Musings Around the Grid

Sometimes, I get these wild little urges to wander the grid and see what is going on with it. Mostly it gets inspired by something I read in the blogorum or something gets tweeted and I have to follow up on it. I'm easily intrigued by what our residents do, and so when I get a chance to visit someplace without having to fix it, I'm happy lady.

The other night I got a chance to check out Isle of Alchemy, and see Johnny's Fair and Maze, although I need to pop by again and see what more there is. What's really great about this sim is it's tied to Virtual Helping Hands and helping to donate to Japan. Here's a quick link you can check out: Virtual Helping Hands, and yes, I can assure everyone it is on the up and up. So if you get a chance,  please pop by, or donate, or schedule an event with them so they can help those families in need in Japan. Here's a couple of quick of pics of things I amused myself with (ps, the rides are rideable!):

 

Then, I got this tweeted across today, and I rarely bring up other blogs or what not to avoid the "favoritism" stigma we hit, but I thought it was really very cool. And my favorite line (if I steal this Tormie, you won't mind will ya?): "The Prim gives every resident the potential of a god to shape his or her world." I think that sums up InWorldz in more ways than one!

Til we meet InWorldz!

Quick note: I had it listed as Virtual Ability but Cryptic was kind enough to correct me, thanks!

Fun in Da Sun!

The other night we had some fun on IDI, big party which Allan Jeffries had volunteered himself for. We referred to it as the "Pre-Rapture" party, but I have no idea what we'll call it in October when it's supposed to "really" happen. Maybe we'll call it the "Pre-Rapture Non Event"... hmm I may have to work on that title a bit  *wink*.

So here's some pictures, we had 53 people online at one point... Tiggs thought it would be nice to climb into poor Allan's shirt, Victoria tried to get him on her couch... reasons for which I shall leave to your imaginations!

I hope everyone had a great time, thanks for coming out and what was the coolest was to see the new residents showing up and Jewel taking care of them and no one complained of ANY lag. Phlox Rox, but we knew this already  ;)

On other news, as many of you know, I was out, as was Tranq from Sunday through this afternoon. We had the pleasure of heading down to Orlando, FL to meet up with ReactionGrid Owners Robin and Kyle Gomboy. What absolutely fabulous people! We got to meet up with them at breakfast, then we headed over their place for dinner later on.

Besides being trained by their Sonic of how best to throw his ball for him, repeatedly (which made me homesick for my puppy), we had a great time chatting, talking and getting to know each others goals for the Metaverse. Their passion is no less than our own in what they love doing, and while they are redirecting some of their goals into Jibe, which is very cool what they've accomplished so far, they have the same reasons we do. Control of our own destiny is vastly important to both companies and reaching a hand out in this frontier, can be very important.

I will say I was very happy to be greeted again by my lovely 59 degree temps back here in Chicago, as I was positive I was going to melt from the heat there, but we had alot of fun. We got to wander down to Downtown Disney, and I lost some of my pics because we went over to Ghirardelli's for ice cream with Tranq's wife, and her cousin, and could NOT resist having the guy who delivered our order to take a pic. Tranq sent me them, but they are on the laptop, and tonight, I'm just too darned lazy to upload them :)

A huge thanks to MaiTai, Leggie (poor guy gets left out of all the fun trips...) and everyone else for holding down the fort, as we know some things went kaboom while we were gone. And our residents for being ever patient while we catch up support issues tomorrow. For now, we're all eager for the Phlox rollout that's coming tonight, and remember, some stuff is going to break, we'll be on hand over the next few days to work everyone through it all!

Nitnoying...

Been a while since I blogged. Ok, so it's been 3 months since I blogged (I almost wrote blobbed there, really? My brain is in blob form, it's telling me something I bet!), and a lot has gone on since then. Done a ton of reading of blogs, forums, and various other fun or not so fun things out there. Good, bad, ugly, it's all something to take into consideration for us and we do so.

One thing that seems to be creeping into our world ever more so than before, and I'm not sure if it's because of Friday the 13th, the Full Moon, the biblical ending coming Saturday or all three being so close... drama. I have to wonder if humanity has lost it's ever loving mind. I wandered around PetCo today with my puppy to go buy him some toys while I was clearing my head from all the spinning of the last few weeks... and this guy was telling the cashiers we were going to have a Zombie Apocalypse. Seriously?! I sighed heavily and waited until he had left and the air had been cleared of any non obvious contagions.

I know, what does Zombie Apocalypse have to do with Drama right? It's a highlight of how things can get warped out of hand, whether intentionally inflamed to just misinformed. This seems to be happening quite a bit lately, partially on our end, but I won't go so far as to say totally our end. It seems sometimes people have this need, desire, burning urge to stir things without being fully informed and leaping to conclusions of conspiracies or favoritism suddenly being flagrant within the Founders.

What I don't get, is why things get blown out of proportion without trying to calmly, rationally ask why, when, where or how first. I get emotions, really I do, but is there anything that says someone can't ask something of any one of us Founders and not expect an answer? I am not going to shine a light on anyone or any particular thing in this, as that's not what this is really about. It is however, about how incredibly draining it is on the Founders as a whole. Let me explain more  :)

I spend hours a day on IDI every day, it's the 4th thing I do in the morning when I'm up and hitting things. I'm typically there for hours, til 1am last night as a case in point. I may go for a couple hours here or there as I did today to rain toys on my dog. Typical day, non drama starts off with forum postings over coffee, runs to the support tickets, handling restarts, answering I'z problems, then transfers, moves, rename and such. Then I log into IDI. And that's where the day goes flying out of the window. IM's start, answering questions, having fun with the residents on IDI, mentors needing help, and things being told to us that we may or may not need to know. Issues being sorted and so on. All of this is more than enough all on it's own, but now toss in the idea that we get bombarded with emails, ideas being presented to us. Ideas that we ourselves, have no time to deal with or oversee. So things get presented to us, such as handling the wiki, and who can say NO to free labor? I mean really? But, the drainer, the big drainer is the drama. All drama is not created equally, and nor does it have the same effects.

Really great drama gets everyone riled up and I know I've done my fair share of that, usually without intention in regards to the grid. And typically the best drama is the unintentional. But the good part of that type of drama is it's usually educational as well, you learn something from it about dealing with things and how to do so. So there's a plus side to that. Especially when dealing with as many people as we do on a day to day basis.

The worst drama is the one that isn't supported by a wide majority, and has no purpose other than to stir the pot and usually has something in it with personal insults as gravy I suppose. This is not something I'm keen on personally as personal insults lead to one thing with most people, they don't want to know you, unless they themselves enjoy the same type of drama. This type of drama does one thing to us as Founders... drains our energy. We spend hours on this type of drama resolving it and / or correcting it. Why? Because we care. If we didn't care about our community, our residents, then we can't ask them to do the same.

We have never led by a "do as we say, not as we do" mentality, but by a "do as we do" mentality. We encourage discussion, debate, and criticism. These energize us, they do not drain us. Our mentors don't do anything different today than they did when I used to do the mentoring in practice. We do not flame or belittle anyone on our forums, and we don't expect anyone else to do that. You'd be surprised at our own debates within our chats when we don't always agree. They are civil and respectful of each others points and we will hash them all out until we reach a decision or a compromise, whichever works best from the discussion. Do they become heated? Sure, all three of us are passionate about what we do. But never do we lose that tone of respect for one another. Because each of us is integral to this team, and to making sure our world works. From the day to day administration, to the coding, to the venting sometimes needing to be done by our residents, to the answers being given for help and support, we all have our strengths and we all rely on them with each other. And because of that symbiosis between us as Founders, and our passion, we carry that to our residents, to our Mentors. It keeps it alive, and growing, and nurturing this grid that we've all worked so hard for. That's not just us as Founders. That's all of us, from Resident to Mentor to Sr. Mentor, to Founder. It's all symbiotic. If one portion quits caring, the rest will fall to the side as well. And this is the crux of drama.

It takes our focus away from our passion. It forces us to deal with the issue at hand, and deal with it we will. Not always to everyone's satisfaction, but we will deal with it. When the IM's start pouring in, and the messages start flying, what are we focusing on? Not what we need to be doing, that is for sure. Now, sometimes, it's needed because we need to clarify something. That isn't a drain. That's pure questioning whatever has happened, and that's good. It's usually a very simple matter, and doesn't explode into drama, nor drain us from what we need to be doing, because answering questions, hey that's what we do every day.

I think what I'm really trying to stress here, is we're all human, even us Founders. We're not perfect. But we're not in league to take over the world, start making the human populace wear pink thongs all over (sorry Shawn, had to), or become a corporate greed machine. Do we make mistakes? Yes. Do we recognize when brought to our attention that something may have been mistakenly handled? Sure do. And we'll be the first to say so. Because we expect that as well from our residents and our Mentors. If we expect it from you, you have a right to expect it from us. Do us a favor though, don't throw the baby out with the bathwater whenever something comes up you aren't happy with. Contact us, each of us as Founders has an open door policy. We also each have our own distinct way of how we deal with things. But we do not shut down our residents or their complaints, that's not in our nature. We are far more prone to say "hey could we have done this better?" than to say it's their fault they took it wrong.

When Tranq says the grid is his life, take him at his word for that. It's all of our lives. It consumes us, probably in a kind of unhealthy way, but so be it. We live, eat, drink, breathe, sleep and dream (sometimes not so pleasantly) of this world, our residents, their visions and dreams. We listen to your complaints, we discuss them, we make a decision. We listen to your ideas, we discuss them, we make a decision. We watch your banter and lively discussion on the forums, we see your civility when dealing with the not so pleasant aspects, and we go outside of our world to keep a pulse on our residents. If that's wrong on our part, to be in touch with you, let us know. If it's wrong of us to try and know that while we have rules in place on our forums, we will try to keep a monitor on what goes on outside so we can deal with things, then let us know. If you feel we've slighted you or your group, let us know. If you feel we're showing favoritism or anything that would not keep the playing field level, let us know. And remember, when you let us know, we're open to hearing it. We love all of our residents, because the grid is nothing without you. And that means that you do have a say with us, each and every single one of you. When you feel you need to say something or critique something, ask yourself, do I need to stir drama up over this or can I get a really simple answer by just asking one of the Founders directly?

Til we meet InWorldz  :)

Phallic Roles?!?

The last couple of weeks have been pretty drama filled, but informative I will admit. There have been some going ons for a while with particular people, and Tranq posted some of that information today on our forums. My goal is to simply shed a bit more light on what we know, and we'll let you draw your own conclusions. There will be various points where I will note as to what was done when.

If you haven't read the post by Tranq, you should: Forum Post

Now some background information.

Last summer, we had someone put themselves in the InWorldz Founders group, Tom Grimshaw, if you don't know that name you can look it up, but he's the technical admin for Meta7, still part of MMR, and helping Avination. His mentality was to create a role named "Penis" and put himself in it. Needless to say, Tranq fixed the exploit when pointed out by Ratchet Xevion and we banned Mister Grimshaw with an email. We've always worked pretty well with those who find exploits and want to work with us to eliminate them. Finding exploits, it happens in every code, and we're pretty serious about finding them and closing them.

Couple of weeks ago, we had an exploit reported us by Casper Warden, and I immediately cleaned it up. This is where things get interesting. The conversations I have, have been passed over to me and as such, I will not release their names. But you can come to your own conclusions:

[11:06:30 PM] ****: Do you feel that you're better then everyone or something?
[11:07:03 PM] Tom: not at all
[11:08:41 PM] ****: Its just seeming that way. You said Elenia is not very smart, that Avination is secure because it uses your code, and that you end up fixing Melaine's code most of the time. And I don't know much about OpenSim servers, so I can't really defend what you say to me when you tell me things like you know how to get into databases etc.. I'm just left to believe you.
[1/26/2011 9:57:25 PM] ****: [11:10:53 PM] Tom: Look, OpenSim is basically in my blood, i've worked with it so extensively for so long I know it inside and out.  I fix a lot of melanie's bugs, yes, she fixes a lot of mine
[11:11:07 PM] Tom: that's what happens when you work together
[11:12:01 PM] ****: Right, it just seems you have been taking a lot of credit, and making me look like an idiot in some ways.. I know you may not be meaning that though

[10:27:18 PM] ****: I'm not telling Elenia, but there has to be some reason why you care so much. No one tests for vurnabilitys on grids and keep access on their grids without caring..
[10:28:25 PM] Tom: I have been asessing the possibility of porting my vendor system to inworldz, but i will not do it until it's secure
[10:29:34 PM] ****: Thats the only reason? I mean, you got access to their staff groups and their backend. Think about it for a second, had she had such access in Meta7, do you think you'd be okay with that?
[10:30:10 PM]  ****: I understand what you're saying, but I think you're just going the wrong way about it. That too not even telling them, they wont be able to fix these holes..
[10:30:20 PM] Tom: people have exploited meta7 before, I fixed it and thanked them
[10:30:38 PM] Tom: the last time I reported an issue to elenia she bitched me out
[10:30:59 PM]  ****: Do it from a different account?
[10:31:10 PM] Tom: no! I don't want to help someone with that kind of attitude
[10:31:38 PM]  ****: I really don't mean to be harsh at all, I'm on your side, understand that
[10:31:41 PM] Tom: If there's anything that's going to affect the users themselves i would tell her
[10:32:11 PM]  ****: Well, I suppose she considers you as a threat, because she obviously cares why you care so much.
[10:32:46 PM]  ****: It can't just be because of your vendor system. You want to have access on that grid, and I am just trying to understand why.
[10:33:08 PM]  ****: You spent time creating scripts, to get the access you have now, as you stated.
[10:33:36 PM]  ****: So, you know, don't get me wrong, I trust you, and I hope you trust me
[10:33:48 PM] Tom: It's really none of your business
[10:34:57 PM]  ****: No its not. But I'd like to help you, and I just want to be careful. If you get into a legal hassle with them, I don't want to be having something like that on my mind.
[10:35:41 PM] Tom: i'm not going to be in any legal trouble.

Fortunately, our friend was able to point something out to Tom:

Support Response
Elenia Llewellyn
01/24/11 07:28AM
Thanks Casper, was an oversight from our early days when the site was more rushed. We have since fixed it, and if you find other exploits, by all means let us know, and we'll plug those up.

[10:38:06 PM] ****: She didn't bitch out the last time you told her one of her holes
[10:38:14 PM] ****: You copied and pasted the ticket to me
[10:39:35 PM] Tom: that's apparently because she didn't know it was me

True, I didn't know it was him, but nor did I ban him when I was told the following night. It wasn't until this conversation where I banned him, again with his alts. This is the only time he has ever reported an issue to us that we are aware of.

So, how do we tie these two together? With this:

[7:00:07 PM] Tom: I don't deny it at all, but I used THEIR viewer, and an option which is exposed to all users
[7:00:12 PM] Tom: hardly a hack
[7:00:18 PM] Tom: and i'm not banned at all
[7:00:24 PM] ****: What other flaws do you know about their site?
[7:00:32 PM] Tom: many
[7:00:39 PM] Tom: but i'm going to keep some to myself
[1/26/2011 8:39:29 PM] ****: [7:03:40 PM] Tom: i wish you hadn't told her i was casper
[7:03:45 PM] Tom: now i have to make a new account
[7:04:05 PM] ****: I wish you hadn't reported me.. Now I have to call LL lol
[7:04:07 PM] Tom: oh, actually, never mind, i set myself to unbanned

Interesting side note here... the "i set myself to unbanned". We don't ban via the database. At least not with any flags to say the person is banned. His account, Tom Grimshaw, hasn't logged in since Aug. 13, 2010. His Casper Warden account was Jan. 26, which is the night we banned him.

In our endeavor to be transparent, I detest doing things like this, but on the other hand it's good to expose. I think the biggest issue we have with this sort of stuff, is if you have this much time on your hands to worry about us, maybe you need to find something else to do. Have we been to other grids? Sure. Do we do anything to potentially harm their systems? No. And if we found some sort of exploit, we'd report it. Rather than blaring it all over or using it for our own devious ends. Maybe we're a bit higher on the moral grounds and have a tad better understanding of responsibility.... but seriously? Penis? As a role?


Til we meet again InWorldz!

The InWorldz History

I'm in a bit of storytelling mode tonight and my sincere apologies for not blogging last week, but I had a bit of the winter doldrums. Reading through the forums, and Whiskey's blog challenge last week brought up some old memories (and when I say old, ok, they are only almost 2 years old but still!). Grab some hot cocoa, or vodka, or whatever liquid you prefer and read on!

Once upon a time, there were a few people who saw the promise of Virtual Worlds beyond what was being presented out there. The playbooks almost identical with a twist here or there: one jacked people's inventories after breaking a deal they made; one ran by a scam artist who had a trail of unpaid bills behind them; and yet others who felt that a grid was a great way to get rich quick. Far and few between were the grids that actually were doing anything on their own, or providing awesome support, but finding them after the other fiasco's is slightly akin to having severe PTSD. Once bitten, twice shy kinda deal. These few daring souls, figured they could do a grid.

It all started back in February, 2009, when we got a very bare bones server, from GoDaddy of all places. I mean seriously, it was a 512Mb RAM system, 1 core. And on Feb. 12, we were able to actually log in, all of us, into the one little region that was our "grid". I don't even remember the name of it back then. It was a test to see if we could even get it going. We were ecstatic! There we stood, on our very own little blob of a region, saying well HEY lookie at this! Obviously, this server was not going to do what we'd want for long, but the test was completed, we knew it could be done.

Within 2 weeks, we had researched providers and compared prices and even found our first "dev". That box itself, was nothing massively special either, but it was dedicated and we started with it. At that time, the discussions started on what we wanted IDI to look like. Which btw, is where the name comes from! InWorldz Desert Island was slated originally to be a.... you guessed it! Desert! We were a tad sick of tropical. And we were gonna do something kinda romanish. So here's one of the oldest pics from InWorldz:

That is myself, Lecktor, April and Loki. Playing with columns and sculpties. As you can see, there wasn't even any formation to IDI at that point. Date there, is March 10, 2009. Now possibly Legion or Lek may have some older pics, but that is the oldest one in my inventory. I also have a picture in my inventory, nicely framed of our first InWorldz Party:

That's Legion (baldie), Lecktor, myself, and I'm fairly sure one of the other females is Circle Widdershins and the red head is Copper Rau, but please don't quote me on that, I could be terribly wrong there. And yes, the first dance ball in InWorldz is there. That's from April 12, 2009.

Then I have this picture of Bob Bunderfeld, on his rez day March 19, 2009 in a crazy shirt trying to figure out why his arms were still black hehehe:

There are the stories as well, of when one of the Founders decided to drop 3k textures into a single prim. Now mind you, you couldn't OPEN that prim, but let's throw 3k textures into one. That took us almost 2 days to clean up.

What is most interesting is that by our first little party above, we had paying customers! Not alot mind you, but a few.  Some of them have since moved on, or were only around for a quick month, but others stayed: Jim and Jo Smart, Rosa and Gaius (sorry Gaius, love you two dearly but I'm NOT typing it all out!), Bladax who came with Erasmus and stayed, Scotsgraymouser. These were the first real beta residents who have stuck with us through thick and thin, when there was NO ONE on the grid, to where it is now. They've expanded their regions, contracted their regions, but no matter what, they've always been there.

By August, 2009, we had already shed 3 Founders, for various reasons. April left, as did Lek, one we got rid of and then we got rid of our "dev" in August. That left Legion and I and one other. Scots managed in her ever so tenacious spirit to keep asking me what we needed. My response was always the same: a real dev. So scouring SL, did she go in her little mouser way. And she got to talking to PatriciaAnne Daviau and telling her that we were needing a dev. Patti then talked to Tranq, who in turn emailed me about doing dev work. This was early September, 2009.

By this time, I had gotten the groups code rolled in, gotten the currency turned on and running, and had made some huge changes so profiles worked sorta. I didn't actually finish them until Nov. 2009 IIRC. But we seriously needed a dev who could delve far deeper into the code than I was able to, and start sorting things out. Little did Tranq know what he had signed on for  ;)

We also, had upgraded to what was then referred to as The Beast. It was seriously a pretty heavy duty system, that allowed us to expand and grow. In November, we shed our final Founder. I remember Tranq working on rolling the groups code so it was all C# native rather than what it originally was with outgoing calls to PHP to run DB queries.

In January of 2010, we were only running that one server. We now run 36 servers. In the space of 11 months, that's how much we've grown. We went from excitement over 5 avatars in world at one time, to Tranq's mission to have 20 avatars online by March, 50 by June, 100 by September. I'm not sure what his next target is, but so far we've made them all.

In March, 2010, we brought Tranq on board as a full Founder with all the rights and privileges assigned to us Founders: long hours, lots of stress, massive breakdowns of systems whenever least wanted, and lots and lots of support for our customers. We signed our LLC in April, 2010 into actual formalization, which is also when we kinda sorta met. Well ok, I met Tranq, and Tranq met Legion. This is also when we had a sudden wave of new residents.

As with most things, we had a lot come by, if for no other reason than to keep their name intact, some to check out our progress, some to snipe our residents to other grids, some to try and be drama queens, and some to really find another avenue. Lots left, but quite a few stayed. And they expanded our growing core of residents. Some of them are incredibly outspoken, some of them not so much, some I rarely hear from, others I hear from often. Some I consider friends, and others are not "friends" but they are customers and they have that same open door as any one else.

But there's a bit of our history, and I've left some names out, because to be quite honest they aren't worth mentioning. We've had our share of drama, tension, stress, fights, sleepless nights (seriously, nights where I had very little sleep worrying about the grid), and a lot of fun times too. I hope you enjoyed story hour, and there's much more information in our forums in regards to when things happened as far as patches rolled out and such, just feel free to dig around until we see you InWorldz  ;)

Beta Test Crash Helmets Available Here!

Yup, that's right, tomorrow starts our big beta test! At noon and 6pm InWorldz time, we have put a call out for anyone and everyone that can make themselves available for testing. We of course, will be handing out crash helmets for all our test dumm.. er victims. Yeah, victims, that's what I meant  ;)

This is a really huge test as it pertains to the network and Tranq has worked his fingers to the bone on this... which leaves him a tad funkeh looking with boney fingers and all! But he had excellent results testing on his standalone and I was in the beta grid last night and it was very cool. We'll release the beta viewer as well for this, as the two go hand in hand with things that were put in place. The beta viewer WILL work on the main grid as well, so by all means feel free to replace your InWorldz viewer with this one.

The beta viewer has some of the stuff our residents have requested as well, such as the built-in AO, radar and other fun stuff. No bouncing boobies... and no RLV either, sorry folks! The neat thing is who is working on our viewer, so you guys may or may not be surprised by that, but the good part is we'll be able to work on some new features there. Obviously we'll be keeping those quiet until they are implemented and the viewer released, but we have some really cool stuff in the plans!

On a completely different track, I went over our numbers this last month, except currency, which I'll run after the 1st of December. Things are very much where I expected them to be, considering our huge expenses we had this month. Hey, going to San Diego is NOT cheap! But was it fun!  :)  First time land purchases fell, as I predicted, to half, but was slightly recouped with the new region resells. Region resells are spotty at best right now while I bring the system into full swing over the next 30 days. Renewals increased, which was a great thing to see, and I noticed an interesting trend from Oct. to Nov. numbers: Alot of our residents did 3 month renewals to get them through the holidays. That was great to see! We also had some other major expenses come out which will be announced with the next viewer (not the new one coming, but next one, I think... I may be wrong here). And we had our licenses covered for various things, and we also started our Trademark process. So all in all, while we did exactly what I expected for numbers, we spent alot of money too :)

So on that note, I leave you with this beautiful picture we took, Wednesday night, at Cardiff by the Sea, the Beach House restaurant. We got there right at 4:30pm for dinner, and I could not resist taking this picture. I felt right at home with this view ;)

Yes, our table was RIGHT there!

InWorldz, Trust, Future and HG?

It's been a pretty interesting week I will admit. Ok, interesting month... oh well heck, interesting year! I finally got to sit down and while I tend to do the books every month *coughs*exceptseptemberoctoberbooks*coughs*, I did some neat graphs for our residents to see, and then I have some general rambling about our future and something I'm sick of hearing about.

Let's start off with the first graph which is our 3rd quarter general snapshot. This covers July, August and Sept, until the 20th, as that's our books cut off date.

Now, as I posted in another blog, one of the interesting facts of this chart that we don't individually represent is our currency, I'z, purchases:

• July I'z sold: 2,065,000
• August I'z sold: 4,331,750
• September I'z sold: 6,384,250

I stated that things were doubling darn near in the terms of currency purchases, which is what those numbers show. What's more interesting is to combine those numbers with the October, 2010 cashout chart I did:

Our numbers for October:

• I'z purchased: 12,906,500
• I'z sold: 8,864,500

 Which means, once again, from Sept to Oct, our I'z purchases doubled again (although do realize our graph for Cash outs ends Oct. 31). This also means our economy is healthy and growing. We have some pretty happy merchants as well, as we cashed out over $17k during the month of October.

There's another fun fact buried in all this, which is not of released numbers in all actuality, but that we're about 10k shy of handling 6 figures a month in transactions. That's a pretty big leap from a year ago... er, well from 6 months ago... 3 months ago?! I think that says alot for the trust levels from our residents, and that we're not a fly by night operation.

Downside of all this? We're in the holiday season, and already our provider is teasing me on the phone with my knowing our market trend too well. We were originally picking up almost 2 servers a week to meet our growth demands, right now, one a week. I warned them this would happen  :) The other half of this is people are waiting on me to finish the Region Xchange (which yes, I am working on! Don't bludgeon me with potatoes!), and pick up our spare regions not making money.

Today, we had alot of fun over on Treet.TV with Saffia Widdershins and Elrik Merlin. They are really great people, and who doesn't like the UK accent, seriously?! Either the UK or the Aussie accents, I'm telling ya! Apparently Tranq picked up some fans in the interview (No, Conie, I'm not referring you... or am I?! mwahahaha), and we had a lot of fun discussing InWorldz with them. Big big thanks to Julia Hathor for letting us swipe her region, and to Johnny Night, and to Zauber Paracelsus and to Jeri Rahja! You guys are the best! The video should be released tomorrow and we'll be sure to do an embed on it for everyone to see who missed it!

On to the thing that I'm quite tired of hearing about: HyperGrid. Yup, I said it, I'm sick of hearing it. I'm tired of armchair referees who don't run their own grid, who don't understand all the nuances of IP protection, squawking at the tops of their lungs that we won't connect to the HyperGrid. There, now I've REALLY said it. I don't think I can make it much clearer than that. I'm sick of hearing about it. We're not doing it. Not anytime soon. I'm tired of hearing we're going to "control" code if we ever get to that point. I'm sick of hearing how our residents are "missing out". If our residents were missing out, be assured, they would tell us. They would scream, yell, throw things at us, and otherwise make their opinions known.

In fact, we recently encouraged our residents to take part of a poll by HyperGridBusiness, and I can tell you for most part, what our residents voted for that they missed: Vehicles, Online Marketplace, and Search. Notice, I do not mention HyperGrid.

I remember, way back when (wow talk about dating myself here!), how the internet would be made up of nothing but self-hosted websites. Guess what? It's not. Why? Well, it's simple really. Security. That's what web hosts provide to the normal average cookie. Same concept. And I'm applying the internet analogy here, because I keep hearing how HG is the next wave of the internet. Do I think that's wrong? Nah. I do see a great potential for the HG concept. Just not it's implementation as it stands. Because, like the internet, there will be hosts and providers. Companies, just like InWorldz, who will be there to step in for the security issues, to handle them correctly. A fall back for IP protection, where you can legitimately file a DMCA and have the content removed.

Now, I am totally aware I just probably irritated a whole lot of people. I'm not going to lose sleep over it. Sorry. InWorldz has it's own path and growth we're going to follow. And when the time comes that our residents say to us "Hey guys, we'd like to go from grid to grid", then we'll step up to that plate. Until that time, all those who want to scream that we're not HG connected... Allow me to introduce you to the concept of Social Networking, then point out the real HyperGrid numbers. When you put the two together, they don't add up.

This is probably one of my more brutally honest blogs, because, let's face it, I'm human. Yes, really, I don't run on cogs and such, nor do I have caffeine coursing through my veins or anything else. I'm human. And I get tired of hearing the detractors scream at us for this or that. So I need to vent once in a while. I think I've successfully done that!

So, to my lovely readers, thank you for letting me get that out in the open.... See ya InWorldz!