On October 12th, Motorati put two SL replicas of real life vintage cars up for sale at the sum of 100,000L each. All proceeds would go to benefit the Electronic Frontier Foundation. After only two days, both vehicles sold! While I think this is wonderful, I can't help but feel it is overshadowed by their claim. They would have been fine saying that it was one of the most expensive.

Unfortunately this just isn't the case. When will companies learn to fact check before they make a claim like that? Not only is it not the most expensive, nor the second most, but it's also not the most expensive virtual car to benefit a non-profit. If they had comments enabled on their blog, someone might be able to inform them of their mistake.

As it happens, I know the anonymous owner of the actual titleholder. They purchased a limited edition Dominus Shadow during Relay For Life 2006 for a whopping 600,000L! I believe the runner up purchased their limited edition RFL 06 Dominus Shadow for around 400,000L. Congratulations to all of the lucky owners of these vehicles. Now if everyone would just ease up on the bigger, better, first, most ...

With the award ceremony taking place yesterday at around 10am PDT, you would think that the award winners would have been announced shortly thereafter. Instead, I've been pacing the floor and scouring the internet searching for a sign. I finally found the winners on a blog, called Free Pixel, and I must say, 3 out of 9 total nominations for SL aren't bad.

At last year's Machinima Festival, in New York, SLers received 7 nominations over 4 people, and only one person won. That was Eric Call, for his Linden Lab hype machinima, Silver Bells and Golden Spurs. I'm excited to see that our numbers have grown. For the complete list of winners, check out Free Pixel's blog. Congrats to the nominees and winners!

Here is a list of the Second Life winners:

• Best Commercial - When the Postman Spits Twice - SL-Inworld Productions
• Best Technical - Machinima Island - la.interactiva
• Best Series - The Grid Review - ILL Clan

Kirk Claymore and Maddox Dupont, of KMADD ENTERPRISES, are providing a much needed service for men in Second Life. Tonight, at 7:30 pm PDT, they are opening their new sim, Kmadd Enterprise, to the public. In the sim, you can find men's shapes, skins, and clothing from over 35 designers in one convenient spot! Previously, guys had to travel all over the grid to get their shopping done.

In addition to housing menswear, there will be a Center for the Arts, where SL artists can showcase their work. If you can't get enough of a fix tonight, they will be holding a fashion show tomorrow, October 14th, at 5pm PDT. I encourage the ladies to bring a few male friends, or alts, along, and I hope to see everyone there!

Not all of the speakers are recording their presentations for immediate playback, but one speaker, John Martin of Reallusion, had the foresight to do just that! He couldn't make it to the Festival, so he streamed live, using his webcam and desktop, to a website, Operator 11. It allows you to upload webcam media and play it in real time. You can find the high quality version of his iClone demo here.

One of the most common questions that I'm asked about making machinima in SL is how I make my avatar's lips move. Reallusion just so happens to make this wonderful software, CrazyTalk, that is my companion in filmmaking. John demonstrates both CrazyTalk, using our very own SL resident Aren Mandala's work as an example, and their other program, iClone. That software is a 3d engine for filmmaking, but can ALSO be used in conjunction with Second Life through chroma keying. It's nice to see Second Life being recognized!

I was going to tell you that the UK Machinima Festival is being streamed right now from 2:30am-9am PDT/SLT on both Saturday and Sunday. I was going to tell you that SLers account for a whopping 8 nominations! I was going to tell you that we're all gathered at Hathead II island to watch the stream. I was ALSO going to tell you that you could watch it online from Quicktime.

Then I found out that the actual awards ceremony won't be streamed. I discovered when I got here that it would be recorded and aired online on the 20th. This is extremely disappointing as us Americans were planning to stay up to watch the content all morning, and now we don't even get a payoff. If you are attending the awards ceremony, PLEASE email us and let us know if we won anything!

If you are still interested in watching, you can find the program here.

I've been a bit hard on Linden Lab in the past, but I'd like to address something that I started, but never finished. The topic would be that of my loss of inventory in April of 2007. Linden Lab recently announced that they are doing what they can to minimize this situation, and I believe them. Eloise touched upon the subject, but I'd like to elaborate on it more from my standpoint.

What happened to me was like hitting the lottery. If I recall correctly, only about nine of us lost our entire inventory and they worked diligently to fix it for us. At the time, I wanted to calm the hysteria that I caused, so I ceased to report on it, but a funny thing happened along the way. I somehow became a shoulder to cry on about lost inventory. There are apparently many types of inventory loss, from single items disappearing, to folders not showing up. Some of these errors don't have fixes yet, but there are certain steps that you can take to keep this kind of loss at a minimum.

There aren't many details yet, but one thing is clear - the rate hike is coming. Back in November of 2006, when the new fee for islands rose to $295 USD, Zee Linden stated that the prices would be grandfathered in through at least 2007. Given that 2008 is rapidly approaching, you would think that island owners would receive warning of the impending doom.

After a town hall meeting with Zee, LL committed to giving residents a minimum of 60 days notice before they change pricing plans on them. This contradicts other reports that the inflation will occur in November. All signs point to some time after the 1st of the new year. It would be nice to receive clarification from them, though!

While browsing SL Exchange for sculpties, I came across a really cool set of animals made by Timmi Allen. The appeal for me, of course, is that there were holstein cows among them! When I arrived to his shop in Neuland, I was surprised to find very realistic statues. They're even animated so that their mouths open and their tails wag!

I'm really excited to see what residents have done so far with sculpties. In conjunction with regular prims, they allow a whole new level of customization. Have you made anything you'd like to show off? Leave a comment!

The last few days of posts have been on the heavy side, so here's a little something to lighten the mood. I first learned of gorcaking when I was viewing Roberta Beauchamp's flickr page. She'd taken a freebie cupcake that you wear on your hand and modified it to fit on her entire body. After that, she ventured into the land of Gor and was promptly caged.

The sheer hilarity of a caged cupcake inspired me to go on my own adventures. As you can see in the picture gallery, my journey took me to the Welcome Area, Help Island, Eros, a strip club, and on a drive. I was even lit on fire at Burning Life! I ended up having quite a bit of fun with it, using phrases like "Back up off my cupcake!", and "Why you all up in my frosting?" To start gorcaking, you can pick up your freebie cupcake here.

What do Casa del Shai, Wilted Rose, CKS Designs, Daphne Molinari, ETD, Immortelle, Kyoot Army, Last Call, Le Cadre, Nymphetamine, Punch Drunk, Refuge, SiniStyle, Straylight, and TRUTH have in common? They all own groups on one of the fastest growing services ever to hit SL. I cannot stress enough how this device will shape our virtual future.

MSo Lambert, of Synthetik, sought to fix a serious issue that affects all of us - the 25 group limit. Before Subscribe-o-Matic, residents had to choose which groups to leave on a weekly basis in order to make room for more important groups. Now they can just click to subscribe and go on with their business.

For business owners, this means so much more. They are able to see who their subscribers are, when they signed up, what location they signed up at, manage their messages, send notecards, items, and pictures, or just make a simple announcement. In just two short months, the subscriber base has grown to over 19,000!

MSo is continually making improvements upon the service. Some of the features in the works are HUDs that will let you manage your subscribed groups and messages, raising the subscriber limits for the price ranges, integration with third party products and vendors for group discounts and sales, and statistics for the group owners! For a complete listing of all of the customers, you can visit the directory. To find out more or get the system to try for free for 14 days, you can visit his store in Glenn.

Lifeskool and Machinima.com are teaming up to host a Machinima contest inviting you to show them your "sickest trick". Lifeskool is a free on demand TV network online that covers a variety of topics. Machinima.com is a site where you can showcase your Machinima, chat in their forums, and participate in contests.

The contest began on October 1st and will be accepting entries through January 31st, 2008. According to the rules, the Machinima can be about anything you want, including music videos, comedies, and dramas. There is no entry fee, but you must be 18 years old to enter. Please note that they specify only one entry per person.

On February 5th, they'll begin the voting process, which ends on the 22nd. 10 finalists will be selected from the entries, and then the judges, which include Tommy Lee, will pick the Grand Prize Winner, while voters will pick the People's Choice Winner. They'll announce the winners on March 5th.

The Grand Prize Winner will be flown to New York to spend time with the creator of This Spartan Life, Chris Burke. They will put you up in a hotel for up to 12 days and give you $1000 USD spending money as well! The People's Choice Winner will receive the video game console of their choice, up to $1000 USD in retail value. For more rules and information about the contest, please see their FAQ

Law & Order: SVU aired their second episode of the season, titled Avatars, last night. The premise was a girl being kidnapped from her home, and through investigating, they discover that she is portraying a 14 year old girl in a virtual world called "Another YOUniverse". There are many similarities between this platform and Second Life.

We are given a tour of the world by a woman with the avatar name of Tawny Coppercuffs. She shows an avatar profile that has transaction history, images, video clips, and pictures of friends. It's something I actually wouldn't mind seeing implemented in Second Life itself. She is friends with the woman that disappeared and knows her by Vixy Platinum. They use AY to explore their sexual fantasies and charge money for their services. It is then revealed that Vixy is an ageplayer that has a large number of clients.

In the next scene, the detectives are explaining the virtual world to their boss. You can buy anything, including virtual real estate, food, and clothing. Just like in the real world. You pay for it in virtual cash, which can be exchanged for real money. At that point, it is time for them to get answers from Eric Winton, the creator of AY. Is it me, or does he look similar to Philip Rosedale, creator of Second Life, in hairstyle and manner of dress?

I won't spoil the ending for you, but I really feel that it portrays virtual worlds in a negative light. Those uninitiated will think that they are only about sex and roleplaying fantasies. While those are a large part of Second Life, we as residents know that there is so much more out there to be done. Did you see the episode? What were your thoughts on it?

On October 1st, SocialRank introduced Sweet Second Life, which could be considered a Techmeme for the Second Life crowd. Once SocialRank decides on a niche to monitor, they invite a set number of bloggers from that niche to go about their business of blogging. From there, they manually identify the top stories, related blogs, and topics. After several weeks, a complex algorithm learns from the patterns and is able to spot the hottest news on it's own!

From what I can tell, it monitors the traffic to the blog entry, number of trackbacks, and comments at the very least. At that point, it recommends the 15 top posts of the moment, and the 15 blogs that showed the greatest increase in traffic for the day. Once it identifies the entry as a success, it sends a trackback to it, if possible.

Not only are they keeping viewers informed of the stats, but they're also gaining new viewers in the bloggers that check out the incoming link! I was even able to spot a few blogs that I'd never checked out before. It's brilliant!

What's cute, cuddly, and politically incorrect in every way? Tiny Tardimals! Kyro Kilian, the proprietor of Tardimals HQ, began creating these avatars as an alternative to the more traditional, healthier looking tinies. The initial response to them has been so overwhelming that he's even had to hire sales reps!

Kyro is constantly adding new Tardimals to the lineup, with his latest being a squirrel. He also sells accessories, such as bandanas, glasses, and costumes to wear with your avatar. As soon as they look up at you with their bug eyes and their tongue hanging out, you're hooked. You can find his store in Collins.

The real world is so mobile that you can take your IM buddy lists with you everywhere you go, including your cell phone. This, of course, did not apply to SL - until now. On October 1st, Vodafone, as presented by Rivers Run Red, launched the public beta of their InsideOut program.

The way it works is you would go to their island and get a HUD from the vending machine. When you attach the HUD, it gives you instructions and takes you to a webpage where you will enter your real cell phone number. Once it verifies that it is valid, it will allow you to start adding buddies to your list. It will assign a virtual number to you where you can text your friends' cell phones back and forth from your HUD!

Until November 30th, the service will be available for free, but will possibly cost up to 300L per text message sent after that. Standard text message usage charges occur from your cell phone provider, though. For now, the numbers that you must text from your cell phone are in Germany, which limits many US customers. If your carrier allows it, though, it's a really cool feature for SL!

To celebrate the public beta, there will be treasure hunts throughout the week. You can win Vodafone goodies and Linden dollar prizes. You can find out more about this program on their website, or by going to Vodafone InsideOut island.