Here’s picture and a little update.

* We have a new copy of ThereIM we’ll be linking too. This one doesn’t require you to change that target, and should make it much easier to new members or returnees. You can get it here . Remember, I said that one of our tasks was to get this building again — and the There Client — so that’s checked off.

*IMPORTANT*

You must quit ThereIM before doing the install. Just exiting it isn’t enough – you must right click on it’s icon on the right side of the task bar and choose “Quit”. If you don’t, the install will only be half-baked, and havoc will ensue.

*IMPORTANT*

*IMPORTANT*

There have been some problems reported with this release. This is why we needed to do this.

USE AT YOUR OWN RISK. OR, PREFERABLY, DON’T USE AT ALL.

*IMPORTANT*

*IMPORTANT*

If you’re using this release and having SegVios, then try this:

1. Find the ThereIM icon in your task bar (at the bottom of the screen)

2. Right click on it.

3. Pick “Exit”

4. From your computer, delete the folder “C:\Program Files\Makena Technologies”

5. Re-install ThereIM

Thanks to all those who helped us with this tip.

*IMPORTANT*

There shouldn’t be any noticeable changes in this version. I was the last one who worked on it, and, as I recall, we had already shipped everything I’d done, so don’t expect anything like cats in ThereIM or anything.

* I’m very happy to announce that Mackie will be re-joining us on a part-time basis to help answer questions and develop the policy for “I-can’t-remember-my-password-or-my-email-or-my-secret-answer’, and implementing it. After some testing today we discovered that you can not send a tissue sample for DNA sequencing through the fax machine, so that’s out.

* Please think carefully before sending us an email claiming that all of your things are gone or you don’t have your T$. In every case so far that we’ve investigated, we’ve found that the member(s) had given or traded away all of their stuff shortly before There closed.

* We know that many of you don’t as you expect in ThereIM, and SamSyn has a nice logical explanation:

A mystery in three parts.

—–

Your skin color is just one part of your avatar’s “Lookset” (which also includes the shape of your body, it’s default hair, lip shape, etc.) It does NOT include your clothing. That’s stored in an ‘outfit,’ which is a different adventure story (with a happy ending).

When your OLD avatar on the old There.com service was first created, you picked an initial skin color for it. This is your “Original Skin Color.” You liked it well enough, but you probably didn’t have many choices.

Over the course of time, you might have visited a Spa and changed your skin color to something else (Caramel being the most popular color, back from the days when clothing had to be ‘married’ to a particular skin color). Eventually, you had a skin color on the day we had to shut the service down. Let’s call that the “Closing Color”

Now the clock jumps forward 17 months or so.

Recently you have created your NEW avatar (with the same name as your old avatar, but really it’s a completely new avatar on a completely new There.com service). When you did that, you used the “avie picker” at http://www.there.com which allowed you to pick a new skin color (and if you picked nothing, it defaulted probably to “Vanilla”). But you had to pick SOMETHING, so let’s call that the “Picker Skin Color”

The Picker Skin Color didn’t last very long. By the time we re-created your avatar on the NEW There.com, its skin color had already been changed back to the “Original Skin Color” (note: not the “Closing Skin Color”). So your first moment of surprise came from your first ThereIM login where you realized that your “Picker Skin Color” was not actually used (likewise, the Picker Gender was ignored, since your new Avatar is created with a matching gender to your old Avatar.)

But your second surprise was that ThereIM displayed your “Original Skin Color” and not the “Closing Skin Color” you probably expected it to.

So where is your “Closing Skin Color?”

It’s in a lookset!

Part of the data migration process is to migrate all the looksets you created for your old avatar. Each lookset can have a different skin color (and/or body shape). When you leave the spa, and ‘save changes,’ this data is always stored in one of your looksets (which one, is hard for us to say) And because it’s hard for us to know which one you were using on closing day, we don’t try to put one on for you automatically, and just leave you in your “Original” lookset.

Once you get your avatar back into the 3D world, and can visit a Spa, you will see these looksets, and have the ability to change which one your avatar is “sporting”

And THEN your avatar can come close to looking like its “Closing” self.

VAST AMOUNTS OF TESTING (TWO analyses 🙂 have given us a warm and fuzzy feeling that your looksets are likely have the proper data in them. But ThereIM just gives you no access.

And, of course, once you can get to a Spa, you can completely configure yourself as you like, skin color and all. Nothing about your lookset is “permanent”

SO WILL YOU LOOK 100% IDENTICAL AT THAT TIME?

Well… The code DID continue to evolve over the last year, as we added DirectX9, support for some dramatic new textured face technology, and large numbers of bug fixes (though not the bug YOU wanted fixed, of course, we saved that one for when you returned. To give you a sense of home). It’s possible that some of these changes impact lookset appearance. (No, you won’t suddenly have a textured face, that’s a shiny new feature to be exposed at some future date, or never, as you see fit. We will NOT force you to have a textured face)

But we DID find some value-checking bugs, whose repair might have made some of the more ‘extreme’ body configurations that people were making with UNLICENSED THIRD PARTY ADD-ONS, less extreme. Plus there was a silly bug that made the Spa sliders behave oddly (not sticking where you put them, being unable to be set in what appeared to be completely legal ways) and that might have some effect as well.

So there might be some differences, is all we’re saying. We can’t state otherwise. Plus your memory isn’t perfect either, so there! But your skin color isn’t one of them. That code has not changed in many years. So if you had a lookset with a particular color in it on closing day, your new copy of that lookset on your new avatar (once you have a chance to put it on) should present the same skin color as it did on closing day.

OK, so there weren’t REALLY three parts, in case you were counting.

* Dan is working on the bug which prevents IE8/Windows users from registering. Evidently lots of people have had that problem (with IE handling of certain types of XML/HTML documents), so we’re not alone. He might have found a solution, so that should be resolved soon.

* 3rd party add ins: If it’s something like the hair patch, which may have someone else’s content in it, Do NOT Use It. Those assets belong to someone else, and if you use them, you’re stealing. If it’s something like JSCompass, etc, use it at your own risk! We can’t support you if something goes wrong, and if you report a problem, the first thing we’ll ask you to do is uninstall any third party extensions.

Before anyone gets their knickers in a twist over this, just think: How could we possibly support someone else’s code?

That’s it for now. I may add updates later.

I purposely made this picture lighter because I don’t know what WordPress does to them, but they look FINE on my computer and wayyyyy to dark on the blog.