We’re mainly focusing at improving response times and lowering the prim count of each object.

Each of the Hermes Optical objects will check for a new version of the product every 48 hours. If for some reason you missed the update in Second Life – No need to panic, you’ll be offered the update again 48 hours later.

Enjoy!

Hop on over to the Hermes Optical showroom in Second Life to preview, or have a look at the contact sheets below.

Enjoy!

Because of that, we haven’t introduced or updated any products for a while – We mainly focused on keeping things running smoothly. And although we’ve never really been away, we’re both back and working as hard as ever before. Expect some exciting announcements to be posted on the blog soon, including some news about how we’re making the good stuff we offer even better!

Congratulations to all artists, producers and all of the tech crews involved in making these albums.

Publishers – please note that with the public release of these albums, you’ll find some new options in the online panel. You can configure if/how your albums are displayed in the charts, and there is the new feature allowing you to add extra information to your albums, which will be included in your chart listing.

You can find the first Hermes™ Hit charts online at http://charts.snowcrashdigital.com

Have you ever wondered what a code monkey and a marketing troll would get from Santa? Well; here’s your answer – some little elves laid out a brand new design for our main website and this blog. Be sure to check out www.snowcrashdigital.com and enjoy all the new and shiny things on there – though please note that we’re still tweaking here and there – we’ll be adding more information and products to the website soon.

More updates and a shiny new layout will be coming soon to our online user areas as well, along with some new features. Stay tuned!

Our updated websites:

• Snowcrash Digital™ Main website
• Snowcrash Digital™ Blogs

Because of that, we thought it would be handy to give you a quick update on how you can contact us during the Holidays. Snowcrash Digital™ will be “closed” from Thursday December 23th 2010 till Monday January 3rd 2011 – individual team members will be reachable by e-mail, but please keep in mind that they won’t be “in office”, and response time will be slower than normal.

For product support, please use the support portal at http://support.snowcrashdigital.com. Although it’s Holiday Season, support calls will be responded to the usual way, which means within 12 hours. Please note that this only goes for the support portal; directly mailing one of our team members can mean a delay, as some of them are travelling or in areas where there’s no internet around. (Yes, those still exist!)

Management office hours will not be held over the next two weeks – we will start these up again January 8th 2010, when Phil will be having office hours at noon pacific time. For any urgent matters, please refer to our support system – for any other topics, please feel free to send an email to Phil or Jim directly, but keep a longer response time in mind.

Wishing you a great end-of-year and a happy 2011!

Press contact: Philippe Pascal, Snowcrash Digital Marketing Director
(ppmediadev Blinker in-world, phil@snowcrashdigital.com)

Snowcrash Digital™ is proud to announce the launch of the Hermes™ Hit Charts, January 2011. The Hermes™ hit charts will reflect the most popular CDs published in Second Life® by Hermes™ publishers, based on the amounts of active listens the audio content gets.

Snowcrash Digital™ has been experimenting with charts for some time – they tried several methods to build a chart and after a long evaluation, the team decided to base the charts on “active listens”.

“By using active listens, we base our charts on the most frequently listened to songs in Second Life®,” marketing director Philippe Pascal states, “We believe this is the best way to put the most popular albums at the top of the chart, and we are able to maintain the current policy we have about third party vendors – publishers using our publishing system can use any vending system they like and still be featured in our charts. As we know that for several artists Second Life® is an addition to their real life income, we also didn’t want to unleash a “price war” where the cheapest CDs would probably end up being the most popular ones.”

The data for the charts is collected 100% anonymously – Snowcrash Digital™ didn’t even need to make any changes to the current range of players.

“As each listener’s Second Life client plays a track from our system, we log the details of the track and periodically add them all up.”, explains technical director Jim Evans, ”This means we’re only counting tracks where someone is actually listening to it – so we’re producing reliable realistic chart data without having to collect lots of personal information about the listeners.”

To make the best of these charts, some new features have been added to the Hermes publisher system – to give publishers the opportunity of adding more details to their albums. Publishers should look at the guide http://charts.snowcrashdigital.com/changes-for-publishers/ for more details.

In creating a Second Life® hit chart which doesn’t require extra effort from the listener (they don’t need to vote, nor is there a need for them to visit a website), Snowcrash Digital™ is confident they have created a charts system that will not only increase exposure for Second Life® publishers, but at the same time will also give a realistic image about Second Life® performers’ and publishers’ popularity; As Phillippe describes it “because at the end of the day it’s the answer to the question “do people actively listen to your music?” that tells us who truly is the most popular musician.”

Find out all about the Hermes™ Hit Charts at http://charts.snowcrashdigital.com

# # #

For more information about this press release or about Snowcrash Digital, please feel free to contact Snowcrash Digital’s marketing director Philippe Pascal at philippe@snowcrashdigital.com

It’s important to know that none of the changes to these policies is radical, and that you will be able to continue to use our systems as you’ve always done. Here’s a quick overview of the changes to each of the policies;

Terms of Service

• Changed to our new name (old: SLevolution, new: Snowcrash Digital™, Hermes™)
• Updated contact information, to reflect our new home base
• Broadened up – The terms of service used to be specifically about the Hermes™ Audio Technology, but as we’re looking forwards to announcing all kinds of nice new products and services, we had to make sure that the Terms of Service were written in such a way that they’d also were suitable for these new projects.

Privacy Policy

• Changed to our new name (old: SLevolution, new: Snowcrash Digital™, Hermes™)
• Updated contact information, to reflect our new home base
• Added the paragraph “How do we use your information?”, giving you more insight
• Added the paragraph “COPPA”, giving your more information about how we handle minors using our systems now TeenSL and Second Life are merged

IP/DMCA Policy

• Changed to our new name (old: SLevolution, new: Snowcrash Digital™, Hermes™)
• Updated contact information, to reflect our new home base

Although we’re confident that none of these changes are drastically, we do encourage you to read through them and contact us with any questions you might have. You can find all our policies online at the legal info pages.

The total amount of money raised can be followed in real-time on the dedicated Toys for Tots Christmas fundraiser website, where we’ve now also posted payment confirmations of the money forwarded to the Toys for Tots charity.

Wunderland Records and SnowcrashDigital™ would like to thank all of the kind people making this event possible; all of the Second Life musicians who kindly to donated tracks, the Second Life sponsors that added that little extra and each and every person who donated their hard earned L$.