1. The Toronto Star – Let my avatar buy your avatar coffee. “Paula Weisz’s favourite place to take her dates is the Millennium bar, where she can sip a glass of red wine and have a good conversation. She typically goes on one date per week with men she meets at Omni Date.com, a Toronto-based company. For her dates, the 42-year-old single mother of two doesn’t need to leave the comfort of her living room sofa. And the Millennium won’t be found in any local phonebook.”

2. Reuters – Lego’s latest brick trick: a virtual world. “Millions of children pick up Lego bricks each year to spend hours — 5 billion, in fact — creating their own imaginary worlds. Now the manufacturer of the little plastic playing blocks wants to take them online to “Lego Universe,” a virtual world for fans of the ubiquitous toy.”

3. The Jeffersonian (USA) – Virtual world new marketplace for cars. “Owings Mills entrepreneur and iMagicLab CEO Richard Keith Latman is obviously tickled by last month’s opening of his company’s newest venture — a multi-brand automobile dealership. Set on its own island, the dealership looks like a car wheel and hubcap to shoppers as they fly toward the site.”

4. Tech Digest (UK) – Grand Theft Philadelphia, courtesy of virtual world GeoSimPhilly. “Fancy going to Philadelphia for free? And without leaving the house? That’s the AMAZING FUTURISTIC POSSIBILITY opened up by GeoSimPHILLY – an extremely realistic online representation of Philadelphia.”

5. The University of Texas at Dallas – Students Develop a Virtual World for Art Lovers. “High culture comes to gamers with the help of a group of graduate students from UT Dallas Arts & Technology program. Twelve graduate students have created a virtual art education environment in which art lovers can learn about museum practices and the visual arts.”

6. Fox News – Science-Fiction Writers Help Government Prepare for Attacks of the Future. “magine an attack by a swarm of armed micromachines … or a bioweapon small enough to fit in a suitcase and deadly enough to destroy the human race. It’s the stuff of Hollywood storylines, but to the U.S. government such plots are potentially very real and very dangerous. So the government has turned to an unlikely source for help in identifying these threats: science-fiction writers.”

7. T.H.E. Journal – Children’s Way Beefs Up Security in K-6 Virtual World. “Non-profit developer Children’s Way Foundation has teamed with eGuardian to bolster security on its Woogi World, an online virtual world for K-6 students. The agreement allows Woogi World to incorporate eGuardian’s online verification service as a means of safeguarding kids from online strangers who might be posing as other children.”

8. Science Daily – Virtual World Therapeautic For Addicts: Study Shows Impact Of Environment To Addiction Cravings. ” Patients in therapy to overcome addictions have a new arena to test their coping skills–the virtual world. A new study by University of Houston Associate Professor Patrick Bordnick found that a virtual reality (VR) environment can provide the climate necessary to spark an alcohol craving so that patients can practice how to say “no” in a realistic and safe setting.”

9. Profy.com – Are We Sure About This Virtual World Thing? EA Land Hits Deadpool. “Almost a year and a half ago, Colbert Low posted here on Profy that the future of the Web would be 3D applications, or virtual worlds, with Second Life leading the pack. It’s amazing to me that so much could have changed in such a short amount of time. Today it was announced EA Land, which was formerly called The Sims Online and rebranded only a short time ago, will be shuttering before the end of summer.”

10. IT Business (Canada) – Canadian college turns virtual world creation into real business venture. “After being the first Canadian college with a virtual campus, in Linden Lab’s Second Life, Loyalist College is now starting a commercial venture to help other schools and companies create their own virtual world space.”

1. New Scientist – A virtual refuge from recession. “Do these two graphs look related to you? This blogger concerned with virtual world Second Life thinks they might be, using them to suggest that the current global “credit crunch” has driven the growth of virtual world Second Life’s economy.”

2. Social Science Research Network – Criminal Law in Virtual Worlds. “When does conduct by an online player in a virtual world game trigger liability for a real-world crime? In the future, will new criminal laws be needed to account for new social harms that occur in virtual worlds? This short essay considers both questions. Part I argues that existing laws regulate virtual worlds with little or no regard to the virtual reality they foster. Criminal law tends to follow the physical rather than the virtual: it looks to what a person does rather than what the victim virtually perceives. This dynamic greatly narrows the role of criminal law in virtual worlds. Existing law will not recognize virtual murder, virtual threats, or virtual theft. Virtual worlds will be regulated like any other game, but their virtualness normally will have no independent legal resonance from the standpoint of criminal law.”

3. Wall Street Journal – Sony Again Delays PS3 Virtual Community. “Sony Corp.’s videogame unit delayed for the second time the release of its much-anticipated virtual-community service for the PlayStation 3, showing the extra care it is taking in vetting products as demand for the videogame console is increasing. The 3-D service called Home, which originally was expected to be sold starting last year, now is expected to be available in the fall, the company said. The service will let users create avatar characters, decorate homes and interact with other users in a virtual world.”

4. IT Week – The virtual world is your oyster. “While the influence of social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace on firms’ sales and marketing initiatives continues to grow, some experts predict that their impact will soon be dwarfed by that of another Web 2.0 technology – virtual worlds.”

5. Times Online – McKinsey: ignore Second Life at your peril. “Virtual worlds such as Second Life will become an indispensible business tool and vital to the strategy of any company intent on reaching out to the video-game generation, one of the world’s leading consultancies has said. McKinsey & Company, the management consulting firm whose observations about corporate behaviour are closely watched, said that virtual worlds were on the cusp of a major expansion – particularly as a way to reach younger customers – and that companies were “ignoring them at their peril.”

6. CNET – Real solar homes come to virtual world ‘Second Life’. “It’s about time green architects invaded Second Life. The organizers of the Solar Decathlon are hosting an event in Second Life on Thursday where people can attend a virtual conference and then get a virtual walk-through of a house designed to be powered entirely by the sun.”

7. Indianapolis Star – Celebrate the Earth with eco-friendly sites. “If the celebrations of Earth Day (April 22) and Arbor Day (April 25) have triggered your child’s interest in “going green,” here are some fun online ways to further that interest. At the PBS Kids EekoWorld, www.EekoWorld.org, kids ages 6 through 9 can explore environmental issues by participating in two simulations.”

8. Sydney Morning Herald – Why games matter. “Madison Reed, an 11-year-old Spinal Muscular Atrophy sufferer, is sad and mad. It’s not because “my muscles don’t work right” as she says on her blog, because she’s “just like other kids” and loves life, even if she needs help with most tasks. The reason she’s sad and mad is because Disney has decided to close its Virtual Magic Kingdom on May 21.”