I don't need to fight to prove I'm right

How long is it going to be before people accept that SLExchange has changed its name? I just can't bring myself to call it XStreet SL despite the logo, it's SLExchange. These things take time, the bus stop in town in Tesco was still the bus stop in town by Tesco years after Argos had moved into the store. Nowdays however it's the bus stop by Argos so eventually a change makes its mark.

I've been perusing showcase lately. The evil heinous showcase that has fashion as a section when it simply shouldn't be there. Take fashion out of it and it merely becomes questionable, fashion shouldn't be there, it's just plain wrong.

However I do find showcase to be useful. Who knew that Journey had a sim? More to the point, who wanted to know? You see search only finds what you want to find, if you're lucky. We do need more than search, despite what the perfectly prim lobby would have you believe. There's none so blind as those who can't see.

It's not just the showcase though, I was out checking a former ad farm area today and not only did I find a train track, minutes later a plane flew past me. I had been told about the SL railroad before but I hadn't checked it out, it's a really nice feature, but who would pay to ride it?

So I've been to a giant maze, discovered en garde, been ice skating (although I knew about that one already) and I'm planning on going skiing. I wonder at times how entertainment venues make money. Greenies have been charging, to much negative vibes, but this is a culture issue. I don't like the fact that they charge and I won't go there whilst they do, but why shouldn't they charge? They have to pay their tier fees like everyone else. My mind can't quite understand why I find this concept wrong.

Clubs are in the same boat, clubs need to be free. Yet clubs need to pay staff, pay tier, pay advertising. This is why we have so many club/mall setups. Entertainment here is restricted by our misgivings about paying for entry. That's not to say there aren't clubs here, there are umpteen of them but the model seems to be mall/strippers/tips/hope for the best. This isn't a sound financial business model in any way shape or form and many clubs are simply empty. Club Carnage isn't, there always seems to be something going on there, but that appears to be the exception rather than the rule.

I like live music here when I go but I don't go often. The last live act I saw was Kina Babii, who is English so I'm biased there, but it was good. I don't understand why more live musicians aren't coming here but maybe that's linked to people's reluctance to pay entry fees so club and venue owners don't hire them.

However the whole concept of money flow brings me back to believing that people simply need jobs. If people have linden dollars in their pocket they won't be so aghast at spending them.

There's a whole big world out there, plenty of things you simply won't find in search, but to flourish we need to be able to find them easily and we need to have an infrastructure that supports a lot more users on each sim. The place would really creak if all sims were even half busy.

There's so much more this platform could be delivering. However more live music, more information on where to find entertainment venues, more word of mouth, involves more groups. Social networking here is a long long way from where it should be, will they ever address this? It's not just the number of groups, it's the system for receiving messages, the 25 message cap. The whole concept of communication needs a drastic rethink. I should be able to pick up my messages inworld, not have them sent to my email. If my mailbox gets full the message is not delivered, or I can't send messages myself, it's the way messaging systems work.

This requires Linden Lab to acknowledge their current systems don't deliver, do they have the guts to be brave about this?