1. Associated Content (USA) – Islands for Sale Follow Cave Home onto Real Estate Oddities Market. “First it was a cave house that was auctioned off on eBay; now there are private islands for sale. Would you buy an island right now? What is more, would you buy a private island on Second Life? Private islands for sale aside, there currently is a unique cave home listed on eBay while a balloon note threatens a cave foreclosure. The eBay cave home auction is scheduled to go until 03-11-09 and for only $300,000 the cave could be yours; unfortunately, even though the story generated much interest, there are no bidders thus far. Will those holding private islands for sale have better luck?”

2. New York Times (USA) – Portrait of an Artist as an Avatar. “Certainly, Filthy Fluno is not the first artist to realize that in order to sell his paintings, he needs to sell himself. He does, however, work at it with impressive zeal. Every day he makes new friends and cultivates new contacts, edging himself and his work — a collection of expressionistic oil paintings and vibrant, graffiti-laced pastels — just a little bit farther into a universe that to others might appear huge and indifferent, but as Filthy sees it is stuffed with possibility and also potential customers. To this end, you will often find him wandering around art openings and dance parties, dressed in a spiffy suit and pair of sneakers, trying earnestly to chat up every person in the room.”

3. NPR (USA) – Scott Simon Looks for Coffee in Second Life. “When you think of school, you may think of students sitting in rows of desks in a classroom while a teacher lectures up front. But, what if you could go to class in your pajamas while lying on your couch? Dr. Michael DeMers is a geography professor at New Mexico State University. While he does teach in a traditional classroom, he also invites his students to join him in an online virtual world called Second Life. At least once a week, their avatars (digital versions of people) head to an island in this virtual terrain to review class notes. Host Scott Simon’s avatar paid a visit to this online virtual island to meet with Dr. DeMers, our Second Life guide. While there, Scott asked for a cup of coffee, but what he opened was a can of worms instead”.

4. Slippery Brick (USA) – VR headset mimics all five senses. “What you are looking at in the pic above is a virtual reality helmet that recreates sights, smells, sounds and even tastes from far-flung destinations. Created by British scientists, the device will allow users a life-like experience of places such as Kenya’s Masai Mara while never leaving home. You could greet friends and family on the other side of the world as though they were present in the same room. Previously, scientists have only had success with virtual reality technology recreating sound and vision. This helmet named the Virtual Cocoon could change all that.”

5. Money (UK) – Real Money Trading in a Virtual Environment – Virtual Items Can Lead To Immense Wealth (And Occasionally Death). “A virtual economy is generally taken as being the exchanging of virtual goods in a virtual world, just as it reflects how a real economy works in the Real World. However, there are times when the line between Real and Virtual economies can bleed together, when players exploit “virtual” goods in order to profit from their deeds in the “real” world. Here is an amalgamated list of some well-known (and perhaps some not so well-known) instances of where the line between “real” and “virtual” becomes a little too blurred for some.”

6. Campus Technology (USA) – Second Life: Engaging Virtual Campuses. “n the previous article in this series, Real-Life Teaching in a Virtual World, we looked at the state of Second Life as it pertains to higher education. There are so many schools represented that one could spend days exploring the college and university campuses. The ways they are used in the 3D online virtual world vary drastically, and how much and how well they are used appear to vary as well. First, the bad: ghost towns abound. Just as many corporations have created presences in Second Life with the approach of “if you build it, they will come,” some colleges and universities have done the same.”

7. Science Daily (USA) – Virtual And Real Worlds: Two Worlds Of Kids’ Morals. “Children’s moral behavior and attitudes in the real world largely carry over to the virtual world of computers, the Internet, video games and cell phones. Interestingly, there are marked gender and race differences in the way children rate morally questionable virtual behaviors, according to Professor Linda Jackson and her team from Michigan State University in the US. Their research is the first systematic investigation of the effects of gender and race on children’s beliefs about moral behavior, both in the virtual world and the real world, and the relationship between the two.”

8. The Guardian (UK) – Friendship studies reveal the power of pals. “A recent study from the University of Leipzig found that college freshmen were more likely to be friends with people they met in their first week at university if they had been randomly assigned a seat next to them in an introductory lecture. The happiness of our friends is infectious, according to researchers at Harvard and the University of California. In a study that measured the happiness of nearly 5,000 individuals over a period of 20 years, reports showed that when an individual was happy it spread through their network of friends, and their friends’ friends, and the measurable effect could last for up to a year.”

9. Accountingweb.com (USA) – Financial literacy moves to Second Life. “Ohio University and credit union industry leaders have launched a new educational video game that uses the virtual world Second Life to teach financial skills to young people. The game, Credit Union Island, is designed for high school students. Based in the teen grid of Second Life, a simulated world with millions of users, the game enables players to guide their avatars through real-life financial decisions such as taking out a college loan, making car payments and buying a home.”

10. Computerworld (USA) – No security reprieve from Blizzard’s Warden – Two good reasons to pass on MMORPGs in the office. “World of Warcraft (WoW) and other massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPG) are the source of recent rumbling in the industry. The online gaming numbers are staggering, but the notion that a significant percentage of people is logging in from work is truly the stuff of executive nightmares. The impact from lost work hours and the legality of alternate-currency businesses or “gold pharming” are worthy of discussion, but the alarm is a bit misplaced. Games have been a staple of computer workers’ existence since J. Martin Graetz, Alan Kotok and others cooked up Spacewar! on a PDP-1 in 1961, and people have been exchanging virtual identities and goods for real money since the first multiuser dungeons (MUD) in the ’80’s. Such games will always be with us, and the further up the knowledge-worker ladder one goes, the seemingly more essential their importance for blowing off steam. Modern role-playing games aren’t my thing, but I’d much rather see a senior security officer ganking Blood Elves in a cathartic frenzy for 30 minutes on company time than losing her cool when cornered by a tightly wound executive in some postincident blamestorming session.”

1. University World News (USA) – Alliance to create virtual worlds. “A major IT company has teamed up with a Canadian open university to establish a research centre that will create bespoke three-dimensional virtual learning environments. Sun Microsystems of Canada Inc has announced the creation of a new education centre for excellence at Athabasca University, Canada’s Alberta-based open university. Athabasca delivers the bulk of its courses online and the centre will be charged with enabling academics, students, schools and communities to develop virtual world-style online learning platforms. The university will integrate this three-dimensional immersive technology research into its curricula.”

2. Toronto Star (Canada) – Second Life makes classical music fans feel at home. “You can hear the breeze caressing the West Coast pines and the gently rolling sea. High clouds float overhead as people gather in the amphitheatre on Music Island. It is as pretty a spot as one could ever imagine for a concert. Three early-music specialists from Switzerland perform for an hour on recorders and flutes to an audience of listeners from Philadelphia, North Dakota, Norway, Finland, Holland, Italy, France, China, Korea – and Toronto.”

3. ScienceNews (USA) – Playing for real in a virtual world. “In a virtual setting where fifth-graders become wizards and athletes, and even change sexes, preteens stay true to their real-world selves. Classic sex differences in play preferences, characterized by rough-and-tumble games among boys and intimate conversations among girls, still exist after youngsters adopt a range of personas for virtual encounters, investigators find. Boys who create girl avatars — or computerized altar egos — and girls who create boy avatars still behave consistently with their biological sex, say psychologist Sandra Calvert of Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., and her colleagues.”

4. Game Fwd – Mathew Kumar on Why Virtual Worlds Miss the Mark. “Speaking at an International Game Developers Association (IGDA) Ottawa event on February 26, 2009, Gamasutra contributing editor and one of Canada’s most renowned games journalists Mathew Kumar discussed the place of virtual world games in the video game industry. Not shy to express his dislike for the concept as it has been executed so far, Kumar pointed out some of these games’ essential flaws to an intimate crowd at Ottawa’s bitHeads Studio. The event was organized as part of the Interactive Ontario gTalk game industry speaker series. Kumar was quick to highlight that virtual worlds, which are usually based on social interaction functions, rarely succeed in their goal of being effective vehicles for social interaction. While their developers and marketers portray them as a great way to meet new people, most players don’t take advantage of these features.”

5. CNBC (USA) – Virtual Meetings Get A 2nd Life. “Forget the days of companies flying employees to exotic locales to rally the troops and strategize. Who has the money to sustain that the corporate conference excesses of the past — and big remote gatherings just simply look bad. With companies cancelling Las Vegas meetings and Pebble Beach golf outings, some are finding a new, inexpensive way to gather far-flung employees — virtually, in Second Life. Linden Lab’s virtual world, which is home to 1.3 million regular residents, or avatars, has become the new hot spot for corporate gatherings.”

6. Allakhazam (USA) – Console MMOs: Are We There Yet? “If you’re an MMO player, there’s a good chance you have at least one video game console in your home. Personally, I have a Wii and Xbox 360 on the shelf under my television for those times I just don’t feel like sitting in front of my PC to play games. I even have most of my older systems, ranging back to my original NES, for when I get nostalgic. But with the current trend of companies such as Sony Online Entertainment pushing for console MMOs to become commonplace, will there be a time in the near future where players are more likely to pick up a controller than a keyboard to enter a virtual world? It’s certainly a possibility, but the slumping sales of the PlayStation 3 may make it difficult to entice gamers to try out an MMO from the comfort of their couches when their PCs will do just fine.”

7. ZDNet Asia – Bringing online marketing to life. “he 25-year old founder of Singapore-based Dream Axis, which specializes in creating 3D environments on virtual platforms such as Second Life, sees much potential in the 3D online space as a marketing platform for companies. Soh told ZDNet Asia in an interview: “There is so much opportunity for Web 2.0 to move to Web 3.0, where social collaboration in the 2D space goes to 3D.” Dream Axis recently completed building a set of islands for the National University of Singapore. The tertiary institute last year developed the online replica of its campus in an effort to reach out to potential students.”

8. Earth2Tech (USA) – Geekout: Sun, Second Life & Green Data Centers. “It’s the geekiest thing I’ve ever done: I just watched Sun Microsystems give a tour of its green data center designs in Second Life via a Ustream feed. Complete with Sun execs flying between data center designs, chuckling about their virtual outfits, and red (hot) and blue (cold) air flow designs emanating from the server gear, the media event lasted about 45 minutes. That was about 45 minutes too long (kidding!), as it was actually pretty hard to hear or understand what was going on. I’m going to wait for a “first life” tour in Santa Clara some day.”

9. Business Insider (USA) – IBM: We’re Still Committed To Virtual Worlds. “Earlier this week, we wondered if the departure of IBM’s (IBM) “Metaverse Evangelist” means the company is scaling back its interest in virtual worlds and Second Life. We haven’t heard much from the group in months, which only added to our speculation. IBM reps finally got back to us, and they let us know they’re still in there”

10. Telepresence Options – Holograms: coming soon to your front room? “I’ve done some daft things in my time, but inter viewing someone who wasn’t there for the best part of an hour must be in a class of its own. The person in question, Ian O’Connell, director of London-based Musion, wasn’t  invisible. I could follow his every movement, gesture and eye motions: it was just that he himself was somewhere else. I was chatting to one of his company’s products, or maybe I should say non-products: a hologram.”

1. Forbes (USA) – The Second Life Hype Has Fizzled—Is Twitter Next? “Second Life is still a vibrant virtual world—with over 12.2 million registered users and more than 54,000 online the last time I logged in—but you wouldn’t know it from the media coverage (or lack thereof) lately. It wasn’t always this way, as MediaShift’s Mark Glaser recounts, in a post covering how Second Life’s media hype has fizzled.”

2. Mediashift (USA) – Reuters Closes Second Life Bureau, but (Virtual) Life Goes On. “The sun shines brightly as I stroll along the curving pier above the water, looking out toward a beautiful island with trees swaying in the wind. There’s a looming ampitheater festooned with signs for Thomson Reuters, and a series of concrete buildings that appear ready to hold important meetings. I stride in confidently through the doorway… You might think I was describing a trip to visit Reuters in the UK, but really, I was strolling through the virtual world of Second Life (SL), visiting the Thomson Reuters island, now largely vacant. The island symbolizes the efforts of media companies not only to cover life in the virtual world of Second Life, but also to live there and set up virtual offices. Reuters made waves by setting up a bureau in SL, with reporters Adam Pasick and Eric Krangel covering stories about the virtual currency and the startup businesses springing up in-world.”

3. Computerworld (New Zealand) – Reality is broken so go virtual, says games developer. “Web developers and designers have a lot to gain by looking to the virtual world, because compared to the gaming world, reality is broken, says Jane McGonigal, game designer and director of game research and development at the Institute for the Future, a California-based non-profit research group. People are not as happy and fulfilled in reality as they are in online, virtual realities, such as World of Warcraft, McGonigal told the audience at developer and designer conference Webstock, which kicked off on yesterday in Wellington. ”

4. Telepresence Options (USA) – The Case for 4D Immersive Holographic Spaces. “The United States of America has steadily fallen further and further behind Asian and European nations with respect to broadband penetration and related services. This is impeding the development of new consumer applications (and related new industry and services) and limiting communications in an economy where knowledge exchange is vital in order to be to be a major player of the emerging , seamless and unobstructed global market. Reversing this trend may be of high interest to the incoming administration, but the viability of extending broadband is dependent on the deployment of new high bandwidth and high value applications that (a) will justify the investments required and (b) will contribute digital solutions to many of the key societal problems in this Energy-Climate Era (as recently identified by Thomas L. Friedman in his book Hot, Flat and Crowded) such as growing demand for ever scarcer energy supplies and natural energy, rapid and accelerating biodiversity loss, and disruptive climate change.”

5. Atlanta Journal Constitution (USA) – Gamers want to look rivals in eye. “he scene unfolding one recent Friday evening at Cyberdome in Easton, Pa., couldn’t be sweeter for a group of teenage boys poised for a night out with friends. Teens and tweens, ages 12 to 19, popped open cans of caffeine-loaded Liquid Lightning, slouched into the kind of swivel chairs executives use and centered themselves behind 20-inch screens, the windows into their virtual worlds for the night. “This is Disney World for them,” said Cyberdome’s owner Mark Dressel, who was hosting the all-night video game lock-in for nearly 20 area teens.”

6. Gameplanet (New Zealand) – The Sims 3 Q&A session. “With over a hundred million units shipped to date, you can’t deny that The Sims is one popular franchise.
Developers Maxis started the series nearly a decade ago, after venerable designer Will Wright insisted he could take their immensely popular SimCity series in a new direction and make a “people sim”. The concept of manipulating people sitting in their houses whilst you sat in yours was, perhaps surprisingly, a hit, and even after seven expansions the series is still going from strength to strength.”

7. The Malaysian Star (Malaysia) – Philips extends invitation to its virtual island. “PHILIPS is inviting Malaysians to take a peek at its virtual R&D island located in Linden Lab’s Second Life where virtual concepts are being tested and visitors can participate in co-designing the projects. The company called the island its collaborative working space for the real and virtual worlds, which provides the opportunity to research ideas with creative global early adaptors of new trends. “It fits with the company’s philosophy that design should be based around people and grounded in research,” said Dolf Wittkämper, senior director of Philips Design.”

8. Campus Technology (USA) – Real-Life Teaching in a Virtual World. “Few technologies have been subject to more hype and subsequent disappointment than Second Life. Corporations from shoe manufactures to cruise lines to news services set up shop with hopes this new frontier would bring soaring profits. Most evacuated shortly thereafter when the effort resulted in spaces devoid of audiences and buyers. A notable exception, though, is education. Education is thriving in Second Life. This enthusiastic subculture is abuzz within the Second Life realm, constantly interacting inside and outside Second Life. Educators are exploring every possible tool the 3D virtual world offers and establishing best practices along the way.”

9. Virtual Worlds News (USA) – Interoperability Gaining Steam Again? “In Fall 2007, interoperability was the buzz word surrounding our show in San Jose. IBM had organized a summit of leaders from the industry and announced plans with Linden Lab to work on avatar interoperability. Things died down a bit after that as individuals returned to their own projects, but IBM, Linden, and others continued to work to integrate OpenSim and Second Life, which OpenSim is based on. It looks like things are picking up again, at least for Linden and IBM, which are co-chairing the Internet Engineering Task Force’s Massive Multiplayer Online Experiences working group.”

10. RedOrbit (USA) – Microsoft To Study Educational Benefits Of Video Games. “Devin Krauter sits on the end of his bed, using his video game controller to shoot down aliens while taking with other players through a headset, all the while texting on his cell phone and chatting with a visitor. A video game Web site ranks the 17-year-old high school junior among the best players at “Gears of War 2,” a game in which soldiers fight their enemies using an assault rifle with a mounted chain saw bayonet. Krauter says the game teaches him to think on his feet, and that he thinks about succeeding, not slaying.”