Happy 7th Anniversary, ZoHa Islands!

ZoHa Islands Main Sales Office and Tier Payment Center

ZoHa Islands Main Sales Office and Tier Payment Center

We are excited to announce that 2014 is ZoHa Island’s seventh year of providing the best estate land in Second Life! In honor of that milestone, ZoHa Islands is throwing a party!

Save the date: Saturday, November 1, 2014 is when we are holding our big bash. Plans are still in the works, but it includes fun, dancing, and live music! We will try to hold it in the mid-late afternoon so as many as possible can attend. We are definitely cognizant of the wide variety of time zones represented in SL and in ZoHa Islands residents, so stay tuned to this blog as plans develop.

Zoha Islands General Pictures_006ZoHa Boa started out with just a few sims in 2006. As his reputation grew, so did the size of his landholdings. As the business continued to grow, ZoHa decided that he needed to hire an operations manager, and that is where Deuce Marjeta comes in. Deuce was hired in 2008 in the role of Operations Manager. Prior to that, he worked for Surreal Estates for four years, and owned and operated his own estate company, Massine Estates, for three years. At the time that Deuce was hired, ZoHa Islands had about 90 sims.

Fast forward to 2014, and ZoHa Islands is one of the top estates in Second Life, boasting 813 sims and going strong. We offer a variety of sim and parcel choices for just about every budget. You can have grass or sand, land on an adult sim, an entire homestead or a full-prim sim.

ZoHa Islands Business District Office

ZoHa Islands Business District Office

ZoHa Islands is one of the few estates to offer a Business District with a dedicated Business District Manager! If you place your business on a parcel in our Business District, you get not only an awesome piece of land that you can purchase and own with owner’s rights, including setting your land to group, putting your own music stream in, etc. you will get a full-service manager plus free advertising in the kiosks at the tier payment centers, and a link to your shop on our website! We have just about any size parcel for your business that would work for you. The pricing is reasonable, too.

ZoHa Islands Sandbox -- Grass Area

ZoHa Islands Sandbox — Grass Area


ZoHa Islands Sandbox Builder's Level

ZoHa Islands Sandbox Builder’s Level


One of the nicest perks of being a ZoHa Island resident, is access to the ZoHa Islands dedicated Sandbox. This is a quiet sandbox, and has several levels for serious builders. If you need a place to build without lag, and you’re tired of crowded sandboxes where you have to elbow people to find room, then the ZoHa Islands sandbox is the perfect place for you. If you simply need to room to rez out a build you purchased, then you can use it for that, too.

ZoHa Islands is the place to be for your home or your business. We thank our current residents and business owners from the bottom of our hearts. We couldn’t do it without you. We would like to celebrate our success with you on November 1st. Please save the date, more details will be forthcoming!

I remain respectfully yours,
~ Suzanne Piers, ZI Social Media Manager

Gatcha!

Gatcha Arcade_007As I am still tapping my foot impatiently, waiting for the next big MadPea event (I am so over the Green Mire; but then again I’m not a huge fan of the whole aliens thing), I decided to check out the Destination Guide for some inspiration. There, I discovered Gatcha, and I had to go see what all the excitement is about.

Gatcha, a wildly popular game in Second Life, is loosely taken from the real life Japanese “Gacha” games, where you pay a small amount of money to get an item at random, similar to purchasing toys from a vending machine. In real life, games that use gacha typically promise rare “grand-prize” items to players who can manage to amass a set of specific items, which encourages players to spend more money on randomized gacha draws in order to complete their collections.

Gatcha Arcade_012 resizedIn Second Life, you can get “rare” items but they are strictly random and have nothing to do with amassing collections or trading in order to complete a collection in order to trade up to rare items. In Second Life, Gatcha machines are designed similarly to real life old fashioned vending machines — sometimes they look like penny arcade games, sometimes they look like old fashioned pinball machines or arcade game machines from the 70s.

These gatcha machines have grown from being inside the stores at various merchants across the grid, to huge sims dedicated to nothing but gatcha. I assume that this mass exodus to gatcha only sims is in response to Linden Lab’s new rules on gaming, and that gaming is restricted only to gaming sims which have different rules and pricing structures.

I have never been a huge fan of gatchas; to me they are simply another way to suck Lindens from me, and while the gambling idea appeals to many people, I am simply not a gambler or risk taker in RL. Just like in RL gambling, you have to be smart. While the rare item inside the machine may be something you really want, make sure you don’t spend $1,000L on the machine to try and get a $50L trinket. You really have to weigh the value of the goods inside the machine against the return of the items you may or may not get.

I’m sure for some people, it’s the thrill of the gambling that makes it worth it, and the feeling of satisfaction of finally getting that rare item outweighs the cost. It’s just another way to pay for entertainment, just like in RL gambling.

Gatcha Arcade_018 resizedI decided to visit a Gatcha sim, and see what all the fuss was about. I decided to visit The Arcade Gatcha Event, which is touted in the Destination Guide as “The Arcade Gacha Events presents the ultimate GACHA experience! Guaranteed to delight shoppers, The Arcade offers unique gacha prizes from 100 of the grid’s top designers! Proudly sponsored by Apple Fall, Boogers, Pure Poison, and Style Kingdom.”

Boogers? Okaaaaay….

Gatcha sept 8_001 resizeWhen I landed at the Arcade, the visual appeal of the place was amazing. It was built very similarly to what I imagine a casino or arcade at the Atlantic City Boardwalk in New Jersey, USA would look like. I appreciated the time and effort they put into the minute details of the sim — the textures and buildings themselves were crisp and amazing. The windlight settings made you feel like you were at the ocean with a slight hint of fog in the air. You could hear the mournful fog horn (or maybe it was a ship’s horn) in the distance, along with the clang of the bell on a bouy, the sounds of the surf and the seagulls calling to one another.

Gatcha Arcade_006 resizedAs you approach the Arcade, you walk down a long boardwalk, and outside the arcade is a cute merry-go-round (which I decided to take a ride on) and some vendors where you can purchase cotton candy, hot dogs and other fun carnival-type food. There was caliope-music playing, and while that was cute and catchy for five minutes, after that it just got annoying and I turned down sounds.

Gatcha Arcade_014 resizedInside the building is a very visually appealing beautiful build that looks exactly like the inside of an arcade is supposed to look. The details are amazing, and the Gatcha machines are very well made. It is a very popular spot — there were 41 avatars on the sim when I was there, and more continued to arrive and depart. All the avatars, along with the scripty Gatcha machines, made for a lot of lag. But everyone seemed to take it in stride and be very good-natured about it.

Gatcha Arcade_010 resizedEach Gatcha machine is labeled with the name of the merchant whose items are inside the machine, and each machine has different cost. The way a Gatcha machine works, is each machine is loaded with several items made by that particular merchant. Some are labeled “rare” and some are just ordinary. Often, the Gatcha machine will be loaded with several colors of one particular item, and you pay the machine and it will dispense one of the items. If the machine doesn’t give you the item you wanted, then you simply pay the machine again and hope for a different outcome. I have no idea if the scripts are completely random, or programmed to give a rare item every so many clicks, or what. Sometimes you end up with the exact same item several times in a row. Sometimes you end up with a rare item on the first ca-ching. As I cautioned earlier, you really have to decide how much you’re willing to spend to receive the exact item you were wanting. The cool thing is that some vendors had demo items you could purchase and try, before you attempted to get one of the items from the machine.

Wearing my Gatcha prize

Wearing my Gatcha prize

One thing I observed is that many of the items in these Gatcha machines were tchotchkes (knickknacks or trinkets) and toys for children, and so there really wasn’t much that interested me, other than to wander around and watch the action, and to see what there was to see there. I did find one vendor that had a hair I really liked from Clawtooth. I decided to try for that. On my first click, I received an orange hair. Hmm. Not for me! This particular Gatcha machine was $75L, and I normally pay $250 for hair in SL, so I decided to give it two more tries, as I was looking for a brunette hairstyle. On the second pull, I received a very dark brown one, which would have been fine, but since I had given myself up to three tries, I did it again and was fortunate enough to end up with the exact color I wanted on the third try! I really like this hair; it is of excellent quality and looks good on me. I’m sure that in the near future I will be visiting that store; which I suppose is at the heart of these Gatcha games — future customers.

All in all, it was a fun experience, and worth doing at least once, especially if you like tchotchkes! There are several such Gatcha sims around, so I am sure each one offers a different experience.

I remain respectfully yours,
Suzanne Piers
ZoHa Islands Social Media Manager

Helping Amputees Virtually

“Second Life is the perfect place for amputees to overcome emotional trauma by sharing stories and realizing they are not alone!” says Sandra L. Winkler, assistant professor at NOVA SouthEastern University in Florida, teaching occupational therapy.

In a recent episode of the Drax Files, they produced a wonderful video about an amazing use of virtual worlds. Sandra Winkler created an online environment that brings people together from across the world who can then create a virtual support group. Sandra also goes on to say that not only can they find support to help resolve their emotional trauma, but also enables them to see how their bodies can do things in RL by watching their avatars do the same things.

In addition, it gives non-disabled people an opportunity to experience what it is like to have a limb missing by having a prosthetic in Second Life. Sandra also teaches her students in RL empathy by having them try to get around in a wheelchair for a period of time, or have them wear a blindfold to experience what it is like to be blind.

Sandra’s Virtual Health Adventures also has a prosthetic museum that displays various prosthetics from before Jesus’s time. It shows exactly how far we’ve come in just the last few years, let alone the last 2000 years.

This is very similar to Episode 13, where they featured how Second Life helped a woman with Parkinson’s disease be able to do more in real life by watching her avatar do them in Second Life. By interacting in a virtual environment, this creats new neural pathways in the brain to help people with disabilities — in this case, someone with Parkinson’s.

Sandra’s Virtual Health Adventures is part of her project “Dissemination of Amputation and Prosthetic Evidenced-based Medicine” is funded by a grant from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

Here’s the video.

Once again, this just goes to show that Second Life is more than just socialization and virtual sex. It is bringing people together for emotional support, helping people with disabilities have better real lives, and educating others.

I remain respectfully yours,
Suzanne Piers
ZoHa Islands Social Media Manager

Virtual State Fair

One of the last bastions of summer is the State Fair. Just about every state in the US holds a State Fair of some kind, usually in the city where the state capitol is located. And just like real life, you can find a good old fashioned State Fair in SL, as well. The only thing missing from the experience is the crowds, the heat, and the smell of fair food — corn dogs, funnel cake, popcorn, cotton candy — Yumm!!

When I landed at the Virtual State Fair, I expected to hear calliope music, which is universally associated with fairs. Sadly, the only time I heard any sound was on the rides, or some of the exhibits had links you could click on for audio and/or visual information.

This fair is sponsored by Cooperative Extension, a research-based learning network who is celebrating the 100-year anniversary of the signing of the Smith-Lever Act of 1914, which officially created the national Cooperative Extension System. This celebration highlights Extension’s past and focuses on the contemporary application of Extension’s transformational educational programming into the future. And part of that transformational educational programming is their presence in Second Life.

This is another example of how education finds a home in Second Life. Take a look at Extension’s website, and visit the Virtual State Fair. There you can learn more about Cooperative Education in RL and SL, and also quite a lot about many things, from food borne illnesses, to the way a tornado works, to an entire exhibit about Andy Byrd, a quadraplegic organic farmer. Andy treated at the Shepherd Center, where an SL and RL friend of mine also treated for his spinal injury.

All in all, it was a lot of fun, with exhibits, rides, and just about everything else you would find at a fair (sans the rigged games). Go by and check it out; it’s a lot of fun and educational too.

Here are some pics from my visit:

I remain respectfully yours,
~ Suzanne Piers, ZoHa Islands Social Media Manager

Giving Education A Second Life

Wolverine Clinic ResizedOne of the many great things about Second Life is how various organizations can utilize this platform for much more than socialization and virtual sex. Case in point: The University of Michigan School of Nursing announces that it is using Second Life to help medical students hone their leadership and communication skills, and to do so with some degree of anonymity.

According to this article on the HealthLeader Media’s website, “telemedicine isn’t just a cost-saving way to treat patients in remote locations. It’s also another way to train medical professionals.”

Medical schools are adding programs that emphasize teaching empathy and observational schools, and some use technology as a way to enhance the learning experience.

The University of Michigan School of Nursing has a virtual clinic in Second Life called the Wolverine Clinic. Medical students can log in with their own avatars and work through various scenarios at this clinic.

There is a slideshow of photos take at the clinic here. The avatars need work, but that isn’t the point of being in-world. The point is to develop realistic diagnostic situations to allow nursing and medical students to utilize skills in both diagnostic and problem-solving in a virtual environment. This simulation allows real life scenarios to unfold using roleplaying, and if a mistake is made, then no one is hurt.

A small grant was used to build the virtual clinic and is the brainchild of Michelle Aebersold, PhD, RN, a Clinical Assistant Professor at the UMSN and her colleague, Dana Tschannen, PhD, RN, a Clinical Associate Professor of the Division of Systems Leadership and Effectiveness Science at UMSN. Aebersold, also the Director of the Clinical Learning Center for the UMSN, started the program with nurses, and saw that training in Second Life had great advantages.

The clinic offers virtual acute care and outpatient environments where the students perform their trainings. “The nice thing about the virtual environment is that we can schedule training in there and students don’t have to be on site, they could log in from home,” says Aebersold.

In addition, in a virtual environment and role-playing situation, students can be exposed to scenarios that they might not typically experience. The scenarios can be as extreme as someone coming in to a clinic with a ball peen hammer stuck in their forehead, or other just as rare situations. “That’s critical in training a very safe practitioner,” states Patricia Abbott, PhD, RN, FAAN, who is an Associate Professor of the Division of Systems Leadership and Effectiveness Science at UMSN.

The virtual training environment allows students to be able to step out of the classroom and into hands-on training and experience, all within the safety of a controlled environment. These training focus more on interacting with patients and fellow health-care professionals, rather than the physical aspect of care. Students learn a lot about communication, which can be key in RL medical situations.

Aebersold points out, “If you want to teach nursing students how to delegate, how to practice their leadership skills, how to respond to an emergency situation and direct their team members, it’s a great learning environment.”

One example of an exercise in this virtual clinic is described as having the students assess a virtual patient by clicking on an object to view a notecard with the patient’s information. The students are then given choices on how to proceed, and how to communicate virtually with one another to determine how to prioritize care and assign tasks.

Doctoral studets in the DNP (Doctor of Nursing Practice) program also use the Second Life virtual hospital for interprofessional education.

This virtual project enabled nursing students, pharmacy students, and medical students to work together to run a role-play simulation based on disclosing a medical error to a patient.

Using TeamSTEPPS, an AHRQ (Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, a US Department of Health and Human Services agency advancing excellence in health care) program that specializes in interprofessional communication, the students learn teamwork and communication skills, then utilize their avatars to engage in a scenario to practice those skills.

This is how the role-play scenario is played out. The facilitator of the simulation plays the patient and their family. The nursing, pharmacy, and medical students play their respective roles. They receive a notecard with the information and then get together as a team to discuss the medical error, and how they will communicate it to the patient and the family.

Students who participated in this RP gave positive feedback to the exercise. “They seemed very satisfied with being able to do this, to role play this kind of disclosure,” said Aebersold. You can only imagine how difficult this scenario would be in RL, and being able to RP it would certainly give these students some skills to be able to work as a team to deliver such news.

As many have experienced in SL, the ability to role-play situations like these from behind an avatar is easier, there is a sense of anonymity. As Aebersold says, “There’s a sense of having a little bit of protection because I’m not putting myself out there. I’m not so vulnerable, so I’m willing to take more of a risk.” This is something every Second Life resident can attest to, in every day situations to RP situations.

At the end of the training, students are evaluated in different ways. One method has a separate observer use their avatar to watch the students’ behavior and scores them based on a standardized observation tool used to measure performance. Peer-to-peer feedback is another way to gauge performance.

Aebersold is taking the virtual platform to another level. She would like to develop a gaming type environment that would eliminate the need for a facilitator and give students the chance to receive independent or automated feedback.

Recent additions to the SL clinic include an electronic health records system run by Abbott. Using a training program similar to the patient disclosure exercises, interdisciplinary teams consisting of nurses, doctors, and pharmacy students come together to treat an avatar run by another student. The EHR at the patient’s bedside acts as the fourth professional in the team-building exercise. The purpose is to evaluate how the EHR affects team care, something that Abbott feels is not well understood in the healthcare industry.

All in all, the purpose of the virtual learning environment is to help students have a better learning experience, and to come out at the end of the training better prepared to handle today’s healthcare environment.

Please see the article in its entirety here.

I remain respectfully yours,
~ Suzanne Piers
ZoHa Islands Social Media Manager

Protecting Against Hackers

While this article isn’t specifically about SL, it’s about keeping yourself safe from hackers on your computer, which is indirectly SL related.

I saw a news report this morning on TV from Mike Wendland who writes a tech blog called PC Mike. This caught my attention this morning, because he was talking about hackers. The news reports lately are full of the story about the Russian hackers who have hacked billions of websites, stealing logins and passwords. The solution? They recommend you change your login ID and password for every website you use.

Really?

I don’t know about you, but that is very, very daunting. I have a LOT of logins to a LOT of websites; I honestly don’t even know if I could find every single website for which I have a login.

One of the best ways to thwart hackers is to use long, complicated password like KQo=3oyB>VG^-6 or something like that. The experts tell us that in addition, we should have a different password for each site. I don’t know about you, but there is no way I could remember that many passwords, let alone a password like my example above.

So what do most of us do? We write down our logins and passwords, either in a document on our PCs or *gasp* a piece of paper in a drawer. Even though we know that is not a good idea and very unsafe, what else do you do? PC Mike reported on some online login and password managers on his most recent blog post.

PC Mike recommends that the first thing users need to do is use a password management program, such as Last Pass, Password Genie, and Dashlane.

Last Pass is an online program that manages all your passwords. It keeps track of your user names and passwords for you and logs in automatically with them. It creates passwords the way they would be… very complex. The program will generate these kinds of secure passwords.

Password Genie is another secure password manager. It stores and secures passwords on PC and Mac computers and Apple and Android smartphones and tablets.

Dashlane has a form filler, generates secure passwords and has a very easy to use interface. Like the others, there are free and premium versions.

Here’s a video:

PC Mike is a veteran journalist whose video “PC Mike” reports have been distributed weekly to all 215 NBC-TV stations since 1994, making him one of the most experienced tech reporters in the country. His tech stories and videos have appeared on MSNBC, CNBC, the Today Show, The New York Times, USA Today and in numerous national newspapers and magazines. In addition to the PC Mike tech blog, he also publishes the Roadtreking.com RV Travel Blog in which he travels North America in an RV reporting about interesting people and places.

My only question is…what if hackers hack into the login and password websites?? That way they would have instant access to every single one of your logins and passwords from one hack. PC Mike is a well-respected tech journalist, so I believe that he wouldn’t recommend something that wasn’t safe. But really, is anything safe online anymore? I would definitely do more research about how and why it’s safe to have a login and password manager.

I remain respectfully yours,
~ Suzanne Piers
ZoHa Islands Social Media Manager