Google+ Invites

I was able to get in yesterday after an invite from two separate individuals was delayed by nearly a day.  Despite the long wait-time, the system is fairly intuitive to use and seemed to hold up well when I dumped a 200-photo album of the BuildCity project onto the network.  Google+ had all of my info and uploads from other Google products I use (Blogger and Gmail primarily) ready to access as soon as I logged on, so I was able to pick up a profile picture from Blogger right away.  The integration is nice, and the features that I've discovered so far are straightforward and simple to figure out.

Anyway... who wants an invite?  Let me know by posting a comment here with your contact info and I'll drop you a line.  Just a small thanks for my readers. ;)

Noticeboard: AWExpo Cancelled, Texpo Announced

A bit of ruckus was caused earlier this week when GSK announced that in a joint decision with AWI, the 2011 AWExpo will be cancelled.  The AWExpo had a rough start out of the gate, and despite general community support the struggles came to a climax last week when a vandal took advantage of a Caretaker's privilege password to damage the world.  The Expo world closed in the following days and GSK looked to step down -- even making plans for a successor so that the expo could continue... but AWI did not accept the proposal, and thus the event will be ending.

Builders who have already made a booth have until Monday to save their progress before the world OP is closed.

In light of this decision, citizen Xandrah (Xandrake on the forums) has offered their private, P-100 sized world (RF3D world) up for a community expo that AWI won't be hosting.  The premise of this new event is essentially the same as the AWExpo, with the only difference being that the event dates have been bumped to mid-July and the attendance will likely be lower since AWI has pulled support from an Expo this year.

ActiveWorlds Technology Expo Dates

• June 30th - July 10th
• Registration is open; telegram Xandrah in-world
• Booth Building is Open
• Building Guidelines:
• If you have a plot please only build within your plot space.
• Please make sure your booth is to do with Active Worlds.
• If your booth is not about Active Worlds it will be deleted.
• July 11th
• Texpo Begins
• July 16th
• Texpo Ends

I am not sure yet if AWBuilder will be participating in the Texpo as I have a rather full schedule leading up to the event, but if I do I'll announce it here.  Hoping to see some good things come of it, and we wish it well. :)

Web - How to Refresh Images

The trick behind AW television stations that use rotating jpgs is pretty simple in AW... but how about on webpages?  Unfortunately, there's nothing as simple as 'create picture' to manipulate images, but a snippet of Javascript should work just as well.

<IMG src="image_name.jpg" width="309" height="309" border="1" name="refresh">
<SCRIPT language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript">
<!--
var t = 120 // interval in seconds
image = "image_name.jpg" //name of the image
function Start() {
tmp = new Date();
tmp = "?"+tmp.getTime()
document.images["refresh"].src = image+tmp
setTimeout("Start()", t*1000)
}
Start();
// -->
</SCRIPT>
<!-- Code End -->

I don't know much about Javascript, but I found this online and was able to re-purpose it down to what we'd find useful around here.  When we apply the code above to WTV, for example, the result is an image that refreshes... every 10 seconds.  Exactly what we coded, right!? :)

Just pop that into your page and replace the jpg source, and it should refresh the image every 10 seconds.  This is ideal for tv stations that want the slideshow to work on webpages, and it also has other applications (such as webcams).

Noticeboard: WTV Opens, Help Wanted

WTV opened today after some initial planning by Watson and the staff of WolfW1 world.  As announced today in the Activeworlds Forums, Shadow Creature and Watson. plans to build the station up in the coming weeks, and is looking for helpers and volunteers.  I dealt quite a bit in AW television back in the day as a senior staff member at VWTV... and know firsthand that there's a lot of work to be done on an endeavor such as this, so feel free to offer your skillset because they could surely use actors, builders, designers, writers... maybe even an audience member!

WTV takes after the tv stations of the past by using rotating jpgs to create a 'slideshow.'  In AW, this is achieved by applying an update parameter to the picture command.  Simply apply the following code to the action line of any object that accepts the picture command, and you'll see the image below:

Something unique that WTV appears to be attempting is that they are looking to run multiple channels of their programming at the same time.  Hopefully they'll be busy enough to justify the many channels!  AWBuilder wishes this new endeavor luck, and encourages any interested in participating to visit WolfW1 World in Activeworlds or the website at http://wolfw1.net/.

(Note: If you're viewing this on the frontpage with the related TV post, the image above may be breaking because the script is attempting to run twice on the same page. Simply read this post on its own page to correct the issue.)