Whew, finally. :) Arranging for this host took longer than I expected, but unlike any of the VPS hosting solutions I have looked at, for me it’s a well known reliable quantity. If it actually goes down, it will either be my fault or a significant force majeure disaster, like a power exchange explosion.

The actual move will happen today within 5-6 hours, and should not result in more than one hour downtime.

Update: Moved. Successfully, I think…

Well, what can I say…

I’m sorry you have to suffer through this, but the long expected server move to a host that would be more reliable cannot happen earlier than this Friday. If you have stopped your dropboxes because of the error messages, you will need to replace them — picking up and rezzing them again should suffice.

The hosting company offered to reimage the VPS, however that would mean a rather long interruption of service as I reinstall everything and requires me to stop the server and take a database dump immediately prior to minimise disruptions to normal operation — i.e. it isn’t something I can just say to go ahead with, and there’s no guarantee it helps. I’d much rather move to somewhere I expect I can depend on.

During the past weeks of DSN running I talked to a lot of content creators who have signed up but not put their boxes out, and one sentence I heard a lot was “I am not ready yet with my special item”. While we appreciate designers making special items, it is not mandatory to do so. In fact there is a lot to be said in favour of taking a regular item and distribute it via the network. The sample you send should give a good idea of the quality and kind of your products and it should be aimed to give its recipients a compelling reason to visit your shop. Let’s look at the various items:

• Special item: Creating a special, otherwise not obtainable item is very common for Lucky Chairs. From a psychology level the recipient of an exclusive item feels lucky and privileged. While this works well for Lucky Chairs and other devices, the time-lapsed way the DSN works weakens the point a little. While one subscriber may get your special item tomorrow, another subscriber might receive it in three months.
• Demo item: Especially shops like skin creators with high priced merchandise will consider a demo sample for the DSN. A demo item shows the quality of your creations in a perfect way and might give a compelling reason to visit your shop. The only downside is that it might disappoint the expectation to receive a full item. But since DSN was specifically created to counteract any sense of entitlement, a demo-item might be a good choice for you.
• Regular merchandise: my personal preference and advice to content creators is to submit an item from their regular range of products to the network. By definition, this shows the quality and kind of your products. The main benefit however is the potential for additional pull this might create. Take the scenario where a subscriber shows your item to a friend. Since it is regular merchandise, the friend can simply go to your store and buy it! On a side note, selecting a regular item saves you a lot of time compared to making a special one.

Another question was if you should put a copyable or transferable item into the network. My personal recommendation is to use a transferable item since this will give larger exposure. If a recipient for what reason ever does not like/need your item, they can still give it to a second person.

…that’s it, we’re moving this week. This will result in a few hours downtime at most, which will be announced beforehand.

If your dropboxes got stuck during this outage, I urge you to update to version 1.2 to prevent this in the future.

It is technologically impossible to confirm in LSL if an item delivery completed successfully or failed. Blame LL. In fact, I’m told this is a problem in more established mass-delivery systems like Subscribe-O-Matic as well. Unfortunately, with DSN it is not guaranteed that an item delivered in the past is supposed to still be available, and well, INSOLENCE, for example, put a no copy/transfer item in their sample, which is, in fact, a good idea in the marketing sense, and a good idea for clothing in general, if you ask me, but would be pointless if you could have unlimited redeliveries…

Regardless, here’s an experimental solution to this problem. In the Clever Things shop in Takalo, next to the subscription kiosk, you will find a redelivery terminal, which will allow you to request all DSN samples that you have received in the past 24 hours to be resent. There are the following gotchas though:

• You are only allowed one redelivery request per 24 hours, and only the items sent in the past 24 hours will be redelivered.
• Items will not arrive immediately, but during the course of the next three hours. It is best if you are online at that time. In the future, I will make them arrive over the next ten minutes, but that will require an update to the dropboxes, the required capability will be in the next release.
• If the dropbox no longer exists since that delivery was filled, nothing can arrive in the first place.
• If the item has been changed after it has been sent, you will get the new item, rather than the one that you were sent before.

Let’s see how this works out. If it proves effective enough, a redelivery terminal will be bundled with the kiosk kit, so that there can be more of them. If it’s not effective enough, I’ll try to think of something else… :)

Cannot rely on anything… Second Life in particular. At least four people complained that their deliveries failed for no good reason, that is, instant messages notifying them of deliveries came in, but items themselves did not. While it’s only four people out of a thousand, that’s not really very nice.

Well, there’s very little I can do about that, but here’s an idea:

The next version of the kiosks will include a ‘Resend’ button which will mark all transactions in your name (as a subscriber) that were created in the past 24 hours as incomplete, which will make the dropboxes resend them the next time they check in. There is no guarantee whatsoever that you will get the same item (as the designer might have changed it since) or get anything at all (if the designer took their box offline and won’t bring it back in 30 hours) and there’s no way I’m setting it to more than 24 hours (opens up way too many exploitation possibilities).

But at least that’s something.

Time to update the dropboxes. :) While this update is not a critical one, and old dropboxes will still be working, it would be nice if you update as soon as possible.

New in this version:

• Minor interface improvements you asked for.
• Better resistance to server outages and communication errors — I hope that puts an end to stuck dropboxes.
• Dropboxes that are removed through the web interface will now know they should go offline, though, not instantly, only when time comes for them to check in. (Old dropboxes will throw a script error attempting to send items to a nonexistent key instead.)
• Dropboxes now remember their channel after resets, i.e. when picked up and rezzed again.
• A framework to allow for upgrading dropboxes in place without reloading them in the future.
• Link message API when sending items, so you can write a script that would IM you when an object is sent or otherwise use that information.

See the documentation for full details. To update, just replace the old dropbox(es) with new ones and reload the contents. It’s best if you take the old ones offline first.

The update will be sent to you automatically within the next 24 hours if you have any dropboxes rezzed.