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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1. Wired (USA) – Georgia Town Might Create Its Own Virtual World. “In a bid to promote community networking and participation while stimulating economic development, the town of Decatur, Georgia, is considering establishing a virtual world. The proposed “Virtual Decatur” is still firmly rooted in the planning stages, with potential features and tools being discussed, to determine the viability of such a project.”

2. The Telegraph (UK) – Second Life founder finds virtual world a ‘very interesting alternative to reality’. “Philip Rosedale doesn’t look like his avatar but that, apparently is the point. The founder and chairman of Linden Labs, the US group which runs the Second Life virtual internet universe, is a blond, 40-year-old Californian with boyish good looks, while his internet alias is “a cool cowboy with a handlebar moustache”.

3. Silicon Alley Insider (USA) – Sony Muzzles PS3 Sex Fiends. “Sony has updated its PS3-based virtual world “Home.” In the current release, voice chat has been removed from the service. No reason is given for shutting down the chat lines, but we imagine it has something to do with reports of female avatars getting harrassed in Sony’s virtual world. (Which is what we thought would happen.) MTV gaming reporter Tracey John had her own run-in with PS3 sexual harassment.”

4. Net Imperative (UK) – Guest Comment: I’ve seen the future – and it’s augmented. “As social networks and virtual worlds grow in popularity, the lines between our ‘digital’ and ‘real’ lives are becoming increasingly blurred. Steve Richards, Managing Director at Yomego, explores how this ‘augmented reality’ will affect our lives as technology evolves. In 2009, it will be ten years since that groundbreaking slice of futuristic virtual reality science fiction, “The Matrix”, was launched on an expectant world. A decade on, and science fact is rapidly catching up through a growing phenomenon called augmented reality.”

5. Globe and Mail (Canada) – Family-friendly games to quiet the naysayers. “The two poles of opinion regarding video games remain very far apart as 2008 comes to a close. The consensus view at a recent book-club meeting in rural British Columbia, according to an inside source, was that young people and their violent games are the root cause of many of society’s problems. At the opposite end of the scale, game fans speak of them as new and exciting educational tools and the “convergence of everything” in arts and entertainment, as the creator of BioShock, Ken Levine, put it recently. The good news is this: The games released this year make it easier to imagine those two extremes getting together. Connecting people has emerged as the driving force behind many new games and interactive experiences, and this was the best year on record for producing a rundown of group-play and family-friendly games.”

6. Wired (USA) – Report: Gore Verbinski To Direct Second Life Movie. “Variety reports that the director of Pirates of the Caribbean will partner with Universal Pictures to make a film about Second Life, the popular virtual world. It’s to be a film about relationships, specifically based on a 2007 Wall Street Journal article concerning a man’s alternate Second Life ego. In his “first life,” the article’s subject is a married, middle-aged, diabetic chain-smoker. But in Second Life, he’s a successful entrepreneur — a muscle-bound hunk with a chain of successful (in-game) clubs and retail stores, who’s “married” to another player.”

7. The Straits Times (Singapore) – Second life couple tie the knot. “Doe-eyed Rinaz Bijoux met hunky Cartridge Partridge four years ago, they fell in love, and got hitched.
On Saturday, Ms Marina Noordin, 31, and Mr Roberto D’Andrea, 45, held a traditional Malay wedding dinner for family and friends at a void deck in Taman Jurong. They had met four years ago. These are the same couple. Their first marriage was made in Second Life, the popular virtual world. ‘Rinaz’ is Ms Marina’s avatar, or virtual character, while ‘Cartridge’ is Mr D’Andrea.”

8. Dusan Writer’s Metaverse (Canada) – ThinkBalm, the Immersive Internet and Collaborative Culture. “A while back I was invited to something called the “ThinkBalm Innovation Community” and I suppose it was the word innovation: I’ll even open spam if it uses the word, and if I ever get an e-mail from some Nigerian with $5 billion in a bank somewhere who needs my INNOVATIVE help in getting that money out, I’d probably respond.
Turns out that ThinkBalm wasn’t spam, of course, but a community of like-minded individuals with a passion for the immersive Web, a bank full of ideas, and the moxy to actually make stuff happen.”

9. GameZone (USA) – KingsIsle Entertainment Reveals Wizard101 World: Dragonspyre. “Online entertainment company KingsIsle Entertainment, Inc. today officially announced Dragonspyre, the first new 3D world to be added to the popular virtual world Wizard101 (www.wizard101.com) since the game launched this fall. Dragonspyre is a large, high level world expected to launch in January 2009.”

10. Allazhazam (USA) – Dangers of Sanrio Town. “Due to the relatively anonymous nature of the internet, the safety of children is paramount in the eyes of most parents, law enforcement officials and other concerned people and organizations. Whether it’s through online games, social networking sites, blogs, forums or chat rooms, youngsters can interact with strangers at a rapid pace. And in the world of Hello Kitty Online, all of these communication tools have been combined to make a player’s life accessible at the click of a button if they so choose.”

1. The Financial Times (UK) – Sony aims for a new virtual world order. “The age of the avatar has arrived for games consoles, with the launch of Sony’s Home yesterday completing the response of the big three makers to the growth in popularity of social networking and virtual worlds. The internet connectivity of the current generation of consoles is allowing Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony to build worldwide communities among owners of the more than 75m machines now sold. The addition of avatars and virtual environments is expected to open up new revenue streams, but the impact on existing virtual worlds such as Second Life , Gaia , There and Habbo is still unclear.”

2. CNN (USA) – Virtual world, real emotions: Relationships in Second Life. “Nina Allam was nervous. She was about to meet someone she had been chatting with online since February. Nina Allam and Sean Barbary were married on the virtual world of Second Life before meeting for the first time. “I was terrified on the train. Very, very nervous. I remember sending him a text saying ‘Last chance to back out,’ when I was at the station ready to get on the train.” Though meeting Sean Barbary in person for the first time, Allam was already married to him in the online virtual world of Second Life.”

3. BBC News (UK) – Virtual world for Muslims debuts. “A trial version of the first virtual world aimed at the Muslim community has been launched. Called Muxlim Pal, it allows Muslims to look after a cartoon avatar that inhabits the virtual world. Based loosely on other virtual worlds such as The Sims, Muxlim Pal lets members customise the look of their avatar and its private room.
Aimed at Muslims in Western nations, Muxlim Pal’s creators hope it will also foster understanding among non-Muslims.”

4. Ars Technica (USA) – Griefers attack Muslim virtual world already awash in users. “The idea for a virtual world focused on the Islamic lifestyle began five years ago, when CEO Mohamed El-Fatatry moved from Dubai to Finland in order to attend university. Raised in Dubai, El-Fatatry wanted wider horizons and a chance to see more of life. American universities were generally expensive, so El-Fatatry sat down at his computer, Googled for “media technology studies in Europe,” and found a Finnish university as his third hit. Finland offers free higher education, even for foreigners, so El-Fatatry applied, enrolled, and only then headed to his new country for the first time.”

5. Indiatimes (India) – Beware, your avatar under threat. “Imagine filing a complaint in a local police station to free your gaming character, worth hundreds of dollars, stolen online. As it is it was very difficult to get hostages released from terrorists hands, now local cops have another problem to handle – to release your virtual identity from cyber terrorists. And unfortunately, the NSG or Marcos are not trained in that. The online gaming world is becoming increasingly lucrative. In countries like China, US, South Korea, many companies are employing hundreds of youth to play free games in their parlours. These kids are then asked to make their characters, powerful and arm them with magical virtual weapons.”

6. exduco (Italy) – Research aims to make ‘virtual worlds’ as world wide as the Web . “If you haven’t yet been invited to send a digital representation of yourself to a business meeting or a family reunion in a “virtual world,” it may be because these richly graphical online environments are hamstrung by technical and economic limitations that constrain their reach. So far, virtual worlds have been built by just a few companies, using proprietary technologies that cannot grow in the same free-flowing way as the traditional Web. As a result, while millions of enthusiasts see them as providing unprecedented richness to online interaction, they’re stuck in niche status. ”

7. TechCrunch (USA) – JumpStart’s Virtual World Teaches Kids While They’re Busy Having Fun. “When it comes to educational software, the trick is to make kids think they’re just playing a traditional escapist game, while they’re really being surreptitiously fed facts and logic problems that put their brains to work. But while many games have done this for years, the technique hasn’t really made the jump to online virtual worlds – most of the kid-friendly virtual worlds are more focused on socializing and having fun than learning. Now JumpStart, a best-selling educational software developer, is looking to fill this niche with its new JumpStart Virtual World, which launched this week in public beta.”

8. Gamer.Blorge (Australia) – PS3 Home is surprisingly quite fun. “The PS3 Home open beta just launched recently and I had the chance to try out the latest version of the software (1.03). Even though I have been in the beta for some time, the latest version feels like a completely new experience. If you read my previous article, I did talk down the value of the PS3 Home calling it useless. During my time within Home prior to 1.03, I felt like the whole experience was uneventful and almost forgettable. However, after version 1.03 the whole experience changed within Home. For starters there are now lots of people everywhere. Previously, the Home square was a desolate place, because there was nothing to do there. Now the square is bustling with Home users everywhere. The square received a complete redesign, with a new saucer based game smack right in the middle of the area.”

9. The Industry Standard (USA) – Virtual worlds patent battle brewing? “A controversy is brewing over patent licensing plans by Worlds.com. The General Patent Corporation, which handles Worlds.com’s patent licensing and enforcement, announced Thursday it had retained the law office of Lerner David Littenberg Krumholz & Mentlik for its client. No litigation plans were announced, but Virtual Worlds News reported that GPC would be contacting other companies regarding “licensing opportunities” for its patents.”

10. The Guardian (UK) – Games can have a serious role to play. “People have been saying for years that it was about time that computer games grew up. All that awesome technology being wasted on escapist fantasies – why couldn’t it be used to generate interest in learning maths or something? Well, whisper it quietly, it might be starting to happen. It is, of course, a bit of a libel on the still-booming videogames market to say it isn’t educational. You can’t play Entropia Universe or Eve Online without learning skills that are useful in a capitalistic world, nor Football Manager without acquiring organisational skills. But they were unintended consequences rather than the game plan.”

1. Forbes.com (USA) – Second Life’s Second Wind. “In what tech pundits at Gartner Research call the curve of hype and gloom, Linden Lab’s virtual world, Second Life, has officially entered the gloom stage. In October, Reuters pulled its full-time Second Life reporter Eric Krangel, who had written daily news stories about the virtual world’s economy for a year and a half, out of the virtual world.”

2. The Times (UK) – Days of tedium in front of a computer: corporate gaming is just like real life. “The recent news that a couple are divorcing after a woman caught her husband’s character hitting on a female avatar in the Second Life virtual world, and the subsequent revelation that a 15-year-old boy collapsed and went into convulsions after playing the World of Warcraft online game for 24 hours, have demonstrated how blurred the lines between reality and virtual reality are becoming. The business world has not been left unaffected by the trend. Companies such as BP and IBM have conducted real business meetings in Second Life and business simulation games are, suddenly, everywhere, with students across the world competing in online “invitationals”, in which they run fantasy companies in competition with one another. One games publisher has even produced a title, Informatist, for the Apple iPhone, so that the work-addicted can get a fix of the office while on the move.”

3. iReport.com (USA) – Miss Virtual World. “The Miss Virtual World 2009 pageant was held Saturday (December 6) from 11 AM to 5 PM by Frolic Mills of “The Best of SL (BOSL)” enterprises. Set in a glitz and grand glam four-sim auditorium, the event was received by a live audience of over two hundred avatars, as presented by several judges, a dance troupe, and a cast of 18 models representing Australia, Brazil, Canada, Costa Rica, Czech Republic, Denmark, Egypt, Finland, France, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Spain, Sweden, UK, USA, and Venezeula. At the end of the landmark event, Miss Virtual World 2009 was announced as Mimmi Boa, representing Italy.”

4. Express Buzz (India) – virtual war on terror in cyberspace
.”Video games have often been the target of criticism for simulating violence, with journalists, particularly after high school shootings in Western countries, going to the extent of labelling them ‘murder simulators’. Fortunately, video games haven’t yet been blamed for the terrible incidents that occurred in Mumbai last week. I, for one, expected anti-video game lobbyists to immediately blame “Grand Theft Auto IV” and bring to our attention “obvious” parallels between simulated drive-by shootings in the game and the actual incidents.”

5. The Seoul Times (South Korea) – Internet Addiction A Reality in A Virtual World. “With one of the most advanced IT infrastructures in the world and almost universal access to surfing the net, Internet addiction is on the rise in South Korea. Often called “the worlds most wired country,” over 10 million people are subscribed to super fast broadband connectivity and have made using the internet part of their daily life. Now efforts are underway to control this growing problem as it is thought that more than a third of web users are at risk of dependency and what experts are calling a compulsive disorder.”

6. New York Times (USA) – Original Sim. “I’m sitting in front of a long glass desk in the office of the architect Scope Cleaver. It’s quite a place, with undulating concrete walls, sharply angled yellow-tinted windows and long, cantilevered balconies. And then there is Cleaver himself. He has dark shoulder-length hair, he’s about 3 years old, and he can fly. Welcome to the surreal world of architecture in Second Life.
Unchecked by the usual limitations, designers in Second Life are creating unbelievable structures and entire worlds — either for the money or simply because they can. From sci-fi cityscapes to towers made of French toast, there are endless chances to experiment here.”

7. Kotaku (USA) – U.S. Army Invades Second Life. “You know the United States Army is hard up for recruits when they start poking around in the unicorn-filled virtual world of Linden Labs’ Second Life. The Army will be setting up two islands in the virtual world. One is a recruiting center with information and means to contact the recruiting office in case you feel so inclined, and the other will be filled with activities like parachuting and rappelling with weapons, both of which are activities you can already perform in SL, only afterwards you can go and relax at a dance club dressed as Optimus Prime with a unicorn for a penis.”

8. Physorg.com (USA) – Scientists demonstrate their commitment to the environment by going ‘virtual’. “Scientists from around the world proved their green credentials by participating in a conference on climate change and carbon dioxide storage in the virtual world, this week (3 December). Organised by Imperial College London and Nature Publishing Group, the conference encouraged scientists to meet in the virtual environment of Second Life, instead of the real world, to reduce carbon dioxide emissions normally associated with travelling long distances to international events.”

9. Gamers Daily News (USA) – See Wii Sit, See Wii Play, Speak Wii Speak. “Today sees the launch of an exciting new communications tool, as Nintendo launches the innovative Wii Speak accessory and its associated communications portal, the ‘Wii Speak Channel’. The launch of both will help Nintendo to create new social gaming experiences for all. From today you can also experience the full benefits of Wii Speak with the launch of Animal Crossing: Let’s Go to the City for Wii which comes bundled with the game. The Wii Speak accessory enables Wii users to easily connect to and talk directly with each other* through their Wii console, using the free-to-use Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection**. Wii Speak is placed on or in front of the TV in the centre of your living room, which means conversations can be picked up from an entire room of people. This ensures that your friends and family can converse in comfort with you – whether they are just up the road or half way across the world, enabling true global communication on your Wii.”

10. VentureBeat (USA) – Youth media ad network GoFish reels in $22.5M. “GoFish, a media-based advertising network targeting six to 17-year-olds (and moms), announced that it has brought in $22.5 million in private placement funding, which it will use to pay off its $14.5 million in debt and expand its sales and marketing staff. Backers Panorama Capital, Rustic Canyon Partners and Rembrandt Venture Partners will choose whether or not to kick in an additional $2.5 million in the next few weeks, according to the structure of the deal. They will also be able to purchase new preferred stock at $0.20 per share.”

1. BBC (UK) – Virtual worlds with real purposes. “The idea of having a virtual you following the real you around may seem rather strange – for those of us used to having our feet firmly on the ground.
But the creation of a virtual Berlin lets people be in two places at the same time – as 20km of the city has been faithfully replicated into an online world. By the end of 2008, 50,000 buildings in the German capital are expected to have been copied into the virtual world.”

2. Gamasutra (USA) – Interview: Sony’s Buser On PlayStation Home’s 2008 Launch. “Sony’s PlayStation Home online world for the PlayStation 3 has had a somewhat tortured genesis, with a long period of beta testing and a release date originally pegged for late 2007, before being delayed to Spring 2008 and back to now. However, PlayStation Home director Jack Buser tells Gamasutra that the release of the tardy but much-discussed PS3-defining virtual world “will launch this year”.

3. Licensing.biz (UK) – Nelvana content goes online. “Corus Entertainment’s Nelvana will now offer its aminated content on demand in the US UK, France and French speaking Europe.
Programme including 6teen, Tales from the Crypptkeeper and Di-Gata Defenders will be available through Tribal Nova’s KidStudio online environment.”

4. The Courier-Journal (USA) – Virtually addictive. “Every night, Dillard Raymer wields a sword, hunting wild boar and giant spiders and night elves. He meets his buddies, embarks on quests and occasionally finds himself in a battle. He uses magic and trades in gold in the lands of Azeroth. Then he goes to bed at his Valley Station home. It’s another successful night inside the World of Warcraft.”

5. The Guardian (UK) – Playing socially: virtual worlds with a gaming bent. “It’s my last day before I return to Blighty and the Friday after Thanksgiving, and I’m still stuffed full of last night’s mighty dinner. Rather than give myself indigestion with too much pontification and heavy-duty gaming mumbo jumbo, I thought I’d take the time to point you to some nice social play environments recommended by PC World. These spaces are the more playful, structured cousins to Second Life (although author Darren Gladstone does give that virtual world a whirl), which centre on gaming, but with a social element.”

6. iTnews (Australia) – Despite reports, Telstra and Second Life remain inseparable. “It’s a match made in heaven: Telstra is Australia’s biggest telco and ISP, while Second Life is one of the world’s hottest social networking tools. So when the media reported that “the game was almost over” for Second Life, Telstra was quick to defend its investment. Recently, Tourism Victoria withdrew its advertising funding from Second Life’s ABC Island. This prompted Deacons technology and media partner Nick Abrahams to comment to The Australian that “the drop in commercial interest in Second Life had been noticeable over the past nine months”.

7. mad.co.uk (UK) – Work and play. “The toy industry is a tough market, with retailers and brands fighting for consumer spend. Digital lets toy makers extend their connection with kids. The toy market is facing its toughest Christmas in at least two decades. While toy retailers are reporting it has already been quiet in the run-up to December, most are hoping the approach of the big day will spur shoppers to action. When they do start shopping, digital will play a crucial role in the fortunes of the industry.”

8. New Brunswick Business Journal (Canada) – Innovation Fredericton-based Syntesi heightening the training of tomorrow’s worker. “Syntesi Corporation, a subsidiary of Accreon, a Fredericton-based business consulting and information technology service provider, is looking for ways to train current and future workers that will meet its clients’ needs and teach the workers using media they can relate to. Tim Workman, vice-president of capability development for Syntesi, cites an American study suggesting more than 55 per cent of teens aged 12 to 17 are participating in online social networking, and half of them are gaming.”

9. Virtual Worlds News (USA) – Google: Lively Didn’t Meet “Tough Targets”; Looking to Use Tech Elsewhere. “When Google shut down Lively last week, it did so with as little fanfare as when it launched the virtual world, just a short blog post. Not much more has come out past the thoughts of a few partners and observers, and Google has been fairly tight-lipped. When I reached out to find out why the virtual world project was being canceled after only five months (and years in development) and to find out what might have been, I heard much the same thing as the official announcement. Google wanted to take risks, but also recognize when a gambled hand was finished.”

10. The Guardian (UK) – How an avatar on Second Life sparked a real-life court case. “Who is Victor Vezina? That’s the question bloggers have been asking since this Second Life avatar – a 3D representation of a real person – became embroiled in a legal dispute that could prove a test case for how much jurisdiction courts have over virtual worlds. Richard Minsky, an artist and publisher who also operates in Second Life, is suing Vezina, along with two directors of Linden Lab, owner of the virtual world, over use of the word “SLART”. Minsky obtained a US trademark in March 2008; Vezina had launched an art gallery called “SLart” in Second Life early in 2007. Curiously the case may turn on something as simple as a space between the letters SL and art: literally much ado about nothing.”

1. The Independent (UK) – Cybersex rules: Inside the world of ‘teledildonics’. “When I first deposited Journalist Hellershanks in Second Life, I wanted him to stand out. I gave him a shock of bright- orange hair, and a crisp white shirt, and I adjusted his height to about six-foot-four. He looked pretty good, I thought; but he was still missing something. And so, one morning earlier this month, I sent Hellershanks off to buy a penis.”

2. E-Commerce Times (USA) – Healthcare for Avatars? Medicine in the Metaverse. “In December 2007, Palomar Pomerado Health broke ground on a 600-bed hospital in Escondido, Calif. Just two months later, officials held a ribbon-cutting ceremony, allowing patients, staff and others to tour Palomar Medical Center West and play with new technology deployed throughout the facility. No, this wasn’t the most rapid hospital construction in history. The ribbon cutting took place in Second Life, a 3-D, virtual world that exists entirely on the Web.”

3. CNET (USA) – Avatars to run Altadyn business meetings. “Altadyn, a company that specializes in 3D virtual-world creation platforms, announced on Tuesday that it has released a new product that will turn business meetings into a living virtual world. Dubbed Online Meeting, Altadyn’s service aims to bridge the gap between 3D virtual worlds and Web conferencing. The service offers basic conferencing features like shared presentations, instant messaging, and live conversation through Skype, but it believes its main selling point is that it uses the company’s 3DXplorer virtual platform to create a virtual world that resembles a conference room.”

4. New York Times (USA) – Immersion. “Photographer Robbie Cooper shows just how focused young video-game players can be.”

5. iTWire (Australia) – Second Suicide as Google drops bomb on Lively avatars. “Back in July, when news of the Google Lively launch reached us here at iTWire, we said that the immersive 3D world populated by avatars in which you could create your own space to chat sounded a lot like Second Life. In fact, we went as far a to call it a ‘me too avatar world’ which it really very much was. Not just Second Life but with shades of There.com and IMVU thrown in. ”

6. The Globe and Mail (Canada) – So much for my so-called second life. “My name is Edith Firanelli and I was born in Antarctica. I have short dark hair, which I hide under a wool tuque, and a hot, if unrealistically proportioned, body. I’ve got no money, no job, no home, no skills and no friends. The good news is, I can fly and teleport. The bad: I still occasionally walk into trees and buildings. I spend my days wandering around a strange, computer-generated landscape, having disjointed, acronym-heavy chit-chat with strangers called things like Dimitry Barbosa and Beautiful Barbara. Maybe one day I will fulfill my dream and get a job as a nightclub dancer (like I said, I have no skills), but until then I will stand around like a wallflower in the suburbs of cyberspace waiting for my controller to finish checking her e-mail. It’s an aimless existence, being an avatar, but someone’s got to do it.”

7. The Escapist (USA) – Over 100,000 PlayStation Home Invites Tonight. “The PlayStation Home team hit a milestone last night with the release of beta 1.0 for testers of Sony’s virtual world application for the PlayStation 3. While the release marks a series of improvements for the service, the real news for those outside the secret confines of Home is that tonight, over 100,000 beta invites for Home will be sent out to European PlayStation Network users.”

8. MSNBC (USA) – Second Life bank crash foretold financial crisis. “A string of bank collapses prompted Alan Greenspan, U.S. economic guru and former head of the Federal Reserve, to admit last month that lending institutions could not always be trusted to regulate themselves. He could have taken a cue sooner by looking at the 2007 collapse of Ginko Financial, a virtual investment bank in the online game “Second Life.”

9. Silicon Valley Insider (USA) – Exclusive: Why Reuters Left Second Life, And How Linden Lab Can Fix It. “So what happened? Is Second Life dying? No, but the buzz is gone. For all the sound and fury over recent price hikes and layoffs at Linden Lab, Second Life has a community of fanatically loyal users. Since Linden Lab derives its revenue from user fees, not advertisements, Second Life is much more likely to survive the Web 2.0 shakeout than most other startups.”

10. The Industry Standard (USA) – Linden Lab focusing on higher-end systems for Second Life. “A senior Linden Lab executive has indicated that Second Life’s client software is being developed to take advantage of more powerful computers, but did not rule out future efforts involving low-end systems. Ginsu Yoon, Linden Lab’s VP of business affairs, told The Industry Standard in an interview last week that the “core part” of the Second Life experience were best shown on higher-end computing platforms.”

1. Sky News (UK) – Woman Divorces Over Virtual Lover. “Amy Taylor, 28, cited unreasonable behaviour in the court papers, describing how their three-year marriage came to an end when she twice walked in on her husband pretending to have sex in an online game. Her estranged husband is now engaged to one of the women he had an ‘affair’ with on Second Life – even though they have never actually met in real life.”

(more than 500 publications have run this story in the past week)

2. China Digital Times (China) – China: Too Much Time Online? You’ve Got Psychosis. “On a update of an earlier post on CDT, China has become the first country to list internet addiction as a mental disorder as stated by the Ministry of Health. According to one of the definitions in a manual by Chinese psychologists, anyone who spends over 6 hours on the computer with a mouse has the disorder, and a guideline is expected to head to hospitals soon.”

3. The Times (UK) – Open Minds: Caught in the Net. “The medium is the message, Marshall McLuhan famously said. And by changing the message we change ourselves. Never has this observation been so relevant as it is today, when many people spend their days at the computer, conducting friendships through Facebook and MySpace, posting videos on their websites, going into real society shielded by an iPod, or simply sending their avatar across the Grid in Second Life, looking for virtual relationships, virtual excitement and even virtual sex. Some welcome this, as a form of liberation. Shy people used to go trembling into society, hand in mouth; now they can go boldly into virtual society, hand on mouse.”

4. i09 (USA) – What Happens in Virtual Reality … Probably Won’t Stay There. “Cross Reality, Dual Reality, X-Reality: all of these terms describe the recent work of an MIT Media Lab team to bring the virtual into the real and vice versa. So far, the X-Reality group has focused their attentions on Second Life; last year, its Shadow Lab project allowed the game’s users to virtually check out real-life activity inside the Media Lab building in Cambridge. Later this month, the next X-Reality project goes live — and they’ve got big, wormhole-tunneling, reality-crossing plans for it.”

5. The Guardian (UK) – Art, music, gossip – it’s (virtually) all there in my parallel universe. “It has been quite a week for virtual worlds, the three-dimensional sector of the internet where people can live a parallel existence with their own avatar or alter ego. The world’s most profitable virtual game, World of Warcraft, which has more than 11 million paying participants, released a long-awaited expansion that generated midnight queues as enthusiasts vied with each other to steal a march in the new version. The Chinese government, realising that virtual worlds are an unstoppable phenomenon, announced it was planning to impose a 20 per cent tax on profits earned within them rather than, as hitherto, banning such virtual transactions. And a British couple who got married after meeting in Second Life are divorcing after the wife caught her husband chatting up another woman in the virtual world.”

6. Gearlog (USA) – Hands On: Disney’s Pixie Hollow Clickables. “If your daughter is one of the many girls obsessed with Pixie Hollow, then this year’s gift list will probably feature Techno Source and Disney Consumer Products’ new Clickables Fairy Collection featuring Disney Fairies. Pixie Hollow is Disney’s newest virtual world, and over 7.5 million Disney Fairies avatars have already been created. Girls can escape into Tinker Bell’s world to help bring about the change of seasons by meeting friends, playing games, and collecting items in nature.”

7. The Telegraph (UK) – Second Life infidelity is no less real. “A man and a woman fall in love and get married. The man’s head is turned by another woman. The marriage breaks up, and the man becomes engaged to the new woman, while his wife goes on to find a new partner. Nobody’s a villain here. It’s a sad story, the break-up of any marriage. There’s betrayal, sure – but there may also be the beginning of two separate love stories, and the end of something that was causing neither partner happiness. It’s the second-oldest story in the world: the one that comes right after “boy meets girl.”

8. The Herald (UK) – Sinister reality of fantasy game. “At 4pm on a Thursday in central Edinburgh, Aaron Campbell is beating the traffic with an armoured wolf. The shaggy creature leaps across a wooden bridge and through a market-place unimpeded by the assortment of gnomes, dwarves and orcs milling around. No, it’s not Lothian Road on a fancy dress club night, but the virtual world of Northrend, a newly released continent in the hugely popular online role-playing game World of Warcraft. Aaron, 20, and several other members of his playing “guild” have met up at the Ministry of Gaming cafe on Bread Street to try out WoW’s hotly anticipated expansion set, Wrath of the Lich King, which was released at midnight on Thursday. Three of them went as the clock struck 12 to pick up their pre-ordered copies at Gamestation on Princes Street. The shop sold out the same night.”

9. Eurogamer (UK) – Blue Mars gets beta, launch dates. “Avatar Reality has let Eurogamer know that its massively multiplayer virtual world Blue Mars will enter beta testing at the turn of the year, in January 2009. The first-time developer expects this to last for around three months, before the full game launches in April. And perhaps there will be time for some tea and biscuits if all goes well.”

10. Ars Technica (USA) – Snowy game, VR goggles take burn victims’ minds off of pain. “You’d think being seriously wounded on the battlefield would be the most painful thing a soldier could go through, but the recovery from burns can take months of agonizing physical therapy that prolongs the suffering. In some cases, healing can be more painful than the original trauma. What if you could take patients away from their immediate surroundings when cleaning their burns or stretching the skin during physical therapy? A virtual reality game created to help patients deal with pain hopes to do just that.”

1. The Japan Times (Japan) – Need for reality checks. “The line between real and virtual worlds has become more confused than ever. Two weeks ago, a woman was arrested after “killing” her virtual husband who had divorced her in an online game called “Maple Story.” She was arrested not on charges of murder, but on charges of illegally accessing a computer and manipulating electronic data. She was taken to face real charges in Sapporo, where the real man whose “avatar,” or online persona, was “killed” really lives.”

2. Linux Insider (USA) – Virtual Learning and the Avatar Generation. “Online learning is evolving into much more than discussions via Blackboard. Today’s online learners are spending time engaged in discussions, meeting in virtual classrooms, and combining online and on-the-ground learning, even if they live time zones away from campus. In response, universities are adjusting their curriculum, learning expectations, and changing how instructors approach topics online. One major challenge, creating and maintaining learning communities in virtual space, is testing both existing and emerging online tools. Jeremy Kemp, assistant director of San Jose State University’s Second Life Campus, never meets his students. Instead, he gets to know them through their avatars. The first thing Kemp teaches his library science graduate students is how to do basic things, like how to share information without interrupting each other, how to outfit their avatars and how to deal with technology problems, like when one avatar is in and out of class as their computer crashes and reboots.”

3. London Free Press (Canada) – Gamers, at any cost. “We are stalking the mountainous terrain on our horse in this world of warlocks, druids, hunters and warriors. Thick purple clouds hang in the sky, blanketing the area and casting it into a permanent violet dusk. Lightning strikes fall around us. Here, in this virtual landscape, where relationships are formed through pixilated images on a computer screen and a few dashes of the keyboard send us into a language with its own dictionary, we have reached Level 70 of World of Warcraft – the most popular online role-playing game on the market.”

4. BBC News (UK) – Capturing the scents of warfare. “Video games use realistic graphics and sounds to create virtual worlds. Now researchers in Birmingham are adding smells to the experience to prepare soldiers for war.
I’m walking along an Iraqi street. I can hear the sounds of a crowd somewhere in the distance.
The call to prayer echoes around as I move towards the still-burning wreckage of a bombed bus. The smell of charred rubber fills my nostrils.”

5. Emirates Business 24/7 (UAE) – A virtual victory. “While crowds gathered at public rallies and millions of others glued themselves to cable news, many spent US election night online – and they had plenty of company this time around.
Across the internet, users were discussing, celebrating and bemoaning Democrat Barack Obama’s unfolding election victory inside virtual worlds, on social networking sites and liveblogs and in online games. Others used techno-savvy websites to share their individual voting experiences throughout the day. A motley crew of election voyeurs gathered to watch voting results pour in from across the country on a giant map inside Second Life, the online virtual world developed by San Francisco-based Linden Lab where pixelated avatars fly around and interact with each other. For months, volunteers have been unofficially campaigning inside the behemoth virtual world.”

6. Gamasutra (USA) – The China Angle: China Tries And Buys Social Gaming. “One of the things that people in the game industry say is that the industry is in some way recession-proof because games are viewed as a cheaper alternative entertainment than eating out and going to expensive clubs. Of course, one still has to buy the appropriate console and software, but on a dollar-per-hour measure, it is still cheap.”

7. Forbes.com (USA) – A Realer Virtual World . “For the large majority of Internet users, virtual worlds like Second Life remain a confusing landscape of empty buildings, failed marketing and furry strangers. But Joe Paradiso believes that virtual worlds could be more than an over-hyped gimmick. They just need a dose of reality. Paradiso, a professor in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Media Lab, is working to create what he calls X-Reality or Cross Reality, a system designed to bring virtual and real worlds into a practical sort of alignment. With funding from Second Life parent company, Linden Lab, Paradiso aims to use sensors, displays and software to bring real-world data into virtual worlds and to integrate access to virtual worlds with real-world situations.”

8. PC World (USA) – Second Lifers Split on Linden Lab’s Open Spaces ‘Compromise’. “Linden Lab oversees one of the most successful social virtual worlds in existence, but it is still struggling with residents about how Second Life should be governed. Case in point: The debate over the use of “Open Spaces,” a virtual world land type that the company designed for residents to use for, common sense would dictate, open spaces like forests and water. As residents took advantage of the lower-priced land tier and over-developed and over-used the land, Linden Lab took exception at the increased CPU drain on their servers, and raised prices.”

9. The Daily Mail (UK) – Long live The King. “Next Thursday, I will be queuing at midnight in a line of people dressed as Orcs and elves, questioning what I’m doing with my life. I keep telling myself that I’ll be covering a milestone in the history of games – the launch of Wrath Of The Lich King, the long-awaited expansion for the online PC game World Of Warcraft. But in reality, like 11 million other people worldwide, I’ll be doing it because I’m a helpless addict.”

10. Dusan Writer’s Metaverse – Are Virtual Worlds Ready For Business? “When you think business in virtual worlds you think brands. The wave of polished yet mostly empty sims that followed the press infatuation with Anshe Chung’s mythic millions. And how the brands came and then slipped out into the night, the press flaks from Linden Lab and elsewhere calling the whole thing a brilliant experiment from which, heck, we learned a lot, that was the point really, this was never GOING to be the killer app of virtual worlds, keep your hat on folks, and by the way I have a sim for rent with a nice view.”

1. Marketing Week (UK) – Second Life appoints new Euro chief to boost business. “Second Life, the virtual world, has appointed Clare Rees to the new role of European marketing director. Rees will be responsible for boosting activity on the online platform, including adding more members and encouraging more businesses to use the virtual world as a promotional tool. She joins on October 31.”

2. The Times (South Africa) – Virtual worlds are coming to businesses near . “You’ve probably heard someone in your organisation argue that virtual worlds are the next big thing and that your company had better figure out how to use them before rivals do. At which point you may have thought: “Who’d do business in that terra incognita?”

3. ScienceDaily (USA) – Researchers Find New Way Of Measuring ‘Reality’ Of Virtual Worlds. “A research team, led by North Carolina State University’s Dr. Mitzi M. Montoya, has developed a new way of measuring how “real” online virtual worlds are – an important advance for the emerging technology that can be used to foster development of new training and collaboration applications by companies around the world.”

4. The Guardian (UK) – Elevator Pitch: Myrl builds bridges between virtual worlds. “Myrl is setting out to add a bit of ‘joined up thinking’ to virtual worlds, building a ‘social gateway’ that links competing worlds with the web, and with social networks. Founder and chief executive Francesco D’Orazio, who has a PHD in new media and sociology from the University of Rome, describes the concept as ‘outeroperability’, and says the ultimate goal is to turn the series of different virtual environments into one integrated playground.”

5. Forbes.com (USA) – Making Virtual Worlds Portable. “It’s just another day at work. You’re bored, unmotivated and have a few minutes to kill before lunch. You make your way over to Facebook, where you’re able to jump straight into the virtual world of your choosing–say, “Second Life”–without launching an application. You wander around the world, perhaps buy and sell a few virtual items, before jumping back to your profile page to see who’s left you a Wall post.”

6. Linux Insider (USA) – Virtual Training for Disaster Response. “A groundbreaking training tool for the global energy industry which uses virtual worlds to simulate potential disasters is attracting significant interest within days of its launch. The technology has been developed by Second Places, which has a base in Aberdeen, Scotland, and specializes in creating presences in online virtual worlds for corporate clients.”

7. iReport (USA) – Anger and Frustration Continue In SL. “Well when I posted my first article about the dramatic price increases for Openspace sims, I thought I would wait a couple of days to see what impact there is in the virtual world. It’s plain to see that feelings are running so high inworld that there is a very unhappy portion of the community that now feel alienated from Linden Labs. Albeit that the Lindens are keeping a close eye on the forums and trying to answer all they can on their Website at SecondLife.com. I find it hard to believe the reasons they give for the increases.”

8. CNN Money (USA) – Protest Threatens Linden Labs Profitability. “The denizens of Linden Lab’s virtual world Second Life are a passionate lot, so when the San Francisco company recently announced a steep purchase and maintenance fee increase on popular regions of their virtual land, sign-waving avatars were soon gathered outside Linden’s SL office, in protest. Some even set themselves on fire. There have been protests like this throughout the world’s five-year history, but without a competing virtual world offering all the unique features of Second Life, angry customers have largely stayed put, despite their grumblings.”

9. Gizmodo (Australia) – Things Virtual Reality China Will Not Prep You For (And What You Can Do Instead). “The U.S. is injecting a good $US1.25 million into a new “virtual training ground” for American diplomats who plan on working in China called “The Second China Project.” It’s a pretend city in Linden Lab’s Second Life that purportedly will help almost-expatriots get used to the environment in the world’s most populous nation. While some of the training activities sound useful (for instance, what to give as a gift, how to seat guests), as someone who’s lived in this country for years, I can tell you there are things that diplomats should get ready for that the virtual world doesn’t even seem to touch on.”

10. The Inquisitr (Australia) – Is Second Life screwing its users? Second Life, the once highly hyped virtual space has dropped from the radar this year for many. And yet for the lower coverage, the Second Life universe has continued, with new peak concurrency rates, and a loyal user base going on as they’ve always done. But lately, things are not great in Second Life. The company has slowly shifted its focus to high yield business services such as teleconferencing and the private “Second Life Grid” while giving less attention to its existing users. To make matters worse, Linden Lab has increased monthly fees for some users by 66%, resulting in large scale protests within Second Life itself.”