Let's see what stories I am pulling out of my butt cheeks today, how about: IMVU head office is cleaning up the TM and DMCA products, a quick look at imvupay rates and converting them with excel, maybe a fast story on boobies! and maybe a dash of mmorpg and USB key programs etc. Today's sceen cap is new hair called "Sissy" and I was trying to make this naughty nurse that saucy Cytra showed me. Let's roll
IMVU Matt Announces Trademark Cleanup
Matt made the official post to the forums here. Already there are 79 pages of responses! Holy thread count Batman. It seems one or two corporate heavies contacted IMVU and told them they are in violation. IMVU has decided to do a sweeping cleanup of everything. Now this is a temporary cluster-fuck, but overall I commend IMVU. They are doing the right thing. I know a lot of developers and players think "big bad imvu"...it really is not that way. The internet often has a Wild-West gestation period in many of its prominent businesses. This Wild period lasts about a year and then finally people come to their senses, lawyers get plugged in, and people are shocked to find out "hey! Internet business is just like real life business". In the real world you cannot use material created by other people for your own.
I tend to think this sweep will effect many developers. I am one of the guilty as I have two or three items that I tend to think will be deleted...they are too close to real world items. I am going to self flag them and have them reviewed to be safe since I would rather be legit. For an example, I used the a space invader character from a font set I have to make a sticker. Even though it is from a font set that I downloaded from a legit site, the font creator probably did not have the rights from Atari to use the old blocky aliens. It's simple things like this that we don't really think about.
This entire IMVU sweep also begs the question...If IMVU can clean their inventory, and There Inc. can clean their inventory, why can't Second Life clean their inventory? I'm guessing that if Fortune 500 lawyers contacted SL and said, remove that Nike swoosh or remove that McDonalds Arc, they would. These companies have many 200k a year lawyers on staff, eating bon bons, waiting to sue people's asses off. They have the power and scale to get things done. I think when you get down to the individual player, who is having their designs and textures stolen, we are small and have no legal force, and sadly get politely told to 'pound sand'. I also wonder, what if there were high volume texture thefts in IMVU, would they handle things differently? Since this virtual worlds is newer and a little smaller than SL, it hasn't experienced the problems of in-world stealing to the scale Linden Labs has. It will be interesting so see how these issues are handled in the future. I'm hope that in the new future, virtual worlds will develop tools to better protect content designers.
USB Thumbdrive Update
Celeb posted a great comment on a program just to clean out all the shit that is loaded on new computers like Dells.
Celeb writes
Did you know about the Dell de-crapifier tool?Check out:
http://www.yorkspace.com/pc-de-crapifier/
Check that site out!!! Just look at all the shit loaded onto these new computers. And Dell and them wonder why they have such tech support nightmares. AOL, MusicMatch, McAffee NetZero...everything on these lists are Viruses to me! I hate that stuff. You might be asking yourself "Why does Dell load so much shit onto their computers?" The reason is not because they want to help you have more fun...the reason is money. Let's say you want to make the cheapest computer on earth and you find out you can make it for $399 and so you want to sell it for $499...but you know Walmart can also sell it for $499 and you want to beat them in a price war...what do you do? Well if you are Dell, you "sell space" on the desktop. You call up AOL and say "for a zillion million we will load your crap on our computers...deal?" and AOL agrees. Then you call up McAfee and say "pay us a big bag of gold and we will load your crap on your computer desktop...deal?" and McAfee says deal. So now, you sell, not only the computer, but advertising on the computer. Now you can sell that same computer for $399 and be the low price leader.
This is one of the reasons I really like home-made computers...they are purely clean. I almost never send my friends to Dell since they are the kings of crap. I much rather send my friends to buy a Shuttle, which has a little crap but 10X less than Dell and HP and the big three low price people. Thanks for the great find Celeb. :)
Imvupay Currency Chart
If you make content at IMVU, you probably sell credits. Sadly there is not a corporate operated exchange like the excellent Linden Lindex, but their is the privately run Imvupay. One of the confusions with credit buyers and sellers, is that they all use different marketing terms to package money. Here is a quick excel chart which converts ImvuPay rates to regular rates. My math is never great so you might want to double check. This adds in a 15% deduction as well for the fee. Chart.
So to read the chart, here are a couple of quick examples...say you are paying $50 per 100,000 for credits...this is like an imvupay rate of 1700:$1. In reverse, if you buy at 3000:$1 on ImvuPay, that is like paying about $27.50 per 100,000 credits. I use this chart to help better understand what the various currency traders are buying and selling at.
BE Boob Man Comments!
Back when I first started this blog, I mentioned that I first learned Photoshop, from Boob Morphing tutorials. Hahaha. BE Archive is an old site dedicated to this black art. BE in this case, stands from breast expansion.
Imaginos writes
Hey there, I see you've linked to my old tutorial compilation on the BEA. Would love to see you do a tut one of these days. :) Hope the site helped you
I really should do some boob morph videos one of these days. I could by some naked art pics at the stock photo places and then maybe I could draw fake bikinis on them or something to keep things M rated rather than R. hehehe. As I said previously, there are four main systems for faking the big boobies:
Liquify
Cut, Magnify, Paste
Swap In A Set
Paint
The skills uses to make these transitions is a lot of the same skills needed to make Photoshop skins and makeup...you end up doing a lot of dodging, burning, color matching, seam alignment and hiding. If you enjoy photoshop and want to learn boob morphing, or many of the same skillsets used to skin, check out the BEA Art Tutorials. You need to be an adult though or you will get a boob in your eye.
I think the most impressive and inspiring tutorials are by a lad called Vitamin C. This shows the complexity of the Photoshop layers and the artistic eye used to paint fake breasts or skins. There is no porn here so this is safe for all. Check this great tutorial. I only wish Vitamin C had left the PS file for download to even understand it better. Here is the final art, forget the boobies for a minute, and check out the excellent use of photoshop and shading. I think it is rather impressive how it seamlessly blends into the original photograph.
Ok I'm tired, can I stop typing now? LoL I keep blogging too much! Oh! fuck I just remembered three stories.
Dark and Light Free
Dark and Light publicly admitted they were rushed to market by investors. They feel bad and want to clean the bugs and they are opening the game for free for now.
http://www.darkandlight.com/
Ok Go's New Video
I was sipping the tequila and watching VH1 when I saw the greatest video! Ok Go, you might of seen them in...I think it is a Gap TV ad...they are so retro Mic Jagger! I want to grow my hair out now but my hair is too thick and would never look flat and greay like that. *sigh*...ok where was I? Oh!!! So this video...Frig!! It's so cool and the best way I can describe it is that it is like figure skating on excercise equipment! Peeeeeee. Watch Here It Goes Again right here. If you want to see the Gap ad thingy, watch Do What You Want.
Speaking Of Tunes, London Bridge!
Click here then click bottom left Music then click Fergie London Bridge. I have so many questions and thoughts on this video! 1) Did Fergie leave the Black Eyed Peas? Is she solo? 2) This song steals at least six hooks from other songs! Is it trademark or copyright violation? You know what I mean by a hook...like when a guy grabs a megaphone and sings into the mic, that is a "hook"...Fergie steals like Gwen Steafni's Hollaback beat and feel, then she uses like 50 cents In the Club "we don't give a fuck about your birthday" and then there are a few other hooks that I can't get out of my head but can't solve. Overall...I think it is a great song and I dig the massive levels of distortion...but I do think it is cheap using all those almost trademarked hooks from other artists. Oh!!! And did you see Tito Ortiz...ultimate fighter in the video! Yay Tito!
Litha Paint
Just thought this was cool...like a web based, clunky, photoshop
http://www.litha-paint.com/
::cries:: I'm a dell user :( Don't hate me....but I love my Dell. I'm not computer savvy and would rather have someone make it for me than me do it myself
Posted by: Elika | Wednesday, August 16, 2006 at 05:47 AM