I won't let you down.

Sometimes it takes a lot to keep finding the right information about Second Life to post on my blog. Sometimes I really don’t feel like doing it, but always have the urge to take care of my readers, and oblige myself to post an article.

Today is one of those days. Having a lot of work in RL, I don’t have the time to surf for a long time around the metaversed world, to find an eye catcher.
Nevertheless I could not get it over me of not writing something on my blog. As the style of this blog has changed over the months, I think I really need to add more personal stuff, personal experiences, along with the news or information I find on the web.

So, in the next period, you will be able to find again more stories, about me, about my friends, that is, if you would be interested in that of course.

I wrote already several articles about Eaglewolf Kubrick, a dear friend of mine. He created, together with four other friends, Doornroosje, an island where there was always fun, always someone to talk too, and a nice place to hang around too. (Doornroosje = Sleeping beauty)
This island has moved to a place where there were more prims, and thus, more possibilities for Eagle, as we call him, to build his castle again.
After some weeks, there were some complains from neighbours, having trouble with the noise, coming from Doornroosje’s place, but was, to be clear about that, not from any member of Doornroosje. So after a few days, Eagle gathered all his courage, and started all over again. Building from day to day at his new castle, where there was no fear that any of the neighbours would have to complain about.
Soon, after this magnificent idea of castle was almost finished, he had the urge of seeking new prims, as the ones on this island were almost eaten. He tried to persuade some neighbours to move, so he could buy their land, but did not succeed.
This castle of “Sleeping Beauty” (Doornroosje), is in fact the old one, but built upon a huge “ dungeon” where there is a place to party, as we used too. And above that, there is the castle, with a beautiful romantic garden with a fountain in the back.
But it took too long to build, and the people were gone, there was no one left to party anymore, despite all the efforts of Eagle. Only a few members were returning regularly.
But EagleWolf would not be EagleWolf, if he did not find new challenges……and he did.

To be continued…..

How to ....... in Second Life

Two new official books from Second Life, about Second life to be published soon.

The first one is about making money in the metaverse.
Let's say you have a fashion boutique you're trying to establish. Or a great new toy shop. Or you're getting going with a prefabs business.
There are several important marketing methods you're going to want to pursue as you attempt to raise community awareness of your products and/or services. And Daniel Terdiman has written at length about those methods in the marketing chapter of his book, The Entrepreneur's Guide to Second Life, which will be published by Wiley next month.

The second one is written by Aimee Weber and is titled Creating your world: The official guide to advanced Content Creation for Second Life., and will be published next week.
This book is all about how to become better known in the Second Life community--and thus to boost awareness of your business.
What the author Aimee Weber said in an interview was this: "Volunteer for work, especially charity work. This will get your name associated with a reputable and respectable cause."
She explained herself later in a comment: "Well the problem I was addressing was how to land a contract or job when you don't have professional references. The content creator basically has three options:
1. Get the job without professional references. That's pretty difficult! If you stick with it long enough, somebody may take a chance on you which will give you the reference you need for the next job. But waiting and hoping is not a proactive move.
2. Work for free for a corporation. This will not only give you your reference but also provides you an "in" with a company that could lead to more lucrative corporate work and contracts.
3. Work for free for a charity. This gives you your reference while doing something good for others.
There are reasons why one would prefer to donate time to a corporation instead of a charity, but morality wouldn't be one of them.
People routinely write off charitable donations from their taxes, but that doesn't mean they donate their money FOR those write-offs. The truth is, charities really need our help and are happy to tell others when/if you have proven yourself to be conscientious and hard-working."

The reason why I post about these two books, is because it all has to do with marketing. This time not from a big company, but for yourself, as entrepreneur and blogger in Second Life. How to make business in the metaverse, how to get your name known etc... especially, when you have a shop, or you have something to sell.

Second Life Survival game - I am Legend

Based upon the forthcoming adaptation of Richard Matheson's classic science-fiction novel of the same name, the Second Life Survival Game offers fans an opportunity to go inside the world of the film and explore its physical universe while inhabiting a number of different characters.
Technically "The Omega Man" is a rip off from the 1964 Vincent Price movie '"The last Man on earth", which was based on the book "I am Legend". In fact they could call it the "The Omega Man- the remake".
The movie is coming to the theatres, but now there is also a game in Second Life, based upon Will Smith's movie "I am legend".

An incurable, unstoppable man-made virus is basically killing everybody and the people that are left fall into infected and uninfected people. The goal is to find a cure to this virus and survive. You can play as a Darkseeker, an infected human, or an infected dog, or you can play as an uninfected human of a police dog. You go in the game and you get to actually choose your factions, specifically the class. You can be a dog class or a human class.

After reading several blogs about the convention of San Jose, the conclusion is that Second Life is, with no doubt, the most attractive virtual world for all companies for their marketing. You can not deny, you can not look besides them, all the moves of well known companies, in this case Warner Bros., to be part of the virtual world, and to have them noticed with the help of Second Life.

New challenges in my Second Life

It has been a while that I posted a story of my own, and I thought maybe now is a good time to write about some experiences on the grid.
I have been busy, very busy the past days. Working from some disappointments trough out in some new challenges, which makes life (second one) so much more interesting.
Sometimes life can be strange, one moment you have no expectancies, the other one, you don't know how to manage it all together. And all that can change in just a second.
This blog of mine has definitely his advantages for me. First of all, you meet new people, who are commenting this blog, writing their own blog, me, visiting their blog etc.
Secondly it is a way for me to express myself in another language, that is not my native one, and learn throughout the days, not only the language, but also the applications on the web, which comes with it. It is fun doing that, and I will keep on doing it as long as I am having fun looking for and posting articles.
What gave me another look on all this, is that I was privileged to meet new people lately, and somehow, made me feel good, getting to know these people.
Colleague bloggers, who have the same passion (writing on the blog), and are open to new ideas, that is the only thing what it takes for me to get a new fresh breath in Second Life.
You already could guess it, yes....I am working on a project together with another fellow blogger, and this experience alone, is worthwhile to keep on doing the things that I do.
We have only met each other recently, but I know now, from the few conversations we had, that we can work something out, that will give a new aspect to my work in Second Life, and of course not only mine.
Now, I can only say, wait and see, as I will post about it when it is the time for it. It is still in an early stage and still needs a lot of work and communication to finalize it.

Controlling RL devices in Second Life

Daden Limited is a virtual worlds agency working in Second Life and other virtual worlds. Their aim is to help people engage with their audience using some of the most interesting technologies around today. They already developed the aircraft tracking system in SL, and now they are working on a system in Second Life that can control your RL devices.
"This is a work in progress. We’re using libsecondlife to detect activity in SL and then drive a USB break-out-box, so that we can control (and read from) RL devices. Here we just see a switch in SL controlling one of the LEDs on the USB interface."

Did you know...about the red beacon of confusion

You have certainly seen it on your screen in Second Life, the red beacon that points to a certain location. Well, if it bothers you, you can easily make it disappear.

When you visit a location a vertical red beacon appears nearby, along with a red arrow that follows you around until you walk through the beacon to make it disappear. However, sometimes the beacon is in a place where you can't walk through it, and sometimes the red arrow follows you when you teleport to a new location.
Here is the simple way to take care of this problem.
When you arrive at a location and there is a red arrow trying to point you to the red beacon, just open your main map window to show your current location. You will also see the red circle of the beacon and the yellow circle that represents you. Then just click on the yellow circle and the beacon will shift to your avatar's position and either disappear or be very close so you can walk through it and get rid of it.

A Travel Guide for Virtual Bruges

You all now by now Bruges in Second Life, thanks to the articles and pictures on my and other blogs. As this is a piece of art in the virtual world, and a must to be seen, Louis Platini, has made a hud to visit the place.
LouisPlatini.com is a metaverse content provider that helps companies to have a successful
presentation in Virtual Worlds. Recently, Virtual Bruges was constructed which is one of the
more popular destinations in Second Life for Virtual Tourism, shopping and Live Music Events.
Read the press release below.
An example of Augmented Virtuality

Second Life, 15 October 2007. The Travel Guide for Virtual Bruges is now available.
Several kiosks are placed at different locations in Virtual Bruges that give away the guide for free to the visitors. The guide contains facts about “real‐life” (RL) Bruges houses such as architecture, shopping and restaurant information.

To provide information about the reconstruction of Bruges, Belgium in Second Life, we didn’t choose to place boards near the houses that would hinder the view, but have developed a HUD that show information about the houses the avatar is seeing.

The HUD calculates at each moment to position at which the avatar is looking at and retrieves all information from a remote database. This can be compared to a RL tourist that flips through the pages of a travel guide when looking at a particular building or monument. All information is personalized for each tourist, e.g. the tourist standing beside you might be looking at something else and might consult other pages from his own guide. The same situation is possible with a HUD in Second Life; two avatars standing side by side, but looking at another building will retrieve different facts.

Together with the launch of the Travel Guide HUD, a website is available with more in‐depth information about (Virtual) Bruges at http://www.virtual‐bruges.be. The website contains more information about RL and SL Bruges, including the weekly events that are organized in Virtual Bruges.
More information about the Travel Guide HUD and underlying technology is available at http://www.louisplatini.com (A white paper is available in which more information is given about this Augmented Virtuality Application). For questions you can contact Louis Platini in‐world or at Louis.Platini@gmail.com

PINK FOR LIFE

Press release In a sequel of last year's operation "100 women for life" which gathered 126 famous women in favor of breast cancer fight, the cancerology Institute, Gustave Roussy, first European research center in cancer research, launched in October 2007 : "Pink For Life". This operation was organized to raise awareness about breast cancer, during Pink October, international month for the fight against breast cancer. October 9 and 10, 2007 on the Champs Elysees (Paris) - Hotel Dassault-Artcurial, has been organized an exhibition followed by an auction of pink items. Items were donated by famous fashion designers and luxury brands.

ConceptSL organized the Second Life side of this event :

— The staff of ConceptSL has duplicated several real-life exposed items in Second Life. The virtual objects were exposed in the exhibition hall of our Second life island : Elyseum customized in pink for the operation from October 1st to 10th.

— The Second Life community has also contributed : 22 RL and SL designers have donated over 40 pink objects for the SL exhibition.

— SL Volunteers were guiding visitors showing creations and telling their stories during the 10 days.

— Oct. 9th and 10th, during the RL exhibition in Paris, 11 musicians have organized a 20 hours live concert (RL/SL) over the two days.

There as been no less than 42 objects that have been sold : (glasses, dresses, furnitures, jewels, etc.). Throughout the 10 days we have had around 950 visitors (420 unique avatars - 360 during the two days of the concert) ! With around 80 avatars at the same time on Elysuem.

Although it was organized to raise awareness about breast cancer, the various items purchases and donations brougth over 65,000 L$.

All by myself in Second Life

Sector 13 - City of Abaddon

Yesterday I had some disappointments in Second Life, and was talking about it to a friend of mine. As you all already know, you can have that in your second life too, those moments that you don't know if all makes sense.
But I don't want to write about these things on this blog, I want to show new things , new pictures, all new experiments that I encounter.
So, this friend invited me to a place, where, and you will not believe it, where there was no one else, just the two of us. Amazing!
And what is more, this place was magnificent.
These last days , I discover new SIM's on Second life, who are worth to visit more than once.
The sim he took me, Sector 13 - City of Abaddon, was build with such a detail. Never seen like it before, although the Cannery Rezzable is also a similar place.
In one corner you could find a small Chinese village, with market place, even the wooden beams had these Chinese description on them. At the other side it was an abandoned city, with cars crashed, as if an atomic bomb had just fallen.
Check the other pictures in my flickr stream, as usual.