The Metaverse Journal - Virtual World News

1. BBC (UK) – View from the end of the world. “Taking a journey to the end of the world might not be for everyone, but in the virtual spaces of gaming and online environments, it’s not as dangerous as it might seem. Robert Overweg in the Netherlands has been capturing virtual spaces since 2007 and his latest project has produced some of the most eerie and unexpected pictures from the worlds of first-person shooter video-games. He first found the edges of a world while playing a game called Left for Dead. “I saw normal road, walls and bushes but then the road just ended – it was foggy. So I decided to capture this and go into other games and explore their aesthetics of the ends of their worlds,” Mr Overweg said.”

2. The Guardian (UK) – Internet addiction driving South Koreans into realms of fantasy. “s dusk descends on the Sinchon neighbourhood of Seoul, a wave of Saturday shoppers melts away, on cue, into restaurants and bars. But in a windowless room several floors above the throng, Ji Yu-tae is steeling himself for a very different night’s entertainment. His only companions are a bottle of vitamin drink, cigarettes and a monitor displaying a scene from Aion, one of South Korea’s most popular online games. When the hunger pangs become irresistible, he will click a box in the corner of his PC screen and order instant noodles. By Monday morning, after two days of almost non-stop gaming, Ji will make his way to work, pale and sleep-deprived, but content that he has progressed in the virtual world that has been his second home for the past two years. Seated next to him among rows of screens at this PC bang, an internet cafe in the South Korean capital, are scores of fellow obsessives whose attachment to online gaming is fast becoming a problem in the world’s most advanced internet society.”

3. Ars Technica (USA) – Gamers crave anonymity, so Blizzard scuttles Real ID plans. “Blizzard did not make many friends with its recent decision to force users to post with their real names in its official forums. The response was immediate and deafening, with pages and pages of users complaining bitterly about the new rule. One Blizzard employee posted his own name to prove the system’s safety only to have his personal information, including address and phone number, posted on the forum. The company listened to the feedback, and is now reversing course. “We’ve been constantly monitoring the feedback you’ve given us, as well as internally discussing your concerns about the use of real names on our forums,” Mike Morhaime, the CEO and cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment, wrote. “As a result of those discussions, we’ve decided at this time that real names will not be required for posting on official Blizzard forums.”

4. Huffington Post (USA) – Overview: Asia’s Social Media Scene. “Asia’s diverse cultures, languages and levels of economic development have always made it an exciting place to work. Now, however, Asia’s wide range of digital ecosystems have created wildly divergent virtual worlds that few people understand. These virtual worlds are, however, having a very real impact on Asias economics, politics and culture. I run Ogilvy’s team of social media specialists in Asia and created this video for an internal meeting to show some recent developments across the region. Countries in Asia with a similar level of development can have extremely different ways of approaching the Internet. In Korea, broadband connections are available virtually everywhere, while Japan’s Internet population is highly reliant on mobile.”

5. Times Higher Education (UK) – Sceptics start to see the other side of Second Life. “Hostility between academics who advocate teaching through virtual worlds and those who scorn the idea is being blamed for holding back the evolution of higher education. The warning comes despite evidence that universities are slowly embracing virtual environments such as Second Life for teaching, according to a report from the Virtual World Watch consultancy. The report, Zen and the Art of Avatar Maintenance, says that like the two characters in Robert M. Pirsig’s 1974 book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, academics hold polarised views of learning online. “Some people take to it with great enthusiasm; others recoil in dismay, horror or anger,” writes the study’s author, John Kirriemuir.”

6. Wall Street Journal (USA) – Reality Gets a Makeover. “French electronics company Parrot SA plans next month to release a toy helicopter with a twist. The AR Drone has a pair of cameras to relay video to iPhones or iPads, which function as the remote control. The device also recognizes certain objects, such as other AR Drones, and can add graphics to the video feed, creating a videogame played out in the real world. The $299 toy is the latest example of an effort to commercialize augmented reality, a technique in which extra information or graphics are added to ordinary surroundings. From virtual mirrors that superimpose a shade of lipstick on a potential buyer’s face, to restaurant reviews that pop up when a person points a camera phone at a restaurant, proponents say the technology has a range of possible uses beyond videogames that mix the real and virtual worlds.”

7. Bendigo Advertiser (Australia) – Professor nurses a real passion for regional health. “Professor Isabelle Ellis is looking forward to the challenges of her new role as professor of rural and regional nursing at the La Trobe Rural Health School. Professor Ellis was appointed by the La Trobe University board and will also head the school of nursing and midwifery. Professor Ellis was the mastermind behind a virtual online hospital course called v-Hospital, which enables nursing students studying externally to access real-life nursing in rural and remote areas. Her program was heralded a world first after it was launched at the Charles Darwin University in the Northern Territory in 2007. After leaving the NT, she took up a role at the University of Western Australia, where she continued to develop her passion for helping disadvantaged communities in rural and remote areas.”

8.Marketing Vox (USA) – Cascadian Farm Becomes First Branded Crop in FarmVille. “Organic brand Cascadian Farm is becoming the first branded organic crop to be offered in Zynga’s popular online game FarmVille. Beginning July 19 through July 26, Cascadian Farm will give FarmVille players such benefits as coupon offers, organic farming and green living tips and – per the game’s philosophy – the opportunity to enhance their farm. The campaign was developed with the support of Sterling-Rice Group. The brand has recreated the real Cascadian Farm – located in the Upper Skagit Valley of Washington’s North Cascade Mountains – virtually, with the online fruits and vegetables planted in similar fashion. There’s also an avatar farmer called “Farmer Joe Cascadian,” who’ll serve as the “virtual” tender to the brand’s own FarmVille farm.”

9. Gamasutra (USA) – Virtual Fairground Launches Engine for 3D Flash-based MMO Games and Virtual Worlds. “Virtual world and MMO games specialist Virtual Fairground announced today the launch of its browser-based virtual world and MMO game development platform, The Ride. The Ride enables reliable and rapid development of advanced and scalable 3D Flash-based virtual worlds and MMO games at a fraction of the cost usually associated with these types of products and services. Virtual Fairground has spend over 2 years developing this proprietary technology and design platform after raising US 4 million in venture capital in 2008.”

10. Government Technology (USA) – Edmonton, Alberta, Replicating City in Second Life. “Second Life may be a scary, uncharted world for most local governments, but not for Edmonton, Alberta.
In the capital of Canadian province Alberta, CIO Chris Moore is on a mission to recreate his city in the virtual world, where avatars roam and interact like they would in real life. Launched in 2003 by San Francisco-based Linden Lab, Second Life is an immersive online environment and a 3-D modeling tool based around simple geometric shapes that allows users to build virtual objects. At the beginning of the year, Second Life had 18 million accounts registered. Moore is one of them. When it comes to business, he likes to plug in.”

Popularity: 1% [?]

1. The Guardian (UK) – Ten years of virtual worlds: Habbo hits a decade. “Virtual worlds might have been an entertaining diversion for big media a couple of years back, but for a massive swathe of web users these are a powerful and important part of their online lives. Far from being a flash in the pan, sites like Habbo Hotel can claim both longevity and profitability – both often elusive qualities for social web institutions.”

2. The Telegraph (UK) – Club Penguin: parents and the power of the penguins. “Club Penguin is an internet phenomenon like no other – this virtual world, inhabited by millions of four to 14-year-olds, is the most popular children’s website in Britain. But when Canadian Lane Merrifield founded the site in 2005, it wasn’t an attempt to cash in on pester power: “I really did start this for my kids,” he says. “There was nothing online that was fun and safe, and that took advantage of the fact that children really want a social experience.” Just two years later, Disney bought the site, with its games, chat-rooms and virtual pets, for $350 million (£230 million).”

3. VentureBeat (USA) – Playdom buys Metaplace, which forsook virtual worlds for social games. “Fast-growing social game company Playdom has acquired Metaplace, which failed in its attempt to create a site for user-generated virtual worlds. The price of the deal wasn’t disclosed. The move is the latest in a spree of acquisitions by Playdom, which is racing to catch up with social game rivals such as Zynga in one of the hottest markets in games. Last month, Playdom said it raised $33 million to fuel its rapid acquisition pace. The outcome could be a good one for Metaplace, which did a two-step and shifted strategy earlier this year. Metaplace shut down its meta world, which consisted of 30,000 user-created virtual worlds, at the end of December. At the time, founder Raph Koster said the San Diego company was pursuing an exciting opportunity but declined to comment further on it.”

4. Technorati (USA) – Virtual Worlds Continue To Make Real-World Gains. “Opensim, the open source server platform used for hosting virtual worlds has reported growth of over 13% last month. Opensim has two modes. Standalone and grid. Standalone essentially hosts the entire virtual experience on one server which limits the number of users, whereas the grid option spreads the number of simulations across a number of different machines.”

5. Kotaku (USA) – Blizzard’s Naming Policy Is Smaller MMO Publisher’s Marketing Opportunity. “Who benefits from Blizzard’s controversial decision to use players’ real names in forum posts? War Rock publisher GamersFirst hopes it will, issuing an official press release to let gamers know it’s all still anonymous there. Blizzard’s decision to modify its forums in the near future so that players’ real names are displayed instead of their character names has caused quite a stir. While others debate the pros and cons of using your real name on the internet, others smell opportunity. Public relations folks always smell opportunity. GamersFirst is a publisher of quick and dirty online games, many of which you might never have heard of on Kotaku if not for today’s press release. You might have heard of War Rock, but Knight Online World? Sword 2? Our World? Never heard of them, until now.”

6. USA Today (USA) – NASA releases free-to-play online game. “NASA’s latest endeavor to educate people on space exploration has taken them to the world of video games. The space agency has released a new PC video game available through Valve Software’s Steam service called Moonbase Alpha. The game, which features single-player and multiplayer components, places players inside an astronaut suit, as they must rebuild a lunar base crippled by a meteor strike. To complete the objectives leading to the revival of the base, players will use a variety of tools include mobile robotic repair units and a lunar rover.”

7. Image and Data Manager (Australia) – Surveying the collaboration battleground. “In June 2009, we set out to assess the state of play in the collaborative software market in Australia. We wanted to get behind the hype of the “collaboration” buzz-word to discover how organisations are selecting and implementing these tools, and whether they are benefiting from them. We used an online survey to collect our data, and received 42 responses. In the following article, we will present some of our high-level findings. We began by asking our respondents to define the term “collaboration” in the first place. To give you some idea of the responses, we have put the text through Wordle, an online tool that creates ‘word clouds’ from text based on the frequency of words within that text.”

8. Virtual Worlds News (USA) – 3Dchat Launches Today. “New social virtual world 3Dchat officially “beta launches” today. The world is billing itself as an adults-only virtual scene that will feature an identity verification process for users who want to log in using their real name. The virtual world plans to use this process to verify user ages, as well, so it can screen out any users that are under 18. User gender will also be verifiable through the process.”

9. MTV.com (USA) – ‘Star Wars: The Old Republic’ Closed Beta Kicks Off, Invites Sent. “Even though Blizzard went back on its controversial decision to require real names in the official “WoW” forums, fans might still be sore. What better way to inflict revenge than to join another MMO? The time may soon be ripe, as “Star Wars: The Old Republic” has just entered a closed-beta phase in which outsiders will be able to test out BioWare’s biggest and most epic timesuck yet.”

10. The Drum (Australia) – This is Web 2.0, and it’s changing our world. “I’m looking at a series of pictures by the photographer Robbie Cooper and they’re making me think about computers, the cyber world and our changing relationship with reality. They’re from a book called Alter Ego – a project in which Cooper travelled the world taking pictures of people alongside their ‘avatars’ – the images they construct for themselves in cyberspace games like World of Warcraft and Everquest. Some of them are funny, like the skinny kid who appears as a superhero or the obese boy whose avatar is a Viking-like warrior – and some of them make you wonder what’s the point, such as the woman whose avatar looks exactly like her – but one pair of images really stays with me. It’s the little boy in an oxygen mask, with stick-like, atrophied arms and hands resting on foam support cushions, next to the image of a menacing figure in full space armour. It tells a story without words, and it’s a story of liberation – a child whose life has been expanded by the ability to travel to new (even if imaginary) places and experience a world outside his room.”

Popularity: 1% [?]

1. LiveScience (USA) – Virtual Government (vGov) Aims to Improve National Security. “The federal government is launching a cyberspace initiative this summer that sponsors say has the potential to enhance national security, improve government collaboration and save taxpayer dollars to boot. Called vGov, it is a virtual world that will function much like a secure “Second Life” for government agencies. “Second Life” is a virtual world where users, or “residents,” can interact with each other and participate in individual and group activities online. It has nearly one million active users, including 1,400 businesses such as IBM, according to Linden Labs, the creator of the virtual world. Launched under the aegis of the Department of Agriculture (USDA), vGov will initially serve as a digital sandbox for the USDA, the Air Force, Department of Homeland Security and the National Defense University (NDU).”

2. Virtual Worlds News (USA) – Pillsbury IP Practice Adds Virtual World Counsel. “Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLC’s Intellectual Property practice is adding a new counsel, Sean F. Kane, who will focus on issues involving virtual worlds and online games. Kane is a member of the American Bar Association and co-chairman of the board’s Computer Games and Virtual Worlds Committee, co-chair of the Section of Science & Technology Law’s Virtual Worlds and Multiuser Online Games Committee, and a member of Board of Editors of the LJN publication Internet Law & Strategy. ”

3. CNET (USA) – Groups push feds for video game age restrictions. “Video game aficionados might have to enter a credit card or find another way to verify their age before playing a networked game, thanks to a new push from advocacy groups who say they want to protect minors from in-game advertising messages. In-game marketing has become so advanced that it “allows advertisers to track game users” and detect if people who are exposed to certain ads eventually use or buy the advertised product, a coalition including the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, the Center for Digital Democracy, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and U.S. PIRG told federal regulators this week.
They say that because “mobile devices, instant messaging, social networks, virtual reality, avatars, interactive games, and online video” have become so pervasive, the Federal Trade Commission must enact new regulations to protect minors from electronic advertisements and other marketing messages. Not only young children are at risk, but the FTC “should seek ways to provide protections to teens,” the coalition recommends.”

4. MSNBC (USA) – Second Life: Reality Intrudes on Virtual Reality. “While you were worrying about keeping your home, you may have missed the popping of the virtual-reality real estate bubble. In Second Life — Linden Lab’s immersive, 3D game that allows players to trade real dollars for virtual dollars — a nice stretch of mainland coastal property that would have fetched around $65 in 2007 today goes for $16.
That’s partly because the financial crisis crimped spending for the 1.38 million users, known as residents, who have logged into Second Life in the past 60 days. “The real real estate crisis had a direct effect on the real estate” in virtual worlds, says Guntram Graef, a business partner at Anshe Chung Studios, which sells “land” in Second Life. It’s also because the pell-mell growth of Second Life has slowed dramatically since four years ago, when BusinessWeek put Anshe Chung — the avatar for Ailin Graef, Guntram’s wife — on its cover.”

5. VentureBeat (USA) – 3D maps: you’ll be able to walk around in them like in a virtual world. “Online maps are extremely useful, but not very innovative in their present form, as most maps we use today merely mirror paper maps. The road map serves most of our everyday needs, but as more and more data with a location component to it is accumulated – geo-tagged photos, videos, or information from social networks like Facebook and Twitter – we’ll need to represent that data in a way that adds value without overwhelming users. And as mobile devices gain more processing power, they’ll be able to access raw data stored in a server and display it in whole new ways. Mapping technology specialists say that these two developments — the increase of geo-tagged elements and the increased power of mobile devices — mean that browsing a map will increasingly mean moving around in a virtual, three-dimensional world like in the state-of-the-art video games seen on consoles like the PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360.”

6. MIT Technology Review (USA) – Treating Cockroach Phobia With Augmented Reality. “Augmented reality–overlaying the virtual world on top of the real world–has been used in everything from neurosurgery to iPhone apps. But until researchers at the Spanish Universitat Jaume got the bright idea to simulate hoards of cockroaches swarming over insect-phobic volunteers, no one had thought to use it as part of what’s known as exposure therapy.”

7. CTV News (Canada) – Feds head to virtual world to find workers. “If the heroes of the recent science fiction film Avatar showed up at a career fair, their blue skin might elicit a few stares. But at the federal government’s next fair, avatars are welcome. The Public Service Commission is going virtual to recruit new people to join Canada’s rapidly aging ranks of civil servants. In September, they’ll open an island on Second Life, an online universe that sees about 830,000 people wander hundreds of virtual communities each month. The PSC’s island will have information booths, presentations on jobs and a chance to interact live with current federal bureaucrats and ask questions. “Yes, we’re doing what we can do in the real world but there’s an additional dimension we can add to this,” said Marvin Bedward, director of project planning and innovation with the Public Service Commission of Canada.”

8. BNET (Australia) – Second Life Needs to Stop Having a Separate Life from Other Social Nets. “If you’re like most people in social media, you don’t spend much time anymore thinking about — let alone playing in — Second Life, the virtual 3D world that, a few years ago, had “it” social networking status. But with the news on Friday that Mark Kingdon, the current CEO, was stepping down, it’s time to think about it again — and wonder if its reputation for being a geeky hangout for people with no real-world life has proven somehow self-fulfilling. Other social nets, such as Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare, have a degree of interoperability — people can broadcast their location using Foursquare, for instance, and also have it sent to their Twitter followers. But not so with Second Life.”

9. The Malaysian Star (Malaysia) – Risk failure to succeed, says technopreneur. “Societies must encourage innovation by creating a culture that tolerates risk, said famed San Francisco-based technopreneur Mitch Kapor. “Risk involves failure and failure isn’t so shameful. People assume that if you’re a failure, you’re finished. This is not true,” he said at the Innovation and Entre preneurship: Lessons Learned From Silicon Valley talk here on Friday. Kapor explained that failure was part of the risk culture needed to raise a breed of able technopreneurs in the country. He said that besides having a risk culture, there needed to be other practical considerations, such as investing in affordable broadband and having a well-trained IT workforce.”

10. Escapist Magazine (USA) – The Escapist’s Publisher Speaking on Interactive Storytelling via Second Life. “If you’ve ever wondered about the function of storytelling in an interactive environment (i.e., videogames), pop in to Second Life this afternoon to hear Escapist publisher Alex Macris enlighten you. Linden Labs’ Second Life has quite a few uses outside of its (in)famous depth of user-generated content. Some tech-savvy teachers use it to hold classes in the virtual world, and then there’s Metanomics. A “passionate community” of people who are interested in exploring “the serious uses of virtual worlds” – that is, videogames and places like Second Life – Metanomics is perhaps best known for its weekly web show Wednesdays at 3PM EST (12PM PST), in which speakers discuss the nature of the virtual worlds surrounding us.”

Popularity: 1% [?]

1. BusinessWeek (USA) – Linden Lab’s Virtual Second Life Eyes Second Life. “Linden Lab’s virtual world called Second Life was seen as the Web’s next big thing following its 2003 debut. Investors including Amazon.com Inc. Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos and EBay Inc. founder Pierre Omidyar poured millions of dollars into the project, where 3-D avatars sunbathe on virtual islands and operate virtual companies. Businessweek featured Second Life on a 2006 cover, and Reuters opened a virtual bureau. Coca-Cola Co. held a virtual contest. Philip Rosedale, who founded San Francisco-based Linden Lab, said Second Life has yet to reach its potential. He was named interim CEO today, replacing Mark Kingdon, who stepped down. In 2008, Rosedale predicted that virtual worlds will become “bigger in total usage than the Web itself.”

2. Ars Technica (USA) -Saving “virtual worlds” from extinction. “Sometime this August, librarians at the University of Illinois will finish archiving over a dozen famous computer games, then step back to consider where to go next with their project. These programs go back over four decades, and include a 1993 version of Doom, various editions of Warcraft, and even MIT’s Spacewar! circa 1962. We wondered, given the gaming nature of most of the software being preserved, why the venture is calling itself the Preserving Virtual Worlds project. So we called up the project’s coordinator, Jerome McDonough, Assistant Professor of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois, to ask him about the name.”

3. University World News (UK) – Save money switching to OpenSim. “Educators in post-secondary institutions, colleges and schools looking for lower costs, better controls and no age restrictions might consider switching from Second Life to its open source alternative, the OpenSim virtual world server platform. The OpenSim server software can be used to power an entire public grid or a small private, behind-the-firewall installation, and can be run on an institution’s own server or hosted with third-party providers. Educators say they find OpenSim offers significant cost savings over Second Life although there may be hidden costs. “OpenSim is far less expensive to us to run,” said Shenlei Winkler, President of the Fashion Research Institute, in an online comment to the International Society for Technology in Education. “We pay less a year for most of our regions than we do for a month of our Second Life region’s hosting bills,” Winkler said.”

4. Inside Higher Ed (USA) – ‘Rebundling’ Liberal Education. “In 2009 a group of 42 researchers, educators, and entrepreneurs met together at the invitation of Union Square Ventures, a venture capital firm, to discuss how the Web could transform education. A major theme of the daylong discussion, which took place under the theme “Hacking Education,” was “unbundling,” the process through which online distribution of digital media and information breaks apart and erodes existing industries. At the center of “unbundling” are new technologically-enabled relationships that democratize access to the means of production and collectively create plenty where scarcity once existed. An often-cited example of “unbundling” is newspapers: with blogs and other online tools, one no longer needs a printing press or fleet of delivery vehicles to be heard. The newspaper editorial room competes with an army of bloggers and other online media outlets. Craigslist emerges as the marketplace for used household items, local job listings, and community announcements, replacing the advertising function of the traditional print newspaper. The combination is a perfect storm leading to a steady, nationwide stream of newspaper closures.”

5. VentureBeat (USA) – VenueGen lowers pricing to take virtual meetings to the masses. “VenueGen said today that it’s taking its 3D virtual meeting tools to a new audience, with a version aimed at freelancers, small businesses, bloggers, and do-good organizations. Company president Jeff Crown said that most of the existing virtual world products for businesses, such as those offered by Inxpo and Unisfair, are out of reach for smaller organizations, because they cost tens of thousands of dollars per year. And VenueGen’s initial service, which it launched at the DEMO conference coproduced by VentureBeat, was similarly priced for large enterprises.”

6. BusinessWeek (USA) – Second Life: Reality Intrudes on Virtual Reality. “While you were worrying about keeping your home, you may have missed the popping of the virtual-reality real estate bubble. In Second Life—Linden Lab’s immersive, 3D game that allows players to trade real dollars for virtual dollars—a nice stretch of mainland coastal property that would have fetched around $65 in 2007 today goes for $16. That’s partly because the financial crisis crimped spending for the 1.38 million users, known as residents who have logged into Second Life in the past 60 days. “The real real estate crisis had a direct effect on the real estate” in virtual worlds, says Guntram Graef, a business partner at Anshe Chung Studios, which sells “land” in Second Life. It’s also because the pell-mell growth of Second Life has slowed dramatically since four years ago, when BusinessWeek put Anshe Chung—the avatar for Ailin Graef, Guntram’s wife— on its cover.”

7. Scientific American (USA) – Grand Theft Auto Is Good for You? Not So Fast… “If your children are like 99 percent of boys and 94 percent of girls, they play video games. And, if they are like 50 percent of boys and 14 percent of girls, they prefer games with “mature” – read: violent — themes, such as Grand Theft Auto, an urban dystopia of gun fights, car chases, pole dancers and prostitutes, where blood splatters realistically on the “camera lens.” Should you worry whether such a game will warp your children’s minds? A new paper by Cheryl Olson, a public health specialist at Harvard, suggests the answer may be: au contraire. Olson surveyed children’s reported motivations for video game playing and found that their top rated choices were to have fun, compete well with others, and to be challenged. She then elaborates on the psychological benefits such play might afford, describing how video games facilitate self-expression, role play, creative problem-solving, cognitive mastery, positive social interactions and leadership. Sounds more utopian than dystopian, right?”

8. Wall Street Journal (USA) – Real Economist Learns From Virtual World. “In the first quarter of this year, while Chinese demand for copper, aluminum and nickel helped the London Metals Exchange’s index of prices rise to a 4% gain, the minerals price index for EVE went in the opposite direction, dropping by 1.8% over the same period. The deflationary trend in EVE was led by sharp declines in high-end metals Zydrine and Megacyte, mostly explained by a positive supply shock. A hitherto inaccessible asteroid belt was opened up in null security space, which created an important new source for the two metals and counteracted the upward effect of stronger demand from spaceship builders. These observations and more are laid out in the latest quarterly report on economic activity in EVE by Eyjolfur Gudmundsson, chief economist for Reykjavik, Iceland-based CCP Gaming, the company that designed, created and now manages EVE.”

9. TechCrunch (USA) – Amidst Turmoil, Linden Lab’s CEO Steps DownJune has not been a good month for Linden Lab, the creator of virtual world Second Life. A few weeks ago, the company announced that it was laying off 30 percent of its staff and taking Second Life into a new direction. Today, Linden Lab is announcing that current CEO Mark Kingdon (pictured here) is stepping down. Company founder Philip Rosedalehas been named interim CEO, and CFO Bob Komin has assumed the additional role of COO. The company did not give a reason for the reshuffling of the executive team but it’s safe to assume that it reflects Linden Lab’s new strategic direction. When announcing the layoffs in early June, Linden Lab also said that it aims to make SeconfdLife more browser based, eliminating the need to download any software. The company is also pushing for Second Life to extend to social networks.”

10. Escapist Magazine (USA) – Rumor: Star Wars: The Old Republic Closed Beta In Progress. “The Star Wars: The Old Republic community has been in a fervor over nearly confirmed rumors that the game has entered a public closed beta phase for this weekend only. The game isn’t expected until mid-2011 at the earliest, but those with the force in them may be playing as we speak… err… write… as I write… and you read. They’re playing it now is what I am saying. BioWare has not confirmed the beta, but rather than a denial, Star Wars: The Old Republic community manager Sean Dahlberg wrote in this forum thread: “Thanks for the information and it’s definitely interesting that people are posting about our Game Testing Program. We don’t have anything official to say at this moment.” He also said that members of the beta were only allowed to say that there is a beta, and that they are in it, if one were to be ongoing.”

Popularity: 1% [?]

1. Sydney Morning Herald (Australia) – Log on for a dose of reality. “Fifteen years ago, or thereabouts, my then employer sent me to a conference on “business communications”. It was a largely forgettable and dreary two-day event, the high point of which, I seem to recall, was the muffins at morning and afternoon tea. Baked goods aside, the only thing I remember with any clarity was part of a presentation by a chap from, of all places, the NRMA. Mr NRMA recommended some rules we should adopt at work when using this newfangled email thing. Bear in mind that this was in the dim pre-history of the web. Tools such as Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and YouTube were barely a gleam in the eyes of a few hardcore geeks.Most of us were still grappling with the ground rules of how we should behave towards each other online.”

2. Stuff.co.nz (New Zealand) – Big brother watches in this virtual world. “RICK Earl is a virtual world sheriff. The 34-year-old Aucklander is executive producer and director of Customer Support for SmallWorlds, a Kiwi-created international virtual community with more than 350,000 active users every month. Earl is largely responsible for writing the rulebook on SmallWorlds’ crime and deciding the consequences for breaking it. He deals with everything from swearing to attempted grooming for under-age sex. In the R13 SmallWorlds, users can create up to five avatars [on-line alter egos] to interact with each other and trade virtual property. Virtual users’ representations are often idealised versions of themselves, and are free to engage in activities often beyond users’ abilities in real life. Earl said SmallWorlds, which has been designed with age 13+ players in mind, is cartoon-like with no nudity and it filters swearwords automatically.”

3. Inside Social Games (USA) – World Cup Goods Fill Facebook’s Virtual Stores. “The sale of virtual goods has always been a primary monetization method for social games, and with the world’s most popular sport, soccer, already in the heat of the 2010 World Cup, you can bet that a number of social developers are taking advantage. We’ve already tracked a number of recently-released soccer apps, so below we’re taking a closer look at what non-sports games are doing in recognition of what is, arguably, the world’s largest sporting event.”

4. VentureBeat (USA) – Which startups will bridge the physical and virtual worlds? “In our pockets sits unprecedented processing power, in the form of smartphones that are morphing into superphones. And they’re on the verge of having next-level software that can provide us with deeper immersion and more interactive experiences. As networks improve, we’ll roam the world virtually, seeking relevant information regardless of time and place. Still, there is a gap between the physical world and the digital experience of it. The question: How do we cross it?”

5. ZDNet Asia (Singapore) – S’pore tech shines at CommunicAsia 2010. “Singapore’s Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*Star) showcases some of its market-ready technologies at the trade show. The exhibition is organized by two of its arms–Institute for Infocomm Research which focuses on research and development and commercialization wing Exploit Technologies. In what looks like a CSI (Crime Scene Investigation) setup, A*Star shows off its digital forensic evidence and file recovery technology. A spokersperson explained that the files are stored in fragmentation on the hard disk, and contrary to popular belief, files do not disappear when deleted but become shreds of unrelated memory. Contrasted with “state-of-the-art”, commercially-available technology seen on the right, which is only able to recover two-thirds of a deleted image, A*STAR’s technology is able to completely recover a deleted file. A*Star achieves this through its “patent-pending technology” using a novel algorithm with more complex scenarios, she said.”

6. BusinessLine (India) – World’s becoming more ‘playful’. “What do video games do? They amplify particular human tendencies — our innate hunger for learning, our delight in solving problems and challenges, our sociability and rivalries, our pleasure in escaping the uncertainties of the world for more predictable rewards — says Tom Chatfield in Fun Inc. (www.landmarkonthenet.com). He adds that, additionally, ‘games as interactive systems increasingly connect to the ways in which we work, communicate, plan and express ourselves in a digital age, a process that is making the world more playful, and where the business of play is becoming ever broader and more profitable.’ Over the next half-century, in the author’s view, video games are going to become as much a part of everyone’s daily experience as television, radio, automobiles, refrigerators, type and the written word. Another certainty that he sees in video games is money, lots of it!”

7. San Diego Business Journal (USA) – In a Galaxy Far, Far Away … “While console games such as those played on a Sony PlayStation or Microsoft’s X Box still dominate the video gaming industry, a shift is under way that will result in a much larger amount of revenue coming from online games such as a new one now in beta testing at San Diego’s Sony Online Entertainment. “Star Wars: The Clone Wars Adventures” hasn’t been released yet, but when it is sometime in the fall, the game is expected to garner a lot of attention, not only from a target group of young boys from ages 6 to 14, but from their parents, who grew up with characters such as Luke Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi. “We want to make this game a destination where kids can play with their parents,” says Taina Rodriguez, spokeswoman for SOE, which makes its headquarters in Sorrento Valley with some 500 employees locally. To ensure that the Star Wars game has the highest level of authenticity, the folks at SOE worked closely with LucasArts, the video game division of Lucasfilm, which created the blockbuster movie that is still generating revenue for the company.”

8. VentureBeat (USA) – Rixty, Coinstar turn spare change into virtual goods. “Rixty has a system that lets kids and other gamers turn in their coins at stores and then get credits that they can spend in online games. Today, the company says that more than 50 companies have signed up to integrate its alternative payment method into games. With Rixty, you can break that piggybank and take your coins or cash to 20,000 locations such as Coinstar coin-counting machines in grocery stores. The machines count your coins and give youcredit (via a 16-digit pin code) to spend on games. So far, Rixty’s users are spending an average of $30 a month on games. The users spend about $28 a month for games on Facebook.”

9. Tekrati (USA) – Immersive Tech Experts at ThinkBalm End Research Operations. “Erica Driver has announced that she will depart ThinkBalm next month, citing slower than expected enterprise adoption of immersive technologies. While partner Sam Driver will continue consulting with clients on immersive technologies, the firm will discontinue industry research operations and disband the ThinkBalm Innovation Community. Ms. Driver will join QlikView in July as senior director of Global Partner Marketing. ThinkBalm has been dedicated to enterprise adoption of immersive technologies — including virtual worlds, immersive learning environments, and virtual event platforms — since its founding. The small firm has racked up an impressive list of accomplishments during its two-year run: a blue ribbon client list, valuable research available free of charge, and a vibrant community of innovators. ”

10. The Ledger (USA) -Merely Human? That’s So Yesterday. “ON a Tuesday evening this spring, Sergey Brin, the co-founder of Google, became part man and part machine. About 40 people, all gathered here at a NASA campus for a nine-day, $15,000 course at Singularity University, saw it happen. While the flesh-and-blood version of Mr. Brin sat miles away at a computer capable of remotely steering a robot, the gizmo rolling around here consisted of a printer-size base with wheels attached to a boxy, head-height screen glowing with an image of Mr. Brin’s face. The BrinBot obeyed its human commander and sputtered around from group to group, talking to attendees about Google and other topics via a videoconferencing system. The BrinBot was hardly something out of “Star Trek.” It had a rudimentary, no-frills design and was a hodgepodge of loosely integrated technologies. Yet it also smacked of a future that the Singularity University founders hold dear and often discuss with a techno-utopian bravado: the arrival of the Singularity — a time, possibly just a couple decades from now, when a superior intelligence will dominate and life will take on an altered form that we can’t predict or comprehend in our current, limited state.”

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1. BBC News (UK) – Police investigate Habbo Hotel virtual furniture theft. “Thieves have struck again in the virtual world Habbo Hotel. Finnish police are investigating up to 400 cases of theft, with some members reporting the loss of up to €1000 (£840) worth of virtual furniture and other items, according to Detective Sergeant Marko Levonen. “We have done five home searches in five cities in Finland,” he said. This is not the first time Habbo Hotel, which allows users to meet friends and buy virtual goods, has been targeted. In 2007, a Dutch teenager was arrested for allegedly stealing virtual furniture worth thousands of euros on the site, which is believed to have more than 100 million registered “avatars”.”

2. AsiaOne (Singapore) – Students create virtual-world temple. “Internet users can now visit a three-dimensional virtual world of Thailand’s past, presenting a new and surprisingly real insight into Thai heritage, arts and culture. Called 3D Virtual World Heritage Wat Chaiwattanaram, the glimpse into Thailand’s history is a joint effort by Kasetsart University, Sun Microsystems and the Inter University Network, UniNet, using Sun Wonderland technology. Above all else, the project, at http://niramit.hpcnc.com/WatChaiWatanaram, involves pride in the Thai heritage, by promoting a kind of Internet tourism. A professor at Kasetsart University’s Computer Engineering Department, Putchong Uthayyopas, said the three-dimensional virtual world of Wat Chaiwattanaram had been developed by students of his department.”

3. New Scientist (UK) – Impossible figures brought to life in virtual worlds. “Ever found a computer game truly impossible? If not, you soon might, thanks to Chinese computer scientists who have found a way to depict physically impossible figures in 3D virtual environments. The endless staircases of the Dutch artist M. C. Escher appear impossible and possible at the same time, and able to go in all directions. Such visual trickery depends heavily on the observer’s viewpoint – and that makes it difficult to animate Escher-type figures in games. If the viewpoint pans around a 3D computer depiction of such a staircase, “the impossibility is lost”, says Tai-Pang Wu at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.”

4. Entrepreneur Magazine (USA) – Should We Meet in Another World? “Like so many things in cyberspace, Second Life, a 3-D virtual world, began with a lot of hope–and hype. Who could resist what was promised? Islands full of new friends! A new era of human interaction! Hundreds of retailers opened virtual stores, and Reuters even launched a Second Life news bureau. Well, the bureau closed early last year, and Linden Lab’s virtual utopia is full of malls selling nothing but pixilated genitalia. But Second Life is hoping to polish up its reputation in the business world by solving virtual reality’s very real problem: the absence of security layers and administrative control functions that would make such an environment a safer place to do business.”

5. Destructoid (USA) – Browser-based Star Wars Clone Wars Adventure revealed. “This fall, Sony Online Entertainment will release Star Wars Clone Wars Adventures, a free-to-play, browser-based virtual world based on the popular animated series. Based on SOE’s Free Realms engine, the game will allow players to create a character and then enter a world where they’ll have immediate access to a host of mini-games, with an emphasis on action, competition, and socializing. The game, like the show, is clearly aimed at a younger audience. But after a short time with an early build of the game — from pick-up-and-play speeder bike racing to a typing mini-game, to a super-addictive tower defense game — there may be a bit of something for everyone in Star Wars Clone Wars Adventures. ”

6. Department of Defense (USA) – Technology to Drive New, Better Ways to Educate the Force. “Got a cell phone handy? It could be your ticket to keeping up with your professional development requirements. That’s just one concept being explored at Air Education and Training Command, the Air Force’s training and education component. Like its counterparts in the Army, Navy and Marine Corps, AETC hopes to take advantage of new and emerging technologies to provide more efficient, effective educational opportunities to the force. Most servicemembers are familiar with the concept of distance learning, with training delivered through the Internet or snail mail. Distance learning is a big money saver for the military, reducing travel and temporary duty costs associated with classroom training. And in light of heavy mission requirements, it enables servicemembers to meet many of their educational requirements without extended absences from their duty stations and loved ones. But with ever-expanding technologies and young “digital natives” now entering the force, officials hope to take military education to a whole new level.”

7. Kotaku (USA) – When World Of Warcraft And The Real World Come Together. “This is a charming short film about everyday people and their World of Warcraft avatars, interviewing a few players while their characters stroll around in the real world. It’s only four minutes long, but in that four minutes you get to meet a number of Irish players who give honest, enjoyable stories of just why it is they play the game, and what it is they’re getting out of it.”

8. Otago Daily Times (New Zealand) – Screen technology taste of the future. “Imagine ultra-high definition TVs not much thicker than a millimetre, electronic books made with plastic screens that flex like a magazine and displays that let you touch a virtual version of yourself on the other side of the glass. The technology to build these crazy new gadgets was shown in Seattle last week during Display Week, the Society for Information Display conference. A combination science fair and industry bazaar, the event attracted almost 6000 people from most of the companies developing TVs, monitors, touch screens, electronic books and cellphone screens.”

9. Kotaku (Australia) – World Of Warcraft Creatures Prowl The Waters Of Southern Australia. “Behold the Pink Handfish, one of fourteen species of bottom-dwelling marine fish endemic of the waters of Southern Australia and Tasmania, or, as World of Warcraft players know them, Murlocs. It’s easy to imagine the handfish as the inspiration for some of World of Warcraft’s most hated and beloved enemies. They’ve got the same hands and feet as the fantasy race, after all, as well as that striking crest, formed out of its secondary dorsal spine and a flap of skin.”

10. The Daily Mail (UK) – ‘Avatar’ mother goes missing after becoming obsessed with online 3D world. “A mother has gone missing after becoming obsessed with a 3D virtual world on an internet chat site. Annemarie Squires has not been seen for three weeks after leaving her home without warning. Her partner of eight years, Andrew Jobe, and her son have not heard from her and her mobile phone is switched off. Miss Squires’ family said in the months before she vanished, the 40-year-old spent most of her spare time on imvu.com.”

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1. USA Today (USA) – Spending on virtual goods continues upturn. “Spending on virtual goods in games, virtual worlds and on social sites such as Facebook continues to show real increases. About 13% of Americans bought virtual goods in the last 12 months, with average spending of $99, up from $87 last year (a 14% increase), finds a new survey from research and consulting firm Frank N. Magid Associates and virtual goods monetization firm PlaySpan. The nationally representative online survey of 2,412 was conducted May 7-14, 2010. (1,955 were aged 18-64; 457 were 8-17). And more than one-fifth (21%) of spenders say they expect to spend more in the coming year. Biggest spenders? iPhone owners, with 43% of them saying they made virtual goods purchases (up from 28% last year). Next came virtual worlds visitors, 41% of whom say they have bought digital goods.”

2. Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies (USA) – Caprica, Gamer, & Surrogates: Overlooked Benefits of Virtual Worlds. “In its first season, Caprica has done an excellent job of exploring the ethical issues relating to V-World (the virtual world created by the ultra-rich Daniel Graystone), looking at the dangers of becoming overly immersed in V-World, and whether an avatar constitutes a real person. Also in the past year, we’ve seen Gamer and Surrogates, two movies that explore some common themes with interesting parallels to those in Caprica. In Caprica, Tamara Adama’s storyline is what gives us the richest opportunity to explore V-World. Killed in Zoe Graystone’s MAGLEV bombing, a copy of her lives on in V-World as an avatar. Her father Joseph, although he’d never used a holoband before, becomes obsessed in his quest to find her avatar, neglecting his son and turning to drugs to make himself faster in the game. Joseph says Tamara isn’t dead, because according to him the avatar is his daughter. At the same time, Tamara meets a man who’s obsessed with the game as it finally allows him to be something. Tamara suggests that maybe if he didn’t spend all his time in here he would be something out there.”

3. Federal Computer Week (USA) – Government-only virtual world on the way. “Federal employees and managers will be able to meet, interact, train and learn together in a government-only online virtual world being created in the vGov project. The Agriculture and Homeland Security departments, Air Force and National Defense University iCollege have joined to create the vGov virtual world behind a secure firewall that can only be accessed by federal employees with authenticated identities. Paulette Robinson, assistant dean for teaching, learning and technology at the iCollege, said at the Gov 2.0 Expo today the project will use the three-dimensional immersive experience of virtual worlds to bring employees together from locations worldwide for real-time interactions. People will use avatars to appear in the virtual world, where they can chat with other avatars and interact with the environment.”

4. 3 News (New Zealand) – Like a drug: Videogame addiction. “A lot of us can confess to being addicted to videogames. Whether it’s spending your hard-earned moola on the latest console, suffering sleep deprivation, taking days off work or missing homework in order to get your gaming fix. Plenty of you reading this right now will be familiar with the impact that being a gamer can have on your everyday life. However at what point does an enthusiastic pastime get out of hand? Sadly, there have been many cases around the world where gamers have not only destroyed their own lives, but affected the lives of others as well.”

5. Hypergrid Business (Hong Kong) – Paper: Second Life, OpenSim best for education. “The Second Life and OpenSim platform are the best bet for educators, according to a white paper released today by virtual worlds research firm Daden Limited. “It is the only one offering reasonable graphics with in-world building tools, and as a result high levels of flexibility,” wrote author David Burden. The platform also offers the largest user community, he added, and a high degree of innovation. “If the shared hosting of the Second Life main or Teen grid are a blocker to adoption — or there is a need [for] access across the age 18 divide — then Second Life Enterprise … or OpenSim may be a solution.”

6. The Online Journalism Review (USA) – Learning by doing: Seeking best practices for immersive journalism. “Ernest Wilson, the dean of the Annenberg School of Communications and Journalism, put it like this: What if, after receiving the home and garden section in the morning, the reader could walk right into the section and visit a garden? This bucolic vision reflects one potential scenario for what we are calling at Annenberg “immersive journalism,” a new genre that utilizes gaming platforms and virtual environments to convey news, documentary and non-fiction stories. As a senior research fellow, I am prototyping immersive journalism stories, hoping to discover and create best practices for a burgeoning filed that can capture audiences increasingly accustomed to experiencing digital worlds. The fundamental idea of immersive journalism is to allow the audience to actually enter a virtually recreated scenario representing the news story. The pieces can be built in online virtual worlds, such as Second Life, or produced using a head-tracked head-mounted display system, or HMD.”

7. ARN (Australia) – CeBIT 2010: NBN will lead to crime surge, expert claims. “Vice-president of IT security group Cyveillance, Eric Olson, has warned cybercrime will surge with the increased connectivity of the National Broadband Network (NBN). Olson’s keynote presentation was delivered during CeBIT 2010 in Sydney. He said the benefits of fast and readily available Internet outweighed the negatives, but told communities and governments to be ready for the rise in crime. Large-scale data theft, wage slavery due to Internet gaming and the number of computers being taken over by bots would sharply increase because of the ubiquitous Internet provision provided by the NBN, Olson claimed.”

8. Sydney Morning Herald (Australia) – Red Dead to revive the Western. “The Western genre, long described as dead, could be set for revival thanks to the most anticipated video game of 2010. Red Dead Redemption, from the makers of the hugely successful Grand Theft Auto franchise, has been released to almost immediate and universal critical acclaim. Set in the dying days of the Wild West, RDR is inspired by such Westerns as 1969′s The Wild Bunch and Sergio Leone’s Spaghetti Western classic The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.”

9. Seattle Times (USA) – Displays of the future: Smart, bendy, 3D and more. “Talk about gazing into the future. Imagine ultra high-definition TVs not much thicker than a millimeter. How about electronic books made with plastic screens that flex like a magazine? Or perhaps a display that lets you touch a virtual version of yourself on the other side of the glass? The technology to build these crazy new gadgets is being shown in Seattle this week during Display Week, the Society for Information Display conference. A combination science fair and industry bazaar, the event is drawing 6,000 people from most of the companies developing TVs, monitors, touch screens, electronic books and cellphone screens. Inventors and component manufacturers will be showing their latest creations to consumer-electronics companies, looking for technology and materials to build the next iPad or wafer-thin 3-D TV.”

10. Virtual Worlds News (USA) – Club One Uses Virtual Worlds To Battle Obesity. “The Second Life virtual space Club One Island announced that participants in its behavior modification program had lost more than eight pounds over the course of a twelve-week period. A control group that was attempting to modify behavior using the same methods but without the aid of a virtual world lost, on average, slightly less than six pounds per week. Club One attributes the virtual world’s success in aiding weight loss to certain key features of how people interact with virtual spaces. “Club One Island is a new approach to health that encourages individuals and organizations to rethink how we deal with obesity issues in this country,” said Celeste DeVaneaux, Creative Director of Club One Island, in a press statement. “Program participants are very pleased with their weight loss results and we believe that there are tremendous implications for companies, health insurance providers, and governments looking to reduce the burden of health care costs and improve the lives of entire populations.”

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