The Zindra Times is now closed to new postings. Real life commitments are taking priority right now for several of our staff members. However, we will keep our past content up on this web site.
We recommend you look at the following blogs if you are interested in Sex in Second Life and Virtual Reality.
Jennnnna Jameson is Second Life's Leading Porn Star, and a prioir reporter for the Zindra Times. Her blog is both fun and sexy. Check out Jennnnna Jameson's Second Life.
For gay readers, Eddi Haskell, the former editor of the Zindra Times publishes Second Life's Leading LGBT blog. Check out Eddi Haskell's Second Life.
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Jago Constantine, the founder of the Zindra Times publishes a blog that has ranked the coolest DJ's and clubs in Second Life. You can catch his blog here:
Suede Sixpence, the former Editor of the Zindra Times has just set up a very chic Photography and Fashion Blog. Please check out Suede Design Studio.
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Suede Sixpence : So Tazzy, Please tell the readers a little about your Avatar's life on the grid.
Tazzy Jenkins: Ok, well I'll start with me, I'm an SL work-aholic : ). I love creating things. My motto is "so many ideas, so little time". It's what I do with the majority of my time in SL. I own Tazzy's Tasty's. Hippie Haven, Perfect Day Wedding Store, The Grocery Store and of course Playmates. I have been on SL for a little over 2 yrs.
Suede Sixpence: Yes I do see your a busy woman, which of these enterprises was running first?
Tazzy Jenkins: Hippie Haven was 1st (I am a die hard hippie RL) then came the magazine.
Tazzy Jenkins: I love to read and so I subscribed to a lot of magazines and was very disappointed. There were so many ads. I had to wait for each page to rezz just for ads. So I decided to write my own magazine. Many of my friends were trying to get into modeling so I thought Playmates would be a wonderful outlet for my creativity and to help models get exposure.
Suede Sixpence: and your right about the ads it's too many. So back to your magazines,how many issues have you produced so far?
Tazzy Jenkins: 29 Playmates, we expanded with Boy Toy which is Bi-monthly and we are working on our 5th issue and the 4th Playmates After Dark
Suede Sixpence: What is the difference between Playmates and Playmates after dark?
Tazzy Jenkins: After Dark is an X-Rated version of Playmates, we try to keep Playmates classy and informative,We say Playmates is for your coffee table and After Dark is for your night stand".
Suede Sixpence: How do you find your models or do they tend to come to you, I would have thought you would be flooded with girls?
Tazzy Jenkins: we had so many request that we started a contest. Then they are used throughout the year for pictorials and appearances and the calender. So many women wanted to be in the magazine and at first we had a free contest where we (our staff) voted, but feelings got hurt, So then we had a voting system where you could only vote once. one day I got an IM from this girl who was so upset because none of her friends voted for her. She said she had been disfigured in RL and was living vicariously through her avi. It is the only way I know that "Anyone" can live out their dreams in actual fact we have had to give some make-overs to a few models before the shoots but in the end I thinks its the most fair system of choosing models for Playmates.
Suede Sixpence: It's true.. SL has a bad rap.. but honestly.. for people in Second Life.. who may not be how to say.. Richard Gere or Julia Roberts.. Second Life is a nice equalizer.
Tazzy Jenkins: A wonderful fantasy, lets face it in RL only a tiny percent make a mag cover.
Suede Sixpence: How much are the magazines?
Tazzy Jenkins: They are $99L because we only allow 10 or less ads but we are switching to free issues next month for more distribution. I think Playmates will blow up once we go free. I hope so, we really try hard to make it a quality mag, good to read and look at, the tiny print in many magazines doesn,t make since to me, if I cant read neither can anyone else. So we made ours with larger print and more pictures.
Suede Sixpence: oh btw.. your welcome to put a kiosk at the Zindra times office if you want
Tazzy Jenkins: wonderful! we will be setting up the Intelli-Kiosks soon, so all our publications will be free. However,we still have to pay upload charges, blank books and our staff as well as tiers and rent at several sales stores.
Suede Sixpence: So you will need adverts to recoup your costs
Tazzy Jenkins: no! never
Suede Sixpence: still no adverts.. so how you gonna break even?
Tazzy Jenkins: we decided we aren't in it to make a profit, so with the model fee's we can pull it off the contest boards I meant.
Suede Sixpence: yeah that is a good income generator, hopefully it will cover your publishing costs.
Suede Sixpence: Okay and how long does it take you to produce one copy.. do you do everything the editorials, articles and photography or do you have a team?
Tazzy Jenkins: I could never do 60+ pages alone! I have a wonderful co-owner, Carma Latte, she is the fearless one. I'm the quiet one behind the scenes. We also have writers and investigative reporters on staff
Suede Sixpence: ah hah.. what do you investigate
Suede Sixpence: smiles
Tazzy Jekins :nothing deep, mainly we like to tell our readers the truth about relationships, scams, etc as well as great entertainment places, shopping and new things to see and do. Sherlynn Donner and Katelin Skytower do a lot of the foot work for us.
Tazzy Jenkins: It's great exposure for models also, have had many centerfolds tell me later how much it boosted their careers
Suede Sixpence: Boosted their careers in what way?
Tazzy Jenkins: Having a 12 pg pictorial on their portfolio and the cover had given them exposure. several models said they were approached by fashion designers to model. I love hearing that.
Suede Sixpence: I did notice you had JJ on the cover, that is how I noticed the magazine in the first place.
Suede's notes
The books are in in intellibook format, and loaded quite quickly even on my state of the dump computer. Tazzy was very pleasant and obviously cares a lot about the quality of the magazines she produces, when they go to free publication, I dont see any reason why you should not get yourself a copy or 10 and pass them around to your mates along with a nice cold beer.
Oh and ladies, that boy toy is well worth looking at too..
So I found the coolest thing today, It is a *FREEEEEEE* service, which is always good , and what does it do, well basically you type in the co-ordinates of somewhere cool you like any sim and an automated bot comes over and films the location creating a seamless panoramic view of the sim, it's super really.
Here is the blurb from the website it's self.. quote unquote
Peek360° is a free application that allows you to take a quick 360 degree look at a location in-world without the need for logging into a Second Life client. The output is delivered as a flash display which you can view with a standard browser and share to others via links and social networking sites. As long as the website is active, the panoramic views you created will remain in the server.
Peek360° was conceived and developed by Avatrian, a full-service metaverse development company that specializes in Second Life, OpenSim and other virtual worlds. Avatrian has been in operation since 2006 and has a Gold Solutions Provider status by Linden Labs. You can visit www.avatrian.com for more information about the company.
The bot who comes to take the shots is called Paparazzi Artful, and this is what she took of the Zindra Times Office in Ironchurch.
I also took a view of my house which has a lot of trees, but the trees kinda obscured the view and so it is up to you to choose the location you want the bot to film carefully. It also sent my finished *Peek* to my email within 4 minutes which is really very fast. I also want to show you the 1st one I did with the tree problem.
The website is listed below so you can have a look yourself.. like I said before I thought it was very very cool. Go try it out for yourself. http://www.avatrian.com/Peek360/confirm.php
Firstly sorry I have not been posting, there have been a few shakeups at my RL work and I am being kept busy by all that, hopefully it will be all sorted out by next week and so I will be back to posting at least 4-5 times a week.
Okay, So the next new thing is this, the staff at the Zindra Times are all pretty niffty with the snapshot button and we have decided to hold an exhibition of our work,above and below are our official adverts. Please come to the gallery and see our work and meet us inworld, so then you can tell us what you really think of us......sniggers.
I had a little trouble with this video, my poor G4 decided to do the mac sadface on me and I have been sitting on this video for at least 2 weeks, I actually managed to finish it tonight and post it. It's a cute series of photos of the Sensual Stoneworks Roleplay castle with all it's clever toys, some of which I played with too..
* Update, I got an email today - saying my sound track was copyrighted and they muted it, hence no music, I used Wild Thing by the Troggs, looks sad, I pulled it off my cd, so not much I can do. looks sad.. sorry about the lack of music.* enjoy
Dont forget to tp over to Sensual Stoneworks to experience all they have to offer for yourself.
This is a comparsion of two shots using the same model and the same pose as well as the same camera angle the only change that was made was the light and the angle of sun on the siders.
The Stats Model: Chaser Baxton Viewer: Emerald Pose : Instinct Bed No.13 Skin, shape and Tats.. Model won't tell
First Picture. I turned the viewer to basic night with out doing much of anything really. I turned the sun from left to right trying to move the shadows on the body, but as you can see it was not very successful and eventually I realised I was just wasting my time. The picture is flat and uninteresting even though the subject matter is worth looking at.
My personal thing is that I don't tweak and polish using photoshop, even though I have it, I try to use SL's inbuilt photography tools to create the atmosphere I need.
Second Picture So I ran through the presets on Emerald and eventually decided on this one. I think the reason why is totally obvious, the light is so dramatic, the sky turned black, the sheet turned white ( which it actually was- it wasn't green at all) and every muscle and angle on Bax's body was highlighted to perfection. Even his knee is sexy and making knees especially man's knees sexy has gotta be worth something. I decided on this angle because as usual the model's face is not that important to me, I wanted to show the flow of this man's body.. I don't know about you, but I want to trail a fingertip down that neck and onto those pecs.. and maybe slide the flat of my hand....... ooops enough of that..
Well, so anyway as you can see my point is well made with these two comparsion photos, a little tweaking with the light sliders can make the difference between a okay photo and a ohlala photo.. cheers Suede
Kitten Rumble is the Owner of this new club on the Sexual Fantasy sim with her junior partner faye mai. She showed me around and I must admit I liked what I saw the club looks terrific. So below is the interview I had with the delectable Ms. Rumble... Purrrrrrrr.....
Suede Sixpence: So why did you decide to open the club Kitten Rumble: I wanted to try some of the ideas I had...no neon classy and discrete, see if it would appeal to people
Suede Sixpence: how did you come up with the name Kitten Rumble: I just went with what liked and the name lends its self to lots of things....its provocative and also when shortened it gave us the name for the dancers...dynomite..tnt...and we do like spank here Suede Sixpence: ah clever play on words Suede Sixpence: Did you do much work to the build, the inside of the club has an art deco feel to it. Kitten Rumble: I have great friends who helped me, my best friend in here it does textures, so I picked and she did the work. I am not a builder. The Club is my favorite colour downstairs and upstairs I changed it because I wanted the mood to change, its sexier upstairs and we also have a skybox based on each colour.
Suede Sixpence: Do you have a music feed to the club and what kind of music do you play ? Kitten Rumble: Yes we have a music feed to the club and we have two D.J.'s Ruff and Koss Kitten Rumble: The music we are playing ...or we will be playing...will be edgy sexy stuff...I like UK bands so we mix it up and we like the ladies with attitude stuff too.
Suede Sixpence: So.. is this a dance club with lapdances.. and/or is there escorting involved? Kitten Rumble: We prefer to call it professional roleplay, its not voice, its not real,its sl and roleplay Suede Sixpence: Like burlesque clubs so for example.. a girl might say to the client/customer Suede leans forwards and whispers in your ear.. whilst trailing her fingertips down your arm. That kinda thing? Kitten Rumble: Yes but where we differ here is that there is absolutely NO lewd remarks on local, but on IM is where the fun is. Kitten Rumble: the girls use IM to be discrete and find out what the client would like to play, so if you come people are dancing and having a good time...but under the surface its sex. We won't employ until we have trained them our way, We dont allow any notecard emotes it has to be an interactive experience.
Kitten also showed me the skyboxes she has available, one is themed blue and the other red, the blue box I really liked it has a fully animated bathroom and the decorations were very plush indeed. Ms Rumble did mention to me several times during our chat about the fun of * spanking* so I think that might be a little kink in the works.. if you're.. into a little red bottom yourself.. you might find all your fantasies fulfilled at the Top and Tails club.
Quote unquote " the name lends its self to lots of things....its provocative and also when shortened it gave us the name for the dancers...dynomite..tnt...and we do like spank here"
Three weeks ago, on January 12, the most devastating natural disaster in modern times hit Haiti. - a 7.0 Earthquake. As most people know by now, estimates are that 200,000 people have died, and 1.2 million have been left homeless.
As soon as I heard about this, I decided to do something in Second Life- even if it was small scale. I approached the remarkable Sasun Steinbeck, head of the art galleries group, about setting up a kiosk system for Haiti - with contributions going to Direct Relief International, one of the most effective charity groups in the world with a 99% effectiveness rating. Our goal was to reach 100,000 linden in donations in three weeks and raise awareness in Second Life for Haiti efforts. We were one of the first to respond, and as of today, we reached our goal. I want to thank Sasun for doing so much and putting in many many hours to make this possible.
The kiosk systems will be coming down today; other groups in Second Life and other individuals are planning their own beneifts. I will still be depositing all funds that come into my account (including all wedding and photography fees) for the time being into the Haiti effort - with the exception of funds earmarked for the Bread and Jams homeless organization in the United States.
I will be maintaining a donation box though March 1 at the Living Color store in Whiskers if you care to make donations.
I do want to thank one individual who will continue to collect funds along with myself for Haiti - Jenwen Walpole at Escort Oasis. But more importantly, Jenwyn has personally raised over $48,000 Linden (at last count) at Escort Oasis for Haiti. In other words, half the donations were from this one establishment!
Escort Oasis is more than a sex club, it has really good shopping, free skyboxes if you need "privacy" for that special someone, and is just a really nice place to hang out. The "sploder" gives a percent to Haiti. The sotres are excellent and have a large selection of things that are of interest to gay Second Lifers (I need to mind the non-mature rating of the blog but please use your imagination). And, of course, it has really hot freelance escorts- and is crowded at all hour of the day.
Please patronize this establishment. and check it out. You will be helping the people in Haiti by doing so.
Thanks for reading, and thank you for helping the people in Haiti ---
IMAGE LINKS TO SLURL *proudly serving SL's gay community since mid-2007 *undoubtedly largest selection of genuine gay furniture on one sim *creator of acclaimed new 'ULTRA' products featuring 568 animations spread across 50 menus for 2 and 3somes *made for gays, approved by gays, and used by gays *over 6000 'very satisfied' customers
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