Celebrating Second Life's power couple

Quick! Tell me the first three words that come to mind when you think of Torley. Really, please tell me.

Over the next few days, I hope you will accept my invitation to celebrate two people who make a difference in most everyone's Second Life®, for who among us has not learned in some small or large way from Torley Linden and Ravenelle Zugzwang? He is synonymous with mentorship, having taken that time-honored activity to a new and effervescent zenith, and she is often the first friend a Second Lifer has on Flickr. They are both builders, scripters, photographers, videographers, writers, and... a couple: Second Life's best known and best loved couple. Even if they disappeared from virtual worlds today, their legacy of creative empowerment - and smiles - would endure.

I've just completed an interview with this duo, and there is so much to share with you that I'm going to give it to you in bite-sized fun pieces. Because they are so well known, we can begin most anywhere, so I thought we might look at how they are both bursting with creativity in unexpected and delightful ways.

Making the most of Google Lively is what Ravenelle Zugzwang did within hours of creating her account there. A little fire, a lava lamp, and a plant, together with several of Lively's believable and cute animations and her warm, smiling voice resulted in this, "Journey to a New World, Pt 1."



Meanwhile, I will never, ever forget this video. I watched it the other night sitting on a comfy, shocking pink bench on their new island, Here. While Torley has created more videos than there are days in the year, and nearly all of them are tutorials to help you "amplify your awesome" within Second Life, he does branch out eclectically to share just about anything he is passionate about, and that is a lot.

If you have already seen it, then watch it again! I guarantee you will smile from ear to ear.



Now then, what three words come to mind immediately when you think of Torley? And yes, you can duplicate other's suggestions.

White Noise travels from Second Life to Google's Lively and gets gray

Here's something few (any?) Second Life® content creators can do over at Lively.

You may recall when Austrian MosMax Hax's (aka Max Moswitzer) White Noise - a bleached and clustered and dynamic freebie structure - became a finalist at a Second Life art and architecture contest last October.



White Noise, as photographed by MosMax Hax

Mosmax opened an account on Google's Lively (note that his name there is nonamesaviable), and created this with what was available to him there. He calls it GrayNoise.



A first?

Your name in virtual worlds is your brand - Protect it on Google's Lively

Whether you intend to spend time on Google's new virtual world Lively or not, you'd best get over there and ensure that - at the very least - your virtual world name is protected. Grab an account at Lively in your Second Life® name and ensure that it is yours.

Unfortunately, it is too late for some people. Jurin Juran alerted me to this problem last night, after she discovered that someone had already taken jurin.juran. What kind of person would do such a thing? Geez.

My name at Lively is BettinaTizzy.

You don't need to be a nerd to REV up the default Search engine

Given how much time all of us spend using the Search feature, why not make that time as enjoyable and productive as possible? Late last week, DrenBoy Opus from the Elven lands and owner/creator of Opus Labs, gave NPIRLers some hot tips on how to put our personal stamp on Search. While I am sadly challenged on practically every technical front, even I was able to use these easy-to-follow instructions to remarkable advantage. This is brilliant stuff!

By DrenBoy Opus

Second Life's newfangled Windlight First Look release comes to town, along with a non-Windlight Search Release Candidate viewer version... Both have the new web-based search feature. After playing with it, I discovered how to change the default search engine to Google as well as a host of other things:

Here are the steps to change to Google
1. Ensure you have the 'client and server' menu up (press CTRL + ALT + D or press CTRL + ALT + SHIFT + D)
2. Click on Client --> Debug Settings
3. Drop Down to the 'SearchQueryURL'. You will see the default text is

http://secondlife.com/app/search/search_proxy.php?
q=[QUERY]&s=[COLLECTION]&m=[MATURE]
&t=[TEEN]&region=[REGION]&x=[X]
&y=[Y]&z=[Z]

Change that text into (I have prepared other options including LSL search for those who dont want Google ;D)

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=[QUERY]
&s=[COLLECTION]&m=[MATURE]&t=[TEEN]
&region=[REGION]&x=[X]&y=[Y]&z=[Z]

4. Close that window, give the search a whirl and (if you dont crash due to a typo / mis-paste), you will be basking in your new-newfangled search!

Google Search
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=[QUERY]
&s=[COLLECTION]&m=[MATURE]&t=[TEEN]
&region=[REGION]&x=[X]&y=[Y]&z=[Z]

SLBrowser (created by Felix Wakmann and Diva Canto)
http://webi.slbrowser.com:8080/webadapter/results.jsp?
query=[QUERY]&s=[COLLECTION][MATURE]
[TEEN][REGION][X][Y][Z]

NPIRL Blog Search (Yes, LOL!)
http://npirl.blogspot.com/search?q=[QUERY]
&s=[COLLECTION]&m=[MATURE]&t=[TEEN]
&region=[REGION][X][Y][Z]

SLURL (A virtual GPS; not useful but fun)
http://slurl.com/secondlife/[REGION]/[X]/[Y]/[Z]/[QUERY]
[COLLECTION][MATURE][TEEN]

LSL Wiki
http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Special:Search?search=[QUERY]
&s=[COLLECTION]&m=[MATURE]&t=[TEEN]
&region=[REGION][X][Y][Z]

SL Exchange
http://www.slexchange.com/modules.php?
name=Marketplace&SearchKeyword=[QUERY]
&s=[COLLECTION][MATURE][TEEN][REGION][X][Y][Z]

YouTube Search (some movie controls are kinda wonky)
http://youtube.com/results?search_query=[QUERY]
&s=[COLLECTION]&m=[MATURE]&t=[TEEN]
&region=[REGION][X][Y][Z]

Microsoft's Live Search
http://search.live.com/results.aspx?q=[QUERY]
&s=[COLLECTION]&m=[MATURE]&t=[TEEN]
&region=[REGION]&x=[X]&y=[Y]&z=[Z]

Yahoo Search
http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=[QUERY]
&s=[COLLECTION]&m=[MATURE]&t=[TEEN]
&region=[REGION]&x=[X]&y=[Y]&z=[Z]

Wikipedia Search
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=[QUERY]
&s=[COLLECTION]&m=[MATURE]&t=[TEEN]
&region=[REGION]&x=[X]&y=[Y]&z=[Z]

Ask.com Search
http://www.ask.com/web?q=[QUERY]&s=[COLLECTION]
&m=[MATURE]&t=[TEEN]&region=[REGION]
&x=[X]&y=[Y]&z=[Z]

All these locations tested by DrenBoy Opus on 15th Nov 07

November 25th: Just received this update from Felix Wakmann:

Linden Labs included a new search feature in the Windlight release candidate client of Second Life. At first it looked like another closed system, but then DrenBoy Opus discovered that the search page is configurable via an obscure setting. Since Diva Canto and I have been running our SLBrowser search engine for the last 6 months, we've been looking for better ways to hook into SL. So we created Open Search for Second Life to augment the Linden Search with some alternatives. The Open Search page gives you quick access to multiple search pages, including SLBrowser, Linden Labs, OnRez, SLExchange, and Google. The line-up is subject to change, but this is our current offering. You get all the functionality of Linden Labs new search, plus these other great search engines. We believe that search should be open, and that the best way to improve things is for competition... where the users choose the best solution, rather than being forced to go with once choice. If you have the new Release Candidate (see the link above) you can easily configure it for Open Search. Thanks to DrenBoy Opus for letting us know about this possibility. -- Felix Wakmann and Diva Canto