What Is HyperCat?

We are a listing service, we will list what we find on the HyperGrid that is ForSale and TakeCopy. We will collect the names, and sometimes, the pictures of items that are ForSale or set as TakeCopy. We host pages that list those names and pictures, and we provide a search function. We are not trying to steal your traffic, we are making it easier for people to find the things that you offer in your region. We are not a marketplace. We do not host your content. We show what you have, and where you have it. If someone wants something from your list, they click the HOP, and Teleport to your region. Once in your region, they can buy what they want from you and see other items in your region. The customer still comes to you to get your items, we just help them find your region.

We are trying to find the balance between "Generous and Respectful". If we offend any one, let us know by filling out the Comments form, and we'll do our best to correct any mis-step on our part. Hopefully nothing we do will be irreparable.

IF YOU CHOOSE, as a merchant, you can place a HyperCat Vending Machine in your region, and you can add the same items that are available in your region. A Vending machine with the same items in it, can work with the HyperCat Remote Delivery System to enable a User to request delivery through the website to the Vending machine in your region. You host the Vending machine, and you fill it with the products that you want to allow remote delivery for. If you have placed a vendor in your region with your items, and a user requests remote delivery, then the website will ask your vendor to deliver the items. If the user is from your grid, this almost always works. If the user is from another grid and has visited your grid, it will most likely succeed in delivering the item to the user. If the user is from another grid and has never visited your grid, it will most likely fail, this is inherent in the HyperGrid architecture. (Only a few merchants want this, but the ones that do, feel strongly that we make this available.) If you are interested, please fill out the Comments form, and we will have someone contact you.

In our own regions, we have found the listing useful to ensure that nothing is unintentionally set as ForSale and TakeCopy. In some cases, it has also aided in discovery of Lost Prims. (At some time in the future, we may offer a separate service just for that.)

To acquire any of the items listed on this page, click on the Hop link button (or other link for your client and grid) to teleport to the location of the item. Once there, you will be able to purchase the item for the price set by the seller. In cases where there is a landing point defined, you may find the first TP brings you to the region, frequently if you click the teleport button again on the same dialog, this should bring you within a meter or two of the item. Do not be distressed if you are on the other-side of a wall from the item. You might even teleport embedded inside the item. You should be able to use camera controls to locate the item near you. Occassionally you may teleport on top of the roof or in the basement of the building where the item is at.

PLEASE BE AWARE, in rare cases it has been reported that people TP into an area where a security device is operating. If this happens to you, please using the Comments form to let us know.

I want to be listed, What do I do?

If you want to be listed on HyperCat.info, fill out the Request Form and we do the rest. But there are a few things you can do to improve your listings. Anything can be improved. If you’re interested, take a look at the tips lower on this page.

I DO NOT want to be listed. What do I do?

If you DO NOT want to be listed on HyperCat.info, fill out the Comments form to let us know. We will make sure that we do not list your region(s).

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Who is using HyperCat?

We don't know who they are, but we know what they are looking at… Take a look at our statistics here.

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Why we are here?

Kris had visited an OpenSim grid, where they were doing a fairly good job of bringing free content from across the grid. But they chose to be a Closed grid, so she could not share from my alt on that grid, what she'd collected. She needed to find it again on the HyperGrid, but where to go to find the specific thing she knew existed? If she'd been on SL, she would have gone to their Marketplace to find things and would have bought them there. But for the HyperGrid, there's no Marketplace, so much content is free, so there's little financial incentive for anyone to create a Marketplace. We saw a need, and a new purpose on the Grid. We consulted with an OsGrid landowner who hosts a lot of freebies, we agreed a listing service could be a good thing. We got a lot of good advice, maybe even a little bad advice, and hopefully our team has created something that will be useful to the residents of the HyperGrid.

There are a lot of grids out there, and a lot of regions within each one. The enormity of it all could be discouraging, but we are trying.

If you think this is a good thing, please encourage vendors to fill out the Request Form . If you think this is a bad thing, please send us a Fill out the Comment Form, and explain to us what we're doing wrong.

For now, it is only a labor of love by a few dedicated people, but if you wish to donate to our efforts, we certainly appreciate it.

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Tips for improving your listings

Tips for Preparing Sales boxes

Choosing the display picture

Many items for sale are packed inside a box object. Sales boxes are frequently a single Prim box. We only ever look at the root prim, so keeping your sales boxes simple is recommended. We avoing taking textures from Mesh or Sculpties, we don't want to accidently expose a model.

This might sound obvious, but if you put the same texture on all 6 sides of a box, we are sure to get the correct texture.

We recognize the following principles when evaluating what side of a prim to use for the display picture.

• Any sides that are Full-Bright will be favored. Any sides that are not Full-Bright will not be.
• We ignore any side that is darker than 0.66.
• We ignore any side that has any transparency.
• We only look at textures on the root prim, if you are selling a complex model, where a display image is not suitable, consider if a display image can be hidden on a side of the root prim.
• We avoid taking a display picture from the textures of a Sculpt or Mesh object.

In case you were looking for advice on how to prepare your sales picture. Don't take a picture of a dark item on a dark background, or a light item on a light background, try to maximize contrast. Please try to make sales pictures clear as to what is for sale. Avoid the temptation to include too much distraction from the item that you are selling. If you show a skinned avatar wearing an outfit on a setting, and may not be clear if the product is the Setting, the Outfit, the Skin or the Avatar. If your product is a necklace, don’t show it over a woman with a tattoo on her chest. The tattoo is distracting, and makes it difficult to see what is being offered.

Content guidelines

It matters what the Name of a prim is. Try to be give Sales boxes suitable names. The name matters, especially when someone is using word search to find your item. If the prim is named Object, we're going to list it as Object, if it's name is prim0-mesh, we're going to list it as prim0-mesh. and your customer won't be able to identify it by the name. Please try to be aware of typos and mispellings.

Our goal is to list everything that is For Sale or Take Copy. This will include materials that may be offensive to some audiences. We will try to avoid using the display image of some items intended for mature audiences. We hope this finds the proper balance between Taste and Completeness.

For example, if you are a Content-Creator, and you are promoting a hair product, please avoid nudity in your display picture when possible, it shouldn’t be necessary, and may require us to censor your picture, which we don’t want to have to do.

If you believe we have shown any offensive material, please fill out the Comments form and let us know.

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Securing your regions

At HyperCat, we have learned that some people think of their regions as Private, yet they don't have real security in place to enforce that impression. Other people have suggested that we should list everything in every region, and that we should infer that if it was meant to be private real security would have been implemented.

We ask regions to Opt-in... We had a hard debate when someone said to us "What if every-one had to opt-in to Google?" This felt like a compelling argument that we should list everything that we could find, without regard to people’s wishes. But some places and items are not secured because people don't know how, don't have access, or don't wish to restrict aspects of HyperTravel. Implementing security can be a pain, and having to stop and set-up exceptions as they arise can be prohibitive. We acknowledge there may be reasons why strict security is not enforced, and we understand that a lack security is not implicit permission for us to publish everything we find.

Respect remains our watch-word, and this is why we still ask regions to Opt-in. If we did not, we would certainly upset some people, so we try to list regions with the permission of the region owner. If you know a region owner that we should list, please urge them to fill out our Scan Request Form, or send listing suggestions on our comment form and we will attempt to obtain permission from the region owner.

You may still choose not to implement strict security, but this section is here to reduce the number of people who don't know how.

If you are securing a WHOLE GRID, you can use:
[GatekeeperService]
ForeignAgentsAllowed = false
See: http://opensimulator.org/wiki/Hypergrid_Parameters
See also your: Opensim\bin\config-include\StandaloneHypergrid.ini

p.s.: If you know anything about securing regions, you certainly know more than we do... in that case we ask that you please tell us what you can by filling out the Comments Form so that we can add your knowledge here.

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