Rezday...

and nobody noticed... kinda makes you wonder

To the Moon and Back

Visiting the Warrior

Well it is amazing what you can find in SL. So today I visited Mars... seriously :D

These places make SL worthwhile visiting for the creative experience and to see what can be done if the heart and not the wallet is involved.

Explorer Island makes you feel like a little Dora flying around, through the phantom landscape and of course snapshotting with your tiny virtual Kodak.

What you see here is the 1/3 scale of the Victoria crater, 3/3 would need 9 sims to build!?
It's done with sculpted prims, a friend explained me how they did it but yes indeed it was too much tech talk for little old me ;)

Nevertheless it's wonderful and these projects are one of the most valuable reasons of the virtual worlds' existence... at least something to think about and be inspired by.

Una sorpresa maravillosa...

Como he estado una sorpresa de recibir mi primera serenata virtual, un cantante privado y amigo muy precioso. Todo los preparaciones y esfuerzos en secreto... me he gustado mucho!

Unos de los agradable lados de SL esta sin duda la gente cariñosa que puedes encontrar de todo el mundo

Muchas gracias mi querido charro :)
<3

We're in the news

Seriously, the job we did for IMAX left them very content and we got different media coverages... can I enjoy this moment?

hehe... guess so :p

'Phoenix' soars into Second Life
Virtual avatars credited with boosting film's Imax 3D showing
By Gail Schiller

Aug 3, 2007

NEW YORK -- A virtual marketing campaign for "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" engagements in Imax theaters that transformed Second Life avatars into "buzz agents" for the movie is getting credit as the main impetus behind Imax breaking all of its boxoffice records.

In a campaign run by This Second Marketing Llc., a relatively new agency that specializes in brand marketing in Second Life, about two dozen avatars were recruited and paid real-world wages to act as virtual street teams, handing out free virtual promotional items and engaging fellow avatars in discussions about the film at Imax theaters.

Dressed in white futuristic-looking outfits with the Imax logo and a cube with the "Phoenix" Imax 3D poster floating above their heads, the buzz agents gave out virtual 3-D glasses, Imax T-shirts, directors' chairs with the Imax logo and virtual movie tickets. Only the virtual movie tickets had a real-life use, with all 300 available redeemed for Imax "Potter" tickets via a link to Imax's Web site.

According to Imax and This Second Marketing, 15,099 unique avatars engaged in conversation about the Imax "Potter" and accepted promotional items during 840 total hours of street marketing efforts in the week surrounding the Warner Bros.' film's July 11 opening. The campaign logged 25,189 individual Imax brand interactions when including all conversations with Second Life avatars, many of which occurred on more than one occasion.

"As far as everyone can tell, this was the highest one-on-one branded interaction known to date that ever took place on Second Life," said Greg Foster, chairman and president of Imax Filmed Entertainment. "Reaching 15,000 people in exactly the demographic you're shooting over seven days is sort of hitting the marketing bonanza."

Foster said Imax's market research indicated that the Second Life campaign "closed the deal" for many of the moviegoers who went to see "Potter" in Imax theaters.

"A huge proportion of our opening weekend tickets came from advance Internet purchases, and a large number of those people came from interacting on Second Life," he said. "We had more than 15,000 one-on-one unique interactions on Second Life, and we captured over 15,000 avatar names. Those people virtually became walking billboards," he said, referring to the fact that whenever an avatar put on the virtual 3-D glasses, the "Potter" Imax cube appeared, spreading the viral campaign.

"Phoenix" led Imax to its largest worldwide opening at $9.4 million, its biggest first-week total at $11.6 million and its largest second weekend at $3.9 million, the company said. The film reached the $10 million mark faster than any other Imax DMR release. (DMR is the company's digital remastering technology that allows it to digitally transform any conventional motion picture into an Imax film.)

Foster said the campaign helped Imax reach its target 12- to 34-year-old "techie" demographic that is a "a little bit more illusive these days in terms of coming to movies."

According to Joni West, president of This Second Marketing, the Imax campaign was much more effective than those implemented by many other marketers who have just created "islands" in Second Life without any marketing or advertising campaigns to get people to go there.

"Some companies have built islands, and they've expected people just to show up, which is not a realistic expectation in Second Life. For Imax, we decided to go and bring the brand and the story to the people," she said.

Imax also opened an office on This Second's island, where avatars can get free promotional items for future Imax movies. West's company has also run smaller buzz agent campaigns for 1-800-Flowers and Careerbuilder.com in recent weeks.

Many other entertainment companies that have marketed their content in Second Life have also been quite successful. An island created for Showtime's "The L Word" -- which features a virtual coffee shop like the one in the series, a street with mostly women's clothing stores, vacation homes for sale, a nightclub and a screening room where whole episodes of the show are streamed -- has attracted more than 50,000 avatars since it launched in January, according to Electric Sheep Co., the company that created the island for Showtime. The avatars have visited the "L Word" island an average of three to four times a week and stayed an average of 20 minutes per visit.

An assassination game created by Electric Sheep and played throughout Second Life to promote Universal Pictures' "Smokin' Aces" drew 1,200 players, Electric Sheep said. To promote "Live Free or Die Hard," 20th Century Fox orchestrated a Q&A with Bruce Willis and his look-alike avatar in Second Life for media and a select number of fans who won a competition to attend.

"It was very well attended and definitely successful," a Fox spokesman said.

In May, Fox also hosted the first online virtual premiere party for "X-Men: The Last Stand," attracting about 18,000 Second Life residents to its movie-themed Avalon island, where the 19-hour party was held. Because of the party's success and high demand from avatars who couldn't get in, the party was extended to last the whole week, drawing thousands more fans to the virtual event, the studio said.

Second Avatar

In this funny psychedelic journey I actually entered Miss SL 2007 recently, why didn't I mention that earlier. I guess cause I'm a weird mix of shyness and vanity hehe. Anyways, just having some fun won't hurt anyone. I'll probably go around unnoticed since it's all about clicks, well we'll see but it is funny that such a thing exists.

I first heard about it through someone else's blog, I should look her name up she was a SL miss too :)

Hear me say "too" hehe as if, well it's fun, and maybe I'll keep entering till I'm a lil' ol lady and be crowned Miss SL 2047. That's the beauty of SL, you never age.

Is it important... no totally not, but it's fun savouring as much SL experiences as you can. So one is added to the growing list again :)

Secondavatar.com

The Thin Line

OK SL is fun, very much fun and i must plea guilty to being an addict by now. Do I mind? Nope hehe! For me as long as I can keep a healthy balance between FL and SL, it's cool in my opinion.

Now how important is it to keep RL & SL separated? I really don't know, it all depends with who I guess. But you never know who's really on the other side of the avatar so I wouldn't start handing out any RL address cards hahaha. Anyways, some people seem to be very cautious about anything that might come near RL info. I like to keep it balanced, a name won't hurt anyone, but a life story and RL emotions (especially when it comes to romantic illusions) can be tricky. The tease is nothing without pretending it's real, but it's pretend real and the line between real real and pretend real can be confusing to many, so they start freaking out, running away, coming back and running away again.

To be honest, I've had some of that confusion too. I guess cause I couldn't make the difference between RL values and the permitted lack of them in SL. It's bizarre how most morals/values/principles/etc. fade the second you log in to The Grid. But then again that also depends on who you meet and what you're looking for.

In the end what intrigues me most is the effect this possibility of having a SL has on human interaction and the way we treat our fellow virtual beings, whom in the end (again) remain human. I will get back on that later, but even though I love SL, the nice diversion it can be and perfect business opportunity.

But lately I've come to appreciate my RL more and more every time I log off, what a relief to see the blue bubblegum sky for realz :)

Pause

So since RL called me abroad quite unexpectedly it's been over a week since I've been on SL, it is scary how I keep thinking about it though :D

Anyways to keep me in virtual mood I ordered the official SL manual + CD and in all the buzzyness haven’t been able to make up my mind yet whether or not it's worth it, but I'll let you know.

Next week is project-time for me on SL so I'm curious if this is going to be worth it too, if not SL has become a nice place to meet and keep in touch with really nice people. So receiving all these offline messages is really sweet!

Love ya guys ;)

The Beginning

So today was the day (since I'm writing this retrospectively) I decided to join the expanding community of Second Life. Ever since I've become a bit of an addict and put up this blog to share whatever I'd like to share about this rather bizarre phenomenon.

Why I call it bizarre? Is quite simple, it's just your screen and a whole lot of pixels but still it's a world on its own, where thousands of people gather every day and night to share their moments together: studying, skydiving, working, making love, building, fighting, etc.

Almost nothing is impossible and there's always the security of the phrase: "What happens in SL stays in SL, and what happens in RL stays in RL".

Complete weirdoes, geniuses, geeks, sexy and not so sexy... for everybody the perfect buddy available.

Will update this regularly... ;)