Archive for May, 2011

Hello everyone,

Today I am writing you all to let you know that the Forums on the Amaretto website are now active once again. Feel free to go in there and talk about Amaretto related items.

We do want everyone to be aware that, Slander or Abusive Behavior of any kind will get your post deleted. The website was created for everyone to enjoy and have a wonderful time together, so lets keep it that way please. If you feel the need to be “Rude” then take it somewhere else is what we do ask.

With all of this being said we do welcome you to the Amaretto Website/Social Engine. If you have any issues logging into the site please send a NC with your full name and email to Tmzasz Luminos, Amaretto Web Master.

 

Hey guys its Monday!!   Wooooo hopefully all of you are enjoying a 3 day weekend (those of you which are in the states anyways)

So Ive seen a few tickets come through about this issue, and wanted to let everyone know why this happens and what you should do when it does!

This happens when there are two copies of a horse in world, this can happen due to lag, sim restarts, sim rollbacks, crashes, and even updating.

So your horse is duplicated what do I do now??

File a ticket, include the uuid, where you got the horse, and if you passed it to someone. If you recently bought the horse please include your transaction history from secondlife.com.

Why do we ask for this? Well……when we look up the horse on the server if you do not show as owner of the horse we cant return it to you! This is for all of our customers protection we don’t want anyone to just give us a uuid and say the horse is theirs when its really not!

So if you have a horse that has the red text that says Duplicated horse, file a ticket with Amaretto support, don’t freak out just file a ticket! Be sure to include all the info you can this will make your ticket answered in a timely manner!

Also please when sending folders to csr, make sure your name and ticket id is on the folder! Don’t send replys to tickets in im or ncs, reply  to your ticket!
If you do the things I have  talked about here your ticket will be answered quickly and it will be a smooth process for you and Amaretto Csrs!!

Happy Breeding everyone!!! Cya on the network !!

Website Advertisements

Hello everyone its the Webmaster Tmzasz here and today I wanted to talk you about the advertising system on the Amaretto website. As a few of you have noticed we turned on the ad system last week and some of you have already started to use it. All ads currently are priced at a flat rate per week ( no worries about having views or clicks expire just straight time ). Currently ads are priced in 4 tiers:

1 Week Rotations cost 10$USD and will run 1 week from the date of Approval.

2 Week Rotations cost 19$USD ( 5% Off ) and run 2 weeks from the date of Approval.

3 Week Rotations cost 27$USD ( 10% Off ) and run 3 weeks from the date of Approval.

4 Week Rotations cost 34$USD ( 15% Off ) and run 4 weeks from the date of Approval.

Now for the technical information you need to know about your future ad!
Ad Titles are limited to 25 characters
The logo for your ad can be any size up to 180 x 180 ( Pixels )
The body of your ad is limited to 135 characters

We review all ads placed in the system to ensure they are appropriate ( no profane language etc. etc. )

Placing an ad  to advertise your market, your stud service or even your store is really simple just follow these steps:

First click on the button at the top that says Advertising and a new page will open.

Then Click on the red Create an Ad to open the ad editor/package selector.

Choose a package and click the blue Create an Ad button to go to the editor, in this window there will be a preview for your ad as you create it helping you decide exactly how your ad will appear ( the preview is actual size ).

If you have created an ad campaign already ( previously created an ad ) then you can add the new ad to that campaign if not you can enter a campaign name below if you want. ( Its only used to group your ads for your convenience )

Next if your ad has a URL ( like an in world SLUrl ) copy and paste it into the URL box so that when they click on the ad it takes them to the url.

Enter a title for your ad like So and So Stud Service.

Then give your ad a body text ( explain what you are advertising )Finally Upload your ad logo ( remember it has to be 180 x 180 or smaller )

Press continue and a new section drops down be sure its set to today’s date for start date and press continue

Once you press continue you will be asked to place order or edit ad.  Please review your ad and make sure its how you want it. Press Place Order to submit your ad and proceed to the Pay With Pay Pal screen. This takes you to the Pay Pal Payment Gateway where you can complete your order and have your ad placed in the review queue. Within 24 hours we will review your ad and either approve it ( at which point the package starts but not before) or Deny it and send you a message with why it was denied ( refunds are issued if you chose not to place the ad after this ).

I hope this helps everyone understand the Advertising system on the new website. Enjoy

Tm

Autism Check 1 Presented

I want to thank everyone for purchasing the Autism LE’s. I went with Richie and Tmzasz to the check presentation and was so thrilled to watch the children ride the horses. The smiles and laughter of these children while on and around the horses is just remarkable. Your donations will help lots of children this year to be able to enjoy the horses, and they will benefit deeply from this type of therapy. Again THANK YOU for your support. You are all awesome.

Please check out this story that was broadcast on a local Television station in New York about this presentation:

http://www.clipsyndicate.com/video/playlist/20439/2500435?title=top_stories&wpid=9609

 

Local Organization Receives $22,913.30 From Online Virtual Fundraiser Selling Limited Edition Virtual Horses

From Southern Tier Alternative Therapies: 

From Australia to Washington State, from California to the United Kingdom, children with Autism throughout the world will benefit from a virtual fund raiser located in a 3D world.
The Amaretto Ranch Breedable (ARB) community from the program called Second Life has come together again for a great cause. By purchasing special limited edition virtual horses which can be raised, bred and sold in this virtual world, ARB was able to raise $137,479.75 USD to benefit organizations which offer therapy to children with Autism.
Amaretto put out four unique horses; two horses designed with puzzle pieces to fit the theme for Autism Awareness and the other two were decorated in a May Flowers/Spring Showers theme and were made available for avid collectors and equine enthusiasts in the virtual world of Second Life. The detailed and interactive horses are popular with hobbyists who can enjoy the care and maintenance of the online pets as well as experimentation with breeding of the pets for creative results and new highly coveted and rare colorations.

The Avatar and Amaretto Ranch Breedables team member in charge of setting up the event was Avalon Crystal. Avalon Crystal said, “This is the first one we have done for the kids, so I hope it will be the best!”

Amaretto had their highest numbers for fund raising via the limited edition horses. Each horse sold for L$1,125 lindens (the virtual currency used in Second Life). This translates to around $4.80 USD each. The fund raiser was held over a five day period from Monday April 25 to Friday April 29.

The funds were raised to support six different organizations around the world which provide Equine Therapy, otherwise known as Hippotherapy, to autistic children. All six organizations were quite surprised and grateful for the gift, each receiving a total of $22,913.30 USD.

Southern Tier Alternative Therapies, Inc.

“$22,000 will serve 200 kids! Equine Therapy changes lives, changes outcomes and improves quality of life like no other. It will be used for scholarships and will make an astounding impact on our organization, of our community of children with disabilities. People like you and the others in your group will make such an obvious difference, such an impact. Your unprompted generosity is astounding! I want to thank you for choosing STAT. Thank you with all my heart.” Catherine Markosky, Executive Director for STAT, after receiving word from Christina Galanis of Southern Tier Health Link who initially found STAT from a Google search.

Other organizations to receive donations are:
Little Bit Therapeutic Riding Center – Woodinville, WA
REINS Therapeutic Horsemanship Program – Bonsall CA
Riding for the Disabled Association of Australia (RDAA)
Riding for the Disabled Association of UK
McKenna Farms, GA

Each member of the Amaretto Team shared stories they were hearing from the community, many of them heartfelt and show just how much impact a virtual community can have.

Trinityskye Zarco commented, “I love mine! I bought mine for my 19-year-old Down’s Syndrome son who has, after 15 of those years, struggled to get diagnosed with Autism because of lack of funding. He goes on the U.K. horses in the U.K. and they struggle for cash, so I’m happy as punch! Tomorrow when he wakes I will show him the virtual horses and he will love them. He loves to see them on my screen and that is priceless to me.”

Kracklin’ Kahlan stated: “I have supported the other limited editions which have come out, but the autism awareness horse has really brought me to tears. I think it is awesome a group like Amaretto reaches out to so many different folks in the interests of what is affecting people these days. I’m a mother of an autistic child.”

Dina Delicioso said, “Thanks to Amaretto for this charity. This cause hits home for me and my family. You guys are great!”

Owner of Amaretto Ranch Breedables, Josaphine Cooperstone, is quick to add, “It is our community which is great. Without the generosity of the ARB community we could never do any of this.”

The ARB team members credit the success of the fund raisers on the community.

Tasia Tonic, Head of Marketing for Amaretto says, “We have one of the greatest communities for any virtual product anywhere on the net. We will keep doing what we are doing and grow with our community. We cannot thank them enough. We look forward future fund raisers.”

http://www.newschannel34.com/content/developingnews/story/Local-Organization-Receives-22-913-30-From-Online/brgRAVvRpU67eivyGqkazQ.cspx

We have been working around the clock with the engineers to get the server migration completed and all the bugs worked out.  The entire Team has heard the community and we share in your frustrations of the past week. As our token of gratitude for all  your support and patience throughout these issues we have compiled an Esteem Pack to show our appreciation to you the community. We will have vendors out tomorrow on May 19th (Times & Location to be announced tomorrow.)
**ONE Esteem pack per avatar.**
*****YOU MUST HAVE OWNED HORSES PRIOR TO MAY 18, 2011 IN ORDER TO RECEIVE THE ESTEEM PACK******
What do these Esteem Packs contain you might be wondering?
1 Random Esteem Horse (gender and Coat are both random) There are 3 different Esteem Horses (you will only receive 1 that is randomly choosen in your Esteem Pack)

  • Limited Edition Esteem Steed Short Circuit  eye: Electric Green  (Eye can pass)
  • Limited Edition Esteem Steed “The Network” eye: Data Burst   (Eye can pass)
  • Limited Edition Esteem Steed Cyborlossa   eye: Laser eye   (Eye can pass)

Complimentary Consumable Pack which contains 1 of each of the following:

  • 1 – Jumbo 25 pack of Breedable Food
  • 1 –  Jumbo 25 Pack of Salt Licks
  • 1 – 5 pack of Amaretto Cocktail
  • 1 – 5 pack of Endurance Elixir
  • 1 – 5 pack of Horsie Snacks
  • 1 – 5 pack of Sugar Cubes
  • 1 – 5 pack of Passion Pills

We want you all to know how much we appreciate your patience and support.  The team has been working countless hours to get through all your support tickets which are taking a longer response time than normal, but rest assured we will get to your ticket. We hope the Esteem Pack lets you all know how much we do appreciate our Community!

******YOU MUST HAVE OWNED HORSES PRIOR TO MAY 18, 2011 IN ORDER TO RECEIVE THE ESTEEM PACK******
TO BE PERFECTLY CLEAR:
1.    These horses are like any other Limited Edition in that they do have the ability to have all the hidden traits the starter horses have.  However, these Esteem Horses do have the ability to pass the eye that     is showing (Electric green, Data burst & Laser). The coats on the Esteem horses DO NOT pass.
2.    You will only be able to purchase ONE of the Esteem packs per avatar.
3.    These will only be available at ONE location, please leave the sim once you receive your Esteem pack as only 30 avatars will be allowed on the sim at a time. They will be out long enough for everyone to receive theirs so no need for a mad rush 

On a personal note the Amaretto Team, consisting of myself, maleficent, Dakota, Avalon, Jaymee & Tmzasz as well as the owners Jaysin & Josie, all want to send an extra special THANK YOU AND WE LOVE YOU to our own General Manager Richie Carami without who we would not have survived this past week!  We hope the entire community will join us in thanking Richie for all his hard work and inspiring the rest of the team to work hard (even when we’re dead tired) Thanks Richie

PLEASE HELP US HELP YOU

First, with all the server issues we have been having, most of you have noticed that it is taking longer to respond to your tickets. We would like to thank you in advance for your patience and understanding.

With the last group of bundles, a message Please delete bundle has been happening. In a lot of cases the mother horse will have another one. If you have filed a ticket on these bundles and the horse finally has one please go in and update your ticket so that we will not remake and duplicate your good bundle causing another ticket.

“MOTHER_HAD_SECOND_BUNDLE_IN_THREE_DAYS”
If for any reason a mother horse already had a bundle in the past 3 days, this prevents it from occuring. If the mother horse had a good bundle, you can delete the MOTHER HAD SECOND without filing a ticket. Only file a ticket if mother did not have a viable.

When you buy a bundle from another person always check stats and see if bundle has parents. If the bundle does not show parents it is bad. If you buy one, even with transaction history, we will not be responsible for replacing it.

A few things that need to be said……..

Well Monday has passed us by once again. I sat and thought a long time what to write about,  I have decided to talk a little bit about what has happened the past few days.

We at Amaretto are very sorry about all the inconvenience that we have placed on the community as of late, with some of the server issues we have had. That is the reason that we had the server migration last week to ensure that we would no longer have any down time. There were some technical things that happened that were out of our control that the engineers had to fix.

These issues have caused multiple problems with bundles and yes some people have lost bundles that would have normally connected to the server successfully. Sadly in some cases we are not able to always recover these bundles.

Now all that being said im not trying to make excuses or say we are not at fault, but i do want you all to think about the many months that Amaretto has been here and has provided you with support and will continue to do so. These issues will be ironed out and this too shall pass.

Tickets are at a high and we want you to know that your ticket does matter and that we are getting to them as fast as we can. There are people that are trying to spread rumors about Amaretto and some people will believe these I know i cant change that. I can say that Amaretto is not here to harm anyone we are always willing to help in any way we can.

So when you see me in the group and inworld, when I say we appreciate you we do, I care about every breeder out there and try to help all I can and those of you who know me know this. Many of us are working around the clock to ensure a fast turn around on tickets and I ask that you please have patience and understanding at this time Amaretto WILL correct this situation.

Well I should get back to your tickets happy breeding everyone!

Hello everyone,
I’m sure that all are aware but this morning we had some server issues.  We had some bundles that did not properly connect to the server and said “This bundle had an error, Please delete bundle”. We have good news!  The good, viable bundles are now starting to drop! We have noticed that a lot of you have filed tickets on this issue. Please do not file a ticket for this bundle with error if you already have gotten a viable bundle from the mother. The only reason a ticket is need for this error “This bundle had an error, Please delete bundle” is if you DID NOT receive a viable bundle. If you already have a ticket in and the bundle has dropped please do the following so we can get through the rest of the tickets faster.

1.  Go to http://support.amarettobreedables.com/
2.   Log in to the Support Site
3.   Find the ticket that you have that corresponds to this issue… click on the title of the ticket.
4.   Once in the ticket… select close from the status drop down menu…. and then hit apply.

Also, if you have filed a ticket:
Please be sure to include parental information. If you did not include this originally, go back to your ticket and provide this information.
Please understand that the ticket volume is very high at this time. It could be at least 72 hours for a response to your ticket.
Please do not contact CSRs in world about your ticket.
Please be sure to check back in your ticket regularly after it has been assigned to the CSR as more information may have been requested.
Please remember that tickets are worked on in the order they are received.

Keeping these few simple points in mind will help tickets go smoother and faster for everyone.

I also wanted to add… When purchasing a bundle… please make sure you click the bundle and check for parent information. If you do not get parental information, I would suggest not purchasing that bundle as it is very possible that it is not a viable bundle. If you chose to purchase this bundle we will not be able to help you in the support system with this issue and we will refer you back to the purchaser to resolve the this.

On a lighter note, I would like to say from myself and the whole Amaretto team that we are truly sorry for the issues that have happened in the past few days. We are working very hard to ensure that each and every one of you have a very enjoyable experience with the horses and Amaretto.

Thank you for you time!
Until next time……

Many of  you have been affected by the server issues from yesterday and the entire staff is here working extremely hard to do everything we can to get your issues handled.  Some of you know me personally and can testify to the fact that I don’t understand a lot of the technical mumbo jumbo that the scripter and the guys at the office talk about so I am going to try to tell you in my own words what happened yesterday.

When our server company did the backup yesterday something went wrong with a table and a lot of bundles that were dropped did not register on the server.  That means that some of you who saw the stats on your bundles and knew what you had still don’t have a viable bundle that registered to the mother horse.  You will be seeing a response in  your tickets that looks like this: According to our data base the mother horse did not have a viable bundle. Please send both the mother and the father of the bad bundle to (whatever CSR has your ticket) in a folder with your full SL name and Amaretto Ticket number. I will set both horses at 100% fervor and will send you a true random bundle. These are being handled as if you received a Bad_bundle because we have no way of replacing a bundle that did not register on the server. The true random bundles that are being sent do have the ability to have the same new traits as any of the starters that you would buy at the Amaretto Store locations.

**PLEASE INCLUDE UUID NUMBER’S FOR THE PARENTS ON YOUR TICKET**  Having the UUID’s of atleast the mother of the bundle will speed up the processing of your ticket.  You can locate the uuid by right clicking on the horse and copy and pasting the entire number from the description line into your ticket.

The entire team is saddened by this last issue and want you all to know the server has been migrated to a larger more stable server and now that the backup phase and migration are complete we are hopeful that these are all issues that have been solved and will not happen in the future.  We appreciate all your patience and support and again we extend our most sincere apologies.

Written by Dakota on behalf of the entire Amaretto Family