News on Grid-Press

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So as many of you may have noticed, our blog has been pretty quiet lately. This is because we have been making a lot of innovative creations in the back end of things. We were also dealing with a big deal of new customers, and we are very excited to share some news with you guys. We are going to be covering some changes we are going through these next two weeks.

Grid-Press

That is right, we have been rehauling the old Grid-Press site and it is almost finished. But this time we are changing it up a little bit this next release. We thought Hypergrid Business was doing a good job, however we noticed it is still missing the focus on actual grids and articles by regular residents. Now we know there are tons of bloggers already who do this stuff, but we want to contribute back, so we are going to be offering a crediting system.
The new Grid-Press site will have the fallowing new categories: News, Grid Voice, Opinion, Explorations. We are going to be focusing on getting people to see what is in this mass virtual metaverse. We are also going to be rewarding people who want to be dedicated writers for Grid-Press money via PayPal. Not a whole lot of money, but when you get up to 5 USD you can cash out. Most articles will be 0 to 2 USD, however we will pay out monthly based on articles that have the most traffic and most actively commented on.
News (0 – 1.50): Articles about news affecting the opensimulator code, virtual worlds, hypergrid and related.
Grid Voice (FREE): This is for grids to publish news about what is going on in their worlds, new features, etc.
Opinion (0 – 1): These articles are for people to give their opinion on different grids, reviews of grids, giving critical reviews on things in the metaverse. No bullying or defaming of people or companies will be allowed, all opinions must be appropriate.
Explorations (0-1): Show off regions and grids you never explored, or you find and think need to be shown off to people.
If you are interested in becoming a writer for the new Grid-Press, due to launch this weekend, please contact us at support[at]zetamex.com with the fallowing information: Name, You know how to use WordPress, Use images with proper permission or taken yourself for articles, Why you should be a Grid-Press author. We will be selecting only a few people, and be announcing them on the grand re-opening of Grid-Press.
Stay tuned for Zetaworlds news as it will be coming out in the next day or two!

Web Site Service Provider Issues

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We apologize for the Zetamex site downtime, only sites were effected all services were still 100% operational. We have contacted our hosting provider, and there was a glitch in their billing system that they are still unsure what happened, however we are currently waiting on them to resolve the issue, but we have been assured that the sites are back online and should remain online.

I again apologize for any inconviences this might have caused our customers, please rest assured that we are working closely with our web site services provider to make sure this does not happen again as this greatly upsets more than you would imagine. However, that being said. All the sites are back online, and sorry for the outage.

ZetaWorlds Delayed

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We are sad to announce that we are delaying the launch of ZetaWorlds as some new features have just been made available in the opensimulator source code. We are also changing up the focus of the project as well. The new launch is set for the 15th, which will only be a public testing point not an official release.

What is ZetaWorlds?

Recently we been having a lot of people consider starting up a commercial or closed grid, but then pull out because they get hit with the wall that most hit. That is being starved for content creators, people joining your world, and the grid being constantly updated and stable. Some people want and need that bleeding edge and some want that stability.

Now this is where ZetaWorlds comes in, we are a virtual world that hasn’t been done in opensim yet. We are launching a world that anyone can come in and do their thing, we are even giving away free land. We also have hypergrid turned on, with security in place. Import and and export features for region owners, with safety features in place. We even have currency, which you start out with 10 ZC$ starting out so you can purchase your first parcel tier free.

So why do we not think this is a conflict of interest? Well we have thought long and hard about starting ZetaWorlds, and we cannot think of anyone would risk doing a closed grid, with an almost completely open concept. Not to mention, we are just managing the back end. We are not a niche grid, we are not ourself running events, we want the users to control how they use the grid.

This does not mean we are not involved, we will have monthly town hall meetings. The citizens of the grid will elect candidates to be in charge of certain things in the community. We will be providing tools for any resident to schedule public events, and even setting up public event centers for performances and more. Including our first event, which is Zetamex turns 3 years old!

Now that does sound a bit different, but we are going a step further. Like SecondLife, we are going to have 3 copies of opensim back-end running. However, unlike SecondLife, region owners get to choose what version they want to use. Here are the versions with their code names:

Husky – This is our version of stability on the grid, that is only updated when certain milestones are reached. We chosen to name it husky, as huskies tend to be strong and tamable animal.

Dragon – This is weekly opensim master code, pulled every Sunday with our own modules added in. Dragon is chosen because we think you are playing with fire when choosing to use bleeding edge code, but you get to play with all the latest improvements.

Bullet Dragon – This is the same as Dragon, however we have Bullet physics turned on. The name should speak for itself.

We do want to point out the pricing is slightly higher for regions on ZetaWorlds than our regions on Metropolis, OSgrid, or other open grids. The reason that is, because we need to cover core server costs, it is actually why charge less on region hosting for other grids so you can have money to donate back to the actual grid. We will keep our ability to have more than one regions with a simulator, however you will not gain console access to these regions, but you will have a more improved ZetaPanel.

I look forward to hearing from everyone!

Two Important Notices!

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We have been running into a lot of customers misunderstanding how automatic payments work. So we want to try and resolve this issue by explaining it in this email.

When you choose to subscribe to paying Zetamex automatically, you are making an agreement with PayPal not Zetamex, to automatically send money to Zetamex. We cannot cancel this ourselves, this must be done on your end, the only thing we can do is refund your payment. Which does cost us to continually refund, as PayPal charges us charge back fees. So please remember, if you do not want automatic billing to occur, choose to do manual payments with us.

This also goes for if you cancel service with us, you MUST also tell PayPal to stop sending us payments. We have not control over this, we are now updating our cancellation email with the steps so people who cancel service will know the steps to take to cancel your billing arrangements with PayPal.

Also, we have noticed a lot of people been bypassing the Zadaroo site and going directly to http://lkstuff.softpawhost.com/ to fetch the files. While that was setup for temporary while we setup Zadaroo, we do rely on visitors to go to http://zadaroo.com/ as it allows us to make pay for the server storage fees, so lkstuff.softpawhost.com now redirects you to Zadaroo.com automatically.

This does not mean we have turned off hot-linking. We understand that hot-linking makes it easier for you to load OARs straight from our server, so we have left that enabled, you will just have to use the site like you used to when Linda Henson(Kellie) was the owner. I do understand this means you see a few ads, but those advertisements are how Zadaroo remains a free asset to you.

I thank you all for understanding these changes.

New Plans & Double Up

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Our new plan layout has gone live, and through out today regions will be restarting as they take effect the back end changes to our plans. Feel free to check out the new line up on our new sub-sites we will be using to start our ad campaigns across the web, or our regular site at http://zetamex.com for all the latest changes.

Standalones(Mini Grids) – http://standalones.zetamex.com/
Metroplis Regions – http://metropolis.zetamex.com/
OSgrid Regions – http://osgrid.zetamex.com/

Main Site – http://zetamex.com/

We are so happy to announce our new plan called MAX which is what knocked all our plans down a tier. We noticed many people want the prim count you can get with kitely, so we are giving it to you. However you must remember than prim count is effected by script impact, users, and many other factors as well. But we assure you this is possible.

Now then, it is time for our next discount run. So we have tons of new space on our new servers, and we want to fill them up. So here our the coupon codes for this month.

DOUBLEVISION – (Aug 7 – Aug 30, 2013) Buy our Standard Simulator, then you will get another Standard simulator FREE for the life of your subscription of the first simulator. This coupon can only be used once per customer.
OMG50OFF – (Aug 7 – Aug 30, 2013) That is right, 50% OFF ALL our plans except our dedicated servers. This account can be applied to only once per customer, and gives you your first month 50% OFF after that it goes back to regular pricing.
25OFFDEDI – (Aug 7 – Aug 30, 2013) Get 25% OFF your first month on ALL our dedicated server plans. This coupon can only be used once per customer.