Wow! What a difference a week makes!

Happy Monday all! At SpotON3D® we're all amazed at last week’s traffic and activity. Thank you all who came to visit! We’re really looking forward to the new and exciting things coming your way, what with all the new content creators and residents. People have repeatedly commented on the lack of lag, great customer service, and solid performance and that’s music to our ears, since that’s been our primary focus the last 24 months. And as many of you know, much of the awareness of SpotON3D is due to the generosity of the Phoenix viewer folks and the announcement of our partnership. Words cannot express our gratitude for their willingness to throw in the hat with us and lead the way into the future of the Metaverse.

Now for a bit of news and numbers! We’ve had over 100 new users a day steadily for the last week, and with the release of the new Phoenix/SpotON3D logo coming out today *crosses fingers* we expect that trend to continue for a good bit longer. All weekend Mr. Victor was kept very busy helping residents set up their land rentals, and in between time taking the opportunity to automate the process a bit more for ya’ll. Our extended Land Rush certainly has gotten everyone’s attention too, with prices starting at $9.99 – 18.99 for double prim parcels and 24.99/3750 prims 39.99/5k prims and $59.99/15K prim islands going fast! These are introductory prices that will not go up when our regular prices kick in, so be sure and stake your claim. OH! And those prices also reflect your Premium Membership, so that is your total cost. You can learn more here http://land.veesome.com, or come in and take a gander at our sign at SpotON3D Grid region hub. Don't hesitate too long though! With over a 100 new users each day, these regions are flying off the shelf.

We're also pleased to welcome new content creators coming into our Web Worlds™. One of note is Jennifer Brennon of Luna Animations, who is not only furiously working to bring in her content, but will be collaborating with SpotON3D to develop specialized-for-fee and for-free poses for the business and educational users. Contact us at 3demote@spoton3d to give us your ideas and suggestions for animations, educators! We're looking forwards to hearing from you.

Also in our MusicaJam™ project there was some good stuff going on with our big ManKind/Craig Lyons double header – FIRST TIME EVER THESE GUYS PERFORMED BACK 2 BACK! And wow! What an event it was! Thank you guys! And thanks to all those brave explorers of the Metaverse for joining in on our fun.

We hope you enjoyed them just as much as we did hosting them. A great time by everyone - about 40 of our users. Not bad for a new grid! The new performance stage Sunny Salamander made for us features free instruments of all kinds, mics and animations. Everything a musician would need to give a top-rate performance, right between our two freebie stores, and with over 100 users passing through that means some great face time for those burgeoning artists hoping to get a great following. So if you come by, grab a free guitar and serenade the audience! The stage is yours! Just let one of our Moderators or Admins plug in your stream and we’ll help steer traffic to you – even set you up with a tip jar!

We're really looking forward to seeing new and emerging artist come to the forefront. We know things have gotten a bit harder this last year. MusicaJam is here to help YOU find YOUR audience again and build a loyal following that you can really grow with. AND BIG BIG THANKS to Mankind Tracer, Craig Lyons again! And Kalli Birman, our new PR person extraordinaire for getting the word out and driving traffic to SpotON3D, even before the Phoenix announcement and helping us make this such a success! Can’t wait to do it again!

MusicaJam & SpotON3D Present a Never Before Concert!

Get going folks and outfit your avies on the SpotON3D grid, because tonight is a first in the Metaverse. Live ... Onstage .. Back2Back ...

Mankind Tracer & Craig Lyons will perform at the Free4Ever MusicaJam Performance stage!

If you've ever heard either of them perform you KNOW they rock our worlds like no one else. And now .. together for the first time, they'll play to you in the hottest new grid out there, SpotON3D at the premiere of MusicaJam.com performances. Be there or be ... well .. CUBED! :P

WHERE: Grab a FREE4EVER account and SpotON3D client here at http://spoton3d.com early
WHEN: Tonight , Jan 28th, 2011 4 - 6 pm PST/SLT
WHO AGAIN?

Mankind Tracer: http://www.sethregan.com
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=102258230515

Mankind Tracer has been labeled Second Life's Premiere Rock Performer for good reason. For over 4 years, this live performing artist has released three CD's, has won every prestigious Second Life Award and has attained well deserved fame and popularity like no other. He performs his amazing original music as well as a host of covers from the 60's through the present, offering an unprecedented level of audience interaction by way of audience requests he takes through IM's during his standing room only events. Don't miss Seth Regan as he performs as Mankind Tracer in the first ever Official Live Music Event in SpotON3D!

Craig Lyons: http://www.craiglyons.net
http://www.facebook.com/craiglyonsmusic?v=app_2405167945

With three self-recorded solo albums released during a period of artistic solitude on the shores of Lake Erie, Craig Lyons has exploded into LA's music scene with the release of his latest release, 'On Reflection'.

A quiet small-town guy bringing heart back to a cynical music landscape, Craig brings intimate acoustic sublimity to his live electric rock show. His band performs regularly at LA's most distinguished venues including The Viper Room, Key Club, and the House of Blues.


A SpotON3D(r) http://spoton3d.com &
Tracer | Birman Agency (http://www.facebook.com/pages/Tracer-Birman-Agency/167079829984971?v=info)
Production with thanks to Grid Gear (C) a SpotON3D Lead Designer

Real Content Protection ... What is that anyway?

We saw some folks looking for info on our content protection, and it's there but in the TOS, which most people trudge through on an as-needed basis. I've spoken extensively on this subject, both on Gridwrap, my office hours and the Phoenix Office Hours, but felt it was important to put it in a way that was easier to access and review. Sooooo ... here I go! *-)

VIRTUAL RETAILING IS AS REAL AS IT GETS
Let's face it, it's a daunting task to run a store anywhere. Anyone who thinks it's a walk in the park and you make something then step away, simply hasn't ran a successful virtual business. Its every bit as demanding as a real world business and in fact IT IS REAL.

- If it makes you money you're going to pay taxes on it.
- If you deliver to other people, there are going to be a lot of customer service needs.
- If you have a store, you are going to have overhead costs.
- If you are going to be successful you will have to run ads.
- If you make a logo, or original content, you're going to want and need to protect it.

This all adds up to REAL BUSINESS that just happens to sell virtual product, and one of the primary reasons we created SpotON3D was to provide a safer place for creators to create, display, and sell their goods and be more portable in their sales. This way they could tap into the growing OpenSim markets more effectively and less expensively.

REAL CONTENT PROTECTION

- CLIENT SORTING:
We sort all clients other than our own to an isolated region, blocking potentially malicious clients from accessing the rest of our grid. This means only approved clients get into the main grids. If they can't "see" it through special clients they can't copy it.

- VOLUNTARY COMMUNITY DRIVEN DISPUTE RESOLUTION & REAL WORLD ARBITRATION
We support a community-driven Dispute Resolution Panel, by calling out to the community for volunteers to hear both sides and try to come up with solutions to disputes on our grids. We choose 3 to 5 randomly selected premium users, ensuring they are from a variety of walks of virtual life. They have access to legal advice to ensure that their resolutions have legal legs. It's open to the public so no hiding behind closed doors.

If that doesn't do the trick, either of the two parties can pay to have the case pushed up to a real-world judge and have their case heard for a fraction of the cost of going to court physically; and make no mistake - this is as legally binding and secure as going to a real world court, but instead of paying $2K-10K the fee starts at $150 USD. AND since this is not any different than a real world court, the decisions are legal and binding in over 150 countries.

We aren't even involved in the decisions, except to implement the resolutions that run through our services and make sure the TOS and community standards are followed - something I think we can all agree has been needed. SpotON3D charges no fees to file a DMCA. The fees for the real world arbitration go directly to http://virtualcourthouse.com and we make no money off that either. Its a wonderful deal we are able to give our users, due to our CEO Stevan's legal connections. That's not evil or awful. What we feel is evil and awful is the fact that in today's legal system you can't have any real form of justice unless you have at least 2K-10K, and we felt that was unfair. Justice should not be determine by the size of your wallet and right now that's the only recourse for creators outside of our grid.

- MULTI-GRID V-RETAILING WITH DOUBLE DUTCH DELIVERY (DDD)
Many creators think that there isn't enough reason or user base to be bothered with a single grid, and they are right! Two of SpotON3D’s main objectives were to create a Universal Registration and Avatar system built around a community of interconnected trusted virtual worlds/grids. In this way people could travel effortlessly from one virtual environs to the next seamlessly, as they do on the 2D Web today. But for this to be a success the user’s Avatar had to be able to carry its inventory along, making it possible to have a persistent appearance everywhere. The challenge was how to do this in a professional and legal way that compensated creators fairly, respected their copyrights, but also allowed them to service a wider audience in a reasonably secure manner. The SpotON3D team realized that the best way to do this was at the purchasing point, where verified buyers and sellers connected, giving the purchaser the ability to have their inventory legally replicated to every trusted grid on which they shared a presence with creators. This is an OPT-IN program and is in no way a requirement of using SpotONSynergy, SpotON3D's web based marketplace (http://spotonsynergy.com), and is accessible to FREE4EVER users as well as premium account users.

HERE'S HOW DDD WORKS
If you purchase a product on SpotONSynergy that is identified as a DDD item, you’ll get that item delivered to your inventory in SpotON3D, as well as any other virtual world/grid that your avatar and the creator share a presence in. This is exclusive to the SpotON3D Trusted Grid System for security measures, and verification reasons.

Currentlly, DDD works exclusively between the SpotON3D grid and Second Life™. Branded Kiosks located in both grids can be programmed to point to all the content that an artist sells through the SpotONSynergy web site. The shopper doesn’t have to be inworld to received their items on multiple grids and detailed records are relayed to the creator to confirm deliveries so they can keep track of sales.

NEED A FREE PLACE TO DISPLAY BIG BUILDS?
For those builders who can't afford land to set up a store we do have a way to display your builds fully and for free. An excellent example of this is InterSpace3D, a sci-fi themed grid with a 9 region MegaSim community area designed to enable awesome sci-fi roleplay.

SpotON3D has donated land to community web world groups like InterSpace3D in an effort to help them get going in the development of their own micro-communities. For those doing great sci-fi type builds this is a NO COST place to get their builds in front of the residents seeking sci-fi builds at no cost. All the builds donated to the community regions can be made clickable and linked directly to the listing for that build, so they act as a selling tool too and get showcased completely for free. In this way we hope to help builders have lots of content for people to not just view as a picture on a listing, but walk through without having to invest right away in an island for display.

All of us want to thank you for your interest and hope this blog answers a lot of your questions. If you have more, feel free to tag them here and we'll get to them as soon as we can.

Tessa and the SpotON3D Team & Community

Breaking news: Phoenix Viewer partners with SpotON3D®

As some of you know, we’ve been biting our tongues on a very big piece of information and at 2pm SLT yesterday, at the Rezz.tv island in Second Life ®, the cat finally was let out of the bag. SpotON3D ® is most happy to announce our partnership with the Phoenix Viewer team in creating a Phoenix-flavored viewer just for SpotON3D Web Worlds! The download for the beta viewer from Phoenix will be in the next couple of days. In the meantime grab a copy of the SpotON3D viewer and kick the tires on ours ( https://spoton3d.com/pages/downloads ). We’re sure you’ll have ideas, hates and greats that you’ll want to be addressed by us or changed up in the Phoenix viewer after comparing the two. You can put in your two cents by emailing us via phoenix@spoton3d.com. Some of the things you’ll want to pay attention to before you suggest doing away with certain parts is the many hybrid 2D/3D systems integrated into the Spoton3D® grid, such as …

· Our BoostCloud™ dedicated servers to let you entertain up to 125 users without impacting your neighbors, or they you.

· Our Universal Registration, Avatar & Inventory System

· SpotONSynergy and Double Dutch Delivery™ system backed by PayPal® using real USD to create a truly portable economy system

· Integrated SpotOn3D EZPrezTools™ and much much more coming at you this year.

Both the Phoenix Viewer Team and the Spoton3D Team are looking forward to working in close collaboration. This will provide users with a clear voice in how the grid and viewer interact and the path towards new features. The teams look forward to the exciting changes that will undoubtedly take place as the Phoenix team helps to further develop SpotON3D’s network of Web Worlds and associated grids.

For more information, or to get your copy of the official press release, please contact Brandy Maltas (Kalli Birman in-world : SpotON3D®'s public relations) at public_relations@spoton3d.com. We look forward to seeing ya’ll wearing your Phoenix Fire tags and streaming fire icons as you build! Until then, please go ahead and grab a copy of the SpotON3D client and kick the tires a bit on the FREE4EVER account and in the FREE4EVER Sandbox. https://spoton3d.com/pages/downloads

Around the world with SpotON3D® - Part 2

Today we're bringing you the second in a series of blog posts highlighting all the exciting new projects and communities that are being developed within the SpotON3D Web Worlds™. The first project that'd we'd like to present to you is our very first MusicaJam™ stage in SpotON3D®.

This free-to-use stage is available for poets and musicians, and has been exclusively developed by metaverse developer Sunny Salamander for SpotON3D. No need for rezzing rights or any other hassle; just click the buttons at the side of the stage to get the instruments set up for you, and you're ready to go.

If you'd like to use a live stream, just send a quick IM to one of the SpotON3D staff members. Thanks to a remote stream switcher developed by metaverse application developer Snowcrash Digital™, our team is able to switch streams for you no matter in which Web World they are.

We are also encouraging musicians to come over and give us their thoughts and opinions on how to formulate MusicaJam and help us in our alpha testing, so we can get your feedback and together squash the last bugs. If you'd like to participate, please contact Phil at phil@spoton3d.com. Also big thanks to everyone who joined us yesterday during one of these tests - your help and feedback was priceless, without you it's just technology - you make the difference.

Several developers are working hard to get this web world launched; next to the SpotON3D Tech Team, Taff Nouvelle (a lifetime musicians and audio engineer), metaverse developers Sunny Salamander and Snowcrash Digital™ are all ganging up to create an unprecedented online live music experience, using all of the turn-key technologies SpotON3D already developed, including cloud serviced venues and HotSwap scenes™.

Around the world with SpotON3D® - Part 1

Happy Tuesday all! Today we're bringing you the first of a series of posts highlighting some of the amazing builds and other wonderful community projects that are going on in the Web Worlds™ brought to you by SpotON3D®.

SpotON3D isn’t just about fun and games. Its platform can be used for serious business, both as a stand-alone offering for select clients and consumers of their products and services, and as part of the overall Web World network. A good example of this is a rather large real estate project that has found its way to SpotON3D. Since a real estate focused solution provider hasn’t really stepped up to the plate, UnReal Designs™, along with two residents of SpotON3D, Caliburn Susanto of Draconis Digital Goods & Services and Phoenix DaVinci of Auspicious Primz, have taken on the task of creating a demo for this project at the request of a major architectural firm overseas. The goal is to use UnReal Designs and PowerSynch’s replication and programming skills to develop a ‘cradle to grave’ toolset for visitors, tenants, leasing agents and even the property management engineers.

The illustrative demo build is designed to show how effective and flexible UnReal Design’s 3DLIVE Blueprint Kiosk System can be for large commercial properties which promises to revolutionize the way real estate is managed.

Next to the business side-of-things, we're also happily welcoming several role play communities. SpotoOn3D has several residents busily working on their own micro-grids - Some examples are InterSpace3D.com and as yet unnamed G (good for everyone) rated grid with Francisco Koolhoven & Rettiset Gopheller who also play in SL® and other opensim grids. Like we always say - its not about leaving! It's about expanding your experience.

Want to see your SpotON3D story featured here? Get in touch! Let us know at phil@spoton3d.com.

FREEBie stores … FREEBie builder sandbox!

FREE BUILDER SANDBOX!

SpotON3D® happily invites you to come build and play around in our brand new sandbox. Log in, open up the world map and look for the region called "Epsilon", where you'll find a full region for you to play around in. This sandbox has a 3-hour "self cleaning function" - so do make sure to backup your builds once in a while. And here are a few more reasons why building in SpotON3D is better!

• No upload fees
• Prims stretch to 256x256
• No distance linking restrictions
• Daisy chain linked sets over the 256 limit
• Sculpts conform to shape – no need to make phantom

FREEBIE STYLISTICS STORE!

Ladies & Gentleman! Now you can shop FOR FREE in SpotON3D®’s new FREEBIE Store called Stylistic, just off the main entrance to the SpotON3D Hub Grid. No, it's not stocked with designer duds, but it is absolutely free – modify and copy perms for you to mix, match and tint to work with your other outfits. More new stuff will be added weekly, so if you don’t see what you like this week keep checking in. More choices will be coming your way.

Log in to SpotON3D, and once at the central landing point, Click on the FREEBIE sign to get a landmark, or just walk over to our new Stylistics shop - or if you can't possible wait till your next log-in, have a look at the Stylistics Shoppe listings on SpotONSynergy.com!

Happy rezzing!

New merchant feature on SpotOnSynergy.com - Split Profit Enabled

We're excited to announce that our resident coders have just enabled splits on the SpotON3D® marketplace SpotONSynergy™. With this new feature, you can split profits automatically between you and your fellow creators.

You can now divide the proceeds of each sale with up to 5 avatars, giving each a percentage of 10% or more. In order to do so, visit the SpotONSynergy™ website, log in and go to "my profile." This page will give you an overview of how you are splitting sales with other avatars, and it also gives you an overview of the percentage others are giving you of their sales.

To start splitting proceeds with a certain avatar, start typing in their name in one of the boxes. Our system will do a live search for that avatar while you're typing. (see second screenshot). Just click the name as it shows up, fill in the percentage and hit "Update Profile".

In order to be able to split profits with a certain avatar, this avatar needs to have logged in at least one time on SpotONSynergy™. So, if you want to split proceeds with someone, but you can't find their name in the list, don’t panic. *-) Just ask them to log in once to SpotONSynergy™ and you're good to go.

Stay tuned for more news about the SpotONSynergy Marketplace, because our tech team is working on a revolutionary way of adding product to the marketplace ... shhhh.

Sneak preview: SpotOn3D World Map and 3DWeburls coming!

SpotOn3D® resident coder Mana has been using some of his coding magic, and we're happy to share a sneak preview with you of our new World Map. Surf to https://spoton3d.com/map to check out both the Veesome and SpotOn3D® Web Worlds™ overhead views.

This new feature of our website fits in our goal to create a fully functional 3DWebUrl-system, allowing our residents to link to a specific place in one of our Web Worlds™ from the "classic" 2-dimensional web. Next to being the base for the 3DWebUrl-system, this new world map can also be used for the upcoming HTML-based in-world map in Viewer 2.

To stay within the techy atmosphere, but slightly changing topic -- Last week SpotOn3D® successfully upgraded all Web Worlds to the new 7.1 OpenSim version. We're most happy to see so much positive user feedback from our users and thank everyone for all the great bug reporting. Everyone’s especially pleased at the shorter log-in times and sharper rezzing.

Stay tuned for more exciting news to come - to say it with a Bachman Turner Overdrive quote; "You ain't seen nothing yet."

Problems logging in? Contact us!

First of all …. Don’t panic if you can’t login. All's ok with our Web Worlds™. We had a few residents last night report problems getting in and it seems to have been an undetected bug form the upgrade. We of course made this our highest priority and solved it in record time – GO TECH TEAM! We’ve taken extra measures to make sure everyone should be able to log in without any problems, but if by chance anyone out there is experiencing difficulties, please let us know by sending us an email to support@spoton3d.com. We’ll take care of it ASAP, as always.

Thank you again for being there!

Upgrading our grids

SpotOn3D® is happy to announce we will be upgrading our grids to OpenSim version 0.71 this week. Lots of important bug fixes will be deployed to the grid, to give you all an even better experience. We do anticipate to put the grids offline for 24hours in order to be able to properly deploy these updates.

Therefore please note that our grids will be put offline on Thursday January 13th, 1am central time. We've scheduled 24 hours to deploy this update to all of our grids, though chances are that we will be ready-to-go-online again earlier. We do apologize for any inconvenience this may cost you, but we're confident that this will be a major improvement for all of our users, especially designers and content creators.

Bug fixes include the edit/undo-bugs that happened when editing prims or aligned prims, and the invisibility problem that sometimes happened when editing attachements. For a full list of bug fixes in this upgrade, please refer to the OpenSim wiki at http://opensimulator.org/wiki/0.7_Release, though do note that HyperGrid and FreeSwitch changes do not apply to the SpotOn3D grids. (SpotOn3D® does not connect to HyperGrid, and we use our own voice system instead of FreeSwitch.)

Happy upgrading all!

3PM Today - GridWrap with AgileBill of Agile3D

Another Monday, and you know what that means - GridWrap at 3PM. Your hosts Dousa Dragonash and Tessa Harrington bring you the latest movers and shakers in the virtual scene. Today promises to be an interesting and exciting episode as our hosts will be joined by AgileBill of Agile3D.

AgileBill of Agile3D is a SCRUM and AGILE developer in virtual and real world settings, creating experiential scenes to help industry leaders learn how to collaborate in the digital age. Agile3D has worked with over 1,000 people worldwide. Though they are based in North Carolina, they save time, travel & money by meeting online in virtual environments like SpotON3D, welcoming members from across the globe, while their sister group, ARTP meets face to face - the best of both worlds! (http://www.meetup.com/agile3d/)

So mark your calendars and join us at 3PM pacific time on Metaverse Island for the live recording of this show. If you can't make it, not to worry - the show will be available online at the GridWrap website soon. Also check out the previous episodes there!

Happy New Year from SpotOn3D

Welcome to the very first blog post of 2011 on the SpotOn3D® blog. First of all - a very happy new year and the very best wishes from all of us at SpotOn3D® to you and your beloved ones. We were all very happy to see 2011 arrive as it promises to be a very exciting year for the SpotOn3D® Web Worlds™ with many new features coming soon.

Getting curious? Well, let's have a look underneath the top of the iceberg. 2011 will not just bring several new features, but SpotOn3D® will also be launching three new Web Worlds™; Edu-Merge, Biz-Grid and MusicaJam. As the names probably already gave away: MusicaJam will be a world fully focused on live music, the Biz-Grid will be all about sustainability for small and large businesses through virtual meeting and conferencing, and Edu-Merge is already gathering real world universities and educators to explore the distance learning options a more secure virtual grid can bring them - all with features especially developed for these applications.

One of the exciting features of MusicaJam will be the ability for musicians from all over the world not just to perform in our Web Worlds™, but even to have intercontinental jam sessions with others without being out of synch. SpotON3D has been working behind the scenes towards the launch of this new Web World™ for a long time, and thanks to some strategic partnerships with various virtual environment developers, MusicaJam promises to be a turnkey virtual world for musicians and live music enthusiasts.

Our tailor-made Biz-Grid Web World™ for business users is to be launched soon as well, featuring Go Green Virtual Offices and a whole range of out-of-the-box ready-to-go applications for business users, allowing them to immediately use the full potential of Web Worlds™. No set-up required, "log-in and do your thing" is the key idea behind our business applications.

Recreational, non-profit, business and educational users of our Web Worlds™ all will be very happy to hear about SpotOn3D's cloud services. We're working hard on pushing our cloud technology, allowing more (up to 125) users simultaneously on one simulator, making Web Worlds™ a worthy alternative for real world meet-ups and conferences.

Last, but certainly not least; in the first quarter of 2011, SpotOn3D® will also launch the recently announced HotSwap Scenes™. As previously noted on our Tech Highlights blogs, HotSwap Scenes will allow island renters to seamlessly change from say their private hide-away to a conference center setup with just a click of their mouse, making Web Worlds™ a truly versatile and multi-purpose tool for all.

And we can’t forget to mention the SpotOn3D sponsored TV-Show, GridWrap™, which will also continue to bring you the latest ins and outs about the WHOLE METAVERSE, sharing interesting conversations with key figures active in virtual reality.

Lots of stuff to be looking forwards to! Stay tuned for future updates on all of the exciting new features and Web Worlds™ mentioned above!