list somehow (some many clever minds turned to mischief). It is not from Linden Lab. Would seem to be an attempt to overload SL support page. But looks like Linden has a problem with email to avatar list security or someone is scrapping a web page where this is posted.

Email comes from "no-reply@secondlife.com" Subject = Warning or Suspension of Your Second Life Account

text =

Dumb Bots and Campers entice newbies to wander into empty shopping malls on the Second Life grid. It is a scam that Linden Lab continues to allow as it masks the lack of engaged user growth. Linden Lab knows the percentage of sessions and the amount of hours that Bots/Campers represents, but is not revealing this information.

While grid continues to protest the OpenSpace scandal and Linden Lab continues its policy of spin, hype, confuse and ignore, the big issue of where is the growth on the Second Life platform is still a mystery--or is it? Is there in fact no real growth and just a lot of data mixed up with Bots and Campers? And if LL is serious about improving the "user experience" wouldn't getting rid of this scam practice be a major step forward?

Vancouver Sun points out that: "Many jurisdictions fear attaching value to virtual goods will open a Pandora's Xbox of legal problems. And it will. Where does the virtual world end and the real one begin? Hard to say. But ignoring a complex problem doesn't make it simpler -- or go away."

So is selling virtual land mean that it falls under housing/rental legality in a real place? So can you seek relief for virtual land issues in the same way you can for real land? Or is virtual land really not real? Is it then misleading to sell that to consumers? If there is no such thing then as virtual land then how can you sell it??? There is no land, there is no water, no sky, no "luxury" living--it is all just data storage and application services.

The Sun also reports: "In 2006, a U.S. gamer sued Linden Lab, maker of the online world Second Life, for ruining his virtual real estate business. The parties settled out of court." 

/me wonders what that is all about...?

Tateru scoops this news that Mark Kingdon CEO of Linden Lab names a former Bush (and Dole) staffer to run the campaign to get lucrative US Government contracts. Scott Sechser, most recently at Health and Human Services doing "special projects" but previously White House Operations Manager 2001-2004. A little bit of web trolling (UNO Alumni Mag see page 31) also shows that he had a "job with the U.S. Defense Department as a public affairs specialist for the U.S. Air Force, a Pentagon post that included time under U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld."
 

/me shakes my freaking head more than a little.