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: Five Quick Tips in Under Five Minutes

This week we’re running through some tips that were too short to make into an entire podcast. 

Photos: Make the Prim a Light Source

One: When creating pictures for your Second Life home using snapshots, consider turning the prim into a light source to make the image look better.  To do this open the edit menu and go to the “Features” tab, then check “Light” to make the prim a light source.  I usually set the intensity to around 0.7 because it gives the colors nice pop without whiting out the image. (Imagine a television with the brightness or contrast set too high.)  This will eliminate dull, hard to see pictures, and give them a pretty cool glow too. 

Photos: Change Permissions to Prevent Meddling

Two: When sending photos by texture that are intended for the recipient only, change the texture permissions to NO TRANSFER, NO COPY, NO MODIFY  to make sure your image doesn’t get passed around. There are rarely good reason to copy, transfer, or modify a personal photo. And before you send that texture, take a listen to my episode on safety, and use good common sense.  Once it leaves your computer it’s gone forever, and textures can be places out in the open, on billboards, and in profiles for all the world to see.  There are some things you don’t want to become famous for.

Podcasts: Listening in Second Life

Three: Listen to podcasts directly on your Second Life land. Take the download link from the website for the individual episodes and enter it into the Music URL on your land.  You can listen to the podcasts in game, and even listen in as group by all pressing the play button at the same time.  I often do this for the science fiction story podcast Escape Pod, or when listening to podcast novels while I manage my IM’s and attempt to slay the drama monster.

Clothes: Organizing Your Virtual Closet

Four: Organize your inventory by outfit. If you organize your favorite outfits into folders, you can just left click and choose “Replace Outfit” to change your entire outfit without having to select and wear individual items. Throw in weapons, accessories, animation overrides, and HUDs, and all of these will be loaded as well. This works especially well for people like me who like to use a variety of different types of avatars, because it makes shape shifting as easy as Paris Hilton on an Oxycodone bender.

(Disclaimer! Paris Hilton has never used drugs… for real…)

Superpowers: Seeing Invisible Objects

Five: See the invisible world.   By going to view and selecting “Alt Shows Physical” you can see all of the physical objects in an area, including the invisible ones, whenever you hold down “Alt.”  You’ll be able to see the red outlines of weapons, attachments, and invisible prims.  The one downside of this setting is that you’re going to see these invisible prims whenever you hold down the Alt key to adjust your camera, and I also need to warn you that these will show up in snapshots, so it’s best to turn this off when taking pictures or videos in game.  But it’s still pretty cool to see some of the… ahem… attachments people are walking around with, thinking they are completely hidden.  

That’s it for this episode!  Stop by the website and 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 us out on the web at QuickAndDirtyTips.com.  

So until next time remember, alt-highlighted invisible prims can be photographed, so consider very carefully which ones you want to wear in public… As this podcast is work safe, I won’t elaborate on this point, but trust me, you don’t want to end up in my scrapbook.