1. After four months back in the CEO’s seat, Phillip Rosedale has taken a step back again. It’s hard to fathom the current Linden Lab strategy at present. Tateru Nino has a good wrap on the issue here.

2. For some impressive avatar dancing, Australians can tune into ABC 1 and ABC 2 in coming weeks:

When The Physical TV Company’s new film Entanglement Theory screened in Italy in May this year, media headlines read “Avatar dancers land in Naples” and articles went on to describe “the first dance movie that sees human dancers in a performance dialogue with their avatar” (DanzaBlog). When Entanglement Theory screened in New York at the famed Dance on Camera Festival in January it was dubbed the “best” animation on the festival by The New York Times, which went on to praise the film’s “new vitality”. Entanglement Theory, recently described by Australia’s RealTime as “a seductive reverie” now lands on Australian TV screens, with broadcast premiere screenings on ABC2 on Sunday October 31 at 8:20pm and ABC1 on Sunday November 7 at 4:20pm.

More info here.

3. Second Life Viewer 2.2 is now available.

4. Tonight Live with Paisley Beebe provides another week of engaging TV. Guests include guests CelesteAngelique Zapatero, Co-Founder Positive Arts, Creative Director Club One Island; Tip Corbett, classical/compositional improvisation for piano and Ignatius Onomatopoeia, Faculty Member of University of Richmond.

5. Multi-grid currencies continue to grow on the OpenSim platform.

6. Virtual Justice sounds like an interesting read and is likely to be available free online via Creative Commons in the near future.

1. There’s a solid lineup on the latest Tonight Live with Paisley Beebe that’s well worth checking out – there’s talk on the scrapped community gateway program and the future of Linden Lab.

2. Tateru Nino continues to fire on all cylinders with some great yarns on the Emerald Viewer and the disappearance of more staff at Linden Lab.

3. Most readers here won’t need convincing that more mature web-based virtual worlds are the likely future growth trend, as they are already. HTML 5 will play a big role in that, as you can see with this stunning project. You’ll need the Google Chrome browser for it to work properly though I know some people have found it works ok in Firefox.

4. Twinity have gone retro, offering 50s style fashions and furniture.

5. Fancy a trip to the Czech Republic in 2011? Then think about presenting a paper at the 1st Global Conference on Experiential Learning in Virtual Worlds. You have a month to submit an abstract.

1. Want to win 140-thousand Linden dollars? Then make a machinima and submit it to the University of Western Australia’s competition.

2. Veteran platform OLIVE has announced new pricing and a perpetual licensing model.

3. The dynamos at ReactionGrid have launched Jibe, a web-based world based on the increasingly popular Unity3D engine.

4. Frenzoo are now offering 3D chat rooms.

5. Kzero have an excellent summary of a piece of research conducted on children’s play in virtual worlds: do take the time to have a read. 52% of those young children surveyed used virtual worlds regularly and there’s some incisive discussion on the interaction between marketing, parents and children.

6. Relay for Life 2010 in Second Life was once again a big suspense. Get a glimpse here. 53 million Linden dollars were raised, which is 221-thousand US dollars: an amazing effort by any standard.

1. The winner of the 2010 Linden Prize has been announced – with the Tech Virtual Museum Workshop coming up trumps. A worthy, but unsurprising winner.

With our parochial hat on, we were hoping for a UWA win but kudos anyway for being shortlisted.

2. It’s quite the week for virtual worlds development company news. First is the creation of a new Canada-based production company called Startled Cat, a joint effort between Remedy Communications (AKA Doug Thompson / Dusan Writer) and The Virtual Worlds Story Project.

Second – California based Eveny Technology, Inc. and Indiana based Global Virtual Holdings, Inc. have signed off on a joint venture called Virtual Development Center, Inc. Their focus is OpenSim, with the plan to provide an automated OpenSim solution for new business / NGO users of the platform (Disclosure: Global Virtual Holdings are a current advertiser on The Metaverse Journal).

3. Twinity are holding a competition to find the most popular fan location for the World Cup.

4. 3D avatar modelers Evolver continue to grow, partnering up with 3Dvia.

5. It’s no real surprise, but Moshi Monsters is experiencing explosive growth. Even less surprising is the announcement to churn out a raft of Moshi Monsters books – expect to see stands of them in a local bookstore next year.

1. Paisley Beebe interviews the University of Western Australia’s Jayjay Zifanwe in her latest episode of Tonight Live. You can watch it here.

2. If you have a Nokia Smartphone and want some tasty virtual worlds wallpapers, you might like to check this out.

3. The Second Life economy for the first quarter of 2010 hit an all-time high. In case you missed it, Tateru Nino has her perspective on the announcement.

4. Space-based MMO EVE Online is running a competition to increase it’s female player cohort. Apparently only 5% of players are female currently.

5. Kzero recently updated their virtual worlds by sector reports for the first quarter of 2010 – check out an example here.

6. If you’d like to get some in-depth visuals of Blue Mars, it’s worth browsing their Flickr stream.

7. We’re still keen to reprise our V2 series of profiles on couples or friends who have met in a virtual world. Here’s a previous example – why not throw your hat in the ring?