100 Stories on CNN!!

I reached a bit of a milestone the other day, my 100th story on the CNN’s ireport site, I put my 101st story on today (SL London Includes Soho Sex Trade Area).   My friend and fellow writer Hibiscus Hastings and I had been pioneers in respect of ireports, as we were among the few who got stories put on the first official CNN ireport page when it stopped being Beta, we had been putting stuff on the Beta pages too when CNN had been trying it all out and there were only a handful of us in those days who were ireporters.  Now there are nearly 27,000 ireporters worldwide.  It was dead scary too, as we had no access to edit our work once it was uploaded and I remember desperately emailing the real CNN reporters Tyson and Nicole put right the odd typos I had made. 

It’s been a great journey for me, interviewing lots of really nice, clever and interesting people.  Covering the first American Congress meeting ever to be held in SL down to funny wacky stories that I find so amusing.  I couldn’t have done it without support from my friends, Hibiscus Hastings and Drax Ember, who are always there to encourage me to carry on and calm me down when people drive me nuts!!!   Plus the CNN reporters Nicole and Henry who keep us going at the meetings each week. 

You meet so many different types of people in SL from all walks of life, all ages, all nationalities, all with different ideas that make the whole thing so fascinating!  I’ve had many ups and downs, more ups than downs though, people who just want to get written about or their stuff promoted, people who alter history like Schmonson Dalglish (artist Paul Batt, see Fine American Art Makes History) and not forgetting nuisance people who spout off in public then make a big fuss when you quote what they forced everyone to listen to.  It’s been an enjoyable ride and writing is a thing I can’t get enough of, so I hope I will be telling SL stories for some time yet!!

Another Normal Night At CNN And A Visitor Calls!

Blimey what’s going on?  These CNN meetings are getting stranger each week.  Not real life reporters Nicole and Henry’s fault, but the weirdness of the people dropping in to delight us with their big talk and ideas.  Some of it is quite entertaining, but it can go on a bit and disrupt the topics we should be covering.  Last night a strange little av called H3 dropped in, from the start he was annoying, he arrived with his arms in the air, waving them about and there he sat during the whole meeting moving about like a nutcase.  It seemed from what one of the other ireporters told us, that he had been banned from a couple of other sims for griefing, well there’s a surprise!  He started to have a go at one of the other ireporters and promote his own stuff, so I asked him to write about it, and as usual it was excuse after excuse!  When Nicole left, he had the cheek to make a remark at the end of the meeting that  ‘the last lady was boring’, saying he ‘usually comes up with fun things to say, and that lady would have been easy to roast’.  I continually asked him who he was talking about, but he wouldn’t write her name down.  Come on H3 if you are going to talk about people at least have the bottle to do it properly and not be a coward.  Griefing a meeting by waving your arms in the air continually is one thing, and pretty annoying, but to make remarks about people without being brave enough to carry it through just shows that you have no substance!

One of the ireporters who is a brilliant writer, Maverick, usually turns up as a superhero, but he looked great last night as Clark Kent, which was quite funny!

Getting away from strange meetings, Hibiscus and I had an uninvited visitor to the balcony of our apartments the other night.  As we chatted in each of our apartments through the floor, he came and sat on my balcony, but didn’t say a word.  He had a tee shirt on with ‘Public Enemy No one’ written on it.

As he sat there I created a prim and re sized it to cover him as I moved it out onto the balcony where he was.  He got out of it and clicked to sit on the top of it, once sitting, I lowered the prim with him on it down to Hibs apartment, where he jumped off. 

Hib is ready for any eventualities, and got her wedding dress out to put on, grabbing the chance to capture this handsome av.  She did no more than ask him to marry her and named the next day as the wedding day!!

I was a bit ashamed of Hib though, she hadn’t got dressed properly and still had her day clothes sticking out from under the gown, no way for a would be bride to behave.  Our visitor started to talk and he knew quite a bit about us, the lines were coming thick and fast and he was very humorous.  We know who you are Mr Alt!! and we both waited the next day for you to claim your bride, but you never showed up.  Hib was gutted and so was I, I had my bridesmaid dress all sorted!!

SKY News in SL

It seems that a lot of the media groups are joining SL lately.  I interviewed a great guy the other day for the Virtually London (Lite) site.  His name is Mal Burns and Mal is a bit of a genius as well as being very nice, he runs some great informative web pages all about the Metaverse and it’s future (see http://twitter.com/malburns  http://www.netvibes.com/malburns   http://www.metaverseweekinreview.com/)

It was while I was looking at one of his sites that I saw a short film about SKY News coming into SL.  So I thought I would check it out for myself. 

As I entered the building they had pictures of all the real news people from SKY which is a nice touch, I then saw that you could get a free mic, well this rang a bell!!! Jim Sella another Ireporter made a very similar mic to use in his ireport pics and he has handed them round to the others at CNN.  I wonder where SKY got this idea from, hmmm, Jim perhaps you ought to ask them!

 The layout of the studio was great, you could sit at the desks and do some typing and you could also sit at the replica news desks and imagine what it’s like to go live with the headlines.

Trouble with all this is that the place was deserted.  Although it all looks very flashy there is nothing interactive to draw you there, it would be nice to have some sort of link to the real SKY news or something that you could click on to make it more interesting, perhaps there was, and I missed it!!  At the meeting last night CNN talked about altering their sim.  They do need something to make people aware of their presence in SL just as SKY do, as I hadn’t even had a clue that SKY was in there before catching Mal’s web site.

As I looked around I noticed a sign asking for people to make films about SL and submit them to SKY, this too is the way that CNN seem to be going, they appear to think that text articles are getting a little ‘tired’ and that the SL video captures are going to be the crowd pullers for the ireporting site in the future.  That’s as maybe, and there are some good film makers out there, so I’m sure they will get some great stuff.  I don’t know if it’s just me though, as the material that is so painstakingly edited to make these films still comes out looking like yesterdays technology, I’m surprised that the Lindens haven’t included an easy to use ‘add in’ in the SL program to make impressive little virtual films.  Then again, who am I to say, I haven’t got the ability to produce the present type!!!