1. Information Week (USA) – Design Your Own Board Game With The Game Crafter. “Internet-powered personalization has changed the way products are made and sold. Using various e-commerce sites, individuals can now create and sell products like books, CDs, DVDs, mugs, posters, stamps, T-shirts, and assorted accessories with only a few digital files and mouse clicks.
The do-it-yourself ethic has also spawned Web sites like Metaplace that allow users to create online virtual worlds, but until this week, aspiring board game makers had to handle game production and assembly on their own.”

2. Hypergrid Business (Hong Kong) – Sex king takes on the hypergrid. “The battle for the future of the 3D Web is about to get hot… and steamy. Utherverse CEO tells us that he’s planning to launch an all-out attack against the other virtual world platforms out there, with free hosting and a set of free building tools designed to attract business customers. His main target is the hypergrid – worlds based on the OpenSim, RealExtend and Second Life platform which all use the OpenLibMetaverse set of communication standards and can all be accessed by the same set of browsers (now numbering over a dozen), and potentially supporting hypergrid teleports.”

3. CNET (USA) – MMPORGs, microtransactions, and user experience. “Microtransactions within online games and social networks offer one possible way to place a value on services while enhancing the experience for users. In addition to online games like Maple Story, virtual goods are launching all over social-networking sites, including Thursday’s launch of PlaySpan’s marketplace on Facebook and MySpace. Funding for virtual worlds has grown dramatically over the last year and companies need to find sustainable revenue models. Transactions of virtual goods allow for new cash flow into both subscription and nonsubscription sites. But some users don’t like the idea that you can simply buy something to affect the game in your favor. Accordingly, games need to be very clear about the purchased goods unfold into the game.”

4. TechCrunch (USA) – PlaySpan Launches Virtual Goods Marketplace On Facebook And MySpace. “Micro-payments across the gaming world is gaining serious traction, especially on social networks. PlaySpan, which powers micro-payments across over 1,000 video games and virtual worlds, is launching marketplace storefronts for Facebook and MySpace (which will be rolled out soon). The marketplace will which let users purchase online game items, virtual goods, and game currencies for online games and applications directly from their social networks. What makes the marketplace interesting is that you can buy, trade, and sell goods within the marketplaces on Facebook and MySpace and then use the items in online game environments. And making a transaction on the marketplace becomes a whole lot more social, as your friends may be able to see it on your NewsFeed. PlaySpan, which recently acquired micro-transaction app developer Spare Change, has processed more than $50 million worth of micro-transactions through its PayByCash and Ultimate Game Card products. PlaySpan also raised $16.8 million in a series B funding last Fall from Easton Capital Group, Menlo Ventures, Novel TMT Ventures, and STIC. The startup was founded by a 12-year-old, Arjun Mehta, but it is actually run by his father, CEO and co-founder Karl Mehta.”

5. Virtual Edge (USA) – Forterra the 10 Year Old Start Up Provides Secure 3D Collaboration, Learning & Marketing Solutions. “Forterra Systems, Inc. is a 3D immersive environment for meeting collaboration and marketing that started about 10 years ago as There.com. There.com was one of the first social virtual worlds (teenagers) before Second Life. About 4 years ago, management saw they had a great opportunity for more serious, business uses of the technology so they split into two parts and Forterra Systems was created to go after the business usage of the technology. They launched their Olive products about 2 years ago as a software development kit for the 3D environment. Inherently it’s been a virtual world software platform, really focused mostly on how people can craft collaboration and training applications. But, underneath collaboration, the core areas that they focus on are meetings, events, and training solutions.”

6. Virtual Worlds News (USA) – QuickStat: Korean Market Update. “Market research and consulting firm Pearl Research today teased the game and virtual worlds industries with a number of data points from its recently published “Online Games Market in Korea” study. The stats are worth noting as what is popular, and who is thriving, in Korea — in the online gaming, MMOG, and virtual worlds camps — can sometimes impact the North American market. The top five game operators in Korea in 2008, according to Pearl, were NHN (with revenues up 51 percent year-over-year); NCsoft (revenues up 5 percent year-over-year); Neowiz (revenues up 29 percent year-over-year), CJ Internet (revenues up 21 percent year-over-year); and Nexon. ”

7. ReadWriteWeb (USA) – Cross Reality Will Change Your Life, But at What Cost to Your Privacy? “Yesterday we explored an emerging trend called “Cross Reality”, one term for when sensor networks meet online virtual worlds. As this trend becomes more common over the next few years (and it will, as both Web-connected sensors and virtual reality ramp up), what are the implications on how people use the Web? How will it change our interactions in both real and virtual life? In this post we’ll explore some of these issues and offer some ideas: for example a bookstore that offers you personalized, contextual information on your mobile phone, in real time and with virtual reality.”

8. Computerworld (USA) – Timeline: The evolution of online communities. “In the hyperactive online venues of today, it’s easy to forget that online communities got started back when ABBA was cranking out hits. True, these early efforts didn’t much resemble Facebook or Ning, but they were communities nonetheless. Here’s how online communities have evolved. ”

9. San Francisco Chronicle (USA) – Virtual Relay For Life fundraiser in Second Life. “About 3,000 people will be gathering from around the world Saturday to journey back to the Middle Ages, do the Tour de France, take part in a scavenger hunt or sail a boat — all in the name of charity and all in the virtual world of Second Life. It’s the annual Relay for Life in Second World event, which has already raised more than $236,000 in real-life dollars for the American Cancer Society, says event chairwoman Fayandra Foley. In real world Relays, teams of participants take turns walking around a track or a park to raise money for cancer research. For the Second Life version, the teams made up of about 2,000 volunteers have set up virtual castles and villages to visit, Foley said.”

10. GamingExcellence (USA) – Cities XL PC release date confirmation. “Aiming to re-define the perennially popular city builder video game genre, CITIES XL offers an experience that pushes the limits of scale, realism and sophistication both in solo play and with the vast connected online community in the game’s massively persistent multiplayer ‘Planet’ mode. Online or offline, CITIES XL lets gamers develop cities on realistic 3D maps using a painstakingly crafted collection of unique structures and monuments based on European, Asian and American architectural styles. The numerous maps feature a variety of environments including mountains, hills, canyons, beaches and islands, all set in different climate zones ranging from tropical to desert, Mediterranean to temperate.”

1. CBS News (USA) – The Obama White House’s First Try At Second Life. “Since entering the White House in January, the Obama administration has made use of a myriad of social networking and Internet communications tools, such as blogs, the YouTube video service and Twitter, to interact with the public. Come Saturday, you can add a virtual world appearance to the list. When President Obama, who is visiting Ghana, speaks to a live audience tomorrow morning, his speech will be streamed on Second Life and Metaplace. These computer-simulated worlds offer 3D avatar-driven environments where participants can use voice or text chat to communicate. In this instance, however, there will be no Obama avatar.”

2. GameZone (USA) – Innovating Genres – Bringing Life to the City. ““City Building” – the term itself doesn’t always inspire excitement in the hearts of most gamers. The average gamer is likely to see the genre as one filled with crunchy details, obsessive micro-management and hours of watching a game that’s seemingly run on auto-pilot. Up until recently, you’d likely find few who would argue with that perception, except fans of the genre themselves, however, but in recent years, independent French developer Monte Cristo set out to change all that. Their original outing in the genre — “City Life,” took the standard city builder, and infused it with “life.” No more were citizens simple numbers to monitor, in City Life, they were living, breathing human beings, with specific wants and needs, and your job as a mayor was to do more than just plonk down buildings. City Life was met with critical and consumer praise – spawning several sequels. Now, Monte Cristo’s taken their 80+ person team (split between Paris and Kiev) and aimed it at the genre again, this time, going much bigger – with true social interactions, online gameplay and features to attract a wider audience than the traditional one of city builder player.”

3. People’s Weekly World (USA) – The impact of homophobia in virtual communities. “A few weeks ago there was a group established on Facebook called “I hate gays” which openly advocated killing gay people. When the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) sent a report through Facebook’s built in reporting system and then urged its Facebook and Twitter followers to do the same, the user was suspended, and the group abandoned and commandeered by pro-gay users in the matter of hours. It seems that real people in those virtual communities, as well as the massive companies that run the platforms, don’t like when people form groups that advocate killing people or targeting groups. Now what happens when you take that model and you turn it to online gaming virtual communities? To illustrate my point, take a look at this video previously highlighted on Kotaku and GayGamer to get a sense of the problem just in online gaming communities. ”

4. CNN (USA) – Virtual cash meets the real world. “While China is seriously cracking down on the exchange of virtual currencies for real cash, virtual economies backed by newfound legitimacy elsewhere are quickly gaining ground in the real world. There’s gold in them there screens: Real-money transactions in virtual worlds are finding new legitimacy. On June 24, 2009, the role-playing game 140 Mafia launched on Twitter, following in the footsteps of highly lucrative games Mob Wars and Mafia Wars on Facebook (and now iPhone) to link virtual-currency exchanges to real-money transactions. In March 2009, MindArk — creator of the MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role-playing game) Entropia, where one player famously bought an island for US$26,500 in 2004 — saw its wholly owned subsidiary Mind Bank granted a banking license from the Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority.”

5. CIO (Australia) – AI-powered customer support robots bring human touch to virtual world. ““More Human Than Human” may have been the slogan of the fictional Tyrell Corporation in the sci-fi film classic Blade Runner, but it could equally apply to Australian company MyCyberTwin, a provider of artificial-intelligence powered virtual staff.
MyCyberTwin technology is designed to allow almost anyone to build a virtual, artificial human — called a CyberTwin — which can handle such tasks as personalised customer support, client sales or even entertainment and companionship. CyberTwins can take the form of a clone of yourself, or a representative of your company, and they can live in almost any digital environment, including Web sites, virtual worlds, blogs, social network pages and mobile phones.”

6. New York TImes (USA) – The Next Financial Crisis: Virtual Banks. “By now, the financial woes of Lehman, Bear Stearns, Washington Mutual, and the many other troubled banks is old news. But we may need to start preparing for another round of bank failures … in the virtual world. If indeed it happens, a character named Ricdic will likely be to blame. Ricdic is part of Eve Online, which I have never heard of, but according to this BBC news report “has about 300,000 players all of whom inhabit the same online universe. The game revolves around trade, mining asteroids, and the efforts of different player-controlled corporations to take control of swathes of virtual space.” Ricdic, according to the article, runs a large ebank at the site, and pilfered some virtual funds, traded them to other players for real money, and made a down payment on a house and paid off medical bills.”

7. PBS (USA) – 5 Ideas to Transform Newspaper Sites. “I sometimes wonder whether we are held captive by old school thinking. At our newspapers at Mediafin, we are in the process of integrating web operations with the print publication, a move which I fully endorse. There’s one major risk to this: that we might end up seeing the web as just another way to distribute newspaper articles rather than a radically new opportunity. People who have spent years writing for print newspapers could easily fall victim to the horseless carriage syndrome — the belief that they can continue to apply the same thinking that they applied to an old technology to a new, fundamentally different one. At the turn of the century, many saw the automobile as a new variation on the horse-and-carriage, not realizing that the car was in many ways very different. Just as cars are fundamentally different from horseless carriages, or cinema is fundamentally different from theater, the web is fundamentally different from newspapers.”

8. Times of India (India) – Social Networks and Fashion Trends. “Do friends sport the same style in shoes or see the same movies because of their similar tastes, which is why they became friends in the first place? Or once friendship is established, do individuals influence each other to adopt similar behaviours? Social scientists don’t know for sure. They’re still trying to understand the role social influence plays in spreading of trends because the real world doesn’t keep track of how people acquire new items or preferences. But the virtual world Second Life does. It is a free 3D virtual world where users can socialise, connect and create using voice and text chat. ”

9. Daily Kos (USA) – A Soldier’s Peace, A (Rescheduled) Documentary Premiere in Second Life. “etroots Nation in Second Life and Virtually Speaking had originally scheduled the “in-world” Second Life premiere of peace activist Marshall Thompson’s remarkable film A Soldier’s Peace on June 20, but due to a series of technical roadblocks culminating in a hard drive crash on the system from which we had planned to host the film, we were unable to premiere the film that day. However, we went ahead with our scheduled interview with Marshall, and are we ever glad we did. Marshall, an Iraq War veteran, is a passionate, warm, and kindly advocate for peace with a terrific sense of humor. ”

10. Chicago Now (USA) – Patrick Lichty: Summer of Love 2.0 (Tuesday night performance only). “Making good art with Second Life, Twitter, or Facebook sounds like a dicey proposition, but Patrick Lichty’s Summer of Love 2.0 commandeers all three social networking sites, making good art that uses technology to evaluate the depth and sincerity of the social commitment Web 2.0 fosters both on and offline. Tuesday night’s performance featured a re-performance of Yoko Ono and John Lennon’s Bed-In, staged in Second Life by Second Front, a virtual performance collective. This event kicked off the weeklong project, which turns the MCA’s McCormick Tribune Orientation Gallery (the 12×12 space) into living installation where Lichty hopes to blur the boundaries between his online community and the MCA’s undulating community of viewers. ”