While I am away on vacation from work, I am currently working on a special project with my fellow freebie fashionistas of the Freebie Queens Discord server, where we are drawing up a comprehensive listing of Second Life stores with free gifts. (Trust me when I say this: it’s like herding cats, people! Stores open, move location, and close with alarming regularity.)
And in my travels across the SL grid, I came across an unusual freebie which I wanted to share with you, from a store called Twilight (SLURL). Click on the sign shown below to join their store group for free:
There are a couple of gifts available here. One is a mobile phone with a Bento hold pose (just click on the panel indicated by the red arrow in the image below). However, this is not just any old SL cellphone, with a static screen or a HUD with a selection of static screens; it actually has a working web browser built into it!
In the picture below, I have it set to the homepage of the RyanSchultz.com blog:
According to the included documentation:
Double-Click on white screen to start the browser. Search for any website on web with Google search. Or enter the URL you want to access in the search bar to open the website. You can scroll on the prim too and click links and watching videos and so on, like on your own Google or Firefox browser.
This phone also comes in a separate, rezzable version to use as home decor (say, to leave on a desk or an armchair). It also has a working web browser. The documentation notes:
*** Having multiple phones or web browser screen item in the same parcel can cause bugs. Use with care.
This mobile phone itself is Copy/Mod to enable multiple ones to be rezzed and [resized].
The Bento hold pose affects your avatar’s right hand and head, so you are looking down at the phone. It’s a high-priority animation which seems to work quite well with my animation override /AO.
This is a cute freebie, and I really like the fact that you can customize what you see on the screen! It’s actually a gift from the old Stay at Home Club program, launched in the spring of 2020 as the pandemic lockdowns started, and Second Life’s monthly active users (MAU) count jumped from 600,000 to 900,000. The program ended in September 2020, but some stores like Twilight are still making their gifts from that program available (for which we thank them!).
And how’s about this for a final, meta image? Looking at this very blogpost while I’m in Second Life!
Happy freebie shopping!