1. AdAge (USA) – Guinness Lets U.K. Drinkers Create Virtual Worlds. “Guinness is offering U.K. drinkers a personalized virtual-reality experience in a partnership with Google Earth that lets people create their own worlds and then invite friends to join them via Facebook. The Diageo-owned stout is best known for its epic TV commercials, but Guinness is moving its marketing online in order to build a more interactive relationship with drinkers.”

2. TechCrunch (USA) – My Virtual Head Would Look Great On Your Virtual Body! Gizmoz Merges With Daz 3D. “Since Israeli startup Gizmoz launched three years ago, people have used its technology to create millions of 3D-realistic avatar heads from photos of themselves. But what good is a head without a body? Gizmoz found a body—lots of them, actually—in a Utah-based company called Daz 3D. The two companies are merging. Existing investors, led by Benchmark Capital, Highway 12 Ventures, and Columbia Capital, are put in an additional $5.3 million into the new, yet-to-be-named company. Previously, Gizmoz raised a total of $12.8 million, most recently $6.5 million in March, 2008 from the venture arm of Docomo, which also participated in the latest round. Daz 3D raised $4 million back in June, 2007, and targeted creative professionals as customers.”

3. SBS (Australia) – Alter Ego. “Alter Ego is a documentary about virtual worlds on the internet, but ironically it’s really a story about people. Mind you, these are not just any people. You could call them eccentric. The more callous, when pressed, would say they were odd. But in each case we meet real people dealing with real challenges in an unconventional way – online in a virtual reality world called Second Life where their alter ego takes precedent. Our first Second Lifer is 37-year-old Melbourne man Andy, a frustrated musician and self-confessed “bum.” If there’s a rebellious, alternative path to take in life, Andy’s will take it. His cousin Pearlie, whom we also meet, describes Andy’s music as “fiercely non-commercial.” And she’s not wrong. I can’t understand the appeal of his songs where the guitar and vocals are set to different rhythms. But Andy’s happy.”

4. Arabian Business (UAE) – Virtual worlds – Arabic style. “One only needs to utter the words “World of Warcraft” to grab the attention of many avid gamers. This classic game is a primary example of how Massive Multiplayer Online Gaming has taken the world by storm, especially when one considers that it has 11 to 12 million subscribers. Other kinds of MMO games out there, apart from WoW, include the likes of Everquest II, Runescape, Star Wars Galaxies, Lord of the Rings Online and many more. The very nature of MMOs are such that they are capable of supporting hundreds of thousands of players playing simultaneously on the internet in what is a persistent virtual world. These games typically feature character avatars, online chat, a level editor and network play. There is often character progression, whereby players first need to go through a character creation process choosing the race, profession, appearance and specific skills that are of interest.”

5. Gamers Daily News (USA) – Be at Home in the London Pub. “EEMEE, an independent creator of branded and original content for games platforms and virtual worlds, are excited to announce details of the first virtual London Pub releasing on January 7th 2010 in PlayStation Home, priced at €4.99. Based on your favourite London watering hole, situated on the banks of the river Thames overlooking The Houses of Parliament, The London Pub personal space comes complete with a multi-player darts game, a roaring open fire, comedy beer pumps, crank phone calls and hand dryers that don’t dry your hands (they’re only virtual you know).”

6. VentureBeat (USA) – IMVU and myYearbook set up virtual currency exchange. “Two successful online sites are getting together to encourage their users to adopt the other’s services. IMVU and myYearbook are setting up a virtual currency exchange so that users from either service can exchange currency between the sites. The deal is significant because it is a step toward a universal virtual currency, which could have profound implications for the economies of games and virtual worlds, creating the ability for fluid movement between different sites.”

7. The Guardian (UK) – Video games: the decade when playtime took over. “Seasoned gamers would say that every decade feels like a tumultuous one. This is, after all, the entertainment medium in which the major content delivery platforms – ie, the home consoles – are reinvented every five years. And if you’re a PC owner trying to stay at the cutting edge – well, that’ll be a graphics card and processor update at least every 18 months, thank you. Moore’s law can be a bitch like that. But the Noughties has been a standout period – mostly for the acceptance of video gaming as a mainstream activity. Sure, it bloomed during the 90s as the well-marketed PlayStation console courted a generation of cash-rich twentysomethings with no family commitments and bags of free time. But this was still boys playing games together. It wasn’t until the 2000s that the industry really started to hit the family living room, rather than the teenage bedroom or shared bachelor pad.”

8. Marketing Vox News (USA) – 3M’s Real World Privacy Filters Get Virtual Campaign. “3M has launched a virtual goods marketing campaign to promote its Privacy Filters product line. It’s a serious product and serious subject – filters designed to prevent data theft in public places by making a computer screen impossible to read from the side. The campaign, though, focuses on the lighthearted with several TMI (“Too Much Information”) themed virtual goods designed for the campaign. When opened, these virtual items opened to reveal funny short videos of embarrassing moments with the warning, “Don’t let TMI happen to you.” There is also a Facebook application where consumers can watch other embarrassing videos, choose other TMI ‘badges,’ and send them to friends.”

9. VentureBeat (USA) – Multiverse’s Remix makes it easy to create Avatar spinoff games. “James Cameron’s high profile sci fi movie Avatar, which hits theaters tomorrow, will be accompanied by a ton of accompanying merchandise and spinoff products. And thanks to a small company called Multiverse, two big brands, Coca-Cola and McDonalds, were able to easily create some spinoff web games based on the themes in the film. Mountain View, Calif.-based Multiverse has built a platform that can be used to pop out one virtual world after another. And both Coca-Cola and McDonalds made use of a new Multiverse technology, dubbed Remix, that takes the digital assets created for a film — such as a computer animated character’s face or body — and automatically turns it into something that can be used in a game.”

10. ZDNet Asia (Singapore) – Businesses get a Second Life. “The spotlight on Second Life as a marketing tool has dimmed with the emergence of social media tools like Facebook and Twitter, although the virtual world is increasingly used by enterprises internally for virtual meetings and events, says its developer, Linden Lab. Second Life saw its hype peak two years ago as users flocked to the platform. According to reports at the time, however, businesses setting up virtual shop there did not profit from their online ventures, nor where they expected to in the immediate years to come. Some companies today are putting more emphasis on social media platforms like Facebook–which reached 300 million users in September–and Twitter. Greg Fisher, head of advertising and marketing services at Intel Technology Asia told ZDNet Asia in an e-mail interview that Intel, which launched a Second Life marketing campaign in 2007, is increasingly leveraging “more traditional” social media channels such as Facebook, Orkut and Twitter to reach Asia-Pacific mainstream consumers.”

1. San Francisco Chronicle (USA) – FTC: Explicit Virtual world content easy for minors to see. “The Federal Trade Commission today said minors can access explicit sexual and vilolent content in 70% of the virtual worlds it reviewed in a congressionally mandated report and urged virtual world operators to make key enhancements aimed at reducing the risk of youth exposure to such content. The report, The Virtual Worlds and Kids: Mapping the Risks, looked at 27 online virtual worlds — such as Poptropica, Runescape and Zwinktopia — divided among those specifically intended for young children, teens and those intended only for adults. The FTC found at least one instance of either sexually or violently explicit content in 19 of the 27 worlds and observed a heavy amount of explicit content in five of the virtual worlds studied.”

2. Defence Systems (USA) – Second Life demonstrates mingling of real and virtual worlds. “While the public version of the Second Life virtual world remains primarily a playground for self expression and social networking, military and government agencies are taking a more serious look at its practical applications now that its maker, Linden Lab, has created a version of the environment that can be run behind a firewall on private servers. But Second Life is only one of several environments for creating what are sometimes called 3-D Internet experiences. Like Virtual Battle Space 2, Second Life made cameo appearances at several booths around the show floor at the Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation and Education Conference in Orlando, Fla., this week.”

3. Crispy Gamer (USA) – Buying Influence: how anti-healthcare reformists use virtual currency. “How much is your voice worth as a United States citizen? 100 virtual coins or a fake hat in your favorite virtual world? And are social game users willing to do anything to earn such things to get ahead in their favorite games? These are the questions being asked as real-world political positions and influence are being purchased by fake dollars and intangible baubles in virtual worlds. The story begins with a trade group representing the health insurance industry that is using a third-party offer in some social network games and virtual worlds to send letters to congress expressing opposition to President Obama’s health care plan, according to a report in Inside Silicon Valley. This questionable third-party offer came to light when a company called OMGPOP tipped the publication off, providing it with a screenshot of the offer in progress.”

4. TechCrunch Europe (Germany) – Twinity’s virtual London opens for business. “Twinity, the virtual world that mirrors the real world, has finally launched a beta of virtual London. And if mirroring the real world includes replicating London’s reputation for delayed construction works, then Berlin-based Metaversum, the company behind Twinity, is doing just fine. The virtual world, which distinguishes itself from the likes of Second Life by building exact replicas of well known cities, launched back in 2006 and while London was always planned to follow Berlin and Singapore, it feels like it’s been a long time coming. And tough luck if you are on a Mac – the 3D browser only supports Windows XP and Vista.”

5. WoW.com (USA) – How the WoW community is about to push the self-destruct button. “This post is going to be very meta in some regards, and it’s going to touch on a few things that deal with the WoW community’s very existence. We’ve wrote this article in hopes that it might help calm the waters, or at least bring some will on the part of the multitudes of individuals not to jump on the wrong bandwagon. If you’ve been paying attention to the role forums and the “Ghostcrawler drama” this past week, you know what I’m talking about. If not, we’ll begin with a brief rundown.”

6. The Guardian (UK) – Gamesblog Christmas Book Corner. “We’re rarely sent videogame-related books for review, which is shame as I’m always happy to cover them on the blog – especially when they’re rather esoteric and intellectual, thereby providing raw material for some of my more, erm, ‘conceptual’ postings (i.e. pretty much anything through the slow summer months). Anyway, The MIT Press has sent over two books that I’m currently reading simultaneously, and they’re both worth a look if you’re interested in reasonably heavyweight game theory.”

7. The Toronto Star (Canada) – Avatar: James Cameron’s new world. “In science fiction, they call it “world building” – the long, often-exhausting process of imagining not just a story but the whole vast new environment it takes place in. James Cameron had Pandora, the world filmgoers will visit this week when they rush to see Avatar, in his head for two decades – but it was Peter Jackson who showed him that it could be brought to life.”

8. NPR (USA) – In Which Virtual World Will You Choose To Spend What’s Left Of Eternity? “You won’t read about it in the headlines, but deep in the high-tech corporate campus of the Research Triangle Park, in Durham, North Carolina, desperate refugees fight for survival against mutant cannibals in a dystopian wasteland where civilization is just a dim memory. No, it’s not a hyperbolic recession metaphor (at least not exclusively), it’s Fallen Earth, the post-apocalyptic virtual world created and maintained by RTP game company Icarus Studios. Fallen Earth, you see, is a video game — one in which thousands of players play simultaneously via the Internet and their personal computers.”

9. The Irish Times (Ireland) – Research reveals video games are stimulating to the brain. “PARENTS BUYING video games this Christmas will draw comfort from new research suggesting that, in contrast to conventional wisdom, they do not turn kids’ brains to mush. Just as the physical activity-based Nintendo Wii console convinced parents that computer games and sloth do not have to go hand in hand, new research suggests that video games stimulate the brain. A multidisciplinary team of neuroscientists at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, Canada, has discovered that video games increase brain activity.”

10. The Guardian (UK) – The internet’s dirty carbon secret. “We’ve been told about the environmental costs of motoring, industrial farming, long-haul flights, big oil, deforestation in the Amazon and buying sweat-shop produced, throwaway fashion. Some of us have taken this advice on board, cycling more, flying less, choosing renewable energy schemes, and seeking out ethical, organic products. We can make these choices because appliances and cars are rated according to their energy consumption, and Fairtrade or organic products have prominently displayed certification logos. The information we need to assess whether a service or product is environmentally friendly is either accessible or it’s just common sense – hopping on an aeroplane every weekend is hardly sustainable, after all. But there’s one particular aspect of most of our everyday lives whose environmental consequences are not so well explained: the internet and online activities.”

1. The Independent (UK) – Millions and millions of little monsters. “Virtual worlds are booming. This summer, market research firm Strategy Analytics projected that the population of virtual worlds would increase from 186 million inhabitants to 640 million by 2015. And a big part of this giant leap is going to be from young people. Apparently, children between five and nine will boost the market by 27percent while teens will bump it up by 21 per cent. And it’s already happening. ‘Club Penguin’ and ‘Habbo Hotel’ have record numbersofmembers, while the number of children playing online game ‘Moshi Monsters’ (above and left) has hit the10million mark, with one million new users signing up every month.”

2. TechRadar (UK) – Heritage Key VX review. “Before the web came along, virtual environments seemed like the next big thing in interface technology. We now have the processing power to do everything those old-school futurists dreamed about: telepresence, immersive filesystems, cyberspace applications… yet it’s still gamers that make most use of virtual worlds. Heritage Key VX may end up changing all this, though. It’s a mainstream application of a once niche feature that reminds us why we all thought it was such a good idea. While Heritage Key is predominantly an educational website aimed at amateur historians and fans of archaeology, its heart is the 3D virtual exhibit.”

3. Times Online (UK) – Real-world arrest for man who stole RuneScape virtual characters. “A man who hacked into accounts to steal virtual characters and their possessions on one of the world’s biggest multi-player online games has been arrested. In what experts believe is the first case of its kind in Britain, the man obtained log-in details for RuneScape, a web-based role playing game with more than ten million members, to steal their “virtual” characters. Players in the game have often spent years creating their online characters by completing set tasks and activities. Police believe that password details were obtained through a so-called phishing scam where a fake internet page tricks people into handing over their personal information.”

4. Government Computer News (USA) – Second Life demonstrates mingling of real and virtual worlds. “While the public version of the Second Life virtual world remains primarily a playground for self expression and social networking, military and government agencies are taking a more serious look at its practical applications now that its maker, Linden Lab, has created a version of the environment that can be run behind a firewall on private servers. But Second Life is only one of several environments for creating what are sometimes called 3-D Internet experiences. Like Virtual Battle Space 2, Second Life made cameo appearances at several booths around the show floor at the Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation and Education Conference in Orlando, Fla., this week.”

5. The University of Texas at Austin News (USA) – Innovator for Teaching with Virtual Worlds Passes Away. “University faculty member and instructional innovator Leslie Jarmon died on Nov. 24 after a 15-year battle with cancer. She was 57. Jarmon was an early adopter of instructional uses of virtual worlds, becoming a role model and advocate for colleagues looking to create new models in pedagogy through innovative uses of emerging technology. Jarmon designed and taught graduate-level courses at the university beginning in 1998 with the Office of Graduate Studies. In fall 2008 she joined the Division of Instructional Innovation and Assessment as a specialist in faculty development.”

6. The Industry Standard (USA) – UC Irvine offering four year video games program. “Well-known for its excellent courses in engineering, business, and medicine, UC Irvine is now pushing into a new area of expertise; video games. The university announced that it had established its Center for Computer Games and Virtual Worlds earlier this year by joining forces with the Institute for Software Research and the Game Culture and Technology Laboratory. Construction is currently underway on a 4,000 square-foot, 20-room “cyber interaction observatory” for faculty research, and the plans call for floor-to-ceiling projection screens, and advanced 3D displays.”

7. Virtual Worlds News (USA) – Unity Lays Claim to “Fastest Growing” App Platform. “Unity Technologies, a company that produces a game platform many virtual worlds run on, last year created a mobile platform specifically for iPhone app development. Today the company said its iPhone platform was “proving to be the fastest growing game development platform for the iPhone.” Twelve percent of games featured on AppShopper.com’s Top 25 paid-for apps were built with Unity iPhone, says Unity Technologies.”

8. The Globe and Mail (Canada) – When gamers become recruiters. “As 2009 winds down, the world of Facebook has fragmented into two camps: the people who are pretending to be farmers, and the rest, who are busy wishing a plague of locusts upon them. The last few months have witnessed the meteoric rise of a new kind of online time-waster: Facebook games with names such as FarmVille, FishVille, Island Paradise and Cafe World that are calibrated not toward fun, but toward the recruiting of friends and the disgorging of credit card numbers. They propagate with an almost organic zeal – and they have tens of millions of customers to show for it. The question is: How can something so dreary have become so popular?”

9. Calgary Herald (Canada) – An eco-friendly message for young minds. “If we really want to reduce our carbon footprints and make the world a healthier place, we’ll need new generations committed to the ecological cause. A Vancouver startup company says it has found a way to reach young minds, delivering an eco-friendly message that is not preachy and allows kids to have fun. And the future for the company may be green in more ways than one.”

10. TechCrunch (USA) – Second Life Gets A Life 2.0 At Sundance. “Does anybody go to Second Life anymore? It seems like a ghost town these days, although every now and then you hear rumblings of a quiet comeback for the proto-virtual world. Well, at the very least Second Life will be getting a second life at the movies. A documentary called Life 2.0 will be screened at the Sundance Film Festival. Life 2.0 was produced by PalmStar Entertainment (which is theglobe.com co-founder Stephan Paternot’s indie movie company) and Andrew Lauren Productions (The Squid And The Whale).”

1. DNA (India) – Virtual worlds will provide real security: Indian origin scientist. “A scientist of Indian origin has determined that advances in computers are making possible virtual worlds in which defense analysts can explore and predict results of many different possible military and policy actions. The scientist in question is VS Subrahmanian, a Maryland computer science professor and director of the University’s Institute for Advanced Computer Studies (UMIACS). According to Subrahmanian and John Dickerson, a UMIACS computer science researcher, “Defense analysts can understand the repercussions of their proposed recommendations for policy options or military actions by interacting with a virtual world environment.”

2. Canada.com (Canada) – Embracing the future of fitness. “It wasn’t that long ago that running with a Discman was considered cool. Of course, so was talking on a cellphone the size of a brick. Today, people run with a phone that not only plays music and takes calls, it maps your run while tracking speed, mileage, pace and calories burned. And runners aren’t the only exercisers being courted by technology: There are smartphone apps for cyclists, gym junkies, triathletes and swimmers. Even those without a smartphone can hop on the technology bandwagon: Nike and Apple have teamed up to track runners’ stats through an in-shoe transmitter and an iPod. Stationary bikes take cyclists on virtual rides through scenic routes, and provide the opportunity to compete in a virtual race against the cyclist beside you or in the next country.”

3. VentureBeat (USA) – Next Island to launch sci-fi adventure virtual world — with time travel. “Next Island is the latest company to launch an ambitious virtual world. But this sci-fi adventure paradise comes with an interesting twist: time travel. The company is announcing today that it is building a world in MindArk’s massively multiplayer online virtual universe, Entropia Universe. That means it has licensed virtual world technology from MindArk, whose technology is behind Planet Calypso, which until now has been the only virtual world in the Entropia Universe. Next Island will be the “planet” going live in the virtual universe. Its private beta begins in less than 30 days.”

4. brand-e (UK) – New life for Second Life. “Online sharing. It’s time to brand the virtual world. That’s why UK-based Corporation Pop is making use of the Second Life platform providing a secure place for folk to meet and communicate. So, even when individuals are hundreds of miles apart, they can almost shake hands thanks to their virtual avatars. The environments Corporation Pop creates can be used for anything from team training and game-based learning to consultations and ceremonies. And they include nifty extras like embedded external video, as well as voice technology.”

5. Marketing Web (South Africa) – Real-world value of virtual markets. “News headlines for the past year have been dominated by the effects of the global recession. This trend has affected almost all industries, with computer gaming being one of the few exceptions. Shortly before the recession kicked in computer gaming overtook movies in entertainment spending, and was on track to surpass music too. When the recession hit it wasn’t immune, but the gaming growth curve lasted longer, and has kicked back in sooner, than many other industries. After a dismal September 2009 the industry has seen the first signs of turn-around as initial Q4 sales data is starting to come in.”

6. Wired (USA) – World of Warcraft Quests Remain Compelling, 5 Years On. “After five years, it’s hard to imagine a world without World of Warcraft. Released Nov. 23, 2004, the massively multiplayer online role-playing game has set the standard for the genre. More than 11.5 million players from around the world, from all walks of life, spend hours a day in the world of Azeroth. They embark on epic adventures, battle other players or just hang out. And each of them pays developer Blizzard Entertainment $15 per month for the privilege. Players create characters and develop them over time, forging relationships with other gamers and going on quests to gain experience or loot. Whether they play with strangers, friends or alone, Warcraft’s polished virtual world proves easy to get into and hard to get out of.”

7. Hypergrid Business (Hong Kong) – Virtual goods hit $1 bil in U.S. “The U.S. virtual goods market doubled in size from 2008, to reach $1 billion this year, according to a new report from Inside Network. “While virtual goods have been driving revenues in Asia and Europe for years, 2009 will be remembered as the year virtual goods-based businesses began to scale in the United States,” said Insight network editor Justin Smith in a statement. The size of the Asian virtual goods market reached $7 billion in 2009.”

8. The Telegraph (UK) – Advertisers pile into augmented reality. “The technology origin myths say that the Model T Ford made cars, books made e-commerce and pornography made VHS. It seems that augmented reality, which takes the real world as seen through a mobile phone camera or computer webcam and adds images, digital models and data, is to be made by advertising. Not passive advertising like billboards or television commercial breaks, where you lie back and let the spending opportunities wash over you, but active advertising that you seek out and voluntarily engage with.”

9. PsychCentral (USA) – The Proteus Effect: How Our Avatar Changes Online Behavior. “The other day, a commenter asked whether people “truly represent themselves for who they are, do they take on different personality characteristics while in their online persona, and how is their level of tolerance for disagreement affected?” One way to examine this question is to look how people provide based upon their choice of avatar — the pictorial representation of themselves in an online environment (such as virtual reality game).”

10. BBC (UK) – ‘Virtual graduation’ for students. “A university is to hold a “virtual graduation ceremony” for students on a distance learning course. Edinburgh University will broadcast the ceremony at its McEwan Hall on to the Second Life web community.
The move will ensure students on its E-Learning course who are unable to travel to Edinburgh do not miss out on the graduation celebrations. They will be able to download robes for their online avatars, and gather in a virtual bar after the ceremony.”