Is it just me or has anyone else noticed this too? I mean, I just noticed many Runtime products now wposted at CP and updated for to current figures (like somoe M2 textures updated for M3). I know Apollo moved there recently - but is a larger merge occuring? I like and use both sites. I am curious if anyone knows anything about any sort of new relationships between two of my fav Poser sites. Thanks. Tim

A merger would be unfortunate, I think, like the homogenization of PoserPros when it became part of Happy Valley. It's hard to imagine the corporate folks at ef letting RDNA keep its edgy New York streetwise feel. But who knows? My favorites too, but just because I like raspberry ice cream and bleu cheese, doesn't mean I want them together. M

RDNA lost a lot of the edgy feel a while ago but it is kind of interesting.

They do lots of special products geared towards e-frontier figures. You have to remember they have been affiliated with each other since CP launched. Recent market survey have indicated taht the Miki userbase is actually considerably larger than anyone first anticipated, and certainly larger than reflected in forum/site polls. I think everyone is just using the opportunity to market Miki and make money. RDNA is a brokerage, well of sorts. There would eb technically nothing to merge. Their products are always in CP already.

RDNA, Sixus1, Jolly and other Content Merchants have been associated with Poser 6 from the get go. CP and RDNA appear to have gotten together to offer some Bundled Packages of Miki lately. CPeF provides Miki and RDNA provides Textures, Hair and Clothing. CP offers a discount on the bundles to their Passport Membership. With the potential to see Apollo's acceptance increase as well, I could potentially envision more such associated bundle packages . I just do not see CP wanting to take over RDNA. The synergy they have now appears to be working just fine. I believe CP wants their own site to expand and improve. Re: PP Sorry, just my opinion here,I just don't see the same PP Forums Traffic or much else, that I remember, before the sale. Cheers DR

I wrote a letter of complaint to Content Paradise because I thought, and still think, their method of displaying an item for sale is very inadequate. First, the webpage is JAMMED with 2 useless sidebars. This makes the area to show the content tiny. Second, vendors get away with showing almost no details of the products, only teasers. Third, in many cases vendors are armored-up. a) There often is no link to a read-me b) there is no email address to speak with the vendor c) There is no direct link to the vendor or a way to get ahold of them. Here is the letter I got back, polite enough. I think that CP should have some sort of explanation on their site of their "partnership/showcase/shoppingmall" paradigm. Hi John, I apologize for certain shortcomings in the function and design of Content Paradise, but it isn't another Content Store... It's more of a content mall. If you need to investigate a product more deeply than you can here, you actually have to go to the Content Store who's selling the item. We offer the top products sold at other content stores all in one place so you don't have to go to 25 different stores to hunt up what your want and need. If we had to support 20,000 products, and over 500 artists/vendors individually, the 4 person crew that operates Content Paradise would die of trauma and sleep deprivation in the first week. What makes us possible, is that we are an indirection of dozens of other stores. We are a service. Part of the price of that is flexibility. If you look at the Partners tab at the top of the screen, you'll find we provide the contact information for you to get all the additional support your need for any product that interests you. When you are selling 20,000 products your need to provide tools and support... and the number of products and customers is growing geometrically. So, I apologize that we aren't all things to all people... I realize that the individual strores can give you much better direct service for each product. That is why we invite you to contact them to get what you need. Content Paradise is a Content Mall. In that context it's clean, efficient, and beautifully designed... use it the way it's designed and you'll have a great time here :-) Mary Tobias

Second, vendors get away with showing almost no details of the products, only teasers. Sorry but that's not true. The pictures used on the Rosity-stuff that is on Content Paradise is exactely the same pictures as the ones you see here. The text, too. It's all copied, right down to the font colour (which unfortunately makes one or two of my newer things hard to view on CP, but... well...) The initial pictures are smaller than they' are here, and it's a pity, but a simple click on the picture will open it in its original size, in a new window. Same with the thumbnails for the other promo pictures, they all open in a new window. I would assume that the same is true with RDNA-content, but I haven't been to RDNA lately. Since their upgade, my login no longer sticks and it's a PITA to have to log in at each visit. (and yes I've checked my cookies and everything) So I buy my RDNA content through CP nowadays. Much more convenient.

Hey what was the email you sent them? You got quite a long response. Can we see what you sent them??

I just nabbed a New Miki clothing Freebie they've put out over at Raunchyminds! Nice leather getup! You guys who have Miki should go check it out!

okay, I have take back one thing and acknowledge another. When I said "teasers" all I meant was, the promo images were so small that you can't tell anything from them when they are rotated into the "Main" frame. This is/was my general frustration with vendors, compounded by the Tiny Image problem with CP. My general frustration is that very often vendors DO NOT show enough or proper images so you can make a buying decision. For instance, texture artists show models posed and lighted and haired etc., but seldom actually let you see the actual texture! Therefore, one never knows if the texture is full of highlights. So, I take back the "teaser" comment. Now about getting the promo to open full screen.....WHOD-A-THUNK-IT? CP does not give that instruction anywhere, and you notice Mary Tobias does not mention it. So okay, I am supposed to be smart enough to figure out that, even though clicking on the thumb gets the image into the "Main", you can take it further by DClicking on the image. So shoot me. Anyway, I am glad to find out all thesse cool tricks about what CP "actually" is and how it "actually" works as they are slowly revealed. The day I wrote my frustration letter to them, I WAS dealing with two items I wanted, neither of which had a readme attached or a link to a vendor. I had to leave CP and find it elsewhere. ::::: Opera :::::

I agree that there should be an easy way to contact the vendor there. But the thing is, they're copying Rosity's text, everything but links, actually. So the usual link, which goes to Renderosity, doesn't work. There IS however an easy way to get in touch with at least the Rendersoty merchants: The readme. Rosity demands that the merchant has a valid email adress listed in the readme, and you can read the readmes on CP too :o) So that way you can at least relatively easy contact the vendor. I agree that a simple MailTo link at the name would have been even more convenient, but otoh that opens a big possibility of spam-harvesters. And it's not like I need more mails about how to enlarge my penis or get a university degree....

CP is much newer to content than most of us are, being the old dusty dogs we are. Crabky dogs too. hehe. They just need time to catch up. Most other Poser sites took years to get pretty and friendly. They need the space and time to come into their own. They have uber traffic though. My sales and most of my friends at RDNA all had about 50% sales from CP.

Message edited on: 03/05/2006 15:28

. . . that got quite the rambling conversation going. . . : )

i admit I was crabby!

Hi operaguy. I always try to make CP as useable and user friendly as possible and if you follow the CP Passport Forums you'll see that when users make valid sugestions/complaints about site operations myself or my assistant make every effort to accomodate those changes. Not a day goes by that I don't change cp to improve its ui and operation. Case and point. If you find the leftbar gets in your way and don't like it, I've added a link to the bottom of it to hide it. Just click "<< Hide This Bar". As for the product detail images, I added the instruction to click the thumbnails for a larger copy and have now added an extra description to the larger image that it can be clicked for a full size version. Also, as a rule of thumb anything your mouse cursor changes to a hand you it means the item is linked and you can click on that item. I hope the changes help, -Ry

on behalf of us all, thank you very much!! sorry I was crabby, but glad to have results. Do you think the general Poser community understands the "mall" paradigm of CP? ::::: Opera :::::

Do you think the general Poser community understands the "mall" paradigm of CP? I do. I think most users do, but maybe not initially (and that can be a problem). I will tell you CP has gotten me looking at some stores I had ignored but for once every few months. It also has gotten me to look at some artists I had overlooked in the past. Mall concept is nice, and with them offering some original stuff it makes it worthwhile to check out more regularly.

Do you think the general Poser community understands the "mall" paradigm of CP? I happen to like CP as well. I can select Miki, Koji, Apollo etc and instantly get a wide variety of offerings from several merchant sites, as opposed to visiting individual sites to see what's offered. I find one purchase for several merchant site's products is much nicer than jumping from site to site. Exactly RC, when I go through CP Mall's Latest Products, I see something I like, that I may not have otherwise gone to and individual site to see. I noticed an entire set (Ringmasterm Clowns etc) from Sixus1 that I probably wouldn't know about. The biggest question I see in the CP Forum is: How long is the "Delay" from seeing a new product at a participating merchant's site, before it appears on the CP Shopping Mall??? Cheers DR

i'm on board with the mall!

Ok, I've got a suggestion too: what about putting the base Miki package on sale, ie 30% off for a limited time? This way even non Passport members would maybe think about getting her. At least I would.

I certainly agree that CP is a preferable place to shop, and I ground my teeth for days because Traveller's Samyra Shades didn't turn up there. (Bought it at RDNA this weekend.) I like the "mall" feel of the place. I wish the slice and dice functions worked a bit better. I don't buy at R'osity, so I don't have any interest in seeing what's for sale there, and the information sets a pretty high noise level in my shopping. Getting "all new Miki stuff except at R'osity" isn't (or didn't used to be) easy. I have to congratulate the guys who are putting together the content side of ef. For the first year of P5, Content Paradise was a cruel joke in the forums. There was even a thread here telling us how to remove the useless "Content Room" from the app. They have turned that around with a vengeance. I come in weekly, sometimes daily, to look around. And I spend money. The forums are not quite fleshed out yet, but given that DAZ still calls theirs "beta forums" after 2-3 years (of course, everything at DAZ is striving upward to new planets of alphahood... but that's NOT evolution), I'm willing to be patient. M

mickmca... Just out of curiosity.. why won't you buy anything here?

"like the homogenization of PoserPros when it became part of Happy Valley." mickmca, what are you talking about? There have been very few changes to PoserPros since DAZ rescued it. There has been no homogenization at all, unless I misunderstand what you mean. There's still the same diversity of products and forums. Changes planned for this year are all for the good ... stricter standards for product approval and the like. I'm aware that you have a beef with DAZ but c'mon. :-)

"like the homogenization of PoserPros when it became part of Happy Valley." mickmca, what are you talking about? There have been very few changes to PoserPros since DAZ rescued it. Agreed. There are still people bickering and bitching and taking each other's heads off in the Chicken Coop, if that's what you were worried about. I think Guarie has stepped in SLIGHTLY more than Mehndi used to, but only very slightly. It's still pretty much a free-for-all in the Coop. The rest of the forums, as far as I can tell, haven't changed even slightly. The store has had some changes that may not be visible on the surface (they've tightened up on what they'll accept for sale now, and NOT on any sort of morality grounds, but on quality ones, and it was a change that all of the merchants who spoke up supported). Other than that, it's pretty much the same place it always was, just with slightly different management. DAZ don't appear to interfere with the running of the place or set ANY policies there. They appear to be nothing more than absentee landlords (with the occasional maintenance guy that comes around to fix stuff and set up a few fun things like that Halloween trick or treat thing, which a good many people greatly enjoyed). bonni