1. Information Week (USA) – U.S. Armed Forces Look To Second Life For Training. “The Second Life role-playing and gaming communities are home to dozens of make-believe armies and navies. But you can find the real thing in virtual worlds too. The Air Force, National Guard, and Navy are using Second Life and other virtual world technology for collaboration and training. The armed forces are looking to virtual worlds to reduce the time and costs associated with travel, and create more realistic experiences for users than those provided by flat-Internet applications.”

2. VentureBeat (USA) – Facebook platform developers could see $500M in revenue this year. “A growing number of game makers on Facebook are making money from virtual goods — from poker chips to virtual clothes that users can buy or earn while playing gaming applications with their friends on Facebook. The combined ecosystem of these game developers and other companies supplying services to them could generate half a billion dollars in revenue in 2009. That’s significant, considering third-party applications on Facebook have been viewed as gimmicks making no significant revenue. Facebook itself appears headed toward the $500 million revenue mark this year, mostly through advertising.”

3. The Economist (UK) – Of dragons and dungeons. “HAVING once lost badly at three-card brag—poker’s brutal ancestor played in the pubs and clubs of Britain—your correspondent worked double-shifts to pay off his gambling debt, and vowed never again to play games of chance. The only exceptions he has allowed himself over the years have been the odd video game or two, where the stakes are measured more in terms of satisfaction than hard cash. But even his early forays into the grinding world of monsters and loot favoured by “massively multiplayer online role-playing games” have dwindled since parenthood. Such virtual worlds are far too immersive and addictive—and keep getting more so with every increase in the number-crunching power and graphics of personal computers and game consoles. Better to stay clear of online communities like “EverQuest” or “World of Warcraft” if you are perpetually running out of time in the real world.”

4. Business Week (USA) – Studying Epidemics in Virtual Worlds. “A day after news reports about an outbreak of swine flu in Mexico, health officials in Allegheny County, Pa., huddled to discuss contingency plans. How should they respond if the virus came to their part of the world? By closing schools? With widespread vaccinations? To test different courses of action, they turned to computer scientists who had built a working model of the county. “It helps come up with recommendations of when and how to intervene,” says Dr. Ron Voorhees, chief of epidemiology and biostatistics at the Allegheny County Health Dept.”

5. ICT Results (European Union) – When virtual reality feels real. “Despite advances in computer graphics, few people would think virtual characters or objects are real. Yet placed in a virtual reality environment most people will interact with them as if they are really there. European researchers are finding out why. In trying to understand presence – the propensity of humans to respond to fake stimuli as if they are real – the researchers are not just gaining insights into how the human brain functions. They are also learning how to create more intense and realistic virtual experiences, opening the door to myriad applications for healthcare, training, social research and entertainment. “Virtual environments could be used by psychiatrists to help people overcome anxiety disorders and phobias… by researchers to study social behaviour not practically or ethically reproduced in the real world, or to create more immersive virtual reality for entertainment,” explains Mel Slater, a computer scientist at ICREA in Barcelona and University College, London, who led the team behind the research.”

6. The Gazette (UK) – Godfather of online gaming: Inventor of Mud Dr Richard Bartle. “Virtual worlds are a global industry worth tens of millions of pounds a year. Eleven million people pay an annual fee of $15 – a bit less in poorer countries – to play the adventure game World of Warcraft. Twenty five million players have at some point entered the kids’ on-line universe Habbo, and players spend an astonishing average of 38 Euros a month buying imaginary possessions for their on-screen characters.”

7. MediaPost (USA) – Are Media Companies Missing The Virtual World Mark? “Many traditional entertainment media companies are missing out on huge opportunities to market and monetize their content libraries in Casual Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) worlds. Some forward-thinking companies have dipped their toes into the interactive entertainment pool, but there are many obstacles to successfully extending your brand into an engaging interactive experience. As innovative brands explore developing Casual MMOs, a number of important lessons can help lead them to success.”

8. Business Week (USA) – Virtual Currencies Gain in Popularity. “Make way, Zambian kwacha. There’s a hot new exotic currency on the market, only it’s not from any country on earth—at least not one in the material world. This currency is called the Project Entropia Dollar (PED) and it’s used to buy and sell goods on the planet Calypso, in an online gaming world called Entropia Universe. The PED is among a growing number of alternative currencies changing hands in virtual worlds, social networks, and other Web sites eager to make it easier for users to spend money and carry out other transactions while online.”

9. Information Week (USA) – Rumors Of Second Life’s Failure Are Just Lousy Journalism. “As a journalist and Second Life enthusiast, I’m annoyed by irresponsible articles that take it for granted that the virtual world is dying, or already dead, or a failure. In fact, Second Life is healthy and growing — I say this based on personal experience, and statements made by officials of Linden Lab, the company that created, develops and operates Second Life. Linden Lab CEO Mark Kingdon described a couple of the signs of Second Life’s health in an interview Wednesday conducted inworld at Metanomics, an interview program hosted by Cornell University, conducted inside Second Life. The number of active users now stands at about 600,000, Kingdon said; that’s up from about a half-million last year, and it follows a period of roughly a year when Second Life’s user base had plateaued. Blogger Wagner James Au analyzed the growth last month at GigaOM. Monthly repeat logins — people who logged in more than once per month — were 731,000 in March, climbing upward since August. Active users — people who’d spent more than an hour in Second Life — were 650,000.”

10. Times Online (UK) – Free Realms is latest children’s craze. “Forget the youth club — record numbers of children are spending their leisure time exploring online worlds that combine the fantasy element of traditional games with social networking. The games mark a shift in the industry away from adult-oriented virtual reality adventures and towards less gritty and more fun titles aimed at pre-teens. The popularity of these games has surged in recent months as word of mouth spreads. Two sites stand out: the Disney-owned Club Penguin attracts an estimated 4m primary-school-age children every month, and Habbo Hotel has signed up 120m teenagers worldwide. These are figures that dwarf much-hyped adult worlds such as Second Life, which has never drawn more than 2m users in a month.”

1. Federal Computer Weekly (USA) – Virtual learning gets second wind from Second Life. “Virtual-world technology is giving the idea of online training a second life in the federal government. A handful of agencies are turning to virtual worlds to create programs that bring together the best aspects of Internet-based training and the traditional classroom. Like standard online training, virtual-world software makes it possible for employees to take classes without leaving their desks, which saves on the time and costs associated with travel. And the new technology more closely replicates a classroom experience by creating a 3-D world in which students can interact with one another, the instructor and even objects in the environment.”

2. GigaOM (USA) – Can Sony’s Free Realms Compete With Club Penguin? “When it comes to MMOs, freemium worlds for kids are enormously popular and lucrative; for the most part, however, the major game publishers have done little to pursue this market. That changes this month with the launch of Free Realms, a colorful virtual world from Sony Online Entertainment. Since this new franchise is targeted at kids, including girls, Sony changed its approach from the ground up. The developer of the Everquest series and other MMORPGs aimed at the 18-34 gamer dude demographic threw out long-held assumptions about what made online worlds appealing, and used market research to learn what kids actually wanted. Turns out that instead of dramatic backstories and complex gameplay, kids want free-form fun and tools for telling their own stories.”

3. San Francisco Chronicle (USA) – Avatars, attorneys in new world of virtual law. “Like so many things, virtual law started with sex. Specifically, the first known legal case originating in a virtual world was over a bed designed for rolls in the virtual hay. Eros vs. Volkov Catteneo was not unlike business dustups that happen in the real world every day. One person created something and sold it, and another person allegedly copied it and sold cheap knockoffs. The only thing novel about this case is that the item in question was a piece of furniture made entirely of computer code, and it was bought and sold by 3-D avatars in Second Life, a virtual world run by San Francisco’s Linden Lab. Second Life user Kevin Alderman of Lutz, Fla., created the very interactive bed, which enabled avatars to engage in a range of activities (cuddling, more). But when another user started selling copies, Alderman hired real-life lawyer Francis Taney, who tracked down the real person behind the bed-copying avatar and secured a consent judgment from Florida’s U.S. District Court ordering him to quit.”

4. AFP (USA) – Virtual mobility for disabled wins Second Life prize. “An organization that lets people with disabilities virtually climb mountains and hike trails shared top honors in a first-ever Second Life prize for in-world projects improving real-world lives.
Virtual Ability and Studio Wikitecture, which designs buildings in the virtual world launched by Linden Lab in 2003, were declared co-winners of what is to be an annual prize at Second Life. The honor comes with 10,000 dollars (US) each in prize money. Virtual Ability helps people with disabilities use avatars to skydive, fish, mountain climb, hike and even fly in Second Life, the organization’s vice president David Ludwig says in a message posted online at virtualability.org.”

5. Gamasutra (USA) – Habbo Creator Sulake Planning PC Version of Bobba Mobile World. “Sulake, developer of the successful younger teen-oriented virtual world Habbo Hotel, recently launched Bobba, a virtual world for smartphones. But Sulake is not stopping there – speaking to Gamasutra, Sampo Karjalainen, Sulake co-founder and CCO mentioned that “We’re working on an iPhone version that should come out hopefully this summer,” which was recently hinted at – but the company will also bring the virtual world to PC. Bobba targets an older demographic than Habbo’s 13-16 year old main demographic. The virtual world, which is similar in concept to Habbo, currently runs on certain Nokia smartphones, and aims for a demographic of age 16 and older, providing a place where users can meet, date, party, work together, and otherwise network socially. ”

6. VentureBeat (USA) – Game and virtual world fundings reach $936.8 million in 2008. “This is a second update to our game and virtual worlds funding list. Here we’re adding new data from Jussi Laakkonen’s blog. Previously, we had updated to include data from Virtual World Management’s list, so the number is much bigger than we reported earlier. In 2008, VentureBeat chronicled lots of game and virtual world fundings. Our updated list now shows 112 game companies raised more than $936.8 million worth of venture capital and angel funds. This amount doesn’t include undisclosed fundings listed at the bottom. In 2007, game and virtual world companies raised $613 million, according to Jussi Laakkonen.”

7. Atlanta Journal Constitution (USA) – Kids are focus of video game company Elf Island. “iz Kronenberger and her husband Craig came up with the term “gaming for good” to describe the mission of their new company. The entrepreneurial Atlanta couple set out to create a video game company where kids could make a difference in the real world. They wanted to combine competitive game playing, social interaction and storytelling with social responsibility. They formed the company, called Elf Island, about two years ago. The site, ElfIsland.com, launched in April. Through one non-profit partnership, when kids help save a polar bear in the online world, they also help real polar bears.”

8. CIO (USA) – Red Hat to host Second Life-like virtual JBoss trade show. “Red Hat is stealing a page from the Second Life playbook and will host an online conference for users and partners of its JBoss Java-based middleware products in which people will have their own avatars and can virtually attend a conference as if it was a live trade show. The JBoss Virtual Experience is a Web-based conference through which JBoss executives and engineers will give the usual keynote speeches and host sessions just as they would at a regular trade show, according to Red Hat. The virtual conference, for which people can register now, also will have booth exhibits from JBoss, Red Hat and other event sponsors.”

9. CIO (USA) – Ignoring Web 2.0 Will Cost You. “Not wild about wikis? Not big on blogs? Not sold on Second Life? IT execs who ignore Web 2.0 collaboration technologies could be hurting their company’s bottom line. That’s the message from enterprise IT leaders and industry analysts who are convinced that Web 2.0 technologies are the real deal. “Not embracing social networking is like saying I’d rather hide my money under the mattress than put it in a bank. Companies make a big mistake when they prohibit these tools out of the sheer fear of what employees will say when they communicate with one another,” says Rene Bonvanie, senior vice president at Serena Software, a maker of application life-cycle management tools.”

10. New York Times (USA) – In Room 100, It’s Sid and Nancy All Over Again. “By consensus, the Hotel Chelsea is not the hub of bohemian life it used to be. Two summers ago, Stanley Bard, the beloved longtime manager, was replaced by a corporate management team. Rents rose, artists left. Those who managed to stay were confronted by a battery of disturbing changes: The pigeonhole mailboxes behind the front desk were removed, and Bob Dylan’s old room underwent renovations. But now, thanks to Second Life, a 3-D virtual world on the Internet, the hotel’s spirit lives on.”

1. BBC (UK) – Virtual worlds and web ‘merging’. “Second Life boss, Mark Kingdon, said identity is key in virtual worlds. “You take one avatar and you cross multiple virtual worlds… that is going to be a really powerful and important part of the virtual world future,” predicted Mark Kingdon, the boss of Second Life. This online fantasy space had 1.4m users over the past two months, out of its 17m registered users, who can access to products and places replicated from real life. The residents can spend their time visiting exact replicas of actual tourist hotspots, shops, or even bizarre fantasy lands. Videos on the site’s homepage aim to help users find content that interests them within the vast 3D environment. Second Life may have been one of the first virtual worlds of its kind, but six years on, the competition is fierce.”

2. USA Today (USA) – In virtual worlds, kids just want to grow up. “While Peter Pan never wanted to grow up, it seems that today tweens (kids ages 8 to 12) are anxious to do so, at least in virtual worlds. Banking on kids’ desire to play at “growing up” is a new online game called SuperSecret.
The site was created to give kids a place to go after they outgrow the mega-popular virtual worlds of Club Penguin and Webkinz but before they are ready for the more adult online games of World of Warcraft or the social networking sites Facebook and MySpace. SuperSecret entices kids with the wish fulfillment of living a virtual life that ages them a lot quicker than in real life. After playing the game for about 30 days, kids will age from the entry age of 10 years to age 15. With each birthday comes new privileges and things to do, as well as access to new parts of the virtual world.”

3. CNET (USA) – Hacking online games a widespread problem. “It will likely come as no surprise to anyone familiar with virtual worlds and online games that they can be hacked. But what might come as a shock is the sheer breadth of types of exploits that are possible. That was the broad message of a Thursday panel called, appropriately, “Exploiting Online Games” at the RSA 2009 security conference here. Moderated by Gary McGraw, CTO of software security consulting firm Cigital and an author of several books, the panel took the audience on a deep dive into the diverse ways that hackers and others have figured out to either skim real money or to gain game play advantages not available to normal players.”

4. Touch Arcade (USA) – ‘World of Warcraft’ on an iPhone… For Real? “Most of you have probably seen World of Warcraft-on-iPhone claims/videos/mock-ups before, but this time it looks like it might actually be true. Someone posted this YouTube video of World of Warcraft running on an iPhone.”

5. Federal News Radio (USA) – Virtual Worlds: the next-generation of web 2.0. “Imagine being a soldier in Saudi Arabia who steps into a holographic tent for the training he needs to pass the sergeant’s exam. Or an emergency manager in a rural Oregon county who goes to a telepresence room where her avatar meets with the avatar of the state emergency management director to negotiate for badly needed relief supplies after a flood. That’s the promise of “virtual worlds”, a term which describes such popular web destinations as Second Life and sites where users can meet and interact in graphical environments that exist only in a computer. Today, some of the best minds in government, private industry, and science are wrapping up the 2-day, 2nd annual Federal Consortium of Virtual Worlds conference. The meeting is being held in the analog space of the National Defense University, at historic Fort McNair in southwest D.C., but there are also virtual participants online watching through webcasts, and in a number of virtual communities, as well as on Facebook and Twitter.”

6. The Guardian (UK) – A whole new world of studying. “There’s not a red pen in sight when Russell Stannard marks his master’s students’ essays – but it’s not because the students never make mistakes. Stannard doesn’t use a pen, or even paper, to give his students feedback. Instead – and in keeping with his role as principal lecturer in multimedia and ICT – he turns on his computer, records himself marking the work on-screen, then emails his students the video. When students open the video, they can hear Stannard’s voice commentary as well as watch him going through the process of marking. The resulting feedback is more comprehensive than the more conventional notes scrawled in the margin, and Stannard, who works at the University of Westminster, now believes it has the potential to revolutionise distance learning.”

7. Sydney Morning Herald (Australia) – Second Life to banish racy content. “Second Life plans to clean up the streets of its virtual mainland by providing stricter control of adult content and sending racy material to a separate faux continent. The announcement comes as Second Life creator Linden Labs moves to enhance the virtual world’s viability as a venue for education, conferences, and business.”

8. Virtual Worlds News (USA) – Wiggles Release Pseudo-World For Preschoolers. “I started my day off with some WiggleTime, the new pseudo-virtual world from the very energetic child’s group The Wiggles. I call it a pseudo-virtual world becuase it’s described as a virtual world and hews to that metaphor, but it’s a single-user experience for now. ”

9. Sydney Morning Herald (Australia) – Second Life’s second wind. “Doomsayers rashly declared it “dead and buried” and the media lost interest, but virtual world Second Life continues to prosper as the real economy falters, a virtual world commentator says. After a few years of immense hype, reports late last year chronicled Second Life’s apparent malaise, as companies faced having to ditch their virtual presence as users lost interest.”

10. The Age (Australia) – Your Turn: eKidna World. “You have to admire 40-year-old Brisbane mum Karen Orford. The response from most parents fearful of the impact of games and online worlds on their kids is to ban them from the household, but instead, Karen put her house and $300,000 on the line to build a kid-friendly virtual world. The result is eKidna World, a safe and fun online site designed for 8-12 year olds that is uniquely Australian, and includes games like surfing, fishing, kangaroo racing, snowball throwing and sheep herding. “

1. CNET (USA) – Second Life’s economy is the envy of the real world. “Virtual world Second Life is out with its Q1 2009 Economic Report and things are looking up. In fact, Second Life economics look much better than the real world. Users are spending much more time on the site despite a drop in land ownership. In an interview with CNET News, Linden Labs CEO Mark Kingdon estimated “user-to-user monetary transactions in Second Life may hit $450 million in 2009, up from $350 million.”

2. Animation World Network (USA) – Children’s Virtual World Company Tribal Nova Gets $3 Million. “Tribal Nova, a Montreal based developer and operator of parent-friendly virtual worlds and online educational gaming services for 3-12 year olds, announced today the closing of a $3 million growth financing round from iNovia Capital and ID Capital. “Tribal Nova is well positioned to succeed in a market that has great potential for growth,” said Chris Arsenault, Managing Partner at iNovia Capital. “Children are consuming media and entertainment in new ways these days, with a significant amount of time and attention spent on the internet. Media companies recognize that fact and are searching for different ways to engage their existing audiences.”

3. USA Today – Eco-games help kids to do good. “In Elf Island, kids enter a lush virtual world as an elf. While they can design their own elf avatar, buy it a house and decorate it, play fun minigames, and safely chat with others within this world, what makes this online game stand out from the more than 200 others is its overarching theme that being an elf means doing good in the world. The game ties the story of unlocking the secret of Elf Island to doing a series of “Good Quests” in this virtual world, which are then mirrored in real life. The current “Tree Good Quest” has kids playing games to earn seeds to plant fruit trees in the desert of Niger. Working with nonprofit Plant-It 2020 and the Eden Foundation, when the in-game goal of planting 20,000 trees is reached, 2,000 actual fruit trees will be planted in Niger.”

4. Ocala.com (USA) – Software That Guards Virtual Playgrounds. “Virtual worlds for children and teenagers — Web sites like Neopets, Club Penguin and Habbo — are a big business. On these sites, children create an avatar and, with it, explore an imaginary universe. They can play games, chat and decorate virtual rooms or other spaces. By the end of this year, there will be 70 million unique accounts — twice as many as last year — in virtual worlds aimed at children under 16, according to K Zero, a consulting firm. Virtual Worlds Management, a media and trade events company, estimates that there are now more than 200 youth-oriented virtual worlds “live, planned or in active development.”

5. VentureBeat (USA) – How I became a virtual world believer. “The media narrative about Second Life and virtual worlds is starting to get past the hype stage, past the bashing stage, and is beginning to resemble reality. VentureBeat’s Dean Takahashi has covered this shift in a thorough Q&A with parent company Linden Lab’s CEO Mark Kingdon. Public misperception of Second Life and the virtual world landscape is beginning to change as we see what it means for the evolution a new global culture and economy. I can well understand the skepticism of those who are unfamiliar with Second Life, because I remember how I felt the first time I heard about it. At the time I was an investigative journalist, and I didn’t see at first how involvement in virtual worlds could be justified. I imagined it as the ultimate form of escapism from a physical world too far gone.”

6. University of Delaware (USA) – Fashion professor finds past research takes on new life. “University of Delaware professor Sharron Lennon is one of the world’s foremost experts on human behavior and dress. She has studied consumer behavior and the relationship between appearance and social perception for nearly 30 years. Her dissertation research at Purdue University focused on how physical appearance cues affect people’s impressions about each other. Recently, however, she has found that colleagues interested in consumer behavior are beginning to study consumer behavior by looking at avatars — animated characters that people create to represent themselves in computer-generated virtual worlds such as Second Life.”

7. Tampa Bay Online (USA) – Being dead is no reason to give up your online social life. “In today’s world of always-connected social media, there’s no reason to stop interacting online simply because you’re dead. A wave of new companies are starting to offer services such as virtual cemeteries where guests can visit and e-mail alerts set up by funeral homes to remind relatives near and wide about the anniversary of your death.”

8. Adweek (USA) – Virtual Shopping, Real Results. “Despite the flash-in-the-pan success of online worlds like Second Life, marketers are flocking to virtual reality — for research purposes. Computerized store simulations — in which consumers “shop” in on-screen environments that look very close to the real thing — are now standard for the larger packaged-goods firms like Procter & Gamble, Frito-Lay, ConAgra and Intel, which have been using them for years. But now there are several factors speeding the adoption of VR shopping research among other, smaller players, including better technology, lower prices, the expanded use of brainwave and EKG measurements on consumers to hone results, more emphasis on shopper marketing and the ubiquity of broadband. While firms like P&G tend to do such simulations in-house, IRI, the Chicago-based market research firm, began offering the program to clients about a year or so ago. Earlier this month, Staci Covkin, vp, consumer and shopper insights at IRI, gave a presentation on the subject at the Advertising Research Foundation’s Re:think conference in New York.”

9. ITworld – Massive server purchase likely in Chinese Warcraft deal. “Chinese online game firm NetEase.com will buy all-new servers to start operating World of Warcraft in China this year, potentially leaving masses of unused computing clusters in the hands of the current Chinese operator. NetEase will distribute and run the game in China for three years after current operator The9’s license expires in June. NetEase announced the deal with Blizzard Entertainment, the game’s U.S. owner, on Thursday. NetEase will need massive servers for the extremely popular game. Chinese Internet cafes are often packed with teenagers who chain-smoke as they play the game for full days or nights.”

10. The Guardian (UK) – Bobba: Habbo Hotel creators land on mobiles. “Alice has just reminded me that Habbo Hotel creators Sulake have released a new “pocketsize” virtual world, for mobile phones. The hugely successful Finnish company, whose Habbo has over 129m accounts registered, are currently beta testing Bobba, available for the Nokia N-series and the iPhone. At the moment, information is thin, but the screenshots suggest an avatar-led social space, in which players can create their own spaces and chat with other users.”

1. CNET (USA) – Second Life strives for a second wind. “After it made headlines last week for yet another executive leaving the company, you’d really think things couldn’t get much worse for virtual world Second Life and its parent company Linden Lab. The marketing hype–it’s the next Internet!–bottomed out long ago. There was a wave of unflattering press, from virtual terrorism to technical problems to banking scandals. Even the NBC sitcom “The Office” jumped on board, lambasting Second Life with an episode in which Dwight Schrute, the show’s archetypal “creepy nerd,” professed his addiction.
“I signed up for Second Life about a year ago,” Schrute, played by actor Rainn Wilson, explained with his usual dweeby pomposity. “Back then, my life was so great that I literally wanted a second one.”

2. Network World (USA) – Inside the Smithsonian Institution’s first “virtual museum”. “Many education organizations would love to have their own museums. Of course, the big reason that a lot of them don’t is because it costs a lot of money to own a building large enough to display their exhibits. The Smithsonian Latino Center, a branch of the Smithsonian educational and research institution, has solved this problem by taking its museum online with the help of Ohio University’s Virtual Immersive Technologies and Arts for Learning (VITAL)Lab. The new Latino Virtual Museum which can be accessed through virtual reality platform Second Life, consists of hundreds of different exhibits that have been scanned in as three-dimensional digital replicas for users to explore. Types of exhibits include galleries of Latino paintings, video clips detailing Latino history, a room filled with virtual Caribbean instruments and even a disco club where users’ avatars can learn to dance to meringue music.”

3. Crispy Gamer (USA) – Freaky Creatures Goes Live. “Abandon Interactive Entertainment’s Freaky Creatures is ready for prime time. The massively multiplayer online game that purports to combine the best of online multiplayer gaming, collectible action figures, virtual worlds and social networking is available on PC, MAC and mobile.”

4. Mobile Phones (UK) – How Playstation games will end up on mobiles. “An entirely new way of running gaming services has emerged from one of the inventors of the Apple Mac, and it could mean that super powerful games could soon be played on your mobile handset. The idea is obvious but fraught with technical difficulties – don’t run the game on your remote PC, laptop or handset – run it on a central server and just show a streaming video representation on your portable device and use the broadband nework for your controls. So far the company, OnLive, which has just put its gaming system onto Beta test among US users, is only targeting low powered PCs, laptops and Macs, but will almost certainly begin targeting Wi-Fi attached handsets later such as the iPhone. Imagine playing Halo 2 or Doom on something as small as a touch screen phone or these new tiny Netbooks, which cellular operators are increasingly looking to offer.”

5. Virtual Worlds News – Sulake Bringing Bobba To Mobiles. “Earlier today Sulake soft launched what could potentially be the Habbo-killer for teen virtual worlds. Bobba is a new, 3D virtual world, now in beta, for mobile users. Currently Bobba is only available on the Nokia S60, but the website lists iPhone and iPod touch versions as “coming soon.” If they come soon enough, Sulake could beat out Genkii’s upcoming Sparkle for the title of first 3D virtual world on the iPhone.”

6. CNN – Artists visit virtual Second Life for real-world cash. “It’s 9 a.m. when Cylindrian Rutabaga takes the microphone at a familiar bar. The funny-named musician with crinkled red hair, a white blouse and flowing skirt picks up her custom-made guitar and looks across the audience with a blank stare. Her fans already are rocking out: Some breakdance on the bar’s tile floor. Others flail about with the vigor of ’70s disco dancers. One man with a towering afro and 3-D glasses looks like he’s swimming the backstroke to some nonexistent beat. The randomness of the scene doesn’t seem to faze Cylindrian. She isn’t shocked even when hordes of other fans — including one man who wears a kilt and is followed by a small herd of sheep — start teleporting into the room.”

7. Macau Daily Times (China) – Second Life finding new life. “Linden Lab chief executive Mark Kingdon shakes his head when he sees news stories heralding the demise of former Internet darling Second Life. Reporters that rushed into Second Life to cover cyber-events and portrayed the online fantasy realm a science fiction future come true have been pulling up stakes and tearing down the community they had embraced. Well-known Silicon Valley gossip website Vallywag even started a death watch for Second Life. “You read those stories; as CEO I have to shake my head,” said Mark Kingdon, who last year ago took over for founder Philip Rosedale as chief executive of San Francisco-based Linden Lab, the company behind Second Life. “The reality is that Second Life continues to grow; every second someone joins. Second Life is hopping.” The number of “active users” at Second Life has grown 25 percent since September of last year, while the amount of time and money spent in the virtual world has climbed by similar percentages, according to Kingdon.”

8. The Business Insider (USA) – Second Life’s Second Act: Business Teleconferencing? “Another high-profile exit from Linden Lab, the company behind Second Life: VP for Biz Dev Gene Yoon (a/k/a the avatar “Ginsu Linden”) is leaving the company. Gene’s departure follows the exit of John Zdanowski, Second Life’s CFO, less than two weeks ago. There’s been a lot of turnover at Linden. The core executive team that gave birth to Second Life, witnessed its meteoric rise, and endured some of the backlash are now mostly gone.”

9. Massively (USA) – Infringers of Dune: Dune role-players shut down by Herbert Estate. Spice keeps flowing. “Among the various business, educational and social uses to which Second Life is put, Role-Playing gamers have quite a number of thriving communities. If you want to role-play in the world of Joss Whedon’s Firefly, or Straczynski’s Babylon 5, Lucas’ Star Wars universe(s), Tolkien’s Middle Earth, John Norman’s Gor, Frank Herbert’s Dune, Roddenberry’s Star Trek, or the settings of Doctor Who, Torchwood, Battlestar Galactica, Harry Potter, Final Fantasy VII or CCP/White Wolf’s World of Darkness, Second Life is home to all of these and more.”

10. Washington Post (USA) – At Least Retailers Are Upbeat About The Virtual Economy. “More proof that the virtual goods business continues to do well: Linden Lab is forecasting that users will conduct about $450 million dollars worth of virtual transactions in Second Life this year, up 28 percent from 2008. The company also surveyed more than 2,600 of its virtual business owners, including landlords, event promoters and retailers, and found that they’re quite optimistic about the state of the virtual economy: 64 percent reported that they generate positive net income from the products/services they sell. 52 percent said they generated up to 20 percent of their total income from Second Life. 61 percent were optimistic that their revenues will grow this year, with 19 percent saying they were “very optimistic”. 31 percent planned to invest slightly or significantly more in their virtual business over the next six months.”

1. The Economist (UK) – Intangible value. “Perhaps it should not be a surprise. In the midst of a global capital shortage, the first company to list this year on New York’s NASDAQ exchange not only needs no money; its source of profit is receiving cash for items that do not exist. Changyou is a three-year-old online-gaming business being spun out of Sohu, China’s second-largest internet portal. The deal was due to be priced on April 2nd, as The Economist went to press, in a nostalgic reminder of what the stockmarket used to look like. At the top of the expected price range Changyou will be valued at about $820m, after a special distribution of $100m to its parent. The opening price may be higher still, given strong demand.”

2. Virtual Edge (USA) – Virtual World Evangelist at IBM Produces Virtual Meetings in 3D. “Big Blue has a lot of irons in the fire these days. As a virtual event platform agnostic company, IBM has worked with Second Life, Open Sim, Torque, Active Worlds, Unity 3D and Olive. Karen Keeter, a marketing executive with IBM research, believes that, at this point, no single platform is the magic bullet for all 3D virtual business demands. IBM virtual event clients (internal and external) demonstrate needs across a wide spectrum, from strategy workshops to marketing and sales to collaboration among a global workforce, and the company utilizes a variety of platforms, in some cases integrated with IBM tools and applications, to meet these new demands. IBM has a strong presence on Second Life, growing from approximately 12 virtual islands to somewhere between 45 and 50 which are managed independently of IBM’s corporate home base.”

3. Washington Post (USA) – Virtual World Habbo Sold $60 Million In Virtual Goods In 2008. “Sulake Corp., parent company of Habbo, one of the most heavily-trafficked, advertiser-friendly virtual worlds for teens, is privately held, so financial details about Habbo have been a bit of a black box. But the company recently served up some details: It says it brought in roughly $74 million (50 million euros) in revenue last year. And just about $60 million of it, or 80-85 percent, came from users who bought virtual goods like furniture, clothing or paid for access to the Habbo Club.”

4. Idaho Business Review (USA) – U of I virtual technology program aids microbiology research. “What if doctors could perform surgery from thousands of miles away? Or an architect could walk into a virtual building plan and move beams and joists to test for structural integrity? What if you could meet with potential business partners online, shake hands and physically feel it? Those are just a few of the long-term implications of the work being done by the University of Idaho’s Virtual Technology and Design department – a program in the College of Art and Architecture on the bleeding edge of virtual reality, where complex sets of data like building specs or disease pathology are transformed into interactive 3-D models that allow students, businesses and researchers to gain new insights into the information they work with.”

5. The Times of India (India) – For training, medicos turn to Second Life. “A British medical institute has given e-learning a whole new dimension. Med students at Imperial College London navigate a full-service hospital where they see patients, order X-rays, consult with colleagues and make diagnoses. But none of it is real. These prospective doctors are treating virtual patients in Second Life, the internet world where users interact through online alter egos called avatars. The third-year med students are taking part in a pilot program for game-based learning, which educators believe can be a stimulating change from lectures and textbooks, reports CNN.”

6. The Telegraph (UK) – Second Life’s span is virtually over as firms decide to get real. “While the site is still beloved by geeks and the socially awkward, Deloitte’s director of technology research, Paul Lee, says it has been “virtually abandoned” by “normal” people and businesses. In 2006 multinational companies, including BT, Coca-Cola, Adidas and Toyota, were scrabbling to create “in world” presences to profit from what was expected to be the next great internet cash cow. But today the Second Life high street is mostly deserted, as businesses have realised that despite management claims that the site has 15m members, far fewer people actually play the game. Research for The Daily Telegraph shows just 580,000 people logged on to the game last week.”

7. InternetNews.com (USA) – SimCity’s Will Wright: ‘Web Colliding With Reality’. “The richness of Web-based environments is starting to blur the distinction between games and reality, according to Will Wright, the gaming industry legend perhaps best known as the creator of SimCity and Spore.
“I think the Web is letting people think more about their identities and we’re starting to see overlap of [the real] and virtual environments,” Wright said during an onstage keynote interview here at the Web 2.0 Expo Thursday. “We’re at the point where we can pretty much hold up a cell phone to get someone’s profile. I think the Web is starting to intersect and collide with reality in interesting ways.”

8. The National (UAE) – The net effect of digital Islam. “I am writing in the shadow of a small mosque. This morning I visited several other mosques, admiring their architecture, and then listened to some sermons and recitations from the Quran. While having my coffee I talked to acquaintances on Islamic issues and went to other sources for information on Islamic medicine, fatwas and jihad in Somalia.
The fact that I happen to be in the heart of Wales and stuck in my university office has not prevented me from making these visits and engaging in these discussions.”

9. Scientific American (USA) – Therapists Use Virtual Worlds to Address Real Problems. “When a troubled 13-year-old named Joe first entered the Kids in Transition program in 2007 in Camden, N.J., he hardly spoke to his therapist. Like many teens at this residential mental health treatment facility, he was admitted because he had trouble controlling his anger, had run away from home several times, and had a history of run-ins with the law, according to Heather Foley, a social worker with the program. Therapists typically encourage patients like Joe to get at the core of their problems via face-to-face role-playing—pretending to be in a situation and having the patient practice how to handle it. But Foley says this approach was a nonstarter for Joe, whose confrontational behavior and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) impair his ability to engage and focus in this way.”

10. Vineyard Gazette Online (USA) – Islanders Create Online Community Devoted to Wildlife Conservation. “The internet may have been designed for scientists to collaborate across vast distances, but it has since become all things to all people. Accessing seemingly infinite information and instant communication across the globe are still the main uses of the Web, but there’s a new trend swiftly becoming standard online practice: social networking. This is about creating a personal presence in cyberspace. Facebook and MySpace were some of the first major social networking sites, but another fast-growing sector of the social web, called Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games, or MMORPGs, represents a different kind of online community. Rather than creating a personal page that shares your thoughts, contact information and photographs as on Facebook, these MMORPGs ask the user to invent an avatar, a character that represents less of who you are and more of who you’d like to be. Players then move their avatars throughout vast virtual worlds, doing battle, completing quests, buying virtual goods and real estate, or just chatting with other players. Second Life, World of Warcraft and Everquest are among the more popular, with World of Warcraft now boasting over 10 million subscribers worldwide.”

1. Examiner (USA) – Small Worlds lets ‘tweens take control. “Most kids today have no concept of a world without the Internet. They’re used to using electronic means to find information, communicate with each other and share things like pictures and videos. The success of social sites like Myspace and Facebook is based on the users’ ability to share experiences with each other; a natural outgrowth of sites like these are online communities like Second Life which are largely supported by user-generated content.”

2. FOX Business (USA) – Fundraising Conference Takes on a ‘Second Life’. “Grizzard Communications Group recently held a conference, Winning Strategies in Challenging Times, focusing on effective and efficient ways of communicating to donors during difficult economic times. The conference was held February 24th – 26th and featured a live panel discussion presented in the online virtual world of Second Life. Major George Hood, National Community Relations Secretary of The Salvation Army, along with other IT communications associates from Alexandria, VA and Reston, PA participated in a panel discussion as animated “Avatars.”

3. IGN (USA) – GDC 09: Breaking Down World of Warcraft. “Blizzard’s Jeffrey Kaplan was at the Game Developer Conference 2009 to talk about directed gameplay. Over the course of the crowded, hour-long session he kept the attendees laughing with a number of World of Warcraft inside jokes as he discussed the ins and outs of what he sees as proper quest design and how to forge the best possible relationship with the player. Kaplan, who previously handled design on World of Warcraft and is now working on Blizzard’s unannounced MMO project, kicked things off by explaining that directed gameplay should guide a player to a fun experience.”

4. TechCrunch (USA) – Sparkle: The iPhone Gets Its First Virtual World (And It’s Completely 3D). “The number of apps for the iPhone/iPod Touch is nearing the 30,000 mark but hardly any application takes advantage of the network effects that lie within the Apple ecosystem. Most developers simply ignore the fact that all iPhones and iPod Touches are interconnected globally and roll out stand-alone applications. This is one of the major reasons why the vast majority of fun apps lack stickiness and are easily forgotten after a few quick bursts. But a Tokyo-based start-up called Genkii is building a unique app that has the potential to not only let a few iPhone users connect with each other, but thousands of them – at the same time or asynchronously. Sparkle is poised to become the first virtual world for the iPhone. What’s more, it’s being developed completely from scratch, exclusively as an MMO for the iPhone/iPod Touch.”

5. Washington Post (USA) – Industry Moves: Second Life CFO Departs For The Real World. “Linden Lab CFO John Zdanowski has resigned, headed off to “find the next business adventure,” according to the company blog. Known as “Zee Linden” in-world (his avatar is pictured here), Zdanowski said it was time to move on given that Linden had successfully grown from a cool tech startup, to a profitable company with a “very healthy cash balance.” He joined in 2006, right before everyone from Reuters and Showtime, to the U.S. Army became obsessed with Second Life, and he’s one of the few members of the company’s initial executive team that lasted this long: founder and CEO Phillip Rosedale stepped down in early 2008, and co-founder and CTO Cory Ondrejka (now at EMI) left in 2007.”

6. Information Week (USA) – How One Small Town Is Using Twitter And Other Social Media. “ollowing my post earlier this week about why local governments aren’t making use of Twitter, Facebook, and other social media, I found myself in Second Life with the city engineer of the town of LaSalle, Ill, talking about how the government of her little town uses Twitter, blogs, Facebook, Skype and Second Life to better serve their citizens and stay in touch with other small-town officials across the United States and Canada.”

7. Internet Business Law Seminars – Trademark Protection in Second Life: USPTO Grants Protection to an Avatar. “The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) approved a trademark registration filed by a person seeking to protect her avatar image, which represents the content services provided by the avatar’s creator in the Second Life virtual world. Commentators have noted that this decision is groundbreaking as it opens doors for further real life trademark protection for images used in virtual worlds.
Alyssa LaRoche runs a virtual content and services business in Second Life, a three-dimensional virtual world which opened to the public in 2003. As part of the promotion of her business, LaRoche created an avatar image of herself – her alter ego,– which represents her business. The image is called “Aimee Weber” and features a young woman with pigtails and glasses, wearing high black boots, striped tights, green tutu, a see-through green shirt, and brilliant blue wings.”

8. San Francisco Examiner (USA) – The 3-minute Interview: Mark Kingdon. “The CEO of San Francisco-based Linden Lab, maker of the virtual Internet world Second Life that’s imagined and created by users, explains why his company launched the $10,000 Linden Prize to honor the site’s most innovative user. The winner is slated to be announced by April 30. Why give this award? There’s an incredible amount of innovation inside of Second Life. There are many examples … where resident or community groups created something really wonderful that had a real-world connection and impact.”

9. Virtual Worlds News (USA) – UK Government’s “Indulgence” In Second Life Shows Problems Of Perception. “Earlier this week I saw an report by Sky News Online taking the UK’s Department for Work and Pensions to task for “wasting” £20,000 to build a site in Second LIfe and £12,000 a year to maintain it in this time of economic downturn. One complaint is that the virtual world activity wasn’t advertised on the DWP’s website. That makes perfect sense as it sounds like the effort is a test case for an area for companies and government institutions to show off technological innovation. And, as Nortel’s Nic Sauriol pointed out, if that’s the most they waste on a pilot program, it’s pretty well done. ”

10. The Irish Times (Ireland) – Social networking ‘a business opportunity’. “Companies that block access to Facebook, Twitter and networking sites like LinkedIn do so to the detriment of their businesses, warned Web 2.0 evangelists at an event in Derry this week. A conference for business start-ups, Awakening Creative Entrepreneurship , highlighted how social networking was a business opportunity and not a threat. “These are disruptive technologies that change everything. It scares some companies, but if they don’t embrace it they will wither and die,” said Ian Hughes, formerly of IBM, where he held the role of “metaverse evangelist”.

1. Ars Technica (USA) – Real banking coming to virtual worlds. “Virtual economies of MMO games have been becoming increasingly intertwined with real-world money over the past few years. Titles like Second Life allow players to exchange cash for in-game currency, while others like EVE Online are player-driven and don’t limit currency or materials in the game’s economy. Now, however, the lines are being blurred even further, as a Swedish video game developer has been granted preliminary approval for a real banking license by the Swedish Finance Supervisory.”

2. Gerson Lehrman Group – High risk, High Reward: MMOGs as the Next Wave of Entertainment Media. “Gazillion Entertainment has captured headlines by inking a long-term deal with Marvel for creating online games based on Marvel’s characters. Gazillion also has other IP-related agreements, such as LEGO World. The company acquired online developer NetDevil last year and has quietly acquired other small studios to build up to their current 300-strong team. This is not the first agreement to produce online games (massively multiplayer online games — MMOGs — or virtual worlds, which are becoming increasingly synonymous) based on mass-market properties, but it is notable in its breadth and term: apparently all of Marvel’s 5000+ characters are included, and for a span of ten years. Successful MMOGs typically take 2-3 years to produce, so there is some room for a running start there, and historically these products have retained strong revenue for between five and ten years, making a long-term agreement like this sensible.”

3. MSNBC (USA) – UC San Diego and IBM Launch Center for Next-Generation Digital Media to Power Tomorrow’s Virtual Worlds. “Researchers at the University of California, San Diego today announced plans for a new campus center dedicated to invent the next generation of virtual worlds, multiple player online games, and high fidelity digital cinema, using one of the world’s most sophisticated computer servers — the IBM System z mainframe. IBM (NYSE: IBM) provided a Shared University Research (SUR) award to help the university jump-start its new Center for Next-Generation Digital Media on the UC San Diego campus. In addition to multiple peripherals and additional support, the IBM award consists of the company’s newest System z10 Enterprise Class server with the Cell Broadband Engine (Cell/B.E.).”

4. ReadWriteWeb (USA) – Finally, A Practical Use for Second Life. “When you think of virtual worlds, the first one that probably pops into your head is Second Life, but in reality, there are a number of different virtual worlds out there. There are worlds for socializing, worlds for gaming, even worlds for e-learning. But one thing that most virtual worlds have in common is that they are places for play, not practicality. (Yes, even the e-learning worlds are designed with elements of “fun” in mind). Outside of some reports that virtual worlds will replace web conferencing in the enterprise, we haven’t seen a lot of innovation in this space which would make businesses sit up and take notice. However, that may be about to change thanks to new software that lets you perform data visualization and manipulation techniques within the virtual world environment.”

5.The Ontarian (Canada) – Out of the dungeon and into the chat room. “Just over a decade ago the release of the popular romantic comedy, You’ve Got Mail, helped make the concept of meaningful social interaction online seem realistic and accessible to the average internet user. The Matrix, released a year later in 1999, likewise offered a vision of a shared virtual existence (though admittedly with more sinister implications). At around this time, the internet was a rather new and startling phenomenon to the average person. According to the International Telecommunication Union, developed nations saw only 17 per cent internet usage in 1998. Measured against a much more prominent 62 per cent in 2007. Canada in particular has a high number of net users at 84.3 per cent of the total population according to a recent estimate by Internet World Stats. In Canada, the internet has become a tightly woven part of our social fabric, changing the way we interact. Where you used to ask for someone’s number you might ask for their email or you might Facebook them (sometimes without their consent).”

6. The Industry Standard (USA) – 3D data visualizations in virtual worlds: A “wonderful advance” or fancy window-dressing? “Will “walking” through your data help you understand it better? The folks at Green Phosphor think it will, and hope to convince you. Their product Glasshouse, currently in beta, will place interactive data presentations into virtual worlds like Wonderland and Second Life. Company founder and CEO Ben Lindquist posted an article at CyberTech News Saturday describing the service. “Users can see data, and drill into it; re-sort it; explore it interactively — all from within a virtual world. Glasshouse produces graphs which are avatars of the data itself.”

7. The Chronicle of Higher Education (USA) – New Research Center to Design ‘Next Generation’ of Virtual Worlds. “Watch out, Second Life. The University of California at San Diego announced today the creation of a new research center aimed at creating the “next generation” of virtual worlds, which designers hope will be more visually rich and have more features than Second Life and other popular online environments. The center will use a new hybrid-computing platform developed by IBM. Sheldon Brown, a professor of visual arts at the university who is also the director of the new center, said artists working with simulations have been limited by the computing technologies available. The new IBM platform, Mr. Brown said, offers an increased level of flexibility and power that will give artists more freedom.”

8. The Associated Press – Hillary Clinton, e-diplomat, embraces new media. “Her videos aren’t quite viral yet and she’s not tweeting, but Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is embracing new media, using the Web to promote the agency and her role as the nation’s top envoy.
In less than three months, Clinton’s State Department has embarked on a digital diplomacy drive aimed at spreading the word about American foreign policy and restoring Washington’s image. Part of a broader Internet outreach by President Barack Obama’s administration, Clinton’s Web efforts already have outpaced those of her predecessors.”

9. Church Solutions (USA) – Church 2.0: What It Means and Why It’s Important. “I’m working on a strange sort of book titled “Church 2.0.” Often, when I’m at conferences, I run into several church leaders who aware of the project and ask what the book is about, which makes me realize I need to explain my definition of Church 2.0. You see, when most people hear my book title they automatically think of one of two things: technology or theology. Assuming the book is about technology is understandable for a few reasons. First, the term closely resembles “Web 2.0,” which refers to the recent wave of increased interactivity and social networking on the Internet. I do cover this topic but so much more, also. Another reason many assume this book is about technology is I am the Director of Technical Arts at a church. I write and speak on technology, and I have a blog called ChurchVideoIdeas.com. But this book is currently divided into three sections and technology is only one of them. My hope is that once the book is released and word spreads, the term “Church 2.0” will be much larger and more definitive than just using Web 2.0 in a church setting.”

10. CNET (USA) – Sony says 4 million go home to PlayStation Home. “In an interview with GameDaily, Sony’s senior marketing vice president Peter Dille has revealed some stats on PlayStation Home, Sony’s online virtual community, which was greeted with a rather lukewarm reception when it launched late last year. Word is 4 million people have come into Home and those who do stick around stick around for 55 minutes on average.
Sony doesn’t differentiate between active and idle users (by idle, I mean you’ve gone in once, checked it out, and never gone back), so it’s hard to say how many folks are really hard-core Home dwellers. However, what’s clear is that now that it’s had an opportunity to mature a bit, the company is making a push to publicize the virtual world that Sony officials have admitted has been a challenge to build and maintain.”

1. Kotaku (Australia) – Worlds.com Targets World of Warcraft, Second Life For Patent Suit. “Virtual world patent holder Worlds.com filed suit against NCSoft in December, claiming its games, including City of Heroes and Guild Wars, were violating its patent for multiplayer virtual environments. And it won’t stop there. Worlds.com CEO Thom Kidrin says that the company “absolutely” has intentions of going after other big virtual world creators, including Blizzard for World of Warcraft and Linden Labs for Second Life”.

2. CBC (Canada) – Virtual dealings in Second Life pose real-life privacy risks: study. “You can shop, date and commit crimes virtually in online fantasy worlds like Second Life, but you may jeopardize your privacy in the real world, the Privacy Commissioner of Canada says. What sets such worlds apart from mere games is the fact that they involve real money and real personal information, said Janet Lo, the author of the study released late last week by the Privacy Commissioner. The rules and agreements concerning privacy, however, were sometimes “missing, or just a bit unclear or vague,” Lo added.”

3. Business Insider (USA) – Linden Lab Finally Cracks Down On Second Life Porn. “Second Life is about to get a lot less sexy. Linden Lab, the company behind Second Life, announced today a range of new measures meant to finally confine Second Life’s sprawling adult community to a virtual “red light district.”

4. Information Week (USA) – Second Life Putting A Leash On Sex, Violence. “Linden Lab will build a fence around adult content in Second Life, creating dedicated adults-only areas in the virtual world and banning adult content from appearing anywhere else on the public grid, the company said Thursday. Users — known as “residents” in Second Life jargon — who want to visit the new red-light districts will need to verify their age, according to a statement on the Second Life Blog. Residents hosting adult content on their areas of Second Life will be required to flag that content. Search results will be filtered so that people who don’t want to see adult results won’t have to see it.”

5. RedOrbit (USA) – Virtual World Second Life Continues To Thrive. “Some media reports have suggested the potential demise of the former Internet virtual world of Second Life, but Linden Lab CEO Mark Kingdon claims the former Internet darling is doing better than ever, the American Free Press reported. “The reality is that Second Life continues to grow; every second someone joins. Second Life is hopping,” said Kingdon, who last year took over for founder Philip Rosedale as chief executive of San Francisco-based Linden Lab, the company behind Second Life.”

6. Gamasutra (USA) – Qube, RedBedlam Partner For ‘Messiah’ MMO Tech. “iddleware company Qube Software and virtual worlds company RedBedlam, both of them UK companies, are partnering on new MMO development tech they call Messiah. Qube’s Q Engine middleware will provide the genre and platform-agnostic client base, while RedBedlam’s ZoneBubble System will provide the server technology for a single, persistent virtual world. RedBedlam says ZBS allows for the creation of large contiguous worlds without loading zones or artificial barriers, for the benefit of developers aiming for large communities that share the same environment. ”

7. Wall Street Journal (USA) – How Do Morals Translate Offline to Online? “How does a 12-year-old’s sense of right and wrong play out when he or she is online? A recent Michigan State University study, published in the academic journal Sex Roles, isn’t answering the question but attempting to get the conversation going. The study, titled “Gender, Race and Morality in the Virtual World and Its Relationship to Morality in the Real World,” looks at responses from 515 seventh-graders to questions about the acceptability of “virtual” actions. Those actions included spreading computer viruses, emailing test answers to friends, viewing pornography and sending sexually explicit messages to strangers. It compares those results to the same students’ responses to questions about real-world behavior like cheating on tests, bullying or teasing, lying to parents or teachers and using racial slurs.”

8. MSNBC (USA) – Nortel Teams Up With Virtual Heroes to Deliver 3D Virtual Training Application. “Nortel(1) (TSX: NT)(OTCBB: NRTLQ) today announced that it is working with Virtual Heroes Inc.(2), a leader in simulations for learning, serious games and virtual worlds, to further enhance the simulation and training functionality of its web.alive communications application. Virtual Heroes Inc. (VHI), the “Advanced Learning Technology Company”, creates collaborative interactive learning solutions for the healthcare, federal systems and corporate training markets. The company is best known for its work with the America’s Army Game training platform architecture, and HumanSim(TM)(2) for medical training and education.”

9. Mediaweek (USA) – Sony a Hit With PlayStation Home. “Sony’s gamer-targeted virtual world PlayStation Home has reached a new audience milestone, having been downloaded by 5 million users since going live back in December, said officials—2.2 million of which reside in the U.S. and Canada. But don’t expect the avatar playground to become flooded with ads anytime soon, according to Jack Buser, director of PlayStation Home, Sony Computer Entertainment America.”

10. The Associated Press – Deaths of gamers leave their online lives in limbo. “When Jerald Spangenberg collapsed and died in the middle of a quest in an online game, his daughter embarked on a quest of her own: to let her father’s gaming friends know that he hadn’t just decided to desert them. It wasn’t easy, because she didn’t have her father’s “World of Warcraft” password and the game’s publisher couldn’t help her. Eventually, Melissa Allen Spangenberg reached her father’s friends by asking around online for the “guild” he belonged to.”

1. Associated Content (USA) – Islands for Sale Follow Cave Home onto Real Estate Oddities Market. “First it was a cave house that was auctioned off on eBay; now there are private islands for sale. Would you buy an island right now? What is more, would you buy a private island on Second Life? Private islands for sale aside, there currently is a unique cave home listed on eBay while a balloon note threatens a cave foreclosure. The eBay cave home auction is scheduled to go until 03-11-09 and for only $300,000 the cave could be yours; unfortunately, even though the story generated much interest, there are no bidders thus far. Will those holding private islands for sale have better luck?”

2. New York Times (USA) – Portrait of an Artist as an Avatar. “Certainly, Filthy Fluno is not the first artist to realize that in order to sell his paintings, he needs to sell himself. He does, however, work at it with impressive zeal. Every day he makes new friends and cultivates new contacts, edging himself and his work — a collection of expressionistic oil paintings and vibrant, graffiti-laced pastels — just a little bit farther into a universe that to others might appear huge and indifferent, but as Filthy sees it is stuffed with possibility and also potential customers. To this end, you will often find him wandering around art openings and dance parties, dressed in a spiffy suit and pair of sneakers, trying earnestly to chat up every person in the room.”

3. NPR (USA) – Scott Simon Looks for Coffee in Second Life. “When you think of school, you may think of students sitting in rows of desks in a classroom while a teacher lectures up front. But, what if you could go to class in your pajamas while lying on your couch? Dr. Michael DeMers is a geography professor at New Mexico State University. While he does teach in a traditional classroom, he also invites his students to join him in an online virtual world called Second Life. At least once a week, their avatars (digital versions of people) head to an island in this virtual terrain to review class notes. Host Scott Simon’s avatar paid a visit to this online virtual island to meet with Dr. DeMers, our Second Life guide. While there, Scott asked for a cup of coffee, but what he opened was a can of worms instead”.

4. Slippery Brick (USA) – VR headset mimics all five senses. “What you are looking at in the pic above is a virtual reality helmet that recreates sights, smells, sounds and even tastes from far-flung destinations. Created by British scientists, the device will allow users a life-like experience of places such as Kenya’s Masai Mara while never leaving home. You could greet friends and family on the other side of the world as though they were present in the same room. Previously, scientists have only had success with virtual reality technology recreating sound and vision. This helmet named the Virtual Cocoon could change all that.”

5. Money (UK) – Real Money Trading in a Virtual Environment – Virtual Items Can Lead To Immense Wealth (And Occasionally Death). “A virtual economy is generally taken as being the exchanging of virtual goods in a virtual world, just as it reflects how a real economy works in the Real World. However, there are times when the line between Real and Virtual economies can bleed together, when players exploit “virtual” goods in order to profit from their deeds in the “real” world. Here is an amalgamated list of some well-known (and perhaps some not so well-known) instances of where the line between “real” and “virtual” becomes a little too blurred for some.”

6. Campus Technology (USA) – Second Life: Engaging Virtual Campuses. “n the previous article in this series, Real-Life Teaching in a Virtual World, we looked at the state of Second Life as it pertains to higher education. There are so many schools represented that one could spend days exploring the college and university campuses. The ways they are used in the 3D online virtual world vary drastically, and how much and how well they are used appear to vary as well. First, the bad: ghost towns abound. Just as many corporations have created presences in Second Life with the approach of “if you build it, they will come,” some colleges and universities have done the same.”

7. Science Daily (USA) – Virtual And Real Worlds: Two Worlds Of Kids’ Morals. “Children’s moral behavior and attitudes in the real world largely carry over to the virtual world of computers, the Internet, video games and cell phones. Interestingly, there are marked gender and race differences in the way children rate morally questionable virtual behaviors, according to Professor Linda Jackson and her team from Michigan State University in the US. Their research is the first systematic investigation of the effects of gender and race on children’s beliefs about moral behavior, both in the virtual world and the real world, and the relationship between the two.”

8. The Guardian (UK) – Friendship studies reveal the power of pals. “A recent study from the University of Leipzig found that college freshmen were more likely to be friends with people they met in their first week at university if they had been randomly assigned a seat next to them in an introductory lecture. The happiness of our friends is infectious, according to researchers at Harvard and the University of California. In a study that measured the happiness of nearly 5,000 individuals over a period of 20 years, reports showed that when an individual was happy it spread through their network of friends, and their friends’ friends, and the measurable effect could last for up to a year.”

9. Accountingweb.com (USA) – Financial literacy moves to Second Life. “Ohio University and credit union industry leaders have launched a new educational video game that uses the virtual world Second Life to teach financial skills to young people. The game, Credit Union Island, is designed for high school students. Based in the teen grid of Second Life, a simulated world with millions of users, the game enables players to guide their avatars through real-life financial decisions such as taking out a college loan, making car payments and buying a home.”

10. Computerworld (USA) – No security reprieve from Blizzard’s Warden – Two good reasons to pass on MMORPGs in the office. “World of Warcraft (WoW) and other massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPG) are the source of recent rumbling in the industry. The online gaming numbers are staggering, but the notion that a significant percentage of people is logging in from work is truly the stuff of executive nightmares. The impact from lost work hours and the legality of alternate-currency businesses or “gold pharming” are worthy of discussion, but the alarm is a bit misplaced. Games have been a staple of computer workers’ existence since J. Martin Graetz, Alan Kotok and others cooked up Spacewar! on a PDP-1 in 1961, and people have been exchanging virtual identities and goods for real money since the first multiuser dungeons (MUD) in the ’80’s. Such games will always be with us, and the further up the knowledge-worker ladder one goes, the seemingly more essential their importance for blowing off steam. Modern role-playing games aren’t my thing, but I’d much rather see a senior security officer ganking Blood Elves in a cathartic frenzy for 30 minutes on company time than losing her cool when cornered by a tightly wound executive in some postincident blamestorming session.”