Kiva in Second Life

[Guest]

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[Diane R]

While Linden Labs is not yet officially supporting Second Life on Windows Vista, people whose computers have nVidia graphics cards have reported in the SL Forums that they are running just fine under Vista.  People with ATI graphics cards and Vista are the ones reporting no success yet.  Linden Labs has not published any date for support of Vista yet.

One suggestion from someone using Vista and responding in the forums (and I have no way to tell whether it's reliable or not since I'm not going anywhere near Vista with a ten foot pole just yet, and maybe never if I can avoid it):

Try this before you completely give up on Vista. I know most of you have probably already tried this, but I'll put it out in case you haven't.
-Right click on your desktop SL icon. (The one you use to start SL.)
-Select properties from the bottom of the list.
-Once the properties window opens, click on the "Compatibility" tab.
The following configuration worked for me, you may have to play with yours a bit to get it to work. Don't forget to press "Apply" or "Ok" each time you change the settings.

Settings:
*Run this program in compatibility for: [Windows XP(Service Pack2)]
*Disable Visual Themes
*Disable Desktop Composition

Hope it helps!

[Henry]

thanks! it does work, my laptop get's very hot, worries me a little.  Not going to use it, will wait till I get a working video card in the computer.

[Julia]

Thanks to Kivafriend and Kiva in SL friend Lovania Gray, we now have a free booth in a charity spot in first life aid. All we have to do is choose a spot and set up! 

This place is like a mall and has info about a lot of different charities, I noticed Greenpeace and WWF were there.

So if you have a moment to log on and look and give me suggestions for a spot, please do.  If you didn't get the landmark from the group, do a PLACE search on 'first life aid' and you'll find it.   I'm thinking we want to take as big as possible.  I have stuff to fill it, and can make more!

thanks

Julia (aka Julles Boucher)

[michael]

Its quite time consuming.  I need to upload the file as a *.tga with an alpha channel with the transparencies blacked out, but even sending me a *.jpg with just the person and item cut out would be helpful.

Um, yea, that makes no sense to this old man whatsoever.   But you could take a look at Gogo and his ice pops and see if this meets your standards.  You may have to go ahead and pull the cooler with the rest of the pic.  And it would be nice to photoshop the top of his head back on too............

http://www.kiva.org/app.php?page=businesses&action=about&id=8888

[Joe]

Nice picture, Michael. That would make a nice cutout. 

Julia, did you get the booth confirmed yet? I like the idea of Kiva housed up next to the Greenpeace and the other big charities. Diane's donated land is coming along great as well! We'll need to get some pictures of all that in here soon.

[Julia]

Things happen fast in Second Life.  I got approved for the free booth at the First life aid, and in a few hours we set it up. (three people thousands of miles apart from each other, CA, NY and Belgium).
So this booth is free and was donated by some wonderful people who just want to promote first life charities in second life.  One of the people running it is in South Africa, she made our kiva sign for the roof that revolves.





and already a bit of silliness, sword fighting.

[Kay]

That's fantastic, Julia!

[Julia]

I attended a meeting today in Second Life for Non-profits in SL.  It was VERY interesting.  At first I was concerned with what I would wear - besides the KIVA jacket I made. All my other clothes are historical!  Turns out I did not stand out at all, the meeting was full of some very interesting looking characters, and it reminded me a lot of meetings around exam time when no one had time for laundry and showed up in whatever was clean. 

I took several pages of notes and didn't quite understand everything, lots of new lingo and such. I also crashed a few times, so missed some things.  There was a presentation from the  non-Profit Global Network, SL relay for Life (they do an annual event for cancer and have raised over $100,000 US in Second life.  there relay is in 8 days and people will be walking in teams for 24 hours in 32 sims.  Opening ceremony is July 28 2pm.  Contact me (julles boucher) if you want to do a kiva presence together at the ceremony or any other time in the 24 hours. Apparently there is a real life convention in Chicago at the same time, with over 100 presenters).

The meeting was at a sim that has a lot of Non-profit stalls. I was in two last night and they were incredible, and there are still many more to explore.  This place is new and they do not have all the booths/stalls/offices filled yet. They are going to have the opening party in a few weeks.  Apparently there is a waiting list for space, but I'm going to try to get us at least a sign or teleporter or something. This looks very promising, the person who runs this area is a KIVA lender.   
We are welcome to meet here. We should check out all the booths for ideas for KIVA too, and I think a lot of developers here will help us.  The landmark was sent out in the last KIVA group notice, but contact me for it if you need it.

I had another person at the meeting tell me they loved KIVA and had room for a display on their island too, so I"m going to check that out also. It's AMO island. I'll keep everyone posted.

I have a favor to ask, can someone(s) please write
1) a 20 word blurb about KIVA, being succinct and enticing and simple (and 20 words or less).
2) a few paragraphs blurb about KIVA for a notecard (no word count limit except the limit on what people will read). 
the audience is people in SL who can read English, many will not be English speakers as a first language.
This is for the directory. And we will use it for our information, and get both translated into as many languages as possible. 
  So I was hoping there would be enough people here to collaborate and come up with great words.  Thanks in advance.

[Julia]

Just want to say that the kiva in SL group has raised money now for loans 8 & 9.  YOu can see them all
here:kiva.org/lender/secondlife1494.

This is from people raising money in second life by 'camping' (some people pay you to hang out in their space). So this is real loans from real money made in a virtual world.  How amazing.

[wind5001]

I'm still puzzled by the success of this method of raising money for KIVA. To see that the SL group has already raised money for 8 loans is incredible! Julia, you're doing some great work there!

I can translate the write-ups into German, once they're finished. Just let me know.

Oli