Quote -
Renderosity is based on WWW pages. A web page is sent when there is a request to send one, there is no ongoing "connection" Renderosity could use.

Rendo doesn't do it, but there is a way to keep a "constant" connection...www.drudgereport.com uses it - you put in a piece of JavaScript to request a page refresh every x seconds. ;)

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Quote -
Since they ARE gravatating away from figures not created by EF/SM, it wouldn't surprise me for them to remove any forums that might compete with their products, and I'm sure a free Apollo does compete with their G2 males.

Not to put a pinch on anything, but the CP makes a percentage of anything sold there, whether it supports their own in-house products or not... including AM byproducts.

Rule #1 of business - when it involves profit, always keep your options open :)

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Quote - I agree.  So they have a new home.  I'm excited about it.  It's not dying, it's changing and you know, sometimes change is good.  I know folks say "if it aint' broke don't try and fix it" but it's DAZ's baby and their business model may not agree with everyone but they are still going strong so they are doing something right!!

True, but it lasted 3 years longer than I thought it would, and I was the one who managed to talk DAZ into buying the thing.

--

Quote - The closing announcement thread does say **many **items are not being moved over. And some are saying people are starting to suspect that is this is a vast understatement, though this may not be the case. Some people are going here, RDNA, and CP or just moving some of thier content.

True.

IMHO, I have no kick against upping quality standards a touch, which is what I think is happening in this case.

Quote - 1) Artzone died and this is part of a multi-step plan to revive it, and replace the need for Renderosity's style of Marketplace community site.

You forget - DAZ' fora are now just as busy as --if not more busy than-- Renderosity's. They already have a large and active community.

I don't see Artzone as dead per se, but as a not-so-great idea to emulate MySpace, Facebook, and/or DeviantArt. The fora will continue on just fine regardless.

Quote - If things start out as promised, they will not stay that way down the road for those involved. Just my opinion of course.

DAZ didn't have to bail out PP in 2005. There was literally no business case to justify it save for preserving diversity within Poserdom. They kept it going for 3 yrs. In spite of their own principles, they kept the Chicken Coop as it was, without modification. They kept the place completely free of the censorship and attitude-control that was and is present in the DAZ fora and in Rendo.

Quote - *By accessing or using the services of this Site, downloading Materials or merely browsing the Site, you agree ..."

*"...While DAZ 3D does not censor or read private site mail, in the event that DAZ 3D has reason to believe that such communication could be harmful to DAZ 3D, DAZ 3D reserves the right to read, and delete such harmful messages from the Site."

Renderosity does this right now; they simply don't say anything up-front. Should Merchants now leave Renderosity?

Quote - I think merchant's need more options and freedoms.

Agreed - and they have perfect freedom and a universe of options right now. The very nature of the Internet allows them the right and ease by which they can set up their own store, set their own terms, and take 100% of the price for themselves, minus whatever overhead they spend... just like any business.

Quote - Diane's site has great traffic. Many have studied 'rotica's traffic for years. There are great opportunities for many there I think.

I agree 1000%

Renderotica is an excellent place to sell items. I do, and the store does very, very well. There is also new sitecode in the works to revamp the joint, and at the same time make it highly exciting and participation-friendly.

I for one would love to see more folks get involved. Honestly, you don't have to make sex-oriented stuff to sell there - any high-quality item works fine. You also have perfect freedom to make whatever the hell you like. As long as there's a solid level of quality, you're very welcome to participate.

(Disclaimer of honesty: I'm the server-monkey there, and I occasionally sell stuff in the Renderotique. :) ).

PS: oops - my alter-'nym got logged in instead. My apologies.

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Quote - Alright, let's open it up then to the entire community as a project. 

Here is the dream:

The SCI-FI TENTACLE (avoids copyright issues)

Actually, I dunno if George Lucas can chase you for that... he's not the only one to have used such a concept in a movie.

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Same story here... :)

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Quote - > Quote -

Usually I use HarvestMan for that. Do you know it? (http://harvestmanontheweb.com/)
It's open source and extendable to most special cases.

Funny you should mention them, I was looking at them and Larbin (http://freshmeat.net/projects/larbin/)yesterday afternoon as prime candidates. Any changes I make to either will of course be released/distributed GPL as well.

mickmca: I agree with you. My only concern is income if things grow. I think advertising can fulfill that need, but I do not want it to end up like Tom's Hardware and the like, where you have 80% of the page in ads, 20% in content. That would suck IMHO.

OTOH, a few discreet banners should suffice considering, and with enough volunteers (not just anyone, but volunteers with integrity, intelligence, and a knack for wit), the time invested by individual people can be kept somewhat sane.

3DSmacker: Keep it up and I'll take you up on it :)

adp001: I've begun on hunting for a web crawler/tracker script (which, yes, obeys robots.txt) that may well be useful for hunting down freebies across sites.

Nothing firm yet, though... still working on that aspect of it :)

Also, I'll likely be recruiting native German, Japanese, French, and Spanish writers pretty soon.

Having read all of this, I really like how it's all coming together.

There is one part that I think we can really do something useful with:

Quote - If you are going to allow more help for non-English speakers, then I suggest you liberally pepper your pages with buttons that link to BabelFish.  In fact, I suggest you find a way for the various speakers to identify what language they are using so that the linker to BabelFish will have that information when he or she goes there.  Its nice to allow more for non-English speakers, but you also have to watch out for being side-tracked by particular language.  Churches run into this problem all the time.

Actually, if I can get hold of volunteers (pref. one who is literate in French, one Japanese, and one Spanish -to start with- , The menus (and initial content, like news, etc) can be rigged for those particular languages right off the bat (w/ Forums, it's a simple matter of adding the appropriate language-specific fora). The Web Browser's User Agent string can determine which default menu shows up (with JavaScript handling it), and a simple drop-down menu can switch this to an available language.

Babelfish does very well for Western typset languages, but I found one that does (though not fully syntactically) live translation of Japanese-English as well.

As for help (you mentioned some folks being insular in nature)? I'll happily take on all the help I can get! :) Initially a listing of What's Out There is a best bet (otherwise I'd go completely insane spending every waking moment pressing to, say, write a web crawler that works reliably everywhere). Then we can begin to categorize and check availability and update statuses (is that even a word?).

Maybe over time the freebie makers can (hopefully) come straight to us and list 'em directly, obviating the need for a site crawler. Many sites and freebie makers (especially the Japanese ones) will rarely do this, but a working relationship with the sites which have perfectly working freebie listings (e.g. PoserClub.jp) would be rather beautiful.

Another thought - some freebies may not be appropriate for general consumption (Renderotica, RaunchyMinds), so more-or-less perpetual info on how to reach the sites that hosts those should suffice, allowing their individual site-based age controls help prevent bad reactions.

Cheers!

Thank you! I've been wanting to see these for quite awhile. I'll answer them each in turn (though admittedly I'll have to type fast.. need to be getting ready for work soon).

Quote - Is there a possibility that Daddy (or whoever) may yank back the space and bandwidth once this thing really gets going? Is the owner of the web-hosting company aware of just how big this could get? In my time as a COBOL mainframe programmer, I've heard of people running side businesses off 3 am mainframe idle times. They'd typically get found out and
have their datasets erased, screwing not only them, but also all their
"clients." Now I know you are talking about helping hobbists and not
businesses, but hobbist spend money too, and also their time (which is money too). 

The site space is courtesy of my sister, who owns the company. She's been in business for five years now... considering the tons of work I've put in to help her get the servers up and running, I'm sure it won't get pulled anytime soon. If this thing begins to really grow, I already know of and have basic pricing structures for larger hosting services that are still within realistic budgets. If it gets really large, then I know of at least two datacenters that I can turn to locally, with full SLA and space to spare.

Quote - One of the reasons the major communities are more businesses then communities is that running and supporting a website (with real support personnel)
really does cost money even while also factoring in the profit motive.

I agree, perfectly.

Quote -
However noble your intentions are regarding having a site that is not distorted by
the profit motive, I think you will still run into the money question. Your operations will still have to support themselves somehow, so the most you will be doing is having an operation that's distorted by money in a different way than the operations that currently exist. As you have said "They have to have that focus, or they would die." Once you have the information you need, you will need to make clear how your new site will support itself.  The more likely your site is to
survive, the more likely it is that it will attract the interest you need to make it worthwhile.

I've been thinking about this as well. When I originally wrote the post, I had figured initially that I could set up discreet banner ads and use the revenue to support the site. If things get too big, I will have to find other means to support costs, but you are right in that those means must be communicated clearly to everyone. In my professional life, I state my biases up-front when asked to recommend something, and have found that such honesty is very refreshing to those who hear it. Not thaat I'm some sort of great orator, but that there are no hidden motives or angles.

"I think it would be cool to have a shopping guide, based on value, price, and based on actual unbiased experiences."

  > Quote - I think that would be an excellent ideal, if you could pull it off. The problem would be the cost of gathering all that data to get it in one place. I created an earlier thread (www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php) in which I floated the idea of creating a wiki-fyed database of all the 3D objects that were available, freebie or costie. I also had the idea that this user supported database (which is what I meant by wiki) could also be a collection point for requests for non-existent objects so that independent creators could see the demand for a given kind of object and meet the demand. I was presented with the fact that www.whatever3d.com/, mystic-nights.com/directory/index.php, www.sam3d.com/, and

poserpoorhouse.pbwiki.com/ were all doing this very thing. And for all I know, they may be passing search terms with zero results on to the vendors in some fashion. (Someone made a suggestion here that Rendo's zero-result search terms be handed over to the marketing dept).

I've not seen these offhand, but I will read them today when I get the chance. I am grateful to see that you've already gone to the trouble of researching much of it in public.

Quote - The only thing I see that you want to do different is add independent customer satisfaction reviews to the database. More power to you if you can get people interested in doing that. (And make sure you have good moderators or good liability insurance. Ditto for the forums idea. [Did you see the TamelaJ thread?])

I have set up and moderated a couple of forums before - and reviews are something I am very interested in. If someone gets offended enough to start spending time and money on a lawyer, then they would have to really go out of their way to find something to win from, and in most cases it would cost them far, far more than it would cost me. That said, I will be speaking with a lawyer long before I formulate and set up guidelines for reviews. I know a couple of them that owe me some time. :)

Quote - "Tutorials rock" Well sorted-out tutorials? Video tutorials? Excellent idea. Little liability in that that I can see. The problem that you are looking at a massive database reorganization. There are a lot of tutorials out there. I thought my wiki-db idea might eventually include things like tutorials as well.  But problem is the cost of having some actual people shuffling the data around.  Even charites pay good money to massage and shuffle data around.

Depends on how they're organized. I've found that 90% of the headache and heartaches in data management is the initial structure itself. Much of the data-shoveling can be accomplished by the submitter as well, if it's done with a clear and logical structure.

Quote - "I think a tiered (or differentiated) gallery would be cool:" Have you looked at the complaints about how galleries are rated? (Here, there, or anywhere?) You would inherit all those complaints. Are you ready for that? Do you have the stomach for it? 

Yes.

I've seen the Hot 20 (and remember well Legume's demonstration of how easily it could be shattered). I have even formulated alternate systems. This is something still being worked on (that is, how exactly to approach it).

  > Quote - "News?" Now here might be the best place to start. News put out by any organization that needs to make money nearly always has an ulterior motive. I can see where  reporting that is vendor-free and cross-community might be useful and welcome. But I'm too new here to know if such news sources already exist.  And again, liability insurance. (You do not have to be in the wrong to go wrong. There are such things as "slap" suits.)

Agreed. Cross-community news is almost non-existent. Then again, this hasn't hurt Tom's Hardware, HEXUS, or the plethora of other hardware news and review sites any. A good up-front policy goes a long way towards reducing the chance of any relevant lawsuits. :)

Quote - I second, third and forth the mega-FAQS idea. Should one come into existence, I recommend that the HTML link to it be in 72 point type with flashing yellow and red colors.  Once Rendo's Poser FAQS is updated, I recommend that for it as well. This might also be a good place to start.

Definitely! I've lost count long ago of how many people keep asking what even the basic terms mean, or newbies who get lost at the mere mention of bits and bobs that they cannot wrap their heads around without knowing the terminology (or even the slang).

Quote - We recently had a discussion about the fact that some vendor's items get kicked out of the market place if they don't generate a certain amount of money in a certain amount of time.  Some of these items are really good things that simply need more time to find their markets. One unique service you could provide would be to provide a home for such "long-tail" items.

You know? That wouldn't be a half-bad idea at all. As much as I detest the idea of running a store, the biggest part of that stems from two things, one being the fad/fashion portion, the other being the "flea market" aspect, where you have to dig through a mountain of, well, crap, to get to the quality stuff.

Quote - Well, that sounds overall like a negative post. I don't mean it to be, or to attack you or knock your enthusiasm for assisting 3D art.  Its just that Thomas Edison had it right when he said everything is "1% inspiration and 99% perspiration." Having wonderful ideas is one thing. Getting other people to fall in with you in executing them is a whole other ball of wax.

It isn't negative, it's reality.

I don't intend to do it alone, either. Once the site is near enough to completion on mission, goals, and framework, I intend to do some recruiting. Hopefully I can find some talented, level-headed, and eager volunteers (I'm not doing this for pay either, at least not until/unless it really takes off, then I start hiring from among those volunteers who helped out at the start).

Cheers!

Quote - I love freebies. I don't like going to 400 different sites to find them all. 

 Okay ... so when your site is up and running its 401 site's to wade trough ?

Chris 

Maybe I can explain this a bit better. Initially, it will require a lot of hunting down, to point out and post free items available from a list of sites, so that people can narrow down what it is they're looking for, without having to wade through the mess and morass that we do today. RO is but the tip of a very large iceberg of free items, IMHO. Eventually, it is my hope that enough people know about it to directly post infor about their own freebies there, while (in parallel) we keep abreast of as much of everything else as possible. We can even periodically test links to insure that they're still alive (most places end up leading to a lot of dead links once an item announcement starts getting a bit old).

What if you can, from one place, see the vast majority (if not all) of what is available, then investigate further if/when you decide that you want to download a particular item?

Quote - Did you say "unlimited bandwidth"? Would this mean you could actually host the free items? That would be a huge help! It would also eliminate dead links.

What would I, me, personally like to see? Tutorials, especially video tutorials. Again, bandwidth has always been an issue for those.

Yes, unlimited bandwidth. Hosting freebies could be done, but I'd have to check on how much absolute storage space is available. Hosting tutorials, especially video tutorials, would be quite a lovely idea, and thanks to YouTube, storage space for those can be truly unlimited.

Thank you, please keep them coming!

I like that, especially for people new to all of this.

Thank you!