Minutes of General Meeting 26th January 2009

MINUTES OF GENERAL MEETING 26th January 2009-02-01

PRESENT: Dragon Shichiroji; Elborath Gelfand; StarRose Merlin; Manon Clary; Scott Boronski; Sara Long; Sheena Fairey; AlienShaman Constellation; Kiba Thunders; kuel Tardis; FireStaar Frye; Marty McGettigan; Wulf Urqhart; Lizzy Renard; Shaman Kharg; Jim Benusconi;

AGENDA

1) Happy New Year and Congratulations

2) Mystic Campus

3) Finances and Security Services

4) Daden Navigator 01

ANY OTHER BUSINESS

1) Dragon began by wishing everyone a belated Happy New Year and congratulating the Mystic Academy Senior management team for keeping Mystic Academy running smoothly in his absence.

2) Mystic Campus: The campus is doing well and classes are up by at least 4-5 week. Dragon reported that the teething problems and class overlap problems have been resolved and we are not to allow bureaucratic tape to get in the way of developing choice for the individual learner. We need to get back to our roots – that is going back to focussing on the teaching with a view to making it fresher, more relevant, more practical and more interesting for the learners who come here (this applies to both the Main Academy and the Campus)

Dragon wants members to think of the campus as your own land, and feel free to post classes / hangouts/ discussions at short notice if needed, and to discuss these with the field leaders of those campus areas.

• Baji Bourjade and Jane Atkey – Meditation
• Baji Bourjade and Elborath Gelfand – Literature/Psychology/Philosophy
• FireStaar Frye and Aurav Walden - studies in natural religions
• Manon Clary – land management
• Scott Boronski and Dragon Shichiroji – Music
• Sara Long – Hindu Studies

Dragon welcomed some old faces back and was pleased to see that they are renting land on Matara.

3) Finances and Security Services: Dragon announced he needs to make some cuts to help with the finances. 1) The outside security service which is very expensive is being dispensed with. Guides can ban a griefer which should suffice for the remainder of their class – sim bans can then be referred to Manon or Dragon if they are considered necessary. 2) MA will draw back on the bazaar and offer up free land for rental and residential living.

Mystic Academy has been running at a deficit and Dragon extended deep gratitude to Manon who has been very kind and generous in absorbing it, we need to balance funds with her. The tips Dragon has received for the Academy from this month’s tips donated as portion from the classes will be passed that entirely tip to Manon to help with this months tier.

Dragon set the target that the accounts would balance by the General Meeting in one month’s time. (The General meeting for Monday 23rd Feb)

4) Daden Navigator 01: This is a media player which enables the internet to be streamed and browsed directly into a class. The meeting reconvened in Matara and Dragon demonstrated the Navigator. Please find instructions for use at the bottom of these minutes.

At the moment the Navigator is operating on Matara only – but this space can be used as a classroom area for people who want to use the facility.

ANY OTHER BUSINESS

a) Welcome to Mystic Academy notecard: StaRose has a new notecard available and also has one for prospective teachers – so they can choose the area they wish to work from.

b) StarRose is going to catch up with people who applied to her to teach and have not yet followed through. Elborath to do the same for Campus applications.

b) New teleport system – Dragon tried the new tp system – it is to become the main system for both Mystic Academy and the Campus.

DATE AND TIME OF NEXT MEETING

To be announced

Daden Navigator User Guide
===========

Most control is via chat on Channel 0 (Pro version lets you set channel).

The main two commands are:

url YOURURL - to load a web page
link KEYWORDS - to follow a link based on the words in the link name, just put as many keywords in as are necessary to distinguish the link from any other. Separate keywords by space. For instance if you want to follow a link called "About Us", just type "link about us", or even "link about" if there are no other links with the word "about" in them.

Other commands are:

search or google - brings up google search page
search X or google X - searches for X on google
back - back to last page, Navigator has a 6 page back history
forward - forward onto next page in history (once you've done BACK)
home - go to home page (default is www.daden.co.uk)
set home - sets current page to home*
refresh - refreshes the page
menu - launches (alternative way of getting to most commands)
popout - puts current URL into your main browser, or SL windowed browser
bookmark - remembers page as bookmark with the name of the link that led to it. number only limited by memory. note that bookmarks are cleared when you reset the script
bookmarks - opens dialog box to browse bookmarks
clear bookmarks - clears bookmarks*
list bookmarks - lists bookmarks as chat (good to copy)
toggle media - toggle media between direct and relay mode*
ownerlock on - switches on ownerlock so only the owner can use the features marked *
ownerlock off - switches off the ownerlock

Notes:
- Daden Navigator starts in ownerlock on mode
- resetting the script will clear the bookmark and history lists and set the home page back to daden
- the script resets each time the unit is rezzed
- keep a backup copy in case you get the dreaded Stack Heap memory crash
- after 10 minutes of inactivity the browser reverts back to home page
- the colour border goes red when a link is requested, and blue once URL data is received and purple when a menu is requested and its waiting for a menu choice
- all Navigator chat feedback uses Whisper mode, so you need to be within 10m to hear it

Browsing Notes
==========

- When matching links Navigator scores both on how many words are matched, and what percentage that is of the words in the link - so for longer links you may need to match more words than a shorter link if it doesn't have many unique words
- Page Not Found (404) errors can confuse the Navigator - just say "back" to go back to the previous page and try another link
- If you think an image might be a link then since Navigator handles "Alt" tags you might be able ot guess the ALT tag name and follow the link

Media
====

Since the Navigator uses the SL media stream you can only use one on each parcel.

Navigator supports two media modes:

- Direct: This is the conventional way of handling media. It means that the Navigator directly sets the media stream for the parcel. In order to do this it MUST be owned by the same avatar as the land itself. If the land is group land it MUST be deeded to the group. The only issue with the latter is that because the Navigator is copyable we have also made it non-transferable (otherwise you could distribute your own copies). So for Group land please use the Relay mode.

- Relay: We use this a lot as it means we don't have to deed scripts we are working on! Just rez the Media Relay pyramid (free with Navigator) and tuck it out of sight on your parcel within chat range of the Navigator. Deed the Relay to your group (if you want you can also change its texture to the parcel media texture but this is not essential). Then use the "toggle media" command on the Navigator to set it into relay mode. It will then "say" each URL on the media channel (-63342 - i.e. MEDIA on a phone keypad) which the relay will hear and then set the media stream appropriately.

Limitations
=======

Whilst Daden Navigator is a great step forward it is still not a 100% capable web browser. Its limitations come from two areas:

- Second Life Web Page on a Prim: We use this feature of SL in order to display each web page. This means we cannot control how each individual web page will be rendered. For instance at the moment (July 08, V1.19) SL does not render Flash, YouTube or play media and cannot scroll up and down on a page, or fill out forms - so we can't do these with Daden Navigator.

- To follow links we use our proxy to retrieve the web page you are looking at and parse the HTML to identity the links on the page. However if the links are embedded in Flash, or use complex Javascript, or are images without ALT tags then we cannot find them. In fact Daden Navigator behaves very similarly to the talking browsers and screenreaders used by visually impaired users - so sites with good accessibility (eg WAI AAA) should work well, whereas those with poor accessibility will not (just note how many sites have lots of links called "more" or "click here" - they are a real pain for screenreader users - and now for you). We've always said that accessibility was important!

The simplest work-around to both of these is to use the "popout" command to put the displayed page into your SL client or desktop web browser.