Tag Archives: ZoHa Islands

Avi Choice Awards 2015

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avi choice
It’s that time of year again, and the Avi Choice Awards are open for voting in the SLife Category. ZoHa Islands is up for an award! We are honored to have been nominated in the Favorite Land (Rent or Sell) Company category!

ZoHa Islands works hard to gain your trust and confidence in our ability to find you the very best land for your needs and budget. With over 800 sims available, our salespeople and estate managers are available to you 24 hours a day to help resolve any issues you might be having.

We encourage you to please go to the Avi Choice Awards website and vote for ZoHa Islands — the best estate on the grid!

Click here: VOTE HERE — SLife Awards

Once again, we want to thank each and every one of our awesome residents. We couldn’t do it without you!

I remain respectfully yours,
~ Suzanne Piers, ZI Blogger/Social Media

Covenants And Other Helpful Information

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When you purchase land in Second Life from an estate such as ZoHa Islands, one of the things the salespeople often say before you purchase the land is, “Be sure and read the covenant before you purchase to make sure you can abide by the rules.” Much like when you install a new app on your phone, you must agree to the TOS (which most of us never read; because you can’t have the app without agreeing, so what does it matter,right?). However, in Second Life, when you purchase a parcel, you must agree to abide by the Covenant, and often people will just click yes without reading it, purchase the parcel and go on their merry way.

This is all well and good until a resident bumps up against a violation of the covenant. Then they get upset when contacted by estate managers to correct violations such as large buildings, screens, items that shout, when asked to reduce scripts, or when their land is reclaimed and their items returned due to non-payment of tier. Outraged residents will then kick up a ruckus and more often than not, the EM points out the covenant that they have violated. What we end up with is an unhappy customer, and all of this could be avoided simply by reading the covenant.

Unless you rent a whole sim (either a full prim region or a homestead, which have no covenant other than you must abide by Linden Lab’s Terms of Service), you must abide by the covenants of the estate. The covenants are essentially the rules of the sim. Much like RL, we must all get along when we live side by side on a sim, and in order to make sure everyone is reading from the same playbook, we have a set of rules that everyone must follow in order to have a pleasant living experience for all.

There are different covenants for different types of land. To see the covenants, please click on the links below.

• Residential Only Sims
• Residential and Commercial Sims
• Commercial Sims
• Business District Sims
• Adult Sims
• Gorean Sims
• Full sims (Homestead and Full Prim)

Residents should note that our covenant provides both a building code and a conduct code, among other useful information. Please take the time to read the covenant carefully for your type of parcel. Knowing your rights and what the rules are goes a long way towards good neighbor relations. Should you have a problem, please contact an EM by asking for help in the ZoHa Islands group chat. We have 24-hour staff available to help you resolve your issues.

Vacations and Tier Payments
As we ease our way into the summer months (at least in the northern hemisphere), one of the things that always crops up is tier payments while people are gone on vacation. When planning for a vacation, please plan ahead in SL the way you do in RL. If you’re going to be gone, please make sure your tier payment is paid up ahead so you do not go into arrears and come home from vacation only to find a vacant lot and all of your things returned in a bundle in your lost and found. Plan on paying your tier far enough ahead so that if you are delayed in returning from vacation, you don’t have to stress about whether or not you will lose your land. Make note of the date your tier will expire, and if something happens while you’re on vacation that delays you beyond even the cushion you paid ahead on your tier, then please file a support ticket on this website to get help with your situation. Bottom line is this: In order to avoid losing your parcel or full sim, pay ahead on your tier when you will be out of Second Life for any period of time. People work very hard on their parcels to make them exactly like they want them, sometimes paying a landscape designer a lot of money to landscape their sim. Please don’t take the chance that it will all be returned to you. Always plan ahead and pay your tier ahead.

Rez Boxes and Lag
One of the worst culprits for lag in Second Life are rez scripts. Often when neighbors complain about lag on a sim, and the EM comes over to investigate, someone has left out their rez boxe s for several builds. Residents often leave their rez boxes out when they rez their structures, gardens or whatever item has been packed into a rez box for ease of placement. One of the tricks people are told about is to leave the rez box out, edit the box so it is phantom and invisible, and that way if something happens to your build, you can simply re rez another copy of it. While that makes things easier for the resident, it creates a significant amount of lag on a sim. Those rez scripts in the box, when not deleted after the structure is out, continue “talking” to the structure, and this script chatter is what causes lag.

A better idea is to delete the rez script and take the tier box back into inventory, or delete it if it’s copiable. Let me give you some tips on an alternative solution to leaving the rez box out that will help you should you accidentally delete part of your house or need to re-rez a structure for some reason.

I remain respectfully yours,
~ Suzanne Piers, ZI Blogger/Social Media

VR In Project Sansar

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Living In a ModemWorld by Inara Pey posted a blog post about the future of virtual reality (VR) in Linden Lab’s newest platform, Project Sansar.

Ebbe Altberg gave a 20-minute talk titled “The future of VR is user-created” at the Silicon Valley Virtual Reality (SVVR) Conference, which opened on May 18th, 2015.

“Those who may have been hoping to gain more of an insight into the Lab’s Next Generation Platform (aka Project SANSAR) will perhaps be disappointed by this presentation. As the title suggests, it isn’t so much focused on the Lab’s NGP, but rather on user generated content (UGC).” says Inara in her post.

Ebbe touched on SANSAR during the third part of his speech, but he really didn’t give much more away about the platform than has already been revealed by the Lab in statements made about it to date: That it is in development, that it will be running in a closed alpha from summer 2015, etc.

Read the full article by clicking here: Ebbe Altberg: “The Future of VR is User-Created” (a look at SL + SANSAR from the VR perspective)

I remain respectfully yours,
~ Suzanne Piers, Blogger/Social Media

Project Sansar Is Linden Lab’s New Platform

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Ever since Linden Lab let it slip that they are working on a new project, dubbed “Second Life 2” by speculators, rumors have abounded regarding this mysterious project. Hoopla ensued; people were in a panic over whether Linden Lab was going to stop supporting Second Life once the new world was up and running; content creators and residents alike were up in arms over the fact that the new world would not be backwards-compatible and user-created content from SL would not be transferable to the new world.

Recent rumblings in the forums and blogs have indicated that the nickname is Project Sansar. Indeed, patents have been applied for that use the name Sansar, and Project Sansar.

Inara Pey, in her blog “Living in the ModemWorld” (that’s a clickable link) speculated that: “Sansara was one of the early names considered for Second life (being derived from Samsāra, which occurs in both Buddhism and Hinduism, and, perhaps more particularly where SL is concerned, was used by Hermann Hesse in his 1922 novel Siddhartha as a reference to the “world of illusion”), and currently lives on as the name of SL ‘s oldest and largest mainland continent. Whether “SANSAR” is a play on this is unclear – it might just as easily be an acronym.”

Apparently both “Sansar” and “Project Sansar” are being bandied about, and threads point to the fact that both names have had patents applied for by the Lab:

• US Serial no 86593254 – for “Project SANSAR”
• US serial no 86593259 – for “SANSAR”

In addition, in October 2014, Ascio Technologies, Inc., filed a domain name registration for projectsansar.com listing Linden Research as the Domain Administrator.

A few days after this information was beginning to leak out, Linden Lab tweeted:

ProjectSansar

Stay tuned to this blog; we will post more as information becomes available.

I remain respectfully yours,
~ Suzanne Piers, ZI Blogger/Social Media

Second Life Residents Come to Nepal’s Aid

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Join Hands

One thing that I love about Second Life is the way its residents come together to help when there is a need. There are many annual events for causes such as Relay for Life, Feed A Smile, and many other charitable organizations. SL residents continue to give generously to help those less fortunate than themselves, often raising hundreds or thousands of RL dollars for various causes.

The devastating earthquakes in Nepal over the last couple of weeks have left that country in shambles. Valsnia and Ruby Ornamental, two Second Life residents and bloggers, have recently formed Join Hands, a virtual group they would like to see “make a difference to the real world we live in. Not dedicated to a single mission but the spirit of Humanity.” As the inaugural activity for Join Hands, they are organizing a four-day fund-raiser in support of the people of Nepal following the devastating earthquakes.

Fashion for Food SL is an event that has been organized in order to raise money to donate to the UN’s World Food Program (WFP), which focuses efforts on bringing assistance and relief to the outlying regions of Nepal. This will allow Nepal’s government to concentrate in coordinating their efforts along the Kathmandu Valley. The WFP estimates that US $116.5 million is required to provide food for 1.4 million people for a period of three months – that’s US $27 per person per month.

Fashion for Food opens at 2:00 p.m. SLT on Wednesday, May 13th. The opening event is a special fashion show by SCALA™. It will be followed by an after-show party hosted by DJ Seashell Dench from SCALA™. Clothing and jewellery from participating designers can be purchased from the vendor boards throughout the region, with all proceeds of sales, as well as all donations received going directly to WFP in support of their work in Nepal.

Designers from across Second Life are donating to and participating in the event: 69Park Ave GQ, Amarelo manga, Ana Markova, Astralia Alice Tartaglia, Aura Yeu, Ayiki, – AZUL -, Baboom Couture, CIRCA Living, CORPUS Motion, Dulce Secrets, ~ghee~, ~~ Glitter Girls ~~ and In-Pose, Glitterati by Sapphire, Hawker’s House, ImmateriA, J’adore poses, JCNY Collection, .:JUMO:., K E L I N I Haute Couture, Lazuri. Look @ Me Design, LUXE, Lyrical Bizarre Templates, Mâchoire, M&M Clothing, Me Sew Sexy, Moondance Boutique, NYA’S Shop, No 7, Petit Chat, Prey, Prism Designs SL, PROMAGIC, RAPTURE, Athena Couture, SF designs, Silken Moon, ::SG SLackgirl ::, Snowpaws, TASHI, Totally Random, Vestige Poses, Xen’s Hats and Zanze. All proceeds of the sales through the vendor boards will be going to support the WFP to deliver food to the people of Nepal.

Indian Paradise is the region hosting the event, and it has been designed to re-create an environment which has been shattered by an earthquake, offering a glimpse of the devastation in Nepal. The fashion show and events area is located towards the center of the region, while paths winding around the region take you past the vendor boards, which will be available throughout the four day event.

The planned schedule of events for Fashion for Food is as follows:

• Wednesday, May 13th, 2015, 2:00 p.m. SLT: Fashion Showcase by SCALA™Models

• Wednesday, May 13th through Saturday May 16th 2015: Outfits and jewellery from the participating designers are on sale throughout the region, with all proceeds going to the WFP

• Thursday, May 14th, 2015, 12:00 noon SLT: DJ Bonie Facio

• Saturday, May 16th, 2015, 2:00 p.m. SLT: closing party with SCALA™ DJ – Seashell Dench

Fashion for Food is being largely organized by the Indian community in Second Life in support of their neighboring Nepal, with the event region being sponsored by Indian Paradise. Note that if you would prefer to donate to the WFP’s work directly, you can do so via their Nepal relief work page. Click on the following link to go to their page: Nepal Relief Work Page

You can find the landmark to Fashion For Life by clicking here (won’t be open until 2:00 p.m. SLT on May 13th): Fashion For Life SLURL

Research for this topic came from the blog Living In a Modemworld

Please come out and support this worthy cause. If you cannot attend events inworld, please consider donating either to WFP directly, or with Lindens in SL through Join Hands.

I remain respectfully yours,
~ Suzanne Piers, ZI Blogger/Social Media

Oculus Announces Rift Launch in 2016

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Oculus has announced their plans to debut their highly-anticipated VR (virtual reality) headset in the first quarter of 2016, saying that it hopes to “transform gaming, film, entertainment, communication and much more.”

It is anticipated that VR headsets will revolutionize virtual environments such as Second Life (it is my understanding that the “Second Life II” is being built with virtual reality in mind) and High Fidelity, the VR virtual world project currently in alpha testing by former SL CEO Philip Rosedale.

Oculus is probably the most well-known name in the pool of Virtual Reality headset makers, as their Rift headset has been in development for several years. Until now, most virtual reality technology has come in the form of prototypes and development devices shown at trade shows and high-profile announcements. Rift’s launch has been highly anticipated, with some analysts speculating that if Oculus didn’t hurry up and launch, that other companies such as the Vive, a brainchild of a collaboration between Valve and HTC, would edge them out as a contender.

Meanwhile, Sony announced intentions to launch its own virtual reality headset for its PlayStation 4 video game console, called Project Morpheus. Samsung has also thrown their hat in the ring, with their announcement that they plan to launch Gear VR, a version of the headset made to be compatible with Samsung smartphones.

Oculus itself was the brainchild of a virtual reality enthusiast Palmer Luckey, who co-founded the company in 2012 after a mix of money and encouragement from industry veterans. Oculus held a crowdfunding campaign through Kickstarter that generated more than $2.4 million in pre-orders for its prototype. Facebook bought Oculus for $2 billion in 2014.

According to an article on CNET.com, “Analysts say they aren’t worried which company launches first. Part of the reason is that the resources and investment necessary to attract game developers to make specialized content, as well as the cost of research into next generation technology, leave a lot of opportunity for deep-pocketed companies to duke it out for a while.”

Here is C|NET’s review of the Oculus Rift headset.

Click here: C|NET’s First Look at the Oculus Rift Crescent Bay Prototype

Click here for complete article on cnet.com: Oculus to launch long-awaited Rift virtual reality headset in 2016

I remain respectfully yours,
~ Suzanne Piers, ZI Blogger/Social Media.