Spread your Creations in Real-Time from Second Life to Koinup and Beyond

Broadcast Your Virtual Life from the Metaverse to Koinup
Spread your Creations in Real-Time from Second Life to Koinup and Beyond

Milan, Italy, November 23th, 2007. We're happy to announce we just completed a broadcast system that lets you post any kind of content directly from virtual worlds to Koinup, in one click.

Right now we can only support Second Life, but soon we'll be including many other virtual worlds.
Using this feature, members can send their stuff directly from Second Life to their gallery, without leaving the virtual world. They can broadcast not just pics, but whole slideshows, stories and journals.

Interaction with virtual worlds is at the core of Koinup strategy. This live broadcast system is the first step inside a more complex strategy aimed at integrations with virtual worlds as Second Life and many others that will come.
This virtual broadcasting system is an ideal tool for covering Second Life events, parties and exhibitions. Bloggers and journalists can use it to do live reports while inworld. Any event you attend in Second Life can be exported to your Koinup page. Anyone can now become a virtual reporter!

By combining the Virtual broadcast and CrossPost tools you can unleash the ability to publish from Second Life to Koinup and from here to major services like Flickr and Twitter - it only takes one click.

Try the new feature without registering by sending a postcard from SL to this email address: try.now@post.koinup.com
Have a look at some posted postcards .
Info:
Koinup srl is a web company based in Brescia, Italy.
Koinup founders are Pierluigi Casolari (CEO) and Edoardo Turelli (CTO)

For press contacts:
press@koinup.com

www.koinup.com

Career makers in Second Life (part 2)

PatrickHufschmid Beaumont will probably not be a name that sounds familiar to the most of you. But in fact, behind this Second life's avatar name, you will find the famous guitar maker Patrick Hufschmid.
"Patrick was born in Rotterdam from a Swiss father and British mother. He showed his passion for music very early. He spent most of his time as a small child playing the piano, and later, the violin. He found his real vocation when he was able to experiment with a guitar, in his early teens, about the same time as he fell in love with metal music. He is a designer- creator, not a traditional luthier. As a skilled guitarist, he advocates simplicity and economy in his own designs.
Although Patrick has a degree as a chef, he found his passion for the guitar. He studied its design and Lutherie at Red Wing Technical College, Minnesota, USA.
In the summer of 2000, Patrick was invited to be the official guitar repairman at the world famous Montreux Jazz Festival. During the Festival he met many celebrities who played his instruments. Without exception, everybody was most enthusiastic.

Hufschmid guitars are hand-made individual works of passion from a man for whom guitar playing and design are not only profession, but also an Art. None of these guitars has a serial number. Each one has a unique personality for Patrick Hufschmid, whose aim is to create a living extension of the performer, his music, and his sound."
On his website, you can see the different guitars he made, as well as a list of all famous guitar players, who plays with a Hufschmid.
It is amazing how many find their way in Second Life, if it is not to make and begin a career, then it's just to socialize. But there is definitely more to find in SL than what the newspapers write all the time about the virtual world. And that makes it all exciting and interesting.

Career makers in Second Life (part 1)

Going through some articles, and with a tip from a friend, which is necessary when you write a blog, I stumbled on the articles of a few avatars, who are famous (or almost) in RL, with or without the help of Second Life.
Today I start with the remarkable story of Jeff Krantz, known as the avatar Hep Shephard, who gave up his work in the beginning of 2007, realizing that he would never be heard from behind his desk.
He could never anticipate what it would be from behind his Mac laptop in his NYC apartment that the world would hear his original and heartfelt songs through live performances in the virtual world. Krantz has quickly become one of the world's first thriving Virtual Singer-Songwriters.
Playing all around Second Life for the last 10 months, he became a notorious and successful singer. He would never have thought that in the Summer of 2007, he would receive an unexpected letter of support from Cat Stevens, who felt his songs were "meaningful and clear", complimenting him on his songwriting talents, and urged Jeff(Hep) to keep going.
Jeffs music is honest, raw, insightful and catchy. Sung in a soothing and approachable voice with dynamic guitar playing. Krantz is likened with artists such as Cat Stevens, James Taylor and Paul Simon. His voice has a clear and mellow tone, which he uses in performances to capture the intimacy of the lyrics and melodies he writes.
Personally, I did not had the chance yet to hear one of his concerts, but I will look out for it, and report all about it. To read more about this singer, click here.
His next concert in SL would be on Tuesday, November 27th, on the Carabbean Breezes, from 1.30 till 2.30AM SLT (Monday, November 26th, 19u30-20u30 CET)

It is not Slex after all, which makes Second Life so popular, it even helps some people to have a foot in RL, to make a career in RL, all thanks to Second Life.

EagleWolf......what are you waiting for? ;))

Tomorrow I'll bring you the story of another well known person in RL, who has also an avatar in Second Life.

'Worm' attacks Second Life world

I was preparing my blogpost for today, after reading BBC News. As at chance, it was written on November 20th, not this year, but last year. I almost published it as news, when I saw the date, and double checking the article. Nevertheless, it still could be news from today. The threat is not gone.

Well, apparently Second Life was hit by a worm, called grey goo. According BBC news, many residents were furious.
The grey goo attack, and controversy over a tool called copybot, which can be used to replicate people virtual wares, without paying for intellectual property rights, was beginning to sour some people's opinion of SL.
"You are selling a service which you can not and have not been able to provide."
Some users were angry because the copybot tool could be used to make replicas of objects in the virtual world and sold by some users in their virtual shops.
Copybot was originally intended to be used as a tool by Linden Lab to find vulnerabilities in the virtual world but it has since been modified and spread to other users.
"Like the world wide web, it will never be possible to prevent data that is drawn on your screen from being copied," Linden Lab wrote, advising residents to sue those who are copying their wares.
Other users were unhappy that Linden Lab continues to offer free accounts to people, who are portrayed more as sight-seers than real residents and increase the load on servers, diminishing the virtual experience for everyone else.

I think there are a lot of free account residents, celebrating already their rezzdays in this period, who will not be very pleased by hearing that colleague residents were pointing them out as tourists, with no contribution to Second Life whatsoever.
After reading, and realizing it happened one year ago, not much has changed, I think.
It still will be Linden Lab's task, to secure Second Life, and taking decisions on who may log in to the grid and who not. Are all residents going to pay their contribution to Linden Lab?
To my point of view, it would be better to stop new subscribers for a while, until LL had the chance to stabilize the grid. The growth of SL, has of course a direct link to the possible problems, where I am blogging about the last days.
But the success was also noticed by several big companies , which have set up business in Second Life, ...who are investing, and therefore supporting the development in the virtual world by Linden Lab.
To read the whole BBC News article from last year, click here.

Hacker(s) Attacks Banks in Second Life

Several banks are hit by a hacker. Money was taken from their accounts, but L&L Bank was the biggest victim. 3,2 million L$ was stolen through the ATM's. Read the full article here.
So, despite if any bank in SL is trustworthy, we now have to deal with criminal avatars, who can make a bank go bankrupt.
I immediately went to the site of the Whitfield Holdings, to see if they were hacked too. I found a note to all customers from Christopher Whitfield, explaining what has happened. I also learned the countermeasures he took, to prevent further misfortune.
They were hit for an amount of 1,055,000 L$, which was covered by Belinda Linden, after reporting this indictable offence.
The avatar who hacked the system was Betatester Allen.
But, despite all efforts, the bank was hit a second time the very same day. This time the hacker's name was Hamid Alter, and stole 160,000 L$.
Again, Linden Lab was notified of the abuse, and they are also investigating this black Monday for banks in Second Life.
Countermeasures were taken, such as all accounts with 10L$ or less on the account are blocked, no automatically sign-up in the future, profiles will be checked......

To be honest, I would think that these actions should have been thought about long ago, before this could happen. As when you start a bank.....but it is easy for me, to be critical after the facts.
All Second Life banks will investigate, what is to be done, to prevent this from happening again in the future.

Sports or Miss Belgium Second Life?

Last Saturday there was a football(soccer) game between Belgium and Poland. Belgium lost with 2-0, which was not really a surprise.
What was a surprise, to me anyway, is that on Saturday, I had a record of views on my blog.
When I checked "Google Analytics" today, I expected a lower quantity of views during the weekend, which is normal, but what did I see? An extremely high number of views on Saturday ( 4 times more than usual). When looking at the content that was viewed, I could see that the article with pictures of Miss Belgium Second Life was definitely successful over the weekend.;))
When checking out the origin of the views, it seemed that for more than 75% came from Poland.
Even on Sunday, most viewers came from Poland.
Apparently, my blog had a link on "sports.pl", which is a website for sports in Poland.
I don't know how, I don't know why, but it I think that Miss Belgium Second Life had more success in the weekend , than the Belgian players in Poland.
At first sight, I even did not made the link to the football game, but there is no other explanation.
And to be honest, I am also more interested in pictures of a miss, than to watch a football game of Belgium now a days, so I can understand their interest. But what is strange, is that this blog was to be found on a sports website. Thank you Poland!;))
If you did not read the article yet, please follow the link to the article and this link to the pictures.

Sunrise...in Second Life

I had a picture some months ago, which was post processed, which was one of the coolest pictures in my album of Second Life at that time. That picture was taken with the "depth" setting in the SL viewer.Now I had the chance to make a similar picture, but without rework. With the Windlight viewer I got almost the same effect, even better.

Black Swan in Second Life

I was very busy the last few days in RL. That is why there are not too many articles in my blog lately. Sorry for that.
Even Windlight was difficult to try out, due to my responsibilities in RL, but yesterday, I took my chances, and tried several settings out with the Windlight viewer. What I noticed is that the current viewer is more laggy than the normal Second Life viewer. Not all is rezzing. When I logged in, my house stood only half in my screen. I did not know if half of it was gone, or just not rezzed. By accident I moved a piece of my house, and to correct that, I had to log in again with another viewer. And there it was...my house was still there...;)
To try the Windlight viewer out, I thought it would be good to visit the Black Swan Sim. I had the URL from a friend, and as she told me it was a nice place to take snapshots, it would be the best opportunity to do it with the Windlight viewer, despite the rezz problems.
And I must say, you can do great things with the new viewer. The water looks real, the clouds are beautiful. Enjoy the snapshots I took there, and tell me what you think.

WINDLIGHT is back in Second Life

Finally!!!!!
We all have been waiting several months now on this to happen.
I can't wait to start downloading the viewer. This will probably mean that I will have to quit the "Nicholaz"viewer, but I think the Windlight will give me more profits in Second Life.
Read the official posts about this feature!
Download the Windlight First Look viewer here.

Update: My Second Life project

You have probably already noticed, that I have made a video from the presentation. You will be able to find it on the right column of my blog. It will stay there permanently, with a link to the main article.
This was my first attempt with a video on youtube, but the quality is rather poor.
So, it will be better for now, to look at the presentation through the link to my other blog. But for those who have trouble by opening a flash file, can always have a look on youtube.
We will see to it that, with our next project the quality of the youtube video will be better.