I think I also do not spend a lot of time on the Second Life road… but there was a Time I did.
Reading a Blogpost of Alicia, I decided to think about if I am a Couch Potatoe in my Second Life. Or should I rather call it Parcel Potatoe, Firefox Potatoe or Windows and Apllication Potatoe?
Alicia thinks that she should once again go somewhere in SL. Looks like she makes a Comparison and found out that there was more Activity back in her Second Life Days.
She noticed that´s not only her. Most of here friends just stand on ther Platforms as well. So talking about my Second Life related Activity, I must say this is my own experience I made in the past as well. I defenetly can agree cos if I login to Second Life, I hang out on my own Parcel (Sky- and Sandbox) most of the time too. And it´s true that I rather spend more time with Forums, SL Marketplace, Twitter, blogging and so on. Sure I call it my SL Activity as all this is mostly related to SL. But the good Point Alicia makes is that it isn´t Inworld Activity. And when she said that she noticed the same with her Friends, I just can sign it cos I notice similar behavior of my Friends.
So in my Case I can explaine it so… back in the Days, Second Life was so new to me that really everything was magical and interesting. I was just amazed about each Place I visited. I became somehwat addicted and soon when I met a Person who introduced me to her Estate, Club and Community, then I became all the more inlove with Second Life. I believe back in these Days I did not minimize the Viewer very often. I remember everything was pretty interesting so that the rest of the Internet just became a minor matter.
The Place where I mostly did hang out was an Estate with a Club and I know I got my first free Inworld Shop there as we became very good Friends soon. At this Time I did rather have a small Collection of Products and they all were everything but not Complex or something someone would need. 
Just my beginner Stuff. And also at this Time I did not spend much Time to produce new Stuff. So apart from hang out my own Products there I worked at her Club as well and I remember back that I got a very good Amount of L$. At least compared to what most of the Dancer´s and Host´s get today in SL. It was 1000 – 2000 L$ (really no Joke!) per Hours for working in her Club and much more then my little Shop income. Sure this was a Reason to stay inworld and it would be a Lie if I would say no. But everyday when the Club were closed we did still hang out together too. So I wasn´t hunting L$ only.. I just enjoyed the Time with my new Friends. We had always cool Topics when we did chat and we had defenetly a lot of fun. So I can say it was rather the Friendship which did bring me online. After some Month I had the feeling it was not just the Team of the Club but rather something like a Family and Federation. The bad End of the Story is that she one Day closed her Estate forever. I believe I would still hang out with her much but she did stop to login regulary and later she wrote me that she wont come online often in the Future as ReaLife keeps her on the Run. I can say I miss her much as it was my most active (inworld) Time in SL. Exploring, chatting, dancing, listening Music, shopping and I cant count it all. Sure is I did see a lot of Places in those Days.
So when my Friend did stop loggin in, I had some more Time to learn more about Conten Creation within Second Life. Soon I became a regular on these bigger Sandbox´s and did experiment a lot with Prims and LSL scripting. As I was still a beginner when we talk about creating Content and from now on very fascinated with all that but a very slow creating one, I would call this Time my second Level of inworld Activity. Even if I still was sad that a Friend leaved Second Life, I can tell you that I in fact now did spend more and more Time inworld. I rented my first own Land and started my Store and later a Mall which I did rent out for Tenants. Managing all this alone did result in much more Activity but not only on my Land. Making connections with other Landowner, renting AdBoards here and there affected me to see more and more Places inworld.
But some day creating things out of Prims became routine anyhow. I just learned to create things I have in mind and now didn´t need to think about it much. I just started to create thing´s I had in mind and this Process became faster then before. With much more finished Products then back in the Days I noticed that Xstreet got a bigger Economy-impact then my Mall. The difference of Sales was so huge that I just started to think about closing my Mall and rent a much smaller Place to just have my Magic Boxes rezzed anywhere and a Skybox for new little Projects.
So what about today? They just merged Xstreet to SL Marketplace and the old good impact of Xstreets Sales were just the beginning. My sales on SL Marketplace even increased compared to the closed Xstreet. And after reading other Blogs I now know and bet that a very heavy Amount of Sales go rather through SL Marketplace instead of Inworld Stores. Not enough… new Features like Mesh Import makes Content Creators stay outside of SL to create Content. I do so now too.
Today? I believe I can get these fascinating Essentials of Second Life without logging in much. And there is for me the Problem. It became creating Content outside of SL, managing these Matters outside of SL, advertise it outside of SL. When things are done, then they get just adjusted inworld and then dropped in a Magic Box. Oh and soon we dont even have to rent Land for a Magic Box as we soon can sell Thing´s out of our Inventory. I believe all this has a huge negative Impact on the Virtual Estate Business too.
For socializing it´s pretty much the same.. Social Networks, Forums, blogging… I believe I spend more Time outside of SL today. You get these Second Life related News and hot Topics outworld.. and you can discuss it with People even if you are not online on the Grid. Do I like it? No I think Alicia is right. We should explore more often again Inworld. What I did now was losing the Fascination of SL, I had early Days in SL . The Question is if we are the Reason for that.. if we are lazy? If we lost Ideas where to go? If we lost Friends inworld? Or is this all due to some changes LL made?
Really I like new Features like Mesh Import and the upcoming Features. So.. well.. I am not sure. I just know that Content Creation became a very importend Part of my Second Life and so I can just judge it from this Perspective. Linden Lab gave us Tools like SL Marketplace and the Mesh Feature to just handle everything we want but not inworld. So there seems to be just a minimalized Reason for Content Creators to stay online on the Grid. If I could handle all this only Inworld and there was a Time… then I would probably rather be anywhere around on the Grid. I dont want to say that I dislike the changes of Linden Lab. Great Features arrived and will arrive soon. It´s just for me clear that they have a huge impact. They change Second Life.
Ok. Looks like for me socializing became simply suppressed by creating Content for SL. And now I dont do it often inworld. Even if I still have fun with what I do.. I agree.. it´s anyhow sad because there is maybe so much more I could do inworld. I sometimes just dont know what and why if I can do it without being around on the Grid.
However I think Alica found a Topic which might be for some of us pretty up to date. At least for me. I am sure we all have differend Reasons to be Parcel Potatoe´s or People who just login to put some Thing´s up for Sale. Maybe some of us are still often inworld. But I believe fact is that there are a lot of People who aren´t and if then they simply hang out on ther Parcel and have no other Ideas. Maybe I should start again to explore what SL can offer me apart from what I do now. Or maybe all this is just a subjective Feeling as we did spend already so much Time inworld in the past.. maybe it just feels differend then before. The latter would be what I experiences in other Virtual Worlds like World of Warcraft and so as well.
7 Years ago I did explore any Places in World of Warcraft just because I was nosy what there could be behind that Hill on the Horizon. But today I know there might be nothing then some low Level Monsters which wouldn´t even hurt me. That cool feeling of exploring new Worlds comes again when new Content or an Expansion arrives. But also only for a short Period. The Focus of my WoW Gameplay is now mostly Player versus Player Matches, new Dungeons, Raid´s and so. The World is just nothing new to me…
But sure! The World of Second Life does always undergo modifications! Maybe I should write that on a Note in front of my Keyboard so that I sometimes do anything else then now. 
So this is a Topic I did think about often in the past two or three Month. So that I lately did make a good new start with exploring the Linden Realms.. another Day I was listening and chatting in a Electronic Music Club. But then I got bored again.. I simply do not often have Ideas what to do in SL. But well… lets see…
How to set up your own Banner with Link on the Second Life Forums
Today someone asked me how I did set up my Banner under each of my posts on the Second Life Forums.
I want to explain that now, because it is maybe helpful for others as well. Be sure.. it is really easy.
First Go and login in to the Forums.
1. At top on the right side you can see “My Settings”… click it.
2. Open the tab “Personal Profile” (I think its loaded already when you click “My Settings”)
3. There is a row called “Signature”… there need to be your html-code.
Here is the html code you need to put in there:
<a href=”PUT IN YOUR URL HERE”><img src=”PUT IN YOUR PICTURE ADRESS HERE”></a>
My html-code looks for example so:
<a href=”http://bit.ly/gqdgni”><img src=”http://i762.photobucket.com/albums/xx268/Miyo-Darcy/darcydesignsbanner.gif”></a>
When you did add your own html-code there. Just click on “save”. Now you will have your banner under each post you write in the forums.
Additional information: If your URL or the URL of your picture is to long.. you can use an URL-shortener.. for example bit.ly. There you can generate a short URL if yours is to long.
