1. Newstrack India – Stardoll.com is Brit kids’ most popular site. “Britain’s most popular website for under-12s has been set up to pass on the art of knitting clothes for dolls, according to a new survey. The survey by the Internet analysts Nielsen Online put Stardoll.com at the head of its Top Ten sites visited by the youngest web users. Second in the list was Club Penguin, a virtual world in which players adopt a bird and march it round the beach, theatre or school.”

2. Tampa Bay Business Journal – Entrepreneurs find typical business strategies don’t work in a virtual world. “After previous stops in New York, San Francisco and Chicago, the Second Life Community Convention steps into reality at the Tampa Marriott Waterside the weekend of Sept. 5. It’s visiting a city that already has had its share of entrepreneurs who have jumped into a realm only the Internet, and maybe even a little science fiction on the side, could create.”

3. The Times (UK) – Where the web kids are. “Are they lurking in the darker reaches of YouTube? Or delivering a series of ‘pokes’ and other greetings on the social networking site Facebook? Nope. Today’s kids aged 12 and under are likely to be whiling away their online hours playing games on sites you have never heard of.”

4. Wall Street Journal (USA) – Fluid Entertainment Invites Kids to Play With Purpose in Emerald Island. “Today, Fluid Entertainment announces the title and first details for Emerald Island(TM), their original children’s MMO (Massively Multiplayer Online) game. The company, whose formation and funding was announced earlier this year, is adding this upcoming title to their extensive library of software games for children. Currently in development and slated for release Fall of 2008, Emerald Island challenges players to become online eco-heroes in a mission to save a vibrant, imaginary, virtual world from environmental destruction.”

5. AsiaOne (Singapore) – Donation, sir? It’s online. “A Singapore charity has taken fund-raising to the virtual world, The Straits Times reported. Instead of selling flags or lucky draw coupons potential donors now visit the giant virtual universe Second Life. They enter a special zone filled with candy castle, lollipop trees and chocolate rivers. Each of these virtual goodies come with an option to buy them, and all it takes is a click for the cost of the items to be debited from their virtual accounts. At the close of the donation drive on Sept 21, the virtual funds, collected in Second Life’s currency Linden dollars, will be converted to real Singapore dollars.”

6. Ars Technica (USA) – One month later: Google Lively? Not so much. “In July, Google released Lively, a “Second Life in the browser” plug-in that lets anyone embed a basic 3D chat realm on a website or blog. We strolled through Google’s new social world back then and found that, possibly as a result of the “20 percent time” Google allows employees to spend on projects like this, Lively seemed to be 20 percent done. Now, a month later, we took another look to see if Lively is living up to its name.”

7. Times Union (USA) – Redirecting kids’ passion for video games. “Your son in high school can lay down a face-melting solo on “Guitar Hero,” while your middle school daughter can reach the highest levels on her Hannah Montana video game. They spend hours, without parental provocation, passionately engrossed in their Nintendo DS and Xbox 360 systems like young Einsteins burrowing into a physics problem.”

8. GigaOM (USA) – Why The MMORPG Subscription-Based Business Model Is Broken. “Famed game developer and analyst Scott Jennings recently announced on his blog that he’s quit online game publishing giant NCSoft to join John Galt Games. His new home is the small casual game startup developing Web Wars, a sci-fi game played via a browser plug-in, where web sites themselves are territories to fight over. (Sort of RocketOn meets battle cruisers.) The move is a bit like a top Hollywood producer quitting the movie business for an obscure online-video startup; it’s such a big jump, you want to know why.”

1. 7thSpace – TORC at UH turns to virtual world of Second Life for new study. “The University of Houston department of health and human performance is launching an international effort to recruit 500 participants for a study promoting healthy dietary habits and physical activity. The study will take place entirely in the virtual world of Second Life (SL).” (Also – see our report on Metaverse Health)

2. Network World – 10 questions for virtual world evangelists (Microsoft’s) Zain Naboulsi, and (G-Squared’s) Kyle Gomboy. “Welcome to a new regular feature of this blog … “10 questions for … ” where we talk to interesting people in the Microsoft world through a series of 10 questions (more or less, but who’s counting?) Think of this as a cross between James Lipton (Actor’s Studio) and Robert Scoble (Scobleizer). For the inaugural entry in the series, Microsoft Subnet interviewed two of the people responsible for Microsoft’s presence in Second Life and other virtual worlds.”

3. The Industry Standard – Playboy’s Second Life sim buzzes, even as real-world brand falters. “PaidContent reported earlier this week that Playboy is having a difficult time extending its brand online. Citing a Q2 loss, including declines in online and mobile content categories, it’s easy to assume that Playboy has failed to effectively position its brand on the Web. However, the publisher appears to be succeeding in an unlikely place: Second Life. After launching its virtual world presence early in Q2 last year, rumors abounded that Playboy was pulling up its stakes. Clickable Culture was sure that the Playboy sim was all but abandoned by late July of 2007.”

4. The Houston Chronicle – ‘Avatar’ has taken on life of its own and not just online. “In 2001, the decidedly literate nerd-rock group Harvey Danger penned and sang the lines “I bowed before the avatar / He said the problem’s clear to me / You never got over Morrissey.” The rock cognoscenti would have no trouble identifying the mopey crooner Steven Morrissey of the Smiths, but they may have wondered what precisely an avatar is. Nowadays Harvey Danger would find themselves in no such peril, as avatar appears to be everywhere, though not in the sense that they intended.”

5. MarketWatch – Linden Lab Appoints Frank Ambrose as Senior VP of Global Technology. “Linden Lab(R), creator of the virtual world Second Life(R), today announced the appointment of Frank Ambrose as Senior VP of Global Technology. Ambrose has 20 years of experience in technology infrastructure development, data architecture and operations, including his most recent role as AOL’s Senior Vice President of Technology for Infrastructure and Network Services. Reporting to Linden Lab’s CEO, Mark Kingdon, Ambrose will oversee the development of new processes, systems and tools to maximize the scalability of Second Life’s network architecture.”

6. Wired – Is the Army’s Virtual World Already Here? “The Army wants to build a World of Warcraft-style virtual world for training, DANGER ROOM reported a couple weeks back. “There have been a number of partial explorations in this direction, but nothing near a complete system has been created to our knowledge,” Dr. Roger Smith, an Army researcher, told us. But one commercial game maker insists that’s not true. “There is such a game already in existence,” says John MacQueen from Playnet.”

7. What PC? – Very real legal issues exist in a virtual world. “The past few years have seen the entry of major brands such as Microsoft, Coca-Cola, BMW and Dell into the virtual world Second Life, alongside millions of traditional individual users. Businesses typically use Second Life as a marketing tool to raise brand awareness and as a shop window for products, but it is also used for direct sales and recruitment.”

8. redOrbit – Virtual World in Wii Games is a Fitness Hit You Can Run, Play and Watch It All Unfold With a Cartoon Version of Yourself. “As Kathy Winstead was going for a run one recent day in Ponte Vedra Beach, she saw mountains ahead, as well as waterfalls and fellow runners who waved as they jogged by. “What will they think of next? Rose Signorile, 90, asked as she watched Winstead, 66, exercise with a Nintendo Wii Fitness program at The Players Community Senior Center. Winstead was actually running in place in a classroom at the center on Landrum Lane while watching a cartoon version of herself, on a television screen, running through the beautiful mountain park.”

9. VentureBeat – Six Degrees Games raises $7M for sports virtual world. “Virtual world creator Six Degrees Games has taken $7 million to develop a world for six to 14 year old children with a sports theme. The funding is the company’s first.”

10. CNET – Want to screw up a virtual world experiment? Here’s how. “An island all to yourselves sounds dreamy if you’re planning a vacation with your spouse. But not so in the virtual world, where that sort of solitude is potential poison for companies setting up shop.”

1. News.com.au – Virtual spend making real money. “Spending $26,500 on an imaginary island might sound outlandish, but it’s paid off for computer gamer David Storey who now makes $300 a day from online game Entropia. The 26-year-old Sydney student is promoting the “virtual world” game at the GO3 Electronic and Entertainment Expo at the Perth Convention Centre. His family and friends were initially sceptical when Mr Storey told them he had bought a virtual island with houses, hunting lands and a shopping centre which all existed only in cyberspace.”

2. Abilene Reporter-News (USA) – Texas State Technical College to offer certificate via Second Life. “Texas State Technical College has announced that it will become the first institute of higher education to develop a complete online certificate or degree in the virtual world, as in the fall of 2008. TSTC will offer a digital media certificate utilizing virtual world technology, using Second Life as the primary delivery method, according to a news release. Students earning the digital media certificate will have the opportunity to earn an associate degree in digital media in spring 2009.”

3. HD-Report (USA) – Sony finally starts testing ‘Home’. ““Home,” the much talked about and long delayed virtual world from Sony, began accepting applications for beta testing in Japan. 10,000 Playstation 3 users will be allowed on the beta run, but only gamers with Japanese online accounts are allowed so far.”

4. VentureBeat (USA) – Google testing “AdSense for Games” in bid to shake up in-game advertising. “Google is the sleeping giant when it comes to advertising in video games. While the company dominates search advertising, it has yet to make a big splash in video games. That could change soon, as the company has been quietly testing its “AdSense for Games” product for months.”

5. What PC? (UK) – Virtual answers to real-life ills. “Online virtual worlds are just for teenagers and twenty-somethings, right? To some extent, yes, but not entirely. Organisations are starting to explore the benefits of using virtual worlds not just to share information, hold meetings and allow employees to learn new skills, but to provide an interactive multimedia online environment to reach out to customers.”

6. Washington Post via TechCrunch (USA) – Philip Rosedale Doesn’t See Browser-Based Virtual Worlds As A Threat to Second Life. Is He In Denial? “ecently, there’s been a growing wave of startups and products appearing that are bringing 3-D virtual worlds to the browser. These include Vivaty, Google’s Lively project, and the Electric Sheep Co.’s WebFlock. And I’ve seen a few stealth companies working the same vein. None of these are as fully featured or immersive as Second Life, which requires a separate desktop client download. But it may not matter because a good-enough experience available via standard browsers may eventually qwn Second Life. Linden Lab, which operates Second Life, is working with IBM and others to make virtual worlds interoperable with each other. Still, for the most part, they don’t play nicely with the Web.”

7. Business Standard (India) – Real life Indians yet to get a Second Life. “A year ago, S Sundararaj, founder-member of the Chennai-based IT start-up Anantara Solutions, had just completed his online MBA course from U21 Global. He was under the impression that he would have to attend the convocation ceremony in Singapore where U21 Global is headquartered. However, even as he waited anxiously for the schedule, he was officially informed that he had to collect the certificate of the online university at a virtual convocation on Second Life.”

8. MarketWatch / Wall Street Journal – Manpower Inc. Celebrates First Anniversary in Second Life. “Manpower Inc. announces the worldwide celebration of the company’s one-year anniversary in Second Life. The celebration kicked-off with a multi-media convening of virtual world gurus on Manpower Island to reflect on the ways leading brands can attract a creative and diverse pool of talent and leverage virtual worlds to further real-world social responsibility programs.”

1. Emirates Business 24/7 (UAE) – Why your Second Life is more than Lively. “Virtual history has a habit of repeating itself. Not so long ago, hype surrounding the ‘Second Life’ 3D world seized gamers and companies alike. Now the limelight is on Google’s similar offering, Lively. Google’s virtual world was launched less than a fortnight ago, yet already there are scores of reviews and blogs about it. Very few are from the UAE, where the site appears to have been blocked by the local authorities.”

2. Newsweek (USA) – Living a Second Life Online. “We’ve all heard the warnings: addiction, isolation, a waste of time. But some 50 million people log on to online role-playing games like The Sims and Second Life—and many of them never log off. The makers of a new documentary called “Second Skin,” which hits theaters in September, followed seven hard-core gamers to find out why.”

3. GigaOM (USA) – Will Mark Kingdon’s Reign Boost Second Life? “Back in April, ex-Organic CEO Mark Kingdon took the helm of Linden Lab, replacing its charismatic founder, Philip Rosedale, at a time when the company was already struggling in an increasingly competitive market. While Linden claims to be profitable, its market share has plateaued, with scalability and usability woes keeping the number of monthly active users around 550,000 since last summer. Is Second Life still relevant in this far more dynamic playing field, which now includes Lively, an offering from the Internet’s biggest player? I posed that question to Kingdon a few days ago in an extended conversation at the company’s spacious San Francisco headquarters.”

4. TechNewsWorld (USA) – Second Life: A Wide World for Med, Science Students. “Judith Kung Fu may be just one of more than 14 million computer-generated characters in the 3-D virtual world Second Life. But with her help, her creator may one day save your life. In Second Life, Judith has walked through the walls of a human cell. She has, in a flash, conducted complicated science experiments that took the world’s best minds years to complete.”

5. DMNews (USA) – Social strategy is in this fall. “For their back-to-school efforts, a number of multichannel merchants are marrying micro sites with a significant push into social networking. Some marketers see tie-ins with social networking sites, including MySpace and Facebook, as the biggest opportunity to reach teen agers. But it is uncertain whether these efforts will be enough to ignite teen retail spending, which industry experts predict will be down for the rest of the year.”

6. The Industry Standard (USA) – Google trying to stop the inevitable: Cyber-sex in Lively. “Google’s biggest mistake with Lively may not be the Windows-only release, nor the sketchy functionality. Instead, it’s in forgetting (or ignoring) the driving force of the Internet, which, as the Broadway musical Avenue Q explains, is porn. Google introduced Lively as an all-ages 3D chat application. But, as The Guardian noted a mere day after Lively launched, users quickly figured out how to take things as far as they could with adult content. Google tries to police the adult content as much as possible, but a search will quickly yield scores of rooms designed for cybersex of all kinds.”

7. Mediashift Idea Lab (USA) – Virtual Voting: Finding Our Audience Where They Roam. “A Street Team ’08 video by our Connecticut reporter plays at Election HQ in MTV’s Virtual World. One of the main components of Knight and MTV’s big citizen journalism experiment, Street Team ’08, is MOBILE. In our case, the already loaded term has many meanings…our project includes mobile phones, on both the production and distribution sides, and mobile journalists, or those young, carefree reporters-on-the-go with no need for an office, who you keep hearing about.”

8. The Hollywood Reporter – ‘L Word’ virtual world in works. “Showtime has inked a deal with virtual world technology company The Electric Sheep Company to create a standalone Web-based virtual world for drama series “The L Word.” The L Word virtual world, which begins testing next month and formally launches with the debut of the series’ new season in early 2009, will be the first to use Electric Sheep’s new WebFlock, a Flash-based solution that eliminates the lengthy downloads and other technological barriers that have prevented some virtual worlds from attracting the mass market.”

9. The London Free Press (Canada) – A big thumbs up. All three game console makers are officially on the avatar bandwagon, with Microsoft’s revelation that gamers will soon be able to create and customize virtual versions of themselves to mingle online and play games. Microsoft seems to be aiming for something in between Nintendo’s cutesy Mii avatars and Sony’s more realistic and functional Home, which we won’t see until next year. One intriguing aspect of Xbox’s so-called Live Party system is the ability to get together online with friends to share photos, play virtual game shows or even watch movies. It’ll be intriguing to see how (or if) this works when the Xbox Live update hits later this year.”

10. Silicon Valley Insider (USA) – Google’s Lively Is Just Like Second Life — No One’s There But Perverts And Griefers. “We’ve all heard the knock on marketing in Second Life — brands that do it get a splash of PR, but little else. Most brands end up with abandoned virtual storefronts and negative ROI. So last week, when Google (GOOG) introduced “Lively,” its own virtual worlds product we had hopes that it might suceeed where Linden Lab (SAI 25: #11) failed.”

1. TechNewsWorld – Second Life Goes Hollywood. “Ariella Furman took her first summer vacation as a college graduate to Walt Disney World, where reality hides behind princesses. When it was over, she returned to Ivyland, Bucks County, Pa., and her job making videos — or more accurately, machinimas — for the virtual world Second Life, where reality hides behind avatars.”

2. Israel 21C – Creating new worlds is kid’s play with Shidonni. “A whole new world is coming to your computer, and you’re going to create it yourself. That’s the idea behind Shidonni, a new Web-based computer game developed by an Israeli company of the same name, which allows youngsters aged four to 12 to create their own virtual worlds, then watch them come alive right before their eyes.”

3. San Francisco Chronicle – Second Life offers healing, therapeutic options for users. “”Every human being is interested in two kinds of worlds: the Primary, everyday world which he knows through his senses, and a Secondary world or worlds which he not only can create in his imagination, but which he cannot stop himself creating.”
In a garden pavilion on an island, I sat with an assortment of human beings – one clad as a teddy bear wearing a Santa hat, another as a brazen vixen, a blue man, a tuxedoed prom king – and poured out my heart from a place of loneliness and grief. Click click went the computer keys, like the staccato beat of my heart. Clack clack went their replies, their empathy and their own tales of triumph and woe. Via my avatar – the persona I’d created to engage here – I was participating in an “anxiety support group” in the free, virtual world of Second Life.”

4. The Times Online (UK) – Google’s Lively view of the future. “Lively reminds me of something like IMVU, an instant messaging program that enables 3D avatar chat, in that it provides off-the-shelf avatars with teen appeal for socialising. It’s a pretty simple: it’s about chatting in rooms that can be customised to reflect your taste, and is nothing like as grandiose as something like Second Life or There. It’s not a single persistent world, but a bunch of ad hoc virtual spaces that let people come together and show off their avatar identity through chatting and flirting.”

5. Computerworld (USA) – How to get started in virtual-world operations. “IT service companies, like many of the Second Life solution providers, will be happy to help you build a virtual-world environment for your network operations or data center. But it won’t be cheap. It might run anywhere from tens or hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars, depending on how much IT stuff you’ve got, how many people it’s for, and how much development and integration you need (and how many of these wheels haven’t been implemented yet). And even then, it may not have the features or provable reliability for mission-critical operations.”

6. Thaindian News – Hear your avatar laugh like you on your PC. “It wont be long that your computer avatar will be able to break into laughter or sneeze just like you do after hearing a good joke or under a cold spell, thanks to new software that has the in-built ability to recognise “non-linguistic” sounds, such as laughter, and generate an appropriate facial animation sequence. While animated characters are already “learning” to lip sync when played human speech, the new software could improve the quality of web-based avatars or computer-animated movies.”

7. Times Herald-Record (USA) – IBM customers say data analysis drives new projects. “IBM says small businesses need to take better inventory of their information to help reduce risk and derive more value from their business information. According to a 2008 survey of Big Blue’s customers, risk mitigation and data governance are key drivers of new projects to better track data through the use of metadata, which is information about information.”

8. Management Consultancy (UK) – US accountants live the virtual dream. “US Certified Public Accountants have taken the virtual world Second Life to new levels by holding the Maryland Business and Accounting Expo in it. The two hour workshop allowed the CPA to carry out a continued professional education programme with the second hour featuring a speaker linked up from his office in San Francisco.”

9. Silicon Valley Insider – Google: No Sex in Second Life-Killer Lively. “What’s the difference between Linden Lab’s (SAI 25 #11) Second Life and Lively, the new virtual world announced by Google? How much time do you have? Second Life requires its own software and needs a PC equipped with a high-end graphics card; Lively runs in a Web browser. In Second Life, anyone with a little programming know-how can create anything, which makes the experience “fun”; in Lively, avatars decorate their virtual hangouts with objects from an inventory provided by Google’s (GOOG) engineers and approved developers. If you can meet the hardware requirements, Second Life runs on Windows, Mac, or Linux; so far, Lively only works on Vista and XP. (Look into that, Google.)”

1. Linux Insider – Virtual Worlds: An Untapped Healthcare Marketing Resource. “Second Life is part of a new media category known as “virtual worlds,” an area that has been receiving a lot of attention recently. The channel’s ascension begs the question: What possibilities exist for SL’s use in pharma healthcare marketing and sales? To better answer this, I recently went on an expedition to see what SL applications presently exist and which are being talked about, both in-world and out.”

2. Kotaku – From the Margins to the Mainland: the Future of Virtual Worlds? “Those concerned with ‘virtual worlds’ — as opposed to ‘games’ — spend a lot of time contemplating the role of virtual worlds in a wider market; over at Terra Nova, Bruce Damer looks at the potential future of virtual worlds, which could be a lot bigger than most people imagine. Some potential answers to keep the industry growing?”

3. Los Angeles Times – In virtual worlds, child avatars need protecting — from each other. “On the playground, kids pilfer lunch money and push each other around. But in the cyber clubhouses they’re filling by the millions, kids rig elections, sell fake products and scam each other out of every virtual-worldly possession. Sophia Stebbins recently joined one such online community, Webkinz, which lets its young members create avatars, play games and hang out. The 9-year-old from Irvine worked in a virtual hamburger shop, earned virtual cash and bought a virtual bed, couch and TV for her virtual house.”

4. The Boston Globe – New breed of armchair tourists explore fantastic virtual worlds. “I finally visited Stormwind Keep. I strolled the streets of Darnassus, another place I had wanted to see, and gazed from The Warrior’s Terrace. After a time, I found my way to the rolling prairies and floating islands of Nagrand, which soothed me after my long flight.
Hours or weeks later, I left footprints in the Abyssal Sands as I walked across Tanaris. I entered the vast Caverns of Time. The tunnel spiraled down to a network of caves, some filled with sand, some lush with vegetation. Huge statues loomed, meteors streamed by, and purplish cosmic mist shrouded the scene.”

5. Arizona Daily Star – Autism and virtual reality. “It used to be if you wanted to be someone else for a while, you’d wear a mask and go to a costume party. If no one knew who you were, there was no need to be self conscious. Now there’s a costume party 24 hours a day on Second Life,
a virtual-reality world where users create avatars, or character representations for themselves, with clever names that tell a little more about how they want to be perceived than the names their parents gave them at birth.”

6. GovernmentExecutive.com – Virtual Connections. “After a long search and quite a bit of wandering around, you finally find yourself at your destination:the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. After checking out the building’s modern glass exterior, you are greeted by a friendly red-haired woman at the entrance. Then you walk inside, and an interactive billboard offers you information on smallpox. You climb the stairs to the second floor, where you can find the address of the closest lab that offers HIV tests or flu vaccinations. You turn right and come upon a desk where you pick up a dark-blue CDC rubber bracelet similar to the yellow Live Strong band that Lance Armstrong made popular years ago while promoting cancer research.”

7. Christian Science Monitor – Study abroad through Second Life. “When a group at Ohio University in Athens created a video tour of the school’s virtual Second Life campus, Christopher Keesey expected that it would be, by and large, for the OU community. Yet while browsing YouTube, he found a copy of that same video tour translated into what he thinks was a Nordic language, possibly Danish. “We didn’t know the person. The person, as far as we know, wasn’t even here, they were in Europe,” recounts Mr. Keesey, project manager of Ohio University Without Boundaries. Now the OU virtual campus receives visitors from around the world who regularly interact with student avatars on the virtual campus commons.”

8. The Industry Standard – Second Life users spending more time in world, but are they paying? “Wagner James Au found some interesting Second Life data points buried in Linden Lab’s economic statistics for the virtual world, where users find information from the financial state of the company to exchange rates for in-world currency. In the numbers, the average price for land shares in Second Life dropped from 3.23 Linden dollars (L$) to 2.86 L$ per acre. But an even greater concern for Linden Lab is the ratio of user hours to premium subscribers. Paid subscribers (those who pay a monthly fee for the privilege of spending more money on land rights) have been on a steady decline since December 2007, while the total number of hours users spend in-world has been on a steady upswing over the same period.”

9. Spiegel Online (Germany) – How Shelly in ‘Second Life’ Resists Vodka. “In her first life, Shelly (not her real name) was often drunk. On the day of her niece’s wedding, she downed half a bottle of vodka and took a strong painkiller. Just before the ceremony, while sitting in a white pavillion with a baby in her lap and in a complete daze, she suddenly slipped from her chair and the baby fell to the ground. Someone grabbed her by the arm and put her in a taxi. Shelly looked up and saw her mother, who she then pushed away. She says that she would have preferred to keep on drinking herself into oblivion.”

10. news.com.au – Teen plans to marry kidnap woman. “Ray and Wanda Martini say they are devastated their eldest son, Jonathan, left in the middle of the night to be with the woman once charged with his attempted kidnapping. Tamara Broome, 32, was arrested in June of last year at a North Carolina train station, on her way to meet the boy she fell in love with through online game World of Warcraft.”

1. The Hollywood Reporter (USA) – Nick splits games, virtual worlds. “MTV Networks’ Nickelodeon Kids and Family Group said Tuesday that it has formed separate divisions focused on gaming and virtual worlds and has promoted executives from within the Viacom-owned company to run the new groups.”

2. BusinessWeek (USA) – What Do Teens Want? “Using its online community, Habbo, Sulake surveyed some 58,000 teenagers to compile marketing data covering cosmetics to mobile-phone preferences. Nearly 59,000 captive teens might seem like every parent’s worst nightmare. But for Helsinki (Finland)-based Sulake, such a group provided a pain-free way to gain valuable insight into what “kids these days” really care about. Pain-free because Sulake runs Habbo, the nine-year-old virtual world that as of early June had some 100 million avatars, 9.5 million of them active on the site each month. And because Sulake could use the world as a platform to question the teens—virtually. Habbo’s second Global Youth Survey features the results of a two-month-long poll conducted at the end of last year, which surveyed 58,486 teens in 31 countries. The findings were recently published in a 255-page report targeted at companies looking to market to the lucrative demographic.”

3. Financial Times (UK) – Habbo hits a hundred million teen avatars. “The most financially successful virtual worlds are not 3D and sophisticated, but flat and appealing to younger audiences.
Think Neopets, Webkinz, Club Penguin and Runescape, not Second Life. Habbo, whose graphics are reminiscent of the Code Monkeys cartoon and 8-bit 80s video games, announced today that its 100-millionth avatar had been created.”

4. Computerworld (USA) – Cisco chief lauds coming virtual-world technology. “Cisco Systems Inc. CEO John Chambers today appeared at a virtual press conference in Second Life, where he predicted that virtual world technologies will eventually “explode” in terms of business usage and their impact.
Chambers, whose avatar was dressed in a business suit, disagreed with some recent expert opinions and blogs that virtual world designers and operators are facing a downturn in businesses that are interested in starting up virtual world meeting rooms or product demonstrations in Second Life and other platforms.”

5. Computing SA (South Africa) – Three steps to encourage corporate investment in virtual worlds. “Many business leaders are sceptical of investing in virtual worlds because of the continuing lack of clarity regarding their proven benefits, but there are steps IT leaders can take to encourage corporate investment, according to Gartner. Haphazard investments in poorly planned virtual world projects will continue to cause funding difficulties in some instances, but, once the benefits have been proved, many organisations find that virtual worlds enhance casual social interactions inside the distributed enterprise, which can lead to innovation and produce competitive advantage.”

6. TechCrunch – RocketOn Layers A Virtual World Onto The Web. “Last February we hinted at South San Francisco startup Rocketon’s plan to release a virtual world that spanned the web. At the time, it appeared as though the company was pursuing an embeddable widget strategy. But instead of integrating virtual worlds into webpages, it has actually placed one on top of them so that avatars can roam the web just as you currently surf it. Comparisons can be drawn to both Weblin and PMOG. Whereas Weblin places a little avatar on the bottom of your browser that can be used to chat with other visitors to a webpage, PMOG turns web surfing into a game with mine laying and loot plundering.”

7. Pocket Gamer (UK) – Disney virtual world gets a mobile game spin-off. “One of the trends we’re keen on following in the coming months is cross-platform gaming, and specifically the plans of PC-based massively multiplayer online games and web-based virtual worlds to launch mobile elements.
Yesterday’s report on Blizzard Entertainment’s mobile recruitment shows the activity in this area, but an article in the New York Times about Disney has also made us prick up our ears.”

8. The Industry Standard (USA) – Second Life roiled by by Linden Lab’s DMCA policies. “It seems that he Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is the topic du jour. From the current AP flap to the music industry, intellectual property and the legal issues that surround it are being debated everywhere, including the virtual worlds. Second Life is having its own issues with DMCA enforcement as well. Piracy in the virtual world is a hotly contested issue made all the more difficult because every object in a virtual world can be subject to copyright. Our own Ian Lamont had noted the issue that many Second Life content creators had with piracy concerns a year ago, and apparently, residents still have those same concerns about Linden Lab enforcement.”

9. iTWire (Australia) – Second Life announces the world’s biggest virtual party. “It hardly seems possible, but the immersive 3D virtual fantasy world of Second Life is 5 years old. To celebrate, Linden Lab is staging a Virtual World’s Fair which might just be the biggest birthday party never held. It was on June 23rd 2003 that the 3D world inhabited by avatars known as Second Life emerged from the shadows of Beta testing and opened its doors to an awaiting public. To celebrate this 5th birthday, the company behind the virtual phenomena has announced an ambitious two week long party which will run until July 7th.”

10. Silicon Valley Insider (USA) – If Second Life Is Over, Someone Needs To Tell Cisco (CSCO). “Conventional wisdom is that Second Life is an overhyped ghost town that’s wasted many of corporate America’s marketing dollars. But no one seems to have told the folks at Cisco (CSCO), which has maintained a steady presence in Linden Lab’s (SAI #11) virtual world.”

1. Gamasutra – SGS Panel: Who’s Paying And Why In Virtual Worlds. “At the ongoing Social Gaming Summit in San Francisco, a panel of virtual world execs representing companies like NeoPets, K2, and Nexon got to the heart of why casual virtual worlds were blooming, how developers can make money off of free to play games, and what percentage of players might actually pay. Virtual World News editor and moderator Joey Seiler asked the panel why the casual MMO trend was happening now. Responded K2 marketing VP Patrick Ford, “As a consumer, I have a bookshelf full of $40-60 games that were cracked open once or twice and maybe put back and I didn’t get a good experience from it… but when my son asks me for $5 for a premium package [in an online game], I know it’s money well spent.”

2. Network World – Two online virtual worlds. “In the marketplace of virtual online worlds the 800 pound gorilla is, without doubt, Second Life. But they don’t own the market as much as feature as the poster child. The consequence of that is a small crowd of wannabe’s who have their sights on taking a shot at some kind of market ownership. Given Second Life’s debatable success why would these upstarts care? Simple, because the potential market is enormous. This year (according to eMarketer’s “Kids and Teens: Virtual Worlds Open New Universe”) just looking at the pre-teen and teen market some 12 million children and teens will visit virtual worlds — that’s 34% of all Internet users from 3 to 17 years of age — and the figures are projected to keep on growing rising to 53% of all Internet users in that age bracket by 2011 (that’s over 20 million of them!).”

3. Adweek – Movie Studios Expand Into Virtual Web Worlds. “With fewer bodies in movie theaters and consumers migrating en masse to digital formats, Hollywood studios are understandably keen to reach their market in new, hopefully more effective ways. Although virtual worlds have a spotty record so far, some studios clearly see great potential in these environments for both promotion and distribution of their output. In April, Viacom’s Paramount Digital Entertainment signed a partnership agreement with Makena Technologies, making thousands of movie clips from the Paramount movie library available on There.com, an online virtual world. Visitors who purchase the clips can use them to communicate with others by having their avatar “speak” lines from movies while the actual clip plays in a small window. Links allow users to purchase DVDs of the featured movies.”

4. MPOGD.com – ION 2008 – Discussing Entropia Universe with John K. Bates. “magine if you could leave this world behind and start a new life on a foreign planet. MMOs give players the chance to explore new worlds and lands all the time, but rarely will the virtual wealth accumulated in-game ever amount to actual monetary wealth in the real world. Entropia Universe, however, is one game changing that aspect of MMOs, allowing players the opportunity to exchange in-game currency for the real deal. I talked with John K. Bates – Business Development and Strategic Marketing with Mindark/Entropia Universe – at this year’s ION game conference to learn more about the game and how players are turning virtual businesses into real life profits.”

5. Information Week – Second Life Artist Fights Real-Life Deportation. “A Second Life artist who goes by the name “Eshi Otawara” faces real-life deportation due to the so-called “widow’s penalty” in immigration law. The artist, whose real-life name is Irena Morris, is a Croatian immigrant who lives in Florida. Her American husband died suddenly, when they’d been married less than two years, while her application for residency was in progress. According to U.S. immigration law, the application is automatically rejected once the American spouse dies. Morris received formal notification from U.S. immigration authorities last week that her application was terminated, and she’s ready to be deported from the U.S. at any moment.”

6. The Industry Standard – Sun creates virtual worlds for businesses, but graphics lag. “t’s called Project Wonderland and it’s a prototype for a virtual environment where business teams can meet and interact, but the environments so far lack polish and are graphically sparse. The project aims to allow team members using multiple forms of communication to collaborate through video conferencing, call-ins, and online avatars.”

7. The Guardian (UK) – Second Life: Disability charity sets up virtual advice service. “A charity that helps the parents of disabled children contact each other and access services has set up an office in the virtual world of Second Life. The charity, Contact a Family, is using government funding to create the digital office to support its work giving parents information and mutual support.”

8. Web in France Magazine – Executive recruitment in France arrives on Second Life, as the virtual world attracts more real businesses. “Second Life started as 64 acres of virtual real estate in cyberspace. Today, Second Life’s 3D digital world is now the “size” of a small city, where the alter egos of its more than 3 million members, called avatars, interact, socialize at parties, buy and sell virtual goods and run businesses. Members of Second Life, as the name suggests, design a whole parallel universe for themselves where they can have the homes, lifestyles– and especially the careers — that they have always wanted.”

9. CNET – EMI hires ‘Second Life’ co-founder. “Strugging record label EMI Group continues to turn to the technology sector for leadership as it attempts to navigate the Digital Age. The music label hired Cory Ondrejka, one of the founders of Linden Lab’s virtual world, Second Life. Ondrejka was named senior vice president of digital strategy, EMI said in a statement. The hiring comes two months after EMI hired Douglas Merrill, Google’s former chief information officer. Ondrejka left Linden Labs in December. Ondrejka helped design “big parts” of Second Life.”

1. Kotaku – Sims Franchise To Explore, uh, Virtual Worlds?. “In a somewhat bizarre interview with The Times Online, Nancy Smith (head of the Sims division at EA) said that ” in light of the popularity of virtual worlds … the Sims may soon become a multi-player game.” The article fails to mention the failed experiment of The Sims Online, later rebranded to “EA-Land” and scheduled for closure in August.”

2. Linux Insider – Virtual Space Travel, Part 1: One Small Step. “For those of us old enough to remember life before the Internet , the term “virtual space travel” probably conjures memories of childhood visits to the local planetarium. Fast forward to today, and things are just a little different. In today’s Internet-enabled world, ordinary citizens can explore the universe from the comfort of their own homes through the likes of Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) Sky, Google Moon and Google Mars. Virtual tours are available from sites like SpaceWander and Space.com. Never before has the universe been so close within reach of everyday people. Now, thanks to the virtual world of Second Life, the possibilities have been extended even further.”

3. Venture Beat – Vollee helps Second Life make the leap into mobile. “Fans of Second Life can now access the virtual world through their mobile phones, thanks to a Redwood City, Calif. startup called Vollee. Squeezing a relatively high-end game like Second Life onto your mobile phone without slowing the experience to a crawl is an impressive technical achievement. And this isn’t just some pared-down “check your status” feature, but a real mobile version of the game, one that lets you wander, fly or teleport through the world and chat with your friends. Vollee says it takes advantage of compression and 3G mobile networks to minimize bandwidth requirements.”

4. Variety – Techie tykes get wired. “Little kids are spending time online like never before — in ways that even their older Facebook-addicted siblings couldn’t have imagined five years ago. The showbiz congloms are learning new ways of playing with these tech-savvy tots … but is everybody playing nice? Major media companies including Viacom, Time Warner and, of course, Disney have committed well over $1 billion during the past two years on thousands of casual games and “virtual worlds” that are the moppet answer to MySpace, as well as offering the opportunity for kids to set up their first email accounts before they lose their baby teeth.”

5. AFP – Paralysed man takes a walk in virtual world. “A paralysed man using only his brain waves has been able to manipulate a virtual Internet character, Japanese researchers said Monday, calling it a world first.
The 41-year-old patient used his imagination to make his character take a walk and chat to another virtual person on the popular Second Life website. The patient, who has suffered paralysis for more than 30 years, can barely bend his fingers due to a progressive muscle disease so cannot use a mouse or keyboard in the traditional way.”

6. Stuff.co.nz – Virtual worlds with a Kiwi flavour. “You might think you live in a small world, but thanks to Auckland software development company Outsmart you can now do just that in its 3D virtual world SmallWorlds.
Outsmart co-founder Mitch Olson says SmallWorlds has a “social entertainment focus” and allows users to create cartoon avatars and their own room or space – as they would create a profile on social networking sites such as MySpace or Facebook.”

7. CNET – A rallying cry against cyberbullying. “Lawmakers and Internet executives are perking up to the growing problem of kid bully fights on the Web. Legislators are newly arming themselves with laws that will protect kids from being repeatedly harassed via the Internet, text messages, or other electronic devices. In recent weeks, Rep. Linda Sanchez (D-Calif.) and Rep. Kenny Hulshof (R-Mo.) proposed a federal law that would criminalize acts of so-called cyberbullying.”

8. The Independent – Are ads on children’s social networking sites harmless child’s play or virtual insanity? “As social networking spreads to users as young as five, makers of toys and TV shows are making the most of new opportunities to reach children online. But with more than 100 youth-focused virtual worlds now either up and running or about to launch – over half of which are aimed at under-sevens, according to one estimate – regulators and parents are struggling to keep up.”

9. Los Angeles Times – Testing Second Life on a mobile phone (get ready to text!). “You can do lots of things on a mobile phone. Find directions. Play time-consuming games like Brickbreaker. Call your friends. Now, if you have one of 40 high-tech mobile phones, you troll around on an island, cavort with dolphins and maybe even go to a corporate meeting. No, this isn’t some new function of the iPhone. We’re talking about Second Life, the 3-D roleplaying game that was really popular, then wasn’t and then was again. A company called Vollee has launched a free beta version of Second Life on mobile phones, calling it the first time “residents can explore the entire virtual world from their handsets.”

10. Plan Adviser Virtual Reality. “Before you know it, more meetings could be conducted on exotic islands—virtual, that is. Second Life could even evolve as a cheap tool for advisers and the financial industry as a whole to relate to the younger and more tech-savvy generation. In April 2008, the Internet-based Second Life (www.secondlife.com) had nearly 14 million “residents” and an economy totaling 4.9 billion Linden dollars (about $19.6 million), according to a press release. Since launching in 2003, Second Life has seen investment from consumer and technology companies, including IBM, as a medium for training, meetings, and corporate presentations.”

1. eNewsChannels (USA) – Virtual World Museum of Robots Hosts Competition That Asks Residents to Create Robots to Wear and Display. “Museum of Robots in Second Life announces the “Build-a-Robot” Competition, and invites all Second Life residents to participate. According to the organizers, “Our goal is to explore what a robot is, how it can be expressed within the parameters of Second Life, and to encourage creativity and originality. Our definition of ‘robot’ is unlimited: any creation that the designer thinks can be called a robot is acceptable.” Entrants receive a merchandise prize, with an additional Linden dollars cash prize pool awarded to the top 10 winners.”

2. San Jose Mercury News (USA) – Business is booming in virtual worlds. “To save money in these tough times, universities, conference planners and global companies have started holding gatherings for far-flung employees and students in the online world known as Second Life. Sun Microsystems has only one rule: Employees should show up looking like humans. Other companies don’t seem to mind if their workers take the form of animals and other entities while they’re on the clock. On a recent afternoon in Second Life, about 20 avatars – the personalized character each inhabitant of the virtual world adopts – gathered for a lecture on software development sponsored by Intel. The semiconductor giant planned the event to spark conversation about complex technical topics among employees and others across the globe.”

3. The Scotsman – Ewan Morrison: Weegie bored. “This past week I have done virtually nothing. Or rather in the real world I have done very little because I have been living a very full and exciting virtual life. In ‘reality’ I went to the supermarket a few times, performed several self-maintenance duties, ate and slept. I did not talk to a single soul other than a few checkout assistants.
Meanwhile, in my virtual week, I went to three indierock gigs, attended a lecture by the world’s leading philosopher, watched strangers having sex, swapped music and jokes with seven friends, went book shopping, was reunited with an old German buddy, spoke on Skype for eight hours and stared down at real-time footage of my own rooftop from a Nasa satellite.”

4. AFP – Schools eyeing virtual campuses. “An Internet fantasy universe teeming with faux worlds devoted to socializing and video games is expanding to include virtual classrooms and universities.
A new trend in online education involves students acting through animated characters called “avatars” mingling in simulated school settings and even rocketing off, via the Internet, on quests for knowledge.”

5. The Guardian (UK) – Why are MMOs having a population crisis? “In the real world, overpopulation is a serious concern. The 6.6 billion people on this planet are draining natural resources, and in all areas – except Europe, apparently – the problem is expected to get worse in the next half-decade. In online worlds, however, overpopulation is more of a goal than a crisis. While Blizzard’s unstoppable World of Warcraft (WoW) has seen an exponential growth in its subscriber base since 2004 – it now rests at around 10 million – two of its closest rivals, Lineage and Lineage II, have much smaller (1 million each) user bases. And most of the other notably successful Massively Multiplayer Online games (MMOs) plateau at (and slowly decline from) the 200,000 to 500,000 mark. In these worlds, people don’t use the resources – they are the resources, and if their attention drifts, the virtual world tends to languish.”

6. Pocket Gamer (UK) – Talking streaming, Second Life and mobile World of Warcraft with Vollee and Linden Lab. “A few weeks ago, we reported that start-up company Vollee is set to bring Linden Lab’s Second Life to mobile using its VolleeX engine, which streams games running on the company’s servers to mobile handsets, theoretically enabling you to play any PC game you like on your phone.
It’s an intriguing idea, with as many potential pitfalls as striking selling points. We were curious about how, and how well, it works, so we asked Vollee’s head of business development Julian Corbett and Linden Lab’s VP of platform development Joe Miller to fill us in.”

7. Financial Times Deutschland (Germany) – Commercials cause concern in the virtual Barbie world. “BarbieGirls.com is going VIP. The website associated with Mattel’s Barbie dolls – the world’s most popular toy – introduced a paid subscription section, offering users access to an improved version of its virtual playground. The site, launched just a year ago, allows users to create and dress their own online avatars, earning and using virtual “B Bucks” money. With more than 11m girls registered, BarbieGirls is about to turn into a new revenue source for Mattel. Chuck Scothon, head of Mattel’s girl brands, says the site is attracting girls in the eight-to-15 age group who may be outgrowing Barbie herself.”

8. The Times Online (UK) – Is Second Life about to have a second life?. “If there was one sentence, uttered by its creator, that neatly encapsulates the grown-up ambitions and continued infancy of Second Life, the virtual world that will be ten years old next year, it is this: “Once you get inside it’s an amazing experience, but we still have this situation where a lot of people have problems tying up their shoes.”

9. The Toronto Star – Conan the Barbarian’s latest conquest: The world of MMORPGs. “At roughly 10 million subscribers strong, the king of massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) continues to be Blizzard Entertainment’s World of Warcraft. But if the first week of Age of Conan sales is any indication, those green orcs will need to make way for barbarians. More than 400,000 players have already logged into Funcom’s Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures (www.ageofconan.com), making it one of the fastest-selling computer games of all time. About half of those numbers are based on North American sales and the other half from Europe. The MMORPG was developed out of Funcom’s Oslo, Norway studios.”

10. The Economic Times (India) – Few websites to keep kids busy during holidays. “As the summer heat swelters, temperatures seem to be soaring in an interesting new online world too. Just like virtual worlds such as Second Life helped adults escape from their mundane lives, now with the summer holidays underway, it’s time for kids to escape the shackles of the world run by parents and teachers by logging on to virtual worlds specially designed for teens.”