1. Digital Spy (UK) – Feature: No Place Like Home. “icture the scene: you boot up the PlayStation 3 to arrive in a plaza brimming with people: avatars sculpted to pixel perfection, ripe with insightful conversation. Spotting your friends’ avatars in the distance, you take to the arcade, play a few frames of pool then seamlessly launch into a game of your choice, and later, spruce up your apartment with your game trophies for everyone to see.”

2. MSNBC (USA) – Disney’s Penguin spreads its wings globally. “Every kid in Brazil will have an igloo to live in if the Walt Disney Co. has its way. The Mouse House isn’t trying to bring a new Ice Age to the biggest country in South America; the igloo is a digital fixture of Club Penguin, a virtual world for which Disney paid $350 million 18 months ago, a deal that could cost another $350 million if the property hits performance targets. Its first non-English-language version, operating out of Sao Paulo, launched in November.”

3. Fox News (USA) – Gaza Conflict Moves to Virtual World. “A shadow war between pro-Israeli and pro-Hamas forces is taking place on the Internet — and it is getting fierce. If you’re one of millions of Americans who use social-networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter or participate in virtual worlds like “Second Life,” don’t be surprised if you get sucked into a war thousands of miles away in Gaza.”

4. VideoGamer.com (UK) – EA finds a new Home on PS3. “EA has announced its initial plans for the PlayStation Home Beta on PlayStation 3, beginning the spring launch of the EA Sports Complex within the Home virtual world. “We’re proud to support the PlayStation Home Beta with a very robust offering from EA Sports,” said Peter Moore, president of EA Sports. “As part of our continued commitment to the connected experience and the digitisation of our business, the EA Sports Complex is a rich new online environment that presents a compelling and immersive social gaming experience for the global sports audience.”

5. VentureBeat (USA) – CES: Mattel revamps web sites and launches digital toys. “Digital toys and web sites for kids have had a mixed history. But the future is so full of techno-savvy kids that toy makers are finding they have no choice but to move into the digital realm by providing better online entertainment as well as digital toys in the physical world.”

6. CNET (USA) – MindArk creates ‘Entropia Universe’ planet as independent company. “MindArk, the developer of the science fiction-based virtual world, Entropia Universe, has announced that it is spinning off the functional game side of its business into a separate company. Known as First Planet Company, the new entity will be a stand-alone company that will run the actual virtual world, which it is calling Planet Calypso. MindArk will continue to operate the platform side of its business, focusing on tools that it can make available to partners looking for a custom virtual world.”

7. Massively (USA) – Does virtual learning have to be dreadful? “Australia’s School of the Air programs have been among the most lauded distance education schemes for more than 50 years. In response to a scattered population in a less than hospitable environment and with a lack of nearby population centers and facilities, the School of the Air provided education for isolated children. The original School of the Air was opened in 1951, but had been broadcasting school lessons from the Royal Flying Doctor Service for some years prior to that. The School of the Air programs still operate today, as there are students living more than 800 kilometres (more than 500 miles) away from the nearest school.”

8. Network World (USA) – Lenovo buys into Nortel virtual shopping app. “Nortel this week said it landed PC maker Lenovo as a customer for its virtual world business application. The win comes a little over a year after Nortel announced incubation efforts to develop web.alive, a collaborative, browser-based application for enterprises that provides an interactive 3D experience with voice, graphics and avatars. Web.alive is designed to facilitate internal collaboration and customer interactions over the Web and in real time.”

9. Silicon Valley Insider (USA) – Is Second Life An Acquisition Target? No “When Cory Ondrejka talks about Second Life, we listen: The former Linden Lab CTO built a huge swath of Second Life’s technology single-handed, until he was fired after a falling out with Second Life founder Philip Rosedale, ending up at EMI Music. So when Cory (who likely still has a stake in Linden) said among his other “predictions for 2009” that Second Life would be acquired, virtual worlds-loving corners of the blogosphere lit up. Seems to us Cory still succumbs to the classic dot-com delusion: Saying “we’re awesome and deserve to be rich!” rather than asking “who might be interested in buying our service and what might they pay?”

10. Kotaku (USA) – Second-Life Hooker Bares All. “We have street prostitution here in Italy, and I have always wanted to be one of them,” says “Palela Anderson,” who is a high priced escort in Second Life. “As a teenager I would watch these sexy women walking the streets, waiting for the cars to stop, teasing the guys, and then hopping in and getting out sometime later,” she says in an interview posted to IGN’s Green Pixels. “I’m not sure why I find it such a turn-on. I think it’s because when a man will pay to have you, you know he really desires you. It’s proof that you’re really wanted.”

1. Washington Post (USA) – O Brave New World That Has Such Avatars in It! “The virtual world Second Life, a landscape of primping avatars, ballroom dancing bears, space stations and vampire castles, has a new — and maybe even more surreal — inhabitant: the Arlington County government. The county’s cyber-office, on the first floor of a virtual glass-and-steel tower, sits behind tinted sliding doors, across from a vending machine that sells digital Cheez-Its and Pop-Tarts.”

2. GAAPweb (UK) – Ernst & Young to use PS3 for virtual meetings. “In an effort to cut costs and reduce carbon emissions, UK financial services businesses, including Ernst & Young, are to trial holding management conferences through Playstation 3’s new virtual world Home. The move is part of a project led by Dr Nipan Maniar and Manish Malik from Portsmouth University, which was commissioned by Advanced Workplace Associates and aims to explore how large companies can use virtual worlds to reduce costs on office space and travel, as well as their carbon footprints.”

3. Kotaku (USA) – A Field Guide To Second Life Animal Hybrids. “As some of you were confused about the difference between what Second Life denizens call furries and what they call nekos, or hybrids, I thought I would take a moment to clear things up. Since the dawn of time, man has had close bonds with the animal kingdom. Many Native American tribes revered animal spirits as part of their rituals and celebrations. The ancient Egyptians worshiped gods depicted as humanoids with animal heads. Zeus, king of the Greek gods, liked to turn into a bull and mate with human women. Perhaps that’s a bad example. ”

4. Globe and Mail (Canada) – The age of avatars. “Who do you want to be, digitally speaking? Over the past year, avatars – online characters or personas standing in for real people – entered the public consciousness and grabbed real-world headlines all around the globe. Avatars will enjoy greater mainstream acceptance in 2009, and although convergence is not likely to happen overnight, expect certain sites to begin thinking about partnering up to allow character crossovers the way social networks are trying to make profiles more portable.”

5. Indopia (India) – Video games ‘could be used for education’. “In the midst of a debate over whether they are good for kids, a new study has suggested that video games could be used for education. An international team has carried out the study and found that online computer games could be used as a powerful teaching tool for children because they are not only popular but engaging as well. According to researchers, interactive games could be adapted so that children learn skills from them that could be transferred to real life -in fact, the”immersive” aspect in which the player suspends his belief means that the brain is particularly engaged and can absorb complex issues.”

6. Kotaku (USA) – Second Life Cheating Husband Surprised by Movie Deal. “The man at the heart of the Second Life story, which Pirates of the Caribbean director Gore Verbinski seeks to turn into a movie, was caught off guard by news of the film adaptation. After Crecente posted the news of Verbinski’s purchase of the rights to the 2007 Wall Street Journal article about a man cheating on his wife in Second Life, I hopped onto the virtual world in order to ask Ric Hoogestraat’s avatar Dutch what he thought about his situation possibly turning into a film. Not surprisingly, he hadn’t heard anything about it.”

7. The Mormon Times (USA) – Reflections: Can avatars be Mormon? “Can avatars be Mormon? It’s an interesting and valid question, and one I had never thought to ask until Mormon Times staff writer Michael De Groote decided to explore the virtual, role-playing world of Second Life in a two-part series in July.
While most people think of the LDS Church as worldwide, I doubt many, like myself, had ever given much thought to its presence in online communities on the Web such as Second Life until De Groote went traipsing around the Internet in search of religious people.”

8. Scientific American (USA) – Using virtual worlds and video games to teach the lessons of reality. “Researchers are beginning to wonder whether video games, long seen as a top time waster for kids and a roadblock to their educational development, might actually be a solution to what ails today’s schools rather than a problem. Several educators suggest in the newest issue of Science that schools use video games to simulate the real-world situations in the classroom to help students develop critical-thinking skills and enhance their understanding of science and math and, perhaps, even encourage them to pursue careers in those and related fields such as technology and engineering.”

9. Computerworld (USA) – Gaza: “Though torn in two, we can be one”. “The conflict raging in Gaza between Israel and Palestine has spilled over to the Internet. Since Saturday, thousands of Web pages have been defaced by hacking groups. The defacements have primarily affected small businesses and vanity Web pages hosted on Israel’s .il Internet domain space. One such site, Rosh Ha’ayin, Israel’s Galoz Electronics Ltd, whose hacked Web site read “RitualistaS GrouP Hacked your System!!! The world isn’t insurance!!! For a better world,” on Wednesday. Other attackers have placed more incendiary messages condemning the U.S. and Israel and adding graphic photographs of the violence.”

10. Sydney Morning Herald (Australia) – Online galleries are go. “AUSTRALIAN artists are using the virtual world to show their artworks, hanging digital replicas of paintings and drawings in online galleries. “I expect we’re on the cusp of seeing an increased engagement with [Second Life] and new digital mediums for art sales over the next few years,” Australia Council for the Arts Inter-Arts program director Andrew Donovan said.”