Niran, the creator of Black Dragon, seeks financial help from everyone who uses his Viewer. He is in a moment of particular economic difficulty, according to what he communicates on his blog.
Maintaining the Viewer takes time and money. It is for this reason that Niran asks for support from all those who use his Viewer on Patreon.
What is Patreon? It is a fundraising platform, with which YouTubers, writers, artists, and anyone who creates something particularly useful and interesting, can ask all those who follow them and use their services for financial help. This contribution is monthly, and the amount may vary. For example, in the case of the Black Dragon, the monthly contribution can be $ 1, $ 5, $ 10.
Those who support Black Dragon on Patreon have some advantages. These are particular acknowledgments that the creator gives to those who finance it. Particularly interesting for those who manage a Brand, is the financing of $ 10 monthly. In fact, with this loan, you can get a link to your brand directly on the opening page of the Viewer.
I told general information for now. I want to make some of my considerations. Photographers, bloggers, and vloggers consider Black Dragon, to be particularly interesting for several reasons. The first of them is that, indeed, the graphic that this Viewer offers is of very high quality. Anyone who wants to realize the difference compared to any other viewer, can take a photograph with Black Dragon and another Viewer, and compare them. I believe there can be no doubt about the quality difference that Black Dragon offers. Besides, Black Dragon has other critical features: I am referring to the Poser. This tool allows photographers to customize the position of their Avatar with incredible precision. Using other Viewers, I often found myself having to change the pose of my Avatar when taking a photograph. The poses that are purchased are not always precise (nor can they be). They also vary depending on the Shape of your Avatar. To arrange my Avatar concerning the pose I was using and the type of photo I wanted to make, Poser was a valuable tool. Using other Viewers, I needed to wear Hud that would allow me to achieve the same result, such as AnyPose. Black Dragon has a system for adjusting the pose of its Avatar integrated into the Viewer. Also, the degree of precision in improving the posture of your Avatar is remarkable.
I think closing Black Dragon would be a significant loss, so I invite you to contribute to its survival and evolution through the Patreon fundraising system. At the bottom of this article, I leave all the useful references.
Finally, let me one last observation. Black Dragon has reached such a level of quality that, in my opinion, it would be appropriate for Linden Lab to keep it alive. Black Dragon has contributed to a significant improvement in the Second Life experience, so it would be more logical if the game’s creator company committed to the survival of this incredible Viewer.
On February 6, 2020, Speedlight announces on its Facebook page that it has released an app to access Second Life using Android.
As I had already said in my previous post in which I introduced SpeedLight, the company Smartbot, well known in SL for having created a professional bot management system, created this tool.
As known, Smartbot gives the possibility to purchase bots that automatically manage some activities which, within Second Life, should otherwise be carried out manually.
Before the introduction of SpeedLight, the only way to access Second Life with your smartphone was to use an App called Lumiya. This app, very well made, has recently been abandoned to itself by its creator. It is still fully functional. However, the creator is not going to continue updating it, so we shouldn’t expect any update. For this reason, an alternative to Lumiya becomes essential.
Thus was born SpeedLight, which, until recently, was only a web browser. Usable from PC, Windows, and Mac, can also be used on smartphones. Not as an app, but merely as a web browser. In early February, as I said, on February 6, SpeedLight releases its app.
For the time being, you can use Speedlight only on Android.
In this post, I want to introduce a new app to access Second Life. I state that the app still has some flaws, in the sense that some activities are not possible, or rather, some are not yet possible. Such as entering the virtual world from a 3D perspective. Others would be possible, but still do not work, such as seeing your friends list, seeing IMs and groups. These are issues already raised on Discord, in the Smartbot group. The creator of SpeedLight is aware of these issues.
The Smartbot Discord Group, someone tells about some app’s flaws
Before introducing SpeedLight, through a video that I recorded directly from my smartphone, I would like to remember some aspects already highlighted in my introductory post to Speedlight.
To log in, you must first create an account on their site. So we will have to register, create our account, and choose a password. Once this is done, inside SpeedLight, we can add our Avatars. We can add more than one avatar to our SpeedLight account. The password to access Second Life is the same that we chose on the Linden Lab website.
Therefore, it is essential to keep in mind that with each SpeedLight account, you can add multiple Avatars. You can then choose which Avatar to log in, both using the web browser and using the Android app.
The Speedlight app is on Google Play Store, and you can use it. As I said, three parts are still flawed:
IM
groups
and friends.
Here is the video I recorded to show you the use of SpeedLight.
SpeedLight App – Overview
At the bottom of the article, I leave all the useful references to register for SpeedLight and be informed about the latest news about this new tool.
From yesterday evening 23 February at 22:30 Italian time, therefore 1 PM SLT, the photographic exhibition of Indigo Claire is open at the VIBES Gallery. The title of the photographic exhibition is “Behind The Horizon of the Soul.”
If I had to define Indigo’s artistic performance in a few words, I would say that this exhibition is characterized by realism and sensuality. The first aspect that is evident to the observer is the remarkable realism of the avatar presented in the artist’s images. Looking at some of them, the realism of the forms is impressive, in particular, the body of the immortalized avatar. Even the face is expressive, although it is the face of an avatar. Besides, in most cases, when looking at avatar photographs, the shape of the body is not perfect: Artists often fix lines and inaccuracies using Photoshop or similar programs. Of course, I don’t know if Indigo corrected her images through graphics programs; however, the quality of the starting image is undoubtedly high, as a graphics program is not able to convey realism to a photo that has none at the start.
As I anticipated, sensuality is undoubtedly another of the main aspects of Indigo’s photographic exhibition. Some images are strongly allusive and have an intense erotic charge.
The protagonist of this photographic exhibition is the dark-haired woman, with dark eyes and an intense gaze. A beautiful woman whose intimate moments are immortalized by an “intrusive camera.” One aspect not to be overlooked is the accuracy in the choice of poses that Indigo has made in a commendable way. I don’t know if the artist creates her poses, or if she buys them, what is certain is that the positions that the avatar takes are very realistic, credible, and definitely in tune with the contextualization of the image.
Indigo’s art exhibition is hosted by the VIBES Gallery, which is in a very well-made grunge context. I also recommend visiting the photographic exhibition close to that of Indigo’s one, entitled “It’s not about the pictures” by Sunset Theas, and to take a ride along the urban streets that line the various galleries, being the setting made with care and abundance of details.
I have been reading several complaints on Facebook for a few days about Flickr’s choice to introduce a monthly payment for uploading images. Flickr becomes paid when you want to upload more than 1000 images, having one TB of storage space available.
The complaints I read on Facebook concern payments for all who need uploading more than 1000 images and, above all, for all those need to insert credits in their images descriptions. This problem concerns, above all, the Fashion bloggers who have seen their images with credits links in the description tab deleted. In particular, Flickr penalized the photos that had a direct link to the Marketplace. In short, for Flickr, it’s okay if the photographer put the link to a blog in the description, the question is whether the credits are directly indicated in the description, especially when they contain direct links to the Marketplace.
The conclusion that inevitably all fashion bloggers have arrived at is that, if they wish to continue carrying out their business as a fashion blogger on Flickr, they need to choose a Pro account.
I believe that the preferred way for the photographer is to evaluate their needs: if for years the fashion blogger carried out and included the credits in their images, it will become challenging to be able to store all his creations inside of a blog. Since the activity would become too long, at this point, I think the preferable way, in this case, is to opt for a Pro account. If in your Flickr account, you have inserted links to a specific blog, the problem does not exist: Flickr will not delete any image since it is not an advertisement. Like told, If you added a link to a Second Life Marketplace item, Flickr requires payments, particularly regards fashion bloggers, who have always included in their description the images’ credits. Some of the fashion bloggers got ready in time and brought their pictures to a blog, doing a great job of transferring photographs and related links. In contrast, others did not do so, even for lack of time, and therefore find themselves having to make a choice: delete their images to be able to stay within the thousands of storage, naturally removing the credits from the descriptions, or switch to a Pro account.
Here is a Facebook post of complaint about Flickr policy:
Many, however, are wondering what the possible alternatives to Flickr are. Looking for other options to Flickr on Google, there are many; however, for the needs of a Second Life user, I have to say that the choice is not very much.
The first competitor of Flickr is 500px. However, this photography social network does not accept images concerning virtual worlds. I made sure of this by asking directly to the 500px support service that guaranteed me that all virtual worlds like Second Life’s pictures cannot be accepted on their platform, and, in the hypothesis that a user uploads it, the account could quietly be banned. So 500px is not a viable alternative. What can we choose as social for the promotion of images?
Update on 24/02/2020: You can consider Instagram, but you know Instagram’s images have a square format, and the picture’s quality is not excellent. So, I don’t think Instagram is a valid alternative to Flickr, but maybe you could think it fits your needs.
Given that I don’t see any other options since the sites that people usually suggested as alternatives to Flickr are not captivating, I believe that the only exciting possibility as photographic Social is DeviantART. It is still free, you can upload all the images you want on DeviantART, and it is also a particularly active community. Like Flickr, there are groups where you can share your images. Still, it is also true that being a particularly active community, people quickly find the photos they are interested in. Also, you can put a preference on the images you like, in a similar way to Flickr. It is also possible to save the items that interest you so that you can easily find them later. The difference between Flickr and DeviantART is that while Flickr is a photography community, whether real or virtual photography does not matter, DeviantART is not an exclusive photography community. It was born exclusively as a community of artists. Therefore all art forms are promoted within this platform. Among them, there are also prose, drawings, photographic and artistic images of various kinds, etc. On DeviantART, particular stock images are used by the artists themselves for the creation of additional photos through the use of photographic processing software such as the well-known Photoshop.
In conclusion, remaining within the context of free choices that allow unlimited sharing of images, I believe that the best option is DeviantART. All other solutions have significant limits and thus become unattractive to those who share Second Life pictures. Also, another aspect that we must not underestimate is that those who share images that they have taken within SL, in most cases, expect to have a broad audience, as they had on Flickr. This “stage” becomes impossible within platforms where images of virtual worlds are usually not shared. So the best choice I think is DeviantART, where images of virtual worlds are typically shared and where artists are interested and open to the knowledge of non-traditional art forms, such as those that concern images taken within virtual worlds. At the end of this article, I leave all the reference links related to Flickr and DeviantART, and I also write the references to all the Communities where you can share the images taken within Second Life or virtual worlds in general. On DeviantART, it is also possible to sell your creations and obtain in this way scores that also allow you to spend in the DeviantART’s selling items. DeviantART encourages the sale of its artistic creations, and this is also a particularly exciting aspect, mainly because DeviantART is free, and you can upload your images in an unlimited way.
From the same creators of SmartBot, SpeedLight was born that allows you to enter Second Life using a simple web browser.
You can keep your Avatar online 24 hours a day and always have your message history at your disposal; you can also use SpeedLight from your smartphone or tablet and switch from one device to another without logging out. Some SpeedLight features are free, while others are paid for.
Let’s see in detail what are the free features. They are, in my opinion, enough for those who want to access Second Life through their mobile phone or directly through their web browser when it’s necessary doing something fast that does not require the three-dimensionality of Second Life.
What are the main functions of SpeedLight? They are:
the possibility to teleport to a specific location by using a SLURL;
the ability to see the map and those close to it;
the ability to search for an SL resident by typing their name;
the possibility to access the local chat;
the ability to read and send messages;
the opportunity to see groups;
the ability to access groups;
the ability to see your inventory and put it in order even by deleting items;
the ability to send items that are present in your inventory to other residents;
the ability to send money.
Some features that are unique to SpeedLight are:
keep your Avatar online while your browser is closed;
watching the message history even while the Avatar is offline;
keep and see your transactions.
SpeedLight also gives you the ability to send messages to multiple people at once and send notices to groups.
Looking at the comparison between the free plan and the Gold one, we quickly realize that even the free plan is convenient.
The free plan differs from the Gold plan only by the fact that:
the free plan allows the Avatar to stay online for up to one hour while the Gold plan allows unlimited time.
The free plan also does not allow you to keep the Avatar online once the web browser is closed, while the Gold plan has this functionality.
The Gold plan allows messages to be sent to multiple people simultaneously, while the free plan does not have this feature active.
To create an account to access Second Life through SpeedLight, you must First create a SpeedLight account.
After that, you can add your SL account to SpeedLight.
You can add multiple avatars and not just one.
Then, the first thing to do is to create a SpeedLight account, through which you can access the main features of the site. The most important is the one that allows us to add our Avatar, and enter our username and password through which we log into SL.
Once we have added our Avatar, we will see the image of our SL profile. At this point, it will be possible to log into SL.
It is necessary to give our SL password, which, of course, involves knowing that we are giving our sensitive data to third parties. Considering that the Creator of SpeedLight is the same as SmartBot, I trusted and believe that this person is reliable, but of course, everyone provides their credentials at their own risk.
Once we logged in, at the bottom right, we can see a timer, which clearly shows us that we have one hour. After this hour, we will necessarily have to log out.
What is interesting, however, is that, once we have logged out, if we log in again, we have a chance to have another hour starting from the beginning. If, on the other hand, we want more time without having to worry about having to slog out and log in again, the best solution is to choose one of the paid plans.
At the end of this post, I leave all the useful references to see the free and paid conditions of SpeedLight and to know how to become a Gold user.
I want to point out that the feature of being able to see the 3D world through SpeedLight is currently not active yet.
Reading on their website, you will learn that they have already reached eighty percent of this goal so that this feature will be released as soon as possible.
If you decide to use SpeedLight, I recommend that you also create an account on discord and join the SmartBot group of discord. In fact, by entering this group, you can get assistance if you have problems using SpeedLight.
I think SpeedLight can be a great alternative to Lumiya, which, as we know, has no more updates available. We know that Lumiya has is still usable on smartphones is downloadable, even if not from Google Play Store (actually). However, no updates will be released in the future. I think SmartBot’s idea of creating SpeedLight is a winning one, especially at this time when there are no viable alternatives.
Like you know, for sure, you can find several high fashion and decorbloggers. They can help you with your shopping a lot: for example, I follow the “Forever Twenty One” Blog.
Maybe because the fashion blogger has a style that I love, perhaps because she realizes incredible pictures, I follow her, and I often buy items she promotes in her blog posts.
As you see, I’ve just bought two objects she’s promoted: the eyeglasses and the hair. Clicking her blog post, we can see the credits and know fastly which store products the item we are interested in. In my case, I love eyeglasses and hair.
Let’s start with hair; those are from Doux. Doux is a vast hair store, with many items to sell, so finding this particular hair is hard. But I want to see them in one minute, remember? So how can I do?
Using the Firestorm Viewer is easy. Go to World >> Search area >> Put the name of the item you see in the blog post, in my case, “Noah,” and click on “search.”
Now, you can right-click on the object and click on “teleport to,” but in locations like here where all the teleports go to the landing point, it won’t work. So, better to use ” lighthouses,” click on “show lighthouses” here. And here you go, the lighthouses are these blue lines that show you where the item you want is. Fast? Easy? Yes, within one minute!
Now, let’s go to take our eyeglasses. It will be easier since the Random Matter store is much smaller than Doux. So, teleport to Random Matter, go to World >> Search Area >> Type the name of your item, in my case, “rose” and click on search. We have just found two objects with this name: gold and silver ones. They are near; here you can see the distance between you and the item you want. Show lighthouses again and go to buy your eyeglasses!
As you see, this method is fantastic to find an object, especially in busy and spacious places, like events, to say.
I hope you guys this method will help you to find your items in the easiest possible way.
If you like my video, don’t forget to subscribe to my Youtube Channel, like share, and comment on my videos. See you at the next one!
Please note that I Love Events(TM) is not associated with Linden Research, Inc. or any of its affiliated companies or products, including Second Life (collectively known as "Linden Lab"). The opinions and views expressed on this site belong to the content creators and do not represent the views or opinions of Linden Lab or its employees, directors, officers, agents, or representatives. The usage of the SLBN logo by I Love Events(TM) does not indicate endorsement or representation by Linden Lab.
