April Updates; or

50 Ways to Leave Your Simulator

Spring is in the air, and change is blooming all around us during the first quarter of 2010! The members of Andromeda Underground are all quite busy working on various projects to make the virtual environment market a better place to inhabit, and I'd like to take a moment, just sit right there, and I'll tell you how I became the Prince of a town called Bel-Air.
Wait.. no... sorry, got sidetracked.

Starting with the forums, a lot of updates and improvements have been made since the last post in March, so I'll start there and try to outline what's new :)

Forums - MPL Andromeda3D (GSK)

Starting April 14th, some changes to user permissions are being revised. Administrators and Moderators are exempt from this change. Users must now meet the following requirements to access certain sections:

• Users must now have at least 5 posts to view links and images, or post links and images.
• Users must now have at least 5 posts to create visitor messages, create and view photo albums, and comment on photo albums.
• Users must now have at least 10 posts to view attachments.
• Users must now have at least 15 posts to send private messages. Users can send messages and emails to administrators and moderators without fulfilling this post count requirement.
• Users must now have at least 20 posts to send emails to other users. Users can send messages and emails to administrators and moderators without fulfilling this post count requirement.

Users, both anonymous and registered members, can now report bugs, make feature requests, share ideas, and more. If you see a bug or something doesn't go right, click the [Feedback] button on the left of each page and file a report. This uses the [Get Satisfaction] service, so if you don't have an account yet, you will need to make one (you can use your Twitter, Facebook, or OpenID accounts to create a [Get Satisfaction] account). Creating a [Get Satisfaction] account is quick and easy. After your report is posted, the administrators, like myself, will be made aware and we'll look into it. Keep checking back for additional information and statistics on your report. You can access the [Get Satisfaction] hub by clicking [Support] in the navigation bar.

Additional Updates and Changes in the Forums:

• April 1: April Fools!
• April 5: Users with confirmed donations no longer see forum advertisements.
• April 5: [Support] is now listed under [Apps].
• April 6: In the event the online user count reaches above 500 concurrent users, the forums will close until the user count is reduced below 500 to increase server load. Once user count has reduced to below 500 concurrent users, the forums will automatically re-open.
• April 6: The April Fools Day 2010 prank was re-enabled. You can access the prank by clicking here or by selecting "APRIL FOOLS 2010" from the dropdown box at the bottom-left corner of each page of the forum. Likewise, you can return to the default style by selecting Underground v3 from the list.
• April 6: It is now possible to receive text message alerts upon recipient of a new private message or visitor message. To set this up, visit your User Control Panel. Administrators and Moderators cannot see your phone number.
• April 12: Fixed an error where all of the text on the forum was bold.
• April 12: All users are now required to wait 20 seconds before they can accept revised Terms of Service.
• April 12: The Terms of Service has been updated.
• April 14: Added framework to allow for post count-based user permissions.
• April 14: The list of available BBcodes have been updated.
• April 18: A feature has been disabled because it has been made aware that it violates the vBulletin Terms of Service.

Of course, there is also the upgrade to vBulletin 4.0, and the subsequent new theme created for Andromeda Underground. Unfortunately we were unable to keep the old theme from the prior version because it was incompatible with vB 4 so GSK and I collaborated on the new updated version.

Pixel Labs in SecondLife


Some of the members of the Andromeda Underground are participating in a Second Life collaborative named Pixel Labs. To date, the members roster includes:

• Darian Knight (Aeonix Aeon)
• Goshenta Silversmith
• s1rux Forsythe
• drduke Rehula
• Jon Dragoone (nwasells)

As a result, many of our top posters in the forums have been pre-occupied with collaborative projects. Some of the projects being worked on:

book Tablet : http://www.perpetualstudios.com/book/help/

And of course the koios presentation screen system.

The book Tablet has been gaining a lot of attention in Second Life, and even has an article written about it and the people of Pixel Labs -

http://slnewspaperextra.blogspot.com/2010/04/pixel-labs-and-book.html


Association of Virtual Worlds: Person of the Year Nominations

It seems that the Association of Virtual Worlds is holding a Person of the Year awards event, and our very own Darian Knight has two nominations as of this post! If you'd like to nominate Darian for the Person of the Year Award - check out the following link:

http://www.associationofvirtualworlds.com/avwblog/

Of course, you can email your nomination to edita@associationofvirtualworlds.com
with a subject line of "Person Of The Year Nomination"

Be sure to include Darian's real name for the nomination, and mention that Darian Knight (Aeonix Aeon) is the alias. Not sure what the real name is? William Burns.

Happy Birthday to Darian Knight!

Yep, April 21st marks the birthday for the Project Leader of Andromeda3D - and this year we're not really sure what to do for the occasion. One year he threw a huge virtual worlds concert for his birthday, and repeated the concert the next year. Another year he had a fireworks display for the public, but this year - he's said that the best gift he could get for his birthday are nominations for the Association of Virtual Worlds Person of the Year Award.

Nothing fancy this year -

May 22nd is the Official Anniversary of Andromeda Underground!

Coming in the next month are a number of gifts to our forums members to celebrate the 2 year anniversary of Andromeda Underground. We're not going to say exactly what those gifts are, because it's a surprise!

We will, however, say that it's a good day to make sure you are logged in :)

Thanks for catching up with us this month, and hope to see you in the forums!

Sincerely,

The Andromeda Underground