1. Aussie Second Life resident Juanita Deharo is part of a new art project called Virtual Treeline, with an associated blog.

2. The Chinese government are further expanding their control of virtual worlds, with social games the latest target according to TechCrunch.

3. Earlier this year we covered PIVOTE, which was being used to undertake paramedic training in Second Life. The platform has now won the Times Higher Education award for Outstanding ICT Initiative of the Year.

4. Novicraft, a HR and training-focused virtual environment, now has a blog devoted to its further development.

5. Linden Lab have announced that the beta of Linden Homes is open. They’ve also started promoting SL Pro, an in-world conference for content creators coming up in February.

6. This paper on gender roles in MMOs is well worth a read. The abstract:

Several hypotheses regarding the importance of gender and relationships were tested by combining a large survey dataset with unobtrusive behavioral data from 1 year of play. Consistent with expectations, males played for achievement-oriented reasons and were more aggressive, especially within romantic relationships where both partners played. Female players in such relationships had higher general happiness than their male counterparts. Contrary to stereotypes and current hypotheses, it was the female players who played the most. Female players were also healthier than male players or females in the general population. The findings have implications for gender theory and communication-oriented methods in games and online research—most notably for the use of self-reported time spent, which was systematically incorrect and different by gender.