Do you remember your first teleport?

I do…

It was my third day in SL. I was still walking around help island, bothering mentors with questions and making friends. It was peaceful, friendly and even a nude griefer at the local sandbox couldn’t spoil that. My friends and I knew every inch of the island from the northern sim border to the southern, from west to east. It felt safe. Everything was cozy and we talked about the Mainland as if it were a legend, another dimension, an afterlife. We decided that we wanted to stay on help island as long as possible, because we knew there would be no turning back once we left.

Suddenly, though…Black Screen… Teleporting scroll line… Some-thing happened (well, not something, it was a SL glitch) and all new residents from help island appeared at the place in the middle of nowhere! We had been driven out of paradise… shocked, disori-ented, lost children not knowing what to do or where to go.

“Where are we?” Overcome with childish curiosty.. “Let’s explore”! We went flying around a big forest, waterfalls, mountains and lakes. It was really amazing. At that time, the viewer didn’t register your teleports and I was too distracted by events to create a landmark. I was never able to find that place again. And I am still searching…

Since then, I’ve made thousands of teleports, none have been as exciting as that first one, but there are still many places in SL that amaze me. Each day I discover new places and it seems like the longest journey ever. At times I have to be fast, as many places disappear in a split second.

Most of the time we are busy, but if you decide to ‘take a day off’ and enjoy the spirit of exploration again, please, consider my helpful tips:

“In-world” possibilities:

*First of all, you can use the built-in search (ctrl/cmd+F). I like the Showcase tab, which is also available on the official SL website. Showcase is the Fashion, Music and Arts Guide to SL. Residents submit their locations to Linden Lab and, if the business/location meets certain criteria, they are included in Showcase. The places you’ll find there are well known and you may also have seen pictures of them on Flickr, as well as in many SL magazines. For me, Show-case listings are only a starting point. If you would like to discover a real jewel, you need to dig deeper.

* Ask your friends. We often take for granted what we know, so your friends might not even be aware that you’ve never heard of their favourite “OMG!” place.

* Inspect people and objects, use profile picks to find more unusual places. How do you inspect an object? Right Click>More>More>Inspect and you see information about the crea-tor and owner of the object. Then, using resident profile picks, you might find a great new place.

*For fashion finds and some fun, I use the FashCon HUD. Use the Tour Bus option and every five minutes you’ll get a landmark to a shop owned by a designer in the Fashion Consolidated Group. Sometimes five minutes may seem too long, but other times you may want to stop the tour to enjoy a really good look around. You can obtain the FashCon HUD from any shop with a FashCon kiosk.

How to make a SLURL in-world:
*Open the map (ctrl+M) and click copy to clipboard. You may also use this option when inspecting a landmark (right click -About Landmark from the inventory). Instead of clicking Teleport, click Show on Map and when it shows a destination then click copy to clipboard. Now you can paste the SLURL to a notecard, email or wherever.

“Out of world” possibilities:

*You may browse some Flickr groups:

SL Tourist Board (SLURL in descriptions) http://www.flickr.com/groups/sl_touristboard/

Favorite SL places http://www.flickr.com/groups/835535@N25/

*You may visit some websites:

SL Buzz: snapshots with slurls http://snapshots.slbuzz.com/

BlogHUD: snapshots and blogging with slurls http://bloghud.com/

Snapzilla: snapshots with slurls http://www.sluniverse.com/pics/

By sending an in-world postcard (snapshot) to the email of a website, it automatically sends a slurl with the picture. Easy isn’t it?

How to make a slurl “out of world”:

*Go to http://slurl.com/build.php and build your own slurl.

Basically slurl includes: http://slurl.com/secondlife/ part +Region name + its X coordinate+ its Y coordinate+ its Z coordinate (use %20 instead of space in the Region name).

Tags: Explore, Second Life, Tutorial, Uncover Magazine

This entry was posted on Friday, July 10th, 2009 at 2:29 pm in Section Skills. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.