Teen Metaverse Blog

I know we’re all waiting for the summer to wash in and what better way to do it than in the Second Life virtual reality? And these new bikinis surely help :P. No longer do we have regular plain but she’s added polka-dots and stripes which really gives it a more realistic feel, not to mention its designs are yummy! In the picture I’m wearing Brown polka-dots. They’re really cute and great to pair with some flip-flops to head off to the pool or beach with.They’re 55L each, 125L for all the designs of A single color 400L for all colors of a certain design and 990 for all bikinis. Great price for a sexy outfit don’t you think? Comes in various colors so I’m sure you can find one you like because I sure did ^__^. Bikinis are located a Nouvelle in Beau Monde and Carthago.

Click HERE for a TP

Nouvelle has just released a new hairstyle called ‘Melanie’. It’s an adorable high pigtail style that can be bought in Beau Monde (here). It comes in almost any natural (and a few unnatural) colours you can imagine, and you can buy a pack of three for $75, a pack of 15 for $325, or all the colours that Nouvelle has to offer for $1000.

Nouveau (by Wicked Loudon) on the island Beau Monde has released some brand new briefs, and although a very large portion of avatars think that underwear is useless, I don’t like the idea that my avatar is wearing “system undies” down there. All I can say about these is that I-LOVE-THESE-BRIEFS. Sometime, I just take off everything and walk around with only them on and hear people in the background saying (typing) “Put some clothes on”, but just the design of these is incredible, I don’t know why, but these just look so good! Maybe its the baked lighting, the seamlessness, realisticness, or the sexiness, but you just want to wear them. I also recommend (I wear mostly the Oasis jeans made by Wicked) wearing these briefs and his other underwear with his jeans, as the jeans are low and thus, the underwear shows through, this gives you the ultimate stylization and control over your avatar’s “fashion sense” and appearance, highly recommended, and if you don’t want to buy a pair, just head over and look at the very nice display made of sculpted prims.

______________________________________

TSLB Rates “Nouveau Briefs”: 4.75 Stars

______________________________________

Sharifa Morenz, the owner of Brooklyn Salon has been rapidly producing hairs and putting them up for sale in her store in Beau Monde (Click here to teleport). Her latests hairs (Holly, Holly II, and Jessica) are my favourite by far! These cute pigtails bring out the cute little girl in you, yet are sexy at the same time.

For updates on Brooklyn, and the new hairs being released constantly, join the update group “Brooklyn”!

Keep up the great work, Sharifa

____________________________________

TSLB Rates “Brooklyn Hair Salon” : 4.50 Stars

____________________________________

You’re walking through Destiny, and you come by a very stand out-ish modern building. That is Sentona Corporation, owned by Chilko Tardis. On the first floor, Steven Fermi, a long-standing SL architect, has his furniture set for sale under the brand name “Fixation Furniture”. I looked at the the furniture that was up for sale, and I must say, the design is very…fresh. Tables, couches, and stools; everything at the store is at a VERY reasonable and cheap price, and although they are high prim, and the wood texture used in the furniture is very repetitive, this extremely well designed furniture (which includes shadows) is a must for any modern house or apartment, or even for someone looking to give their place a little flair. The designs are mind-blowingly good and refrshing, I can’t even think of words to describe them, go have a look for yourself HERE!

_______________________________________

TSLB Rates “Fixation Furniture”: 4.50 Stars

_______________________________________

For this review, I decided to write it about a place where I can honestly say, I idolize the owner, because of his amazing, and creative architectural design. I’m talking about Enchantames Productions, owned, built and kept after by Xadllas Bing

Enchantames Productions is located in the northwest area of Destiny; of course the place is very noticeable, it is a very large, colorful and in some parts, bright (but that’s if you use WindLight), Xadllas really puts a lot of detail into his architecture, and bases his builds on his favorite theme parks.

I decided to have a look around. Where do you start but at the entrance. The main section of the entrance has a theme-park feel, as it faces the main building. You feel like you should be lining up to buy tickets to get in. At the sides of the entrance pathway are two sections, a space-age style area to it’s left, which is filled with lots of metallic objects and a lot of rotation scripts in most of them, which gave it a kind of “coolness”; then, an area that looks like a cinema to the right, which has a nice little pond and the actual cinema looking area, I don’t know what it is, but curiosity always kills the cat, so ask questions later I say.

I decided to enter the main building, nice deep purples and blues make the building more attractive, a lot of details inside this building, including the water feature on the ground floor, and balloons on the ceilings, heading to the top floor you will find a sitting area and two picture boards, the first picture board has pictures of real-life images of places Enchantames Productions are based on, the second one shows real life images of many good friends of Xadllas Bing, and a picture of himself.

Next, as I went out to the right of the main building, I entered “Tropical Serenade” (I think that’s the name of the area) which has a tribal theme to it; I’m not sure what theme park this is based on, but Xadllas’ design is very good, I like the lovely water fountain, which gives it a much more harmonious feeling. Moving on with have a garden area, with lots of canapés and a rather romantic felling to it, it would be the perfect place to have a wedding. Next to the Romance Garden, there is an area with some nicely designed buildings; I believe Xadllas said it was based off of a Los Angeles street.

To the left of the main building you enter the Hollywood style area, which has it’s own fountain and stage, you’d think Xadllas would host events on the stage, but he doesn’t, it’s still nice to have a look at, the yellows of the stage and other wonderful features blend in with each other well. Finally, the last bit of this area I looked at was the Phantom Manor, based off of the original in one of the Disney theme parks.

So, to conclude this review, I’d like to say that Enchantames Productions is a beautiful and an amazing example of how far people can go with their designs in their buildings if they have enough prims. Maybe, perhaps, if more people visited this wonderful place, then maybe TSL would have some much better designs in their builds; and with Xadllas updating his land all the time, it’s a perfect way of getting inspiration. I truly idolize Xadllas Bing and I wish I had his talent, so visit Enchantames Productions soon, before it moves to another sim!

Anna Normandy (Nouvelle), has released yet another great male product, the “Striped Track Jacket”. It comes in the usual selection of great colors. Normally, when Anna releases a new product, it automatically becomes my favorite piece of clothing, this was no exception.   One of my favorite things about this is that it is one of the more realistic shirts that Anna has made; seams…all I can say is “wow”, this jacket is the closest thing to seamless I have seen. Great to wear with or without an undershirt and it also looks VERY good on women too, yes, on women. I put on my female shape to do a photo shoot, and the jacket stayed on; To my surprise, it actually looked very good! Overall this is one of the best fabrics Anna has released, and to my, and hopefully a lot of other male avatars’ excitement, Anna will continue releasing great products to keep up with the giant industry of female fashion, and the help the dwindling one, of male fashion.

________________________________________________

TSLB Rates “Striped Track Jacket”: 4.5 Stars

________________________________________________

Hello, and welcome to my first review for TSLB. Today I will be looking at a new rental housing area in the sim of Carthago, “Carthago Hotel”.
Carthago Hotel is in the south end of Carthago, very noticeable as the hotel stands out no matter where you are. The owner, Deany Fall, opened the hotel without an event, so no one, besides his friends and people in Carthago, knew about the opening, one criticism is that the hotel claims to be “Luxury Five Star”, The hotel is already hitting the Popular List.
Let’s start at the beginning, and I mean the beginning. The entrance to the hotel has a way of drawing you into the hotel, be it being whatever is inside the lobby or how the wood fencing directs you into the hotel, not much happens in the front of the hotel but that’s because it’s not the main part.
As you step into the lobby, Deany Fall, the Hotel Manager, may greet you if he is online at that time. When he greeted me, I told his about my review for TSBL and he was delighted to show me around his hotel, we started in the lobby where, in my opinion, looked pretty bare. There were some receptionists, (that’s right, receptionists, he has two reception desks) and an elevator leading to the hotel rooms. When I asked why, he said that he would be adding a café to he’s hotel (read interview near the end to see), which I though was a wonderful idea.
We then went into one of the empty hotel rooms, this gave me a chance to compare Carthago Hotel with it’s next-door business, “Emperor Apartments”, but looking at the rental details, there way nothing much to compare, both businesses had the minimum rental week as one and maximum as four, Emperor Apartments had 50 more primitives allowed than Carthago Hotel; yet Carthago Hotel is much cheaper, L$100 cheaper to be in fact, but looking at the space in Carthago Hotel’s rooms, surely you could have more prims for the room, but of course, that would mean an increase in price, Deany Fall did say that if hotel guests wanted to have more prims in there room, then he could talk over a price to increase the prim level.
Then, Deany showed me something that only the VIP Guests get to rent, the Penthouse, a true honor I say, he wasn’t hiding any secrets, which is good for a hotel manager. As we entered, I found myself thinking “Whoa! Lots of space!” the Pent House was the same size as a normal floor in the hotel, with two private balconies, secret way to the pent house making it very private, but of course, the price to rent it was a lot, but that meant that there was a lot more prims than the normal floors, and with a room that size, you want to fill every corner.
At the end of my tour, I asked for a mini-interview with Deany, he delightedly said yes and we sat down for a chat:

Salmir Aeon: What made you think of the idea for the hotel?

Deany Fall: Well, I thought a Hotel would be pretty fun to run and people don’t always want to buy land, so I thought I would give it a go.

Salmir Aeon: how well did it start in the beginning days of your hotel?

Deany Fall: It went very well in the start, I had a few guests coming along and quite a lot of traffic as I was on the popular list.

Salmir Aeon: what do you think about the competition between your hotel and Emperor Apartment?

Deany Fall: I don’t really see there is a competition really. People are allowed to have choice in the world, so if people want to live in another place, then they should.

Salmir Aeon: finally, what plans do you have for future development?

Deany Fall: Well, we are planning on adding more fun stuff in the Hotel and even some Role play activates to make it more enjoyable. I’m currently working on a Cafe, which should be fun! Also, we had a Party bunny over the past few days that kept chasing my guests around the hotel, haha!

Salmir Aeon: haha, ok, thank you for your time

Deany Fall: Thanks
So, to my conclusion, the design of the hotel is modern yet eye-catching, the Hotel Manager is a friendly guy, Carthago Hotel could have competition in the future with Emperor Apartments, and future café and Role-Play nights are coming soon.

As for “Luxury Five Star”, maybe in the future, Deany has got what it takes to make it “luxury”, but at the moment, he has along way to go.

Many people have them, use them, and love them, in-world music players, where you can add your music and play them anywhere in SL. The last big hit music player was Switch Spectres‘ MyPod. Since Switch has retired from Second Life, the only new music player has been the GPod. Now comes another music player, the XiVa, created by FoXxfire12 Thatcher. I received a copy of it for review, and I must say, I was very impressed not only with the quality of it, but also with the immense complexity of the scripting. First off, and most importantly, there is no skipping of the songs. Then, the entire system is run by notecards, you just put in the UUID of your song into a notecard, title the notecard with the name of the song, and you are ready to go! No cluttered object inventory. Then, you have loadable dances, to show everyone you’re jammin’, and dance balls, to make you avatar look very cool and flashy. You have volume control, customizable colors, private chatting with other XiVa users, HUD Hiding, and, the most exciting feature of all, sharing. You can share your music with other XiVa users, at the click of a button, you simply click the tools icon, share, choose a song, choose an avatar, and the song gets sent to them. All updates are firmware installations, so you don’t get a new object, updates are just installed, and your settings are kept. One more of my favorite features, is the Music Server, you can click on the money icon in the HUD Object, you then receive a list of available songs that you can buy, then, if you choose to buy one, it is sent directly to you object, ready to play. This device is incredibly complicated, and not even all of the functions were listed here because there are just so many (like the album sideshow)!and I would have never expected to ever see something this complicated made on the Teen Grid, but once again, I was wrong. Now, on to the negative (notice that it is in singular form), the price, as always, has constantly been a negative with FoXxfire12, XiVa is priced very steeply at L$1000. For the complexity of this system, the price is decent, but once again, for the average Teen Grid resident, it is very expensive, but, for those of you out there that are looking for a good music player, this is a very good reason to start saving!

XiVa can be purchased HERE on March 5th

________________________________________________________________

TSLB Rates “XiVa Music Player”: 5.00 Stars

________________________________________________________________

It has finally happened, two major island businesses have opened up, and the competition will be fierce. Beau Monde, featuring the grids top designers of fashion, built for beauty, fashion, lounging, this sexy beach themed island is the ultimate paradise where there have also been two very big changes in the two biggest fashion stores, Anna’s Designs, has become Nouvelle, and Cursed designs has split into three sections, Nouveau for men, Miranda for women, and Surfs Up Salon for hairs, there are also the stores Brooklyn, Atticus Tech, Avani, and Eye Candy. A great hangout with a pool, a beautiful beach for all those couples, and a generally sexy, calm, and glamorous atmosphere.

Photos provided by Anna Normandy

Natural, gorgeous, serene, Eden. A sim that is worth its name, built by the top builders on the grid, and also featuring some of the top designers/scripters. Eye Candy, Luckamations, Harbinger Productions, Avani, Heather Designs, Kinzart Kreetures, Malifico’s Marvels, Skyline, The Shiz, Orca Designs, Ryan Dayton, deRien, Atticus Tech, and Fleur-de-Lis Couture. Eden is a sim of mixed beauty, the elegant sub-urban shopping center, combined with the gorgeous meadow and river make for a very relaxing experience. Once you venture out of the shopping area, you immediately notice Sylver Bu, the natural landscape, the mountains that you can go into and discover wild things. Eden, a fit name for this paradise.

Photos provided by Lucky Figtree

Asuka and Wicked, THE top fashion moguls on the grid, they basically have a monopoly over the market, and their profit margins are huge for the Teen Grid. While walking around the grid, I fell upon a store that was on the popular list. Desire. Inside, the store isn’t very visually appealing, it is very chaotic and industrial, however the owners, Sisley Laville and Fenny Ferraris, have a massive collection of products, ranging from Gothic, to preppy. They have jeans, hair, shoes, swimsuits, accessories, present boxes, handbags, eyes, tattoos, skins, bubble blowers, angel wings, butterfly wings, glasses, lips, did we say glasses? You get the idea, there is a massive variety of product, and admittedly not absolute top quality like the Dernier Cri designers. However, this store got on the popular list, which means people know about it, and for the time being, volume outweighs quality, and with time, quality is bound to improve. The store itself (design wise) would not appeal too much to a seasoned resident, overlapping edges, and a rooftop garden that reminds you of a sandbox build. What will lead to the grand amount of business though, is what made asuka’s a popular place, this is not only a store, but also a hangout, people like it here; They come to hang out, and they see something they like, they buy it, they teleport friends, they do the same, and because of the “hangout factor” these “viral sales” happen a lot faster. This duo may well be the next top fashion team one day. (as long as aesthetics becomes a higher priority than is now.)

Visit Desire HERE

_________________________________________________________

TSLB RATES “DESIRE Fashion House”: 3.75   STARS
_________________________________________________________

Well.Seeing how secondlife.com has been dishing out those god forsaken error 503’s for the last week and a half, I figure this is a good time to do the first “Grid Weekly” column.So, just to recap, this weekly column will cover the week’s economic news, social news, and other miscellaneous news stories or opinions/rants.

In other news, Global Kids held a special event where members of the press where allowed onto the GK Islands, to learn about the D.I.D.I Initiative and meet the D.I.D.I pioneers. For those who don’t know, D.I.D.I is a partnership between GK and Youth Venture. The Initiative provides funding and resources to teens who want to create a social venture within TSL, and the real world.

…….for L$250 that is. [Syntrax Corporations]’s ([SC]) New “Roof Walker” HUD gadget, is, in my opinion, very original. Simply click the little human that is upside down on the HUD Interface, and watch your avatar turn upside down, and glide up the ceiling. When I met up with FoX to see a demo of the roof walker, I was going through my IM’s during the demo, suddenly, he says “look”, but I don’t see him anywhere, I go into mouse look, and see him walking upside down on the ceiling. I couldn’t help but let out a chuckle, and so I decided to buy it and give it a spin for myself. As I said before, this is a very original and fun toy, and I recommend it to anyone. Although the price seems ridiculously high for some mildly complex but not difficult scripting, this is still a very nice product, and is a must-have for anyone. Just one word of advice though: don’t use it if you don’t have a ceiling on top of you.

Revision: FoXxfire Thatcher requested we mention Clash Drakes, because that is who gave him the original idea.

You thought WindLight was revolutionary and incredible? You ‘aint seen nothin’ yet! All of those beautiful WindLight clouds gliding gracefully and untouched in the sky are going to dissapear. No, WindLight isn’t going away, those clouds are just placeholders. Thats right, decoys. Linden Lab’s final installation in the new WindLight program will be the “Nimble” cloud rendering system, those boring static clouds you always see at about 200 meters are going away, and full 3-D moving clouds will replace them , and the WindLight clouds, you will be able to control those clouds in pretty much the same way that you control the WindLight sky and water. Second Life, is about to get a whole lot more life like! Everything I have just said can be pretty much summed up in this video:

Hey everyone
With all the awesome new items for sale in Dernier Cri, I felt like I should give you all some previews!

• Wicked Loudon of Cursed Designs released three new male hairs a few days ago! You can buy three differently textured hairs for the really reasonable price of 100l at Cursed Designs in Dernier Cri. I don’t know much about guy hairs, but from what I can tell - they’re really well made (as usual). All you guys should go and check them out!

• Anna Normandy of Anna’s Designs has recently put out a new cocktail dress for girls. It’s really well made, and it comes in six different colors. Each color is L$80 - and it includes a top, pants and skirt. She’s also selling just the top of the dress in all the same colors for only L$45.

• Heather Quasimodo of Heather’s Designs has been on a rampage, releasing tons and tons of new stuff, both clothing and a new line of furniture. Her newest clothing item is a really nicely made tank top and velvet jacket set, which comes in black and burgundy - each one priced at L$60. As for her furniture, it’s nothing less of amazing. Very clean looking, not a single prim out of place. The poses are also quite nice, if I don’t say so myself =P. You can buy her clothing and furniture in Dernier Cri, and she also has a shop on Alcove.

• I’ve also released a new item at my shop on Dernier, Luckamations. It’s my fourth poseball for sale, and I intend to create quite a few more. You can buy it with different mods for either L$75 or L$70.

I hope this inspires you ALL to go out and see these items for yourself!

Hmmmmm, looks like designer Anna Normandy listened to us asking her to make more mens products. Finally, she release her new “Michael” collection of hair. The second I got word of the release, i immediately went over to get a copy for myself. I bought the “Cinnamin” Pack that has reddish hair. To tell you truth, I liked the hair…a lot. Even though Anna does not have the styles and variety that Wicked Loudon does, this is a great start. I liked the hair SO much in fact, that I have replaced it. The hair is simple, no flairs, but this simplicity is very attractive. The only thing that I found a wee bit annoying was that if you looked at the head from the back, it seems as if you are wearing a wig, but that was quickly fixed with a bit of adjusting individual hair pieces. Overall though, I would definitely recommend this hair for anyone looking for something new and different than Wicked’s hair. So go over to Dernier Cri, try out the Demo, buy the hair, and wait for more!

Atticus Tech has put into gear a Grid banking project. In order to motivate people to bank, Atticus has added a credit feature that will add “credits” to your account so that you can cash it in as L$ or buy Atticus products. The more you spend on Atticus, the more credits you get to spend again on Atticus. This is a great idea though, to get interest and also a very good business generator. However trusting someone that you dont know with your money, is not good. There is also the incident on the Main Grid where a bank owner bailed out with L$60,000. I just don’t see the need for a bank, it’s not like it weighs you down. Syn Swindlehurst and Eric Mauvaise have a very clean record though, and are very nice people, and if I had no choice but to put all my money into Atticus Credit Bank, I wouldn’t be afraid. Also a little warning for Eric, Syn or anyone who want to start a bank: A few stray electrons can cause a lot of damage, and if for some technical or other reason, peoples money disapears, whether or not you were responsible, you will be the scapegoat of everyone that banked with you.

While teleporting around the grid in hopes of discovering something new, I came upon Okarthel. I must say, you would never there is incredible beauty. You hear birds chirping from the trees, and water flowing. You even see the light piercing the trees (you actually see physical light). Unlike other silently beautiful sims, Okarthel is fully immersing, you see, and you believe me if I said it the the most elegant, beautiful, well designed, sim I’ve ever been to. You arrive at the telehub, and hear. One thing to always keep in mind at Okarthel, is that there is always more than you see. The Castle on the hilltop, for example, you should check it out, maybe there’s dungeons. The houses in the village, who said they’re empty? And you might want to take a closer look at the little stream at the base of the mountain. I suggest that you navigate the island with-ought flying, in order to add to the realism. Visit Okarthel from HERE.

If you want, you can also see the rest of the beautiful snapshots of Okarthel HERE.

…………………………………………………………………………………

I’ve always thought of AD (Anna’s Designs) as a female only store, well, i was wrong. I was going through the classifieds on the forums when I saw Anna Normandy’s announcement of a Christmas collection of PJ’s. I at least love dressing seasonally so I went right over and bought the whole collection (pretty pricey at L$400, but individual pants are L$90). The design and idea of the pants was very nice, so I put on the red candy cane pair, at first glance i thought i had wasted my money (they looked like spandex), but after you go into the appearance menu and make them baggy, well, there is a big difference. They look so good, I’m actually going to wear them regularly. The only awkward thing is an overly large button, I dont know, some people might like it, but I’m not a big fan, the pants are so festive and well designed overall, that I am willing to overlook it.

Further back in the store i also got an AD Striped Polo. I must say, the resolution on that polo was extreme, it looked life-like, and there were almost no visible seams. The only down-part was that the v-neck went way too low, any lower, and you would probably be able to see my pecs, but as with the PJ’s it is so well designed overall, that I will wear it anyways. Kudos to Anna!

-Ben Carter