Stock Exchange churn continues
August 20, 2007
The near-farcical nature of the multiple stock exchanges in SL continues, with the delisting of a number of companies on the fledgling ISE (International Stock Exchange). A number of these delisted companies were refugees from the World Stock Exchange and they now state they’ll list elsewhere.
The obvious question is - why would anyone have confidence in any virtual world stock exchange or the companies listed on them, when it’s so easy to change exchanges at a whim. To be fair to the ISE, they have implemented “a policy of disclosing all CEO’s stock transactions in direct relation to their listed company”. If this is the reason that the companies have delisted, then the concern should be focused on the company side of the equation. It’s a fair expectation that shareholders know the shareholdings of a company’s CEO.
It’s been discussed in detail all over the SL blogosphere: the current situation is a murky mess full of contradictions and conflicts of interest and it’s fair to assume the churn isn’t going to improve until some fundamental transparency measures are implemented across the board.
On a related note I received the following IM overnight:
[23:41] MouzurX Wise: (Saved Mon Aug 20 01:13:14 2007) You have been ejected from ‘World Stock Exchange’ by MouzurX Wise.
His profile claims:
“I work at WSE Customer Service, am GMG PR/IR Manager and I run an investment company in SL, Wise Financial. Also, I am the CEO of Builders Paradise - Franchise.”
Aside from no explanation about my ejection, here’s one of many examples of the conflicts of interest that abound. Can you imagine someone in RL who owned a financial services company also working for the stock exchange?
Popularity: 14% [?]
Teachers Buzz
August 19, 2007
Teachers world-wide will be conducting another Teachers Buzz this coming Monday 20th August 6pm SLT/PDT. The meeting is being held on the LivingintheUniverse island.
An added benefit to these SL educational happenings is now the use of date and time services at Time and Date.com. Educators here in Australia and around the world now have a quick and easy reference for local times to that of the SL happenings and times.
The Teachers Buzz on Monday is being presented by Cosmo Priestman, Ourania Fizgig and ScubaChris Wollongong, with the planned program being a look at ‘The History of Earth & Life on Earth Exhibit’. This is a scale model installation work on the timeline of Earth, 4.6 billion years ago to the present.
The History of Earth & Life on Earth Exhibit can be found here.
Popularity: 4% [?]
Burning Life, Australian style
August 18, 2007
On the SLOz forums, Australian SL resident Good2Go mentioned he’s set up an RSS Feed Board devoted to Burning Life 2007 - you can find it here.
Good2Go’s take:
“There is seating nearby, for residents to chat and make their Burning Life plans. If there is enough interested we may be able to put together some Aussie proposals for plots. This year’s Burning Life will run concurrently with Burning Man”.
If you’re participating in Burning Life we’d love to hear about your plans. Is there a critical mass of Australians to make an impact on Burning Life?
Popularity: 12% [?]
Movement to minimise Ad Farms
August 17, 2007
I noticed today on the 2nd Place blog that there’s a movement underway to stop land parcels under 128 m2 from showing up in land searches.
The assumption is this would remove the saleability of the 16m2 ad farm horrors that have proliferated over the mainland sims. If they annoy you it’s probably worth voting and discussing the issue on the Second Life JIRA.
Popularity: 3% [?]
Weekend Whimsy
August 17, 2007
Each Friday we provide a sampling of content generated by SL users and posted on services like YouTube:
1. Happiness Factory - The Movie
2. Reflexive Architecture: The DoorWall
3. Steampunk AV 1
Popularity: 3% [?]
VastPark takes next step
August 16, 2007
Back in April this year we mentioned VastPark, an Australian-flavoured virtual world platform. In the months since they’ve been working away at their next phase, something code-named ‘When World’s Collide’. The VastPark site is currently accepting sign-ups for their beta-testing of ‘Worlds Collide’. It’s great to see such steady evolution in virtual world evolution occurring locally.
VastPark’s full press release on the progress (thanks to Brad Howarth):
Today at the XMediaLab “Digital Worlds” conference in Melbourne (Australia), VastPark is announcing their upcoming Virtual Content Platform for creating and running your own virtual world and online games.
This release of VastPark, codename “Worlds Collide”, marks a turning point in virtual world platforms due to its ease of use and speed of deployment. Liz Chung, Sales and Marketing Manager says “You can start from nothing to having created and published your own unique world online in literally a few minutes. And if you’re a content creator, you can get your content syndicated across many virtual worlds. The future value of this sort of viral distribution is huge.”
Bruce Joy, Founder and CEO, said “VastPark puts the power of virtual worlds into the hands of corporations, organisations, game clans and anyone who has a great idea”. Joy claims that VastPark changes the way virtual worlds are created by making them as easy as creating your own blog but with far more creative options.
A unique feature announced today is a method for 3D content professionals and hobbyists to syndicate their content so that it can be used across many virtual worlds at once and enable them to maintain and update the content themselves. This has the added benefit of making it easy for people with limited training in 3D content to still be able to publish their own sophisticated 3D worlds filled with professional content. Craig Presti, Lead Developer of VastPark believes “This is going to enable 3D content to become a viral media. I’m hoping that 2 years from now some 3D artists are going to be household names because finally their work will be able to be seen and experienced by a brand new audience of people. In fact, I see this as a new medium of expression - one that will end up being a significant part of the web.”
Another feature has been a dream for many ever since the original Matrix® film: Independent virtual worlds can open doorways to each other so that they form a seamless connection and users can travel directly from world to world to world. “We think that this feature alone is going to revolutionise the way 3D worlds are perceived online” states Henry Tsai, Head of Development at Everyday Interactive Networks (EIN). EIN is the first partner offering 3rd party support, development services and extensions to the VastPark platform.
When questioned about the business model for VastPark, Bruce Joy claimed “We always want users to be able to get in and do things free of charge. We made the platform because we wanted the tools ourselves. So we decided long ago that individuals can create and run a cool virtual world free of charge. We earn money from the larger worlds and by offering special features. For instance, we’re considering adding low-cost subscriptions for the creators of private and commercial worlds. The foundation of our business is that what we offer will always be free for end users and even our Creator tool and 3D world browser will always be free downloads. Each world is owned by somebody, they can set their own policy on membership to that world. It’s just like the Web all over again.”
VastPark claims that game developers will find the tools familiar and the platform is designed to support social communities, real time virtual meetings and online games including casual fun games and FPS CounterStrike®-type games. ”
Popularity: 12% [?]
Ageplay three months after the ban
August 14, 2007
It’s been just over three months since the ageplay ban instigated by Linden Lab. There’s been no reports of ageplay sexual exploits in SL since that time although there’d be no doubt it’s occurred. There also remains an enormous range of children’s clothes, skins and accessories on offer:
To test the level of risk for an avatar in child form, we logged in on an alternative account as a child avatar and spent some time wandering around a number of clubs in SL to see if any approaches were made for sex. In the hour or so we did this, we weren’t approached but on the other hand, no-one was at all peturbed by a little boy watching their activities:
Some clubs do have prominent warnings on the issue although just as many don’t:
Overall, the ban may have stopped overt displays of ageplay sexual activity and instilled significant wariness of those frequenting the more popular sex clubs, but all of the support mechanisms are healthy and well. What are your thoughts on the issue? Are there valid reasons for over-18’s to be involved in ageplay, sexual or otherwise?
Popularity: 7% [?]
