Twinity: New York, New York..

New York.. A name with lots of connotations. Madison square garden, 5th Avenue, Manhattan! Central Park! Remember the Simon & Garfunkel concert there? No? How old are you anyway? But you surely remember the movies? King Kong, the monster in Cloverfield and Godzilla all seemed to hate New York with a vengeance. On the other hand, artists like U2, Frank Sinatra and countless others sung love songs to her. Some more lucid than others: "A knife, a fork, a bottle and a cork - That's the way we spell New York, Jim - yeah".

And as of tomorrow, this special place can be visited in Twinity. I had the opportunity for a last minute sneak peek, and I must say I am a bit overwhelmed. Even though Metaversum has only recreated a part of Manhattan, there's so much there! Famous buildings, landmarks, familiar contours.. So much to explore. I have always wanted to visit New York; so far I haven't been able to, but this is a very nice alternative! Of course I made a few snapshots, which you can see here at our own Koinup. Enjoy! And please.. do pay Twinity New York a visit, it's really worth it.

Twinity: developing, shopping, gambling..

For a while now I have owned two apartments in Twinity: one in Amsterdam which I rented somewhere in 2008, and the Palmadora apartment which I bought a while ago. As I was checking out the available real estate in Miami, I noticed Twinity now allows me to rent or sell the Palmadora apartment! I already own and rent out real estate in Second Life, and it would be interesting to compare the two rental markets. So, I'll keep an eye the Twinity rental market, as the Twinity rental system and market are developing. Expect more blog items on this issue in the not too distant future :)

Read more »

Twinity: Miami

Tomorrow is a big day for Twinity, when Metaversum opens Miami Beach for all to see. Today I was able to take a look there, and I must say I am really impressed! Metaversum recreated a part of Miami Beach, mainly the areas around Lummus park and Ocean drive, including the beach of course. There's lots to do - funny animations hidden everywhere - and plenty to see as well. Miami Beach could well become a favorite place for Twinizens to hang out.

We know Twinity follows a natural day and night cycle; this means that when it goes dark in Europe, it's still sunny in Miami! This, in my opinion, has got to attract Twinizens, especially when winter comes in Europe.. I can see myself lounging at sunny and warm Miami beach, when the nights are cold and dark over here!

Tomorrow and in the coming days, there will be plenty to do in Miami, to celebrate the launch. Check the Twinity blog for details!

As they say.. 'pics or it didn't happen'. Here you go: Twinity Miami @ Koinup (of course)

Twinity: busy in here

Upon returning from holiday, I noticed I missed a new Twinity event: the Twinity Community awards! Obviously an event I would have liked to attend, as I was nominated in the "Best Twinity Blogger" category. I didn't win; the award went (deservedly I might add) to Dee, who is an outstanding, dedicated Twinity blogger. Congratulations to Dee, and all other winners of course!

As Dee remarked a few weeks ago: it's getting busier in Twinity. Tonight I had my first hour in Twinity after my holiday, and it has gotten markedly busier over that timeframe. There were almost fourty people at the opening party of the new Hanging Palms club in Ibiza, and the Twinity Welcome area housed well over 30 people at the same time. Many other Twinizens were spread all over the world, so it was quite busy, for a weekday in summertime. And I have the pictures to prove it:
Read more »

Twinity: things I missed

A lot has happened in Twinity over the past few weeks, but due to personal circumstances I missed an awful lot of it. I missed the weddings in St. Pauls cathedral, the new & improved look of water (which I love), I missed performances, parties, shop openings, and a tank! A tank? Why yes, a tank:


Glenn, of the GPals store and A Dream beach club fame, created an animated tank which he showed my in Dee's apartment. He continues to build amazing stuff! Can you imagine touring through London or Berlin in one of those?!
Read more »

The Twinity shopping tour

To be honest: I don't like to go shopping, really. It's inconvienient, tends to consume copious amounts of money, and what's with those clothes anyway? I just want the same pair of jeans I bought last year!

Virtual world shopping is, however, a different story. You get to teleport instantly to your destination: all shops are just a mouseclick away. You can buy or wear pretty much anything you like: it's 'your world, your imagination'. And most of the time, it's affordable too! It's no surprise that things like fashion, avatar accessories, home decoration and designer furniture are popular in these worlds.

Twinity is no different and number of shops have opened to cater to the discerning Twinizens' tastes, be it in clothing, accessories, tattoos and hair, lingerie, furniture or other interesting items. If you want to get an idea of what's on offer, you should do the Twinity Shopping Tour! Starting at the Twinity Welcome Area, it brings you to a number of shops where all sorts of virtual goods are sold. The tour ends at the London Shopping Mall, where many more shops have a small presence.

The Twinity Shopping Tour isn't an overview of all stores in Twinity. I missed, for instance, Drykorn, furniture shop GPals and some animation stores, but it's definitely a nice start to shopping in Twinity!

Twinity London grows again

Today, a new expansion to Twinity was released, making well known landmarks such as St. Paul's Cathedral, the Millenium Bridge and the Tate museum available for Twinizens to explore and enjoy. To celebrate the occassion, there's a whole lot of activities to do today; check out the Twinity News section for details. Due to time constraints I can't make it to all of these but I sure hope to catch at least a bit of the party! A few snapshots can already be found here. Enjoy!

Twinity: cracks in the mirror

One fascinating aspect of Twinity has always been it's mirror philosophy: "Twinity is a 3D mirror world based on real cities and real people." Second Life used to have the tag line "Your world, your imagination"; Twinity has "Powered by Real Life", which nicely captures the difference between the two.

There are, however, small cracks in the mirror, situations where the real world and the virtual mirror do not match. For instance, most people do not use their real identity in Twinity; they own places they don't have in the real world. These differences do not matter that much to me: the cities and buildings that make up the real world are mirrored, the inhabitants not necessarily.

But this becomes more of an issue with Twinity's latest addition: the idyllical island of Palmadora which has opened recently. It's a beautiful place and it looks quite realistic, but unfortunately it doesn't exist in the real world. It's a completely imaginary city, designed on a small uninhabited island that does exist in the real world: Espalmador, between Ibiza and Formentera.

Read more »

Twinity: Through the gates of time

Last year, before I started covering Twinity for the Koinup blog, I did an item on my own blog about the Berlin Wall. The Wall fell 25 years ago, and to commemorate this huge event, Metaversum rebuilt sections of the Wall and the Iron Curtain in Twinity, which could be accessed by special portals. I thought that was a temporary thing, but some of the entries to Cold War Berlin are still there (most notably one at the Brandenburger Tor, near the main landing point), so I am reprinting my earlier blog item here, in full.



Once at the expo, find the Wall Tour billboard and click the 'teleport to next location' buttons to get a tour of the main locations of the Berlin Wall. Do yourself a favor, go take a look at what a totalitarian system once did to the city and people of Berlin.

Read more »

Twinity: Skateboard fun

Twinity has become a lot more fun! I mentioned the new skateboard earlier, but it's cool enough to warrant another blog post.

In Twinity, you can't really teleport to just any sidewalk or street in a city: there has to be a destination, a defined landing point such as an apartment, shop or museum to go to. Once you've teleported there, you can go outside and start exploring the neighbourhood, which still can take a lot of time if you have to do it walking or even running. But now that we've got our skateboards, exploring these places has become a lot easier! Even areas somewhat removed from landing points are much more accesible: using the agility and speed of the skateboard (press that shift button!) you get from here to there in no time. Plus, there's the fun and opportunity of discovering new and unexpected things to see. I thought I was a bit done with exploring in Twinity, but the skateboard and the recent additions to the cities have revived that part of the virtual mirror world.

And then there's the competetive side!

Read more »

Skateboarding through Twinity London

Exploring is recognized as an important aspect of virtual worlds; it's one of the four key motivations of virtual world users (Castronova, page 72, citing Richard Bartle). As it happens, one of the cool things to do Twinity is exactly that: exploring the cities of Berlin, London and Singapore. In the past I have spent quite some time walking - and running - through these cities, looking for famous streets and buildings, shops and such. This obviously takes some time, as walking isn't exactly a fast mode of transport.

Metaversum has recognized this issue, and they came up with an elegant solution: a skateboard! Uniquely suited to move fast through any city, a skateboard is a great way to explore. Tonight I bought one, and did a quick trip through London:



London isn't completely finished yet; thinking about those poor medieval explorers who were afraid to sail to the edge of the world, I bravely went over Twinity's edge to see what would happen. It wasn't scary at all, I just got to skate below London :) By the way: I found out that pressing the control button in Twinity doesn't only make you run faster, it also speeds up your skateboard!

No editing was done, this is one complete recording. It was created with the Wegame utility on a slightly dated laptop with a less than stellar graphics card! The video recording facility in the Twinity client itself (introduced somewhere in 2008) seems to be gone at the moment - at least it's not available to me.

Sered Woollahra blogs at Sered's lives and lives in Second Life, Twinity, Eve Online and OpenSim.

Twinity welcomes Therians, expanded Berlin and more

There's lots of news happening in Twinity. Time for a short update on an expansion of online Berlin, the arrival of the Therians (the former inhabitants of There), a visit to the Pergamon Museum and a new release!



Welcome to Twinity, Therians
Last week, veteran virtual world There.com closed it's doors, meaning an experienced population of virtual world users was looking for a new place to hang out. Many of them are currently giving Twinity a try: the landing places in Berlin and London remind me of the starter islands of Second Life a few years ago, with lots of new users stumbling around! Metaversum has extended a warm welcome to these new users, by creating a special welcome package for Therians. Metaversums' Jeremy also stepped in, by writing an honest, open blog entry discussing some of the cited reasons for There's demise and how Metaversum deals with those issues. He also engages Twinizens (old and new alike) by soliciting specific user feedback, but so far he hasn't gotten much, which is a bit of a shame. If you have anything to say to Jeremy, please go post your thoughts.

Time will tell whether the Therians can grow accustomed to Twinity, but let's hope they do. We welcome them all!

Read more »

Twinity shirt, Koinup style

A few days ago Twinity tweeted: have you already designed a shirt for your avatar? The tweet pointed to these instructions: http://www.twinity.com/en/userclothes_tutorial. The instructions are simple enough, and it took me a few minutes to create this Koinup themed shirt:



Designing fashion and creating outfits for avatars is a big part of social virtual worlds such as Second Life. It's good to see it emerge in Twinity as well.

Sered Woollahra blogs at Sered's lives and lives in Second Life, Twinity, Eve Online and OpenSim.

Twinity surfaces in Google Earth

A long time ago, when Twinity barely existed, I discovered Panoramio as a means to share real world photographs of geographical locations. I even blogged about it at the time, saying, amongst other things:

It would be cool by the way if Panoramio would have a section for virtual world photographs, but I don't think that would fit in the site concept at this moment :) And, to be honest, as much as a beautiful Windlight sunset over the SL seas appeals to my senses.. it's no match for the real thing.

Today I was taking a look in Twinity's Alte Museum in Berlin, when I discovered an artist called Marco Manray, SL Photographer and Internet Landscape owner, who took this thought a step further. He actually submitted snapshots of Twinity Berlin for Panoramio. And they got accepted for Google Earth, too!

Read more »

Twinity: Dardo Photography Gallery opens

As far as I'm concerned, Twinity's main attraction has always been the ability to visit real world places in a virtual world. No need to hop on a plane, just load the client and teleport to London, Berlin or Singapore! And yet, to foster and sustain an in world community, this is not enough. After you have seen the famous buildings a few times, you may not return often - unless there is something else that draws you back in. It seems Metaversum is aware of this, and so they organise a lot of events in world to keep the community engaged. Fashion contests, guided tours through London and Berlin, quizzes, opening parties for new venues, language courses, discusions, art and movie events: Twinity has it!

Read more »

Twinity releases new version

Earlier this week, Metaversum released a new version of it's expanding mirror world Twinity. Together with the recent additions to London, this release marks an important phase in the growth of Twinity, as the focus seems to shift from purely technical releases, to facilitating the Twinity residents ('Twinizens') and the community. This is a good thing, as the Twinity community seems to be growing rather nicely, much like Twinity itself.

Read more »

Virtual World Twinity Celebrates Even More Virtual London

(Westminster Abbey photo courtesy Kionup contributor SeredWollahra)

Rocking the Metaverse partner and mirror virtual world Twinity is celebrating the growth of Virtual London this week by showcasing creative expression from art exhibits to live music gigs.   New sites include the Big Ben, the London Eye and many other historical builds, extending what was the city central to the east and south.

Read more »

Metaverse People: Mirko Caspar, Twinity co-founder

Today Koinup blog meet Mirko Caspar, co-founder and one of Metaversum’s Managing Directors. As CMO, Mirko is in charge of marketing, sales and strategic partnerships. Before co-founding Metaversum, Mirko worked as Senior Director of Business Development for Universal Music and as Managing Director of Universal’s direct marketing subsidiary. We meet Mirko and talk about the state of art of Twinity and the launch of Virtual London.

Twinity, as you probably know, is a 3D online virtual world created that offers accurate virtual versions of real-world cities. After Berlin, Singapore, they're now launching Virtual London. We invite our readers to explore real city with their avatar and have a look at the Twinity world!

Read more »

Say hello to Virtual London

Twinity invites you on a virtual trip to Virtual London! They open the city in the hip neighbourhood of Soho: here you can meet nice people from all around the globe, visit beautiful sights and famous places - it's only one record speed teleport away! (Before starting the trip, don't forget to add a touch of realism to your avatar. Because you have to know that Twinity is going to replicate the reality, not escape from it)

Read more »

Sending Postcards from Virtual Worlds to the web with Koinup

The Postcards are one of the most solid and popular features on Koinup. The Koinup Postcard Functionality is supported in many virtual worlds. You can send postcards from Second Life, Twinity and There.com and share your pics from these worlds to Koinup, with just a click, without saving to your HD.

Sending postcards is the easier way to share impressions from the virtual world to the web. In order to send postcards to Koinup, you have to login on the website, go to your account, set up a Koinup Upload Email Address (and then make sure to update, by clicking on "save changes")

Resources:

1. How to send postcards from Second Life to Koinup

2. How to send Postcards from There.com to Koinup

3. Announcement of The Postcards on Twinity Blog