Envision Central

Guys,

The value of the Linden has been decreasing a bit lately, and transaction fees on the Linden exchange are 3.5% when I withdraw the money to my Linden account. In order for Envision to remain self-sustaining, I would like everyone to make every effort to pay via PayPal rather than Lindens if that's at all possible. I will be happy to provide my paypal email if you need. PayPal's fees are only 2.9%, and currency exchange on PayPal isn't an issue for most of you. PayPal is NOT required -- you can still pay in Lindens -- but if you do, please check the currency exchange to make sure you are providing accurate currency exchange values.

There's also an additional hidden transaction fee. Right now, you can buy Lindens for an average of 260 per dollar, but when I try to cash out, it costs me 269 Lindens to get a dollar credited to my account. So to get that dollar back out of the exchange, I'd need to get 9 Lindens from somewhere else. This is designed to bring value into the LindeX every time a buy order is processed, but in the end it screws people who arrange for payment as I do with my tenants.

By using PayPal, we will all save some money each month: you won't have to pay me as much to cover your bill, and I won't be eaten alive by transaction fees. Everybody wins -- except LL

Hello Envisionites,

It seems that I have been lax in my duties as landlord of this island. I have spent some time today going over the state of affairs on Envision, and I’m going to share with you some of my vision for the near future.

First, let’s look at what is currently the state of land boundaries on Envision:

Envision Land Boundaries, April 18, 2009 (Huge Image!)

Now, as you can see, three of our residents have recently moved out. These parcels are going to be filled, of course, but I plan to do so in an orderly fashion.

First, I would like to collect a list of current Envision residents who want more land. Even if your parcel is not adjacent to one of the empty areas, please let me know that you want more land.

To apply for new land, please drop me a notecard with the following pieces of information:

1. Are you willing to move from your current parcel to another area of Envision? (Note: If not, I may not be able to offer you any new land. It would be best if your land holdings on Envision are contiguous (i.e. not two separate pieces), so if you want to expand but you aren’t adjacent to any of the empty parcels, I’ll have to move you to one of the empty parcels that’s larger than your current one.)
2. About how much land do you want, in total (including your current holdings)? To determine how much it would cost you, please visit the Envision Estate Payment Calculator, enter the ideal total amount of land you’d like, select your payment type, and read the Each Month: field of the results, under the “You Pay Me” heading. IGNORE all other items on the results form – they are not applicable to this island!
3. If you could choose, which empty parcel would you like a piece of (or all of, depending on demand)?

I will solicit residents to assemble this list of interested buyers from April 18 through April 24.

On April 25, I will consider the requirements and desires of each person who dropped me a notecard. Solving this will be a sort of “optimization problem": I will want to give as many people as possible some amount of new land, and in cases where people desire the same area, I will divide it evenly among them. If people want more land but they aren’t adjacent to any of the empty parcels, I may just give them one of the empty parcels, and allow others to expand into their old, smaller parcel. We’ll have to work it out on a case by case basis to try and make everybody happy.

One thing I will try to avoid is to leave somebody out. Basically, if you drop me a notecard, I will do everything in my power to ensure that you get some increase in land (though I can’t say how much).

If the requests are too overwhelming, I may even open up a second Envision island, separate from the current one (i.e. borders not touching) – but in this case I’ll also need some help in marketing the new island to cover all of its area with residents

The second thing on my list is a point that’s been bugging me for a few months.

Every month, I lose several dollars (about $20, all in all) from transaction fees imposed upon your monthly rental payments by Linden Labs and PayPal. These companies remove part of your payment to me and keep it for themselves, which means that I come up slightly short every month. In the end, this amount is adding up significantly and threatens the continuity of Envision Island.

To correct this, I have taken the exact transaction fee amounts from the PayPal and Linden websites, and have added these fees to your monthly bill amount. (This is a price increase – on the order of 3% per month.) I am very sorry to have to do this, but I can not afford to lose more money on this project.

The Envision Payment Schedule has been updated with your new monthly fees – select Lindens or PayPal – and I have also listed the date on which I believe you last paid me.

If any of this information is incorrect, please let me know.

Finally, I must inform you that, if your due date amount is in bolded red text on the Payment Schedule, your land is in jeopardy of being reclaimed. Please discuss the situation with me as soon as possible to determine whether you are willing/able to pay your tier so that I do not continue to lose significant money paying for your land every month. This applies to those who I have made deals with in the past to allow them several months of grace period while they recover from various situations. If you are still struggling, I may agree to new terms where you make partial payments – but I simply can not proceed paying the full amount of your tier every month on my own bank account. I’m very sorry, but this is not a charity; I am just here to provide virtual land to those willing to pay the minimum amount possible based on fees imposed by PayPal and Linden Labs.

Thank you for your attention. As always, the best way to contact me is in via notecard in world, although an IM works too – my IMs rarely cap.

P.S. - If you see other residents hanging around on the island, please mention this blog entry to ensure that they are aware of it.

I have created forums for Envision Estate. I figured a blog is not a place to host what I hope will become a bona fide community within Second Life -- a gathering of collaborating people who are socially and economically entertwined, cooperating to enhance their collective quality of life

Please view these forums and read the posts for lots and lots of details about what is in store for Envision. I will probably only be posting reflection and musing on this Envision Central blog here from now on (I'll still maintain my other blogs though!). I think the forums are a much better discussion area.

http://tiyukquellmalz.org/phpbb/index.php

-Tiyuk

The tanking of the world economy has basically affected everyone in some way. Although I must say that the expenses left over for me to cover on Envision are normally affordable to me, I am quickly beginning to feel the burn of the economic hardship indirectly.

First, let’s all remember that Envision is a non-profit sim. I operate in such a way that, if all transaction fees were accounted for, I’d exactly break even. But since almost nobody pays me for my transaction fees, I still take about a 3% hit on my bottom line every month. This is sort of okay.

The problem is that I find tenants are beginning to have more and more difficulty getting payments in. Sometimes they pay late because they have to wait for the next paycheck before they can afford it. Sometimes someone might ask me to defer their payment for a month until they get out of the financial pits. I have even given away a free month on more than one occasion to help people survive whatever hardship is hitting their RL, without asking them to abandon their land in SL.

The worse this becomes, the less I will be able to eat these costs, and the less likely it will be that I will ever oversee a second island. A lot of bills are catching up with me lately, and I am coming to the realization that I will not have very much money “in the black” in my bank account after this winter internship is over, because I am so deeply in debt. The past few months haven’t been that expensive, but it all adds up, and since I make zero money while I am at college, four months of trickling expenses can take two full weeks of internship pay to erase – that’s nearly half of my internship’s duration.

That said, I want to keep everyone on Envision as long as they wish it. Finances should not stop us from making our dreams come true. Second Life is supposed to be a realm where things are – while perhaps not perfect – an order of magnitude more pleasant and utopian than real life. I will not allow the problems of RL to cast a shadow of stress and loss and pain on our little slice of utopia on Envision.

To my tenants, I say this: Regardless of your financial situation, you and I will be able to come to some agreement where your share of land continues to be in your hands as long as you have a desire to own it. I will go to any length to maintain what we have, even if it means cutting my own expenses and canceling the expansion of my estate.

If we were in a car, I’d say “buckle your seatbelts". If we were in a ship, I’d say “brace for impact". But this is about Second Life. I am sending you a very different message instead: relax. Things will be okay. Let me know what is going on, and we will figure out how to keep things moving – and it doesn’t necessarily involve you accruing huge amounts of debt to me, either. The time for creative financial finesse is now… somehow, we will all pull through with our most treasured virtual assets intact.

With love,

Tiyuk

Well, this is the season of giving, so I feel like giving back to the tenants who help me (almost) break even on Envision Island.

It can be very fun to share your favorite music with others in SL. Normally, if you want to do this, you have to either buy your own dedicated server – which costs hundreds of dollars per month – or sign up to a streaming service for a sizable monthly fee, ranging from $10 to $75 per month, from what I’ve seen. Neither of these solutions are very appealing to those whose budget is dedicated to other things than technological toys.

Streaming works like this: a compressed MP3 sound stream goes from your computer, to my server. People in Second Life connect to my server to receive the stream. So your computer sends one copy of the stream to my server, regardless of the number of your listeners. This is important, because many home internet connections are only able to support 2 - 4 listeners at a time, if you were to send the stream to the listeners yourself.

Others in SL will automatically connect to your stream while on your parcel, because you can place your so-called Media URL into your About Land settings, under the Media tab.

As a way of showing my appreciation for those who dwell on Envision Estate, I would like to extend an offer to all current and future tenants: Free Streaming, provided by tiyukquellmalz.org! What does this mean? Well, let’s see:

• You get to stream music to others on your parcel. For Free!
• The bandwidth needed to serve your guests is provided by my server, not your home internet connection.
• Live concerts (singing, guitar, seductive gurgling, whatever you’re into) are equally possible through this medium.
• At your request, I can set up a prim for you, which displays the currently-playing artist and track name for your stream.

System Requirements:

• System Hardware: Very little CPU and RAM are needed; any computer that can run Second Life can run the streaming client. You can also run the streaming client on an older computer, while playing Second Life on your faster one.
• Internet Connection: 256kbps upstream bandwidth or higher is recommended for best quality streaming. As low as 128kbps can be accommodated, but your stream will be lower quality – more like AM radio than CD audio. If you have a DSL or cable connection, you are probably fine; but you may need to shut down programs that consume upstream bandwidth while you are streaming.
• Operating System: Windows XP, Windows Vista, Mac OSX 10.5 or later, or any Linux 2.6 distribution.
• Music Files: Your digital music must be in WAV, FLAC, MP3, MP4/AAC, Ogg/Vorbis, or WMA format. Music which has DRM (Digital Restrictions Management) protection will not work.
• Streaming Source Client: Any Icecast2 Source Client will work. I am more than happy to suggest a streaming client for your platform; we can discuss this when you sign up. I know of at least one valid source client for each of the supported operating systems. ShoutCast-only source clients will not be allowed to stream, because only one ShoutCast source client can connect to the Icecast2 server at a time. For this reason, I disallow ShoutCast source clients on my network.

Your listeners, on the other hand, only need to have Second Life installed to hear your music. As soon as they set foot on your parcel – provided that they have streaming music enabled in their preferences – they will hear you streaming!

Offer Terms and Conditions:

• Only applies to paying tenants of Envision.
• Your Icecast2 service expires if you relinquish all of your land on Envision.
• One stream per tenant.
• If you must hand out your Media URL to those not currently on your parcel, so that they can access the stream outside of Second Life, please do this sparingly, on an individual basis only.
• Do not make your stream publicly available by giving out your Media URL on a website or forum, or publishing it in a YP directory.
• Do not make unnecessary extra connections to your stream with multiple computers, or otherwise load down the server more than necessary.
• Do not stream in a bitrate higher than 128kbps, or Quality 5.0 if you use VBR (Variable Bit Rate).
• Do not give your source client password to anyone else!
• If your stream takes up a huge amount of bandwidth for an extended time, I may advise you to take steps to reduce your bandwidth consumption, or give you the choice of either paying me money for the bandwidth, or canceling your service.
• All streams will initially be created with a listener limit of 100 users. I reserve the right to reduce that number on any stream, at any time, for any reason. If I do make such a change, you will be notified.
• There is no limit on the amount of time you may stream. However, if you are identified as a major bandwidth consumer, reducing the amount of time that you stream may be an acceptable compromise to continue using this service for free.
• The more publicly-visible your stream content is, the higher the standards I will hold you to in terms of its content. For example, if your parcel openly welcomes visitors and is a declared public space, adult content on your stream would not be acceptable. On declared private property, or parcels with a restricted access list, there are no bounds in practice.

Services available to streaming account-holders:

• Initial Account Setup, including tutorial on installing a Source Client, and instructions on how to stream.
• Changing of your URL at your request. For example, if you give it out to the wrong people accidentally.
• Tech support when things go wrong.
• To the extent possible, 24/7 uptime.

Contact me in world if you satisfy the requirements and might be interested in using this service!