Friday, July 8, 2011

Why I don't keep Landmarks

As much as I love the Favorites bar in the current viewer, I have a love/hate relationship with Landmarks in general. In fact, I seldom keep them. Why not? Things change. In Real Life, places seldom move. Tokyo, Chicago, East Millinocket (there is no West Millinocket), Cardiff, any number of places you can name just don't move. But places within places can move. My favorite place to get BBQ ribs locally has moved three times in the last year. If I need to know the address, I search the Internet or ask around. Well, to be honest, I really just get in the car. Someone else drives as I don't have a license and with any luck they know where things are to be found. Goodness knows I haven't found Urban Spoon, Yelp, or similar services to be accurate in my area.

Second Life is worse as whole regions can move or disappear. Then places within places move like drops of mercury in fishbowl (don't ask how I know). When I had a retail shop it moved something like seven times. My home has moved at least as many times. I can keep up with landmarks for those places. But I was about to send a noobie to some freebie shops when I thought "its been a while since I've seen them ..." and popped out to find them. Gone. Four really great places. Gone. Not to mention ones that I knew had gone away, like the fabulous Gnubie Store.

Another reason? Most folks don't maintain the Landmarks they expect us to use. When shops move they sometimes don't update the Landmarks in their packaging or the SLurls they publish in blogs or on The Marketplace. For instance, after I checked the freebie shops I'm off exploring at a well-known shop where I take a Landmark from a marked giver to go see a pre-fab demo I would like to buy ... no such place. I even flew 100 meters around the destination and found no such place. The shop is there. One of the many other demo pre-fabs was in place. But not the one I wanted to see nor were some others.

Delete ...

No, I don't keep Landmarks, as a rule.

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