1. Daily News Online (USA) – Do you know where your children are? Look in a virtual world. “Once upon a time, Tinkerbell was known as the magical fairy who helped children fly. Now Disney is summoning the mischievous little sprite from Peter Pan to get kids to go online. In a virtual world called Disney Fairies Pixie Hollow, girls and boys can become a fairy, dress up, fly around, befriend other fairies and help paint lady bugs, teach baby birds to fly or go on other nature-related quests. It’s packaged as the world of Tinkerbell and her friends, and their work is to make nature happen.”

2. Hypergrid Business (Hong Kong) – Private grids, public grids, and intragrids. “I occasionally get announcements or news from new grids running on the OpenSim platform, but they require the creation of a new avatar to visit. I don’t personally have anything against these kinds of grids, but there isn’t usually an interesting business story there. Semi-public grids — grids which don’t allow hypergrid teleportation, but allow anyone to create an account — are commonly referred to as “Second Life clones.”

3. Forbes (USA) – Wall Street Vs. ‘Virtual Street’. “For the last year, the world’s financial markets have been in utter crisis. There is one sector, however, doing well: virtual worlds that sell virtual goods. Netizens are buying and selling everything from virtual pets and gifts to games to iPhone apps. The worldwide virtual “goods” economy, which some are calling Virtual Street, is estimated at about $5 billion right now (see: “The Fall of Wall Street and The Rise of The Virtual Street”) and 80% of the industry is in Asia (China, South Korea and Japan). The beauty of Virtual Street is that it grows like a virus. The growing number of consumers getting on the Internet, the popularity of smart phones and the seemingly unstoppable proliferation of social media deep into the lives of consumers should continue to provide lots of momentum.”

4. Virtual Worlds News (USA) – Gartner: Virtual Worlds, a Long-Term Play. “The researchers at Gartner Inc. released their 2009 Hype Cycle Special Report last week. The report, prepared by the organization since 1995, is at its core a comparative tool for risk judgment which, this year, looked at over 1,500 technologies and nearly 80 tech sectors. Among the nearly 1,800 data points mapped on the cycle’s peaks and troughs is virtual worlds, an area which Gartner thinks is nearing an inflection point as a technology: virtual worlds, says Gartner, are close to owning the basement of the hype cycle, bottoming out in the dire-sounding Trough of Disillusionment.”

5. WA Today (Australia) – Tourism industry casts eye to the future. “The global financial crisis, swine flu fears and a forecast dip in international visitors has left a cloud over Australia’s tourism industry in recent times. But throw in virtual worlds, pirates on cruise ships and robot sex workers, and the future of the industry looks a scary place indeed. The national Tourism Futures conference on the Gold Coast this week heard the future of the multi-billion dollar industry would be shaped by global warming, social responsibility, huge advances in technology and a more individualistic traveller.”

6. Times Higher Education (UK) – Second Life out as techies embrace cloud email. “Virtual worlds are about to plunge into a “trough of disillusionment”, lecture podcasts are fast becoming obsolete, but cloud computing will soon be on the “slope of enlightenment”. These are the findings of an analysis of the “hype cycle” of technology in education, published by Gartner, an IT advisory firm. The annual study looks at the popularity of emerging technologies, from internet TV and e-books to microblogging sites such as Twitter, across a range of sectors. It tracks their progression as a function of expectations. The cycle ranges from over-enthusiasm as technology is hyped, through a period of disillusionment when it fails to deliver, via a slope of enlightenment to a “plateau of productivity”, as users learn how best to employ it.”

7. CNET (USA) – Cataclysm hits World of Warcraft. “Pretty much exactly as predicted, Blizzard Entertainment announced the next expansion for World of Warcraft Friday afternoon during the opening ceremonies for its annual Blizzcon convention in Anaheim, Calif. Called Cataclysm, the next expansion will, among other features, raise the character level cap to 85, introduce two new playable character races, and involve a wholesale refresh of Azeroth, the setting for the original World of Warcraft game released back in 2004.”

8. Telegraph (UK) – Teenager obsessed by World of Warcraft first to attend US internet addiction retreat. “The 19-year-old man will undergo a 12-step treatment at the reStart Internet Addiction Recovery Programme in Washington state, which has opened for business to cater for the growing number of “cyber junkies”. A typical 45-day residential stay, which will include camping and wilderness adventures, will cost patients $14,500 (£8,800), but the retreat is also open to outpatients seeking respite from an overreliance on joysticks, internet pornography and spending days on end staring at a computer screen.”

9. BBC News (UK) – Castle ‘rebuilt’ in virtual world. “Invergarry was burned down by Oliver Cromwell’s forces in 1654. It was rebuilt, but ransacked by government soldiers after the Battle of Culloden. The MyGlengarry.com Conservation Trust has “built” two versions of the castle, near Fort Augustus, on Second Life. Virtual tours of the building in its ruinous state today and how it was in 1740 have been offered. A computer expert who writes codes for Second Life was brought in by MyGlengarry to recreate the castle.”

10. The Guardian (UK) – The technological secrets of James Cameron’s new film Avatar. “In real life, we see images in three dimensions because our left and right eyes see slightly different images that, when combined by the brain, deliver a picture that has depth. In old-fashioned 3D cinematography – the sort where your glasses had red and green coloured lenses – a pair of closely-aligned images with different tints gave the impression of depth by fooling the eyes. But modern 3D films have developed new techniques to drag them out of their B-movie past, and Avatar takes things a step further by using both computer generated imagery and advanced stereoscopic filming methods to create the illusion of reality.”

1. Globe and Mail (Canada) – For God’s sake, get a Second Life (or not). “Lois King has an avatar. Her avatar is a tall, shapely blonde who lives in a virtual world called Second Life. She wears a snappy business suit, which is appropriate because she teaches serious courses in finance at York University in Toronto. She teaches traditional classroom courses, as well as distance courses on the Internet.

2. Law.com (USA) – Intellectual Property in Virtual Worlds. “It is not surprising that copyright and trademark issues arise frequently in virtual worlds, given the fact that they are products of copyrightable software code and thus by their very nature implicate intellectual property analysis. Additionally, MMORPGs, such as Second Life and WoW, have developed marketplaces for the sale and barter of virtual goods for real money or virtual money that may later be converted to real money. As in any marketplace, there is also a need to identify the source of virtual goods, especially in virtual worlds such as Second Life, which allows its users to generate their own virtual content and retain intellectual property rights in the content they create. “Second Life Residents To Own Digital Creations,” Nov. 14, 2003; Second Life Terms of Service §3.2. Some entrepreneurs in Second Life have applied to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for registration of their avatars (the user-created character representation of the virtual world participant in the virtual environment) and other marks for their virtual businesses.”

3. Virtual Worlds News (USA) – In Virtual Worlds, Games, $400M Will be Spent on Virtual Goods. “Viximo founder Brian Balfour states that Americans will spend between $400 and $600 million on virtual goods in 2009, as reported by the San Francisco Business Times. Balfour states that US spending on virtual goods was roughly half that in 2008, in the $200 to $300 million range, and between $25 and $50 million in 2007. Balfour values the global market for virtual goods in 2009 at $5.5 billion, an estimate consistent with Plus Eight Star’s evaluation of the virtual goods market in Asia alone at $5 billion.”

4. VentureBeat (USA) – Roblox raises $2.3M to help kids build casual games. “Roblox, a casual games and virtual world site aimed at children, has raised about $2.3 million in a first round of funding, according to a regulatory filing. It looks like Roblox allows users to create free games using building blocks that look kind of like Legos, though the site emphasizes that the Redwood City, Calif., company is not affiliated with Lego or similar products. The Roblox site also says the product is still in early alpha testing and describes it as “straddling several rapidly-developing aspects of internet entertainment: virtual worlds, casual gaming, and user-constructed content.”

5. Kotaku (USA) – IRS: Second Life Saves Taxpayers Millions. “he Internal Revenue Service isn’t all about taking your money. It’s also about saving you money by foregoing NASCAR sponsorships in favor of a virtual presence in Second Life. See, instead of spending millions of dollars on recruitment advertising no one will actually see, the IRS instead spent thousands of dollars to create an IRS Careers Island in Second Life which no one will actually see. That’s much cheaper! I actually visited the island as soon as I heard about this, and one can definitely see how they saved millions. It’s a bunch of booths with clickable information signs, and a couple of lounges with some very pretty penguin clip art that must have cost them a small fortune to secure. Frank Stipe, Virtual Worlds & Social Networking Project Manager for the IRS, explains why the IRS needs a Virtual Worlds & Social Networking Project Manager.”

6. Internet Evolution (USA) – Designer Fights for Second Life Rights. “When Gospel Voom was approached by a client to recreate a highly detailed, three-dimensional section of the famed French Quarter in New Orleans for use in the virtual online community of Second Life, I’m sure the last thing on his mind was that he would end up fighting a battle to protect his intellectual property rights. Voom (his chosen Second Life name), is a London-based industrial designer in real life with over 14 years of professional experience, who has developed, among other things, a variety of projects for universities and businesses in Second Life. So it was as a real-life businessman that he was careful to communicate the terms of his commission with his client, on more than one occasion, to ensure he would retain and protect his creative rights and credit.”

7. CNET (USA) – Dell nurtures a virtual life for youngsters. “Dell has partnered with Nickelodeon and Whyville.net to give life to its latest version of the Mini10v. According to Dell, the kids’ Netbook has been designed with safe computing, education, and entertainment in mind. At a glance, Dell is only trying to reach another market (children), but if you look a little closer, the Netbook may represent a change in the way the next generation of preteens and children will learn to socialize and develop their decision-making skills. The Netbook comes with desktop animations which link to Whyville.net, a virtual world where kids of all ages chat, shop, and visit places in town that engage them in science, nutrition, art, and business activities.”

8. eMarketer (USA) – Virtual Goods Mean Real Dollars. “Virtual goods represent one of the strongest ways that marketers and retailers can get involved with virtual worlds, and their popularity in social networks has increased with the opening up of the Facebook platform. For example, fashion marketers and retailers have offered virtual versions of current in-store clothing, along with links to buy the items in real life, on sites such as Stardoll. Branded items are also available to decorate social network profile pages or to send to friends.”

9. iTWire (Australia) – Australia bans another game. “Another one bites the dust, this time the role playing game (RPG) Risen has fallen on the bad side of the Australian Classification Board due to chatting up prostitutes and smoking imaginary drugs. It is comforting that our government is looking after us so well, protecting the adult populace from the evils of virtual worlds. This time the game in the Classification Board’s sites is the multiplatform title Risen, a typical sword and sorcery role play game from developer Pirhana Bytes, makers of the well received Gothic series.”

10. Portfolio.com (USA) – The Virtues of Virtual. “Surging online sales of digital goods — everything from digital pets to “currency” for online game-playing to virtual roses for a love interest — is driving growth and reshaping business plans among Internet companies small and large, particularly around video gaming, offering new revenue streams as web advertising rates have fallen. The trend is fueling growth and innovation among game publishers, dating sites, advertising agencies, payment processing companies and purveyors of industry analytics. For now, the mac daddy of North American virtual goods is Zynga, the Potrero Hill, California, online social gaming company founded in 2007, which gets two-thirds of its projected $100 million-plus annual revenue selling virtual goods ranging from digital farm buildings to poker chips.”

1. Abeceder (UK) – Virtual world experiences increases racial bias. “They say you should walk a mile in a person’s shoes before judging them. Virtual reality technology offers this possibility by allowing us to control a digital representation of another person. Unfortunately, the first ever investigation of racial perspective-taking in an immersive virtual environment has found that assuming a different racial identity leads to increased racial bias, not less. Victoria Groom and colleagues invited 98 participants, half of whom were of White ethnicity, to view a photograph of either a Black or White person of the same gender as themselves, and to imagine they were that person. Next the participants donned a virtual reality headset which transported them to an empty room where they were interviewed for a job, still playing the role of that other person. Crucially, half the participants could see their new identity in a mirror in the virtual room, and as they answered some introductory questions they spent at least a minute observing their adopted selves in the mirror.”

2. Virtual Worlds News (USA) – Weblin Closes, Users Transitioned to Club Cooee. “Layered virtual world Weblin is ceasing operations, according to a company newsletter sent to registered users today. Media reports attribute the closure to a lack of funds. Weblin users are being invited to transition Club Cooee, a site run by the former Weblin principals Jan Andresen and Christine Stumpf.”

3. Escapist Magazine (USA) – Virtual Worlds and MMORPGs: The Best and Worst of Humanity. “The three years Juan Carlos Piñeiro Escoriaza spent making his MMORPG documentary Second Skin were a bit of a wild ride, as he saw how much good these worlds could do for people, and just how badly they could spiral out of control. Juan Carlos Piñeiro Escoriaza was a life-long console gamer until a friend introduced him to the MMOG space via SOE’s Star Wars Galaxies. Though Escoriaza would eventually quit SWG due to the time investment, the experience – and the idea of real people choosing to take on virtual responsibilities – stuck with him. The seeds from that eventually blossomed into his feature-film documentary, Second Skin, which premieres tonight.”

4. Newsweek (USA) – The Sound of One Hand Clicking. “Luis Figueroa lives down the street from UC Merced, the newest campus in the University of California system. So it’s not surprising that the 21-year-old studies from the comfort of his own home. But he’s not enrolled at Merced: from his living-room computer, Figueroa is earning his bachelor’s degree in business administration at Columbia College in Missouri, some 2,000 miles away. At $630 per course—about $1,800 per semester—his online degree will cost far less than even in-state tuition at UC. Not only that, Figueroa is able to continue working full time in a management-training job with AT&T in Merced, a job he feels lucky to have in the current economic climate. “Once I realized I had time constraints, I knew the traditional classroom wouldn’t work,” he says. “Courses online are open 24 hours a day, and I’m able to go there any time I want.”

5. PSFK (USA) – Digital Immortality and Death 2.0. “Without coming across as too macabre and curmudgeonly, we’ll simply say that with dawn of the internet, the business of death has gotten a lot more complicated these days. Consider that wills once existed for the sole purpose of ceding ownership of physical objects, and quests for immortality – things like cryonics, transhumanism, fountains of youth and religion (ahem) – remained firmly planted in the realms of fantasy, but as the lines between our real and digital worlds continue to blur, these customs have changed. The things we leave behind, from virtual businesses to entire online lives, now have an immaterial existence and longevity all their own.”

6. CNET (USA) – Second Life for returning veterans. “Veterans are often reluctant to seek therapy for service-related conditions, but rather than write them off, scientists are creating a virtual online community where servicemembers can find the camaraderie and resources to ease their return to civilian life. The “Transitional Online Post-deployment Soldier Support in Virtual Worlds” created by the University of Southern California’s Institute for Creative Technologies (ICT) will be ensconced within a corner of the virtual landscape of Second Life, a popular online 3D grid where people interact through avatars (PDF). Also known as Coming Home, this world will contain three main areas: one for social activities, one for competitive and collaborative gaming, and one for resources. The resources area will be staffed by artificial intelligence-driven virtual characters available 24-7 to steer veterans to the appropriate support and therapies.”

7. Times Online (UK) – The top seven social networking sites for kids. “How do you know when a social networking site isn’t cool anymore? The day that your dad joins up. A new study has found that young people are turning their backs on sites such as Facebook and Twitter. Meanwhile, the number of 35 to 54-year-olds using such sites has rocketed by 25 per cent in the last year. So what can you do if you don’t want to be poked by your mum or added by your gran? Here’s a round up of the coolest sites and virtual worlds for children – just make sure you hide this page from your parents.”

8. Mass High Tech (USA) – Viximo seeks to turn virtual goods into real profit. “It’s hard enough for online retailers to get consumers to spend money on real goods and services — but one Cambridge company is betting that sites will want to get into the business of selling virtual goods. Venture-backed Virtual Goods Market Inc., which does business as Viximo, provides a white-label virtual goods store with gifts and personal accessories designed to complement online identities and messages. When Viximo launched in 2007, the company’s founders thought publishers of virtual worlds like Second Life and massively multiplayer online role-playing games would be among its core customers, said co-founder Brian Balfou.”

9. IGN (USA) – Artificial Emotions at Gamescom 2009. “The future of computer games in all facets awaits visitors at the trade show “gamescom 2009″. Held in Cologne for the first time, Europes leading games industry gathering draws not only the interested public, but first and foremost, experts and professionals from across the globe. At the Artificial Technology GmbH booth (Hall 4.2, Booth K27) the heads of the company, Frank Gwosdz, Serein Pfeiffer and Daniel Renner, will shed light on the inner workings of EKI One 2.0, their new full-version modular middleware for emotional and artificial intelligence. ”

10. Wired (UK) – Does a healthy virtual life mean a healthy real life? “pparently having a slim avatar encourages Second Lifers to get healthier in real life. Researchers at RTI International have published a report in the Journal of Virtual Worlds Research, which reveals that a healthy virtual life can impact attitudes towards fitness in real life. The team interviewed 29 Second Life residents. According to Science Daily: “Half the participants were interviewed by a thin avatar and half the participants were interviewed by an obese avatar.” They were then quizzed about their levels of physical activity both in the virtual and real worlds. “