Transaction black hole at Second Life Marketplace

In the push to migrate everything out of XStreet SL to the Second Life Marketplace, some major problems have cropped up. One of the biggest is the lack of a clear trail between the customer's purchase, the delivery of the item and payment of the merchant.

A pJira has been opened on it. https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/WEB-2920.

The problem is all transactions go through an intermediary account - Marketplace Linden. It's similar to how the XStreet SL system worked but the reporting is not right. The transaction ID the customer gets is NOT the same as what happens when the merchant is paid. If you look through the Jira issue, Sassy Romano has done a great job of showing where things get lost.

I know the Linden Lab programmers are working long and hard on SL Marketplace but seriously, it looks to me like the migration has been pushed too fast too soon. While I had the occasional delivery glitches with XStreet SL, I could solve them fairly easily because there was a clear trail between the transaction as reported via email and the Magic box delivery. Now it's sort of all muddled together.

Several merchants are reporting not even seeing the money going into their accounts -- which is very disturbing.

LL, you have to fix this before shutting off XStreet.

Early Adopters of Facebook

I just got these from a friend (thanks Ben) and they have to be the funniest things I've read in weeks! I don't know who did these originally but kudos to them!

New release from Inga Wind - Connie

A sort of 1920's can-can look meets gypsy girl! Whatever you call it, c'est très jolie and it shows once again that Inga really has her design-style firmly on the girly-girl side of fashion.

As far as fitting goes, I had to adjust both the prim skirt (make it a big bigger for my butt) and move the ruffles up. Both simple to do and no stress. As always with Inga's outfits, the textures match perfectly and the blend from system to prims is almost seamless.

NOTE: If you join Inga's inworld group, Connie is yours for $300. Otherwise, it's $450. Outfit comes with matching shoes and the belt is built into the prim skirt. Hair orchid and choker are my own accessories.

Emerald Viewer to be blocked from Second Life

As of Wednesday, September 8, 10:00 am, all versions of the Emerald Viewer will be blocked from accessing Second Life. This includes the last release. Read Joe Linden's blog post about it. Anyone logging in to SL or with a valid email contact should have also received direct notice from Linden Lab about the change.

This is truly sad in many respects because Emerald held such promise and was, for a long time, my viewer of choice for building, creating and ♥ playing ♥ in Second Life. However, it does show the limitations of open source projects especially when they are tied to people with shady records in Second Life.

Options

If you must have an Emerald clone going forward, then the Phoenix Viewer (http://phoenixviewer.com/) might be a good option. The development team, composed of some Emerald folks with some new members, has promised complete transparency. This is not a guarantee of a drama-less future however. The team is large and the Emerald project has always been very ambitious. So who knows?

Other options are Imprudence (which I'm using) or Kirstens Viewer (which I like and KirstenLee is awesomeness).  If you want the last version of Emerald itself compiled from "known trusted sources" by LordGregGreg Back, the go here.

If you use an official viewer, I'd lean toward Snowglobe or maybe the old SL version 1.23 viewer. While Viewer 2.1 has greatly improved texture loading speed over the old lines, the UI is just so arcane and difficult, it may well lead to short-term insanity. If you feel like being on the bleeding edge, then you can play with Project Snowstorm AKA the Development Viewer which is also available from the SL main viewer download page.

That is all -- back to your regularly scheduled viewer drama my dahlings!

Second Life viewer drama

I think I'm about to go crazy with viewer madness. Can anything be more strange than all the drama unfolding with Emerald? Seriously, I leave SL for a few weeks and return to a warning from Linden Lab about Emerald being non-compliant. WTH??

Running off to the official Emerald website, I found a new version available for download. WTH again! Then I traipse over to the Modular Systems blog, where I found Arabella Steadham's somewhat overwrought poetic note as an end to Emerald (http://blog.modularsystems.sl/2010/09/01/the-end/). Eek.

Then I came across a notecard from one of the groups I belong to in SL which was a quote from Jessica Lyon's final good-byes with her saga about being locked out of the developer site and so on. Uggghh!

I had actually heard rumblings about problems with the Emerald team a few months back so, being a cautious kitty, I installed Imprudence and started playing with it. I dearly missed some of Emerald's features but when push comes to shove, I really do NOT want to risk my password or other nonsense to an untrusted team. Plus, if even half the stories about one of the Emerald devs logging IP info were true, well, you get the picture. :(

Now the latest just came in from another group notice that Jessica is reforming the development team under the name Phoenix! Woohoo! Added drama! Read here!

At least I know one of the names on the Phoenix developer list -- Kitty Barnett. She seems like a good sort. And Lord Greg Greg has promised (really, really) that his days of griefiing are behind him.

OK, so what should a Snickitty do? Like most of you, I think I'll just wait and see. If things work out, so be it. If not, I sure hope Viewer 2 gets its act together because trust is sadly lacking on many fronts. Right now I'm sticking to Imprudence.

UPDATE: OK, please tell me. Why does Jessica Lyon list her name variously as Jessicai Lyon, Jessica Lyon and Jessica Lyons depending on which site you're viewing. On the Phoenix site, she is Jessicai. On the Emerald site she was Jessica Lyons and Lyon. Color her confused? And me too?