1. The Industry Standard (USA) – Gartner: Rise of virtual worlds will lead to dress codes for avatars. “Don’t get too attached to that avatar of a punk rock angel you spent five hours designing in Second Life. According to Gartner, if you think you’ll be doing work-related tasks in virtual worlds in the coming years, chances are your employer is going to establish dress codes that governs how the avatar looks and behaves — and halo-wearing, flying rockers just won’t cut it. The research firm says by the end of 2013, “70 percent of enterprises will have behavior guidelines and dress codes established for all employees who have avatars associated with the enterprise inside a virtual environment.”

2. GigaOM (USA) – Is Augmented Reality Just the Beginning of the 3-D Revolution? “Augmented reality — a group of technologies that marry the virtual world with the real one — has been around for decades, and has traditionally required the use of expensive and specialized equipment. But the proliferation of smartphones that have cameras, displays, and even GPS and other sensors on them has enabled a whole host of new mobile applications — Soundwalk, Wikitude and Layar, for example — that offer a glimpse at how online digital information and offline physical worlds could be combined. With such tools, virtual and real worlds have moved one step closer to one another.”

3. Earth2Tech (USA) – As Virtual Worlds Grow, More Ways to Cut Carbon. “Take one slumped economy, add some high travel prices, stir in a healthy dose of climate change anxiety, and you’ve got the perfect recipe for an emerging market: virtual worlds for businesses. According to the new GigaOM Pro report “Virtual Worlds for the Enterprise Market” by Kris Tuttle and Steve Waite of Research 2.0 (subscription required), these factors are driving annual revenues for the space for businesses up to $8-10 billion by 2015. While I’ve been skeptical about the emissions-reducing potential of virtual meetings in the past, Tuttle and Waite’s report indicates that the growth of enterprise-focused virtual worlds could have some real green benefits, by helping companies eliminate a higher percentage of business-related travel over time.”

4. Wired (UK) – ‘Visual Walkman’ merges real and virtual worlds. ” new augmented reality helmet that mixes the real world with computer-generated images has been developed by a student from the Netherlands. During his course at Delft University of Technology, Jurjen Caarls developed image processing technology that allowed the “mixing and filtering of information” from a range of different sensors.”

5. Kansas City Star (USA) – It’s not all play for a degree in video gaming. “Menacing, metallic and mega-gun brandishing, the cyber super soldier looms over Richard Fleming’s desk. Not exactly stereotypical for a professor’s office at Johnson County Community College? Well, as the “Gears of War” crowd might say: “Eat boot! Suck pavement! Get back into your hole!” This professor under the “Halo 3” figure teaches video game development. So lock and load, zappers of Nazi zombies or the locust horde. All those hours wearing out your thumbs in front of “Halo” or “Gears” actually could mean a college degree and fast career path.”

6. Hartford Courant (USA) – Wonder Rotunda Fills A Niche. “‘I think this is educational,” observes my 8-year-old stepson, about half an hour after logging on to Wonder Rotunda, a website aimed at kids that was recently launched by a suburban dad. I wonder briefly if the jig is up, but he continues to explore the virtual theme park, intrigued by the prospect of winning and spending the game’s “wonder dollars” to buy virtual food and loot with which to decorate his virtual treehouse.”

7. Wall Street Journal (USA) – Your Second Life Avatar Is Dressed Inappropriately. “Don’t show up to your company’s virtual meeting wearing a tail. And by all means, do not come dressed as a goblin. That’s one of the takeaways from a new Gartner report on corporate avatar etiquette. As businesses use virtual environments such as Second Life, Gartner researcher Jim Lundy said he’s been fielding more questions from companies about protocols for appropriate business use of avatars and virtual environments. He predicts that by 2013, most of them will have such guidelines in place.”

8. AFP (USA) – Imagine Peace Tower lights in Second Life. “Just hours after Friday’s annual lighting of the Imagine Peace Tower in Iceland, a virtual version of the tribute to late Beatle John Lennon opened in online world Second Life. “I hope we will all come to visit it when it lights up every sunset time, as it spreads our wishes of peace throughout Second Life,” Lennon’s widow Yoko Ono said Friday in a message at her imaginepeace.com website. “Remember, each one of us has the power to change the world.” Ono’s avatar spoke at the Second Life lighting ceremony, and then danced with others until a virtual dawn.”

9. CNET (USA) – The future of iPhone games. “With the release of “2012,” the iPhone app tied to the forthcoming Sony Pictures film of the same name, a group of developers may have kicked off the future of games on the hit smartphone. While the game itself is fairly simple and lasts just minutes, it incorporates features that may never have been tried before, and as such, could be among the small number of titles that are showcasing what will soon be considered par for the course. In the minds of many industry observers, thanks to its integration of a functional operating system, an accelerometer, GPS and a camera, and the fact that thousands of developers, big and small, have released games for the iPhone, the Apple device has already surpassed Sony’s PSP and Nintendo’s DS as the most important, or at least most adaptable, portable gaming platform.”

10. Stuff.co.nz (NZ) – Review: Aion. “It’s impossible to review a MMORPG without making a comparison to World of Warcraft. With its huge following none have come close to being able to match it, although a few recent games have tried. This has now changed, because with Guild Wars, Lineage and City of Heroes under its belt NCSoft have finally released what can only be described as a work of MMORPG art. Set in the world of Atreia, the lands are split between the Seraphim Lords (the Elyos) and the forces of the earth (the Asmodians). As a new player you must select between either of these two races. ”

1. Reuters (USA) – Virtual economies in videogames used as case studies. “Virtual economies set up in videogames as players trade items are being used as case studies to track and model real-world economies. As more people join massively multiplayer online (MMO) videogame worlds like Activision Blizzard’s “World of Warcraft,” NCsoft’s “Aion” and Atari’s “Champions Online,” real money is being used to purchase virtual items through micro-transactions. As a result, game worlds are creating virtual economies. With the global recession impacting consumer spending — and the sales of videogames — a research group is using Sony Online Entertainment’s “EverQuest II” as a case study to explore how virtual economies mirror real-world economies.”

2. Jerusalem Post (Israel) – New Worlds: ‘Virtual white cane’ helps familiarize the blind with new environments. “Software developed at Tel Aviv University can help the blind and visually impaired maneuver through unfamiliar three-dimensional environments. Dr. Orly Lahav of TAU’s School of Education and Porter School for Environmental Studies invented the new tool, which is connected to a joystick that interfaces with users through the sense of touch. Today the visually impaired are very limited in their movements, which necessarily influences their quality of life, says Lahav, but this solution could help them find new options, like shorter routes from train or bus stations to their homes.”

3. Mediaweek (USA) – Virtual Worlds See Shakeout. “A couple of years ago, MTV seemed to be onto the next wave in digital media, as it introduced to much hype several virtual worlds tied to its hit series Laguna Beach and The Hills. Last week, even as the new season of The Hills premiered, the Laguna and Hills worlds were nowhere to be found. The site virtual.mtv was still live—but it featured a nearly empty theater designed for fans to gather and watch the MTV Movie Awards—which took place last June. It appears the conventional wisdom that Generation Y was about to become the avatar generation may not have been so wise. For example, The CW quietly shut down its two-year-old Gossip Girl-themed virtual world a few months ago. Earlier this summer, the teen-targeted vSide.com shut down. And in August the once-promising young adult hangout There.com drew just 265,000 unique users, per comScore.”

4. PCWorld (USA) – Twitter vs. Second Life: A N00b Takes Another Look. “Overhyped technology poster child of 2009, meet your counterpart from 2006. We’re talking about Twitter — which, by our reckoning, entered the mainstream at the beginning of this year — and Second Life, the virtual world which went through its own hype phase in 2006 (BusinessWeek: “Virtual worlds abound in useful business applications!”) before being brought roughly back to earth. But not all hype is created equal. In a June 2009 blog entry for AdAge, PR executive Chris Abraham compared the two services, and concluded that Twitter’s hype cycle is more sustainable than that of Second Life. Why?”

5. Advertising Age (USA) – Has Second Life Cut Its Mullet? “At the end of June I wrote a simple blog post for DigitalNext addressing why I believe the hype currently associated with Twitter will be more sustainable than Second Life’s. Long-story short, “Twitter is light, cheap, open and permanent, whereas Second Life is heavy, expensive, closed and ephemeral.” Twenty-one comments and a series of responses later, I was invited by Second Life to return to the virtual world that I stopped visiting back in 2007. My complaint, and why I never returned, is that the client, called the viewer in SL parlance, was too resource intensive, incompatible with my executive laptop (which favored lightweight and slimness over horsepower and graphics cards) and required too much bandwidth, preferably a LAN connection instead of Wi-Fi.”

6. Kotaku (Australia) – Australian Film School Offers Games Course For 2010. “The Australian Film Radio and Television School is now taking applications for a 2010 course in Games & Virtual Worlds. AFTRS is Australia’s national screen arts and broadcast school. Loads of successful filmmakers are graduates: Alex Proyas, Jane Campion, Andrew Lesnie, to name but three.”

7. VentureBeat (USA) – IMVU, the 3-D avatar chat room company, hits $25M in revenue. “IMVU has been fairly quiet about its success in virtual chat rooms, where people can create their own dressed-up 3-D characters and socialize in graphically beautiful settings. But today it’s starting to trumpet loudly that it has established a strong business with a $25 million annual revenue run rate.
Cary Rosenzweig, chief executive and president of the Palo Alto, Calif.-based company, said in an interview the company has doubled its revenue in the past year in spite of the recession and the cooling off of the virtual world hype. IMVU now has more than 40 million registered users and six million unique visitors a month, according to comScore. For the past three months, the company has been profitable, Rosenzweig said.”

8. Kotaku (Australia) – Littlest Pet Shop Online Has Cutest Hourglass Ever. “Why spend your evening waiting in an queue to play Aion when you can watch an hourglass spin around in EA’s new MMO, Littlest Pet Shop Online? The Hasbro / EA partnership is fully realised today with the launch of Littlest Pet Shop Online, an immersive online world filled with animals desperately struggling to keep from being crushed under the weight of their own massive skulls. The game is all about decorating, customisation, and of course, mini-games, offering fun for “girls” whether they opt to play for free or buy a subscription for $US6.95 a month.”

9. Crispy Gamer (USA) – F-Secure details World of Warcraft scams, trojans. “Players of Blizzard’s ultra popular MMO World of Warcraft are under attack by a phishing scheme that lets the attacker steal players’ gold and rare items by luring players with an offer of “free in-game mounts,” anti-virus and security researchers at F-Secure point out. This is common knowledge to many WOW players (read the official forums for proof), but not to those few of us that don’t play World of Warcraft, or security experts who don’t pay too much attention to virtual worlds.”

10. Media Asia (Hong Kong) – Sector Insight… Taiwan gaming firms look to offline advertising. “The growth of the online gaming industry in Taiwan has created a new group of big-money advertisers. Taiwan’s publishers of insanely popular, massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs) are relying more and more on good old offline mass media to recruit players to their virtual worlds. TV is the medium of choice, and commercial breaks feature video grabs of evil demons in deadly action, or cloyingly sexy animated pop idols inviting all to dance and sing. This year’s advertising onslaught began last spring as university students prepared for final exams. Heavy promotion pushed PC/online game adspend to NT$510.9 million (US$15.6 million) for the first half of the year, up a whopping 283 per cent year on year, according to Nielsen Taiwan. Ninety per cent went on TV (77 per cent cable; 13 per cent terrestrial), with six per cent spent on OOH, and a mere four per cent shared among newspapers, magazines and radio.”

1. Marketingweb (South Africa) – Corporate gaming and virtual worlds. “Throughout 2009, the corporate world was exposed to the reality of virtual worlds which has seen a growing influence on how companies train, market, advertise and communicate. This trend was largely driven by the rising influence and profile of virtual online worlds, which allow users to create ultimate realities such as that offered by Second Life, and in a similar vein the computer game SIMS. This is a trend that is expected to continue as organisations begin to recognise the merits of incorporating gaming into their basket of communication tools. As a social dynamic, computer gaming is an influential reality. People under 35 grew up in a world influenced and informed by computer gaming rather than traditional board games. If we consider that society has always used games to teach children the skills they need to be successful adults, the role and influence of computer games is going to increase within the corporate world – driven by the fact that an increasing segment of our marketable demographic have had their values and worldview affected by computer gaming. This growing social effect is one of the drivers behind the probable increase in virtual world activity by the corporate world.”

2. Washington Post (USA) – A Virtual Theme Park for Kids Explores Life’s Wonders. “”I think this is educational,” observes my 8-year-old stepson, about half an hour after logging on to Wonder Rotunda, a Web site aimed at kids that was recently launched by a Washington area dad. I wonder briefly if the jig is up, but he continues to explore the virtual theme park, intrigued by the prospect of winning and spending the game’s “wonder dollars” to buy virtual food and loot with which to decorate his virtual treehouse. I’m not sure whether he’ll be playing next week — who ever knows these things? — but for now he’s intrigued enough to sit still through discussions about how the human digestive system works and which presidents appear on U.S. currency.”

3. CNET (USA) – Audi creates virtual Audi Space within PlayStation Home. “Automakers are like forum trolls. Every time you turn around another one of them is yelling, “First!” This time it’s Audi claiming to be the first carmaker to develop its own virtual area in Sony’s PlayStation Home. Audi Space, as it will be known, will come on line in late 2009. Audi Space will at first feature an Audi TV channel delivering video content relating to the German automaker. In December of ’09, Audi Space will be expanded to include Vertical Run, a futuristic racing game featuring Audi’s e-tron concept. Players will collect electrical energy that will presumably be untamed by the e-tron as they race for the highest possible speed. Be the fastest and you could earn a place for your Home avatar in the virtual Audi apartments, located in a large tower in the center of Audi Space.”

4. Manolith (USA) – Second Life Economy Healthier Than First Life. “Some of you may not be aware of what Second Life is. Some of you might have tried it, gotten frustrated, and then quit. Some of you might still be SL citizens. Whatever your experience with it, you have to be amazed that it’s still around and apparently doing some thriving business. Linden Labs, the company that created this virtual space, has recently reported that SL citizens have transacted over one billion dollars’ worth of services and goods with each other, estimating fifty million dollars being exchanged per month. Furthermore, 1,250 text messages are sent every second of the day, and the virtual geography of Second Life has grown to roughly the size of Rhode Island.”

5. The Guardian (UK) – Maths is the bedrock of the digital age. “It is a situation eerily familiar to most gamers: I am lost deep inside a pyramid, being pursued by a monster about to devour me in a spectacular way if I don’t make a decision pronto. The only difference to most other games is that the problem involves geometry. An arrow appears beneath my avatar’s feet with a length on it, say 5 metres. Above are four boxes consisting of triangles, rectangles and other shapes with sizes marked on the side. Unless I drag the box with the right answer down in front of me, I will be devoured. If I succeed, a fresh section of a stone path opens and the game moves on. Called Pyramid Panic, it is aimed at key stage 3 – and is one of a family of “serious” or educational titles launched today by mangahigh.com. Others range from doing simple arithmetic to make flowers grow to solving quadratic equations to guide a spaceship to its destination.”

6. Virtual Edge (USA) – Two Recent Surveys of Marketing Professionals Shed Light on Trends in Virtual Events. “ON24 and Unisfair recently conducted studies seeking to understand how marketing professionals were planning to use various marketing and collaboration technologies. While the Unisfair survey found that 48% of the respondents planned to increase their use of virtual event solutions. The ON24 study identified some of the drivers for that kind of growth, with cost savings leading the way and time savings close behind. This was a multiple choice question so some of the options we’d like to see weren’t offered but the Unisfair research shed additional light on marketer’s priorities. Not surprisingly, new customer acquisition followed by customer retention lead the marketers’ initiative list. These are two functions that virtual events are very well suited for.”

7. Silicon.com (UK) – Are dinosaur managers and poor teaching holding back Digital Britain? “More must be done to convince grey-haired business leaders to embrace web 2.0 developments, a panel of experts has warned. A panel assembled by the British Computer Society (BCS) were asked to consider whether IT could lead the UK out of recession. But it warned the UK’s potential around technology – and thus the potential of IT to drive economic recovery – is being held back by the current crop of business leaders who are failing to ‘get IT’, and also by the failure of the education system to inspire young people to acquire the skills needed by the industry.”

8. New University Online (USA) – UC Irvine Gets Grant to Study World Of Warcraft. “UC Irvine received a $100,000 grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) for an ethnographic study earlier this month on “World of Warcraft,” (WoW) a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) with over 10 million subscribers. UCI Professor of Information and Computer Sciences Bonnie Nardi and doctoral student Yong Ming Kow will analyze how players engage in creative collaboration in this virtual 3-D universe.”

9. Minneapolis Star Tribune (USA) – Dangerous adventures in Barbie-land. “Wouldn’t it be great if you could go about your daily life as a better-looking, thinner, more perfect version of yourself? That semi-you could go to work, shop for groceries and go out on the town and the real you could schlub around your house all day long, living vicariously through your surrogate. That’d be great, right? Well, not so fast, says “Surrogates,” a subpar sci-fi thriller set in an Atwoodian alterna-future where regular folks stay at home glued to a complex computer screen while their surrogates venture into the world.”

10. The Times Online (UK) – Angelic pretender Aion threatens to knock king of fantasy games off its throne. “Once upon a time, in the world of online gaming, there was but one king: World of Warcraft — the role-playing extravaganza that has snared millions of fans to become one of the most valuable entertainment properties. Now there is a challenger for its crown: Aion, created by the South Korean company NCSoft. The game had already been ordered by more than 400,000 players across Europe and North America before its launch in Britain yesterday.”

1. Ethiopian Review – Virtual Maps For The Blind. “The blind and visually impaired often rely on others to provide cues and information on navigating through their environments. The problem with this method is that it doesn’t give them the tools to venture out on their own, says Dr. Orly Lahav of Tel Aviv University’s School of Education and Porter School for Environmental Studies. To give navigational “sight” to the blind, Dr. Lahav has invented a new software tool to help the blind navigate through unfamiliar places. It is connected to an existing joystick, a 3-D haptic device, that interfaces with the user through the sense of touch. People can feel tension beneath their fingertips as a physical sensation through the joystick as they navigate around a virtual environment which they cannot see, only feel: the joystick stiffens when the user meets a virtual wall or barrier. ”

2. The Register (UK) – Second Life slapped with counterfeit sex toy suit. “A pair of Second Life entrepreneurs are suing the game’s creator, Linden Lab, for allowing other players to sell “knockoffs” of their virtual sex organs, erotic poses, designer clothing, and other trademarked items. Kevin Alderman (known in Second Life as “Stroker Serpentine”) alleges that Linden facilitates and profits from in-game pirates copying his IP-protected line of adult-themed virtual goods. Alderman claims his SexGen branded items and animations are among the most popular virtual products sold within Second Life, making his US trademark a valuable resource to distinguish himself amongst competitors selling alternative methods of bumping ugly online.”

3. ReadWriteWeb (USA) – Shouldn’t Schools Have Embraced Second Life By Now? “When it first launched, the tech and business worlds were transfixed on Linden Labs’ Second Life as a new marketplace. Science fiction fans flocked to the site for its Snow Crash and Matrix-like neo-apocalyptic feel. And finally, educators arrived to build inexpensive and immersive learning environments. While the hype has certainly dissipated with Second Life, the librarian and educator community remains. Today Linden announced the first statewide roll out of a virtual learning environment. Funded by a grant from the University of Texas State’s Transforming Undergraduate Education Program the company will provide a huge space for faculty, students and researchers to explore a virtual undergrad degree program.”

4. Tonic (USA) – Mombasa’s Cable Gives Africa Better Internet Access. “Prince Charles might describe the Seacom Landing Station in Mombasa as “a monstrous carbuncle, located right next to Mombasa’s most imposing sight, Fort Jesus, built by Vasco da Gama in the 16th century,” according to Rory Cellan-Jones, writing in his BBC.com technology blog. This is where the Seacom cable comes ashore, bringing with it East Africa’s first “decent connection to the internet.” Mahmoud Noor, a telecommunications engineer, runs the station, which, Cellan-Jones said, “is just one link in a network stretching from Mumbai to Kenya, and along the cost of East Africa.” The new cable increases Kenya’s telecommunications capacity by 240 percent.”

5. Business Standard (India) – Spammers target online gamers. “With online games attracting gamers from across the globe, spammers have been trying to cash in on the popularity of Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) videogames. Using phishing and Trojans, cyber criminals have been stealing players’ login names and passwords. Analysts explain that by creating characters that send unsolicited ads for items such as extra weapons and playable characters, spammers target gamers in MMO games. “In-game characters controlled by individuals working for spam companies infiltrate these virtual worlds and bombard players with unsolicited ads for the sale of in-game virtual items like swords and even playable characters. Since cyber criminals need large audiences to perpetrate their crimes, they have begun preying on residents in virtual worlds and players in online games, particularly in Asia where these games have become extremely popular,” explains Abhinav Karnwal, product marketing manager APEC, Trend Micro.”

6. Medical News Today (USA) – Psychologists Set To Discuss The Psychosocial Impact Of The Internet. “The internet now plays a major role in many people’s lives. Over the last 20 years psychologists have built up a substantial body of knowledge about people’s social interactions in cyberspace. A symposium at the British Psychological Society’s Social Psychology Section annual conference today, 16th September 2009, led by members of Nottingham Trent University’s Cyberpsychology Research Group will examine some of the current psychological issues surrounding people’s use of the internet. ”

7. NT News (Australia) – Computer games good for doctors. “LEADING health professionals are encouraging health workers to play computer games on the job to improve their skills. Professor Terry Poulton and Dr Tenneth Dalipanda have endorsed Second Life and Virtual Patients at a health conference in Alice Springs. The virtual reality games allow graduate doctors and nurses to learn from their mistakes without killing or harming their patients. Simulated scenarios will be rehearsed with other allied health workers for professional development.”

8. PBS (USA) – Second Life. “When the sun comes up in Second Life, which it does every four hours, you are immediately overwhelmed by the vast, brightly colored mish-mash of stores, houses, and malls stretching across multiple continents—all of it, including the mountains and forests, designed and built from scratch by the tens of thousands of people who regularly visit here.
Move your mouse and you tour the Taj Mahal. A few clicks and you are launched on a NASA rocket into low orbit. Click again and you can join a service in an Anglican cathedral. This live, online world called Second Life was launched in 2003 by the San Francisco company Linden Lab and its founder Phillip Rosedale, who says he had no idea what would happen. PHILIP ROSEDALE (Chairman of the Board, Linden Lab): Well, I always figured in the beginning that if Second Life looked like anything we were able to predict that we would have failed, that if it was predictable we weren’t doing the right stuff.”

9. Nextgov (USA) – Generation V. “There’s an interesting conversation going on at IBM’s Smart Work Jam about the concept of age being just a number when it comes to social networking and virtual worlds. “I’ve led groups of zealous, older managers into Second Life sessions, where a number of younger managers were less interested, and managers of all ages have opted into the online community that I launched for them,” one commenter states. As a result, many have begun using “Generation V,” or “Generation Virtual,” which is not age-specific, to describe individuals who engage in Web 2.0 and virtual worlds. In fact, as one commenter stated, the debate over the generational divide in the workplace when it comes to technology is actually diverting attention from the real issue: “When workers of any age (including old) see business value, they are quick to adopt. So here’s the issue that’s masked: how do we demonstrate business value to people of all ages?”

1. TImes of India (India) – Virtual world hit by swine flu! “They have all fallen in the H1N1 trap. The virus that has made headlines across the world, has also hit cyberspace with growing number of people getting hooked to games on swine flu theme. Several portals coming out with games based on swine flu, an increasing number of youngsters spend between 2 and 4 hours a day, fighting the deadly strain. Albeit, virtually. Says Rohit Shankar, a 2nd year law student, ” I am totally addicted to `swinefighter.com’. It is virtual and yet real since everyone around me is talking about H1N1. The game is very simple too and keeps me addicted. One has to kill the oinking pigs with an injection in a limited time frame to have a high score.”

2. Vancouver Sun (Canada) – Twilight expands into the virtual world. “The Twilight franchise is expanding its reach online. Producers Summit Entertainment says it has reached an agreement with website Habbo to feature products and games in its virtual world. Habbo says it is “the largest virtual world for teenagers” and has teamed with Summit in an exclusive partnership to feature games promoting the Twilight films and Twilight-branded goods. The campaign is timed to start in conjunction with the Nov. 20 premiere of New Moon, the second in the enormously popular Twilight series, filmed in and around Vancouver.”

3. DNA India (India) – Want to buy a street in Paris? “V Kapadia is the owner of Marine Drive… well, virtually.A premium property in Mumbai, you would expect him to earn hefty rents from the buildings he has constructed on the road, which includes a ‘four-sided fortress’ next to Taraporewala Aquarium. Unfortunately, a rival built a sewage plant at Girgaum Chowpatty, and as a result VKAPADIA can’t earn any rent from his buildings. A huge investment literally gone down the drain. Such are the twists of fate in Monopoly City Streets, an online version of the popular board game launched this week by Google in collaboration with Hasbro, the maker of Monopoly.”

4. Simple Thoughts (USA) – Researcher invents virtual maps for visually impaired. A new software tool creating virtual maps will help the visually impaired navigate through unfamiliar places. The visually impaired often rely on others to provide cues on navigating through their environment. The problem with this method is that it doesn’t give them the tools to venture out on their own, says Orly Lahav of the School of Education and Porter School for Environmental Studies at Tel Aviv University (TAU). Lahav’s new software tool is connected to an existing joystick, a 3-D haptic device, that interfaces with the user through the sense of touch.”

5. VentureBeat (USA) – The most popular digital goods are virtual money, weapons and gifts. “People are paying real money for digital goods in all sorts of online applications ranging from Facebook apps to massively multiplayer online games. The No. 1 thing they buy is virtual money. Other top items include virtual weapons and gifts for social networking friends, according to a survey released today. Free-to-play games, where you can start playing for free and then buy items in the game as you need them, now account for more than half of all virtual goods transactions, according to the July survey by market researcher VGMarket and virtual goods platform company PlaySpan. About 58 percent of gamers made purchases in free-to-play games in the past year. About 34 percent made purchases in MMO games (or virtual worlds such as Eve Online), and 23 percent made purchase in social networking games.”

6. Virtual Worlds News (USA) – Trademarking Avatars Now an Option. “Law.com recently reported that Aimee Weber (real name Alyssa LaRoche), a Second Life character, applied for, and was granted, registration to for her avatar as a design mark for “claims computer programming services, namely, content creation for virtual worlds and three dimensional platforms in International Class 42.” What does this mean to business and avatar makers? This ruling, the first of its kind, indicates that avatar trademarking is real. By trademarking your avatar, it will become easier to transport them between virtual worlds, a development that will happen over the next few years, if not sooner. For example, in 2008, an avatar was transported from Linden Lab’s Second Life over to IBM’s Open Sim platform, a pretense of things to come. It also is the start of creating financial value for avatars as they are used more frequently in enterprise applications and in creative contexts.”

7. Kotaku (USA) – Gamer Movie Review: More Second Life Than Counter-Strike. “In the movie Gamer, people control real people in a living third-person shooter, guiding them through a war-torn hell created for the pay-per-view enjoyment of a staggering worldwide audience. There’s also the chance to control people in a world of over-indulgence and sex. But what ties the two worlds together, and drives the movie, is the technology behind these emerging forms of entertainment: The ability to log in and drive another human. Gamer gives us a glimpse of new world gladiators, of lust unleashed on a controlled population, of Sammy Davis dance numbers and of a world slowly turning manic, but is it worth the price of admission?”

8. Information Week (USA) – NATO Looking To Build Virtual HQ. “Today is the deadline for developers to submit proposals to build 3D virtual software replicas of NATO headquarters in Europe and America, to be used for training and meetings, and improving staff communication and productivity. The project is a bit less ambitious than NATO’s previous forays into virtual training; in February, the organization a digital simulation of Afghanistan, including Afghan economics, politics and culture, and two years ago the Navy asked for a similar simulation of Iraq, according to the Wired Danger Room blog.”

9. Nextgov (USA) – The Federal Virtual World Challenge. “he Army Research and Development Engineering Command is looking for more than a few good virtual worlds, and has kicked of a real world challenge to find the best for itself, the Homeland Security Department, NASA and other federal agencies. Tami Griffith, science and technology manager, at the Research and Development Engineering Command’s Simulation Training and Technology Center, says the challenge is designed to explore possibilities for using virtual worlds that have not, and may not have, ever been considered by government.”

10. London Evening Standard (UK) – Second Life farmers’ market gets real with home deliveries. “A virtual farmers’ market based on computer game Second Life is going online. The 3D website will offer food from up to 300 small producers across the country and will deliver to customers’ homes. Shoppers will even be able to wander around the web market and talk to producers about their goods before buying them. The site was created by former cattle farmer Marcus Carter, who attempted to boost his business by starting an online market on Second Life – where gamers “live” through virtual personae called avatars.”

1. The Age (Australia) – Students learning to be virtually anyone. “ASHAV Patel does not look like his online avatar, an athletic character with Japanese-style cartoon body, fox tail and jet pack. Likewise, Solomon Gebru’s tall, blond avatar – a rendering of Dragonball Z, the popular anime character – looks nothing like the quietly spoken boy who came to Australia nearly three years ago from Ethiopia. Quynh Chu’s online persona is taller than her petite creator. Henry Hoang’s is a fox.”

2. Reuters (USA) – Virtual detectives stalk in-game spammers. “Gamers competing against rivals around the globe in online multiplayer games have a new force protecting them — teams of virtual detectives. While some companies cause havoc with PC users via e-mail spam and viruses, a new type of spam company is targeting the huge worlds of massively multiplayer online (MMO) videogames like Activision Blizzard’s “World of Warcraft.” In-game characters controlled by individuals working for spam companies infiltrate these virtual worlds and bombard players with unsolicited ads for the sale of in-game virtual items like swords and even playable characters.”

3. The Wrap (USA) – Virtual Worlds Are Not Just Time-Wasters. “In most Q&As after my documentary on virtual worlds, “Second Skin,” I’m met with the same question, “Why spend time in virtual worlds?” I think it’s like asking, “How can you hang out with your friends for so long?” For one thing, there are few places where we are not forced to be ourselves — the anonymity we arrive to in virtual worlds is empowering. Through it, we’re able to engage others without the burden of someone recognizing us, stereotyping us, or seeing us. (Just ask celebrities like Jimmy Fallon, Vin Diesel and Mila Kunis, among others, who long in like everyone else.)”

4. Los Angeles Times (USA) – Robots + virtual worlds = Robini-i. “The problem with robots is that they tend to do the same thing over and over. That’s great if it’s a robot that builds cars but boring if it’s a toy. This is something Sony learned with its Aibo robotic dog years ago. The Aibo had a small but dedicated group of hardware hackers who took joy in programming the robot to customize its movements, to play soccer or do synchronized dance moves. Alas, there were not enough hackers in the world to keep Aibo alive, and Sony put the product to sleep in 2006.”

5. Wired (USA) – A ‘Second Life’ for NATO Staffers. “NATO’s got a new plan for training up employees and running the alliance’s day-to-day business: create a virtual world. That’s right: The organization is after software models that would simulate its real-world headquarters (pictured here), as well as NATO’s North American command center, the Headquarters Supreme Allied Command Transformation in Norfolk, Va. The 3D programs would be used for training purposes and meetings, and NATO hopes they’ll improve staff communication and productivity, while circumventing “the inhibitions to collaboration posed by physical distance and time zones.”

6. The Globe and Mail (Canada) – Queen’s Goes Virtual. “I got a press release the other day from Queen’s University about a new initiative their faculty of education is undertaking on the uber-popular online world of Second Life. Turns out the faculty has purchased a virtual “island” and filled it with replicas of their real-life Queen’s campus buildings. (For those of you who aren’t familiar with Second Life, it’s a sort of virtual world where “residents” can pretty much do whatever they want. There are about 13-million such residents). The folks at Queen’s believe that virtual worlds such as Second Life are the future of education. The idea is that teachers can use these tools to recreate, say, a chunk of ancient Greece, or have their students virtually sit through a Shakespeare play during the Globe theatre’s heyday.”

7. Daily Pilot (USA) – New university site to focus on gaming. “Who said you can’t treat your college education like a game? UC Irvine’s school of information and computer science is aiming to do just that, with the establishment of the Center for Computer Games and Virtual Worlds, school officials announced Tuesday. The center, with the help of more than 20 faculty members, will aim to expand campus-wide research on the various social and technological qualities of games and virtual worlds.”

8. Los Angeles Times (USA) – ‘Gamer,’ ‘Surrogates,’ ‘Avatar’ and the meaning of (second) life. “In the old days, Hollywood tried to make thrillers that got under your skin — today it’s more about films that get you out of your skin. In a sign of the times, this Friday the blood-splattered “Gamer” begins a wave of sci-fi films that take the concepts of second life and video games into dark corners of the digital age. “Gamer” presents a world where modern flesh-and-blood gladiators (among them Gerard Butler of “300” fame) and sex slaves are controlled by a paying public sitting in front of computer screens in the leering privacy of their own homes.”

9. Stars and Stripes (USA) – A virtual world for veterans. “Pull up a virtual chair and take a load off. That’s what one researcher wants troops and veterans to do inside Chicoma Lodge, a virtual gathering spot on the Internet. The lodge is the central point of “Coming Home,” a project created by Jacquelyn Morie, who teaches at the Institute for Creative Technologies at the University of Southern California. “It’s a VFW of the 21st century,” Morie said in a phone interview this summer. Morie is building the Chicoma Lodge inside Second Life, a virtual world on the Internet that allows people to meet, play games, shop, build dream homes, hike, vacation, play music, even date. Each person has a virtual self called an avatar that can roam from place to place to look for new activities and friends.”

10. Reuters (USA) – Starting Today: 3Di, Inc. Enables 3D Virtual Internet Shopping Experiences by Deploying 3Di OpenSim Enterprise to SANWA 3D INTERNET LAB. “3Di, Inc., which develops and offers 3D Internet solutions (Head office: Shibuya-ku, Tokyo; Representative Director and CEO: Satoshi Koike; hereinafter referred to as 3Di), is proud to announce that 3Di OpenSim* Enterprise, 3Di’s server software for construction of 3D virtual worlds for enterprises, has been deployed to Sanwa Direct, the Internet shopping site run by SANWA SUPPLY INC. SANWA SUPPLY INC. is a major company which develops and wholesales computer supplies and peripherals. ”

1. Hypergrid Business (Hong Kong) – Virtual drag a thorny issue for employers. “In recent years, companies have begun using virtual worlds such as Second Life, OpenSim, Forterra and Qwaq to hold virtual meetings — and employees have begun using avatars, or cartoonish animated online characters, to represent themselves in these meetings. Some companies and employees pick avatars that reflect their real identities — but other avatars are fantastical, whimsical, or gender-bending. As virtual worlds become serious business, however, corporate dress codes are being extended to the virtual worlds in a variety of ways — some more controversial than others. For example, in many jurisdictions, a company may not discriminate against employees who are in the process of changing their gender, or who have already done so. The laws do not cover casual crossdressing by non-transgender employees, however.”

2. IGN (Australia) – Planet Calypso Launches Into Space. “First Planet Company, the developer and publisher of Entropia Universe, has announced the launch of its much-awaited revamp of its game Project Entropia, now known as Planet Calypso. The new version, which has been in development for a couple of years now, utilizes Crytek’s CryEngine 2, possibly making it the best looking virtual world in existence. Because the game’s new graphics will be such a far cry from the original, pun intended, old players will be given an opportunity to remake their characters when they first login.”

3. Wisconsin State Journal (USA) – Massachusetts man arrested for Thursday night incident in Madison. “A Massachusetts man was arrested Friday afternoon after he allegedly drove Thursday night to Madison, impersonated an officer and pulled a gun on a woman whose son he had met playing the online role-playing game World of Warcraft. Trevor L. Lucas, 21, of Gloucester, was arrested by Massachusetts State Police, Madison police said. Lucas had been out on bail for several felony firearms and ammunition violations in Massachusetts, according to a criminal complaint filed Friday in Dane County Circuit Court charging him with second-degree reckless endangerment and impersonating a peace officer to aid in commission of a crime, both felonies.”

4. VIrtual Worlds News (USA) – Sulake: Bobba Confirmed for September. “Habbo’s new boss, Sulake Chairman of the Board Mika Salmi, has confirmed that Bobba, the company’s upcoming attempt at a virtual world for mobile devices, is on track for a September launch.”

5. The Daily Mail (Pakistan) – The paradox of the Jia Junpeng phenomenon. “et’s call it the “Jia Junpeng phenomenon.” What is it? It’s actually a sensation out of nothing or a demonstration of collective boredom. No one knows who Jia Junpeng is, but this name became famous in less than 24 hours due to a forum post that in effect said: “Jia Junpeng, your mother is calling you home for dinner.” It attracted more than 4 million viewers and nearly 200,000 comments in one day. The post appeared on the World of Warcraft (WoW) forum on Baidu, a Chinese portal. A WoW server outage in China has lasted for 40 days. Some 5 million WoW players, who have been angrily waiting for the operational return of the servers, have interpreted the post as a call for the service to start back up as soon as possible. Game experts have said that online players are bored and that the post provided them an opportunity to get away from this boredom. ”

6. The Independent (Ireland) – An abstract issue that suddenly became seriously real. SEBASTIAN Faulks has good reason to feel wary of people wielding tape recorders. So far, the promotional round for his latest book, A Week In December, has proved to be rather trying. Last Sunday, in an interview with a British broadsheet, he stumbled head on into the most incendiary ideological debate of our times. As part of the research for his book, which features a would-be suicide bomber, he read the Koran, and then gave a critical appraisal of it, which included the description “the rantings of a schizophrenic”. Commentators from all backgrounds had a field day, accusing him of causing grievous offence to those of Muslim faith. Faulks doesn’t seem to be the sort of man who would deliberately court controversy in the interests of creating noise and generating publicity.”

7. Escapist Magazine (USA) – Latest Second Life Surnames Include Unfortunate Slang. “In an effort to ensure unique names for each of its inhabitants, the developers of Second Life regularly add a new batch of user-selectable surnames to the open world game. The latest batch however, includes a rather unfortunate piece of slang.”

8. Brand e-Biz (UK) – Brands, charities heading to Habbo, Poptropica et al. “Virtually young. Forget Second Life. Brands are increasingly turning to virtual worlds aimed at younger consumers. One of the most active of these sites is surely Habbo, the hotel-themed virtual world which has played host to a raft of integrated campaigns for brands and charities, featuring everything from treasure hunts to branded discos. Perhaps one of the more unusual campaigns involved the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and its annual Earth Hour event. Habbo incorporated Earth Hour into its environment, representing the themes of the event – which aims to raise awareness of climate change – by dimming the lights of the hotel, encouraging users to get involved in the process.”

9. Foreign Policy in Focus (USA) – The Iranian Opposition’s Second Life. “On July 22, a week into Iran’s foreign media reporting ban, a group of Iranian protesters gathered on a grassy hill to speak out against Supreme Leader Khamenei’s continued support for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Some wore black T-shirts with a blood-spattered slogan: “Where Is My VOTE?” By midday, the protest had attracted several hundred attendees. One woman arrived wearing little more than a thong swimsuit and a pair of purple angel wings. Iran’s security forces, however, were absent. In a nation with a frighteningly effective intelligence service, Supreme Leader Khamenei was entirely unaware of this protest because it took place in cyberspace.”

10. Stuff.co.nz (New Zealand) – Virtual world teaches skills for real life. “Preparing for a job interview can be extremely nervewracking and time-consuming. Decisions need to be made about what to wear, what questions to ask and how much research to do. But a group of students at the Manukau Institute of Technology are taking part in a pilot project that’s come up with a novel way to combat job interview jitters – by roleplaying in a virtual world. The foundation learning students will spend time in Second Life – a virtual world with its own currency and about 15 million registered users – practising their interviewing skills and critiquing their performance.”

1. Daily News Online (USA) – Do you know where your children are? Look in a virtual world. “Once upon a time, Tinkerbell was known as the magical fairy who helped children fly. Now Disney is summoning the mischievous little sprite from Peter Pan to get kids to go online. In a virtual world called Disney Fairies Pixie Hollow, girls and boys can become a fairy, dress up, fly around, befriend other fairies and help paint lady bugs, teach baby birds to fly or go on other nature-related quests. It’s packaged as the world of Tinkerbell and her friends, and their work is to make nature happen.”

2. Hypergrid Business (Hong Kong) – Private grids, public grids, and intragrids. “I occasionally get announcements or news from new grids running on the OpenSim platform, but they require the creation of a new avatar to visit. I don’t personally have anything against these kinds of grids, but there isn’t usually an interesting business story there. Semi-public grids — grids which don’t allow hypergrid teleportation, but allow anyone to create an account — are commonly referred to as “Second Life clones.”

3. Forbes (USA) – Wall Street Vs. ‘Virtual Street’. “For the last year, the world’s financial markets have been in utter crisis. There is one sector, however, doing well: virtual worlds that sell virtual goods. Netizens are buying and selling everything from virtual pets and gifts to games to iPhone apps. The worldwide virtual “goods” economy, which some are calling Virtual Street, is estimated at about $5 billion right now (see: “The Fall of Wall Street and The Rise of The Virtual Street”) and 80% of the industry is in Asia (China, South Korea and Japan). The beauty of Virtual Street is that it grows like a virus. The growing number of consumers getting on the Internet, the popularity of smart phones and the seemingly unstoppable proliferation of social media deep into the lives of consumers should continue to provide lots of momentum.”

4. Virtual Worlds News (USA) – Gartner: Virtual Worlds, a Long-Term Play. “The researchers at Gartner Inc. released their 2009 Hype Cycle Special Report last week. The report, prepared by the organization since 1995, is at its core a comparative tool for risk judgment which, this year, looked at over 1,500 technologies and nearly 80 tech sectors. Among the nearly 1,800 data points mapped on the cycle’s peaks and troughs is virtual worlds, an area which Gartner thinks is nearing an inflection point as a technology: virtual worlds, says Gartner, are close to owning the basement of the hype cycle, bottoming out in the dire-sounding Trough of Disillusionment.”

5. WA Today (Australia) – Tourism industry casts eye to the future. “The global financial crisis, swine flu fears and a forecast dip in international visitors has left a cloud over Australia’s tourism industry in recent times. But throw in virtual worlds, pirates on cruise ships and robot sex workers, and the future of the industry looks a scary place indeed. The national Tourism Futures conference on the Gold Coast this week heard the future of the multi-billion dollar industry would be shaped by global warming, social responsibility, huge advances in technology and a more individualistic traveller.”

6. Times Higher Education (UK) – Second Life out as techies embrace cloud email. “Virtual worlds are about to plunge into a “trough of disillusionment”, lecture podcasts are fast becoming obsolete, but cloud computing will soon be on the “slope of enlightenment”. These are the findings of an analysis of the “hype cycle” of technology in education, published by Gartner, an IT advisory firm. The annual study looks at the popularity of emerging technologies, from internet TV and e-books to microblogging sites such as Twitter, across a range of sectors. It tracks their progression as a function of expectations. The cycle ranges from over-enthusiasm as technology is hyped, through a period of disillusionment when it fails to deliver, via a slope of enlightenment to a “plateau of productivity”, as users learn how best to employ it.”

7. CNET (USA) – Cataclysm hits World of Warcraft. “Pretty much exactly as predicted, Blizzard Entertainment announced the next expansion for World of Warcraft Friday afternoon during the opening ceremonies for its annual Blizzcon convention in Anaheim, Calif. Called Cataclysm, the next expansion will, among other features, raise the character level cap to 85, introduce two new playable character races, and involve a wholesale refresh of Azeroth, the setting for the original World of Warcraft game released back in 2004.”

8. Telegraph (UK) – Teenager obsessed by World of Warcraft first to attend US internet addiction retreat. “The 19-year-old man will undergo a 12-step treatment at the reStart Internet Addiction Recovery Programme in Washington state, which has opened for business to cater for the growing number of “cyber junkies”. A typical 45-day residential stay, which will include camping and wilderness adventures, will cost patients $14,500 (£8,800), but the retreat is also open to outpatients seeking respite from an overreliance on joysticks, internet pornography and spending days on end staring at a computer screen.”

9. BBC News (UK) – Castle ‘rebuilt’ in virtual world. “Invergarry was burned down by Oliver Cromwell’s forces in 1654. It was rebuilt, but ransacked by government soldiers after the Battle of Culloden. The MyGlengarry.com Conservation Trust has “built” two versions of the castle, near Fort Augustus, on Second Life. Virtual tours of the building in its ruinous state today and how it was in 1740 have been offered. A computer expert who writes codes for Second Life was brought in by MyGlengarry to recreate the castle.”

10. The Guardian (UK) – The technological secrets of James Cameron’s new film Avatar. “In real life, we see images in three dimensions because our left and right eyes see slightly different images that, when combined by the brain, deliver a picture that has depth. In old-fashioned 3D cinematography – the sort where your glasses had red and green coloured lenses – a pair of closely-aligned images with different tints gave the impression of depth by fooling the eyes. But modern 3D films have developed new techniques to drag them out of their B-movie past, and Avatar takes things a step further by using both computer generated imagery and advanced stereoscopic filming methods to create the illusion of reality.”

1. Globe and Mail (Canada) – For God’s sake, get a Second Life (or not). “Lois King has an avatar. Her avatar is a tall, shapely blonde who lives in a virtual world called Second Life. She wears a snappy business suit, which is appropriate because she teaches serious courses in finance at York University in Toronto. She teaches traditional classroom courses, as well as distance courses on the Internet.

2. Law.com (USA) – Intellectual Property in Virtual Worlds. “It is not surprising that copyright and trademark issues arise frequently in virtual worlds, given the fact that they are products of copyrightable software code and thus by their very nature implicate intellectual property analysis. Additionally, MMORPGs, such as Second Life and WoW, have developed marketplaces for the sale and barter of virtual goods for real money or virtual money that may later be converted to real money. As in any marketplace, there is also a need to identify the source of virtual goods, especially in virtual worlds such as Second Life, which allows its users to generate their own virtual content and retain intellectual property rights in the content they create. “Second Life Residents To Own Digital Creations,” Nov. 14, 2003; Second Life Terms of Service §3.2. Some entrepreneurs in Second Life have applied to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for registration of their avatars (the user-created character representation of the virtual world participant in the virtual environment) and other marks for their virtual businesses.”

3. Virtual Worlds News (USA) – In Virtual Worlds, Games, $400M Will be Spent on Virtual Goods. “Viximo founder Brian Balfour states that Americans will spend between $400 and $600 million on virtual goods in 2009, as reported by the San Francisco Business Times. Balfour states that US spending on virtual goods was roughly half that in 2008, in the $200 to $300 million range, and between $25 and $50 million in 2007. Balfour values the global market for virtual goods in 2009 at $5.5 billion, an estimate consistent with Plus Eight Star’s evaluation of the virtual goods market in Asia alone at $5 billion.”

4. VentureBeat (USA) – Roblox raises $2.3M to help kids build casual games. “Roblox, a casual games and virtual world site aimed at children, has raised about $2.3 million in a first round of funding, according to a regulatory filing. It looks like Roblox allows users to create free games using building blocks that look kind of like Legos, though the site emphasizes that the Redwood City, Calif., company is not affiliated with Lego or similar products. The Roblox site also says the product is still in early alpha testing and describes it as “straddling several rapidly-developing aspects of internet entertainment: virtual worlds, casual gaming, and user-constructed content.”

5. Kotaku (USA) – IRS: Second Life Saves Taxpayers Millions. “he Internal Revenue Service isn’t all about taking your money. It’s also about saving you money by foregoing NASCAR sponsorships in favor of a virtual presence in Second Life. See, instead of spending millions of dollars on recruitment advertising no one will actually see, the IRS instead spent thousands of dollars to create an IRS Careers Island in Second Life which no one will actually see. That’s much cheaper! I actually visited the island as soon as I heard about this, and one can definitely see how they saved millions. It’s a bunch of booths with clickable information signs, and a couple of lounges with some very pretty penguin clip art that must have cost them a small fortune to secure. Frank Stipe, Virtual Worlds & Social Networking Project Manager for the IRS, explains why the IRS needs a Virtual Worlds & Social Networking Project Manager.”

6. Internet Evolution (USA) – Designer Fights for Second Life Rights. “When Gospel Voom was approached by a client to recreate a highly detailed, three-dimensional section of the famed French Quarter in New Orleans for use in the virtual online community of Second Life, I’m sure the last thing on his mind was that he would end up fighting a battle to protect his intellectual property rights. Voom (his chosen Second Life name), is a London-based industrial designer in real life with over 14 years of professional experience, who has developed, among other things, a variety of projects for universities and businesses in Second Life. So it was as a real-life businessman that he was careful to communicate the terms of his commission with his client, on more than one occasion, to ensure he would retain and protect his creative rights and credit.”

7. CNET (USA) – Dell nurtures a virtual life for youngsters. “Dell has partnered with Nickelodeon and Whyville.net to give life to its latest version of the Mini10v. According to Dell, the kids’ Netbook has been designed with safe computing, education, and entertainment in mind. At a glance, Dell is only trying to reach another market (children), but if you look a little closer, the Netbook may represent a change in the way the next generation of preteens and children will learn to socialize and develop their decision-making skills. The Netbook comes with desktop animations which link to Whyville.net, a virtual world where kids of all ages chat, shop, and visit places in town that engage them in science, nutrition, art, and business activities.”

8. eMarketer (USA) – Virtual Goods Mean Real Dollars. “Virtual goods represent one of the strongest ways that marketers and retailers can get involved with virtual worlds, and their popularity in social networks has increased with the opening up of the Facebook platform. For example, fashion marketers and retailers have offered virtual versions of current in-store clothing, along with links to buy the items in real life, on sites such as Stardoll. Branded items are also available to decorate social network profile pages or to send to friends.”

9. iTWire (Australia) – Australia bans another game. “Another one bites the dust, this time the role playing game (RPG) Risen has fallen on the bad side of the Australian Classification Board due to chatting up prostitutes and smoking imaginary drugs. It is comforting that our government is looking after us so well, protecting the adult populace from the evils of virtual worlds. This time the game in the Classification Board’s sites is the multiplatform title Risen, a typical sword and sorcery role play game from developer Pirhana Bytes, makers of the well received Gothic series.”

10. Portfolio.com (USA) – The Virtues of Virtual. “Surging online sales of digital goods — everything from digital pets to “currency” for online game-playing to virtual roses for a love interest — is driving growth and reshaping business plans among Internet companies small and large, particularly around video gaming, offering new revenue streams as web advertising rates have fallen. The trend is fueling growth and innovation among game publishers, dating sites, advertising agencies, payment processing companies and purveyors of industry analytics. For now, the mac daddy of North American virtual goods is Zynga, the Potrero Hill, California, online social gaming company founded in 2007, which gets two-thirds of its projected $100 million-plus annual revenue selling virtual goods ranging from digital farm buildings to poker chips.”

1. Abeceder (UK) – Virtual world experiences increases racial bias. “They say you should walk a mile in a person’s shoes before judging them. Virtual reality technology offers this possibility by allowing us to control a digital representation of another person. Unfortunately, the first ever investigation of racial perspective-taking in an immersive virtual environment has found that assuming a different racial identity leads to increased racial bias, not less. Victoria Groom and colleagues invited 98 participants, half of whom were of White ethnicity, to view a photograph of either a Black or White person of the same gender as themselves, and to imagine they were that person. Next the participants donned a virtual reality headset which transported them to an empty room where they were interviewed for a job, still playing the role of that other person. Crucially, half the participants could see their new identity in a mirror in the virtual room, and as they answered some introductory questions they spent at least a minute observing their adopted selves in the mirror.”

2. Virtual Worlds News (USA) – Weblin Closes, Users Transitioned to Club Cooee. “Layered virtual world Weblin is ceasing operations, according to a company newsletter sent to registered users today. Media reports attribute the closure to a lack of funds. Weblin users are being invited to transition Club Cooee, a site run by the former Weblin principals Jan Andresen and Christine Stumpf.”

3. Escapist Magazine (USA) – Virtual Worlds and MMORPGs: The Best and Worst of Humanity. “The three years Juan Carlos Piñeiro Escoriaza spent making his MMORPG documentary Second Skin were a bit of a wild ride, as he saw how much good these worlds could do for people, and just how badly they could spiral out of control. Juan Carlos Piñeiro Escoriaza was a life-long console gamer until a friend introduced him to the MMOG space via SOE’s Star Wars Galaxies. Though Escoriaza would eventually quit SWG due to the time investment, the experience – and the idea of real people choosing to take on virtual responsibilities – stuck with him. The seeds from that eventually blossomed into his feature-film documentary, Second Skin, which premieres tonight.”

4. Newsweek (USA) – The Sound of One Hand Clicking. “Luis Figueroa lives down the street from UC Merced, the newest campus in the University of California system. So it’s not surprising that the 21-year-old studies from the comfort of his own home. But he’s not enrolled at Merced: from his living-room computer, Figueroa is earning his bachelor’s degree in business administration at Columbia College in Missouri, some 2,000 miles away. At $630 per course—about $1,800 per semester—his online degree will cost far less than even in-state tuition at UC. Not only that, Figueroa is able to continue working full time in a management-training job with AT&T in Merced, a job he feels lucky to have in the current economic climate. “Once I realized I had time constraints, I knew the traditional classroom wouldn’t work,” he says. “Courses online are open 24 hours a day, and I’m able to go there any time I want.”

5. PSFK (USA) – Digital Immortality and Death 2.0. “Without coming across as too macabre and curmudgeonly, we’ll simply say that with dawn of the internet, the business of death has gotten a lot more complicated these days. Consider that wills once existed for the sole purpose of ceding ownership of physical objects, and quests for immortality – things like cryonics, transhumanism, fountains of youth and religion (ahem) – remained firmly planted in the realms of fantasy, but as the lines between our real and digital worlds continue to blur, these customs have changed. The things we leave behind, from virtual businesses to entire online lives, now have an immaterial existence and longevity all their own.”

6. CNET (USA) – Second Life for returning veterans. “Veterans are often reluctant to seek therapy for service-related conditions, but rather than write them off, scientists are creating a virtual online community where servicemembers can find the camaraderie and resources to ease their return to civilian life. The “Transitional Online Post-deployment Soldier Support in Virtual Worlds” created by the University of Southern California’s Institute for Creative Technologies (ICT) will be ensconced within a corner of the virtual landscape of Second Life, a popular online 3D grid where people interact through avatars (PDF). Also known as Coming Home, this world will contain three main areas: one for social activities, one for competitive and collaborative gaming, and one for resources. The resources area will be staffed by artificial intelligence-driven virtual characters available 24-7 to steer veterans to the appropriate support and therapies.”

7. Times Online (UK) – The top seven social networking sites for kids. “How do you know when a social networking site isn’t cool anymore? The day that your dad joins up. A new study has found that young people are turning their backs on sites such as Facebook and Twitter. Meanwhile, the number of 35 to 54-year-olds using such sites has rocketed by 25 per cent in the last year. So what can you do if you don’t want to be poked by your mum or added by your gran? Here’s a round up of the coolest sites and virtual worlds for children – just make sure you hide this page from your parents.”

8. Mass High Tech (USA) – Viximo seeks to turn virtual goods into real profit. “It’s hard enough for online retailers to get consumers to spend money on real goods and services — but one Cambridge company is betting that sites will want to get into the business of selling virtual goods. Venture-backed Virtual Goods Market Inc., which does business as Viximo, provides a white-label virtual goods store with gifts and personal accessories designed to complement online identities and messages. When Viximo launched in 2007, the company’s founders thought publishers of virtual worlds like Second Life and massively multiplayer online role-playing games would be among its core customers, said co-founder Brian Balfou.”

9. IGN (USA) – Artificial Emotions at Gamescom 2009. “The future of computer games in all facets awaits visitors at the trade show “gamescom 2009″. Held in Cologne for the first time, Europes leading games industry gathering draws not only the interested public, but first and foremost, experts and professionals from across the globe. At the Artificial Technology GmbH booth (Hall 4.2, Booth K27) the heads of the company, Frank Gwosdz, Serein Pfeiffer and Daniel Renner, will shed light on the inner workings of EKI One 2.0, their new full-version modular middleware for emotional and artificial intelligence. ”

10. Wired (UK) – Does a healthy virtual life mean a healthy real life? “pparently having a slim avatar encourages Second Lifers to get healthier in real life. Researchers at RTI International have published a report in the Journal of Virtual Worlds Research, which reveals that a healthy virtual life can impact attitudes towards fitness in real life. The team interviewed 29 Second Life residents. According to Science Daily: “Half the participants were interviewed by a thin avatar and half the participants were interviewed by an obese avatar.” They were then quizzed about their levels of physical activity both in the virtual and real worlds. “