The Watch – virtual worlds in the news

1. Sydney Morning Herald (Australia) – Australian gamer blackballed over virtual world ‘fraud’. “Facing real world debts, a trusted figure in a popular online game stole money from the virtual bank he ran and exchanged it for cash through the black market. It happened in EVE Online, where more than 300,000 subscribers pay $US15 a month to play. They gain wealth through hard work, manipulating the market, or killing rivals in a distant future where humans have colonised the stars in an online game similar to World of Warcraft and Second Life.”

2. Open Media Boston (USA) – Is Virtual Presence Viable for Collaboration? A Look at IBM’s “Virtual Collaboration for Lotus Sametime”. “IBM announced last week that it was adding a virtual world collaboration service it’s calling Virtual Collaboration to its Lotus Sametime communications and collaboration software, which is aimed primarily at enterprises. Virtual Collaboration allows users to collectively view and create documents in a virtual environment similar to Second Life, in essence creating virtual work and meeting spaces. It’s pretty cool, but does this kind of immersive technology actually make collaboration via virtual presence a realistic option? Obviously, perhaps, virtual worlds allow individuals to experience “being” in the same virtual environment, while remaining at their desks. Second Life, Sony’s Playstation Home and World of Warcraft are all examples of virtual worlds. Virtual Collaboration is similar, but rather than create fictional worlds, Virtual Collaboration aims to recreate familiar real world environments like a boardroom or a theater, and extend the utility of real world tools like a calendar or a drawing board.”

3. Computerworld (USA) – Faux pas at virtual world discussion highlight continuing ‘transitional phase’. “Virtual worlds are growing in colleges and universities despite significant problems in using them to teach courses and communicate, a panel of experts said during a virtual discussion sponsored by Cisco Systems Inc. The problems range from giving students and educators access to networks to reach the online virtual worlds to ease-of-use with the applications and tools inside of the virtual worlds, panelists and audience members said. “There’s a long way to go with this technology to make it easy for everybody to do,” said Sarah Smith-Robbins, director of emerging technology for Kelley Executive Partners at the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University. She has taught and written about virtual worlds for six years, and specializes in creating learning experiences that build on virtual worlds and alternative and augmented realities.”

4. TechCrunch (USA) – Does Anybody Still Use Second Life? And If So, How Much Is It Worth Today? “Analyst firm Next Up Research has published an extensive report on Linden Lab, the San Francisco company behind virtual world Second Life. The research is based on aggregate data and is available on SharesPost, a site set up to trade shares of privately held companies (if you register, you can download the report for free from that page, or you can find other valuation reports on companies like Facebook and LinkedIn). The report goes rather deep into the valuation of the Linden Lab, which it pegs at somewhere between $658 million and 700 million. More on that later. Now that Linden Lab has been around for nearly 10 years, and with its product Second Life celebrating its sixth birthday since launching publicly in June 2003, we thought it would be a good idea to take a close look at the report and see how the company’s doing according to the analysts.”

5. Virtual Worlds News (USA) – Sony Hints at Tweaks to Home. “A survey sent to members of the PlayStation Network hints at changes afoot at the company’s online social gaming service/Virtual World, PlayStation Home. Survey recipients are asked to rate (possible) future in-Home options including music sharing, video sharing, voice chat and “more dance moves” among others as prompting more, less, or just about the same number of visits to Home. Additional survey questions probe users’ interest in various content options in the Movie Theater such as music videos, feature-length movies and short/indie films. Another question asks respondents to rate potential features such as mini-games, appearances from PlayStation staff, and video interviews with PlayStation developers on a scale from Very Appealing to Very Unappealing.”

6. Daily Finance (USA) – Surprise Hits: Webkinz — a toy fad with the virtual touch. “One of the greatest smash hits of the decade has been one of the most mundane products of the decade. Webkinz are simply stuffed animals. What’s so great about a stuffed animal? Well, there’s more to these animals than meets the eye — and it’s not because they’re transforming robots from another planet. Webkinz, produced by the Ganz Corp. (more on them in a moment), are sold with attached tags bearing unique secret codes. A child receiving the Webkinz can go online, logs onto the Webkinz site, and use the code to access a virtual version of the new pet, who lives in a virtual world where kids can care for it, play games with it, take quizzes, and interact with other kids.”

7. Washington Post (USA) – Twitter + World Of Warcraft=Tweetcraft. “For all of you World of Warcraft fans out there, there’s a new Twitter client that is worth checking out. TweetCraft is an in-game Twitter client for WoW that lets you send and receive Tweets within a game. If you are busy in the middle of a WoW match, you can put Tweets in a queue to send when it’s more convenient.”

8. Science Daily (USA) – Second Life Data Offers Window Into How Trends Spread. “Do friends wear the same style of shoe or see the same movies because they have similar tastes, which is why they became friends in the first place? Or once a friendship is established, do individuals influence each other to adopt like behaviors? Social scientists don’t know for sure. They’re still trying to understand the role social influence plays in the spreading of trends because the real world doesn’t keep track of how people acquire new items or preferences.
But the virtual world Second Life does. Researchers from the University of Michigan have taken advantage of this unique information to study how “gestures” make their way through this online community. Gestures are code snippets that Second Life avatars must acquire in order to make motions such as dancing, waving or chanting.”

9. BBC News (UK) – Giving life a shape. “One of the more interesting shifts in the technology world over the last quarter century has been the way that cultural organisations have gone from being the late adopters, inheriting office-oriented computer systems from business and making do with them, to being those leading the digital revolution in many areas. When I worked with the Community Computing Network in the late 80s it was hard work persuading charities and voluntary organisations that having a computer to handle their member databases and print letters was worthwhile. But now that there really is a computer on every desk and word processing, spreadsheets and databases are standard, arts organisations seem to be far more willing to engage and experiment with the latest tools, especially online.”

10. CNET (USA) – Metaplace virtual worlds now blog-embeddable. “Metaplace is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game, or MMORPG, that runs in Flash. It doesn’t have nearly as many users as Second Life, nor the cult following of World of Warcraft. But in an announcement that could go a long way in helping the service expand beyond its 6,000 active users, Metaplace worlds can now be embedded into a blog. Once that embed is complete, Metaplace users can play in the world right on the blog. If the blog author adds multiple embeds of different worlds, the gamers can be in each of them simultaneously. Is Metaplace really the kind of service that would make you want to create a world and embed into your blog?”