A sophisticated multiuser notecard postal system in a range of designs!
The Bright Mailbox is a box into which residents can drag and drop notecards, much as they might post letters in real life.
We provide the mailbox in six styles: a wall-mounted steel letterbox, a domestic mailbox standing on a pole, and public postboxes as used in Britain, France, Russia, and the US. The standard letterbox is a simple box, while the other five are detailed meshes. Each mailbox has a land impact (LI) of 1.
(But if none of these styles suit you, just drag the contents from our standard mailbox into any object to create your own!)
The mailboxes are all copyable: rez as many as you need, in as many styles as you wish.
You can assign each mailbox an "addressee", so that notecards dropped into different mailboxes can go to different people.
For instance, if you run a museum, you might use a Bright Mailbox as a "Suggestions Box", and make yourself the addressee, allowing your visitors to post notecards to you.
Or, if you rent out apartments, you could rez a mailbox outside each home, and make your tenants the addressees. Each tenant would then be able to collect notecards left for them, even though you own the mailbox itself.
Bright Mailboxes offer a number of optional features, and when a notecard is posted, they can:
* Send a notification IM to the addressee.
* Automatically forward the notecard directly to the addressee's inventory.
* Transcribe the notecard's content into an email, and send it to an address chosen by the addressee.
Even if notecards are forwarded, or sent on as emails, safe copies are always kept in the mailbox. They will only be removed when addressee uses the mailbox menu to "take" them (into inventory), or "clear" them.
(Note that to allow mailboxes to keep copies of notecards even after they have forwarded them, and to allow residents other than the mailbox's owner to be the addressee and collect notecards, the mailboxes will automatically reject any notecards which are posted without copy and transfer permissions.)
A mailbox can also produce a report of all the notecards it contains, showing the date and time they were posted, their titles, and creators. If you, the mailbox owner, are running the report, it will automatically add a list of all the mailboxes you have rezzed in the region, showing their addressees, locations, and contents.
So whether you simply want to put up a single letter box to allow people to drop you notecards, or you want to establish a postal system for a whole community of residents, the Bright Mailbox makes it possible!
Drag the object "Bright Mailbox boxed" from your inventory onto the ground to rez it. Right click the box to access its pop-up menu, select "Open" to display its "Contents" window, and click "Copy to Inventory".
This will create a folder called "Bright Mailbox boxed" in your inventory, containing the following items:
Bright Mailbox Bright Mailbox (British) Bright Mailbox (French) Bright Mailbox (Russian) Bright Mailbox (US) Bright Mailbox (with pole) Bright Mailbox note
Here you can see the six styles of mailbox, plus the "Bright Mailbox note", which contains the manual you are now reading.
To get started, just drag the "Bright Mailbox" from your inventory and onto the ground to rez it.
(Though it's not essential, it can be a good idea to change the mailbox's name to something meaningful to you. Right-click the mailbox to display it's context menu, select "Edit" to open its edit window, and change the "Name:" of the mailbox from "Bright Mailbox" to "Jane's Mailbox" - or whatever you wish. Then click the mailbox to display its menu, and click the "RESET BOX" button.)
By default, you are the rezzed mailbox's "addressee", and the mailbox is ready to receive notecards posted to you by other residents.
Click the mailbox to display the following menu:
ADDRESSEE: jane.doe NOTECARDS: 1 [Notify] addressee by IM? YES [Forward] notecards to inventory? YES Send notecards as [Email]? NO Show [text] over mailbox? ALWAYS Show [mailbox] name? YES Show [addressee]? YES Enable [sound] effects? YES
The menu offers twelve buttons:
[TAKE CARDS] [COPY CARDS] [CLEAR CARDS] [Notify] [Forward] [Email] [Text] [Mailbox] [Addressee] [Sound] [RUN REPORT] [RESET BOX]
You will see that there is already one notecard in the mailbox. This is a welcome message from us at the Bright Corporation.
Click [TAKE NOTES] to receive a folder containing all the notecards into your inventory, and remove them from the mailbox.
The name of the folder will be that of the mailbox itself, followed by the date and time, as in "Jane's Mailbox 2021-09-11 17:38:02".
Click [COPY NOTES] to receive the same folder, but leaving copies of the notecards in the mailbox.
Click [CLEAR NOTES] to delete the notecards from the mailbox. You will be asked to confirm this choice before they are cleared.
Click [Notify] to enable or disable notifications. While enabled, the mailbox will send the addressee an IM to let them know when someone posts them a notecard.
Click [Forward] to enable or disable notecard forwarding. If enabled, when a notecard is posted, the mailbox will automatically forward it to the addressee's inventory.
Click [Email] to display a dialog box into which you can enter an email address. If you enter an address, when notecards are posted, their text will be emailed to you. Enter "NONE" to stop such emails.
(Note that Second Life only allows scripts to read the first 255 characters of each line of a notecard, and limits emails to a few kilobytes in length, so emails may not capture all the text from notecards with very long or very many lines, or which contain embedded items.)
Click [Text] to determine whether floating text should appear above the mailbox, always, never, or only when it contains notecards.
Click [Mailbox] to add or remove the name of the mailbox object from floating text.
Click [Addressee] to add or remove the name of the addressee from floating text.
Click [Sound] to enable or disable sound effects.
To determine which residents who may access the mailbox's menu, right-click the mailbox to pop-up its context menu, click "Open" to display its contents window, and double-click the notecard "! Bright Mailbox USERS" to open it.
You will see the following text on the first few lines:
* List below residents with access to this mailbox's menu * Put ONE username on each line * The FIRST resident listed is the mailbox ADDRESSEE * Make the addressee OUT OF SERVICE to disable the mailbox
So everyone on the list will be able to use the mailbox's menu, but only the first listed - the addressee - will receive notifications or forwarded notecards.
As there are no residents in the list to start with, you are the mailbox's addressee, and no one else may access the mailbox menu.
Let's say that you (Jane Doe) want to be the addressee, but your friend MadPurpleGirl helps you run your venue, and you want her to be able to access the mailbox menu too. Below the text above, add the following lines to USERS:
Jane Doe MadPurpleGirl
Or alternatively, perhaps you have just rented out an apartment to tenant SomeWomanFromSpace, and she shares it with her friend ZoomZoom Macrami. You want SomeWomanFromSpace to be the addressee, and ZoomZoom to share access to the mailbox menu.
SomeWomanFromSpace ZoomZoom Macrami
Note that even though you are not on this list, as the mailbox owner, you will *always* have access to the menu. You only need include your own name if you wish to be the addressee, but list other residents below you to give them menu access.
If you wish to take a mailbox out of service, just put "OUT OF SERVICE" at the top of the list of users. This will prevent anyone dropping notecards into the mailbox. This is a good way to reserve mailboxes you plan to assign to people later, but which aren't currently in use: such as tenants' mailboxes outside vacant rentals.
For instance, if SomeWomanFromSpace and ZoomZoom moved out of their apartment, just change the USERS list to:
OUT OF SERVICE
Note that if you wish to temporarily remove someone's name, instead of deleting it, you can simply prefix it with an asterisk ("*"). Any line in the USERS notecard which begins with an asterisk is ignored. So for instance, if you wished to temporarily suspend ZoomZoom's access to the mailbox menu, but suspected you'd probably be adding her name back later, rather than delete her name, you could simply prefix it with an asterisk:
SomeWomanFromSpace * ZoomZoom Macrami
To produce a report, click the mailbox to display its menu, and click the [RUN REPORT] button.
You will hear a report like this in chat:
[08:56] Jane's Mailbox: *** REPORT OF NOTECARDS IN THIS MAILBOX *** [08:56] Jane's Mailbox: *** DATE POSTED | TIME POSTED | TITLE | CREATOR *** [08:56] Jane's Mailbox: 2021-09-17 | 12:02:26 | Note from Iggy | Iggy Hyx [08:56] Jane's Mailbox: 2021-09-18 | 08:54:35 | New Note | SupraVixen [08:56] Jane's Mailbox: 2021-09-18 | 15:55:29 | INFO REQUEST! | ZoomZoom Macrami [08:56] Jane's Mailbox: 2021-09-18 | 16:09:04 | *** CLUB CRAZY! OPENS TONIGHT! *** | DJZanda2000
This is a list of all the notecards in the mailbox, shown in the order they were posted.
For each notecard, you can see the date posted, time posted, notecard title, and creator's name.
If you press Control+H to open your chat window, you will see that the creators' names are clickable links: click them to open the notecard creator's profile. (Bear in mind, though, that the person who created the notecard isn't necessarily the person who posted it.)
Anyone in the USERS list can access this notecards report. However, only the mailbox's owner will see the additional report below appended:
[08:56] Jane's Mailbox: *** REPORT OF MAILBOXES YOU OWN IN THIS REGION *** [08:56] Jane's Mailbox: *** ADDRESSEE | LOCATION | NOTECARD(S) *** [08:56] Jane's Mailbox: Jane Doe | Puffball (4,7,35) | 4 notecard(s) [08:56] Jane's Other Mailbox: Jane Doe | Puffball (10,17,35) | 1 notecard(s) [08:56] Rental Mailbox: SomeWomanFromSpace | Puffball (101,36,120) | 2 notecard(s)
This report lists all the mailboxes you have rezzed in the region: showing the name, addressee, location, and number of notecards for each.
Note that the addressee names and locations are clickable links. Clicking an addressee's name will open their avatar profile, and clicking a mailbox's location will teleport you to it.
* Give your mailboxes meaningful names, reflecting their purpose or location. You might have a "Suggestions Box" in your museum, or an "Apartment 17 Mailbox" outside a tenant's front door. This will help people understand their purpose, and make mailbox reports easier to read. (Click the "RESET BOX" button on the mailbox menu to update the mailbox's floating text with the new name.)
* Set up a mailbox called "EMAIL ME!", and click the [Email] button on the mailbox menu to assign it an email address. This gives your visitors a reason to use your mailbox rather than simply dropping notecards on your profile, as they will understand that you may see their email even while you are offline.
* Instead of writing "Please send notecards" in your profile, consider putting the location of your email-enabled mailbox in your Picks, and directing people there.
* If you offer mailboxes to tenants renting homes or shops on your land, once you have added their name as addressee to the USERS list in their mailbox, post them a "Welcome!" notecard! They will receive a notification, get practice collecting their mail, and be more likely to understand, value, and use the service you are providing. In your welcome notecard, remind them that their neighbours also have mailboxes, and explain how they can post notecards of their own.
* Don't be concerned if you occasionally hear the error message "Couldn't find notecard X". It is caused by a slightly odd Second Life bug which means that if you create a new notecard in your inventory, but don't edit it and "Save" it, while it appears as an inventory item, it is not added to Second Life's "assets database". If someone posts such a notecard, when the mailbox tries to read it, Second Life generates this error message, and unfortunately there is no way to suppress it. But it does no harm: the mailbox simply assumes the notecard is empty, as indeed it is.
Shan Bright
Chief Executive Officer