Tonight I went off for a casting with FSC model agency. They are a fairly new agency and I was lucky to be accepted way back when they had their opening a few months ago. They also host a shop for clothes called Zeen. The two ladies that run the agency and the shop are Elyna Carver and Jennifer Felissimo. To very lovely people I have had the fortune to know.
We were give a skin and eyes and asked to style ourselves in a punk style for the casting. I was very nervous but did what I thought a punk was like. I didnt know till i googled the meaning that there were so many different types of punks. It was really interesting to find out what Wikipedia had to say.
Please excuse the above pictures but as anyone knows trying to take a pic listen to the instructions and model is soooo hard to do:)

2 Different styles
2.1 Standard punk
2.2 Hardcore
2.3 Anarcho-punk
2.4 Crust punk
2.5 Gothic rock, deathrock and horror punk
2.6 Psychobilly
2.7 Skate punk
2.8 Pop punk
2.9 Droog
2.10 Suicidals

I must say I wont copy all the information here but it was unbelievable all the different styles. I real enjoyed the styling and choose the following items

Skin : *NOIR* female skin
Eyes: *NOIR* eyes
Hair : .::MADesigns HAIR::. ~ SETH ~ CB V
Clothes :>>GothiCatz<< Dystopian
Shoes:BAX Ankle Boot Black Patent
Accessories: Gems and Kisses long drop earrings.

I thoroughly enjoyed it and was so lucky to make the cut with five other talented people including the girl you can see in front of me Kat.
Well done everyone a great casting.

TTYL

Keeley~~~~~~~~~~~~@

Today I finally got enough NP to go to the Hidden Tower and buy a royal paint brush for Worstenbroodje! Hurray!

Look how beautiful she is now:

Of course I also got the avatar at the Hidden Tower, since it was the first time I bought an item there! Of course I did not get this event, but I like to prentend it happened anyway:

Something Has Happened!
	You are now eligible to use ‘Fyora – Faerie Queen‘ as an avatar on the NeoBoards!

The Flickr platform – part of the Yahoo company – has exploded in the last year, with the addition of social bookmarking and RSS feeds. The ability to integrate into Facebook with the widget MyFlickr and photo editing functions has also expanded its reach. But how are others using Flickr to engage in business conversations?

A “soft” case study
Interestingly enough, I read a recent blog post by prominent blogger Jay Baer, from Convince and Convert fame, on how one photographer has been using Flickr to “soft” crowdsource.

Jay interviewed Tyson Crosbie, a photographer out of Phoenix, Ariz., about how he used Flickr to crowdsource his photos among his audience. He decided to use the platform to allow users to vote for their favorite photograph for his clients – providing the client with another valuable source of feedback (example).

According to a quote from the Convince and Convert blog post by Jay, Crosbie said:

“I initially began the soft edit crowd sourcing process as a way to better educate myself and my clients about photography,” says Tyson. “Sometimes clients select photos that they probably would not have, but the positive feedback from the community can be influential.”

An online community
Crosbie was able to build his brand and develop a powerful online community because he engaged in a fun and interactive conversation. Not to mention that beyond the fact that users were discussing what they liked, the photography was getting more exposure, hence more business for Crosbie. It helps that he adds his logo and name to the bottom, right-hand corner of his photos for further brand recognition.

It all comes back full circle when done right and Crosbie, in fact, did it right. He said:

There are dozens of people who comment on the photos. Some are professional photographers, but most aren’t…If they know the subject of the photo, they are more likely to comment, and some people just love the process and participate regularly.

How does this help me?
There are so many social media platforms out there, and they all serve a valuable purpose, but utilizing the right one based on your objectives and strategies is imperative. Flickr can be a great tool when you want to share content, specifically photos, with your friends, consumers, co-workers and so on. It also allows you to tap into a whole new audience by letting people speak their mind about the topics presented to them, as well as generating potential revenue from the increased brand reputation.

People could crowdsource my picture by commenting

As an example, Crosbie actually builds the “soft” crowdsourcing fee for his photography into each project. This is a way for him to create extra value to the customer and provide another unique selling proposition (remember that term?) to his audience. He has even built a reputation around shooting avatars for Twitter users. Now that’s a niche to be in!

Jay mentions about Crosbie that:

Business portraits for use in social media and elsewhere make up a large portion of his commercial photography work, and he charges $500 for that service – including the soft edit crowd sourcing process.

This can be of help to you by keeping one thing in mind; that with the right strategy and creative mindset, you can use Flickr to build your personal or business brand in new and innovative ways.

This entry is part site update and part blog.

Updates~
You may have noticed the new music player i’ve added, it kinda refuses to start playing automatically, despite me adding the short code, so i’ve pretty much given up on that but i guess it works out for the best since background music can be annoying at times. I will be adding more songs to the playlist soon, but right now it plays “On My Own” from the musical Les Miserables, but this is the Glee version, sung by Lea Michele.

I’ve also opened the TRINKETS section, only avatars are up right now but i will be adding more bit by bit. I’ve added some Michelle Pfeiffer and Wicked icons, here’s a little taster:

Go to the trinket section to check all of them out =D

Blog~
So today i woke up early to go yum cha with my family, we haven’t been in ages so it was a bit of a treat. This time we managed to order just the right amount of dim sum so we didn’t have to take any left overs home hehe, thats the thing with dim sum, everything looks small but it is actually quite filling. Anyways, as the title of the entry says, today has been about new things. After going yum cha we went to Kingston and finally bought my grandma a DAB radio because she could no longer listen to the Spectrum AM558 chinese radio show on our old radio due to the digital switchover. The radio has a CD player and an ipod dock! It looks so pretty i actually kinda want it for myself, though i probably wouldn’t actually use it since i have my ipod and ipod speakers and also my laptop to listen to music with. Plus i rarely listen to the radio anymore, i only listen to it when i’m in the car lol.

After buying the radio we had to head to the apple store in the bentalls centre since i booked an appointment at the genius bar to get my macbook looked at. The grey plastic bit around my macbook screen and keyboard top were starting to chip away for some reason, and since i bought the apple care plan i thought i’d see if they could do anything about it. Thankfully it was something that the care plan could cover and they fixed it there and then since they already had the parts in store. When it was done, i realised they actually changed the whole keyboard, so now my laptop looks brand new from the inside xD. The keyboard and touchpad feel really weird though because they have this “rough” feeling to it when its new, but since i’ve been using my macbook for just over two years now, the old keyboard’s plastic had kinda been worn down and turned shiny and smooth. But oh well, i’m not complaining since they gave me a new keyboard hehe, i’m actually really glad i bought the apple care plan, and i definitely recommend anyone who has a mac and doesnt have the care plan to get it. The care plan is for 3 years and it really does come in handy since you’re obviously gonna be using your mac for more than a year. I mean not long ago my charger went on the fritz and cos i had the apple care they just gave me a brand new charger, which without the plan would have cost me around £46 to buy a new one!

Got home and my uncle and my little cousins were at my house and so were my other aunt and uncle who come to visit my grandma every sunday. It was really nice to see my little cousins, my uncle comes down every month to see my grandma but i was uni when they came down last month, so i’m really glad i got to see them today otherwise the next time i see them would have been at christmas. Little kids actually grow up so fast! My little cousin Gemma is already 11 and just took her 11+ exam! Its kinda weird when i get to see my little cousins grow up, it feels like its too fast, especially the ones who have just about turned double figures, they seem so eager to grow up and it seems a bit scary, i’m just thinking “aww no, stay a kid a while longer”. I swear the childhood period is getting shorter these days. Also i feel so old, even though i’m only 20 haha. If everyone stayed being kiddies i wouldn’t feel so old xD.

Anyways tomorrow is another day and with it shall bring a new blog entry. So until then~

♥ Veronica ~x

prom queen:
MIASNOW Skin – MYSTICAL CRYSTAL 1 (female)
MIASNOW Hair – PROM QUEEN *pink gum* UPDO
MIASNOW Eyes – DISCO BALLS lite blue
MIASNOW Shape – MYSTICAL CRYSTAL
MIASNOW Brows – MYSTICAL CRYSTAL
[ lurveBite ] Cotton Candy Pink – Food Couture – March 09
DooDads – Robot Necklace
*Kookie* Yuki Sock supreme heel – Silver

prom king:
MIASNOW Skin – MYTHICAL CRYSTAL 2 (male)
MIASNOW Eyes – CHROME green
MIASNOW Shape – MYTHICAL CRYSTAL
MIASNOW Brows – MYTHICAL CRYSTAL
+BM+ (BLACK MARIA) Eco15 Black (hair)
[AD] Cigarette Freebie
M*O*B*B* ~Business Suit~ (Dark Grey)
AKEYO_chuck-LowTop
ZHAO-II MB/Male01Pose by *SLC*

There is new content in the catalog library! We are constantly updating new content into the 3D library everyday — keep tuned for new exciting objects. Here’s a user generated scene with our lovely Ms. Congeniality overwhelmed by dinosaurs

Have a great weekend!

The DWP forums have been asking for a walkthrough on how I do avatars. Well I hope this helps. The finished avatar is one I just did.

How To Make an Avatar

A while ago I did a picture for Karnokoto from GiantitP. Here’s the link:

http://jokasti.deviantart.com/art/Karnokoto-143742400

It was based on a picture they gave me. I’d like some critiquing. Thanks in advance.

NEW THEME:P2!
P2 is a new theme that came Out two days ago!It is A Quick posting Blog,because it has a type of Post something At the top of the Page,And it has the Gravatar right next to your Posts!0_o.

Well we got the official second challenge in on Sunday and as part of the challenge as I mentioned before we had to complete a picture of our avatars from the time we started out to where we have got ourselves to now. It was a great experience as I had to redress and put on all my old avatar skin and hair and what ever clothes I could find that I used to wear back in the day. Luckily its just over a year for me so not all of it was gone yet. But it did make me think i need a huge clean out
Here is the resulting picture that is now up at the ModelPages website http://modelpages.net for voting. I suppose I could beg unashamedly for votes but it would not be very refined now would it

TTYL

Keeley ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~@

I saw a mention about web.alive a new online 3D webspace that runs inside your browser on the Second Life Educators listserv and decided to take a look. I went to http://apex.projectchainsaw.com/ and  bravely downloaded the exe file. (The download was fast with no signs of N1H1.)

Download security warning for web.alive. Note the publisher is Nortel Networks Ltd.

web.alive license agreement. (I am showing these basic download dialogs to assure you that 'projectchainsaw' is not a virus even if it sounds like one.)

First view of web.alive shows you your avatar staring back at you

I was then shown a very simple direction guide to help me get moving. The Help button provided me with additional easy to follow directions.

I began exploring the area and seemed to be gliding smoothly through the space. It looked like the kind of environment that you find around a large London railway station, an anonymous place designed for hordes of people to rush through. However, on the occasion of my visit there were no other avatars around making it feel more like an early Sunday morning. Everything around me was concrete and glass with small round pods situated here and there reminding me of those little shops that sell croissants and ties to commuters. Screens were set up in these pods and with a simple click these began showing Nortel movie advertisements. There was another screen in each pod that looked as though it could be enabled to show web browsers. (I wonder, does that mean that an avatar could be in a virtual world via a web browser accessing another virtual world via the in-world web browser? In other words we could access layers of virtual environments through web browsers?)

View of pod rooms. (Note the small area map in the bottom right corner of this picture.)

Conference room. The picture in this shot shows the rooftop space I was exploring.

I wandered away to send an email and stopped looking at web.alive in my browser and was surprised on my return to see that someone had been trying to talk to me. I saw an avatar walking away and gave chase. I was helped by a little map at the bottom of the screen that showed an orange dot (the other avatar) while I was indicated by a red kite shape. I finally caught up with the other avatar who told me, via voice, that  he could hear me typing and suggested I try speaking. I was very surprised to find that he could hear me straight away (especially as I normally spend a few minutes getting voice enabled in Second Life). I had done nothing to set up the voice connection, it just worked… good job I was not singing or swearing! I discovered I was chatting to a friendly fellow from Nortel in California who told me there were other environments available to explore (I plan to work out how to access those next.)

View with shallow canal (accompanied in web.alive with watery sound effects).

For now web.alive is in beta so anything I write that sounds judgmental is obviously a little unfair. Having said that I certainly feel that they could be braver with their sound effects and environment. Perhaps they will take these extra steps now that they have created such an amazingly smooth operating technology? Still, I really missed the lighting available in Second Life and this made me realize how important lighting is to conjuring up atmosphere.  This got me thinking that virtual environments have an  ‘Ambient Presence’  as opposed to Social Presence which describes the sense of the human being behind an avatar. ‘Ambient Presence’ describes the almost unconscious hooks which help immerse us in the sense of being within a physical space when in a virtual, computer generated environment. Ambient sounds and atmospheric lighting play important (almost subliminal) roles when it comes to absorbing us into an immersive experience.

View of city scape below (accompanied by traffic sounds that sounded very like a large drowsy fly).

My work involves communicating with over 100 sites all across America. I would love to find a cheap online vehicle that could really compress distance and make it possible for people to communicate easily when the whim takes them. That is, create a virtual space where I can talk to a colleague in another state as easily as I can walk across to someone else’s office in the physical world. Second Life has the ability to create beautiful spaces with ambient presence and avatars with Social Presence but the operating controls and intense hardware requirements keep ruling it out. web.alive has conjured up an excellent program that is astonishingly easy to use and can run in a browser. All it needs now is a little more imagination and it could become a major rival to Second Life for business and educational users. One more thing,  I keep forgetting web.alive’s name! I wonder if they plan to keep it?  I honestly prefer the name projectchainsaw! At least I can remember that!

Some shadows on the roof for some much needed atmosphere...

Note: For more information: A quick check through Google found additional mentions of web.alive. Take a look at Digital Media Consultant’s post titled ‘Checking out lenovo’s eLounge’. Also see the web.alive blog and http://www.projectchainsaw.com/

Updates November 19, 2009 :

• Just discovered that web.alive does not run on Macs
• ThinkBalm have created their own virtual office/meeting area on web.alive. Also see the post about ThinkBalm on Joe Rigby’s blog MellaniuM (Visit these two sites for direct links to ThinkBalm’s web.alive connection site.)

http://avatarer.yolasite.com

Gaming has become a massive past time over the last 5 years,especially virtual gaming,practically everyone who’s into gaming needs an icon or avatar to make their profile all the more interesting and unique – whilst giving their opponents a little added imagination about the competitor they’re up against add’s to the fun! My latest site has so many great and unusual icons to select just by right-clicking and downloading,all ready to add to your profile or even send to your friends…find it all at

avatarer.yolasite.com

http://iconify.yolasite.com

Gaming has become a massive past time over the last 5 years,especially virtual gaming,practically everyone who’s into gaming needs an icon or avatar to make their profile all the more interesting and unique – whilst giving their opponents a little added imagination about the competitor they’re up against add’s to the fun! My latest site has so many great and unusual icons to select just by right-clicking and downloading,all ready to add to your profile or even send to your friends…find it all at

iconify.yolasite.com

Ha már nincs frissítés, gondoltam kaptok egy adag avatart deviantról-innen-onnan összeszedve.

HH Photo-Real 3D Prim Pubic Hair G2 Style 1 L$500

WOAH!!! Hold on a minute. Photo-Real? You mean you actually took a picture of someone’s pubes so you could make this? Whose pubes did you… wait. No. I don’t want to know. There *is* such a thing as *too* realistic you know.

NEXT!

Yuun Avatar Set 1 Set: L$2000

Cherrai Avatar Set 1 Set: L$2000

Luscia Avatar Set 1 Set: L$2000

Biania Avatar Set 1 Set: L$2000

Todays release are 4 new avatars sets!

Unlike most of Curious Kitties recent fantasy type avatars, such as “Elf & Dark Elf Avatar Sets” these new avatars are a human type!

All of the sets include:

- Shape
- Skin
- Eyes
- Hairstyle
- Bald Base (for hair)

As another plus, all of these sets use Nyanotech 09-A Series hairs! You can change the hair colors with the Nyanotech 09-1A HUD & Nyanotech 09-2A HUD! =^.^=

On a side note the Yuun Avatar Set contains a special hair HUD only for use with its own hair!

I highly recommend all of these unique avatar sets so be sure to check them out in the skin/body section!

[Curious Kitties]

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Curious%20Kitties/184/232/22

[Curious Kitties Body Section]

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Curious%20Kitties/194/40/21

Envien una neofelicitaci�n de pascua para obtener este avy

�

Some days I fear that I might start to get bored with SL. Some days things just seem to be the same over and over again and I feel as if I can’t bear to see another prim. And then I discover a shop with unique and silly things, or teleport to a place where I lose myself for hours and I remember again what kept me here the last two years. Saturday was such a day and I will show you two of the three great places I found today.

“Altya’s Dream Creations and Toys” [SLURL] sells a wide range of silly toys, avatar attachments and other things you never knew you needed. All items also have a “buy as gift” option, which might come in handy for christmas. I love everything to do with aliens and ufos and therefore could not resist to buy this ufo attachment. It folds your avatar so that only your head remains – floating in a blinking ufo jar. You have to detach all prim attachments and it is advisable to at least wear a bikini (for any accidental unfoldings if the AO should not work). It is modifyable so I guess you might be able to put your own name on the sign. I also bought the other version, which is the same ufo jar on an unicycle, complete with little steam clouds and a working horn. Brilliant!

Now that I had turned into an alien, I was looking for a nice space sim to take some pictures. In moments like this I miss the now closed “Privateer Space” sim terribly. It broke my heart – and that of many other people – when it shut down, because it was huge and created by Aley Arai with so much humour and attention to detail. When I read the description of Deshima Space Station, a station “existing far away from major space colonies or settlements”, my interest awoke. And when I teleported there, zoomed out and realised just how huge this station was, my excitement grew.

There is a lot to explore in Deshima and it took a bit of time until I managed to get an overview and to orient myself (and until I found this room with a holographic map of the whole thing). The station basically consistst of three levels, the hangar (where you arrive), the Promenade Deck and the Legacy Deck. The levels are connected with each other through elevators and pressing the green or blue button takes you up or down between them. You can rez a space ship in the hangar and it will open automatically to let you fly out into space, where you can explore the asteroid fields and get a good view of the station.

From the Promenade Deck several automatic doors allow access to the various facilities of the station. They have a canteen, a shop, a medical infirmary, a prison, a theatre (where you can watch Youtube links on a big screen)… Very thoughtfully, a lot of toilet facilities have been provided, something you don’t often see in public buildings in SL.

This is the Botanical Bay, where you can relax in green surroundings and listen to birdsong, have a picnic or watch the carps in the pond.

This has to be the swimming pool with the greatest view in SL! By the way, this is the ufo jarhead unicycle attachment. Love it!

If you would like to see more pictures of Deshima, check out the Flickr stream of Ash Qin, one of the creators, who has put up some high-resolution shots here – or even better, teleport to Deshima (SLURL)and explore it yourself! As far as I understood, Deshima is still under construction and I am very looking forward to see it growing. Deshima is implementing “GreyRP” (more info here), so if you visit, please be respectful towards any ongoing roleplay.

Credits:
Jarhead ufo and unicycle – modifyable – by “Altya’s Dream Creations and Toys” [SLURL]
Skin “Blu Beauty Skin 1″ by MiaSnow [SLURL].
Hair “OCI185″ (gift for update group) by booN [SLURL]
Lashes “Seductress” by LeLutka [SLURL]
Eyes by Miriel (no longer available)

Marvelous Wig-#001-Blue L$100

You can’t tell me I’m the only one who saw this and started singing Twisted Sister can you?

NEXT!

Avatars

Wallpapers

Available in 3 sizes: 1680×1050 1440×900 1280×800

The Presence-L Listserv brings this interesting tidbit about research being conducted by the UT Dallas Center for BrainHealth. Researchers are working on  face recognition/emulation avatars. The idea is that the participant can make a face at an avatar, which resembles him or her, and the avatar returns the favor.  This is most helpful for people, such as autistic children, who have difficulty understanding the emotional content of the reactions they often give others.

One wonders though if all participants will understand that they the cause for their avatars’ frowns. Will there be a disconnect between the self and avatar there?