A niche market?

Yesterday at work a friend brought to my attention Alibinetwork. The website describes the company as "...a cutting edge full-service discreet agency providing alibis and excuses for absences as well as assistance with a variety of sensitive issues." Digging deeper it looks like they provide a very comprehensive and varied service.

After my initial surprise and shock that such a service existed, my reaction settled on the side of admiration. I guess the market must exist if the business does so you have to give the ideas people brownie points for spotting an opportunity.

Thinking later about the whole thing I was struck with an idea of my own. If the business need exists in RL, then surely it must exist in SL too, right? If people need "Privacy Partners" in RL then why not in SL?

It was that thought that has led to my new business venture - SLalibis. Never one to shirk away from grabbing on to someone else's coat-tails I am launching the service today.

So, if you need an SLalibi talk to me. I understand my clients' unique situations and will explore with them various approaches before arriving at and implementing the best solution on a case-by-case basis. I understand your need for complete secrecy and discretion and won't plurk details of cases even with clients' names removed. Rest assured of that.

Maybe you need to hide a discreet booty-call. I can provide you with timely hunt gifts that 'prove' you were busy hunting, not playing hide the pixel sausage with your floozy.

Maybe you want time alone with a 'friend'. I can rent a private luxury hideaway sim in our name so it will never appear on your transaction history as well as constructing a perfectly innocent chatlog, complete with gestures, to show you were shopping and talking to many, many strangers at the time.

Maybe you're in a straight relationship but feel the need to hang around in gay strip clubs. I can replicate your appearance and provide you with time-stamped pictures showing 'you' in a range of well-known photogenic locations.

Maybe you simply want to buy the secret flesh-interest in your life with saucy gifts that cannot be traced back to you. I can track down the perfectly in-appropriate items and transfer them with a notecard on your behalf.

Or maybe your significant other is inworld while you are trying to seduce noobs on Orientation Island for meaningless cyber-nookie. I can provide you with an attractive and fashionable alt to use while logging on as you and entertaining your partner on your behalf.

This is just a selection of the services I can offer. Whatever your need, I can provide the support and solution you are looking for. With a guaranteed promise of no guilt-trip or disapproving noises. IM me now for a free initial consultation.

Double bill

Since the last post I've been a bit down on SL. I log in and find two people on my friends list online. And they're contacts rather than friends. It gets depressing sometimes.

Live music though, that is something I really enjoy in SL, and something I try to make time for. Especially when it's at Idle Rogue, my friend Chry's venue. Which is just next to my gallery incidentally ;)

Tonight it was a double-bill. Two artists for the price of one.


First up was Nohj Martinek, a Kiwi with an English accent. Nice stuff. Covers. Moody Blues, Elton John, Buffalo Springfield, Boby Dylan, Tom Petty. A nice half hour set. And great to open up for the headliner.

The headlining artist though was Adrienne Deezul, a kiwi in German exile.


And she was awesome. I cannot do the set justice by describing it. I really liked her stuff. I don't know how to pigeon-hole it for your understanding. Kind of think Joan Osborne with a smidge of Alanis Morrisette with their edgy vocals and acoustic stuff, but with kinda of an industrial celtic twist? I dunno. Something like that. Whatever. It was good.

Another extreme positive for the evening was the audience. And the artists, I guess. I stood in a room in SL with at least six other people in or from NZ. That has never happened before. I never ever thought it would. I knew three other people in NZ in SL before. I have now tripled the number I have met. Which makes me smile.

Time changes everything

Here in the Southern Hemisphere we moved a couple of weeks ago to wintertime. In contrast, as most of you will no doubt be aware, the Northern Hemisphere moved last month to summertime. Or daylight savings time. Or whatever you call it in your neck of the words.

I can hear you all wondering what place useless not-even-facts like that have on a SL blog. Well, I'll tell you. It all comes down to time differences. With me moving backwards and the north moving forward, given I am in the future, you'd be forgiven for thinking the time difference between me and pretty much the rest of SL got smaller.

For Europe, that is indeed true. I have gone from being 13 hours ahead of the motherland England to being only 11 hours ahead. It means when my mum forgets the time difference and phones me at 7pm it is now 6am for me, not 8am. Joy.

When it comes to the US though, and most of SL, the picture is a little murkier. Take SLT for example. I have gone from being 21 hours ahead to being 19 hours ahead. On the face of it it looks like the gap has narrowed. But because I am so far ahead of them it is like I am behind them, only in tomorrow. So ignoring days, I have gone from 3 hours behind SLT to 5 hours behind.

And that's the problem. When I come inworld it is usually somewhere after 8pm for me. In my summer that was 11pm SLT and still early enough for some of my American friends to be online. Now however, in my winter, 8pm for me is 1am SLT. The number of American friends still awake is thus smaller. And 8pm is the earliest I ever get online pretty much.

So basically the number of friends I ever see online from this point until October is minimal. Perhaps it is time to start exploring alone again. I could even resurrect Wherever Wednesday, I guess. Or maybe just hanging with my Aussie friends. Although previously that's always ended up causing me grief and drama. Aussie women, eh? Sheesh ;)

Disappearances

I am sure at some point before in this mammoth marathon of verbal seepage I have mentioned how we are helpless in our SL friendships and relationships. But I'm going to mention it again anyhow.

You see, this week it affected me very directly and I was once again reminded of the distance between us. Someone close to me, someone I speak to every day, vanished. I was not around all the long weekend, something friends were aware of, but I returned to the computer on Tuesday to find her absent. Tuesday passed, Wednesday passed and still no word. Common friends were worried too. It wasn't just me.


To compound the issue the friend's list shown on secondlife.com decided it would omit her. So my initial thought was that she'd deleted her account. But when I did get online I found the website's error and then dismay turned to worry.

I mean, there may have been illness, an accident or major RL trauma and stresses involved but I had no way of finding out which explanation of these, or indeed any other, was correct. I was left. Lanquishing.


The good news is that Thursday brought relief when she resurfaced. But that's all background detail really. The issue I am writing about is the helpless emptiness we feel when a friend poofs, even for a couple of days.

Some people talk about giving an SL friend RL contact details so that they can get in touch. But even with an RL email address and mobile phone number the situation here was not altered. If people don't want to answer emails or texts they don't have to. So again, you don't know if it space they need or an ambulance.


Others talk about getting similar contact details for an RL contact of your SL friends so you can get in touch in a second-hand kind of way. But some have good reason to be reticent to do that, and even if they're not, it seems a bit alarmist emailing someone you don't know just because a common friend has been offline for two days, eh?

I guess therefore I don't have a solution to suggest. It is just a problem that we have to live with due to the very nature of our global and virtual relationships. What is so exceptional and such a draw-card for me in terms of meeting fantastic people on-line on the other side of the world is also a key flaw. We befriend in this global intrasphere but cannot nip round to have a coffee and see if our befriendibles are ok. It sucks, huh?