Author Archives: ZoHa Islands

Meet Your ZoHa Islands Staff Part Six!

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To continue our profiling of our amazing ZI staffers, here are two more: Melly Belly, and Katara Adored.

Melly Belly (MelonyRose Resident): Sales Agent

MellyBelly resizedMelly has been in SL for five years. When asked what brought her into SL, her reasons are very familiar, as many of us have had the same experience. She says, “I wanted to just try a different game and got sucked in.”

Melly has been with ZoHa Islands about a month and works as a sales agent. In her off hours, Melly enjoys hanging out with friends, going clubbing, and watching movies. She also loves to explore new places, also.

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  Katara Adored: Tier reminders and set ups

Katara Adored resizedKatara has been in SL for four years and seven months. She says she came into SL because a RL friend of hers told her about the game and so she had to come check it out (secretly it was for the porn, but I’m not supposed to put that. Shhhh…). Like many of us, she was very confused upon first logging in, and she nearly quit because she couldn’t figure out how to get off of Noob Island. It took her three tries but she finally made it, and from then on she was hooked! She’s been coming back ever since.

When asked how long she’s worked for ZI, Katara says, “This time around I’ve been with ZI since August doing all sorts of stuff.  I started off as just an agent like most everyone here has, and then they had me doing the set ups, preparing the land people give up so that other people can rent it.  That was in September, I think.  In October I got my manager position I had been bugging Deuce about.  He was worried I wouldn’t be able to handle set ups and EM work but I did both up until last month when we got all the new Bonaire land.  Since then I have been doing tier reminders and set ups exclusively.  Its a seven day a week job but I love it.” Katara used to work for ZI a couple of years ago as a sales agent, but the timing was off because she had so much going on in RL, so she quit for a bit. We’re glad she’s back!

Other jobs that Katara has had in SL include working for WRE and another small land company several years ago. She has also worked as a host manager for a techno club not long after she first rezzed, and as a dancer after that. However, she quickly grew bored and quit not long after she started. She has also had several businesses of her own in SL, either by herself or with friends. She says, “All have been a sucess, but I like to hop around so much to keep entertained that I’d swap out one for another at the drop of a hat.” She has had a full service wedding business, neko tail store, train a pet monkey clothes, & mesh clothes.  Currently she and co-worker KittyKat Jules run a mesh clothing shop called Pixel Snobs.

When not working in SL, Katara likes to log in and talk with her friends. She says she sometimes checks the destination guide to see whats new and interesting.

In RL, Katara is married but currently separated.  She has a wonderful little boy, who is a mini gamer just like she is.  Katara says, “I am really big into gaming, mostly PC and Nintendo, even if my son keeps pushing me to play the Xbox.  One of my favorite games is Minecraft, and I’ve been addicted to it since I started watching the YouTube videos a couple years ago. That is another hobby of mine… watching other gamers play Minecraft and other video games on YouTube.  Some people have their reality shows… I have my YouTube’rs to watch.  My addiction has gotten so bad that I have started making videos and posting them myself just last week.  This makes my son very happy, since he watches YouTube gaming videos almost as often as I do.  He now thinks that I am a famous gamer only after two videos! So I will keep posting videos even if he is the only one that ever thinks I’m a super star.”

And truly you can’t ask for more than that; to be a superstar in the eyes of your child!

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That’s it for this installment of Meet Your ZI Staff. Hope everyone has a great day!

As always, I remain respectfully yours,

~ Suzanne Piers, ZI Social Media Manager

Meet the ZoHa Islands Staff Part Five!

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It seems I didn’t get all of our amazing ZI staff profiled yet and we have some new people that have come on board, so welcome to the fifth installment of Meet your ZI Staff! I’m excited to introduce you to Anastasia Nightfire, Saralynn Karu, and Aden Slingshot!

Anastasia Nightfire (Jewel Carolina): Sales Agent

Anastasia resized Ana is a new hire at ZoHa Islands. She works for us as a sales agent and we are excited to have her with us!  Ana is a long-time SLer, having been in-world for seven years. She says that she can’t remember what drew her to SL, but she’s glad she’s here.

Previous to her employment with ZI, she has worked in sales for many other estates, most recently at Surreal Estates before ZI was fortunate enough to have her join our staff.

When asked what she likes to do best in SL, she states that she enjoys many roles as a mom, daughter, sister, and confidant. When asked what her favorite places in SL were, she says, “I have MANY fave places. ”

In RL, Ana is married and has four wonderful kiddos.

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Saralynn Karu: Estate Manager

Saralynn Karu Sara is a relative newcomer to SL, as she has been in SL for a year. She says she got into SL because her RL father in law and her husband were into it, and so she decided to join them.   Having an experienced resident of SL to guide her helped a lot. What a big difference it makes to have someone to mentor you when you’re new so you can be miles ahead of a newbie.

She has been an employee of ZI for a year, so she really hit the ground running in SL. Currently she is an EM, but  she has also held the positions of sales agent and tier reminders.

When asked what she likes to do in SL, she states, “I just come on and work.”

In RL, Sara is married and has two children. She loves to go camping, have cook outs and spend time with friends and family.

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Aden Slingshot: Estate Manager

Aden SlingshotAden is an SL veteran, having been in-world for seven and a half years. He came into SL because his RL family played it.  Aden has worked for ZoHa Islands for a year and half and is one of our estate managers.  He has also worked as a sales agent, estate manager’s assistant, and productions manager. He also did land setups and tier reminders.

Previous to ZI, Aden has worked for several other estates.

When asked what he liked to do in SL, Aden says, “I like to hang out and meet new people.”

In RL, Aden is married and has two children.

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That’s it for this installment of Meet Your ZI Staff. Hope everyone has a great day!

As always, I remain respectfully yours,

~ Suzanne Piers, ZI Social Media Manager

 

Phoenix Firestorm Question and Answer Session

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One thing that SLers often disagree about, is which viewer to use — the SL official viewer, Firestorm, Singularity — the list goes on. Each person has their favorite, and each person’s system handles one viewer better than another.

For me personally, I was madly in love with Singularity. It did everything I wanted it to, it was user friendly, it had the best features of Firestorm and SL viewer meshed into one… I was a happy girl. However, for some reason the last time I upgraded the viewer, I’ve been having rendering problems, and sadly I’ve had to start trying out other viewers. I saw that Firestorm finally had a 64-bit viewer, so I downloaded it, albeit a bit apprehensively, since both the SL viewer and Firestorm used to make me crash like crazy.  I was hoping the 64-bit version, coupled with the graphics card upgrade I made recently, would prevent the crashies like I used to have.

I’ve been using Firestorm for about a week now, and I really like it. I still miss some of the simpler features of Singularity, but the rendering problem was just too much for me to deal with. It was impossible to view SL properly.

One of the nicest things about Firestorm, is that it is the leading third party viewer, and it has amazing in-world support, including free classes that Firestorm staffers teach in-world. Recently, they taped a two-hour session where they discussed some of the issues that Firestorm users have brought up, starting with a discussion about the problems many users have been having with Norton Anti-virus and other anti-virus software. It sometimes interfering with the ability to use Firestorm properly, because the software identifies the Firestorm coding as a trojan horse and often quarantines it before it can be stopped, and the user cannot get it out.

After doing a “flame and shame” post on Twitter, they got an immediate tweet back from Norton apologizing for the problem, and within the hour, a representative from Norton had created an SL account and logged his avatar in world, found the Firestorm sim and came over to help facilitate the problem! This was someone who had never been in SL before in his life, and they felt the problem was serious enough to create an avatar to come help. Firestorm staffers were very impressed.

The video is quite long, but you can listen to it in the background while you do other things but it addresses many of the common issues, besides the anti-virus problem. It is very interesting to get an insider’s view of the viewer creation and update process, and the burnout many support people experience after a new release is issued and the vitriol that comes at them from users who have problems with the updates. It also has many good tips on how to deal with viewer problems, especially ones that seem to crop up overnight and for which they get blamed.

Have a listen; even if you’re not a Firestorm user, it has some very good insights into the workings of the viewers and their interactions with SL.

As always I remain respectfully yours,

~ Suzanne Piers, ZI Social Media Manager

 

SL Share’s Photo Upload Feature is Temporarily Down

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Hot off the SL Blog Presses regarding photo share and Facebook:

by Community Manager Linden Lab on ‎03-20-2014 11:29 AM

 

Facebook recently contacted us to let us know that the Photo Upload feature of SL Share is not permitted to automatically include location SLURLs in posts made from the application. We’re working with them to get a hotfix out ASAP, but in the meantime the Photo Upload feature in SL Share will not work, as Facebook has temporarily disabled that part of the application. SL Share’s Status Update and Check-In features will continue to work.

When SL Share’s full functionality is restored, SLURLs will no longer be included when you share a picture using Photo Upload, but you will still be able to let your Facebook friends know where to join you in Second Life by using the Check-In feature.

We apologize for the inconvenience this may cause you and are working to get a fix out ASAP.  We’ll use this blog to keep everyone posted with any updates and will of course let you know once the issue is resolved as well. Thank you for your patience.

Posted by: Suzanne Piers, ZI Social Media Manager

 

Bryn Oh’s Singularity of Kumiko

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“When there is nothing left to burn you have to set yourself on fire”  ~ from Bryn Oh’s profile

Bryn Oh is a well-known and critically-acclaimed artist in both SL and RL. Bryn’s latest creation in SL is an incredible display called the Singularity of Kumiko. Bryn brings her art to life in SL with this interactive exhibit, where you literally immerse yourself in her art. Appropriately, she named her group “Immersiva,” an Italian word that translates to “Immersive.”

Canadian-born, Bryn’s blog describes herself this way: “Bryn Oh is a virtual artist created by a Toronto oil painter.” A biography from the Virtual Art Initiative website says that Bryn “makes her living…as a painter whose work is sold by a major galley to collectors around the world. Having received her art education in Toronto and Florence, Italy, her paintings have been exhibited in many galleries in North America and Europe. A meticulous and highly skillful landscape painter, she uses high quality oils and acrylics that she makes herself from raw materials, working the paint with a wide variety of layering and sculptural brush techniques, on large canvasses that engulf the viewer in an almost immersive experience of the human impact on the natural world. In fact it is her interest in immersion that led her to experiment with the art of virtual worlds, and over the past year she has established herself as one of the finest builders and installation artists in Second Life.”

Immersiva 1_001

In order to have the best experience, Bryn has limited access to her exhibit to 15 avatars at a time, and yet receives over 600 visitors a day! This allows you to wander the exhibit and experience it fully without worrying about lag, crashing the sim due to overload or crowding. It is a dark, stark exhibit and is best experienced with few other avatars around. Her art is not everyone’s cuppa, but it is truly brilliant, eerie and disturbing all at the same time.

Immersiva 2_001When you first land, you are presented with instructions to change your windlight settings for an optimal viewing experience. Then, you proceed to the tables where you learn how to navigate the exhibit and pick up your free headlamp. Don’t miss this step, because you will need it! It is dark in the exhibit, and while some ambient light emanates from some of the art, most of the sim is nearly pitch black. Lastly, you read about the exhibit, the 14 letters you are to pick up, and finally, how to enter the sim.

Immersiva 5_001You approach the red door, and in local, you give the magic word. As the door opens, you walk into a tunnel and it spills you out onto the scene of an accident and the story begins to unfold. As you move from place to place, looking for the bottles with letters inside them, you are immersed in the environment. It is tempting to cheat and change your light settings, but don’t do so! It is worth it to experience the exhibit the way the artist intended.

Immersiva 6_001As you progress, you may not encounter the letters in order. But as you begin to collect information, you start to realize that it is a conversation between two people, Kumiko and Iktomi, and that one is stuck in some sort of limbo, while the other encourages the  other “cross over.” The mangled bicycle and car wreck in the beginning of the story begin to take on more significance. But look out for Mr. Zipper, a child’s toy transformed into something menacing. Listen for the squeaky wheel, because if you fail to notice him, he will kill you and you will have to return and start over. It doesn’t do any good to take weapons inside there, either, because Mr. Zipper is impervious to weapons. Believe me, I tried! You simply have to dodge and weave, and run like crazy so he doesn’t kill you.

Immersiva 10_002The entire experience is something out of a nightmare, but fascinating at the same time. The sounds, such as creaking, thumping, flapping of wings, sing-songy children’s music, and buzzing of some sort of insects as you walk around will raise goosebumps on your skin. It is fun, scary, creepy and altogether shivery, but well worth the tour. Take the time to visit Singularity of Kumiko,  you won’t be disappointed!

I am as always respectfully yours,

~ Suzanne Piers, ZoHa Islands Social Media Manager

Second Life’s Oculus Rift Integration is Ready for Beta Testers!

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Hot off the presses from the Tools and Technology blog on the SL website. check it out! 🙂

by Community Manager Linden Lab on ‎03-12-2014 11:16 AM

 

The Oculus Rift offers exciting possibilities for Second Life – the stereoscopic virtual reality headset brings a new level of immersion to our 3D world, making Second Life a more compelling experience than ever before.

Though a consumer version of the headset isn’t available yet, we’ve been working with the development kit to integrate the Oculus Rift with the Second Life Viewer. We now have a Viewer ready for beta testers, and if you have an Oculus Rift headset, we’d love to get your feedback.

If you have the Oculus Rift development hardware and would like to help us with feedback on the Viewer integration, please write to sl_oculus_beta@lindenlab.com to apply for the limited beta.