User:Torley Linden/Postcards

I'll teach you how to share your postcards with the world so you can easily capture and broadcast your Second Life memories. This is how I do it; feel free to adapt and vary to fit your needs best.

The first step is choosing one or more sites which will display your postcards. I use these, each of which has cool, unique features:

• SLBuzz
• Snapzilla
• BlogHUD

Optional but useful: these three sites also allow you to crosspost if you have a Flickr account. What's the advantage? Saved time and no extra "Second Life" logo image also appearing, which is a by-product of the original postcard that doesn't get automatically stripped out, and an annoyance if you use the regular email-to-Flickr. All you need to do is login via these links as applicable and set it up:

• SLBuzz-to-Flickr
• Snapzilla-to-Flickr
• BlogHUD-to-Flickr

Since you don't likely don't want your postcards appearing at Flickr in triplicate, I suggest selecting one crosspost service. Try them out and decide what works for you. I use SLBuzz's because I like the styled "Visit..." SLURL inclusion, which makes it easy for anyone to teleport to the location I took the postcard at; it also turns the postcard text into Flickr tags for easier searching. See an example.

Once you've got that setup, you're ready to send a postcard — not just to any email address, but the special email addresses each of these sites use. I send to these:

• SLBuzz's special Flickr crosspost addy - flickr@slbuzz.com
• Snapzilla's general addy (just about any alias will do) - x@slpics.com
• BlogHUD's - pix@bloghud.com

and I also email myself for an extra copy. You can send a postcard to multiple recipients by separating email addresses with commas. Like this:

To send a postcard in the first place:

• Click the Snapshot button (on the toolbar at the bottom of your screen), or go to File menu > Take Snapshot. A window will appear, offering choices.
• Select "Send a postcard". If it wasn't already selected, you'll also need to click Refresh Snapshot.
• Click Send. Another window will appear where you can enter the recipients' addresses, a subject line, and description message (both can be left blank if you'd prefer).
• Click this Send button, and it's off!

Wait several minutes, then check those sites and/or your email as appropriate, and you should see the postcard — and so will other people.

Watch a video tutorial:

I also highly recommend using a text macro tool to save keystrokes, as it can get very frustrating and tedious to enter recipient email addys time after time. If you've ever wondered how I got so prolific at sending postcards, it's because I use one. Until we have a feature to autosave that, have a look at utilities like PhraseExpress (which I use) and Texter, which empower you to type a few characters which expand into a whole phrase (in this case, the emails). Or as I do with PhraseExpress, I simply use a custom keystroke — Ctrl-Alt-Shift-X — to paste it all out and automate pressing Tab twice so I'm ready to enter a subject line.