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Introducing: Tateru Nino

February 13, 2009 by Leave a Comment

about_tat-smlIt’s an understatement to say I’m really pleased to announce a further addition to the writing team at The Metaverse Journal.

Tateru Nino is a significant addition too – she’s one of the first Second Life writers I read and she was incredibly supportive of our initial efforts when we started in 2006. It’s also worth reading our 2007 profile of Tateru to glean more of a picture of her.

Tateru will be providing stories most weeks and she has a totally open brief. If you’ve read her work on Massively or its predecessor Second Life Insider, you’ll know how thorough her research is.

No-one knows Second Life better and I for one am already excited about the stories she’ll be writing over coming weeks.

Welcome Tateru!

Filed Under: Australian News, TMJ Site News, Virtual Worlds Tagged With:

Avatar Dog T-Shirts: Victorian Bushfire fundraiser

February 9, 2009 by 7 Comments

avatardog_fundraiser Although there’s no shortage of fundraisers going on for the ongoing bushfire tragedy in Victoria, we want to do our own little bit to help.

For February and March, 100% of profits from the sales of the t-shirt range will go to the Red Cross Bushfire appeal. We’ve kick-started things with a donation and it’d be great to add more to the total. More than a third of our readers are from Victoria and any gesture that can assist is worth a try.

Check out the t-shirt range here – if anyone’s looking for customised wording we can set that up for orders of three t-shirts or more. We’ll report back on proceeds raised and donated at the end of March.

A very honourable mention to Crikey’s fundraiser as well, featuring the work of our t-shirt’s artist, First Dog on the Moon – there’s three great signed cartoons available for purchase there.

Filed Under: Australian News, TMJ Site News, Virtual Worlds

Announcing: Avatar Dog t-shirts

January 26, 2009 by 2 Comments

avatar_dog2

I’m really thrilled to announce we’ve got some t-shirts for sale. The primary purpose of the t-shirts is to raise money for Kiva, our charity of choice. Kiva provide funds to small businesses in developing countries and to date well over 57 million dollars have been lent, with over 97% of that repaid so that it can be reinvested in other businesses.

Here’s how it works. Buy one of our Avatar Dog or Real Life Avatar t-shirts, and 50% of the proceeds go to Kiva. To clarify actual amounts – each t-shirt generates 20% commission, of which half goes to Kiva. The other half goes to us to assist in meeting our costs (paying writers, hosting, cost of t-shirt design etc). So on a standard t-shirt purchase, a minimum of $2.50 goes to Kiva.

There’s a number of variants on offer including:

– Avatar Dog in colour, no text
– Avatar Dog in black and white, no text
– Avatar Dog in colour: “What’s a metaverse? I call it home”
– Avatar Dog in colour: “Furry for life”
– Avatar Dog in black and white: “It’s an avatar’s life”

We’re selling the t-shirts through Red Bubble, an Australia-based company that ship worldwide (they have offices in the UK and US as well). Their shipping costs are very reasonable: one t-shirt delivered to the USA is $29 US dollars shipped at present (only AU$36 or so delivered within Australia). There’s a choice of up to 22 different colours and four t-shirt styles.

Most importantly, I’d like to give major kudos to the artist we commissioned to create the Avatar Dog. His name is First Dog on the Moon, and he provides a daily piece of brilliance for Crikey – read First Dog’s blog to see more of his excellent work. I’ve been a fan ever since seeing his work appear in Crikey and I was rapt when he accepted the commission.

Comments welcome – we will be uploading further t-shirts (same design with different text) in coming months, and if popular enough we’ll also be commissioning First Dog for a second design. Enjoy!

Filed Under: Australian News, TMJ Site News, Virtual Worlds Tagged With: ,

Metaverse Aid – join the team

December 28, 2008 by 1 Comment

Back in October 2007, this site started generating a positive cash flow. After covering all costs, the decision was made to put excess funds to good use. Kiva was chosen primarily for its brilliant model of helping people help themselves, but there was also the tie-in of Kiva having a Second Life presence.

Since then, more than a dozen entrepreneurs in developing countries have been funded from our advertising revenue, but we’d love to see an even bigger impact from the virtual worlds community. In October this year we set up a Kiva team called Metaverse Aid and we’re now starting a campaign to build the team.

If you’d like to join the Metaverse Aid team on Kiva, sign up as a member, then join our team. When you make your first loan you’ll be able to select Metaverse Aid as the team you’re a part of. That’s it!

If you’re already a Kiva member, just click on the ‘Community’ button and search for Metaverse Aid.

Without some assistance, the people requesting micro-finance on Kiva will not likely have access to the opportunities that virtual worlds offer – here’s a chance to influence that.

Filed Under: General News, Non-Profit, TMJ Site News, Virtual Worlds Tagged With: ,

Competition winners: ‘The Unofficial Second Life Building Guide’

October 12, 2008 by Leave a Comment

Over the past fortnight we’ve run a competition, with five copies of The Unofficial Second Life Building Guide.

Twenty-one people entered, with some excellent suggestions of new builds in Second Life. Using a random number generator, I’m pleased to announce that the five winners are:

Cary
Alberik Rotaru
KerryJ
Kim Flintoff
Rayn Juran

Thanks to Killer Guides for the prize of five copies of the guide. Winners – we’ll be in touch via email very soon with your prize.

We have another competition coming up in the next month, so there’s plenty more opportunities to win!

Filed Under: General News, TMJ Site News, Virtual Worlds Tagged With:

Our new Second Life HQ

October 12, 2008 by 5 Comments

We’re really proud to announce the opening of our new in-world presence in Second Life. It’s been quite a number of months in the making. Our aim with the new presence was to have a multi-purpose facility that could be used for in-world information sharing.

Our old presence had its limitations although we had a number of groups utilise it for events. With the new build, we hope to increase that focus – if you’re from a non-profit group, education or health support group and need a venue for a meeting, research project or other event, contact us. We’re also happy to hire the venue to for-profit entities, though that’s not the focus.

The whole layout is pretty spartan at present – well be adding further aspects as time goes on but keeping it simpler makes it easier to customise things when an event is underway.

A big thanks to Encore Design Group for their work on the build – they were consultative and very understanding of the extended development timeframes. A disclosure here: EDG Designs are intermittent advertisers on The Metaverse Journal.

So it’s over to you – comments, questions and debate welcome. And here’s to more Australian community events.

Check it out in-world

Filed Under: Australian News, TMJ Site News, Virtual Worlds

Reminder: $5000L on offer for forum sign-up competition

August 10, 2008 by 1 Comment

A couple of weeks back we relaunched our forums and there’s been a number of people sign up and start contributing. For any forum’s success there needs to be a critical mass of participants and there’s certainly not that yet.

To help get things kick-started we have a competition running. Any person who signs up on the forums between now and the end of August goes into the draw to win 5000 Linden Dollars. It’s not a huge prize but if you’re looking for a virtual worlds community to be part of anyway, it’s certainly a nice little incentive. If you’re not a Second Life user you can easily cash the Linden Dollars out for US dollars (we’ll explain how).

So jump in and register and join the community.

Filed Under: Australian News, TMJ Site News, Virtual Worlds Tagged With:

Weekly newsletter now available

August 1, 2008 by Leave a Comment

Over the past few months we’ve had a number of people ask if we could supply a regular virtual worlds newsletter – we’ve now created just that. If you subscribe to it, you’ll receive all the stories published that week in a newsletter format.

To subscribe look for the section as shown above – it’s on the right hand side of our front page.

Filed Under: Australian News, TMJ Site News, Virtual Worlds

Relaunching our forums (and a competition)

July 19, 2008 by 1 Comment

When we first launched in late 2006 we also had forums, which were moderately utilised on those first months, particularly by the ABC prior to the launch of ABC Island. We closed the forums down mid-2007 due to lack of activity and some technical problems with the platform we were using.

I’m really pleased to re-launch the forums which can be found here or via the ‘Forum’ link at the top of this site. The focus is widened and the actual design fits better with the overall site.

On the downside, due to a database corruption I wasn’t able to import all the previous posts into the new forum – it’s literally a blank slate so if you’d previously registered, you’ll need to do so again. Sorry!

If you’ve got a point to make, an event to promote or just want to mix with other virtual world residents, please use the forums – that’s what they’re there for.

To celebrate the relaunch, we’re offering 5000 Linden Dollars to a lucky someone who posts on the forums by the end of August 2008. We’ll get a random number generator to give us a number – the person who posted that number post will be the winner. Example: if the random number was 77 – the person who posted the 77th post wins the prize.

So jump in, start a discussion and maybe you’ll be rewarded for your efforts beyond the rewards of forum interaction 😉

Filed Under: Australian News, TMJ Site News, Virtual Worlds Tagged With:

Five jobs on offer at Metaversum (Singapore or Germany)

July 13, 2008 by Leave a Comment

Metaversum, creators of Twinity, have a bunch of jobs up for grabs.

The roles are varied and can be based in either Singapore or Germany – check our jobs board for more info.

If you’re looking to recruit, why not use our free jobs board yourself?

Filed Under: General News, TMJ Site News, Virtual Worlds Tagged With: , ,

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