Freebie-izm and the Reality of Monetizing a Thriving Metaverse

There has been a lot of debate over the perceived 'entitlement' mentality out there when it comes to how to pay the bills for the Metaverse. At SpotON3D, most of our users understand and appreciate the need for the $2.99/mth premium membership, as evidenced by approximately 50% of our users opting to upgrade. But, every once in a while someone voices their feeling that its unfair to ask someone to pay to own land or build on a grid, since they've been given that option for years in SL for free. I'd argue that, that is exactly why Second Life(r) isn't OUR GRID any longer. It forced them to reach out to more investors for help to fund the programming and better hosting that the users are calling. This may have been the reason for the shift in focus from community to the bottom line at Linden Lab(r), because by most estimates only 10% of SL users actually pay anything to LL. This is not a sustainable monetization model and any grid built upon it will most likely end up doing the same as SL- turning to big advertising agencies and deep pocket investors to pay the bills. In the end this strips US, the user base, of our voice.

USER FEES = USERS HAVING A VOICE
The reality is that it takes real money to pay programmers, bills for co-locations, marketing and promotion to make our Metaverse a reality. If we are not part of the monetization of that, then the focus once again will stray from the us and the community to investors & advertisers, so in my eyes, paying in is like voting. It gives us a voice - a real say in how things are done and how our favorite grids grow.

IT'S NOT JUST ABOUT THE MONEY
Having said this, there are many other very good reasons SpotON3D, in particular, has its $2.99/month fee. It helps address security, permission and stablity issues that have long plagued the Metaverse. When we created SpotON3D we took a look at the historical top five problems people expressed about their virtual world experiences, besides the usual learning curve complaints and tried to remedy them as reasonably as possible.

1. Lag & Instability
2. Griefing, Money Laundering & Fraudulent CC Charges
3. Kids in inappropriate places
4. Personal Drama
5. Scams, Disputes & Copybots

1. FREEBIE ACCOUNTS = LAG AND INSTABILITY
As any oldie of to the Metaverse will attest, anytime you open up to unregulated freebie accounts you get a flood of kids, griefers, and other users that don't want their real world ID's attached to their avatars via a traceable payment, along with a lot of great community. Problem is that the first bunch quickly flood the server systems, overtaxing them to the point of negatively affecting everyone's experience, and many grief just for the "lulz." This is exactly what happened in the summer of 2006, when LL changed from paid to freebie for all accounts. Even with $28m in investment funding, LL was unable to handle the massive wave of new users coming at their doors. Many of these free accounts weren't contributing to the bottom line, so revenues could not keep up with the demand for servers and co-location costs. As a result you saw many people fearing Second Life was on the brink of a melt down. In came IBM to the rescue, loading up LL with a ton of blade servers. It is assumed IBM was compensated for their help with company assets and influence and might have ultimately led to the exit of Corey, and eventually Phillip's initial stepping down, due to the shift in ownership as a result.

While large investors like IBM and Mitch Kapor can definitely be important in any company's long term goals, the shift in focus from community to purely profits was a misstep by most people's accounting. Linden Lab grew a staff of individuals who were not even involved with the grid life, and ignored the needs of their core user base -- the paying members -- not something we want to have happen with SpotON3D.

HOW DO YOU AVOID MONEY MOTIVATION BEING THE PRIME FOCUS?
You make the users the investors, keep an open dialogue with them, and ensure that the monetization model is transparent and rational to most reasonable-minded users. This gives us many reasons to keep YOU as our primary focus and concern, be it a role playing group, educator, business owner, or creator. It's simple mathematics. It takes a lot of money to run a grid and while this small $2.99 a month fee certainly doesn't come close to covering all our expenses, it does make a difference.

2. GRIEFING, MONEY LAUNDERING & FRAUDULENT CC CHARGES
By tying our Premium Memberships to PayPal payments, we dramatically reduce the risk of griefing, because a verified or confirmed PayPal account is required to upgrade. This means that, if needed, a user can be held accountable for their actions in real-world terms, which cuts out about 95% of the risks of not only griefing, but money laundering and fraudulent credit card charges. If we accepted credit cards for payment, the potential for fraudulent CC charges would have required us to raise our prices by at least 30% to accommodate the additional costs - not something we felt was worth the risk and we hope you agree. SpotON3D doesn't think it's fair to accept the risk and make the user base responsible for the additional costs fraudulent charges raise, but ultimately the only way to avoid those costs is to make sure everyone paying is who they say they are. The fact is that our system does work. We've yet to have a report of griefing or fraud. We think our users agree that $2.99 a month is a small price to pay for the peace of mind it affords them, along with the other benefits below.

3. KIDS IN INAPPROPRIATE PLACES
This one is near and dear to me AS A MOTHER of a 16-year-old and as an adult who occasionally enjoys grown-up pursuits in virtual environs. Discussions and mature activities that kids would roll their eyes at and groan loudly and basically do everything they could to disrupt if they were around, or role play and sexy dress-up that I'm just not comfortable doing around kids. It's also a fact that KIDS can do things that drive me nutso, like play the same currently popular song ... over ... and over ... and over again! *sigh* Or crash things over and over again, just for fun. Or break sims with their antics. *ugh* Yes, we adults do deserve and need a place online to be adults and not have our whole lives dummied down for our kids. They have gobs more to do online, on console games, and on TV. A virtual environment meant for adults is one of the places we can relax and enjoy the company of other adults.

Now, how do you go about making that happen in a reasonable manner? We could ask invasive questions, like your Social Security or driver's license number, but lets be real. Kids can swipe that info anytime they want on the sly and register/upgrade their account to get into grownup areas. We wanted to be more responsible about this issue by using PayPal again as our gate keeper. The reality is that parents regularly give kids their CC's to run to the store or mall, but most would be loath to give out their PayPal password to their kids, because it is directly linked to their banking info.

KIDS ARE ALLOWED ON THE SPOTON3D GRIDS ... BUT NOT WITHOUT ADULT MODERATION AND CONSENT
When kids DO come on our grid, it is required that they do so using an avatar from an adult's Key Account. We welcome and encourage our users to share and loan out one of their 5 included avatar accounts to family and friends that they trust. We feel a parent or an educational institution's representative should be there to guide minors in their virtual pursuits and we think it also keeps the adults from sometimes behaving like brats with each other. :P

4. PERSONAL DRAMA
While there will always be drama of a personal nature wherever there are humans, we have seen that people on our grid just behave more civilly around each other when they know they are not completely anonymous. Its amazing the effect our grid has on people, even when they are visiting as a FREE4EVER user. I've seen people, who in SL groups and/or on online forums are bonafide trolls, participate in discussions like human beings again. While we want our users to identify themselves to us, this does not mean we ever share anyone's personal information with other users in any way. We take privacy of our users very seriously. But, if you're very very tired of all the drama you see on other grids, then maybe this is something you'd consider as a positive.

5. SCAMS, DISPUTES & COPYBOTS
For all the same reasons stated above, our premium memberships limit these risks, too. People feel compelled to keep it real and above-board, while playing, working and socializing. We want to be the promoters of responsible adult interactions and minimize any need to be the investigators of negative activities.

IN SUMMARY
The real point here though is, even with a small army of volunteer mentors and paid employees no grid can effectively handle the griefing that occurs when a freebie state of play is enacted on a grid. SpotON3D made a conscious decision to make the users our primary source of funding, so that when investors do come around, we can earmark that funding for innovative solutions and collaboration with others rather than have it decide who is steering the boat. Yes, as a result of this decision we are growing at a slower rate than others, and that's ok. We're in this for the long haul. This only happens when you have a truly dedicated community, which we most definitely have the beginnings of.

If any of you out there disagree with our vision, we can appreciate that. We don't expect to be everyone's cup of tea, but if you're looking for a technically advanced grid that works hard to ensure your experience is as trouble-free as possible then maybe you'll see the value in that little $2.99 a month ... under $36/yr for access to ALL our public grids. That's less than half of what a year's worth of SL memberships costs. AND REMEMBER - there are other benefits for paid accounts on our grid, such as NO UPLOAD FEES, NO LISTING FEES, AND FREE MICRO-STORES while supplies last and access to our FREE SANDBOXES.

PSSSST ... SANDBOX EXPERIMENT COMING!
We are also considering opening up a free-4-all sandbox that would not require an upgrade membership so that any Doubting Thomases can give our grid a test. Should be an interesting experiment. Will the civility be maintained, or will the griefers run amok? Time will tell. Stay tuned to this blog to hear more about this experiment.

As always, we welcome your constructive feedback.

Co-Founder & COO of SpotON3D - Tessa Kinney-Johnson

Come crash our cloud Xmas party with Anek Fuchs!

Just a quick reminder to all of those that like to have their socks rocked off - In true rock'n'roll spirit we'll have a big Xmas party today where we'll try to tear down the venue. How fun is that?

While the brave Anek Fuchs is giving the best of himself of stage, from 2 till 3pm pacific time today, we're going to try to crash the cloud server the performance is on. Come dance, have fun and a good laugh with all of the SpotOn3D® users while we're pushing our cloud driven Web Worlds™ to their limits.

Log into your SpotOn3D® account - or mail Tessa at tessa@spoton3d.com for a free, fully functional, disposable account. Download the viewer at https://spoton3d.com/pages/downloads - or just log into your SpotOn3D® account.

For all info on how, what and why - refer to yesterday's post at http://spoton3d.blogspot.com/2010/12/crash-my-cloud-opensim-stress-test.html

Crash my Cloud - OpenSim Stress Test

You're cordially invited to come crash our server... Yes, you read that right - we're gonna try to crash a cloud serviced region in our Web Worlds™. Sounds like good fun, no?

Come join the SpotOn3D® team on December 15th 2010 between 2 and 3 pm pacific time for a "crash the cloud" OpenSim stress test. We're looking for over a 100 avatars to join us for this pre-upgrade benchmark test on the performance difference of OpenSim v6.9 vs v7.1 backend on a dedicated cloud instance.

If you're interested in joining us, but you don't have a SpotOn3D® avatar yet, please contact Tessa at tessa@spoton3d.com for a free and fully functional disposable account and don't forget to download our SpotOn3D client at https://spoton3d.com/pages/downloads. Otherwise - log in to your avatar and come join us!

Why are we doing this? Another benchmark test will be conducted after the first of the year, upon completion of our 7.1 upgrade and those present on this test will be invited to the next to help, plus asked to bring a friend as we'll be testing up to 200+ users on that benchmark test. All results will be published to the OpenSim Wiki for community use.

Like in any games, there are a few rules however;

• NO GRIEFING, NUDITY OR INAPPROPRIATE LANGUAGE - Seeing we're a very diverse and mixed population we will probably have minors as well as adults helping out.
• NO new and/or unapproved/untested scripts. You will be provided with a box of test items. Please only use those so we can accumulate successful testing benchmarking results for the OpenSim Wiki.
• NO PHYSICS until it is time for the physics test
• DO Dance and enjoy the music and just HAVE FUN! *-)

CALLING ALL SIM DEVELOPERS! HotSwap Scenes™ a Comin’!

The team at SpotON3D® is most happy to announce the introduction of HotSwap Scenes™, expected first quarter of 2011. HotSwap Scenes are one of the upcoming revolutionary features SpotON3D® offers their residents, as well as being a new source of income for sim developers.

With HotSwap Scenes™ SpotON3D® users are able to swap the whole region setup for a new one, choosing from pre-designed sim builds by professionals. With just a few clicks you’ll be able to transform your sim into a tropical paradise, meeting and conference center, discotheque... The possibilities are endless. Users will also be able to add their own items to the scenes, and save their personalized version of each scene.

HotSwap Scenes is slated to be launched first quarter of 2011 and will have a introduction subscription of just $4.99/mth for the basic package. This provides the user with five freebie default HotSwap Scenes and hosting for up to 20 more scenes. Of course this means that there will be a big demand for prefab sims from region renters and hourly cloud rental services giving sim developers a a free ‘try-it-before-you-buy-it’ showcase option.

So content creators? Ready to get back to work making gorgeous regions. Just drop an email off to spoton3d but this time are invited to join us in the SpotON3D Web Worlds™ and to create scenes and collaborate together. To get started email us at simdev@spoton3d.com to fill out the sim developer group registration form, get added to the inworld group and get your Sim Developer’s Packet, which will explain everything else you need to know. Participating sim developers will be able to offer a lwo cost subscription for their scenes, usually $100-$500 $SO per HotSwap Scene, or a once time purchase price of $1,000 to $5,000 $SO through the SpotON3D® marketplace, SpotOnSynergy.com.

Thanks to this subscription system, content creators can rest assure that their content is well protected, as the user never gets possession of that scene’s files. In turn, the users get a low cost solution for a whole sim build at a pricing point that encourages them to invest in more scenes. As a whole, this will make SpotON3D one of the move diverse and compelling virtual world experiences on the web.

And remember, if you don’t want to have to share a development space with your peers, then remember that SpotON3D® still is going strong with its Land Rush offer. At $39.99/mth for a 5K prim region and $59.99/mth for a 15K prim region it's still one of the best products on the market on one of the most stable grids out there and a guaranteed low price for as long as your subscription is in good standing. Don't wait any longer and go to http://land.veesome.com to find out all about it.

More exciting news to come soon - Keep an eye on this SpotON3D® blog, we might have something to tell about a certain VERY POPULARE VIEWER that is rumored to be coming to the SpotON3D grid ... shhhhhhh.

Today: Gridwrap with Chris Collins

It's Thursday, and you know what that means; GridWrap!

Tessa and Dousa will be joined by former Linden Lab staffer Chris Collins, who has created a Unity3d based viewer that is touted to be able to embed virtual worlds like SpotON3D®, OpenSim grids and even Second Life® onto a web page, giving them the ability to reach out to a wider audience via such social communities as Facebook® and more.

Scoot over to Metaverse Island at 3PM to join your hosts Tessa Harrington and Dousa Dragonash for a very promising episode of Gridwrap.- or keep an eye on the Gridwrap website at http://metaversetv.com/blog/category/shows/grid-wrap/ where today's episode will be available soon, and where you can also browse through all the previous episodes.

Tech Highlight: Cloud-driven services

Welcome to SpotON3D’s Tech Highlight, a series of informative blogs designed to keep you in the loop on the latest technological advances SpotON3D has engineered.

Today, we’ll be covering the SpotON3D Boost Cloud™ service, an exciting new option that enables any region renter ramp up the power on their regions to support 50 or even 100 users. And after we upgrade our servers to the 0.7.1 server side version of OpenSim we should see additional concurrency levels possible, with expectations of up to 200 users. These advances promise to reach a much larger audience that has asked for higher levels of service and a more stable experience. So, let’s break it down.

Every region in one of our Web Worlds™ has the option to turn on the Boost Cloud™ service for a self-determined time period. it’s available on demand for just $2.99/hr for up to 50 people and $4.99/hr for up to 100. This takes your region off the shared Lite Use grid server, and places it on its own secure dedicated cloud virtual server. This means your region is suddenly hosted by a ton more muscle, enough to host 50 or more users simultaneously for a lag free experience. Wanna pipe in some music? No problem. It comes Shoutcast® capable. Want to lock it down to a select group of people? You’ve to that too, and not just from a region security level. But at the front door of the cloud server too. And with your region being hosted on a ocean of other virtual cloud servers on the huge Amazon® Cloud Network you’re about as incognito as you can get – everything you’d need to throw a great party, event, class or training webinar and you didn’t have to pay $300 bucks a month to get it. You say a few hours isn’t enough? Need a Boost Cloud instance for a 24-72 hour event? We’ve got bulk rates for such heavy hitting needs. Just email us at boostcloud@spoton3d.com or give us a call us at 330-776-8663 to get a quote.

Next up on SpotON3D’s Tech Highlight: HotSwap Scenes™ - How these same Boost Cloud™ servers get jacked up with unique whole region builds at the touch of your mouse – without loosing your own region’s setup!

Interested in getting your own regions up and running in one of our Web Worlds™? Then don't forget about SpotOn3D's land rush action. Check out http://land.veesome.com for all information, or contact us today to find out all about it!

Press release: Purdue University announces collaborative partnership with SpotOn3D®

for immediate release

The Virtual Collaboration Laboratory within the Purdue University Department of Organizational Leadership and Supervision (College of Technology) announces the beginning of a collaborative partnership with SpotOn3D® (SO) - a software firm whose main objective is to bridge the gap between the 2D web, real world technology and the 3D Web.
Purdue researchers, including Scott Homan Ph.D., Michael Beyerlein Ph.D., and Amy Caryn Warneka (CEO of IPaSS Consulting and Purdue doctoral student), will work with SpotON3D’s Co-Founders, CEO Stevan Lieberman, also of Greenburg & Lieberman - a Patent, Trademark, and Intellectual Property attorney out of Washington, DC and COO/Art Director Tessa Kinney-Johnson to establish an online virtual reality research laboratory using the SpotON3D virtual worlds platform.

Powersynch, LLC, the parent company for SpotON3D® began development of their grid systems in November of 2008. With the help of a team of dedicated programmers, web developers, modelers and grid experts, they have succeeded in creating an exciting new experience that includes answers to many of the complex problems seen with their contemporaries. With a ten year vision for the development of the 3D Web, SpotON3D’s secure and business centric focus caters to an augmented reality experience that embraces existing 2D web assets and real world meeting functionality, attracting a diverse pool of users from the business, academic, technology, and artisan communities alike online. Short term goals are to provide a stable beta grid platform for early adopter businesses and organizations to use, either as a member of the SpotON3D multi-grid micro-community through the adoption of Private Label Grids. The long term goals are to create the infrastructure to enable these professional grade grids to interconnect via the SpotON3D client and the rest of the Metaverse grids and platforms with a blend of open source and proprietary software. Research and business support activities at Purdue will specialize in Virtual Collaboration and the use of virtual simulations in educational, training and business applications.

For more information about the OLS Virtual Collaboration Laboratory or SpotON3D®, contact:

• Scott Homan, 440 Young Hall Purdue University West Lafayette, In 47906 765-430-6193 srhoman@purdue.edu
• Tessa Kinney-Johnson (Tessa Harrington in Virtual):2141 Wisconsin Ave. NW, Suite C-2 Washington, DC 20007 USA 330-776-8663 contact@SpotON3D.com

Announcing Spot On!-magazine

In our continuous efforts to get the best exposure for both our Web Worlds™ as also for the merchants and content creators using our Web Worlds™, SpotOn3D™ is proud to announce "Spot On!"-magazine. Spot On!-magazine will be featuring articles and interviews highlighting new features, communities and content in our Web Worlds™.

The first issue of Spot On!-magazine is scheduled for release end of November. The magazine will be distributed for free, and will be readable online and downloadable in the common e-book formats.

If you have any ideas or suggestions for articles and other content, please contact Phil at phil@spoton3d.com. If you'd like to send in an article to be featured in the November issue, please feel free to do so, but make sure to send it in before November 20th. (Content submitted after November 20th will be scheduled for the December issue if accepted)

Educators - Why choose SpotON3D®?

It's a commonly asked question - why would you, as an educator, choose for SpotON3D®? In this blog post we'll line up the most important characteristics of our Web Worlds™ for you.

EZ Presentation Tools

SpotOn3D® is ready-to-go, out-of-the-box - no need to start looking for special presentation tools - with our standard presentation toolkit, you're teaching your class in a matter of minutes with native support for all your favorite document creation tools, such as PDF’s, PPT’s, MP3 vides, png, jpg and gif images, and even the ability to take a snapshot of our desktop and post all to one presenter as easily as you would post a picture of to FlickR; browse your hard drive, find the file, upload then click display and your sharing with a whole room of up to 100 people.

EZ Inventory

Thanks to our multi-grid inventory, you can access your assets from any of our Web Worlds™, whether you're in SpotON3D®, VeeSome™, Edu-Merge™, or the Biz-Grid™ – you’ll always have access to your inventory. And with Double Dutch Delivery™ this your purchasing power can extend your inventory even to compatible and approved virtual worlds outside the SpotON3D Web World Network. Never buy something twice!

Universal Registration and Avatars

Use your avatars on any of our Web Worlds™. Make a field trip with your students, move between Web Worlds™, all with one avatar - no need to register another avatar for each grid!

Micro- Communities = Cohesive Complementary Communities

They say fences make great neighbors, but until now that simply wasn’t possible in the 3D web and virtual worlds. It was either all or nothing – a big melting pot of everything or exclusively to on genera with no room for other groups to be expressed.

Lord Chaos’ 60ft fire breathing dragon avatar might make for a great avatar, but would definitely prove a tad distracting walking down the main street of the Biz-Grid or edu-Merge. As might a stuffy professor prove to be a fish out of water in a medieval role play Web World.

SpotON3D’s Web Worlds are designed to eliminate these conflicts in genera simply by creating defined community micro-web worlds that by default create tight knit social bonds between its residents. And by giving each community their own branded web site, registration and avatar selections, they can then express and implement their own community standards. This is what SpotON3D calls Responsible Tolerance. This allows everyone to easily interact together, exchange experiences and best-practices from one Web World experience to another without trampling on the other’s right to self-expression. The rule of the day is, “When in Rome, do as the Romans do”.

Community Conference Center

No need to rip apart you class rooms and set-ups when you need to have a large conference - our community conference center is there for you to use 24/7. Simply go to your community conference center and fire up the Cloud Powered Conference Suite to host up to 100 students.

Free4Ever accounts

SpotOn3D® also offers Free4Ever accounts - no need to have a premium account! Your 18 and over students are able setup their own Key Account to come in-world, attend your classes, participate with programmed objects, build with primitive building blocks you supply, go to social events like drag racing as our free racing part, and even to shop on our market place on the SpotONSynergy website to customize their avatars - all without upgrading or paying for a premium membership. When they sign-up for classes with a specific school then they could request their preferred avatar account to be temporarily moved onto the educational institution’s Key Account to gain access to their facilities and classes, or be assigned a new avatar through the school’s administrative department.

5 Avatars per premium account with full production levels

Premium accounts have up to 5 avatars, each with their own inventory and wallet with full production levels. No need to pay for another premium account for your alt! Enjoy all of the features our Web Worlds™ have to offer, starting at only $2.99USD/Month!

Protected Intellectual Property

SpotOn3D® takes great pride in their IP and Web world Security Systems. SpotON3D reserves the right to restrict access to the main areas of their Web World system through unknown third party viewers. This is to ensure the highest level of ease and functionality is experienced by the user through the 3D Web Browser. It's also designed to thwart any potentially malicious clients from gaining access and causing technical and social instability on our Web Worlds.

SpotON3D also sends a very clear message about the do’s and don’ts of content use through their community driven Dispute Resolution Panel made up of randomly selected volunteers from the community to hear their peer’s complaints. If that doesn’t do the trick, then through an exclusive agreement with VirtualCourtHouse.com the users can go through and real world arbitration with a real world judge whose decisions are legal and binding in over 150 countries starting at just $150 USD. No longer is justice meted out by the fatness of one’s wallet, but rather by the state of their arguments.

This allows the issues of content and contract disputes to be put to a rest, so that everyone can concentrate on doing what they set out to do on the 3D web without the distractions and drama seen previous in virtual worlds.

Still have questions? Want to know more? Don't hesitate and contact our team at support@spoton3d.com - We're most happy to answer any of your inquiries.

Do not that SpotOn3D®'s land rush action is still going strong! Visit http://land.veesome.com/ to find out all about our special low prices!

Tech Highlight: Key Account

Every now and then, we use this blog to give a little more information about some of the tech features of SponOn3D®, and today we'd like to cover our Key Account system for SpotON3D.

The most important thing to remember is that logging into your Key Account is a separate action and not the same as logging into your avatar. Key Account is one level above your avatars, and could actually be considered an "avatar administrator" that you tap into through the SpotON3D main homepage, or through your HOME GRID web site, such as Veesome.com or edu-Merge.com. This gives you access to all 5 of the avatars for a regular account, adding money to your main Key Account wallet, distributing funds from there to any of your 5 avatars, and setting access permissions for each individual avatar. This means you can ‘loan out’ or share one or more of your avatars with others, like family, students, and clients. Just make sure you can trust them to do so.

Why is this so important? The Key Account also allows you to define which types of content each avatar can access. For example; if you're a parent, you can use this system to make avatars for your kids. It's important to note that it's against the SpotON3D TOS for a minor child to create their own Key Account to access our Web Worlds. Only a legal guardian and/or parent you can make avatars for minors through their own Key Accounts. This is so, as the adult, you can feel good about having your kids on our General Population Web World’s without dummying down your experiences as an adult.

Business and Educational institutions are able to have the level of control over their employees and student accounts through their HR and/or IT departments, as is typically needed. This enables them to bypass the usual registration process, ensuring they have a smooth and effortless entry into these Web World environments. It also makes it possible for these user accounts to be tied into their other administrative systems needed to maintain accounts control and reporting as needed. The added benefit of this is that t businesses and educational administrators will never have to worry about their employees or students stumbling into mature rated game play activities or social arenas unknowingly. By keeping accounts configured to General Population, the users of these accounts can’t access mature areas, nor see mature content for purchase on the SpotONSynergy site and not buy any mature content.

And lastly, the other great advantage of this system is the cost factor. Instead of paying a premium membership fee per avatar, you’re paying just $2.99/month per Key Account to allow allowing them to explore the full potential of our Web Worlds™ - yes, that's plural. Each avatar created at SpotOn3D® is able (depending on the access settings for that particular avatar) to access all of our publicly accessible Web Worlds™ in our network - just type in the name of that Web World, or a region inside it. Additionally, our 3D Web Browser has the capacity to teleport from the SpotON3D Web World system to other outside compatible Web Worlds through our 3D Map Teleportal System.

Still have questions? Don't hesitate to drop us an email at support@spoton3d.com; our team is happy to answer all of your requests promptly and effectively.

Don't forget; SpotOn3D's special land rush action is still going strong! Check out http://land.veesome.com for our special lifelong discounts!

Press release: Snowcrash Digital joins SpotOn3D®

Press release
for immediate release

Snowcrash Digital joins SpotOn3D®

Snowcrash Digital is happy to announce that it will expand its range of products and services and start actively developing applications for the Web Worlds™ developed and maintained by SpotOn3D®. Within short term, Snowcrash Digital will open its virtual showroom in SpotOn3D®, bringing along their most popular applications to this new and exciting virtual world.

Snowcrash Digital is a gold certified Second Life® solution provider, most known as the developers of Second Life's leading audio solution "Hermes Audio Technology" and the "Hermes Engage" range of educational tools. Since 2006 Snowcrash Digital has developed specialized scripted solutions and "enabling tools", often merging the 2D-web and 3D environments.

"We believe that due to the current evolution of the market, there will be a growing demand for cross-platform tools. Many of our customers already spread their activities over several virtual worlds, and we think that by offering them their trusted tools in these other environments as well we offer them a valuable service.", marketing director Philippe Pascal states. He adds, "We've been evaluating several OpenSim worlds, often being invited by the people behind them. A key-factor for us in deciding which we'll join is the protection of intellectual property, both ours and our customers - for which SpotOn3D® had a very strong case."

“Virtual worlds are evolving and constantly stretching the bounds of what technology can do, and OpenSim based worlds are at the forefront of that. In our opinion SpotOn3D® have the right approach and are backed by a solid infrastructure, making it a great base to spread out of Second Life® and to take advantage of the innovations that OpenSim brings. We’re excited to be part of that revolution, and to enable others to join it too.”, adds Jim Evans, Snowcrash Digital’s technical director.

More news on the services and products of Snowcrash Digital that will be offered in SpotOn3D® will be announced soon. Keep an eye on Snowcrash Digital's blog at http://blog.snowcrashdigital.com and on this SpotOn3D® blog for all the latest news and updates.

# # #

For more information about this press release or about Snowcrash Digital, please feel free to contact Snowcrash Digital's marketing director Philippe Pascal at philippe@snowcrashdigital.com

For more information about SpotOn3D, please feel free to contact Tessa Harrington at tessaharrington@gmail.com

Area 54 Halloween Concert - October 30th

Mark your calendars! October 30th at 1PM SLT the one and only Anek Fuchs will be rocking your socks off at Area 54! Join us for this wonderful event by this great performer. Log in to VeeSome (www.veesome.com) and use the map function to search for 'Club 54' and teleport there - you'll be able to find the Concert Hall when there (use the teleport nexus). If you need any help, ask most anyone around - they'll know where to send you!

Today at 3PM: The GridWrap show on MetaverseTV

How about a full update on the movers and shakers in virtual reality? Come over at 3PM to Metaverse Island in Second Life® (http://bit.ly/dfOZ8k) to join your hosts Tessa Harrington (Tessa Kinney-Johnson in real world, 15+ year veteran of the 3D Web) and Dousa Dragonash for another interesting episode of GridWrap.

Not able to get there today? How about enjoying last Monday's show? Tessa and Dousa had a very interesting conversation with Jim Evans and Philippe Pascal of Snowcrash Digital. Find it online at http://metaversetv.com/blog/2010/10/gridwrap-18/.

GridWrap is brought to you by SpotOn3D® and MetaverseTV. Missed an episode? No worries, visit our online archive at http://metaversetv.com/blog/category/shows/grid-wrap/ to watch any of our previous episodes.

OpenSim IBMer, Sagar Chandola, takes notice of SpotOn3D® and extends invitation

In a letter that went out to about 20 IBM virtual world key specialists, Sagar Chandola talked about the groundbreaking cloud technology SpotOn3D® has been implementing in its Web Worlds™. SpotOn3D® currently uses Amazon cloud servers, but was honored to read that Sagar would be very interested in exploring the possibilities of IBM specialists working together with "upcoming company" SpotOn3D® to develop a partnership between IBM and SpotOn3D®.

With the option to turn on your Cloud Server, you get the power of a dedicated server streaming your region. This means you can host up to 100 people on your land for promotional events, musician performances, webinars and more - making Web Worlds™ reach their maximum potential.

For more information about our Web Worlds™ and cloud technology, please contact support@spoton3d.com. Also note that our special landrush action is still going on! Visit http://land.veesome.com to find out all about it!

Yesteryday's Rockcliffe University Presentation

Yesterday, October 20th 2010, Tessa Harrington of SpotOn3D® gave a presentation about the new and exciting SpotOn3D® Web Worlds™ at the Rockcliffe University in Second Life. Tessa started off by talking about the potential implications of Philip Rosedale leaving Linden Lab again - one of the recent evolutions worrying many Second Life content creators and educators.

Tessa Harrington in virtual, Tessa Kinney-Johnson in real world (15+ year veteran of the 3D Web, as she calls it), described the current situation as "Noah's Ark Time", stating, "It's time to get serious about backing up your content and being prepared to migrate when necessary." adding, " I think between the two investors cashing out this year, the layoffs, the announcement about the TeenGrid and then the declaration of an end to educational discounts makes it clear Linden Lab is in distress." Tessa informed and encouraged the audience of educators to start preparing and backing up, educating them on the many IP legal ways they could back up their team and individual builds and still comply with Linden Lab's 3rd party viewer rules.

No need to panic if you missed yesterday's presentation - Tessa will be giving more presentations about the SpotOn3D® Web Worlds™. If you would be interested in having Tessa come present the possibilities for your community/business, please feel free to leave us a message at support@spoton3d.com

GridWrap with Marc Montague

GridWrap hosts Tessa Harrington and Dousa Dragonash had a most interesting talk in yesterday's GridWrap show where Marc Montague of Pixel Lighthouse Consulting was the central guest. Theme of the episode was virtual businesses.

Some of the highlights in the conversation were his view on why even a virtual business needs a business plan, how virtual business can cross over to the real world and the other way around. Along with other points, this made this GridWrap episode a very interesting one for all virtual and real entrepreneurs. Take a drink, get out your headset, sit back and enjoy: http://metaversetv.com/blog/2010/10/gridwrap-16/

For all info on the GridWrap show, visit http://metaversetv.com/blog/category/shows/grid-wrap/ . GridWrap was brought to you by MetaverseTV and SpotOn3D.

Growth figures - We're growing fast!

The SpotOn3D team is happy to share with you the latest figures on our grid users. It's been an exciting month since the grid first launched, and we're even more excited about having been able to welcome so many people to our new web worlds.

In the last 30 days we had a 15% growth in total registered users, bringing the total to about 1300 registered users. Maybe even more important is our conversions of FREE4EVER accounts to our $2.99 a month Premium Memberships have also went up with 15%, making the total percentage of paid members a whopping 50% of our user base – a remarkable response for such a new grid with very different platform structure using the OpenSim community.

Please note that the figures mentioned above are a reflection of our registered Key Accounts that can hold up to 5 avatars under them. Therefore, our total number of avatars wandering around on our grids varies between 1292 and 6460 avatars.

Gridwrap with SRH Magic & Nissa Rewell of the Pandorian Hub Grid

Join your host Tessa Harrington today at 3PM PDT for a talk with SRH Magic and Nissa Rewell of the Pandorian Hub Grid about using virtual social media as a means to teach marketing & economics for real world business. This promises to be an interesting conversation, so scoot over to http://slurl.com/secondlife/Metaverse Island%161/158/111/25 at 3PM PDT.

Purdue Professors in the real world, Scott and Nissa have been working to establish an AVATAR the MOVIE Community Hub based roughly upon the ideas of the Gorean Hub. They have two goals in this venture – two help promote stronger role playing communities and to use their hub as a training ground for their marketing and economics students.

Some of their goals are as follows:

• To unite and promote traffic to the many exciting Avatar themed sims that are dedicated to structured role play.
• Create a Pandorian role playing training program to help decrease the rate of attrition and provide educated role players for the role playing sim owners, thereby increasing their numbers of devoted role players.
• Illustrate the laws of Marketing and Economics through their Pandorian Hub and V-Retailing center.
• Help give creators of Pandorian playwear an additional merchandising point.
• To promote ‘serious play’ as a tool for serious learning and training and help institute new online training standards and protocols for education online.

Press Release: Announcing Edu-Merge

Press release

for immediate release

Press contact

Tessa Kinney-Johnson (tkinneyjohnson@gmail.com)

Announcing Edu-Merge

The SpotOn3D team is proud to announce its Edu-Merge project, a web world that will

be dedicated to education. Thanks to focusing specifically on education, this web world

will provide an easier ground for collaboration between educators. Edu-Merge will be a

cloud driven service, making this web world scalable and capable of supporting many

more avatars per region when necessary. On top of all this educators can already start

building up and using their region on one of the other web worlds, making it possible

for them to enjoy Spoton3D’s special land rush action!

SpotOn3D believes in specialized web worlds between which users can teleport with

one key account for all of these worlds. One of these specialized web worlds soon to

be launched is the Edu-Merge world, specifically focusing on education. Thanks to

specializing the purpose of each web world, SpotOn3D is able to reach out to a clearly

defined target audience, and the effort required of new residents is much lower as

they immediately find what they came for.

Although the Edu-Merge grid is not launched yet, educators can already start building

their sim and having their classes on the SpotOn3D or Veesome grid. Educators will

be offered the option to move over to the Edu-Merge web world when available. This

means they can fully enjoy the special land rush action SpotOn3D currently has going

on - no set-up fee, and a guaranteed low tier for as long as they own the region.

SpotOn3D also takes great pride in customer service, and is most happy to help you

set up your educational facilities in our web worlds - whether you own just a parcel or

your own private grid. For all info on Edu-Merge or Veesome’s special land rush action,

please contact the SpotOn3D team at info@spoton3d.com. You can also visit the

special land rush website at http://land.veesome.com or follow

http://twitter.com/spoton3d to keep up to date with all of our news and

special actions.

# # #

For more information about this topic, or about SpotOn3D in general, please feel free to contact us. Our team is most happy to answer any of your inquiries. (info@spoton3d.com)

Tools.Jam visits SpotOn3D - the movie

At 3PM PDT yesterday, the kind people from Tools.Jam came over to SpotOn3D to do a field trip, exploring our web worlds. We were all very excited about it, and it has also been a very encouraging experience for all of us at SpotOn3D, seeing our systems remain stable and reliable all through the field trip.

Shamblesguru aka Chris Smith was so kind to make a video of the field trip; Tessa was the host on duty and took people from the central landing point over to the Pathfinders village, afterwards crossing the sim border and walking to the learning path - where also the bug zapper can be found. The video stops at the teleport to the could system demonstration. Thank you very much for the fine video Chris!

Tools.Jam visits SpotOn3D – Come join us!

SpotOn3D is happy to welcome the explorers from Tools.Jam, who will be joining us today at our grid for a demonstration of the possibilities offered by the unique features SpotOn3D offers. Tessa and Denvor will be demonstrating the key features like the unique key-account system allowing people to manage several avatars through one central account with shared balance and inventory, the grid-to-grid teleporting among other groundbreaking realizations of the SpotOn3D team including the smart region server system. There’s even a demonstration of the web browser integrated web world viewer on the schedule!

The full schedule for this presentation is:

SpotON3D HUB GRID (Beta) :: 10 minutes
This is our general landing point for people to enter our network of 3DWeb Worlds, when they are not sure what grid they wish to be born into and explore. This info portal educates them on the selling systems, communities and other 3D Web Worlds available to them as well as access to the Learning Paths™ ten step orientation. The landing point here is called ETA.

VeeSome (Beta) :: 10 minutes
This is SpotON3D’s first launch of its Private Label Grid technology in the form of a hugely successful launch of the VeeSome recreational grid Friday, September 3rd, 2010.

Biz-Grid (Alpha) :: 20 minutes
Biz-Grid is designed to allow for turn-key small to large meetings, webinars, conferences and training through our SpotON3D Private Label Grid system. With its ‘NO-TOUCH INVO/EDIT’ Presentation tools, EZPrezTools™ , one can upload a PPT natively, show videos, pictures and even a snapshot of your desktop with the ease of uploading an image to FlickR.

Q&A :: 10 minutes
This is your chance to poke a hole in our vision for the 3D Web. It’s ok! Take us to task! We like the challenge and enjoy a good debate!

Please feel free to come over and join us, everyone’s welcome to do so. The touring of the SpotOn3D web worlds starts at 9:30am PDT when we will all come together at the ETA landing point. If you already have an account at SpotOn3D, just log in and teleport over. If you haven’t please make yourself a free account at https://spoton3d.com/users/register

If you’re not able to make it today, don’t worry; more demonstrations will be announced soon. Just keep an eye on our blog and twitter (http://twitter.com/spoton3d).

Also note that the VeeSome landrush action is still going on! Get your region today, 5k or 15k prims, with a special low monthly fee for as long as you own the region and no set up fee. Find out all about it at http://land.veesome.com

The Questions You Should Ask When Expanding to OpenSim Grids

If SpotON3D is not the grid for you, that kewl. It would be impossible for any one company or grid to meet the demand of such a diverse and passionate community. We still want to help out anyway we can. These questions are designed to help you evaluate the risks and limits as you explore all your options, rather than eliminate any grids.

QUESTIONS TO ASK … THINGS TO LOOK FOR

1. Does the gird have a certified https:// website?

2. Under About US or CONTACT US do you find a reference to real world contact information, i.e. phone, email that associates with their dot com, physical mail address -not a post office box.

3. Do the founders/exec staff use real identities or game character names?

4. Are you given contact information that clearly identifies the owners, their physical address, a working phone number and email addresses that are answered within 3 to 7 days?

5. If needed, would you have enough information make a complaint to the Better Business Bureau or even the legal authorities where you live?

6. Do they have a user verification system to minimize griefing risks?

7. Do they have a working economy? If so, is it based upon trading one virtual currency for another, like VWallet for Lindens? If so, can you identify the person(s) behind that system in real world terms?

8. Do they have a system in place and staff to deal with griefing and copy bot risks?

9. How do they handle minors on the grid? Is the grid segregated to keep kids that might come in out of areas they should not be in? How would they handle a report of a pedophile? What is their stance on child avatars?

10. How are payments for land & products handled – through a recognized subscription service like PayPal or manually?

11. Can you cash out via trusted money system like PayPal?

12. Do they provide records of all payments for product, services and land rentals?

13. Do they have a TOS in place?

14. Is the grid’s structure based on a peer-2-peer hosting or a hosted solution? A peer2peer grid is where you host your own sim and link up to their central asset server for storage of the community’s content? Or is it a fully hosted solution like Second Life® or SpotON3D™? If the second is true, then is the grid hosted on someone’s home server system or a professional co-location?

15. Do they do routine backups at least ever 24 hours for rollbacks?

16. What is their stance on OAR and IAR file backups? Do they allow you to do them yourself regardless of the state of the IP and the creators who made it?

17, Do they promote the idea of giving away, selling or trading such content without regard to the IP rights of the creator?

18. What would happen to your content if you were to have to leave? Would they reserve The right to continue to use, distribute or sell your content on their grid or through a web based selling system, or would it only exist in the inventories of those you sold to and your own avatars?

19. Does the grid have a system in place to report and/or resolve social and legal disputes through?

20. What is the grid's stance on legal Intellectual Property Rights? Some folks believe simply don't believe in IP or copyrights and see no reason to respect such laws. You need to ask subtle questions to determine where they truly stand in this issue if you hope to use the grid in question as a secure selling destination. The easiest way to do this is to ask if its okay to bring in sculpts and textures you've purchased from SL. If they don't ask you to get the permissions of the original seller, or have a 'no see-no hear-no speak" stance on such things, then that is most likely a good example of how much they would respect your work in someone else's hands.

SUMMARY

We hope these questions help you in your exploration of the many wonderful grids available on through the Virtual World community. SpotON3D will be hosting community events for all the virtual would community in hopes that we can rebuild bridges to the many folks who have left out of heartache, frustration and financial redress. These are hard times indeed, but together we can make something even better - let the phoenix rise again.

13 Very Good Reasons to Consider SpotON3D for Your Next Destination

·         The Universal Registration – Sign up Once – Get access to all Public Grids.

·         The Universal Avatar – Your avatar appearance never changes as you travel the SpotON3D network of grids

·         The Universal Inventory – All your inventory assets follow you through the publically networked grids using SpotON3D;s Private Label Grid System

·         FREE4EVER Accounts – New Visitors can Chat, Travel the General Population areas, Shop, Customize their avatars, Attend events and Meetings, and even interact with scripted gadgets, games and tools.

·          PayPal Verified Premium Memberships with Key Account Security & up to 5 Avatars – For just $2.99 a month users get the following:

o         Up to 5 Fully Functional avatars

o         To ‘loan’ one of their avatar accounts with trusted friends, family & clients

o         Key Account Security means that avatar passwords cant’ be changed without access to the Key Account password too.

o         The ability to give individual avatars under the Key Account different permissions.

·         Anti-Grieving/Drama Mechanisms :: Technical, Social & Legal –

o         Using Verified PayPal accounts as a means to verify memberships makes for a greatly reduce incidence of grieving and adds up to a far more stable grid experience.

o         Client Routing Technology ensures that potentially malicious clients aren’t able to enter into the main grid areas and be used to disrupt service on the grids.

o         Community Driven Dispute Resolution Panel empowers communities to resolve their disputes in a factual and mature manner.

o         Legal Real World Arbitration through VirtualCourtHouse.com puts players on an equal playing field for one low affordable price of just $150 usd.

·         Built-in Web Window into Client: No laggy selling system in SpotON3D. One of the primary reasons so many island can be hosted on so few machines is because the overhead for sale it taken completely offworld, and streamed through a web based system.

·         SpotONNSynergy.com & Double Dutch Delivery ™ – A Membership Sensitive 3D Selling Portal, offering users the ability to sell to multiple grids as securely as possible, expanding to even MMO’s and other incompatible platforms.

·         Integrated Amazon Cloud Server Technology @ $4.99/19.99/hr – Amazon Cloud Server is a ‘pay-as-you-go’ simple storage service that is charge by the hour for any amount of data at any time, from anywhere on the web. SpotON3D uses this  cost effective high powered server instances to host high traffic events of up to 100 , such as Webinars, Musical endeavors, and simulcast Conferences for a fraction of the cost of renting these same server specs.

·         Segregated General , Mature and Adult Populations – Keeping it reasonable safe and inoffensive for most reasonable users in the spirit of Responsible Tolerance.

·         Private Label Grids – Giving individuals, businesses and education the tools and framework to create their own branded grids on dedicated servers. Bundled with a turn key package of avatars, a customer web design with its on Universal Registration Porta, bundled meeting or recreational builds for a turn key experience and much more.

·         Land Rentals - $14.99 - $299.per month – With price points for all budgets, spoton3d hopes to inspire a new generation of users.