We can’t wait to have you check us out and we’re making very good progress with the development of email/password based logins so hopefully you’ll be able to do so real soon

if you have the money for your own “real” server install, the something like Maria suggested with third-party hosters is good. i love SimHost because James gives me 100% freedom and control over the server – it’s the closest i’ll ever feel to running it by myself. while $189 a month ain’t chump change, i knew a good number of people who spent $295 a month inSL just for their own sim (say Ener sent you and James will take 5% off – that 9.40 a month or a lunch!)

i can’t wait to try Kitely out and once they have access set up for a fakey person like me, i’ll be all over it – it is by far the least expensive way to go

great post Maria and to anyone looking to dip their tow into OpenSim, it’s a great time to do so – it runs very well and is not the same as it was a year ago =)

And you have grids that are hypergrid-enabled — you create an avatar on one grid, and you can teleport out to all the other grids.

The vast majority of OpenSim regions out there are hypergrid-enabled. So you can take your OSGrid avatar and teleport not just to other regions on OSGrid, but to GermanGrid, FrancoGrid, VirtYou, JokaydiaGrid, and dozens of others. You do this by going to Map (CTRL-M) and typing in the hypergrid address from Hyperica into the search field. It’s a lot like typing a URL into the browser’s address bar. Then click search, and teleport.

Kitely is not yet on the hypergrid. They will be, but it’s taking them a little longer than expected to get everything into place. They’ve been working on scalability, and billing, and recently added Vivox voice. And they’re just two guys. It’s amazing what they’ve been able to do — and maybe now that they’ve got billing in place, they’ll be able to hire some staff and speed up development.

Hypergrid connectivity requires that they implement region-to-region teleports first (right now, you can only access their regions via the website) and then figure out how billing will work for hypergrid visitors!

So if you’re looking to get content into Kitely (or into Second Life, InWorldz, Avination, or 3rd Rock Grid), you will need up either upload the XML files using the Imprudence viewer or, grids permitting, upload entire OAR files. (SL has no OAR uploads or exports, and some other closed grids restrict them.)

If you’re using Kitely as a staging area for creating content that you want to sell or show off on the hypergrid, I recommending renting a region on OSGrid (prices aren’t as low as Kitely’s, but still a steal), or if you know your way around a router, set up a region — or ten — for free, on your own computer, and attach it to OSGrid or run it as a standalone mini-grid. 

Nova, Dreamland, Oliveira are well-known hosting companies on OSGrid. 

Full vendor list here: http://www.hypergridbusiness.com/opensim-hosting-providers/

On these hyperica urls – if I go in world would I need an account for those places? How would I obtain them to upload? What prompted the post actually was I’d been catching up at HB and went to the hyperica page, and down at the end on the content page was the one german site. I signed up with osgrid, but when I logged in, it wasn’t my avi from Kitely, so I’m not entirely sure how this works. 

Check out these locations:
http://www.hyperica.com/2012/01/fleepgrid-plaza/ 
http://www.hyperica.com/2011/07/welcome/ 
http://www.hyperica.com/2011/07/freebies/ 
http://www.hyperica.com/2012/01/astral-builds/ 
http://www.hyperica.com/2012/01/hope/ 

If you know of others, drop me a line!

To take them to Kitely (until they get hypergrid working) you will need to either upload individual items (using the Imprudence viewer) or upload complete OAR files. For OARs, the best place right now is LindaKellie.com.

She’s doing a fantastic job of making OpenSim accessible to newcomers.

Do you know of any CC licensed resources that qualify? Now that I drank the Kitely koolaid, I’d like to be able to shop at other grids and still use the stuff on my Kworlds. Is that even possible? If so, please point where!

Gee whiz, woman, is Mark Zuckerberg your boyfriend? 8-0

Maria’s reply pretty much covers my own thoughts on the subject but I’m responding just so you’ll know that I’m not ignoring your comment

The main reason Minutes are nontransferable (and why they were added in the first place) is that many people had asked for the ability to stay inworld 24/7 without having to keep an eye on their KC balance. If we make Minutes transferable then we can no longer offer a plan that includes an unlimited number of them.

Our business model only works when every minute of use is paid for by someone (other than the 120 free minutes per month which we plan to subsidize from revenue received from paying users).

We are currently working on removing the requirement to use Facebook and on eliminating the dependance on using our plugin (making it the default option for new users but one which they can bypass). This should open the door to anyone wanting to open a Kitely account and enable people to use whichever viewer they want on whatever operating system they are using.

Once we are done with that, and unless something more urgent pops up, we intend to start working on teleports between Kitely worlds (which is non-trivial due to the way our system works). I don’t have an ETA for when we’ll finish building that functionality yet, sorry

I’ve seen some pretty cool vehicles in OpenSim. But you’re right, OpenSim physics lags behind. For many applications, though — education, training, non-profits, collaboration, meetings, virtual museums, support groups — the vehicles you get in OpenSim are fine. What I hear from developers is that the main difference is in region crossings, where OpenSim vehicles have a harder time. On the other hand, you can have bigger prims and linksets. On other grids and standalones you can also run server-side scripts, which I’m surprised more grids don’t take advantage of. Server-side scripts are highly effective against piracy — if you steal the object and take it off-grid, it’s useless without the scripts — and can also help differentiate a grid from its competitors. 

If Kitely starts making serious money with their new billing system, maybe they can invest  in physics improvements — or put in some work on the Bullet physics engine.

I meant that if you want to have a million potential customers for your merchandise, then you want to be on Second Life, not on Kitely — Kitely doesn’t have much of a user base.

But if you bring your own users with you — students, employees, members of your group — then Kitely could work.

I asked about the minutes, and they’re only for you. The Kitely Credits are what you can use to cover the access cost for your visitors, if you want. 

As far as scalability — the way Kitely is set up, it looks like then can pull up 10,000 new regions in a few minutes — I don’t think any other grid can do that. Plus, they don’t have the centralized asset servers to deal with, which can quickly bog down a grid if it grows too fast. 

In fact, one of the reasons that billing has been delayed for the past few months was that they were working on the scalability issues, just in case usage exploded over night. And one of the main things they did was get rid of the asset database and just use Amazon storage for assets.

The closest thing like this that I know of is the RCI grid management system available from PioneerX, and also distributed by TalentRaspel. It’s got a private cloud setup, which shares some of the cloud scalability benefits, and its got potential to evolve into an even more scalable system.

Another approach is the completely decentralized Diva Distro-based loosely linked grid, which is actually made up of lots of small grids connected by hypergrid teleports and a common map, but without a common asset database. Now that we’ve got hypergrid friends, instant messaging and landmarks, this is actually doable. I believe New World Grid is going to try something of this sort, and Cyberlandia tried the same thing two years ago but wound up just falling apart, with one of the mini-grids, Craft, growing up to replace it.

Why the heck aren’t the minutes transferrable?  Why would I need 200 hours or even 83 unless it was to defray cost to customers/students/clients I was seeking?  Can I run a bot and use my minutes that way? 

What are you talking about that Kitely is the only scaleable opensim grid?  This is surely not the case.