Hey there and thanks for reading this in advance. In advance I also want to say that I'm more than happy to answer any and all questions.

I'm a big fan of virtual worlds. What I mean by that is a world that is setup on various computers and setup in a Grid of connected areas. To separate What I mean by Virtual worlds from such things as World of Warcraft (the best known example)is user generated content. In such things as WoW, items, terrain, avatars etc are pre-made. In a Virtual world (such as Second life) almost everything you see is made by someone. Homes, vehicles, avatars, pretty much everything is made by the people in it. Also a big difference is that in things like Wow, there are set goals, quests, etc. In a Virtual world (hereafter called a VW)there aren't any set Goals or win conditions. Pretty much the imagination is the limit. you can chat, dance, get to know people, own land, build a home (or buy one) pretty much almost anything. To access each you need to install a program (in the VWs case called a Viewer). This program accesses the main grid and is how you do things. Something else to remember and keep in mind. There are pretty much NO NPC's. EVERY avatar you see has a person at the keyboard on the other end. Just like this forum. No Bots. Or at least in IW.

Mostly I'm going to be talking about my experiences in a grid called "Inworldz" It's where I spend most of my time online and have now there for over a year. I also have about a year and a half in Second life experience but I call Inworldz my home grid now.

Inworldz is less famous than second life and is in fact a much smaller grid and is in Beta right now. Not everything works and there are often bugs in what does work from time to time. It's sort of like comparing a small town to a big city. Second life is more mature and has a much larger surface area to wander around and explore but you can get lost. IW however is much smaller and the population is composed of mostly people who have left SL (for one reason or another)thus has a smaller but experienced population. Also it's small enough to where you can get to know people and be known without being drowned out in the crowd. It's also got an efficient grapevine system and a person's reputation is important. A good reputation for honesty for example will go far and people talk about both good and bad people. You are required to be (in IW anyway) 18+ to enter. While IW at this point doesn't do verification (too easy to circumvent) being underage will get you bounced from the grid for example. Oh in case anyone is wondering..... yes "adult" activities do take place. Just don't start off asking where the "sexxors" is ok? We're adults. Best to act like one if you catch my drift. Cool? Things like that will come at a later time. In fact Second Life has a well developed adult industry catering to such but it was never my scene really.

ok,I've drifted a bit with this however there is a lot to cover and it's gonna take more than one post I can tell that already.

So how about a video break?
At the following link you'll find a few videos that I made in IW. They are a couple of months out of date but do cover what's possible. I would recommend the "Tour of my house in Inworldz". Pretty much almost everything you see in that video (about 99%) was made by me personally.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lt-GTt_Ocpk

Just copy paste it into your browser and it should take you there. Also on my channel you'll find some other videos as well dealing the the underwater maze I built at the Snake River sim. For clarity please note that the build no longer exists (had to give up the land)so it's more for history sake than anything right now.

ok, enjoyed the Video(s)? I hope so.

Some Basics:
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Money:
yes there is a full fledged economy running. People buying, selling and trading. I for example sell such things as wearable vehicles, original artwork (made by me), little books for your library at your home, some chairs, hot tubs, etc whatever I feel like.

ok, what's it called and how to get it?
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ok, in SL it's called Lindens and you can buy them directly from linden labs for roughly 250 lindens per Dollar.

In IW it's called the Izzie and it's 500per dollar.

minimum purchase for each is 5$ at a time.

you can also earn the local currency by getting a job,selling things, owning land and renting it out to others, etc. Oh and please don't beg for money. It turns people off really fast. It's very easy to get around and do things without spending any money at all in fact.


Basic Avatar types:
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Got some pictures showing only some of the basic ones.

Standard Human:
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The most common kind you'll find. Everyone starts as one. Clothing, skins, shapes, and various accessories are free where you start out at in IW. There are some stores located at IDI (Inowrldz desert island) that contain donated goods from people who made them free for anyone to use to outfit themselves.

Here's a picture of a dance party that I attended several months ago.



Furry:
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Usually a upright Bipedal animal with intelligence. They come in a very wide variety of shapes and types. In IW they are a rarity at this point due to the grid size being small. IN SL there are entire community of them. This is the most common avatar that I use in fact. Despite the looks I can do almost anything that a normal human avatar can do.... including dance.



Tiny:
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Sort of like seeing a children's book come to life. These avatars come about knee high to a normal human avatar. Unlike some of the other avatars, they require special seating to prevent them from being "unfolded". to get the avatar that small the basic human shape is folded at the knees and elbows. So they literally walk on their knees. Here's a pic of me in my Tiny avatar form.



Others:
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This would include Elves, Fairys, Dragons, Aliens and pretty much anything the imagination can make.

My Home brew dragon avatar for example:



Well, my aching wrists and fingers are telling me that it's time to take a halt for now until I can continue this. Please feel free to ask questions and I'll try to answer them as best as I can.

I tried Second Life once when I was really bored (I saw it on N.C.I.S.). I never could get it to work!

ok, mind I ask a few questions to try to nail this down?

1) How long ago was this?

2) Did the viewer fire up and you couldn't log in?

3) Did the viewer program fire up at all or did it crash and burn?

4) What is your OS? Windows? Mac OS? Linux?

5) What type of internet connection do you have?

6) are your drivers up to date?

It's a multi-step process. First you sign up on the main website. Then you receive a confirmation e-mail. Check your spam folder it might go there! During this process at a bare minimum you choose a first, last name and a password. Assuming you receive these you use these to log in so choose carefully!

I would also recommend that you goto You-tube and check on some tutorial videos. They may be of help as well that's what I did. Most places like SL or IW have an FAQ to where you can get further info to debug your problem.

1. It was a year or two ago.
2. It's been a while, so it's fuzzy, but it tried loading for several minutes and when it seemed like it was ready to go I got an error. Can't remember what it was.
3. Read above.
4. Win XP
5. High-speed Cable
6. All drivers were up to date. I tried it on both machines (I USUALLY have two machines up at any time). They're old (for PCs), but SHOULD have been up to snuff. I forget the specs needed for 2nd life off hand, but I'm sure I checked it then. I know that Enemy Territory runs just fine on both of the though.

I got the login/pass and everything and set up my account (Rogue I think).

ok, if it was a year or two ago then thing shouldn't have been too out of date then.

Hmm, Winxp is fine (that's what I run)
Cable modem is fine (that's what I have)
ok, so the program didn't finish loading. On thing that I've found out about on xp systems is to have the Visual C++ (2005) run time installed. And it's updates. That's created some problems for people in the past.

ok, a thought is that since you don't have the log in info anymore (unless you wrote it down somewhere) you may wish to start over.

Re-register on the site, and download the viewer program and try again after making sure you got the visual C++ runtime installed. Over the past year or so SL has been using what is called "Viewer 2". It supposedly easier to use for the new person to use. However to be honest the Interface (how to do things)... well to be honest.... sucks. I have used the Phoenix viewer successfully in SL and it seems to work pretty well. Be advised it's not officially supported by Linden labs (the people who own SL) but the general consensus is pretty good.

Here's a download link.
http://www.phoenixviewer.com/

So re-register on the main website. Wait for the confirmation e-mail and see how it goes from there. and if you can't log in wiht the Sl viewer then give the Phoenix viewer a try. I wish you luck. In the meantime you may find some tutorials on how to move (arrow keys)chat, (Lower left of the viewer) to be helpful.

Edit to add:
Another possibility is that the grid might have simply been down. That happens from time to time.

So far I've heard of only problems with any OS newer than XP, so if it ain't broke (for MS quality), I'm not fixing it!

If cable don't work, that game's in trouble! How many people have T-x or OC3!? lol

I THINK I had C++ when I tried it. With HD swaps here and there and deleting 'useless crap' all the time and Frankensteining, who knows.

I still have the login info........somewhere amongst 3 zillion other user/pass's.........

Now that you say it, I think I did get a 'grid problem' every time I tried getting on. At first, over the course of about a few weeks (on two machines). Then quite a while later here and there. That's when I gave up and dedicated my free time to ET and FarmVille. lol

I'm thinking that if you tried it right around the time of that Episode then yes indeed it could have been swamped. Lots of people trying it because of the TV program etc. That would explain it. Used to do the Facebook scene myself but burned out totally on the Farmville and other games. So I left Facebook entirely.

ok, to continue the general tutorial what I am gonna assume that your successfully logged in. Here is where I show you the general interface (or how you do things). These screenshots incidently are not from second life or Inworldz but from my own private little grid tht I host on my computer. I use this little "Home away from home" to build things and to debug thing before I upload them into the main grids. I'm known for being a small time vehicle builder in Second life and in Inworldz, ... well I'm Known for making a lot of things. Something I may or may have not mentioned. Almost everything you see in a VW is made by somebody and not by the hosting company. The cars, buildings, and the vast majority of avatars are made by people who often place items for sale. Some ( a small percentage) actually make a living at this. I don't have enough sales to make a living myself, but I have my fun.

Ok, I'm gonna presume that you are now logged in for the first time. You'll find yourself in a "New person's area" (for example in Inworldz it's called Inworldz desert island) and chances are very good that someone will be there to help you get started, and point you to where the "freebies" are located. Freebies are items given away free of charge by various merchants. No charge at all. In Inworldz they have various stores where you can find clothing , skins, accessories, gadgets etc, all neatly divided up in Male and female stores.

Now then, to move is simple. Use your arrow keys to move forwards, backwards, and turn. To run double press the up arrow key. Now it's time for some visual aids.

Here we see a screen shot of the basic interface. Different viewers are gonna be laid out differently but this is the Inworldz viewer and what I'll be concentrating on. Note that this is a very broad over view. I'll get into more details later on.



Here is a URL to a higher resolution picture.
http://i70.photobucket.com/albums/i110/Eugenekoberle/Inworldz/Interfacefullsized.png

A) File: Here is where you shut down the viewer of copy various pictures etc. You are most likely to be using the "exit" fucntion here to shut down the viewer and log out.

B)Edit: Various copy/paste functions that are usually used in building items. Along with Preferences. The preferences is how you configure things with your viewer, audio, video, network, etc if you don't feel like going with the default settings. You'll use this a lot.

C)View: Such things as Mouselook (your literally looking out of your avatars eyes), activating the Mini map, main map, info about the land etc can be found here.

D)World: The most common functions you'll use are "create landmark" and "Stop animating my avatar". A Landmark (or LM) is something you can place into your inventory and by double clicking on it you can teleport there. The "Stop animating my avatar" comes in handy when say your dancing (and your avatar is dancing) you can have it stop that way.

E)Tools: Various builder tools that builders (such as myself)use.

F)Help: Shows what Viewer your running, what version of the grid software is running etc. Usefull for debugging problems.

G) Advanced: a menu that is normally hidden containing some usefull setting but if your new I wouldn't mess with them just yet.

H)Camera controls: The default camera control is behind your head and raised up a bit. With these you can Zoom in and out, pan up, down, left right and swing around in a 360 degree arc.

I)Land menu: Tells you about the piece of ground your on, who owns it, any special rules, etc. Very important.

J)The time. This is always PDT (Pacific Daylight time) thus everyone (this is a global program and you have people from all over the world)and thus they all have one set for the time. Someone talks about being on a 10:00 am PDT everyone else knows when that is. This cannot be changed.

(the far upper right corner)(sorry forgot to letter it). This shows what you have for money. In Inworldz for example it the "Izzie" and they sell for about 500 to a dollar. In SL it's the "Linden" and is about 250 or so to a dollar. Since this screenshot is from my own private grid this is set for 0.

K) Chat window: This is how you talk to people either directly in front of your or to entire groups or another person across the grid. You can also access your friends list from there as well.

L) Fly: yes you can fly at the click of a button. Use your page up/down to control your altitude and your arrow keys to fly forwards, back and turn.

M)Snapshot: Brings up the snapshot menu. You can save pictures to either your inventory or to your computer.

N) Search: Uses a sort of google like search for events, people, places etc in the entire grid.

O) Build: Brings up the build menu that lets you make things. Such as the vehicles behind me. Those I made myself.

P) Map: Fires up the main Map. this lets you (assuming you zoom out enough)look at the entire grid and you can teleport to various regions that way.

Q) mini map: Fires up a local area more detailed map showing avatars within a certain radius.

R) Audio player: Plays an local streaming music that maybe going on. For example you goto a dance club, you can hear the music that's being played there either live or a by a DJ.

S)Video player: Various areas are setup to show streaming video as well and you can access it through that.

T)Inventory: Accesses everything you own in the form of folders. Make no mistake. your gonna accumulate stuff. There are some with 40K worth of stuff in their inventory. Keeping things straight can be a full time affair.

U) Volume controls for various things like Media, music, ambient noise etc.

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yes I know it looks very confusing but it can be made easier with practice.

To make up for the wall of text that I've just hit you with here is a video where I give a tour of my home in Inworldz.

In You-tube I go by the Name of Bendarr2 and I have a few videos showing some things from Inworldz. In this particular video I give a tour of my home that I have so you can see what a rather odd home looks like. Note that almost everything you see, I built myself.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lt-GTt_Ocpk

For best results go full screen and best resolution. you can also see the interface (in this case the Hippo Viewer)in action.

Take care and enjoy!