Top Ten Second Life Sims of the week

Hamlet Au just wrote a story on the Koinup Top SL Places of the Week
As pointed out by Hamlet Au, one of the reason of the SL Places Section is to create a list of the most interesting and most popular places, where the only one judge is the community

Some of the new-coolest sims looks very promosing and I guess some of them will become the hotspots of the next months! So I warmly suggest you to have a look at their preview on Koinup and teleport there for making your own reportages

Reminder. Don't forget to have a look at the Koinup Pathfinder weekly places competition!

(the top image is by the photographer balduinaabye

Neat Tricks Competition

Kali Meads, the excellent photographer and builder you may have known during the last Photo Week Session, is celebrating the 1st birthday of his Wandering Spirits sim! As a celebration, she is running a cool competition. It is more than a contest, it is more link a super-funny treasure hunt!

this is from her blog

"It was a dark and stormy night a year ago in October, when Kali Meads was accused of murder, her partner was found dead after apparantly shooting himself in the head after a russian roulette game. Kali seemed distraught, but strangeg things were happening at Neat Tricks,artist were visting her Gallery and leaving and giving up art to work in a box packing factory...the world held its breath as Kalis talents seem to get better and better......as the veil between the worlds become thin once more the dead spirits rise form their graves to help you to find out what really has been happening at Neat Tricks"

Can you find the body of her dead partner, and follow the clues?


Neat tricks is holding a competition. You need to follow the clues to find out the final details, and the clues are around Neat tricks and urbania (two parcels joined by a road). Follow the slurl to arrive in Neat Tricks and start looking. The clue trails isnt very long so have fun discovering the secret to Neat Tricks.

Please pay attention to what things say when you attach them as they will give you instructions as to what to do next. If you get stuck at any point IM kali Meads she may help you who knows muahahahaha.

Once you get to the end you will be given a notecard with the competition rules on it and a question to answer. Please post the answer to the question back to Kali Meads and you will be officially entered.

The notecard will also have details of the tag to call your pictures for upload to the koinup page.

The prizes are for first prize judged by kali meads herself) 5 000 lindens and a chance to appear on the front of a real life art book being developed by neat tricks and due for realease in March next year.

second prize is 2000 lindens and a free place to stay at bellecere estates courtesy of bellecere estates amd ladydesire benoir. This prize will be voted for by the public so get your friends to come vote!!! (one vote per avatar only)

The Winners will be announced at Neat Tricks 1st birthday on the 30th of NOVEMBER where Neat tricks is holding a Music festival with four live indie stylin acts. Followed by dj's at Mixtape (the new club opening on Neat Tricks).

All these details can be found on the neat tricks website!

Reminder: the tag for the entries is: neattrickscompetition

For more information IM inworld Kali Meads

Become a Koinup Pathfinder

PRESENTATION
Do you think that all Second Life Places have been already discovered? Is that so? Not at all!

Tons of amazing places are waiting for someone who will bring them to light and because of that we are bringing to you the
Koinup Pathfinder Competition

The Koinup Pathfinder competition is a weekly contest hosted on Koinup. Each week we will select a theme and we will ask Koinup members to discover new second life sims related to that theme and post them on Koinup!

PRIZES AND WINNERS
The participants which will discover more sims (fitting the theme) will be the winners and they will get some amazing prizes!

Some featured developers are sponsoring the initiative, by supplying their creations as prizes of the event!

Codebastard Redgrave will raffle her new Filter Cam!

Ana Lutetia, the blogger, fashionistas and poser joined the Pathfinder Comp. and will provide winners her **fresh poses**

And other developers will jon the crew.....(stay tuned)

RULES
1) We consider eligible for the count only sims not yet published on Koinup!
So check it out if some sims are already available on the Koinup Second Life Places section
2) In order to post sims/slurls on Koinup, you can send a postcard (here how to send a sl postcard on Koinup)
or you can upload a photo related to that place and later add the slurl

Other rules

You can follow all the Pathfinder post on the Koinup Blog, here

Koinup members, photographers and pathfinders are occasionally reviewed by the Koinup partner magazine New World Notes. So, they can get a further visibility by joining the competition!


UPDATES
First Round (update on november, 5, 2008)
Theme of the competition: Halloween. The winners are Liqueur Felix, Ambrose, Natasha-Burke, Kirasha. .read more here

Second Round (update on november, 11, 2008):
Theme of the week is: Naturalistic Sims. Winners of the second competition are: Solange Korobase, Clarrice Cinquetti, read more here

Third Round (update on december, 2, 2008)
Theme of the competition is historical sims. The winners are: VickyJayaram, Evola. Read more here

Forth Round (update on january, 6, 2009)
The theme of the competition is Sci-Fi Sims. The winners are: Liqueur Felix, Poid Mahovlich, Pagura. Read more


The image above "yahoo" is by Shoji

Media on Avatar Art

Some authoritative blogs recently wrote about Avatar Art Project
Yesterday, Vint Falken reported on the "Contest" and today Hamlet AU followed on the New World Notes

These days we are seeing also the first entries

Avatar Art Project and Contest is the first Cross-World artistic and photographic project for people coming from all the virtual worlds and games.....

Give your avatar a chance! ;-)

post-scriptum: Doubledown Tandino just released a new story on the Avatar Art Contest

(if you have some stories on the Avatar Art, please leave a comment on this post and I'll add the link the main entry!)

Steampunk winners

Last week we announced the winners of the second life steampunk contest. Today, I would love to point your attention to some of the amazing entries posted by the three winners and also link some other coolest submissions!

Winning works:

Snapshot_209 by Marmaduke


Babbage Square by Eves Redemberger


Gaslight Solicitation by Panteleimon Aeon


Other honorary memtions are well deserved by the following works (and artists)

Powerless by Angel-Ronmark


Waiting for the start by Burk


steampunk9 by MillaKat



There are other amazing entries. So we are launching a sort of open forum, if you think that some other submissions deserve an honorable mention, please send a comment to this blogpost and tell us which are your fav submissions (with link) of the contest....

I'll gather the users based-honorary mentions in a next post!

Avatar Art. The best AvatArt is on Koinup

We just released a new project and a new initiative! Lets call it Avatar Art. "Avatars have been a crucial part of online identity for years. As all culture becomes digitized, it's only inevitable that the avatar itself becomes a new canvas for artistic expression." (Hamlet Au, GigaOM, New World Notes)
If you are wondering what's the hell is an avatar, you are definitely getting behind, because right now avatars are the best canvas you can get for making art and express yourself! Want a sneak preview? Have a look here! Or watch the promo

Post-scriptum: The Avatar Art Trailer has been created by AWM Mars, founders of WBA Advertising
Thanks AWM Mars for such a great job!

Post-Post-Scriptum: The Avatar Art Banner has been created by Angel-Ronmark! Have a look at her awesome works!

VIRTUAL RENAISSANCE

Koinup is partnering this amazing initiative from Mario Gerosa (Frank Koolhaas inworld): Virtual Renaissance
Virtual Renaissance is the first real life exhibition, featuring artworks created in virtual worlds, mainly Second Life. The show is taking place in Florence, Italy. More info, here
I invite all of you to visit the show and attend the 24th october conference
Koinup staff is featured speaker and we will talk about the Koinup Project and future planning)

Sayonara Gion Photo Contest

The Gion Project sim, as you probably already know will close at the end of november, so we at Koinup decided to partner again with the Gion Manager Staff to hold the “Sayonara Gion Photo Contest,” a final event for the Gion fans. All the Koinup members are welcome to participate in this contest with their memorable screen shots of the Gion Project.

Competition Rules

Submission will start on October 20 and will end on November 15.

A Winner will be announced on November 20. Screen shots must be taken in the GION Project SIM.

Submit your screen shots to the Koinup website and tag the file name of each entry with the tag: gionmemories

All the entries will be visible in this page

Screen shots that are already posted on the Koinup website on 20th November are not acceptable. Each contestant can submit up to three shots.

Entering the contest implies the acceptance of these rules. Read the all the rules, here on the GionProject Blog

Top SL Places of the week

We have recently added new filters in the SL Locations Directory!
Now you can browse the SL coolest places(and recent) of the week! I think it is a quite interesting feature because hereafter you can have a better perspective on the new sims growing in popularity and intercept the trends in Second Life residents and the hotspots of the next months....
Maybe we will see raising from Koinup, new figures as Metaverse Explorers and travelers, with skills in discovering places and betting in the most populars...

I invite Koinup members and readers to display on their blogs or Facebook profile, the widget of the top latest sims

If you are looking for inspiration for new places to explore, I invite to have a look at this Wiki, created by Ravenelle

You can also read about this new Koinup Brand Feature on New World Notes.
Hamlet Au just wrote an article on Second Life Places Widget and feed!

AllTop featured Koinup!

Alltop, the feeds aggregator, featured Koinup on the All Top Virtual World News

To be precise, Alltop featured the Koinup Places Feed and the Koinup recent works feed

Talking about recent works.......maybe you're wondering which is the coolest work of the latest two weeks on Koinup?

Voila'...this is the community coolest choice!

Planet Mongo: the next stop on the Koinup-NPIRL Safari!

This Saturday, October 18 at 11:30am SLT, and waiting on the other side of your teleport (Planet Mongo slurl) will be Lumiere Noir, there to give you a personal tour of one of the most photogenic sims on the grid: Planet Mongo.

Read the full story on the Bettina Tizzy NPIRL blog

The event will be the second in a series as part of the Not Possible IRL and Impossible IRL groups' partnership with Koinup.

The Not Possible IRL (NPIRL) and Impossible IRL (ImpIRL) groups are dedicated to identifying and sharing well conceived and realized content creation in Virtual Worlds which would not be possible in Real Life: architecture, landscaping, art, animations, fashion, particle effects, building tools and scripts...

Read all details of the event on the NPIRL blogpost

Hamlet Au is looking for translators

Hamlet Au Lead of New World Notes is looking for Japanese, Portuguese and German Translators! He is planning to start localization for his journal! This follow the recent new from the official Second Life Blog to release soon Second Life in 10 languages. If you are active in SL communities and would you love to be part of the New World Notes crew, please read the full story!

Tools for Second Life Flickr support

This is reminder of the Koinup Tool for supporting Koinup members already using Flickr! We call it Crosspost and it allow members to forward their Koinup photos to Flickr, by simple enabling crosspost option in the account!
you can have a look here!

If you are also using the postcard option and you're sending postcards from Second Life to Koinup, you can crosspost your photos directly to Flickr and this way, your postcards will be available on your Flickr gallery, with attached location infos, as the name of the sims and the slurl!

Have a look now at the most beautiful postcards sent to Koinup!

Photo Sessions. Mentors Project

For this 1st Orange Island & Koinup Photo Session of October we are proud to host a great concept created by Trixibelle (Cala Rossini in SL) called “Mentors Project”.

Join us on Orange Island on Tuesday October 14th at 12PM SLT to show your work to Koinup’s most talented Mentors: Cala Rossini, Kali Meads, Kee Llewellyn & Ji Dallagio. They will review your work and make a deep analysis of it, they will also give you advices, tips and techniques to improve your snaps & uses your favorites softwares!

So don’t be shy and come present your work or just watch others pictures. Is there a better way to improve and become an artist? We are here to share techniques, tips and advices not only to people who share their snaps, but for everyone!

All the community will benefit from this project! Take part in it, Learn, Share and Have Fun!

Please contact Mat Sierota or Koinup Burt in Second Life if you want to share you work with your photographers fellows.

Read the announcement also on Orange Island blog

This is the direct link to Orange Island in SL

Second Life Places Feed

Koinup Places is a useful resource for metaverse citizens. Today, we released two new features: Places Feeds and Places Widgets for making it even more easy and helpful!

If you want to stay updated with the new places discovered by the Koinup community
you can subscribe to the feed!

You can instead use the Places-Widget to display on your blog the coolest places of the last week (or the last month). Have a look here to the various options to choose for your widget!

We are making some tutorials for the new Koinup Places Features.
Here you can read about install the feed on your blog. Here instead you can read how to install the widget on blogger platform



Here's the widget of the top sims of the week!
<a href="http://www.koinup.com/places/">Second Life Places</a>


The banner above has been created by Cienega

Aldarian Isle Photo Safari

Koinup and Aldarian Isle are glad to introduce the Aldarian Isle Photo Safari on Friday, 10. October 11.30 AM SLT!


Aldarian Isle is a free form roleplay medieval style sim, designed with beauty, class and authenticity as the main objectives. Several spots are waiting for your cameras and Koinup and the team from Aldarian Isle are inviting to take part in that safari! Take your shots and send them directly as postcard to Koinup

You can TP to Aldarian here!

This is the Aldarian stream on Koinup!

Join in, take great shots, meet some friends and hope to see you on Aldarian Isle!!

Koinup and the Team from Aldarian Isle

Post-scriptum: Hamlet Au reported on the Aldarian Safari on the NewWorldNotes! Read more

Shoji on New World Notes

The Awesome photographer Shoji got a mention on the New World Notes

You can see all his works, here!

Koinup Places on New World Notes!

Hamlet Au, Koinup partner and lead of New World Notes Blog is writing a series of article on the Koinup Places Feature

Here the launch of the project
Here instead the coverage of our 1000th sim shared by the community

Here a review about the Burning Life sims directory, created by our members

You can follow all the New World Notes articles devoted to Koinup, here on this column

You can also contact directly Hamlet Au, on his Koinup page and send him tips and advices for his New World Notes Journal!!!!