Is this oxabeaver the result of genetic experiments?

You can find more about this animal on the Rent-a-Tutor blog.

When I presented Gmail along with Yahoo Mail, Zoho Mail and Microsoft Live Mail, I pointed out that I don’t like Microsoft’s webmail because they have some very distracting ads in the webmail interface. I was very surprised when somebody in the audience told me in the chat window, that Google Gmail also have ads in their webmail interface.

I never thought about that, but he was right. Google is also placing a text ad on the top of the mail overview and to the right of each opened e-mail. I have used Gmail so long, that I hardly recognize these as ads any more.

On the other hand, I recognize all the graphical, picture laden and maybe even animated ads on every page and I find them extremely annoying. Don’t get me wrong, I never click on these annoying ads, I’d rather try to find an ad-blocker to avoid them. On the other hand, I never felt the urge to block any text-only ads in my webmail interface.

But wait, there is more! Google usually places really interesting ads near the e-mail content. I even find an interesting link occasionally in the sidebar if I read an e-mail so that I sometimes even click on one of these text links to find out more. So, on second thought I can’t say that Gmail does not have ads in their webmail interface, but they don’t have distracting and/or annoying ads there.

If you have the choice, what would you like better? A small collection of well chosen text link ads that won’t distract you from reading your e-mail or a colorful, obtrusive image that jumps right in your face when you open the e-mail you want to read?

You can find landmarks and screen shots on my other blog: Rent-a-tutor.com

I’m organizing a christmas advent hunt from Dec 1st. to Dec 24. using my proven and improved Ultimate Hunt Script. The Hunt will be organized by Second Presentation and all merchants who want to participate are welcome.

Sponsors for this hunt:

Biker Parties at  Weltenville.
Jeaniesing’s Things and Animations at  Pinastri.
vMotional Animations & Poses at Sinamatic.
Daemon’s Club and Vendor area at Poolside.
Arielyn Docherty at Spiazzo (not in the hunt, special thanks for providing the artwork).

I have got 7000 Linden from our sponsors to split between the best hunters in this hunt. After Dec 25 I will do a random draw to pick the best hunters and there will be these prizes:

2000 Linden as 1st. prize (goes to Ela Lionheart)
1000 Linden as 2nd. and 3rd. prize (goes to Thanit Encore and Bar Yebut)
500 Linden as prize 4 to 11. (goes to januh Kilara, Evee Navarathna, Geniveve Boucher, Angelfire Teebrook, Zam Homebuilder, Meiou Yao, Fereshteh Rajal and Franceska Noel)

Congratulations to the winners.

German Version.

The hunt will start Dec 1st. where it will make the first hunt box visible, after this date, every day there will show up another hunt box until the 24th. On Dec. 24 at 23:59 SLT the hunt will end and the boxes will clean up themselves. There is no cost to participate in the hunt but donations will help to pay the server costs.

Any shop who wants to particpate can send me a message and I’ll put you on the list. Hunt items (one prim server and 24 scripts that you have to put into a box that you create by yourself) will be sent 2 weeks before the hunt starts. Setup is quick and easy, you just need to rez the server object, put your gifts in it and then rez and hide 24 wooden boxes where you put the scripts in the content tab. The boxes will be hidden after you put the script in, they will become visible automatically, there is nothing to do for the merchants after the setup.

There is no need to give out 24 gifts with this hunt. This hunt will work a little different from my other ultimate hunt events. You can now put a gift or a notecard into the hunt box, so if you have useful information, a poem or a recipe, you can put this into the hunt box. You can also leave the box empty. Finds will be counted again as with the other hunts that I made. I’m not sure if there will be a special prize for the best hunters but there will be a leader board available, showing the top ten hunters.

A list with the top hunters can be found here:

http://www.secondpresentation.com/sl-business/ultimate-advent/hunter.php

If you want to blog about it, you can use this image:

Jim Gustafson

Update: The hunt is now finished. We had 3293 hunters looking for the hunt boxes. They have found 51163 boxes in total.

(Dieser Text ist auch in Deutsch verfügbar)

Some statistics for this hunt (Sept. 20):

Number of active avatars: 2234

Number of items found so far: 35100

It seems that there are more avatars hunting in this hunt than in the last one (was 1224 in the Zindra hunt) but people seem not to find so many items (was 73600 in the Zindra hunt). Anyway it looks like a great success so far.

Anybody who owns a shop in SL and is interested in paticipating in the hunt can send me a message. I’ll send you group invites and more information when the new script enhancements are ready (monday Sept. 6). The hunt will be easy to set up and it will have some special features like repositioning the items automatically to make it harder to find them.

Thanks to all the sponsors who have donated a total of 10,000 Linden in cash and 10,000 Linden in gift certificates for the hunt:

Yoshi Zhangsun – Mindshift

Siss Truss – Perfect Prefabs Coral

Sin Toshi – vMotional

Madddyyy Schnook – slguides

Jeaniesing Trilling – Custom Animations

Quilla Quinnell – Devil Girl Designs

Constanza Amsterdam – slapt.me

SDWears Honi – SD Wears

Liznwiz Wei – Liz’s Independent Marketplace

and a special thanks for designing the hunt objects to:
Arielyn Docherty/Mickey Heaney  – Feather my nest

There are 47 shops pre-registered for the hunt until now, I hope we will get up to 100, so please contact me in world if you are interested.

According to the back-to-school theme, I will also invite SL-schools and educational institutions into the hunt. If you run a school in SL and if you are interested in participating, please let me know.

Some shops may be on adult rated sims, so please make sure you are age verified in order to be able to enter these regions of Second Life. That’s Linden Lab’s rules, not mine.

The technical background will be my “Ultimative Hunt” system that I have tested successfully in the “Happy Smiley” hunt with 32 Shops and 144 items to find. I really hope that there will be much more shops and items to find in the zindra hunt, which will give me a good chance to test the database application under full stress conditions.

Checkout the details here: Mark of Zindra Hunt

Here are the winners from the leaderboard (snapshot taken Sept 6 at 23:59:00):

1st. place with 442 finds:

Mike Flagon
Katman Landar
Ayako Kaligawa
Dariana Violet
Darkmoon Milev
Alina777 Demina
Polenth Yue
sTwo Acker
Taka Menges
Aryna Markova
nanami Juliesse
SweetNSexy Haystack
Kat Messioptra
Scarlett Osumi
Silarce Woodrunner
Tropo Chrome
Thraxis Epsilon

2nd. place with 441 finds:

69 Sugarplum
Ceilidh Arbenlow
Techwolf Lupindo
Bulldog Blackbart

3rd. place with 440 finds:

Vette Sweetwater
Krell Karu
Reesa Rieko

Place #4 with 439 finds:

Shelby Loudwater

Place #69 with 219 finds:

Alania Darkwatch

unfortunately some of the merchants did not have the patience to keep their boxes out until the official end of the hunt. Therefore all finds from removed boxes/shops has been corrected to the actual available boxes to avoid confusion or unfair advantages for those who would not have a chance to increase their score because of the vanished boxes. The final result should still be fine for the top 4 places though.

Each merchant will hide a few Smileys in their shop. They are not easy to find because you will not be able to use scripted HUDs who will scan for hunt-item names (because they will change their names every minute) and you will not be able to spot them easily in wireframe-mode (because they are just a flat box with a texture).

If you find a Smiley you just touch it and it will tell you how many other items are in this shop. Most merchants will give out special gifts depending on the number of hidden items. For some gifts you have to find all items before you get the gift. All finds will be counted and the three avatars with the most finds will also get a linden dollar prize.

Since a normal scripted HUD will not work, you will get a special HUD from an info-giver that merchants will place in their shops. This Smiley-HUD will find the nearest hunt item and will also give you a hint that the merchant will provide for each of their items. So you can see how far you are away from the next item and the hint will tell you where you should look.

But wait, there is more! If you touch the info-giver, you can  request:

a notecard with detailed information about the hunt+race,

the hint-HUD and

a free login to your personal hunter’s page (a website that opens in your web browser).

On your personal hunter’s page you will see how many stores are participating in the hunt, how many items are out to find. It will also show a list of the top ten hunters and if you are logged in, you can see your personal score and how many items you have found so far in which store. There will also be a complete list of all participating stores.

Prize money for the best hunters will be:

• 600 Linden-$ for the 1st. hunter with most finds
• 300 Linden-$ for the second and
• 100 Linden-$ for the third

In the event of a tie, cash prizes will be divided equally.

Merchants who want to participate can contact me in world (Jim Gustafson).

Here is the direct link to the video. And here you can vote for my video if you like.

Edit June 5: Currently received 10 votes so far, thanks to all voters

X Marks the Spot

This is a hunt initiated by Jeaniesing Trilling for her friends and merchands from XStreet-SL. The rules are easy: Go around and find an X-shaped object in the store. If you touch it, it will give you freebie that was made by the shop owner and a landmark to the next shop. You can then teleport to the next location and contiue your hunt. It’s fun. If you get stuck, you can join a hunt group and ask for a hint or just have a look at the X Hunts Hints on the website.

You have to hurry up, because the hunt will end on May 19.

SL Discovery Hunt

This one is very big with 500 stores particpating. You have to look for a small magnifying glass in the stores. You can buy them for 0 Linden and you will get a Folder into your inventory with the freebie and the next landmark. Because the hunt is so big, they have put up a redirect website for shops that did not put out the hunt item or where the landmark is missing or broken. Sometimes it’s hard to find the item, so feel free to check out the hints webpage. This hunt started May 1st, and will run until end of June.

I was interested in the position as Personal Assistant, because I have two years of experience in SL and several years in teaching on the Internet and in real life classes. So I asked if it would make sense to apply for the job, because I am in the european time zone and they might be somewhere in the world that may not be suitable for intensive coaching.

The person responsible for the job applications told me that she will check my CV or my website. Later she told me that this position will be paid in Linden-Dollar and that I can expect a salary of 75 Linden-Dollar per hour. I thought she was teasing me, but it seems to be a real offer. That’s not even 20 US-cent per hour for a personal assistant.

I told her, that I’d rather do it for free instead of insulting myself taking peanuts for a qualified job. She told me that this would not be possible. “We do not allow people to work for free”. Ok, I know Lee Iacocca worked for Crysler for one Dollar per year, but is it really ethical to offer jobs in SL for a fee that is not much more than plain camping and expect real work to be done. And then insult people to say “We don’t allow people to work for free”?