Last night at SL5B, education & orientation panel, Prokofy Neva made an interesting remark. Behold, it’s not even a complete paragraph!

Well I am grateful to Ingrid Ingersoll who took me to her friend’s store and had me spend my $500 stipend on a shirt and pants, and well, that’s Second Life. That’s how it should work. Everybody can pay something — and there should be less freebies, they clog inventory and stifle newbie initiative. Prokofy Neva

Now, although I like receiving - and creating - freebies, there’s definitely something to be said against them:

1. They INDEED clog inventory.
2. People often cherish what they have payed for more - or at least had to do effort to get -, as they consider it to have a higher value.

3. Using or wearing something selfmade gives you a sense of achievement, and uniqueness.
4. Without freebies people would ‘learn’ to spend L$ from the very start. Good for the SLeconomy, a bit less good for the retention rate?
5. A certain amount of the freebies are certainly crap, and those ‘500 freebie boxes’ are bad inventions. Clearly list what it contains, and what it does?

but…

1. Please don’t take the freebie/OS scripts away!
2. What’s the use of uploading the same i-net found textures over and over again, you might as well get freebie packages.
3. I like giving out freebies, it’s kewl to see people all enthusiastic.
4. Freebies are a good (great?) promo tool.
5. I would never pay for a dance cow, 10 different types of coffee cups, but it’s still nice to have them.

So, I wonder, Freebies, are they a ’show stopper’ or a ‘great gift to the Grid’. What’s your opinion? And which freebies do you use still/most? For me that would be my flightfeather attachment, the ZHAO AO and.. errr… that’s it. (If I think of more I still regularly use, I’ll add them to the list. Pandora HUD too, I don’t recall 100% sure if that was a freebie or gift. :/ )

10 ARE TALKING HERE »
Tags: freebie, orientation, prokofy neva

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Yeey! As I already plurked - yeah, Vint is to be found on Plurk lately - and listened around with a few peepz - do you foresee any SL-problems with this baby - there is a new addition to the Vint-family: Mao and Deng got a little brother. Although he’s officially named Acer Aspire 8920G (934G64BN) we’re still thinking of a name that fits the family tradition better. Naming suggestions are welcome.

Acer Aspire 8920G Specs

It’s a healthy baby, with a good - although above average - weight, black body and not to noisy (but sounds great when you tell it to make noise - for a laptop, that is). More specific: NVIDIA® GeForce® 9650M-GS, Intel® Core™2 Duo processor T9300 (2.5GHz/FSB: 800MHz/6MB L2 cache), 4GB DDR II RAM, 640GB HDD (2x 320GB) and the rest of usual features that come with such beings. The only icky thing is the CineDash Media Console, which imho is totally unnecessary (maybe it can be removed without to much problems, like the appendix?) It comes with a clean Vista install (no ‘hey, try this out, it’s shareware crap thanks to nice the PC guys from the shop) which is already way less scary now I found the way to revert it to ‘old, classic windows look’. :d

It’s strange how such a thing can give you a whole new look on virtual life. From 4:3 aspect ratio to almost 2:1 surely needs a while to get used to. (Yeah, I could not help myself. First thing I did was to check how Greenies Lawn looked on this one, and how my fps was doing.)

Software. Errr. Suggestions welcome.

Now the thing is, what to teach it in his first weeks:

* = He can already do that.
? = ‘no idea’ or ‘would this be a good idea?’

1. Surfing: Firefox*, Opera, Firefox plugins
2. Anti-virus: Avast
3. Firewall: pffff. not needed?
4. Zipping/unzipping: 7-Zip
5. E-mail: Thunderbird
6. FTP: FileZilla
7. Graphics: Adobe stuff, GIMP, Adobe Reader*, Wacom drivers
8. Torrent: ?
9. 3D software: DAZ?, Blender (not that I’m good with it)
10. Second Life: Second Life RC Client*, shadow branch test files, avpainter, clothingpreview, qanimator, ?
11. Feed Reader: ? (might go web based)
12. General comfort: Notepad++ *
13. Office: OpenOffice
14. IM/chat: Skype, ICQ, MSN, mIRC
15. Capture audio: Audacity
16. Capture video/screen: any good alternatives for Frapps?
17. Fun & Various: Bryce, PacketGarden, Twinity viewer, ExifViewer, AMP Font Viewer, camera drivers, Spore Creature Creator (maybe), …
18. Music playback: ? (probably WinAmp)

Did I forget any important stuff a PC should be able to do?

What won’t make it on the new PC: lot’s of useless Intel programs, Microsoft Office, Flickr Uploader, _anything_ CoffeeCup, Nero 7, Corel Painter (unless I buy a new Wacom someday, but never actually used it), Google Video Player, AC3D, QuarkXpress, Flock, Google Earth, Flux Player, Pownce client, HentaII3D, Plopp, meet-me (never worked), AC3D, … .

Fingerprint, a bit ‘over the top’?

A final questions, that ‘fingerprint identification’ that comes with almost every laptop nowadays, does anybody use that? Is it extra safe? And what if you loose your finger? Seems kinda silly and ‘unnecessary luxury?’ (ok, so is the subwoofer in the laptop and some other things, but still. :d)

12 ARE TALKING HERE »
Tags: acer, gadgets, graphics, hardware, vint falken

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The second annual ‘Hippo’ (aka Linden Lab Innovation Awards) are open for nominations. The Linden Lab Innovation Awards are a part of their Open Source - or open source, opinions may differ - project and serve to ‘honor community members who have had the most significant impact on the Second Life open source viewer project over the last year‘. Candidates are contributors who have had the most impact on Second Life open source development in the last 12 months. Got a favorite contributor, documenter, or beneficial influence whose contribution you feel was exemplary between 1 July 2007 and 30 June 2008? Nominate them for an award! More information about how to nominate your favourite contributor over at Massively.

Most famous ‘Hippo’ 2007

Most well known winner last year was Mr. Nicholaz ‘Beresford, who won the title ‘Contributor of the Year 2007′ for his huge amount of great patches - bye, bye memory leeks, or ‘lower memory footprint ‘ as Nicholaz puts it so nicely - which he incorporated in the Nicholaz Viewer. The same Mr. Beresford that almost gave up on supplying us with great ‘asstachment free’ viewers and patching the Linden’s viewer - obviously this (2007) was a different time, a time when everybody thought that contributions would continue to be readily accepted and not largely ignored - does not care much about this year’s Linden Lab Innovation Awards: ‘I’m a pretty ambivalent about this years awards, given that the Nicholaz Edition is now more of an independent viewer and given that I even stopped making submissions. I’m pretty proud of my last one about the Asstachments, which was around January, but the feedback from the Lindens (essentially calling it a cheap band aid) about was less than thrilling. Others which I’m equally proud of, actually the ones which make most of the difference between Linden versions and Nicholaz Editions, have hardly been accepted or I pulled them out after seeing them ignored for months.‘. For those who did not know, btw, there is are a whole lot of ‘alternative’ viewers/clients for Second Life in the running, most - but not all - listed here.

I hope Lindens take better care of this year’s Hippos. Send them iMacs, IM’s and most important of all: listen to them! They were chosen because they have valuable suggestions to make in the first place! ;)

How to nominate a possible Hippo

This is a rather closed ‘poll’, as Lindens don’t announce this call for nominees and votes on the Second Life blog, you need to dig through the wiki until you find a page titled ‘Linden Lab Innovation Awards. Now it’s easy you say? Nope. 1st thing you need to do is login into the Second Life Jira Issue Tracker - and we by now know that 99,19%* of Second Life’s population does not know that JIRA exists, let alone how to use JIRA and then being able to ‘add the person’s Second Life avatar name as a subtask to the appropriate category under MISC’. Not sure if I now how to do that, honestly. :p

All the best of luck to the people that got nominated already - see list below - but maybe we should have some ‘aimed at the broader public’ awards too. Best contribution to virtual fashion? To the art of animating your avatar? Most useful HUD? Best tutorials? Prime interesting news source? Best in picturing the Grid. Top metaverse social peace keeper? Most funny virtual clown? Something to engage all residents, and rewards those that make our Second Lifes more agreeable on a daily basis, not just because of their knowledge of code, but because they have other skills. No? As this is only about people who use ‘Linden Lab shared tools’ kick-ass people like Natalia Zelmanov - contributing hugely in their own way - fall out of the boat.

Anyway, the nominees (so far!) for the Linden Lab Innovation Awards are:

1. Best Documentation (misc-1301) - SignpostMarv Martin, Asuka Neely, Strife Onizuka, Gally Young, Day Oh, Saijanai Kuhn and Catherine Pfeffer
2. Best Project Organizer (misc-1302) - Lex Neva, McCabe Maxsted, Harleen Gretzky and Strife Onizuka
3. Best Contribution (misc-1303) - Mm Alder ,Ellla McMahon, Gellan Glenelg, JB Kraft, tangletwigs fairymeadow, Able Whitman, Seg Baphomet, Marine Kelley, Realxtend development team and Nicholaz Beresford
4. The Jesse Malthus Award for Best Community Influence (misc-1304) - Zha Ewry an Lex Neva
5. Contributor of the Year (misc-1305) - Gigs Taggart, Harleen Gretzky, Alissa Sabre, Carjay McGinnis, Maxwolfe Goodliffe, Fox Diller, Whoops Babii, Michelle2 Zenovka, Marine Kelley and Nicholaz Beresford

As only 8 names out of this list ring a bell to me, I feel ashamed for not spending enough time on JIRA (, but it loads that slow, sir!) although I’m almost always on the RC. To often when something bad happens to me, I just reboot and get one with it, assuming somebody else will report it so they can fix it. But also a bit for our Linden Gods, who should - imho - try harder to explain to people & avatars about JIRA and how to contribute (and maybe see some results of that).

* Vint’s best guess. But really, I won’t be that far off!

I HAVE AN OPINION »
Tags: hippos, jira, Linden Lab Innovation Awards, open source

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For the ‘web 2.0′ there are once in a while interesting projects that see the daylight, but not enough of it. Rather ‘clonelike’ projects create a lot of buzz, and long term, fascinating players, don’t get enough attention. I figure ‘We Feel Fine’ is one of those: We Feel Fine is an exploration by Jonathan Harris & Sepandar Kamvar of human emotion on a global scale.

‘Huh?’ Was my first reaction. How the hell can they - Jonathan Harris & Sepandar Kamvar - know how I feel. Let alone the whole of mankind? But seems that the global scale is the blogosphere: since August 2005, We Feel Fine has been harvesting human feelings from a large number of weblogs. Every few minutes, the system searches the world’s newly posted blog entries for occurrences of the phrases “I feel” and “I am feeling”. As blogpost often contain author name, date, geolocations, … and We Feel Fine even looks op the info in the profile of the blogger, they know - more or less - who you are, what’s your sex, how old you are, where you live, … . The result is a database of several million human feelings, increasing by 15,000 - 20,000 new feelings per day. The internet holds emotions after all! ;)

You can look up those feelings at We Feel Fine in quite a few different ways: Murmurs the most extreme for those who are fond of prying into someone else’s life and Metrics the most fitted for those who prefer general data over one person views.

Interesting because?

• It gives us a ‘voyeuristic’ look on other people’s lives and more important, emotions: gossiping is out of fashion as one does not know one’s neighbours any more, and reality tv continuous to suck. People trust things to their weblogs - and thus the entire ‘web population’ that they often would not even trust their partners with.
• Data! Compare the average amount of happiness in the USA vs happy people in the EU, see if it’s true that the only ones with either euphoric or highly depressed feelings are teenagers, and if the weather has something to do with it. Does astronomy make sense? Do all people born in 1984 feel more or less alike? Were there more ‘I feel disappointed’ people on the day George W Bush was elected president again? Etc.

Can you think of any more interesting uses?

My only ‘doubt’ about this, is that even if it would scramble all the blogs, it is still a bit a biased image the We Feel Fine API paints:

• I tend to blog when I’m a) euphoric/made a new discovery/did something well/very positive feeling or b) sad/disappointed/very negative feeling. I assume this is the same for others, creating an universe of feelings where the extreme ones are represented far more, and the ‘neutral’ feelings are neglected. Now who would write: ‘I feel normal’? ;)
• It will be a representation of the blogosphere’s feelings, thus people who have access to the internet. Which excludes how much of the world’s population? We’ll probably not get feelings from war zones and the poorer countries, which makes this ‘an universe of feelings from the wealthy nations’. If I would type ‘I feel hungry’ and ‘I feel unsafe’ a few times, would that pull things straight, you think? Far from.
• What languages does the application speak? Does it read feelings in Japanese, Russian, Spanish, … and even Dutch? As I could not find any information about that, let us just assume it is ‘the universe of feelings from wealthy nations where one speaks English’.

None the less, gathering blog data from a variety of online sources, including LiveJournal, MSN Spaces, MySpace, Blogger, Flickr, Technorati, Feedster, Ice Rocket, and Google, We Feel Fine is an impressive project.

1 REMARK »
Tags: we feel fine, web 2.0

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1. Second Effects: How Cool Is Your Avatar’s Name? - ArminasX thinks my avie name is kewl. Yeey! I must admit, I’m rather happy with it. =d
2. ShareCG - kimber89’s portfolio - Texture heaven! That I did not discover this earlier! Check out Kimber89’s cute vector insects! =)
3. Flickr: Linden Lab’s Photostream - Linden Lab now has a stream with ‘official’ stock photographs. ‘Email licensing@lindenlab.com for information about obtaining a commerical use copyright license.’

I HAVE AN OPINION »

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If you did not notice yet, those virtual roaches - and human’s real reactions to those virtual bugs - keep me puzzled. That puzzled during I shared my thoughts on it with the real life friends. You know, those friends that ‘don’t like virtual worlds’, ‘prefer real life’, still ‘wonder what the hell it is that you are doing’, but that you love none the less as you forgive them their ignorance! ;) And also exact the kind of friends that - because of their ignorance - come up with great ideas regarding virtual stuff. They are able to look beyond those eye shells that grow on you when spending to much time in - any - world. And one of those friends told me about ‘augmented reality’. Using the words: ‘Having a virtual Christina Ricci projected in my bedroom would get me off, yeah, so I assume that stuff can be real. But preferably in my bedroom, yes.’*

Augmented reality is where one ads a layer of ‘virtual goodness’ on top of the real world, and do it that well that they blend in almost perfectly. But what do the roaches have to do with this all? In 2007 the clinical psychology department at Universitat Jaume I in Castelló, Spain did exact that experiment with virtual roaches: A team of computer-imaging specialists filmed the creatures, digitised images of their scurrying and teeming, and displayed the images—not on a computer monitor, but on see-through goggles. To the wearer, the virtual roaches then look as though they are really in the room. Next, university psychologists set about therapeutically frightening patients who have a fear of insects. “They put a foot on the ground and the cockroaches start climbing over it,” says Cristina Botella, who led the researchers. “The computer just pumps them out.” In November Ms Botella presented her team’s findings at the Association for Behavioural and Cognitive Therapies conference in Philadelphia. The treatment worked very well. I would love to see them test this with virtual roaches in our brave new virtual world**. Reality, only better from the Economist states: For some things, it turns out, computer graphics can be much more effective when viewed not on screens, but superimposed on the real world. The technique is known as “augmented reality” (AR) or, less frequently, as “augmented vision”, because the real world is augmented with virtual text or graphics. Ah, yeah well… as stated before, if you spend enough time in our virtual world, it kinda grows on you, and becomes as real - or almost as real - as that other one.

Still, I guess we just can’t do without ‘real life’ - ;) - and here are some interesting applications for augmented reality:

1. Scan for veins under skin, processes that data and then projects the veins on your skin in real time, making sure the nurse knows where to stick that needle. Would be handy because: it sucks to go to school in a long sleeve when it’s 30 degrees Celsius because else they’ll all think you’re a junk.
2. Tourist information, in stead of long brochures of boring text and dates, give the visitors a pair of goggles and show them battle scenes, how the ruins looked when they were still ‘castle’, or what exactly happened in the master’s bedroom. Would be handy because: they can charge extra for the viewer that includes pr0n scenes.
3. Virtual safaris in France the Parc du Futuroscope. Would be handy because: Reality TV sucks nowadays and it does no harm if you feed a virtual animal. They can sell an endless amount of virtual food.
4. In the military: Soldiers with head-mounted displays might read street names superimposed on the ground, follow colour-coded arrows for patrols or retreats, and see symbols indicating known or potential sniper nests, weapons caches and hiding places for booby-traps. The displays could also show the locations of friendly forces and levels of ammunition and other supplies, as in a video game. Would be handy because: Flight simulator fell in enemy hands.

All sound rather kewl, no? So what use for augmented reality could you think off? I think my friend was dead on target with his ‘virtual pr0n, live in your bedroom’ idea, but I’m sure you can think of some other great innovations making use of augmented reality?

* I do not exclude the possibility that for his birthday his bedroom will be rebuild in the virtual world and a Christina Ricci skin & shape will be shopped for! ;)
** Brave New Virtual World, a world previously known as Second Life, now Second Life™.

3 ARE TALKING HERE »
Tags: augmented reality, roaches, technology, virtual worlds

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1. Beware the virtual roaches! They can be real. - Rezzable - Really flabbergasted me. How virtual roaches can trigger a real life phobia. Guess we should redefine ‘real’ and ‘virtual’. Maybe make that ‘real life real’ and ‘virtual life real’? ;)
2. Picnik - edit photos the easy way, online in your browser - Fun & fast online photo editing tool. Works on snapshots too! ;)
3. Emvee Cuba Storyboard Contest - Koinup - ‘The contest is restricted to Second Life residents, the focal medium being still-frame storyboards; artistic media other than storyboard will not be accepted.’ I want a 3D Navigator Mouse! My wacom one is near death by exhaustion.

I HAVE AN OPINION »

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Who’s a Flickr Group whore escort? Now, c’mon, don’t be afraid, and raise your hands. You’re not a Flickr Group Whore you say? Right. Check your Flickr photographs. How many groups are they in? Above the 5 groups / photograph on average? Yep, no point denying, you’re cheap all right! ;) But no damage done. Really. Even, the whoring part just has become a whole lot more easy, thanks to a nice discovery made by The Boss: a neat little Greasemonkey Flickr Multi Group Sender script to add to your FireFox extensions. Yeey, it’s an incredible handy time saver!

Greasemonkey?

First you will need the Greasemonkey FireFox addon, download it here. Greasemonkey is a Firefox extension that allows you to write scripts that alter the web pages you visit. After you install it, you won’t notice any change at all… until you start installing what are called “user scripts”. A user script is just a chunk of Javascript code, with some additional information that tells Greasemonkey where and when it should be run. Each user script can target a specific page, a specific site, or a group of sites. A user script can do anything you can do in Javascript. In fact, it can do even more than that, because Greasemonkey provides special functions that are only available to user scripts.

Greasemonkey Flickr Multi Group Sender

How do we use this user friendly goodness that allows us to send a photograph to multiple Flickr groups at the same time?

1. Make sure you are using FireFox. (Learn: Neat things are NEVER made for Internet Explorer! Never thought I’d refer to MS (crappy) support pages, but here you go.)
2. Download and install the Flickr Multi Group Sender script. (one click)
3. Go to one the page of the photograph - your photograph, of course - you want to submit to multiple Flickr groups at the same time.
4. Click the ’send to group’ icon above your Flickr photograph: your new and improved submission window opens. Notice it does not load group icons and all the fancy stuff, so it’s way quicker.
5. Use CTRL + left mouseclick to select all the groups you want to submit your photo to. (a few clicks, depending on how ‘whoring’ you feel like doing today)
6. Press ‘add photograph’. Your photograph is added to those Flickr Group Pools, and you even get a neat report for which groups this worked and for which this failed.

Some more ‘neatyness’ about the Flickr Multi Group Sender:

1.) If you check ‘Save this group selection’ and then press ‘add photograph’, next time you want to submit a photograph to the same pools, you just need to select the setting for the selection of groups from the drop down menu. Ideal for making ‘fashion groups’, ‘art groups’, ‘get your silly on’, … group collections presets. This is going to save you tons of precious time!

2.) To long a Flickr group list? Not sure which letter that group starts with? Not good at doing that abcdeeurr… alphabet thing? Don’t worry, group search is here! In the upper box, type a part of the group’s name you’re searching for - SL does not really help, still to much results! ;) - and press ’search’. The results - with amongst them probably the group you’re looking for - will show up. To go back to the overview, simple press ‘reset’.

I bet installing this beauty named ‘Flickr Multi Group Sender’ will save you tons of precious time, which you now can spend commenting on my Flickr Photographs. TY very mucho! ;)

I HAVE AN OPINION »
Tags: flickr, greasemonkey, tools

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I’ll send an SOS to the world, I’ll send a… message in a bottle. For their SL5B build, Lillie Yifu and Dizzy Banjo are creating ‘A Message to Second Life’ and want to hear what you have to say. What does Second Life mean to you? How did it affect you? And what are your hopes for our brave new virtual world’s future? And who know, perhaps the messages perhaps it will be found again at SL10B?

We feel sometimes we shut people out of important happenings like SL5B, because they don’t speak the right Linden language - English in this case. So here is the call out in a few languages. Feel free to translate and spread the message for messages yourself! (And can we get a copy then? ;))

1. ‘A Message to Second Life’ (English)
2. ‘Eine Nachricht an SL’ (German) (by Andromega Volare)
3. ‘Votre message à Second Life’ (French)(by Trinity Clift)
4. ‘Bericht voor Second Life’ (Dutch)
5. Spanish Version (in the comments) (by a user form the Spanish SL forum)

English version

SECOND LIFE IS 5 YEARS OLD !

As part of the SL5B celebrations, Dizzy Banjo and Lillie Yifu are creating “A Message to Second Life”.

We have created a giant bottle, which we want to fill with all your messages to Second Life. What would you like to say to the entire SL community on its 5th birthday ?

What does Second Life mean to you ?
How has your Second Life affected you ?
What hopes do you have for the future of Second Life ?

You can submit your message in two forms :

- An uploaded audio recording of you speaking your message ( PREFERRED OPTION ! ! )
- A text based message in a notecard

Once we have recieved your messages they will all go into the bottle and spill out intermittently as part of a fun interactive sound and music installation celebrating the Second Life spirit !

At the end of the 2 weeks of birthday events the bottle will be sealed and cast off into the SL ocean, perhaps it will be found again at SL10B …

HOW TO SUBMIT YOUR MESSAGE :

Audio Messages :

Watch this easy video tutorial which will explain how you can record your voice and upload your message and give it to us. Maximum 10 seconds!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xLt-vyKQoc

Text Messages :

1. Please write your message within 140 characters in a notecard.
2. Make the notecard FULL PERMISSIONS by right clicking on it in your inventory and checking the “copy” and “modify” boxes
3. Goto SEARCH ( open the all tab ) and type in DIZZY BANJO and click my resident profle ( the top link )
4. Drag the notecard onto my profile.

Note : All messages need to adhere to the Second Life Terms of Service, and be PG in nature.

DEADLINE !!

ALL RECORDINGS AND MESSAGES MUST BE RECIEVED BY :

WEDNESDAY THE 18th OF JUNE 2008 !

Thanks for your interest and we look forward to hearing your submissions soon and putting them into the bottle !

German version

SECOND LIFE WIRD 5 JAHRE ALT !

Als Teil der SL5B Feierlichkeiten inszenieren Dizzy Banjo und Liilie Yifu
“A Message to Second Life” (”Eine Nachricht an SL”)

Wir haben eine riesige Flasche gemacht, die ihr mit euren Nachrichten an
Second Life füllen könnt. Was würdest Du gerne mal der gesamten
SL-Gemeinde an ihrem fünften Geburtstag sagen?

Was bedeutet Dir Second Life?
Wie hat Second Life Deinen Alltag verändert?
Was wünscht Du Dir für die Zukunft in Second Life?

Du hast zwei Möglichkeiten Deine Nachricht zu übermitteln:

- eine Audio-Aufnahme Deiner gesprochenen Nachricht hochladen (bevorzugte
Option!!!)
- eine Text-Mitteilung als Notecard

Wenn wir Eure Nachrichten haben, kommen sie in die Flasche aus der sie
dann- gemixt mit einer fröhlichen interaktiven Sound und Musik
Installation- zur Feier des Second Life Esprits heraussprudeln werden.

Nach den beiden Veranstaltungswochen wird die Flasche zugestöpselt und in
die Brandung des SL-Ozeans geworfen werden,vielleicht taucht sie ja zum
10. SL-Birthday wieder auf?
…

So sendest Du Deine Nachricht:

Audio Nachricht:

Sieh Dir diesen kurzen Film an, er erklärt wie Du Deine Stimme aufnimmst
und wie Du sie zu uns hochladen kannst. (in englisch) Make sure your message is maximum 10 seconds!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xLt-vyKQoc

Text Nachricht:

1. Schreibe Deine Nachricht mit max. 140 Buchstaben in eine Notecard.
2. Erteile der Notecard ALLE RECHTE indem Du sie in Deinem Inventar
rechts anklickst und die “copy” und “modify” Kästchen aktivierst.
3. Gehe zur SUCHE (öffne den “Alles” Tabulator), tippe “DIZZY BANJO” und
öffne sein Profil ( der oberste Link)
4. Ziehe Deine Notecard auf das Profil (drag and drop)

Wichtig: Alle Nachrichten dürfen nicht gegen die Second Life Terms of
Service verstossen und müssen PG (jugendfrei) sein!

Abgabe bis spätestens:

Mittwoch, dem 18. Juni 2008

Danke für Dein Interesse, wir freuen uns darauf bald Deine Übertragung zu
hören und sie mit in die Flasche stecken zu können!

French Version

Dites nous ce que vous pensez de SL pour son 5eme anniversaire!

SECOND LIFE A 5 ANS !

A l’occasion des célébrations du cinquième anniversaire de SL, Dizzy Banjo et Lillie Yifu écrivent “un message à Second Life”.

Nous avons créé une bouteille géante que nous voulons remplir avec tous vos messages pour Second Life. Que voudriez- vous dire à toute la communauté de SL sur son 5ieme anniversaire?

Que signifie Second Life pour vous ?
Quelle fut l’influence de SL sur vous ?
Qu’attendez-vous de SL dans l’avenir ?

Deux solutions s’offrent à vous pour transmettre votre message :

-un enregistrement audio de votre message que vous aurez téléchargé dans SL (OPTION PREFEREE !!)
-un texte écrit dans une “notecard”

Après avoir récupéré vos messages, nous les mettrons tous dans la bouteille et ils se répandront de façon intermittante comme une animation audio et musicale interactive pour fêter l’esprit de Second Life.

A la fin des deux semaines d’événement la bouteille sera fermée et jetée dans la mer virtuelle, peut-être sera-t-elle retrouvée pour le dizième anniversaire de SL….

COMMENT ENVOYER VOTRE MESSAGE :

Message audio :

le lien ci-dessous permet de voir une vidéo qui montre comment enregistrer votre voix et comment télécharger votre message pour nous le faire parvenir :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xLt-vyKQoc (make sure your message is max. 10 seconds!)

Message écrit :

1. Ecrire un message de 140 caractères maximum dans une “notecard”.
2. La “notecard” doit être “FULL PERMISSIONS”. Pour celà, afficher ses propriétés à l’aide du clic droit de la souris, puis cocher les cases “Modify”, “Copy”, “Resell/Give away” en bas.
3. Rechercher “Dizzy Banjo” dans le moteur de recherche de SL puis afficher le profil.
4. Faire glisser à l’aide de la souris la “notecard” depuis l’inventaire sur le profil de Dizzy Banjo.

Note : tous les messages doivent adhérer au “Second Life Terms of Service” et être de nature “PG”.

TOUS LES MESSAGES AUDIOS OU ECRITS DOIVENT NOUS PARVENIR AVANT LE

MERCREDI 18 JUIN 2008 !

Merci pour l’ interret que vous portez à cette démarche, c’est avec impatience que nous attendons vos messages afin de les mettre en bouteille.

Dutch Version

Second Life wordt 5 jaar!!

Voor de SL5B feesten - Second Life 5th Birthday - werken Dizzy Banjo en Lillie Yife aan een ‘Bericht voor Second Life’. ‘Bericht aan Second Life’ is een gigantische fles, die ze willen vullen met jullie berichten voor Second Life. Wat zou jij willen zeggen aan de volledige SL community nu we 5 jaar worden?

Wat betekent Second Life voor jou?
Hoe heeft Second Life je leven beinvloed?
En hoe hoop je dat Second Life’s toekomst eruit gaat zien?

Er zijn twee manieren waarop je je bericht kan achterlaten:

- Een geluidsbericht, waarop jij je boodschap inspreekt. (Voorkeur!)
- Een tekstberichtje in een notecard.

Zodra de berichten ontvangen worden, gaan ze allemaal de fles in. Ze zullen te horen & te lezen zijn als deel van een leuke en interactive geluids- en muziekinstallatie om de ’spirtit’ van Second Life te vieren. Op het einde van de twee weken dat SL5B duurt, zal de fles verzegeld worden en in de virtuele oceaan geworpen worden. Wie weet, misschien komt ze op SL10B terug boven water?

HOE JE BERICHT INSTUREN:

Geluidsopnames:

Er is een simpele tutorial - in het Engels weliswaar - over hoe je bericht, maximum 10 seconden, kan opnemen, uploaden en aan Lilly overhandigen:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xLt-vyKQoc

Tekstberichten :

1. Maximum 140 lettertekens op een notecard.
2. Zorg ervoor dat de notecard ‘full perm’ is! Rechtermuisknop klikken op de notecard in je inventory, en zorgen dat de boxjes ‘copy’, ‘modify’ en ‘transfer’ zijn aangeduid.
3. Ga naar ‘Search’ en typ Dizzy Banjo and open zijn profiel.
4. Sleep de notecard naar Dizzy’s profiel.

Belangrijk: De berichten moeten ‘PG’ zijn (niets sexueels of extreem grof) en mogen de Second Life Terms of Service niet schenden.

DEADLINE:

Alle geluidsopnames en tekstberichten moeten ontvangen worden voor:
WOENSDAG 18 JUNI 2008!

Alvast bedankt voor de interesse! Hopelijk kunnen we snel je inzending in de gigantische fles stoppen! ;)

3 ARE TALKING HERE »
Tags: library, second life, sl5b

• New 'official' avatars. Library expanded. Icky?
• SL5B minus The Children
• 'Children' not welcome at SL5B

Certainly once, you have felt surrounded with reality in SL… a true moment of emotion, a real expression on a friendly face…. is the tagline for Koinup’s ‘One Second of Reality’ photography. The aim? Right, you can guess it already: To capture an instant of reality, and have viewers believe the photo was taken in RL. The challenge here is to share with the community what for a second seemed real to you. We hope you will go beyond still-life shots and try to show us emotions that are real, no matter where - Second Life - or what is happening. ‘One second of reality’ aims to find out where reality begins for you. Try to mesmerize the jury and make us believe the photo was taken in RL.

The prizes

The winner of the “Jury Prize” will receive his/her work printed and framed in high quality format and the winner of the “Community Prize”, the coolest work in Koinup, will receive a complete package from Never 30 including a N30 studio, poses kit, lights… and more. Both winners will have the chance to participate to an exhibition in a RL gallery: LaCantina, located in the center of Paris. Winning photos will also be displayed on Orange Island (Orange 1, 195/134/30) for a minimum of three weeks.

The Jurors

Winners of the “Jury Prize” will be picked by a contest jury composed by Margharita Balzerani (curator at “Le Palais de Tokyo”, Paris, contemporary art museum), Marco Manray (photographer SL and author of the book “IO, REPORTER IN SECOND LIFE”) and ‘moi’.

The ruleset

1. In order to take part in this contest, you must have an account on Koinup. Registration is free.
2. The theme of the contest is “One second of reality”. The aim of the contest is to capture an instant of reality, and have viewers believe the photo was taken in RL. (As far as I care, this means you can have a Neko in there, as long as it looks real.)
3. The challenge here is to share with the community what for a second seemed real to you. We hope you will go beyond still-life shots and try to show us emotions are real, no matter where they happen.
4. Photos can be taken in-world using any available means (such as Second Life photo studios) except RL photographic backgrounds.
5. Photos can also be post-processed using programs such as Photoshop.
6. You are allowed to use tricks, and encouraged to share your technique. SLURL are welcome.
7. Photos should be submitted to the contest by posting them on Koinup. To submit a photo to the contest, please insert the tag ‘orangephotocontest’
8. Photos already posted on Koinup before June 9th cannot be submitted to the contest. Please submit new works.
9. The contest is restricted to Second Life residents and is a photography contest; artistic media other than photography are not allowed.
10. No brand logos or hidden advertisement. No sex, violence or offending contents. Black and white accepted.
11. Each participant can submit up to three photos.
12. Photos will remain on Koinup after the end of the contest.

My definition of ‘Real’

Of course, the ‘reality’ of a SL photograph lies in the eye of the beholder, and this beholder spends way to much time inworld, so I’m having problems with the real / not-real border. ;) BUT there are a few things that help me convince things are real:

1. Convincing shadows. Even when shooting with a softbox IRL, there _are_ shadows, they just are subtle. Regardless if they are subtle or over-present (film noir), make those shadows match! Second Life gives you total control about where the sun comes from (the height your avie finds itself, the time of the day, location of the sun and the height of the sun.) Use that! You even want to consider testing if the ‘Shadow’ branch client runs on your system.
2. Second Life tends to oversaturate things, giving them their comic/3D animation look. Try to start of with a hazy, foggy setting, and lessen the fog/haze until it’s just perfect. Better not enough gamma brightness than to much gamma brightness! It happens IRL photographs too, bleached out areas, but it’s not something that looks good most of the time.
3. If you are shooting indoors, you definitely want to put your ’sun’ strength to almost zero and the ‘ambient’ light up to compensate. Harsh shadows almost exist inside. Except if you have only one hard lightsource (extreme spotlight, or one sunny window.) If you have multiple light sources, you might want multiple (soft) shadows.
4. COLOUR TEMPERATURE! Back in those old real life photography days, you used to have separate sets of film & lens filters, depending on the colour temperature. This is - although or brain filters it out IRL - each type of light source emits a different coloured light. A good example is: shadow areas are blue, sunsets are yellowish. A good article about this can be found here. You can give a slight hunch of the colour temperature, but SL pushes it. Also, when doing for instance ’sunset’, it forces that colour temperature in extremis on the complete photograph although that does not necessary need to be the case, were it shot IRL. If you have two different light sources, you’ll need two different colour temperatures.
5. Reflections! Almost every object reflects in real life. Wearing a bright green sweater? Not a good idea! It will probably make your face look green. Your eyes? Right… they reflect light. If you have a metallic, shiny object, it is bound to reflect parts of the environment around it, and it’s colour on the environment.
6. Sense of depth. Depth Map + Lens Blur. Or manual blurring. Does not need to be exaggerated, though. This happens IRL when you shoot either a) Macro stuff or b) in Dark areas.
7. Motion blur. Definitely something that needs to be postprocessed. Only if you’re up to it! ;)
8. Step off the standard viewer wide-angle lens. Standard RL photography lens is 50mm. Press ctrl+0 twice. At least. (ctrl+9 to reset)

And there are more: round shapes should be round, shadow on clothing textures should match the atmosphere of your photograph, … . Guess you can’t include them all in one photograph, but I’m damn curious what people will come up with! Here are already some of the entries. Oh, and one final thing, obviously fake photoshop sun reflections in your photograph, are NOT the way to go! ;) To participate, go to the Koinup contest page.

2 ARE TALKING HERE »
Tags: contest, koinup, photography, photoshop

• Koinup Contest: 20 000L$ for best 3 Windlight Photographs
• Best Exotic SL photograph gets 20 000 L$ from Koinup
• Koinup 'WindLight' Exhibition and Jax Streeter Live