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  AW News (july + aug.+ sept. 2021)
 
General news (Activeworlds & its Community)
 
* Community Picture
 
During the Community Meeting of 16th may, there had been decided for the 26th anniversary of AW, to make a Community Picture on 26th june and and a party in Darkmatter's Ballroom, but all the events had been cancelled. ( why? -> read below)
However, for the Community Picture, Heu (#348543) had decided to make the Community Picture on Sunday 11th July at 6 PM VRT.
This event has been a succes with more then 30 citizens present to take the Community Picture.
One of the screenshots ..
Heu (#348543) has added afterwards as many citizens for the community picture as he could : he added all the citizens that came online when he was online , during the rest of the month of july and he added them with Photoshop.

The final result is a picture with 139 citizens. There have been added 2 special citizens to the picture : Keshi , who passed away 5 days later (she was already in hospital on 11th of july) , and Bach Zhaa, our community leader , who had been banned again in June.

(-> more info below about Keshi and about Bach Zhaa ).
With that many citizens on the picture, Heu had convinced us that here is still a large community in Activeworlds , and that AW stays alive and active.
Community picture by Heu : Final result
* New feature : Text to Speech
 
* On 11th of July , a new feature has been introduced : all the chat text that appears in the chat window, will be automatically spoken by a voice. This spoken text includes : name of the citizen or bot that speaks , and text that the citizen or bot has typed.
Also the text in whisper mode will be spoken text . And also the text generated by the say command. The say command is one of the building commands . And finally also text messages generated by a bot. There are pros and cons for this new feature.
 
Cons - Objections
 
* It affects your privacy : everything that you type, will be heard others (in the same world), But for text in whisper mode, here Chris (#290065) assured us that only yourself and the citizens to which you whisper , will hear the text speech.
 
* A problem for parties with music in public worlds : For instance, in Star City, the "text to speech" will disturb the music, because all the written text will be spoken. And you will have to explain to every "party visitor" to how to desactivate the "text to speech", so that they only hear the music.
 
* A problem for private worlds that host parties with music , or for the "text to speech" in general : the private world owners should have the option to desactivate the "text to speech" in their world features.
 
* The problem of abundance of spoken text, because not all the text messages in the chat needs to be spoken.
 

* The spoken text of chattext written in a foreign language is not spoken correctly by the spoken voice.

Pros - Supports
 
The text to speech has also elements in favour, it can be useful.
 
Sound signal : If someone enters the world and you are busy with something, you will hear the spoken text if that citizen enters a text in the chat window, and you will be able to respond to that citizen before he/she leaves again.
 
If you prefer listening instead of reading : some people prefer to rest their eyes , and can follow the chat just by listening to what has been typed.
 
Or if you are too lazy to read.
 
You can continue with your 3d build while you can listen to the chat.
 
If you have a virtual museum , then you can add the "activate say" command to sign objects or to pictures , and the text will appear in chat and all that text will be spoken as well. It will be ust like in a real museum , where a guide explains everything with words and not with text.
 
Gaming options : you can activate the gaming instructions that way. Also for instance in a science-fiction world , the "text to speech" can be used for robots, androids and intelligent computers or advanced domotica.
 
How to activate / desactivate the "text to speech" ?
 
* Here you go in the menu to : Options - Settings - Chat
Then you check or uncheck the option : Text to Speech
 
How can you have the speech for another language ?
 
* In the forum , Chris (#290065) talks about "text-to-speech translation"
For this you need to go to Microsoft's Text To Speech Service Settings e.g. change voice and language i the Windows Contol Panel
* Read in the AW Forum : Help & Support - Text to Speech
* Wiki pages : http://wiki.activeworlds.com/index.php?title=Text_To_Speech
In general , people have welcomed the new option , which proves that the AW software continues being updated.
Somehow, citizens have questions to get improvements to this new feature, but Chris has responded that their will be no additional options, he wants to keep it "basic".
 
 
* New feature : Laurel-Spangled Rating
 
* On 30th of July , the Star-Spangled Rating has been expanded with Laurels : as from now , you need to be 31 years online in order to obtain the Diamond (white) Laurel Rating.
As Activeworlds exists "only" 26 years, it will take 5 years before the first (oldest) citizens will reach this status.
* An overview of the Star- and Laurel -Spangled Rating can be found on the wiki pages
http://wiki.activeworlds.com/index.php?title=Star-Spangled_Rating
On this picture we see Dreme Lojyk (#155898) with 1 blue laurel, which means that he is already 19 years a citizen in Activeworlds. This picture has been taken in the new Landing Zone of Alphaworld (more info below)
* Keshi has passed away
 
* Activeworlds has lost an important citizen , Keshi (352322). She passed away on 16th of july at the age of 65, after kidney and liver failure. She was a diabetes patient .She lived in USA and was of jewish origin. Her real name was Angela Jourden Banker .

* Keshi was a modeler, she was skilled in the modeling program Wings3d. She offered models for sale in her private world !!AVines , but she also gave modeling classes in her world (in 2016) . You can download the lessons there together with the textures for the creation of the models. She already created a Wings3d modeling school in 2010 , in the world Winter, on position 85N 598W .

* She also hosted the Explorers Club from 2013 till 2016.
* In 2018-2019 helped creating the portal world AWEntry: almost all the models there were created by Keshi.
* She also offered world hosting, which she offered together with Karten (#315184) .And Karten will take this hosting service over from her.
* But she did more than that...(.e.g making terrains in Dovestar's world Shokan , doing modeling works for world owners, playing games like ToTheTop , building up the world AAABrasil ,...)
* She played a leading role in Activeworlds. We won't forget her.
Lady Pippin (#308688 ) has made a memorial area for Keshi in Alphaworld :
AW 4387S 3669E 1a 90
Keshi (Angela Jourden Banker) (from her Facebook page)
* Cleet has passed away
 

* Also the citizen Cleet (397603) (Jim Brooks) has passed away. Sad news already reached us mid july, when Cleet had to be taken to hospice, and that he wouldn't return to Activeworlds. But on 24th august , CableCarGal(#288431) had announced that Cleet already has passed away on 22nd of July at the age of 80.

* Cleet was also an important citizen : he was the world owner of the world Brooksworld.
* This huge world (p100-size!) contains hundreds of unique objects and avatars. While the world is still online now, i have explored the entire world , and added an explore page with a wide range of pictures of this nice world.
* Cleet had also a lot of help from Keshi (352322) for his world.
Lady Pippin (#308688 ) has made a memorial area for Cleet in Alphaworld :
AW 4374S 3679E 1a .
* The memorial overview of the "fallen leaves of the AW tree" can be found on position 4387S 3685E 1a 180.
Picture of Cleet with his dog . This plate object (in Brooksworld) is an object from Keshi's Wings3d modeling school.
*The Peacekeepers organisation has stopped
 
* Also on 11th of July, Tomas (312020), who leads the Peacekeepers organisation has announced on AW Facebook, as well as in the AW Forum that the core members of the Peacekeepers have decided to disband their organisation.
* Reasons are the increasing disinterest in AW and not being treated by AW like it should.
* From now on, any questions about building issues, cit's issues and object garbage are to be adressed to AWI themselves. This can be found on the website of activeworlds , then click upon" Help" in the upper right corner, and then upon "Support".
* Some Peacekeepers ( for instance Perra #261818 ) will continue doing volunteer work for Activeworlds !!
 
 
 
 
 
The reaction of AW ( Chris (#290065) ) is that they were not involved in the discussion of closing down the organization.
However they thank the Peacekeepers organization for their cooperation of more than 2 decades, knowing it is a hard job and time consuming.
The #911 account has been disabled , and the 2 worlds related to this organization have been closed.
AW welcomes however the startup of a new organization, that takes over the community concerns in the free universe of AW.
* Bach Zhaa has been banned (again)
 
Bach Zhaa (#360197) had returned in february 2021 after his ban from Activeworlds in 2018. He also resumed the two-monthly Community Meetings, which continued to be succesful as they had been like before.
In april , a new problem began, when his account for the AW Expo Zone had been taken away from him. There has been talked with Rick Noll about that, during the community meeting on 18th april, and it was decided to give the account back to Bach Zhaa, and Rick Noll proposed to do some kind of contest, in order to create a new landing zone for Alphaworld, so that there would be a rotating world entry point. (±yearly).
A week later, Bach Zhaa got his rights back , but the world entry point of Alphaworld was moved to the entry point of 1995 (0N 0W) , until a new landing zone was created.
Then later, in june, there had been questions in the AW Forum about how to build up this new landing zone. Bach Zhaa responded that it has never been agreed by the community to bulding a new lading zone, and that this was only a proposal by Rick Noll , but no agreement by the AW Community. This discussion got worse and had lead to a new ban for Bach Zhaa.

Heu (#348543) (in the background) has decided to be the photographer for the community picture instead of Bach Zhaa

News from the worlds
 
* Alphaworld has a new landing zone
 
During the Community Meeting of 18th of april in Dreamland, the CEO of Activeworlds, Rick Noll -> Rick (#8), also known as Enzo (#59991) told that he preferred to have a "rotating" system for the Alphaworld landing zone, this means ±yearly another world entry point. As the landing zone of AWExpo was already the landing zone of Alphaworld since 2014, and that was too long in his opinion.
The landing zone was modified in may to position 0N 0W , which is the "old" landing zone of 1995. This was not a good idea, because nothing can or will be changed or added here due to the historic value of the location , and it is plenty of dead url-links.
On 13th of July , SW Chris (#306637) returned to Activeworlds, he is one of the builders of SW City , ( located in Alphaworld on position 2217S 3609E)..
SW Chris told to Chris (#290065) (who is in charge of the programming and decision making of Activeworlds ) , that he had created in 2011 a copy of a modernised version of the old landing zone on position 8000S 11000W. Finally , on 14th July, it was agreed to make this area as the new AW landing zone, as there can be modified things (e.g. adding new ads and new signs for the current aw community , or a calendar with the events) ..
This will be a temporary landing zone, until a new LZ is created , but creating a brand new landing zone lasts for several months..
SW Chris asks (on Facebook Official) for new ads for the new landing zone.
The new Landing Zone, this LZ will be temporarily as there are a lot of error messages of dead url-links. On this picture, we can see the citizen Mondo (#209221), who has now a "laurel" status.
* AWSchool is looking for new teachers
 
One organization decides to stop, but another organisation is looking to expand ... :
 
* Lensman (302579), is leading now the AWSchool organisation and is caretaker for the world AWSchool.
* Lensman is looking for new teachers : people which are prepared to help people in learning to build , and in helping to explain the many building commands.
* If you know the skills , and you are interested to be a teacher, then contact Lensman (302579), and let him know your citizen number, the country where you live, and the time zone where you live.
* In exchange, you will receive a privilege password, that can be used for building in the teaching areas and also for cleaning up the teaching area regularly of the many try-outs made by newbies. The privilege password cannot be used for the rest of the world AWSchool , it won't work to build on other locations besides the teaching areas.
* Alphaworld has a new map with teleports
 
* More than a decade ago, we had the Alphamapper created by Ima Genius (#96929) on his website Imabot.com. This webpage-map was very useful : there were 10 zoom levels on the map, and you could teleport from this map to a location in Alphaworld. The map had been created in 2008, afterwards there hadnt been made a more recent map. The map worked pretty well (on internet explorer version 9.0), until there were windows updates, and the map disappeared from the webpage. The page still exists: imabot.com/alphamapper/ but doesn't work anymore.
Some citizens told to restore / update the alphamapper, but this never happened.
 
* However, one citizen knew how the alphamapper-pictures were coded : Astroh (#349251) recreated the alphamapper on her website (zoom level 4) :
alphaworld.fr/guppy/articles.php?Ing=fr&pg=14
But she also knows the codes for more detailed zoom levels : you can read about this on this webpage that i made in 2015 : venice3d.net/2015news44.html
* Astroh even displayed a "small part" of the Alphamapper on zoom level 8 in Alphaworld on position 2300N 3200E 2a. This proves that the alphamapper images still are online on the internet.
 
* Finally i decided (= Panne (#365962) ) to create a teleportable map of Alphaworld, and can be viewed on position 15500N 23500E . Zoom level 4 has been used for this (like you can see on Astroh's webpage), and consists of 256 images (16 rows of 16 images).
Alphaworld is a p32750-sized world: 32750+32750=65500 divided by 16 means that each image covers an area of 4093x4093 cells.
For the map in Alphaworld, there has been chosen a scale of 1:1000, which means that 1 cell on the map is equal to 1000x1000 cells in Alphaworld. And 1 move position on the map (50cm) corresponds with 50 cells in Alphaworld. But in total , this map still consists of 33x33x4 cells = 4356 cells !! (33 because the world size is a p32750).
As each image corresponds with an area of 4093x4093 cells, the size of the picture objects has been scaled with 4.1, which corresponds with 4100x4100 cells. This is only a deviation of 7 meters per picture, or only 7x8=56 meters of difference with the p32750 border line.
 
There have been added hundreds of popular places on the Alphamapper, the teleports are on the poles . There are also a few railway lines on the map. The images of the map are still those of 2008 , this means that everything that has been built afterwards is not visible on the images. A disadvantage with the former alphamapper is that you don't have zoom levels , and that you can't teleport to any location on the map. The advantage compared with the former alphamapper is that you see the names of the most popular places in Alphaworld, you have "direct teleports" instead of "random teleports".
Citizen Celery (#365474) exploring the new Alphamapper
Alphaworld position 15500N 23500E
 
 
View from above : you can see the GZ, the SWCity area (= the large lake in the south-east), the birthday area (in the south), and Horizon City (in the south-east surrounded by a huge circle).
* Alphaworld has now a botanic garden
 
* Panne (#365962) has also started to create a botanic garden. The botanic garden consists of flowers, shrubs and trees (=arboretu) and can be called a plant yard.
The objectpath of Alphaworld is rather limited, which means that you don't have that many plants compared to objectpaths of other worlds.
 
* Some people however, are very creative and are able to create new and nice plants by using simple commands , or sometimes by using complicated commands. Alphaworld is big (size 32750), and all those creations can be found somewhere in Alphaworld, but there wasn't really a place where you could find all those creations together, until now:
The Botanic Garden can be found on position 15000N 23500E.
* All examples of the botanic garden can be found around the central building, and for each plant or tree, you will find a pink-coloured sign with the name of the builder , and with a teleport to the location where the plant has been found. The builder is not necessarily the creator : the builder might have copied it from another builder.
* When you go to the west (position 15000N 23475E ), you will find the entire objectyard of plants of Alphaworld, including more than 200 .png-images of MeL(#341444) that have been added to the Alphapath in 2015.
 
* All "new" plants of the botanic garden have been created with the Alphapath, there haven't been used picture -urls for these plants, which means that they will remain like they are , they won't have dead url-links.
However , the Botanic Garden will be expanded with an area of plants with picture objects. And this area will be limited to websites will are well-known to AW, like for instance the website of SWCity.
 
* The Botanic Garden has been started in august 2021 and when new plants creations have been found in Alphaworld ,they will be added to this Botanic Garden. No need to worry anymore about the limited choice of plants in Alphaworld !!
Central building on position 15000N 23500E.
 
 
* New attractions in Aeolia's Legoland
 
* Horsy (#319337) has added new builds to this p10 world , and this world has been build exclusively with Lego-models.
This summer, Horsy has added a church surrounded by trees (position 6N 5W). The church of the village where Horsy lives has been the example that he used for his Lego-church.
When visiting Aeolia , keep in mind that you will have to choose a Lego-avatar from the avatar-menu. And i advise also to lower the visibility, because its a heavy download. For instance, the trees around the church have 175125 vertices each.
But it is really worthwhile to have a look and see all those lego objects ! Have also a look inside the church :)
Church (and trees) in the world Aeolia
* New worlds
 
* Phoenixbyrd start: 15 july
p10

The world owner has the same name as his world : Phoenixbyrd (#386165)
 
 
* Fenrir start: 15 july
p20

This world is owned by Toxor (#391292)
 
 
* FlowerForest start: 17 july
p10

This world is owned by Feronia (#440143)
 
* Nosferatu start: 21 july
p10

This world is owned by .Vampyre. (#381446)

 

 

The world Flowerforest - Dance area