GeekSugar

Gossip Girl's Second Life Secret

GeekSugar — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 16:00:41 -0700

While we've been enjoying the stylish fashions and gadgets on Gossip Girl - and the fact that the show is about a blogger! - some fans have started enjoying Gossip Girl's neighborhood in Second Life experience called "The Upper East Side."

In case you didn't know, Second Life is a 3D virtual world entirely built and owned by its residents. It opened to the public in 2003, and is now "inhabited" by millions of residents from around the globe. The Upper East Side community allows you to build and customize your avatar, have a dance party with friends, play games, watch clips and full episodes of the show. From what I can tell, it's much like the Virtual Worlds MTV has set up for shows like The Hills, Newport Harbor and Laguna Beach, only it exists in the Second Life platform.

The virtual Gossip Girl world looks like the set of the television show, with the same streets, the same hot spots, and even the same characters. To try it out you just need to download the software, go through a brief orientation, and start your "second life." Who knew geek was so chic?

To check out more pictures of the Upper East Side community on Second Life, read more

View 11 Photos ›

Tyra Hosts A Post Grammy Party Today In Cyberspace

GeekSugar — Mon, 12 Feb 2007 03:01:52 -0800

Looks like Tyra Banks is following in the footsteps of her protégée and Top Model Adrianne Curry for once! Last week, Tyra sent out an e-mail saying she'd been keeping a secret for months - she and some hot designers have created Tyra Banks' Virtual Studio on the internet. She explains "We all IM and chat online with our friends, so I decided to TYRASIZE (kind of like "Super Size") online chatting - so I've had the talk show set and myself turned into 3D animation!" Users can even leave the studio and explore an entire virtual city filled with fun. Tyra will host a post Grammy Party, where she'll be on hand to ask you your favorite moments from the big show and chat with fans like yourself, today at 6pm PST/9 EST.

Want to join in the fun? read more

Here's what you need to do: download the software ("don't worry," says Tyra. "You know I'm cheap, so the software is free!") and then you create a virtual "mini me" of yourself. You can pick and choose from different hairstyles, eye color, clothing and more. Then you can hang out on the set and chat with other people, a group of your friends, or even Tyra. Apparently, Tyra fans have been flooding to the site, so if you just can't get enough, you better check it out.

Note: Works for PCs and Macs.

Virtual New Moon Worlds to Launch This November

GeekSugar — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 01:43:45 -0700

If there wasn't already enough geeky New Moon and Twilight goods to go around, Summit Entertainment - the production company behind New Moon and Twilight - and web-based virtual world creator Habbo, have teamed up to create New Moon themed virtual rooms before the release of the movie on Nov. 20. Users will be able to create their very own avatars, buy virtual items, and decorate their virtual New Moon rooms with goods from the movie. No word on an exact launch date, but we'll be sure to keep you posted on this exciting news.

Photo courtesy of Summit Entertainment

The 13 Most Beautiful Avatars Of Second Life

GeekSugar — Fri, 16 Mar 2007 08:00:08 -0700

No this isn't a post about America's next top avatars contest, but it is about the model-like beauties of Second Life. Based on Andy Warhol's short films: 13 Most Beautiful Women and 13 Most Beautiful Boys comes a serious of canvas mounted portrait prints by the Italian artists Eva and Franco Mattes. Actual Second Lifers originally created these creative avatars. What are your thoughts? Do they scream beautiful in a virtual, digitally enhanced sorta way? Leave your comments below.
[via play-girlz] Want to know more about Play-Girlz's co-editor Ingrid Diaz? Check out my Geeky Girls We Love interview with her.

Daily Tech: LG Debuts Its XD3 Slim Portable Hard Drive

GeekSugar — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 12:04:50 -0700

LG's new 320GB external hard drive has surfaced in Korea for about $90 - Engadget
Take a virtual trip around the world with Google's newest 5.1 version of Google Earth - Lifehacker
Check out which video games made it to store shelves this week - Green Pixels
Morgan Ritchie took tweets from the past 100 days from British actor and writer Stephen Fry's Twitter page and turned them into an illustrative masterpiece - Mashable
Wow. You can pick up a Rock Band kit and Rock Band 2 for only $79 - CrunchGear
It's giveaway and game time on GeekSugar! Be sure to log in and play our Best Video Game ever bracket! - GeekSugar

Download of the Day: TooManyTabs

GeekSugar — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 10:15:08 -0700

Ever since Firefox and I have patched up our rocky relationship, I've been looking at new ways to spruce up my favorite Internet browser. The FF add-on ColorfulTabs (I couldn't imagine my virtual world without it!) has added the perfect amount of oo la la to not only my browser, but my screen appearance in general. But I'm loving my latest add-on, TooManyTabs, because it provides you with an extra Firefox row, so you don't have to scroll through all your tabs to see them - making it much easier to find specific tabs!

Would You Take a Virtual Vacation?

GeekSugar — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 10:15:34 -0700

There's nothing like feeling the warm sand under your toes as you step out onto a beach during the first few moments of a vacation. You know you're really on vacation. That is, of course, if you have saved up enough vacation time and money to go. But what if you could take a virtual vacation anywhere in the world with just a few clicks of your mouse instead of worrying about all the hassles of planning a real vacation?

Websites like Vizzera let you travel to far reaches of the globe in a 3-D interactive tour of the Taj Mahal and Machu Picchu, whereas Wonder Rotunda - which is aimed at kids - takes you on underwater and high-flying adventures around the globe.

Website of the Day: What Does the Internet Think?

GeekSugar — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 07:33:43 -0700

Forget taking an informal poll of your friends, you know what you really want to know what your virtual audience thinks - your Twitter and Facebook peeps, and basically, the world at large.

Find out what the new public opinion is on any subject with What Does the Internet Think?. Enter in anything you're curious about, from celebrities to movies to random subjects like donuts, and the site tells you if the general opinion is positive, negative, or indifferent. The results are compiled from Google or other search engines depending on preference. How does it determine good, bad, or ambivalent? Don't worry. The Internet knows.

To learn how to post your favorite websites to our Website of the Day group, read more.

First of all, join the Website of the Day group.
Click "New Post" under the website of the day tab at the top of the page.
Give your story a "Title."
Fill in the "Body" with a link to your favorite website and the reasons why you love it.
Type "Technology and Gadgets" in the Categories box
Add keyword(s) in the tag field with relevant tags (for example mine for this story was "Website of the Day").
Choose whether you want the post to be private or public.
Click "Create Post" to submit content.

So join the Website of the Day group and share information about all your favorite sites! Yours just might end up on the geeksugar homepage!

The Guild Cast in Cheeky Video About Online Avatars

GeekSugar — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 05:46:32 -0700

With the third season of the web based series The Guild starting August 25, the fantasy MMO characters are appearing in a new music video called, "Do You Want to Date My Avatar?" With The Guild star Felicia Day serenading us with lines like, "You'll never see my actual face, our love will be in virtual space." The video basically mocks all of the stereotypes associated with people having really hot avatars in role playing games like World of Warcraft. The beat is catchy and the lyrics are even better.

Tech Dating 101: Blogging About Dating

GeekSugar — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 07:33:39 -0700

Call it tech and the single girl; lately, we've been tackling a lot of couples' issues in Tech Dating 101, but today I'm going to focus on being single in a virtual world.

With so many people blogging, it makes sense to mine your rich personal life, particularly the joys and horrors of dating. Just think - instead of making several phone calls to your girlfriends and any other interested parties, you can just direct everyone to your latest blog post.

Sure, many people think this alone is poor form, but I don't think it is - as long as you follow a few ground rules. To see my advice, just read more.

Be vague. Give your dates aliases or just use initials so that if they or people they know found your blog, it wouldn't be a dead giveaway who you were talking about. Don't be too specific about details either. But if you do want to give many details . . .
Utilize any privatization settings your blogging platform provides. Check your settings and allow only those you want to see your posts, or password protect the site.
Don't TMI anyone. Or at least know your readers' TMI thresholds.
Don't post anything you wouldn't want someone dating you to be posting. And don't assume that no one would be interested enough in your little blog to pass it around.
What happens when one of your dates/blog fodder becomes something more serious? You have a choice: stop blogging about them altogether, or come clean and be honest about your blogging so that they're not hurt if one of your friends eventually blabs about it. Even if everything you wrote was totally innocuous, hearing you've been blogged about behind your back is unsettling.

Any advice from you guys? Have you ever blogged about dating or been blogged about?