Second Life® - Create your Avatar, download the viewer & login!

I made the following 3 videos for a quick introduction to the process for joining the Second Life® community which includes selecting an avatar and name, downloading the viewer (a small file) and then logging in for the 9 step introduction to the most beautiful virtual world on the planet!

http://www.secondlife.com
A playlist of the videos shown below is available on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=D3FC4145B4052788

Creating your Second Life® Avatar

Also available in HD 720p:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I17Oz7Vaykg&fmt=22

Logging into Second Life (HD 720p)

Also available in HD 720p:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBBnbTCouC8&fmt=22

Second Life Tutorial in 9 easy steps

Also available in HD 720p:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bAK1kQq6Ig&fmt=22

Improving the retail experience one virtual racetrack at a time...

library studios Sandy Sandy Sandy, originally uploaded by HVX Silverstar.

Library Studios Island sits amidst the popular Alliance Virtual Library and partner sims in the Information Archipelago; American Library Association (ALA) to the north, Stanford Libraries to the west and one of the Cybrary City Islands to the east. The expansive sandy coast with its wild ("out of sim lines") rocky refuges begged for California "real". I don't know a coastal community in California where the deep greens of Somerset actually meet the ocean waves. So, working our little avatar legs off, with the estate/region window open, we attempted raising and decrease the default 'highs and lows' for the texture files... it was one surprise after another. The most daring change in the height levels for the SouthWest quadrant brought a wave of 'virgin sand' rezzing across the English greens, leaving it more like SoCal... Oh, no, this is Sonoma!
Now the roads... Hyacinth and I have been working on piecing together the sculpty pieces. Daunting. I need an escape.
Shopping in Second Life® should set me on a new path of retail therapy or bring me to my Linden Dollar senses and just try to pull together a few coastal slopes and winding roads from the road packages and textures I had previously collected .
So let's buy some roads:
First stop, PR Hollywood's Fusion City (101, 99)

It's at this point that I have rezzed and re-rezzed PR Hollywood's race courses... watching the pieces fly through the air in an urban dance as it darts across the black skies; certainly enough to qualify as a higher level retail experience.
The choices span the screen and the imagination. I find myself contemplating a racetrack running through my formerly calm landscape where I can still hear the waves crashing against the digital shore while laying out streets and arguments atop Fusion City's midnight platform.
Well, still streetless, I'll have to contemplate the options and return tomorrow to scan XstreetSL® and the SL® search before going back to my roadwork jigsaw that is currently sprawled across the sim.


http://slurl.com/secondlife/Fusion%20City/97/96/1001

fusion city prefab demo roads 317 prims, originally uploaded by HVX Silverstar.

Thoughts from Library Studios Island (pick up machinima workflow instructions here) in the very beautiful Second Life®.
SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Library%20Studios/32/45/23

Hyperlinking in YouTube with Annotations

Hyperlinking videos in YouTube: upload your video to your YouTube account and when in Edit mode, choose the 'Annotations' feature:
using the 'callout' option you can add a title and link to a related video on YouTube. Shown here are links to the MISSILL concert at the 2006 Trans Musicales Festival in Rennes, France, as well as a more recent video clip, MISSILL Solidays 2008...

Watch the video on YouTube and check out the annotations in the last 8 seconds of the video.

Virtual Ability Ribbon Cutting by Gentle Heron

Virtual Ability Ribbon Cutting by Gentle Heron, originally uploaded by HVX Silverstar.

Today was the opening of Virtual Ability Island in the very beautiful Second Life. I use "very beautiful" rather loosely in many of my posts... but today was beautiful, inspiring and extremely moving. The auditorium. The ribbon was cut by Gentle Heron (also of Heron Sanctuary on Eduisland 4) in honor of The Sojourner who passed away just recently. Take a moment to meet the people of the Virtual Ability community: Dusty, Kat and Namrav: http://www.virtualability.org/page9.html
The project was begun with a grant to the Alliance Library System (now Alliance Virtual Library in SL) from the National Library of Medicine. The project has been able to continue on by the generosity of individual contributors to Virtual Ability, Inc. , a non-profit W(3)c organization.

Paste the SLurl into your browser's address bar:
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Virtual%20Ability/128/128/23

For further information about this wondrous project, contact Carolina Keats or Eme Capalini in SL.