International Women's Day

It’s International Women's Day. Time to celebrate!!! On this occasion remember all the women in your life and make them feel as extraordinary as they always are. Wish us all love and feelings that we are truly special

Little bit about this historical day.

International Women's Day (IWD) is marked on March 8 every year. It is a major day of global celebration for the economic, political and social achievements of women.

The IWD is also celebrated as the first spring holiday, as in the listed countries the first day of March is considered the first day of the spring season.

The first IWD was observed on 28 February 1909 in the United States following a declaration by the Socialist Party of America. The idea of having an international women's day was first put forward at the turn of the 20th century amid rapid world industrialization and economic expansion that led to protests over working conditions. Women from clothing and textile factories staged one such protest on 8 March 1857 in New York City. The garment workers were protesting against very poor working conditions and low wages. The protesters were attacked and dispersed by police. These women established their first labor union in the same month two years later.

In the West, International Women's Day was commemorated during the 1910s and 1920s, but dwindled. It was revived by the rise of feminism in the 1960s.

contest from sl illustrated

Hi I would like to invite you for a nice contest from sl illustrated if you have a club, SIM or just management one. Please speak with Ariel Lingiuan. This is a great opportunity to have your place advertised and earn some money also.
This are some information about the contest send by Ariel

Stars of SLI Contest
Theme : Zodiacs ( Aquarius, Pisces, Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagitarius, Capricorn )
Finals Date : May 17, 2008

This contest is a way to:
1) Get a chance for your club/establishment to win 25K for top group prize
2) Give the patrons of your club the chance to win 25K for 2 top individual prize
3) Generate traffic for your club through voting for candidates
4) Reinforce the values of SLI : Community, Beauty and Freshness

Prizes:

L$25,000 for Top Male Winner
L$25,000 for Top Female Winner
Modeling Contracts from SLI Modeling Inc for the Top Male and Female Winner
L$25,000 for Top Club with the most number of votes combined for their representatives in Phase 2
L$ 2,500 each for the 10 individuals

If you have questions send your IM to Ariel Lingiuan or Ted1 Kamachi, since IMs's can be capped, we would appreciate if you can send notecards about your questions.

Ariel I expect I assisted you. I wish this clue help everyone also.

Future in Second and First Life!! A tribute to men imagination, From Jules Verne to metaverse

Text and Photography by Anna Avalanche

You can also see this article at back numbers (March Issue) at: Deja vu international

Who know the future? Speculate about the future is something like ride a balloon; we don’t know where to go. Through the history men always imagine the upcoming. Scientist, Science-fiction writers, and common people using imagination made future possible. Exploring metaverse looking for interesting places and people I found out St Michel, the first museum in Second Life to honor the life and creative works of the 19th century French author Jules Gabriel Verne. His imagination and attention to detail combined to help him predict many aspects of life that are relevant even to the early 21st century, such as camera-phones and fuel-cells. Jules Verne, together with Hugo Gernsback and H G Wells, is often referred to as the 'Father of Science Fiction'.
St Michel - the Jules Verne Muse, Jockeys Ridge (134, 228, 23)

Spread over small beautiful islands and comprising self-paced informational experiences, it is hoped that the variations in type and scale of the exhibits will convey some sense of the sheer breadth of Verne's genius. St Michel - the Jules Verne Museum draws its name from a series of boats which Verne himself owned.

Veritas Raymaker a Professor at Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore designed this and other facilities in SL. According to Veritas ideally, the visitor should visit the airship first. He intentionally designed it not to be immediately clear what to do next. Anyway it is very nice to get a ride in a balloon see the sea and the islands from above and feel free! I felt like I was inside Verne’s “Around the World in Eighty Days”. This is a very romantic place at the sunset, but watch out when you reach the cloud. Veritas deliberately designed the airship to be unsafe! You can fall down because there are no safety railings. He wanted to evoke the sense of exploration and adventure that was very important to Verne.

Veritas is interested in education and basically the exhibits are meant to evoke emotions from each of the main literary works for which Verne was famous. Such as, Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864), From the Earth to the Moon (1865), Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea (1870), and Around the World in Eighty Days (1873).

Bikini: AA Blue Pixel Bikini— AA Trade Company, Cleary (120, 70, 113)

— 100

As Veritas Raymaker is looking for how to help people understand more about real life, he also designed a marine environments centre dedicated to manatees and dugongs.

Suit: AA Black Sequince Sensation — AA Trade Company, Cleary (120, 70, 113)

— 100L

This was a great surprise! All my articles are not about places in SL but real people that worked hard to create a better future in second or real life. From Van Gogh to Jules Vernes in real life to some extraordinary people I met in metaverse like Veritas.

Visitors to this Centre are provided with opportunities to learn more about the threats facing these aquatic mammals, and the efforts which are being undertaken to preserve their natural habitat.

Necklace: Dolphin FEMALE –AA Trade Company, Cleary (120, 70, 113)
— 300L
Face Light: FaceFX Designer v1.3 – AA Trade Company, Cleary (120, 70, 113)
— 375L

Hope the future for these beautiful, cute animals are not the extinction. I would love to help keeping these animals alive. Oh!! It was so cute and fun to swim with the mother and his Young baby manatee. Hope this article can help preserve all in dangerous species as well.

The Rhode-Raymaker Marine Enviro, Manatee Reserve (92, 94, 26)

So what about the future? According to Veritas Raymaker SL has a great future as a virtual world, especially because it is founded upon and driven by user-generated content. As we all know, it is the residents in SL who really make SL what it is. However, exploring SL and getting to learn about SL requires a great deal of time and patience. That is SL's biggest strength, yet at the same time it's weakness (because many people do not realize how much time it takes, and therefore leave disillusioned, or with an inaccurate understanding of how SL can help bring cultures closer).
Dress: AA Purple — AA Trade Company, Cleary (120, 70, 113)
— 100L

Maybe our closer future will be live on the moon. Till then you can have fun simulating a low gravity experience and have fun at St Michel museum or learn more about aquatic mammals.

Anna Avalanche clothes are from:
AA Trade Company, Cleary (120, 70, 113)

The first days of Second Life

The following is a book summary that originally appeared on Reuters.com.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - When executives from San Francisco-based Linden Lab built Second Life, they had a sense they were doing something historic. So, to keep tabs on their creation, they contracted their own journalist to chronicle the growth of the Internet’s first virtual world.
Now that chronicler, Wagner James Au, has released a comprehensive history of Second Life’s early days in his book “The Making of Second Life: Notes from the New World” (HarperCollins, $25.95).

Second Life has lost some of its buzz in the past year. Growth has leveled, and media investigations have highlighted possible fraud and child pornography within its borders. Early hopes of Second Life’s potential to market real-world brands largely failed in practice. But with 1.2 million active users, it is still the dominant player in a rapidly expanding virtual worlds industry, with the most content and a highly loyal fan base.

It may surprise readers of Au’s book to find that Linden Lab originally wanted a simulation of the natural world. What actually transpired is quite different.

While many people have a Second Life character — called an “avatar” — that looks like them, others pick talking cartoon animals or blinking robots. The environments are similarly varied, from reproductions of European cities to areas with a fantasy or science-fiction theme.
Repeatedly, Linden Lab set out to offer one product, only to find a combination of financial restraints and input from their customers pushing them into marketing something very different.

ACCIDENTAL FLIGHT

For example, one of Second Life’s most distinctive and memorable experiences is flying. With the click of a button, an avatar will soar gracefully into the stratosphere, exactly as one might imagine Superman does it.

But flight, as Au recalls, was practically an accident. In a virtual world filled with hills and buildings, no one had the time for the more difficult task of programming an avatar’s ability to climb.

Similarly, Linden Lab assumed it would create an in-world experience for avatars to play in. It was only after programmers started using their own product they realized it would be better to allow their users to build their world for them.

Linden’s users quickly began constructing their own buildings, clothing, and nightclubs. Pleased to have their users create content, Linden tried to encourage the practice with a system of ratings. An avatar could register an endorsement of a particularly attractive home with the click of a mouse.

“It’s fair to say the voting boxes began to be abused almost the very moment they were introduced,” Au writes.

Cliques of users banded together to vote positively or negatively en masse, in exchange for favors or to pursue petty vendettas.

The ratings system was eventually abandoned. Like so much else in Second Life, including the in-world currency called the “Linden Dollar,” the ability to buy and sell land, or the popularity of adult-themed virtual goods and services, users had their own ideas about the technology and what best to do with it.

Au dedicates his book to those creators of content. “They’re more important to the world’s success than the company which actually owns it,” he said.

As new virtual worlds come online and try to lure some of Second Life’s users and hype, the story of how Second Life came to be may provide a road map for others.

“Second Life isn’t the only model, but ultimately I think it’s the only reliable one,” Au said. “Otherwise, a company will be forced to produce content to an ever-demanding audience of largely passive consumers. That’s destined to fail.”

(Reporting by Eric Krangel; Editing by Eddie Evans)

from Reuters

If you have a history about the old times of SL and would like to share with us please get in touch with me (Anna Avalanche). I would love to publish it!

Rio de Janeiro no SL from Anna Avalanche

Yes sweet Liane, this is a nice contest in the most beautiful Brazilian city and Déjà vu Magazine is supporting it.

My friend AQUILES Amat one of the contest organizers sent me the contest and the island advertise. Very good pictures!!! Congrats Aquiles. As we like beautiful places and gorgeous people we support your effort.

The Brazil Rio Island, with barely a month of operation, is one of the coolest Brazilian islands. The place is always surrounded by friends, pretty people, interesting avatars and the marvelous Sugarloaf Mountain view. Also the possibility to practice sports like Wind surf, hang-glider, Jet Ski, motorbike and parachute diving attracts people that like to have fun practicing radical sports. The island was carefully planned and constructed to provide you an excellent place and nice parties and contests promoted by BioBrilho Company.
We would like to invite you for the big "Girl Olympus 2008" contest. So, don’t miss your chance to win more than L$15.000 lindens distributed by the winners and also lots of gifts from the best Second Life stores.

Rio de Janeiro no SL from Liane Maertens

A new model contest is stirring the Brazilian fashion world on the SL, the agency Olimpia is promoting the "Girl Olimpia 2008" and a table with photos of 25 girls is in Rio SL, I was there giving a look and decided riding a cable car, a beautiful walk for those who love the Rio de Janeiro RL. It is worth to check the contest with beautiful Brazilian girls on the tour by the island.

For this tour I choose light cloths, as the Rio is hot. In this photo I wear Naima Oro ed Avorio, Vampirelle Storm_schoomz shoes, hair ETD Melrose - Chocolate and jewels JCNY - SOHO, Hardwood Bead Collection.

You can jump from the top cable car in a delta wing. There is a beautiful view of the whole land at midnight and a very good place for a romance. I found nice couples having fun there. So don’t wait more, because the competition of Olimpia ends soon and the girls expect your vote.

Linden Lab bans extortionate “ad farms"

SECOND LIFE, Feb 14 (Reuters) - Linden Lab has banned “ad farms,” the small plots of land with gaudy advertisements that are designed to extort neighboring landowners.


“Whilst advertising in itself is okay, where it crosses the line into harassing behavior or visual spam, where the intent is purely to compel another resident to pay an unreasonable price to restore their view - then this will be covered under Harassment in our Community Standards,” Jack Linden wrote in a blog post.

“It will obviously be difficult for us to define exactly where example A is an abuse issue as compared to example B where it is not,” he added. “‘Ad Farm’ will apply specifically to advertising or content that is intended solely to drive an unreasonable price for the parcel it is on, usually by spoiling the view of others.”

Early reaction from Second Life residents was largely positive, but concerns over what will be considered an “ad farm” linger. “It’s imperfect, but it’s a start,” said Taran Rampersad, who writes about Second Life under the avatar name Nobody Fugazi. “Linden Lab taking this step indicates a willingness to deal with the harder questions to come.”

Jeff Strohman, a Second Life land trader known in-world as Stetson Rail, was so exasperated by ad farmers he said he considered a lawsuit, but opted not to take action due to the costs of suing an avatar physically located in another country. He estimated ad farms lower the value of adjacent land by 20 percent.

Beyond the economic damage ad farms cause, there’s also the aesthetic one, Strohman said. “They only hurt Second Life and make it look like a damn junkyard,” he said.

(Image courtesy of Carl Metropolitan)

By Eric Reuters

From Reuters