1. InformationWeek (USA) – 1 In 10 Internet Users Buys Virtual Goods. “Virtual weapons, Facebook favors and other forms of digital currency are a growing market, according to a survey released Thursday, with 12 percent of Americans saying they spent real money on these items in the last year.
The heaviest buyers of these objects — which are bought over the Internet and exchanged through online games, social networks, and virtual worlds such as Second Life — appear to be young and middle-aged women ages 12 to 44, although they were also purchased by young men.”

2. The Guardian (UK) – Virtual worlds are getting a second life. “We haven’t heard much recently about so-called virtual worlds such as Second Life, in which you move around with your own avatar. Critics must be hoping they have disappeared up their own ether. Actually, they are booming. The consultancy kzero.co.uk reports that membership of virtual worlds grew by 39% in the second quarter of 2009 to an estimated 579 million. Not all these members are active but I can’t think of anything, anywhere, that has grown so fast in the recession this side of Goldman Sachs bonuses.”

3. Hypergrid Business (Hong Kong) – Copyright in virtual worlds. “As the virtual worlds grow and develop — and evolve into the next 3D Web — the issue of copyright is being debated again. In some ways, virtual worlds copyrights may require changes in the way we think of and use copyrights. But, in most respects, virtual worlds copyrights are no different than the copyrights we currently have today. For example, today, if a content producer makes an original work and sells to a buyer, then, by default, what is sold is single-time use only.”

4. PBS (USA) – Virtual Worlds Show Promise for Newspaper Communities. “In my previous post, I talked about the browser-based virtual environment Metaplace, which I think may provide a way to boost interaction with our community on newspaper website Mediafin. To test how well virtual worlds could be used to build a community, I undertook some experiments in organizing “conferences” in worlds like Metaplace and Second Life. And the results turned out to be quite promising. How can we at newspaper websites experiment with new media without upsetting the community or — possibly even more — our colleagues? Virtual environments are not yet universally accepted as useful for newspaper communities, so the question of how to introduce community and colleagues to these spaces is especially pertinent.”

5. The Globe and Mail (Canada) – Avatars come alive in workplace. “Avatars will become the big buzz this year, thanks to director James Cameron’s pending flick of the same name. They’ve been all the rage among video gamers for years. Now they’re also sprouting up in the workplace, and experts predict they will emerge as a key trend in the coming years. For puzzled employers and perplexed employees, what’s the sense of using a digital person rather than a real one?”

6. Singularity Hub (USA) – Haptics Unleashes Virtual Reality and Telepresence Revolution – Awesome Vids. “Whoah! Prepare to be blown away with this post! Here at the Hub one of the things that we are all about is the coming merger of the physical world with the virtual world. Programmable matter, moving beyond the outdated mouse and keyboard interface model, immersive environments, and so on. Now we are here to tell you about a seriously game changing technology that is absolutely busting apart the traditional barrier between the physical and virtual worlds. Its called haptics, and if you haven’t heard about it yet then read on and prepare to be thrilled.”

7. San Jose Mercury News (USA) – Stanford’s virtual reality experiments transport knowledge to new vistas. “Even as it gained acceptance on college campuses during the 1990s, “virtual reality” could never quite escape having just a whiff of junk science. The graphics created for early virtual worlds were so clunky and slow they conjured up bad LSD trips. Giant helmets immersed subjects in fantastical environments far more virtual than real. It was like conducting a seance in a hat. “Until five or six years ago,” says Jeremy Bailenson, director of the Virtual Human Interaction Lab at Stanford, “when I told people what I did for a living, they laughed.”

8. ReadWriteWeb (USA) – How To: Use Virtual Worlds for Business. “Despite the hype, only 11% of enterprises have adopted virtual worlds to augment their work, says a new report by Forrester. Virtual worlds have been around since about 1995, but it took businesses half a decade to realize the potential value within the enterprise. But the research released this week isn’t just an outline of the market: it’s a how-to guide for doing business in a computer-generated universe. Vendors may not have done a very good job of marketing themselves to the enterprise to date, but there’s still a huge opportunity for your company to get virtual, if you know how.”

9. Xinhua (China) – Virtual reality – a new world awaits… “Virtual reality is no longer a concept of the future, innovative 3-D technology can now transform a desktop computer into an interactive world of adventure, fashion, fun and entertainment. Using the Internet as an entry platform, the new technology is blurring the lines of the real and virtual worlds. In contrast to a traditional two-dimensional interface, the 3-D environment provides a completely immersive and highly social world, enabling access to people and places that would be virtually impossible in the real world. Through the use to avatars, a virtual replica of yourself, or whoever you want to be, life can literally take on new dimensions in cyberspace.”

10. Virtual Worlds News (USA) – Augmented Reality To Get iPhone Push. “ugmented reality is quickly gaining a foothold among entertainment brands. In the last few days, Mattel’s foray into augmented reality, with its upcoming Avatar line of action figures, has resulted in a wave of coverage. Now, iPhone developers are coming out of the woodwork with uses that coincide with the September release of version 3.1 of the iPhone software. The new iPhone software, and the subsequent listing in AR-enhanced applications in the App Store, will mark a turning point. Some dozen or so companies, according to reports, are gearing up for the day. And just yesterday, according to AppleInsider, Apple provided iPhone developers with a third beta of iPhone 3.1 software.”

1. Associated Content (USA) – Tron Legacy Coming Soon in 2010. “Some test footage from Tron Legacy, the sequel to the 1982 cult classic Tron, was shown at Comic Con 2009. The Tron Legacy footage depicted a battle between a blue and yellow “light cycle”, familiar to those who recall the first film.
Tron was the first film to make heavy use of computer generated images (CGI). Tron depicted the adventures of Flynn, played by Jeff Bridges, a computer programmer who had been literally sucked into a virtual, computer world and forced to fight in deadly arcade like games, such as the light cycle battle, by the Master Control Program, played by David Warner. Flynn was aided by two computer generated characters, Tron, played by Bruce Boxleitner and Yori, played by Cindy Morgan. Tron and Yori had real world counterparts, Alan and Lora, who were Flynn’s friends and also computer programmers.”

2. The Economic Times (India) – Could virtual gaming contribute to medical research? “If twitter is the tech-story turned mainstream media darling of 2009, then San Francisco-based Linden Lab’s virtual reality world “Second Life” (SL) was clearly the fancied one in 2008. There was a bizarre SL related story – virtual rape/murder/suicide – every other day in the papers , CNN and Reuters had news bureaus within SL and journalists were getting invites to attend virtual press conferences in SL from gimmicksavvy tech companies. In 2009, while the limelight has gone and its user base has remained stagnant at about 800,000, Second Life has made that allimportant leap: converting hype into REAL money. Some analysts estimate that it will make a 100 million dollars this year and turn a net profit of about 35 million dollars within two years. The main source of revenue of course is the “real money” users pay to acquire real … err virtual estate in the SL universe. ”

3. The Telegraph (UK) – Addiction therapists signing up to World of Warcraft. “Experts have said that some massively multiplayer online games, in which players battle enemies for weapons and rewards, are as addictive as crack cocaine.
Dr Richard Graham, a consultant psychiatrist at the Tavistock Centre in London, is so concerned that he plans to provide online therapy for youngsters who are spending so much time playing these games that they have lost touch with the real world. A recent report by Sweden’s Youth Care Foundation described World of Warcraft as “more addictive than crack cocaine”. The game, which attracts almost 12 million players every month, is set in a fantasy environment, with users taking on the characters of dwarves, elves and wizards, interacting with other players throughout the virtual world.”

4. Computerworld (USA) – Faux pas at virtual world discussion highlight continuing ‘transitional phase’. “Virtual worlds are growing in colleges and universities despite significant problems in using them to teach courses and communicate, a panel of experts said during a virtual discussion sponsored by Cisco Systems Inc. The problems range from giving students and educators access to networks to reach the online virtual worlds to ease-of-use with the applications and tools inside of the virtual worlds, panelists and audience members said. “There’s a long way to go with this technology to make it easy for everybody to do,” said Sarah Smith-Robbins, director of emerging technology for Kelley Executive Partners at the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University. She has taught and written about virtual worlds for six years, and specializes in creating learning experiences that build on virtual worlds and alternative and augmented realities.”

5. The Age (Australia) – ‘Risk illiteracy’ among the young and reckless. “”THE only thing that shakes us is when one of our friends dies,” admits 19-year-old Hamad Al Mazmi in Prahran on a Friday night he has spent riding around in a high-powered Holden ute. The international student’s words are the last thing that police, the Transport Accident Commission and parents of young drivers want to hear. They know they are true. It’s a terrible irony that the deaths of nine young drivers and their passengers in the past month may have done more to teach inexperienced drivers about the fragility of life than could any government-funded campaign or parental tirade.”

6. ZNet – Elites and power. “The following text develops an argument that leads up to the vision of its last paragraph – which, to some, might seem enigmatic or disappointing in its implications. It is all about the concept of planning – of participatory or democratic or, as I would prefer to call it, scientific (interdisciplinary) planning. It is about the multitude of experts, scientists and professionals that are involved in the incredibly complicated planning processes of today. How to move from ‘here’ (private ownership of the means of production, corporate divisions of labor, plutocracy, the specter of markets, autocratic planning) to ‘there’ (a socialism based on science, knowledge, reason) is the central question. And you can’t move without movers. Writing about a strategy for the future cannot compel a European of my generation to dismiss the lessons of 20th century’s Left Project, which started out under the banner of ‘scientific socialism’ – and dismally failed. But do we refrain from returning to classical art and thought just because the project of classical antiquity ‘failed’? To Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and to thousand other thinkers the concept of scientific socialism was essential. And many think, that advances in the soft and hard sciences are such that this concept finally has a chance. ”

7. Top Tech News (USA) – Collaboration Tools Can Cut Costs, Boost Productivity. “At a time when enterprise software investments are trending town, companies may not be looking to invest in unified communications and collaboration tools. But with the boost to business productivity, the contained costs, and the chance to be a good corporate citizen by reducing your company’s carbon footprint, it may be time to look at how collaboration tools — both enterprise-level and low-cost open-source solutions — can benefit your company. “Providing employees with collaboration tools that enable them to work together effectively, no matter where they may be located, is no longer a wish-list or nice-to-have item — it’s a requirement,” said Kent Erickson, senior vice president and general manager of Workgroup Solutions for Novell.”

8. North Shore Times (NZ) – Study out of this world. “Virtual worlds and computer games aren’t only for teen cyberjunkies, says Massey University associate professor Erik Champion. He says computer games have enormous potential and tools to explore and interact with ancient cultures, distant places and inaccessible environments. The new media lecturer at the design school on the Albany campus is seeking designers to create more New Zealand-themed virtual worlds. “The challenge is to find new interactive ways to experience things through digital media,” he says. Dr Champion says those worlds will soon become more popular than travelling and book learning and the like.”

9. The Economist (USA) – Online playgrounds. “REMEMBER Second Life, the virtual world that was supposed to become almost as important as the first one? Now populated by no more than 84,000 avatars at a time, it has turned out to be a prime example of how short-lived internet fads can be. Yet if many adults seem to have given up on virtual worlds, those that cater to children and teenagers are thriving. Several have even found a way to make money. In America, nearly 10m children and teenagers visit virtual worlds regularly, estimates eMarketer, a market researcher—a number the firm expects to increase to 15m by 2013. As of January, there were 112 virtual worlds designed for under-18s with another 81 in development, according to Engage Digital Media, a market research firm. All cater to different age groups and tastes. In Club Penguin, the market leader, which was bought by Disney in 2007 for a whopping $700m, primary-school children can take on a penguin persona, fit out their own igloo and play games. Habbo Hotel, a service run from Finland, is a global hangout for teenagers who want to customise their own rooms and meet in public places to attend events. Gaia Online, based in Silicon Valley, offers similar activities, but is visited mostly by older teens who are into Manga comics.”

10. VentureBeat (USA) – Do you have the right to socialize on multiplayer games? ““Erik Estavillo is suing Sony over being banned from PlayStation Network, claiming that the company violated his right to free speech and has caused him pain by removing his only form of socialization, as he suffers from agoraphobia.” When I first read about this lawsuit, I wondered if the plaintiff in the case filed his suit pro se — representing himself. My thought was that any attorney who represented him might be subject to professional discipline for bringing a meritless claim. A suit that blatantly lacks jurisdiction would probably fall under that category. On second review though, I thought that there might be a colorable basis for this suit, enough jurisdiction for the lawyer to avoid censure at least. The plaintiff’s complaint doesn’t specify exactly how Sony’s Resistance: The Fall of Man (RFoM) game platform qualifies as a “public forum”, but this point will determine whether the court can even entertain the case.”

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. ”

1. Sydney Morning Herald (Australia) – Australian gamer blackballed over virtual world ‘fraud’. “Facing real world debts, a trusted figure in a popular online game stole money from the virtual bank he ran and exchanged it for cash through the black market. It happened in EVE Online, where more than 300,000 subscribers pay $US15 a month to play. They gain wealth through hard work, manipulating the market, or killing rivals in a distant future where humans have colonised the stars in an online game similar to World of Warcraft and Second Life.”

2. Open Media Boston (USA) – Is Virtual Presence Viable for Collaboration? A Look at IBM’s “Virtual Collaboration for Lotus Sametime”. “IBM announced last week that it was adding a virtual world collaboration service it’s calling Virtual Collaboration to its Lotus Sametime communications and collaboration software, which is aimed primarily at enterprises. Virtual Collaboration allows users to collectively view and create documents in a virtual environment similar to Second Life, in essence creating virtual work and meeting spaces. It’s pretty cool, but does this kind of immersive technology actually make collaboration via virtual presence a realistic option? Obviously, perhaps, virtual worlds allow individuals to experience “being” in the same virtual environment, while remaining at their desks. Second Life, Sony’s Playstation Home and World of Warcraft are all examples of virtual worlds. Virtual Collaboration is similar, but rather than create fictional worlds, Virtual Collaboration aims to recreate familiar real world environments like a boardroom or a theater, and extend the utility of real world tools like a calendar or a drawing board.”

3. Computerworld (USA) – Faux pas at virtual world discussion highlight continuing ‘transitional phase’. “Virtual worlds are growing in colleges and universities despite significant problems in using them to teach courses and communicate, a panel of experts said during a virtual discussion sponsored by Cisco Systems Inc. The problems range from giving students and educators access to networks to reach the online virtual worlds to ease-of-use with the applications and tools inside of the virtual worlds, panelists and audience members said. “There’s a long way to go with this technology to make it easy for everybody to do,” said Sarah Smith-Robbins, director of emerging technology for Kelley Executive Partners at the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University. She has taught and written about virtual worlds for six years, and specializes in creating learning experiences that build on virtual worlds and alternative and augmented realities.”

4. TechCrunch (USA) – Does Anybody Still Use Second Life? And If So, How Much Is It Worth Today? “Analyst firm Next Up Research has published an extensive report on Linden Lab, the San Francisco company behind virtual world Second Life. The research is based on aggregate data and is available on SharesPost, a site set up to trade shares of privately held companies (if you register, you can download the report for free from that page, or you can find other valuation reports on companies like Facebook and LinkedIn). The report goes rather deep into the valuation of the Linden Lab, which it pegs at somewhere between $658 million and 700 million. More on that later. Now that Linden Lab has been around for nearly 10 years, and with its product Second Life celebrating its sixth birthday since launching publicly in June 2003, we thought it would be a good idea to take a close look at the report and see how the company’s doing according to the analysts.”

5. Virtual Worlds News (USA) – Sony Hints at Tweaks to Home. “A survey sent to members of the PlayStation Network hints at changes afoot at the company’s online social gaming service/Virtual World, PlayStation Home. Survey recipients are asked to rate (possible) future in-Home options including music sharing, video sharing, voice chat and “more dance moves” among others as prompting more, less, or just about the same number of visits to Home. Additional survey questions probe users’ interest in various content options in the Movie Theater such as music videos, feature-length movies and short/indie films. Another question asks respondents to rate potential features such as mini-games, appearances from PlayStation staff, and video interviews with PlayStation developers on a scale from Very Appealing to Very Unappealing.”

6. Daily Finance (USA) – Surprise Hits: Webkinz — a toy fad with the virtual touch. “One of the greatest smash hits of the decade has been one of the most mundane products of the decade. Webkinz are simply stuffed animals. What’s so great about a stuffed animal? Well, there’s more to these animals than meets the eye — and it’s not because they’re transforming robots from another planet. Webkinz, produced by the Ganz Corp. (more on them in a moment), are sold with attached tags bearing unique secret codes. A child receiving the Webkinz can go online, logs onto the Webkinz site, and use the code to access a virtual version of the new pet, who lives in a virtual world where kids can care for it, play games with it, take quizzes, and interact with other kids.”

7. Washington Post (USA) – Twitter + World Of Warcraft=Tweetcraft. “For all of you World of Warcraft fans out there, there’s a new Twitter client that is worth checking out. TweetCraft is an in-game Twitter client for WoW that lets you send and receive Tweets within a game. If you are busy in the middle of a WoW match, you can put Tweets in a queue to send when it’s more convenient.”

8. Science Daily (USA) – Second Life Data Offers Window Into How Trends Spread. “Do friends wear the same style of shoe or see the same movies because they have similar tastes, which is why they became friends in the first place? Or once a friendship is established, do individuals influence each other to adopt like behaviors? Social scientists don’t know for sure. They’re still trying to understand the role social influence plays in the 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. Researchers from the University of Michigan have taken advantage of this unique information to study how “gestures” make their way through this online community. Gestures are code snippets that Second Life avatars must acquire in order to make motions such as dancing, waving or chanting.”

9. BBC News (UK) – Giving life a shape. “One of the more interesting shifts in the technology world over the last quarter century has been the way that cultural organisations have gone from being the late adopters, inheriting office-oriented computer systems from business and making do with them, to being those leading the digital revolution in many areas. When I worked with the Community Computing Network in the late 80s it was hard work persuading charities and voluntary organisations that having a computer to handle their member databases and print letters was worthwhile. But now that there really is a computer on every desk and word processing, spreadsheets and databases are standard, arts organisations seem to be far more willing to engage and experiment with the latest tools, especially online.”

10. CNET (USA) – Metaplace virtual worlds now blog-embeddable. “Metaplace is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game, or MMORPG, that runs in Flash. It doesn’t have nearly as many users as Second Life, nor the cult following of World of Warcraft. But in an announcement that could go a long way in helping the service expand beyond its 6,000 active users, Metaplace worlds can now be embedded into a blog. Once that embed is complete, Metaplace users can play in the world right on the blog. If the blog author adds multiple embeds of different worlds, the gamers can be in each of them simultaneously. Is Metaplace really the kind of service that would make you want to create a world and embed into your blog?”

1. TechRadar (UK) – The evolution of virtual worlds. “Stitching Facebook and MySpace into a 3D environment might not seem like the most exciting project in the history of gaming, but a handful of intrepid gaming companies are wondering if social gaming is going to be the next huge, very profitable thing. The logic is simple – not everyone enjoys blowing up friends and enemies when they go online, or obsessively assembling a vast arsenal of ultra-weapons and superhuman skills. While World of Warcraft and its medieval and science fiction beat-’em-up and shoot-’em-up siblings have questing and wizarding locked down, the popularity and momentum of social networking suggests that there’s serious money to be made from friends and fans. But is this really gaming? And does it matter?”

2. The Economist (UK) – The avatar will see you now. “THAT people undergoing medical procedures should give their informed consent might seem simple and uncontentious. But what if a patient has a mental impairment and his doctor does not have time to ensure he understands the proposed treatment? Those who try to look after the interests of such people say that, in practice, hard-pressed hospital staff often ask leading questions and the “consent” obtained is thus far from informed. A team of researchers led by Suzanne Conboy-Hill, a psychologist at the Royal Sussex County Hospital in Brighton, England, reckon virtual environments could provide the solution. ”

3. Revolution Magazine (UK) – UK start-ups out to prove virtual worlds are back in fashion. “NearGlobal and RealLife could be among the next wave of virtual worlds to receive hype of Second Life proportions after securing venture capital funding from Ariadne Capital. The two UK companies have received unspecified amounts of funding from one of the UK’s largest digital investment firms. Ariadne’s cheif executive Julie Meyer said that the company became convinced of the potential of virtual worlds only where the user has a purpose, rather than several existing virtual worlds where the experience is casual.”

4. IT Business Edge (USA) – Catty Thoughts on Job Recruitment via Second Life. “Like many folks, I find it tough to focus on work on Fridays. It’s an even bigger challenge than usual today, thanks to the Goverment Technology story sent to me in response to a call for sources for an article I’m working on about job recruitment via social channels like Facebook and Twitter. The story, datelined September 2008, describes how the state of Missouri hired a developer for its Department of Natural Resources via a recruiting area it created in Second Life. Have trouble seeing the humor? The money quote, from Missouri CIO Dan Ross: “He came to our job fair as a tiny cat with a red bow tie on and expressed interest. That was followed by an in-person interview.” So many questions. Was it the red bow tie that helped put this developer over the top? Did other applicants apply for the position and, if so, what kind of avatars did they use? Are they going to pay the developer in Linden Dollars? Thank goodness a personal interview also was involved.”

5. Virtual Worlds News (USA) – Scottish University First in UK to Teach Virtual World Development. “Glasgow Caledonian University, a school based in Glasgow, Scotland, is actively creating a 3D Web project and a major component of this project is a “complete, integrated module” that will teach students everything they need to know about 3D virtual worlds. The course will teach students all the elements required to get a VW up and running. These include hosting, managing and creating real estate, and user interactivity. The course will be taught for now in class but could also be supplemented by elements in Second Life and will also use OpenSim.”

6. Troy Media (USA) – Second Life’s founder responds to criticism. “Philip Rosedale, the mastermind behind virtual reality phenomenon Second Life (SL), predicts that SL technology will make great strides in the near term. If “near-term” is typically defined as under a year, this means users will find that it’s a lot easier to master SL and get into its virtual world, according to Rosedale.
At the moment, Rosedale says it takes about five hours to understand and get your bearings in SL. With software and hardware refinements, he says that it will take only five to 20 minutes to get the lay of SL’s virtual terrain. That’s about as close to user-friendly as any technophobe can hope for.”

7. Massively (USA) – Linden Lab releases Snowglobe 1.0 for Second Life. “A while back, Linden Lab’s Philip Rosedale announced a new Second Life viewer development project. That project ultimately grew along lines similar to that of third-party viewer project, Imprudence, breaking down many barriers to user contributions, and adopting a more agile methodology. After only a couple of release-candidates, the result is already available. One of the biggest developments you might see in the Snowglobe viewer is that the map is now an order of magnitude faster to load, rather than taking several fractions of forever, as is traditional. This is the start of a new texture-transfer pipeline, which we can reasonably expect to become standard in future viewers, and to encompass more kinds of textures, however there’s a new caching architecture which should benefit all textures.”

8. Express Buzz (India) – Senior citizens in second life. “As we entered, we were greeted with a cheerful smile from Bessie, a small old lady with a crop of snow white hair, exuding an infectious enthusiasm. Once you are in the restful premises with its lush green gardens, you will feel like you have been transported away from the city. This is the Little Sisters Of The Poor on Hosur Road, a home for the aged and the infirm. Well, if that makes you think of a place bereft of liveliness, of a place where people just bide their with nothing much to do, think again. Expresso paid a visit to see how the elderly come together to form a community and go through their daily lives.”

9. Destructoid (USA) – Sony: Home to be ‘essential’ for all PS3 games. “f you close your eyes and get everybody to be quiet, you can almost hear my soul dying a little bit. That’s because Sony has stated that its eventual goal for PlayStation Home is to make the horribly dull poor man’s Second Life an “essential component” of the PS3 experience. Excuse me while I am sick into a little bag. “Home is the starting point for PlayStation 3 online, and that’s something that gamers are going to expect as more games support Game Launch from within Home,” promises SCEE’s Peter Edward. “This will become an essential component for all PS3 games.” Edwards states that Home is not going anywhere soon, stating that the company is “in it for the long-term.” He also boasts 7 million users of the service worldwide. 6 million virtual items have also been downloading, leading me to believe that the world is full of incredibly bored people. ”

10. AdAge (USA) – Twitter Is What Second Life Wasn’t: Light, Cheap and Open. “I run into many skeptics who believe that Twitter is rife with the sort of hype associated with the ascent and crash of Second Life. This is not true. Twitter is suffused with hype, for sure, but it is a much different and more sustainable hype than Second Life. Here’s why: Twitter is light, cheap, open and permanent, whereas Second Life is heavy, expensive, closed and ephemeral. Twitter does things right where Second Life failed. Second Life is amazingly heavy, requiring lots of computer, lots of bandwidth and a commitment to client software. Second Life is a closed system, a walled city, completely invisible to serendipity and coincidence. Second Life is greedy, pushing avarice and commerce. Second Life is ephemeral and anti-textual, meaning that all of the work and energy one spent on Second Life invariably went away the moment people stopped investing time and money into the platform. While there was a programming language, a scripting language and lots of room for creativity, Second Life was not nearly as agnostic and open a platform as it could have been.”

1. Virtual Worlds News (USA) – Report: Virtual Worlds Growth to Skyrocket. “Market research firm Strategy Analytics today released its forecast for growth within the virtual worlds sector and to say it sees growth would be an understatement. Overall, the firm said it sees the global population of virtual world users growing from 186 million today to almost 640 million by 2015 — that’s almost one hundred million new players a year, a nearly 25 percent compounded annual growth rate. The fastest growing demographic is kids between the ages of 5 and 9 which the company predicts will grow 27 percent; the current largest segment of virtual worlds players, tweens and teens, should grow by some 21 percent, according to the company.”

2. UQ News (Australia) – Virtual worlds and video games explored at teaching conference. “Not all academic conferences include sessions on the Nintendo Wii, but an upcoming UQ event is happy to explore new boundaries in the name of better teaching. Taking place on June 18 at St Lucia, the Blended Learning Conference will link researchers from Australia and abroad to discuss innovative approaches to education. Among the participants are Caroline Steel and Dr Helen Farley – two UQ researchers who are helping establish virtual learning environments in the realm of Second Life. Dr Farley, who holds joint appointments with UQ’s Centre for Educational Innovation and Technology (CEIT) and the School of Philosophy, Religion and Classics, said the applications of virtual learning were endless.”

3.VentureBeat (USA) – Intel Labs prototypes virtual world for scientists. “Intel is showing off a number of cool research projects today at its research day event in Santa Clara, Calif. But the coolest of all is a project called ScienceSim, which is an effort to create interconnected 3-D virtual worlds that scientists can use for experiments. The worlds will be able to connect to each other as needed, says Intel chief technology officer Justin Rattner. The company will debut the effort, in concert with university researchers, at the SuperComputing 09 conference later this year. The idea is to create a prototype of what Rattner says will become the “3D Internet.” The research platform will focus on immersive scientific collaboration and will be based on the OpenSim technology.”

4. OC Register (USA) – ‘World of Warcraft’ quest leads to Laguna. “Get your orcs, trolls, elves, dwarves and Forsaken ready.
The “World of Warcraft” has descended upon a museum near you. The Laguna Art Museum has recently opened a new exhibition, “WoW: Emergent Media Phenomenon,” which explores artwork created for and inspired by the world’s most popular massively multiplayer online role-playing game. The show runs through Oct. 4. For those of you who don’t play video or online games, “World of Warcraft” is a highly graphic computer-based experience with an intensely loyal following – about 11.5 million subscribers. Created by Blizzard Entertainment, which is headquartered in Irvine, “WoW” (as it’s known) has spawned its own art, action figures, board games, comic books, manga and novels.”

5. Accounting Web (USA) – Taxation of virtual goods is on the drawing board. “The National Taxpayer Advocate has raised the question of whether the tax code should allow for tax-free transactions of virtual goods. Taxpayer advocate Nina Olson, in a report to the IRS earlier this year, said that in 2005, about $1 billion in real dollars changed hands in computer-based environments. Online gamers or social networkers use real money to buy virtual currency, which is then used to buy virtual goods. Those ‘goods’ can be objects, such as virtual birthday cakes posted to social networking sites, or actions, such as the ability to get to a more advanced level in an online game, explained Lora L. Abe, director of marketing for Gambit, a payments engine for online games, in Venture Beat.”

6. CrunchGear (USA) – Interview: Rob Burkinshaw, game designer and creator of homeless Sims. “Yesterday we posted about Alice and Kev, homeless Sims that exist entirely in the world of Sims 3. They are a family. Alice is a girl with the traditional adolescent pre-teen worries but she’s saddled with a father who is high-strung, hates kids, and is generally a misfit in the orderly world of the Sims. They are homeless in that they live in a house with no walls and sleep on park benches. They have no source of food except for things given to them from other Sims or stolen in the course of the day. They can’t get clean in their own home – there’s no bathroom – and Alice’s sleep is interrupted constantly by Kev’s rants. Rob Burkinshaw created the experiment, called Alice and Kev, as an examination of game theory and a test of his in-game photography skills but it quickly morphed into one of the most heart-breaking stories I’ve read in a long time.”

7. Sydney Morning Herald (USA) – Sordid world of razor gangs reborn for virtual tourists. “HE fleshpots of Sydney’s Darlinghurst and the Cross are havens for sleaze, binge drinking and boozy violence. Cocaine dealers, standover men, pimps, junkies and sex workers abound. Tales of vendettas and gang murders are vicariously thrilling law-abiding newspaper readers. The State Government, desperate to curb the escalating violence, is about to enact a law forbidding criminals from associating with each other. What’s this city coming to? The year is 1930, the days of the 6 o’clock swill, when early closing times created a lucrative market in after-hours booze. This colourful period of local history is relived in a new interactive GPS game called Razorhurst, designed by Darlinghurst resident Richard Fox.”

8. ZDNet Asia (Singapore) – Youth Olympics virtual world to debut early 2010. “Singapore Technologies (ST) Electronics has been appointed to create and operate a virtual world for the inaugural Singapore 2010 Youth Olympic Games–the first time such a concept will be used for an Olympic event.
In a press statement Thursday, the company announced its wholly owned subsidiary, ST Electronics (Training & Simulation Systems), was awarded the contract by the Infocomm Development Authority (IDA) of Singapore. Dubbed “Virtual World for Education and Youth Engagement”, the three-dimensional virtual world is scheduled to be ready early next year, the IDA said in a separate statement Thursday. The virtual world will help promote friendship and connect youths from the 205 territories taking part in the Games, the Authority added.”

9. Canada.com (Canada) – Virtually nasty: cybersex is pushing the boundaries of human behaviour. “Was it real for you too? Human-computer sexual interaction – whether using interactive stimulus-toys or engaging your `virtual self’ in fantasy romps with mythical creatures – is slowly gaining in popularity, but as the line between the real and virtual experience blurs, sex educators are faced with some tough ethical questions. Emerging technologies offer individuals greater access to diverse sexual practices, says sex educator and online columnist Cory Silverberg, who spoke this past week at the annual Guelph Sexuality Conference in Guelph, Ont.”

10. Massively (USA) – Second Life moves to 1.23, opens adult continent, allows more content. “Linden Lab has released the new viewer, bringing Second Life up to 1.23 a few days earlier than expected, off the back of a very short release-candidate cycle. The new viewer brings three things with it: The new Adults-only continent (formerly Ursula and now Zindra), user-verification by documents or payment-status, and a new Adults-only content rating that opens up Second Life to more extreme sexual and violent content. At least so long as it is confined to the adult continent and no child avatars are involved, of course. That this was all done as a adult-continent rather than an adult-grid suggests that Linden Lab’s intergrid interoperability isn’t ready for prime-time yet.”

1. VentureBeat (USA) – Zula launches science-focused kids virtual world. “Hoping to add an Internet dimension to its growing kids business, Zula USA has launched a successful kids science education TV show in the past three years and is now diving into the vitual world market. The Burbank, Calif.-based company quietly launched its ZulaWorld virtual world for kids on June 1 and just filled me in on the details of its new offering. It has about 1,000 members so far, and it’s all in the name of making science fun.”

2. Bangkok Post (Thailand) – The world is yours … however you want it. “Have you ever created your own avatar and sent it wandering into a virtual world? With advanced tools and open source technology, Internet users can indeed create whole new characters and places online. Taking inspiration from sci-fi movies such as Star Trek, Star Wars and Sunshine, two Chulalongkorn University students have teamed up to build their own 3D virtual world called Hyperion. Kriangkrai Traichaiyaporn and Noppawat Muktaphan spent one month building Hyperion, which went on to win an award from “Wonderland Challenge 2009”.

3. Virtual Worlds News (USA) – Microsoft: Avatars, Si; Virtual Worlds, Nyet. “Last year, the New Xbox Experience introduced fully customizable avatars to Xbox Live players. With those avatars, came the attendant thought that Microsoft might be prepping an entry point into virtual worlds, with one exec going so far as to tell VirtualWorldsNews, “We’re thinking about the [virtual worlds] space heavily and have been involved in a gaming aspect for quite some time.” But that was 2008. Which is why all eyes were on Microsoft at this year’s annual E3 Expo trade show. And while recent comments from Xbox Live general manager Marc Whitten don’t exactly point to a virtual worlds launch from the company, they do fuel continued speculation.”

4. ZDNet Asia (Singapore) – Virtual worlds an inroad to new generation. “Virtual worlds aren’t dead–they’re enjoying a re-awakening, as marketers learn to connect both the real and virtual, say observers. Mary Ellen Gordon of Market Truths, a U.S.-based research firm specializing in virtual worlds, said in an interview with ZDNet Asia, companies expressing interest in virtual worlds such as Second Life are compelled to learn the media-consumption habits of the new generation. This marks a contrast against the initial wave of companies which flocked to Second Life for mostly publicity, and also “during which at least some companies did not seem to take the time to really understand virtual worlds or to think about how to use them to contribute to their overall business objectives”, said Gordon.”

5. Gamasutra (USA) – Worlds of Abundance: Currency and Virtual Worlds. “Money holds the power to shape the flow of games – from single player games to MMOs. With every game we make, we are designing currency. Sometimes the currency is simply points (or points in a more colorful guise). Other times it is a means of drawing the player towards challenges – collect x widgets and you can continue. In a third case the player collects money to gain power directly or indirectly: Direct mechanisms being things like Mario’s 100 coins for extra lives or experience points to earn level-ups, and indirect ones being shopping and bartering. One thing unifies those examples: The game has absolute control over the money supply. And in many games, it tends towards an initial scarcity that later collapses into an abundance of wealth; the player starts off weak, and has to pick opportunities carefuly, but inevitably progresses in skill or power, or finds loopholes in the system, and legitimately or not, they collect hundreds of extra lives, store thousands of pieces of equipment, boost their character’s abilities to god-like ratings.”

6. io9 (USA) – 7 Virtual Reality Technologies That Actually Work. “So far, virtual reality has mostly been a colossal disappointment. But VR has had its share of breakthroughs and innovative applications. Here are seven VR technologies that work, and that may yet point the way to truly successful virtual reality.”

7. E-Health Insider (UK) – Second Life to show Confed sessions. “embers of Second Life will be able to view sessions from the annual NHS Confederation conference live online tomorrow. For the first time, three key sessions from the conference will be accessible to members of the public through the virtual world’s website. The free screening is being provided by the NHS Confederation and Imperial College London. Second Life members will be able to view ‘Can Obama fix the US health system?’, a panel discussion on the financial challenge facing the NHS called ‘Just how tough is it going to get?’ and a final session on The paradox of choice: Why more is less.”

8. Kotaku (USA) – Seventeen Magazine Gets An MMO. “Teen bastion of style and sex tips, Seventeen Magazine, is signed up with Habbo.com to create an online interactive world for its readers. Break out the virtual lip gloss. According to Media Week, Seventeen will supply Habbo with articles, quizzes and polls for the MMO while Habbo will host a Seventeen Beauty Salon section where readers can get beauty tips from editors. This is a step up from Seventeen’s first foray into virtual worlds over its digital issue released via MTV’s virtual world, Virtual MTV.”

9. New York Times (USA) – Microsoft’s Project Natal Seeks Poetry in Motion. “Microsoft’s headline announcement at this year’s E3 gaming conference was a motion-detection system housed in a sensor bar that plugs into your Xbox 360’s ports. The pull-out-all-the stops unveiling included an on-stage appearance by Steven Spielberg who raved “I think what Microsoft is doing is not about reinventing the wheel. It’s about no wheel at all.” I had my doubts.”

10. VentureBeat (USA) – Free pricing triumphs as Free Realms online game hits 3 million in seven weeks. “Sony’s Free Realms has scored 3 million registered users in just seven weeks, making it a true hit for the free online games business model in the U.S. The “free to play” games, where players start playing for free but can purchase virtual goods with real money as they add new capabilities, has taken off in Asia, where companies such as Shanda and Nexon have pioneered this new way of doing business. But until now U.S. consumers have been reluctant to embrace it. Sony Online Entertainment’s Free Realms is the first big stake in the ground for a free-to-play massively multiplayer online game in the U.S. market. It could force a lot of rivals to follow and, god forbid, might even make a dent in the demand for the industry-leading World of Warcraft, which has 13 million paying subscribers. Just two weeks ago, Sony announced it had two million registered users for Free Realms.”

1. io9 (USA) – 7 Failed Virtual Reality Technologies. “There was a time when people were calling home virtual reality the wave of the future. Now most people just call it goofy and expensive. Here are 7 virtual reality technologies that didn’t work, and never will. In what may be considered the first case of virtual reality reaching beyond its own limitations, Morton Heilig unveiled the Sensorama in 1962. It was a large box that enclosed the viewer’s head and displayed a stereoscopic 3D movie. The seat tilted and the box unleashed wind and smells. And all of this was accomplished mechanically.”

2. Federal News Radio (USA) – Beyond ‘heads-up’: augmented reality for virtual worlds. “Fans of the science fiction television show Star Trek: The Next Generation are certainly familiar with the ‘holodeck’, a room where powerful computers create realistic virtual environments. That’s the fictional model for what virtual worlds researchers are developing in labs all around the world today. Recently, several of the top names in the realm of ‘augmented reality’ presented an update on their work at the recent Federal Consortium for Virtual Worlds Conference at the National Defense University at Fort McNair. Dr. Maribeth Grandy from Georgia Tech is one of the world’s foremost experts on the topic of augmented reality for virtual worlds.
“Augmented reality can mean many different things. Traditionally, you’re registering 3D graphics with the world, and the user is experiencing that virtual content through a head-mounted display, or a tablet computer that is acting as a ‘magic window’, or a projector. More recently, I’ve been working in the mobile domain, where you can use something like your IPhone as a little magic window.”

3. Fox News (USA) – College Plans Virtual Graduation for Online Students. “Many colleges and universities offer online courses. But only one’s having an online graduation. Bryant & Stratton College, a for-profit institution with campuses in four states, plus an online division, plans to host a graduation ceremony June 10 in Second Life, the online virtual world. Fittingly, the commencement address will be delivered by Second Life founder Philip Rosedale.”

4. VentureBeat (USA) – Small Worlds and Hi5 combine virtual world and social networking. “In a marriage of games and social networks, SmallWorlds has teamed up with social network Hi5 to open up SmallWorlds’ cartoon-like virtual world to Hi5’s 60 million monthly visitors.
Hi5’s users can use Hi5’s games channel to access the browser-based virtual environment of SmallWorlds, which has hundreds of casual games available to play. Hi5’s games channel has become a major focus for revenue generation for the San Francisco-based social network. With the alliance in place, users can pay for items in the virtual world using Hi5’s virtual currency, Hi5 coins, said Ted Tagami, vice president of business development for Small Worlds. The deal is good for SmallWorlds because it broadens its potential audience – Hi5 is a top 20 web destination with huge followings in Latin America and Europe.”

5. Virtual Worlds News (USA) – In-world Sound Gets Upgrade from Cornell Researchers. “One look at the environment in Second Life, for example, and the conscious mind knows it is dealing with a virtual world; the same occurs while attending a virtual event. Still, developers do their best to enhance the in-world experience, using every trick in the book to nudge one toward a suspension of disbelief. Take sound. It helps that the Second Life servers manage VOIP as they do — making it proximity based, tuning the vocals based on relative position to, and distance between, avatars.”

6. Toronto Star (Canada) – Keeping it under control. “Steven Spielberg came down from his mountain (of money?) this week, eyes blazing with prophetic fire, to deliver a pronouncement to the rabble of international gaming media gathered at the annual Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) in Los Angeles. “The only way to bring interactive entertainment to everybody,” he declared from his green-glowing pulpit at Microsoft’s press event, “is to make the technology invisible. Only then can we shine the spotlight where it belongs, which is on you.” Like millions of other game-news junkies around the world, I received this sermon remotely, through my laptop screen in the comfort of my couch, and it’s a sermon those millions and I have heard many times before.”

7. The Advocate (USA) – Virtual Gays Say “I Do”. “Gays and lesbians can now get married all over the world — the virtual world, at least. After playing The Sims 3 for a week, Lyle Masaki at AfterElton.com discovered that gay couples can now marry. Earlier versions of the game only allowed same-sex couples to move in together and declare unions. The Sims 3, which debuted at this week’s E3 electronics entertainment expo, builds on its hugely popular predecessors The Sims and The Sims 2 from video game developer Electronic Arts. The game allows players to create and control virtual characters and communities.”

8. Kotaku (USA) – The Sims 3 Review: Delayed Gratification. “After a more than three month delay—and more than four years on from the release of The Sims 2—The Sims 3 is finally here. So let’s get down to reviewing it. There are two types of Sims player: the Second-Life types who enjoy crafting and sharing stuff online and the God-types who look for new and interesting ways to terrorize their virtual dollies. The Sims 3 has room enough for both types in its expansive gameplay and online-feature set that lets you create and share everything from couch patterns to machinima. The once-narrow world of the Sims has been expanded to a persistent environment where Sims can freely walk from one lot to the next, the town around them progressing instead of freezing ‘til your Sim arrives on the scene. This makes the life cycle of the Sims more fluid; as your Sims grows old, so too do all the Sims around him or her. ”

9. O’Reilly Radar (USA) – 3D Glasses: Virtual Reality, Meet the iPhone. “A light flickers from two distinct points in time. As a child in the early-1970s, one of my toys was a View-Master, a binoculars-like device for viewing 3D images (called stereograms), essentially a mini-program excerpted from popular destinations, TV shows, cartoons, events and the like. The View-Master completely predated the advent of electronic toys (it was light powered and human click driven), but it was dumb simple to operate, and the 3D viewing experience was quirky cool. Plus, the content was customizable (just pop in a different program card) and for its time, it was engaging (sound could play on top of each image, making it even more so). Flash forward, and it’s 1992. I am reading Mondo 2000, a long since deceased magazine that was at the bleeding edge of the technology wave that was to come. Total reboot in terms of re-thinking and re-imaging the schema of the possible.”

10. Daily Kos (USA) – Kossacks in Second Life. “I first started working in Second Life as a library assistant, helping the campus library I work for develop its virtual presence to complement the programs already being developed in distance education through the university. As I continued working in Second Life, however, I realized I also needed friends there, as well, in addition to just working. No woman is an island, even in a virtual world. That’s when I started seeking out folks who were like me. I wanted the same environment I found at Daily Kos — a fun mix of diverse views and strong progressive values.”