Avatars United - A "Facebook" site for Second Life?

Greetings!

In late January Linden Labs announced their acquisition of Avatars United (http://www.avatarsunited.com), a Facebook-esque social media site designed specifically for the avatar. Avatars United had been designed for avatars of virtually any genre (Second Life, World of Warcraft, etc.) to come together and share exploits, pictures, and more.

I joined Avatars United earlier in 2009 as my avatar (Regulus Darkstone), but there had been virtually no activity until the announcement from Linden Labs... now, with the force of Second Life behind it, Avatars United is exploding. Indeed, at the time of this writing (February 4, 2010), their main "Recent Activity" page says "Limited Activity Feed" due to "increased load on their site". I would concur: Regulus has been receiving a plethora of friendship requests over the last week, and he has (somewhat enviously) noticed other avatar profiles with friends numbering in the hundreds... *smiles*

Anyway, I encourage you to explore Avatars United... and if you create a profile, be sure to request the friendship of Regulus Darkstone! :)

Peace, -- Michael Russell (Mt. Hood Community College, Gresham, Oregon)

Thank you Gearsawe Stonecutter!

I want to take a moment this afternoon to send a shout out of thanks to Gearsawe Stonecutter, the developer of a tool in Second Life called U-Poser that we use to create poses for our avatars. I love it because it's a very simple visual tool that works directly in Second Life. I also love that its creator bothered to stop and take the time to help me this afternoon, making me feel both connected to this technology, and incredibly well supported in my tool selection.

I ran into a frustrating road block by my own error- when you create a pose in U-Poser, you export the data to chat and then copy and paste the data back into a notecard in the HUD to save it for later retrieval. There are two types of data that prints in your chat window, and I by Murphy's law and trying to do too much with too little time grabbed the wrong format. It's the one with plusses, not decimals, if you're ever in the same situation.


Gearsawe patiently came by OR CC Isle and helped me walk through what could be wrong. twenty minutes later, I feel a bit foolish when he points out to me my error, but also grateful beyond imagination that he reinforced my feeling of belonging to a true community by his assistance.


If you are in the market for a pose creation tool, I can't say enough good about U-Poser or it's creator.