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OpenSim’s public grids gained 2,546 active users this month, and land area increased as well, by the equivalent of 2,475 standard region. OSgrid gained the largest land area — 4,440 new standard region equivalents, followed by DigiWorldz with 848, Virtual Worlds Grid with 441, Kitely with 411 and Atek Grid with 256Read More →

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Franco grid is calling on as many OpenSim creators as possible to submit their avatar creations for the fourth annual Festi’Avi 2017 event before the deadline at the end of September. The event is hypergrid-enabled and open to residents of all grids. Creators willing to participate can send an in-world noteRead More →

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[Editor’s note: In this opinion column, Kitely CEO Ilan Tochner is responding to High Fidelity’s content protection plan, which uses the same blockchain technology as that which powers Bitcoin. Tochner previously managed an identity rights protection company, IDChoice, and worked in Unit 8200, Israel’s equivalent of the NSA.] First, I’d likeRead More →

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Educators are using virtual worlds, but not in the way they had used them in the past, and not in the same numbers. What you see now is a more selective and targeted use by a smaller subset of the educational community, primarily higher education. Those groups that still useRead More →

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OpenSim’s public grids gained nearly 1,500 regions this month despite the summer season, but total active numbers were down by just over 1,700. The 257 currently active grids reported a record high area, totaling the equivalent of 83,190 standard regions. The biggest land gainer this month was Atek Grid withRead More →

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Educators are souring on virtual worlds, as evidenced by declining participation in online forums, in virtual conference attendances and education-related destinations on the Second Life grid. For example, Second Life Educators, the forum for educational organizations and educational use of Second Life, shows a dramatic decline in the number ofRead More →

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As you folks know, I’ve been struggling with collecting all the stats from all the grids every month, and, earlier this year, have almost fully automated the process, using an extremely jury-rigged Filemaker script. Today, I accidentally stumbled on the fact that Google Spread can be used to do theRead More →

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The Island Oasis grid now has a new owner, and has been offline since Monday while the servers are being moved to their new location. The grid is expected to be back up on Friday, according to the official announcement. The new owner’s name has not yet been announced. Former owner andRead More →

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If you’re using a default avatar that comes with some versions of OpenSim, your name might wind up on copybotted content without you knowing about it. That’s just what happened to a user known as “Gemini Fullmoon,” a resident of the Great Canadian Grid. Fullmoon is also the owner of the FullRead More →

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AvatarFest, which will showcase and celebrate non-commercial builds from talented OpenSim creators, will take place on September 23 and 24. Many exhibitors have submitted their applications but those who have not and are still willing to exhibit are invited to submit the applications by filling a form on or byRead More →

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Starting your own grid isn’t easy. You need your own servers, membership website, plus, of course, residents. Plus, if you want an in-world economy, you have to put payments in place. There are hosting providers, like DigiWorldz and Dreamland Metaverse, that will do all of this, but it takes quiteRead More →

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The total reported land area of OpenSim’s public grids has passed 80,000 regions — a record high. This is despite the fact that InWorldz, the most popular OpenSim grid, did not report its land area this month. The total number of registered users went up by 9,764, and even the numberRead More →

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If you have a unused balance in your ZanGrid virtual currency account, the grid is suggesting that you donate it for War Child charity to help children and people affected by war. The grid is conducting a fundraising campaign for the charity, which will last through September 1, and has created aRead More →

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  3rdLife grid will be hosting it is first year birthday on Friday, July 14 on its Amusement Park region, featuring live music and DJs. The following is the schedule for the day. 4 p.m. to 5 p.m.: DJ Shayna Wulluf (The wolf Lady) 5 p.m. to 6 p.m.: DJRead More →

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On Tuesday, David Kariuki’s article about a freebie store that distributed content that was “found and collected” on other grids — without any checks that the content was legal — drew some comments from people who defended the practice. Let’s put aside the main issue, that infringing content opens theRead More →

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The first meeting of the Hypergrid Chamber of Commerce will be at 11 a.m. Pacific time on Friday, July 21 and several major players in the OpenSim economy have officially joined as members, including Gloebit, Podex, and Kitely. Another early supporter is GamesCredit, which offers cryptocurrency-based in-game payments. The group plans to work on standards forRead More →

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Lost World grid is offering avatar make over freebies such as custom shapes, skins, hairs and clothes that have been collected from around OpenSim, all for free. However, the grid cannot confirm the origins or the license terms of some of this content. The items are available at Body ShopRead More →

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After trying several business models with fail and shutting down and reopening several times thus earning the name “the yo-yo grid,” AviWorlds is back online. This time, it’s a closed grid, meaning people will not be able to teleport to other grids or easily take their content to other grids —Read More →

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Public OpenSim grids gained the equivalent of 1,257 regions this month, while the number of active users rose by 511, after falling for the past three months in a row. Great Canadian Grid, InWorldz and The Adult Grid did not provide full data this data, as was the case theRead More →

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Last September, I looked at the land prices on all the public OpenSim grids, and the average price was $20.39 per standard region. Today, I reviewed the prices of all 55 grids that I know of that post their prices, and the average has fallen slightly to $19.22. The medianRead More →

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I occasionally get emails from people starting new OpenSim grids, and wondering how they’re going to pay for them. Here are the top five ways that OpenSim grids find success. 1. Commercial grids These are the best-known grids, typically because they put the most time and resources into sales andRead More →

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OpenSim lost land area and active users this month — on paper, at least — as one large commercial grid did not report its stats this month, and another grid suffered an outage. The total OpenSim land area fell by 442 regions this month, to reach 72,978 standard region equivalents. ThisRead More →

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AviWorlds is coming back — again — with a brand-new business model and a brand-new technology partner. Since early 2011, owner Alexsandro Pomposelli has experimented with being the most expensive grid, and with offering land for free. He tried to have the grid hosted with Dreamland Metaverse, with Zetamex, with Kitely, and, most recently, withRead More →

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Neverworld Grid has opened a fashion center, a group of hypergrid-enabled regions for avatar fashion and fashion shows where designers can showcase and sell items to both local residents and hypergrid visitors. There are also freebies available. The name of the main region is Design Couture, and it offers aRead More →

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Genesis Metaverse, a commercial grid that emerged last fall from the collapse of Avi-Labs, has been having problems with its currency vendor, Podex, and took the dispute public today. For residents, this means that they will now buy and sell their currency directly from the grid and not from Podex,Read More →

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Today, I got another submission for a free ad that was basically just the grid’s name. And I regularly talk to grid owners who try to tell me that their grid is special because of its community, and to attract residents they offer low-cost land and free user accounts. HavingRead More →

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The Great Canadian Grid will host its first annual Art Fest at 10:00 a.m. Pacific on Saturday, April 29 and Sunday, April 30 at the RR Estates regions. It will feature display of art, photography, poetry and stories from talented artists around OpenSim, and the grid hopes to have the showRead More →

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The Google Plus community OpenSim Everything gained 131 new members since last September, bringing it to a total of 506 members. It was the single biggest gainer of the OpenSim-specific communities we follow. However, more people could be visiting the community without becoming official members. OpenSim Virtual remains the largestRead More →

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All approved Gloebits merchants can now, from Saturday, withdraw their in-world proceeds through PayPal. The cash-out limit of 5,000 Gloebits is also going up, based on the merchant’s transaction history and level of identity verification. Cash-out limits will continue to rise in the future, Gloebits CEO Christopher Colosi told Hypergrid Business.  “As timeRead More →

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Key OpenSim stats fell this month, as two popular grids — InWorldz and The Adult Grid — opted not to report their total land area or their active users. InWorldz has been the most popular grid every month from 2012 on, and had 5,276 active users last month. However, bothRead More →

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If you’re a fan of Torben Asp — and you probably are, as he’s one of OpenSim’s favorite performers — and you live or visit the US east coast, you might now be able to catch him performing live, in person. “The move to the USA is to pursue a real lifeRead More →

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On the back of a new free land offer marketing campaign, Island Oasis gained 603 new registered users this past month, nearly twice as many as in March. This was the highest number of new registrations since the grid first launched in 2011. The grid offers free parcels of 4,896 square meters each withRead More →

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InWorldz announced that as of this month, it will no longer be publishing its region stats or active user numbers, two statistics which have been falling over the past few months. Total registered user numbers and the number of users currently logged in remain on the login screen, however. AccordingRead More →

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A number of grids are hosting Easter events including Easter Egg hunts and contests this Easter season. That includes two events on OSgrid. OSgrid‘s Easter Egg contest began last Monday and will go through Friday, April 14. The Event Plaza has been re-decorated for the occasion. Participants are competing to create the bestRead More →

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OpenSim grids reported a net fall in both regions and active users this month, but the regions drop was due to one grid with server issues, and the active users drop was due to a couple of grids that had problems with their stats. Overall, OpenSim lost 975 active users this month,Read More →

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This time, AviWorlds shut down not with a loud scandal, but without even a whisper. Over the past few days, grid owner Alexsandro Pomposelli has opted not to renew his grid servers, let his domain name expire, and shut down his media accounts and stopped responding to emails, Skype messages,Read More →

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To help schools and educators create, access and share more virtual learning and educational resources, an Educator Commons shop has been set up on OSgrid‘s Wright Plaza region by Kay McLennan, a professor of practice at Tulane University. The shop, which is hypergrid-enabled, has virtual world learning and teaching tools, freebies, Do-It-Yourself resources,Read More →

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The annual No Borders Festival, which was previously known as ROBstock Festival, will take place on Saturday, February 11 and Sunday, February  12 from 8 a.m to 8 p.m Pacific time on 3rd Rock Grid to raise money in support of the Doctors Without Borders medical charity. The name was changed toRead More →

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The total amount of money spent on purchases over the VirTec OpenSim vending machines network nearly doubled last year, increasing by 92 percent from $4,206 in 2015 to $8,080 in 2016, the company reported. Meanwhile, the total number of transaction increased nearly three-fold. In 2015, the company’s first year offering the OpenSim vending service,Read More →

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I am passionate about OpenSim and making OpenSim more accessible to people unfamiliar with the OpenSim platform. New people, like myself a few years back, need places to get things for their avatar and their region and this is my contribution. I visited a variety of places on the hypergridRead More →

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ZanGrid went live with the Gloebit virtual currency on Monday as the platform gets ready to start approving merchant cashouts. The currency can also already be used on Mobius Grid. Users can use a single virtual wallet to shop on any Gloebit-supported grid, and, when the grids allow, take the purchasesRead More →

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$6 for three years of protection against lawsuits from US creators — for any grid, anywhere in the world helps protect against take-downs by hosting companies and domain registrars helps keep creators from going to social media and blogs to get attention for problems The US Copyright office has madeRead More →

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OutWorldz has released a beta version of the DreamWorld OpenSim installer for home-based mini-grids which now offers users a free subdomain for their grid, such as anygrid.outworldz.net. Previously, users had the option of registering their own domain name with a commercial registrar or using a free external DNS service like No-IP, DuckDNS, andRead More →

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In response to yesterday’s post about the changing editorial direction at Hypergrid Business — and free ads — I’ve been flooded with requests for advertisements. And I want to run the ads. Really, I do. Promoting OpenSim to the 100,000-plus site visitors who might not have heard of OpenSim beforeRead More →

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The world seems to have hit a tipping point when it comes to immersive environments, and the pace of change is exploding. These changes have been dramatically reflected in the readership of this site over the past couple of months. My life is about to change dramatically as well. SoRead More →