In the world Winter you can build your own christmas theme in the Winter Holiday Village II ( 718N 1960E) and is located next to the Winter Holiday Village of 2010. Some of us have seen those buildings of 2010 already with the Explores Club on 7th December. There are 56 building lots , ask of telegram to Bach Zhaa(#360197) for your own building lot. You can build during the whole christmas period.

There are also several parties : on 14th december the GK holiday party, on 21th december the Xmas party at @Kitteths, and on 22nd there is a Xmas Parade in the Winter Holiday Village (there will be 3 parades). On 28th there is the December birthday party @AWReunion and there are 2 parties planned for celebrating the New Year on THE 31st . Look at the calendar page for more info.

http://forums.activeworlds.com/read.php?6,361830

http://forums.activeworlds.com/read.php?6,361850

AWSchool has introduced a brand new teachers schedule, mentioning all the teachers showing when they are online for teaching classes. The schedule is located at the world entry square.

You will also see an "individual" appointment schedule, where a student can make an appointment with a teacher for a teaching class. By viewing the teachers schedule at the left you will know which teacher you have to telegram to. When the appointment is "booked" , you will see that is indicated in red.

There is also a calendar , mentioning the events "for all" in AWschool world , such as Mover Workshops and parties. The calendar is also located at the world entry square.

http://forums.activeworlds.com/read.php?6,361758

AWRadio is back .

AWRadio was founded in 1995 by SilverFerret (=PChard). The radio has been managed by several citizens over the past few years until 2008. In april 2012 AWRadio has been restarted, and now in november 2013 , PChard (#320577) runs again the AWRadio. (Read more on AWWiki : http://wiki.activeworlds.com/index.php?title=AWRadio ). You can listen to AWRadio at http://awradio.info/ . At the moment there is no schedule when the radio is transmitting, but more info will be added soon : there world PChard is the home world for AWRadio.

RJBradio, PKToons and Nursemom radio

There are still other radio stations in AW for many parties in the worlds. There is RJBradio.com , owned by Dovestar(#278411) , and is running since 1997. There is also pktoons.com (PeaceKeeperToons) owned by Class 3 (#288391),(http://wiki.activeworlds.com/index.php?title=PKToons_Radio ), Nursemom radio, owned by Nursemom (#304857), ), and Terra.Libre radio owned by Bukka (#301389)

http://forums.activeworlds.com/read.php?6,361695

http://forums.activeworlds.com/read.php?6,361729

http://forums.activeworlds.com/read.php?6,361568

http://forums.activeworlds.com/read.php?6,361623

http://forums.activeworlds.com/read.php?6,361439

http://forums.activeworlds.com/read.php?6,361518

The Yellow Gazette is the new official newsletter.

Since there was no new release of the AW Newsletter since january 2013, AW had to look for a substitute. After the switch in june, AW needs new support within the AW community and they have chosen for the Yellow Gazette, which was very obvious, as the Yellow Gazette had issues since 2010 and it is the only other newsletter, and quite a lot of citizens are making an article for each issue. You will find information about the Yellow world, and tutorials for newbies , but also for advanced builders. You will find a link to the Yellow Gazette in the AW immigration message, each time you log in into Activeworlds.

This AWTimes newsletter has only started in august, after the Yellow Gazette has become the official newsletter for AW. The AWTimes remains an alternative newsletter and it's a good thing that there are different sources of information.

http://forums.activeworlds.com/read.php?6,361295

http://forums.activeworlds.com/read.php?6,361361

http://forums.activeworlds.com/read.php?6,360923

Introduction of the Star-Spangled Rating.

One week after the free-citizenship launch , all citizens got a rating that has been indicated with stars. The color and the numbers of stars indicate how long you have been a citizen in AW.

See also on the wiki pages: http://wiki.activeworlds.com/index.php?title=Star-Spangled_Rating

When clicking upon this "orang-circle"icon on the toolbar , a menu will appear with information about buying credits. You can buy credits by choosing "i need more credits". The more credits you buy , the more advantage you will make : for instance, you can buy 1000 credits for 80.5$ if you use Paypal. Then you will have credits upon you account, which you can use to buy worlds, bots , clothes .... The amount of credits you have will appear on the screen, but you can hide/show this information by choosing : Show - Credit Info (CTRL+F7)

You can buy a p10-world for 200 credits, with access for 5 users. When you buy a larger world, you also have other advantages. For instance, a p20-world costs 600 credits, with access for 50 simultaneous users and VOIP included.

If you want to buy bots, for using 1 bot per year you have to pay 210 credits, 3 bots will cost 570 credits. And you can also buy credits if you want to change the nickname (200 credits).

Finally you can also buy clothes or accessories in the AWMall world, but here you don't need to click upon the awcredits button, but by clicking upon the object you want to buy. Then you will see how much it costs ,and then you need to confirm if you want to buy the object or not.

On june 15th, Activeworlds starts with free citizenship for all. No more tourists, everyone is citizen now. AW also starts with a new payment system with credits. AWMall becomes the new portal world, where you will find avatar clothes and accessories with you can buy with those credits.

Activeworlds passed through the worst. Now the revival...

AW continues losing visitors and it is clear for all of us that the introduction of the free citizenship had to be implemented urgently. There were talks about it already about 2 years ago, but there was effort and time needed to develop the aw program for this change. And there were also the implementations of the version 6.0 in 2012 with a lot of great improvements every month, starting as from june 2012 and still going on now in 2013.

As people remained without any answer about free citizenship and about the future pricing policy of AW, people started to hesitate and leave. In may 2013, AW reached the lowest number of visitors : below 10 simultaneous users on the calmest moments of the day and only 40 users at peak hours. Since the startup of the free citizenship in june 2013, the number of visitors has almost doubled after 2 months. The revival has started !