Will Ross here, welcome to The Traveling Avatar’s Quick and Dirty tips for a Better Second Life. On this show we discuss tips and tricks for the game Second Life, created by Linden Labs.

This Week’s Episode: “Groupthink: Making Your Own Groups in Second Life.”

One of the benefits of a computer-based virtual world is organization. Everything you own can be accessed and searched with a few keystrokes, all of your friends are on one convenient list to visit or spurn at your whim, and virtue or vice are just a landmark or teleport away.  So it makes sense that organizations, cliques, clans, families, and businesses would be organized the same way, and in Second Life this is done through “Groups.”  Groups are used for everything from families, relationships, land trusts, businesses, and any number of other things, and they’re a great way to find and keep tabs on people of similar interests. If you’re looking for a group to join, you just open up your search menu, click the “groups” tab and search for keywords. You can even create your own if no one yet caters to your own particular interests.

Creating your very own group is fairly easy, and it will only cost you 100 Lindens. Right click on your avatar to open up the radial menu and choose “Groups.”  From this menu you can change your current group tag and organize the groups you belong to. From here click “Create” and you’ll bring up the new groups menu. It’s important that you choose your name wisely, because apart from a forced change for a “terms of service” violation, you won’t be able to change it once you create the group. 

From this menu you can also change your group insignia (which can be either texture you upload or an in-game snapshot) and the group’s charter (which tells the world why your group exists). It’s also important that you label the group “mature” if you plan to use it for anything naughty, since not all of us want to stumble upon “Furries Gone Wild” without being prepared for it. You can also choose from here if the group will show up  people’s profiles if you want to be all secrety about it.  Yes, I made up a word:  secrety. Update your dictionaries.

One important thing to remember is that you can’t let your group fall below two people in membership, or you’ll lose it. I’ve actually got an “Alt” (alternate character) for just such a situation, and you might consider making one when you create a group. You know, just in case people aren’t as excited about 17th century feudal Japanese shogun successions as you are.  Actually, I’d probably join that group, but I’m that sort of a nerd.

Now for all you business owners out there, I’d like to close with a warning about groups.  Be very selective about who you let have an owners tag in your group, and reserve rights to things like selling land and objects only for yourself. I personally know of three separate clubs that were stolen by partners from the original owners, and none of them were ever returned since the person had the authority to do so by virtue of having their powers granted by the group owner. It’s always better to be safe than sorry. 

That’s about it for our primer on groups. And with that I’d like to announce the winners of our contest for three copies of “The Unofficial Tourists Guide to Second Life” by Paul Carr and Graham Pond. As I said, I’m giving away copies for the funniest, strangest and coolest picture. I used a completely unscientific method to choose the winners, so if you disagree, or think you could take a better picture, send me one! If the winners would kindly send an IM from the avatar that won the contest the avatar Craig Jua (C R A I G J U A) with their delivery information, I’ll have my delivery ninja’s shoot those books out to you.

The strangest picture award hands down goes to Bailey Brennan who sent me a snapshot that, quite frankly, haunts my dreams. Two words: banana hammock. So thanks for ruining a good nights sleep.

The picture I thought was the coolest came from Ashley McKinley, who turned everything to wire frame at a dance club and caused me some fairly intense vector graphics flashbacks. 

Finally, the one I found the funniest was sent in by Samantha McMahon. It’s a great picture, and I’m not sure if it’s supposed to intentionally be funny, or if I just have a one track mind, but frankly it makes me laugh every time I look at it. To me, it implies a less than work safe rating, so I’m not going to describe it, but you can see it by going to (www.flickr.com/photos/travelingavatar), where you can also see the other contest entries. And please, keep sending me photos.  I’ll keep adding them to the page as I receive them. 

That’s it for this episode! Stop by the website at QuickAndDirtyTips.com to check out my Twitter Page, if you want to see what I’m up to on any given day! Send your feedback or question to secondlife@quickanddirtytips.com, and the comment line is 206-888-6975, that’s 206-888-mysl.  The Traveling Avatar’s Quick and Dirty Tips for a Better Second Life is part of the Quick and Dirty Tips network, so be sure to check out other great shows like Grammar Girl, Mr. Manners, and Legal Lad, at QuickAndDirtyTips.com. 

So until next time, remember, the first rule of Ninja Fight Club is you don’t talk about Ninja Fight Club. Strangely enough, the second rule involves pandas, but per the first rule, I can’t talk about it.