1. TMCnet (USA) – Diabetes UK: Second Life launch for diabetes campaign. “Diabetes UK has this week launched its Silent Assassin campaign’ within the virtual 3-D world of Second Life. The charity launched both its headquarters and the campaign in the virtual world that boasts 15 million residents’ to coincide with its biggest ever UK-wide campaign – created to raise awareness of the seriousness of diabetes.”

2. CCTV (China) – Beyond space and time: 3-D Forbidden City. “A three dimensional Forbidden City is now open in a virtual world. People can get a glimpse of the imperial palace and experience the lives of ancient emperors without having to be there. And the interactive platform allows online tourists to take on an ancient identity.”

3. Herald Sun (Australia) – Microsoft’s Xbox, Sony’s Playstation launching rival ‘virtual worlds. “Microsoft and Sony are taking their battle for gaming supremacy into cyberspace, launching competing virtual worlds.
Microsoft announced its New Xbox Experience at this weekend’s Tokyo Games Show.”

4. DMNews (USA) – Machinima is a futuristic, viral option for marketers. “Although still in its infancy, machin ima — animated films created by using a number of different game or virtual world engines — is rapidly emerging as a surpris ingly effective new tool for marketers. Currently, most machinima is produced through the online virtual world Second Life. However, it is expanding to include other online games and virtual worlds.”

5. Stars and Stripes (USA) – Game developers tap into social network. “As the Internet continues to increase in complexity and social networking grows in popularity, game developers are working to utilize the full potential of these technologies. “Social technology has fundamentally altered the means by which we communicate,” Jim Crowley, president and CEO of Turbine, said during a presentation Friday at the Tokyo Game Show.”

6. VentureBeat (USA) – Twofish raises $4.5M to create economies for virtual worlds. “Twofish has raised $4.5 million in a second round of funding for its business of creating the economic infrastructure behind virtual worlds. The deal is another indication that the virtual goods economy is heating up, even as the real world economy spirals downward.”

7. Gaywired (USA) – A Virtual Lesbian Life: Revisiting Second Life. “Although I dabbled in the massive online world of Second Life back when it was first becoming really popular 3 or 4 years ago, I didn’t have time to really explore and didn’t end up playing for long. It was not until Showtime made a big splash in SL by creating a virtual L Word island in the game a couple of years back that I ventured back in for another go. My passion for the immense virtual world comes and gos, but there is no denying that Second Life is an addition that’s hard to kick.”

8. bMighty (USA) – Welcome To Fantasy Island. “With fewer dollars to spend in the real world, consumers have been hanging out in virtual worlds — where their money goes farther, according to operators of such sites. Take Habbo, a self-described hangout for teens that charges a small fee for access to specific site features. Visitors are spending twice the amount of time on Habbo than in days past, the site’s EVP told Forbes.com. U.S. users, who account for 25% of Habbo’s 10 million customer base, spend around $18 per month buying virtual items. You do the math.”

9. Pittsburgh Post Gazette (USA) – The Next Page: The triumph of the gamer. “If he were alive today, Shakespeare might very well have rephrased his famous observation stating “All the world’s a stage and all the men and women merely players” by describing this worldly existence of ours as more closely resembling a videogame than a theatrical production.”

10. BBC News (UK) – Virtual worlds carve out new path. “If you are walking with orcs in the World of Warcraft or setting up a business on planet Calypso, the real world is probably very far from your mind. But for attendees at the Virtual Worlds Forum in London this week, the question of how to bridge the gap with the real world is a very pertinent one. As well as gaining an audience beyond the core teenage male gamer, virtual worlds with real world connections offer a whole new way to make money.”

1. Fox News (USA) – ‘World of Warcraft’ Gets Kids Interested in School. “t’s not unusual for video game players to speak of a routine that involves ordering pizza, getting a sugar jolt, and then playing “World of Warcraft” for hours. But the person talking in this case is Constance Steinkuehler, an educational researcher who organized an afterschool group for boys to play, for educational purposes, the massively multiplayer online role-playing game.”

2. MarketWatch (USA) – Virtual World ‘Planet Cazmo’ Integrates AllPosters.com Content. “Today Planet Cazmo, http://www.planetcazmo.com, a virtual world that hosts a global audience of ‘tweens and teens, announced a major update which includes integration of ad content from AllPosters.com, the world’s largest online retailer of quality wall decor, with over one million items including posters, prints, and specialty items. Planet Cazmo is one of the first virtual worlds to partner with AllPosters.com — a relationship which gives Cazmo players access to thousands of poster images with which to decorate their virtual rooms.”

3. BBC News (UK) – Future football stars start here. “If you ever had the desire to live the life of a top football player both on and off the pitch but lack the real world ball skills, then Football Superstars might be able to help. The online game combines a football simulation with a virtual world and lets players work their way up towards superstar status, earning money as they go.”

4. ScienceDaily (USA) – Virtual World Offers New Locale For Problem Solving. “Second Life, a virtual world created in 2003, currently boasts more than 12 million users worldwide who go there for everything from college recruiting to shopping. Now, Penn State researchers are investigating how virtual teams can better solve real world problems by collaborating in Second Life. Nathan McNeese, undergraduate, psychology; Gerry Santoro, assistant professor, and Michael McNeese, professor, information sciences and technology and psychology, Penn State; and Mark Pfaff, assistant professor of media arts and sciences, Indiana University-Indianapolis, created an experiment in which students formed teams and were asked to solve a problem, posed by a video, using different meeting styles.”

5. Ottawa Business Journal (Canada) – Living in a virtual world. “It was when he mentioned we could teleport to our next meeting that I got a little skeptical. I’d been chatting with Eilif Trondsen, program director of the Virtual Worlds Consortium for Innovation and Learning at California’s SRI Consulting Business Intelligence. He was in town last week to deliver a series of presentations to Industry Canada, OCRI and the National Research Council on the growing importance of ‘virtual worlds’ (VW) – those quasi-geeky, online simulated realities such as Second Life – in the business world. “The key message is corporations are recognizing that these are technologies they need to understand better,” said Mr. Trondsen, with a distinguishable Scandinavian lilt, just before heading off to the NRC early last week.”

6. Online Media Daily (USA) – HipChicas.com Targets Tween Latinas with Eco-Friendly Virtual World. “Hip Venture Co. is the latest company to enter the crowded virtual worlds market for kids, tweens and teens (KT&T) with the imminent launch of HipChicas.com. But what separates this Flash-based virtual community from some of its competitors is its focus on socially conscious, young Latinas, and its “eco-friendly” stance, differentiators that analysts say may help it stand out from the pack. HipChicas.com members can create and customize avatars and living spaces, as well as purchase items with virtual currency called Hip Change. Girls can chat in English, Spanish, Portuguese or French, with an automatic translator that displays the appropriate language for each user.”

7. io9 (USA) – Real Economist Studies Virtual Economy in EVE Online. “Today’s virtual worlds have their own virtual economies, whether you’re coughing up enough gold to buy an epic mount in World of Warcraft or converting real money to Linden dollars so you can buy realistic genitalia for your Second Life avatar. EVE Online, a sci-fi online game of space warfare and commerce, may have the deepest, most complex virtual economy in the world. It’s so deep, in fact, that EVE Online has a chief economist, Eyjolfur Guomundsson. What do real economists think of fake economies?”

8. The Guardian (UK) – We’ll all be citizens of virtual worlds. “Most people still look askance if you admit to using virtual worlds where you move around with an avatar or 3D version of yourself. It recalls the technophobic reactions in the early days of the internet. But attitudes may now change for two reasons. First, children are piling into their own virtual worlds, so their parents can get a glimpse of what it is all about. And second, a huger user base is being created, one that is accustomed to virtual worlds and is ready to trade up to more sophisticated ones as they grow older.”

9. TMCnet (USA) – Vollee Enables Nokia N96 for Second Life Mobile. “Vollee, a 3G streaming services provider, announced support for Nokia (News – Alert) N96, and also its start of sales worldwide. With Nokia’s new model, N96, users can access Second Life, the 3D virtual world platform by Linden Lab. Other than new Nokia N96, other Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Motorola, Samsung, LG and other manufactures models are being supported for access to Second Life as well. In fact, with N96, there are now more than 70 3G handset models supported by the Vollee service.”

10. The Daily Telegraph (UK) – Space travel: The urban spaceman. “Richard Garriott grew up surrounded by astronauts, keeps two Sputniks in his home, and claims to own the Moon. And next week, the British-born video-game pioneer will become the sixth person to make a private flight to the International Space Station. Peter Lyle joins him in Russia as the countdown begins.”