Come celebrate with us! ZoHa Islands is turning SEVEN and we want you to celebrate with us!!
Here’s the SLURL to the party: ZoHa Islands 7th Anniversary Party!
See you Saturday!! Bring your friends! You don’t have to be a ZoHa Islands Resident to attend!
I remain respectfully yours,
Suzanne Piers, ZoHa Islands Social Media Manager
We are very excited to announce that ZoHa Islands is having an Anniversary Blowout!
Date: Saturday, Nov 1, 2014
Time: Noon to 8pm SLT
We want to accommodate all time zones, so we are running this party for eight solid hours! Please join us for this fabulous line up of live musicians, DJ and tribute band!! Come party with us and rock your pixels off! We are celebrating!!
Here is the entertainment line-up:
12 Noon to 1pm SLT: Gweeb Resident (live)
1pm to 2pm SLT: Luvofmusic Resident (live)
2pm to 3pm SLT: qqquartzzz Resident (live)
3pm to 4pm SLT ℳƛƔЄƝƝ ӇƲƝƬЄR (mavenn) (live)
4pm to 5:30pm SLT: Malia Gustafson (Malia Skytower)-Lightning strikes tribute band
5:30pm to 8pm SLT: DJ Buzrd (buzrd.draconia) awesome and amazing DJ
Kudos to our awesome Deelish Wishbringer for pulling this huge event together! Dee is our Business District Manager. Please be sure and see her to place your business in this amazing area.
Here is some information on some of the artists scheduled to play:
qqquartzzz Resident:
Quartz is a Canadian singer, songwriter and musician who performs all his shows with passion and an emotional connection to the music he sings. Quartz plays keyboard, lead, bass and acoustic guitar. His genre is typically classic and progressive rock, from the cassette years to now, and he brings a repertoire of over 200 songs including his own compositions. He sings with backtracks or purely acoustic; both are excellent. In addition, he also does an amazing live tribute to Elton John show.
Luvofmusic Resident:
Luvofmusic was born and raised in Chi-Town (Chicago, Illinois). Being a real life singer, she brings experience and a professional feel to her SL gigs. She started singing at a young age and had a few generations of music playing all the time in the house. Some of her influences include, Amy Winehouse, Erykah Badu, Dinah Washington, Sarah Vaughan, Billie Holiday, Janis Joplin, Frank Sinatra, Marvin Gaye, Donny Hathaway and Sam Cooke, just to name a few. She loves singing Jazz, Blues, R&B, Rock & Roll and some Pop. She may even throw in a country songs!
We will post the location as it gets closer but please put this on your calendar and come celebrate with us!!
I remain respectfully yours,
Suzanne Piers, ZI Social Media Manager
[Ed note: I fixed the link. It now contains the correct SLURL.)
I received an email that the premium gifts from Linden Lab were available, and in the same email was information about the Haunted Halloween Tour in SL. Naturally, I had to go check it out.
Created by Linden Lab, this has to be one of the scariest, creepiest, grossest haunted/horror site that I’ve seen so far. I decided it deserved a v-blog. But even if you watch the video you MUST go and experience it for yourself. Warning: This is NOT for the faint of heart nor the faint of stomach!
Go to the Portal Park and enter the Halloween portal. But be prepared. This will be something you won’t soon forget!
Enjoy!!
I remain respectfully yours,
Suzanne Piers, ZoHa Islands Social Media Manager
Second Life’s TV show Designing Worlds‘ Saffia Widdershins and Elrik Merlin interviewed Linden Lab’s CEO Ebbe Altberg. Filmed during their 250th episode, Saffia and Elrik had an in-depth and candid discussion with Ebbe about many things, including the new platform, the future of Second Life, among other things.
Ebbe revealed that bringing back last names is on the horizon. He stated that while it’s not an active project on the moment, it is high on the list and will be coming back at some point in the future. He also discussed possibly bringing back community portals, which would attract users directly into a creator’s experience from RL.
He also discussed how bringing real-time facial expressions to avatars in SL is also a project, but that this technology is very much in it’s infancy and will take time for the hardware (such as 3D cameras) to become more common before this can become a reality.
Ebbe also had a long discussion about the new platform. He indicated that it has not yet been named, and said they have a code name for it as they’re developing it. However, they are keeping it secret because they are not sure the name will become the platform’s actual name. Linden Lab doesn’t want it to get branded with that name if that is not what is going to be used. It could potentially be very confusing. So for now, they continue to call it “the new platform” publicly.
Ebbe also emphasized that this new platform is NOT a replacement for SL; but is a completely new environment incorporating new technology. It iss easier to build new using the SL platform as a jumping off point, rather than trying to make the old platform work with the new technology. He stated that the new platform would be in the spirit of Second Life, with user generated content, and to make it easier for new users to interact with it.
He stated that they are at the point with the new platform that they are getting close to launching an avatar in the new world (hopefully by the end of the year), and indeed working towards possibly having an alpha test ready for specific invited users by mid-2015.
When asked if the viewer for the new platform will be open source, Ebbe stated that at the present time, they do not plan to open source the viewer. However, they are looking at possibly having plug-ins to be used with the viewer for customizations without the code being open source. He hinted that there might be a possibility for open source in the future at some point.
Ebbe also discussed cross-compatibility. He said that indeed some content would be able to cross to the new platform, but not all. They wanted the new platform to be forward thinking and future oriented, and not have to be written to allow for older technology. He stated that mesh would be transferable into the new platform, but that there would be a completely different scripting language used. He also indicated that avatars would be able hop between worlds using your avatar’s identity and Lindens. [Ed. Note: I got the impression that you would have two different avatars, one in each world, but that you could transfer the identity and lindens, not the avatar itself.]
The interview is featured on the Living in a Modemworld blog, and includes a written transcript of their discussion. In addition, the blogger, Inara Pey, includes interesting graphics and embedded videos to highlight the transcripts. It is well-worth a visit to her blog to see it. What I did was listen to the video and follow along by reading the transcript.
The video interview is here below.
I remain respectfully yours,
Suzanne Piers, Social Media Manager
In my second attempt at a V-blog, I decided to take you on a tour of ZoHa Islands’ Business District. ZoHa Islands is the only estate in Second Life to offer a set of sims that are connected to form a large business district. You can purchase parcels of almost any size and prim count to accommodate businesses large and small.
Part of the package offered to businesses who rent parcels in our business district is free advertising in the advertising boards located at both the main office and the business district office.
Also, if you’re not sure how to operate the tier payment kiosks, I have demonstrated that in this video. I hope that those new to ZoHa Islands will find that helpful.
I also discuss the ZoHa Islands sandbox, which is a wonderful place to rez items out, create builds, etc.
I hope that you enjoy this video and hopefully I will continue to improve as I move forward.
I remain respectfully yours,
Suzanne Piers, ZoHa Islands Social Media Manager
So this weekend I decided to try something different — record and post a video blog, or a v-blog. I decided to try X-split Gamecaster to record gameplay in SL, and it worked really well with one problem — I had difficulty with the sound. I kept getting an echo. After a lot of frustration and experimentation, I realized if I muted my speakers I could record a voice-over as I video recorded my travels in Second Life, but this meant that I could not hear in-game sounds, but yet in-game sounds recorded on my video recording. (If anyone has any ideas about how to fix this, I’d love to hear them. You can email me on my gmail account at suzannepiers821 or contact me in-world.)
What was interesting was when I played the recording back, all of the in-world sounds were there, which I could not hear as I was exploring. The video I recorded ended up being over 30 minutes long, and I tried to edit it into two videos to post on two different days, but alas my video editing skills are in the infant stage, as well. I need more practice (and a decent video editing software!).
I decided, since it was nearly October, to visit a site that has some haunted stuff. This was called Halloween 8th Year Haunted Mansion, rides, Zombie Hunt.
Here is my very first v-blog. I know that it is too long, and the last half drags a bit, so feel free to fast forward through the end if you’d like. I’ll work on improving my skills for next time. Meanwhile, here’s my very raw video blog.
Enjoy!
I remain respectfully yours,
~ Suzanne Piers
ZI Social Media Manager