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.”

1. MCV (UK) – World’s first virtual football world. “Football Superstars is a free to play football MMO, published by UK Company CyberSports. It is the world’s first virtual footballing world – an interactive online virtual world designed for football fans to live a top footballer’s lifestyle and is due for release in late 2008. Once downloaded, players re-create themselves online as a footballer and then have free reign in the state of the art interactive virtual world. Players can play their way from three-a-side up to eleven-a-side matches, gaining attributes and skills in order to specialise in their chosen playing position.”

2. The London Free Press (Canada) – Public health enters virtual world. “The young denizens of Whyville never saw the dreaded Whyflu coming — though in retrospect, the flu clinic that mysteriously popped up in their virtual world a few weeks earlier should have been a clue. Avatars who hadn’t received a flu shot started coming down with the Whyflu, sneezing every time they tried to communicate with their online friends.”

3. HR Zone (UK) – The virtual world of recruiting. “The use of virtual worlds as a recruitment tool has been much hyped of late – TMP hosted the UK’s first ever ‘virtual world’ careers fair last year; Kelly Services launched its own island in Second Life; and GCHQ, the government intelligence organisation, has been advertising in online gaming to tempt web-savvy graduates to become spies. But how is it possible and what does it mean to use virtual worlds as a recruitment tool? Is this wave of technology really going to dwarf social networking sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace? Is it merely an over-hyped media gimmick or the next evolution of the web?”

4. BBC News – Web worlds ‘useful’ for children. “Virtual worlds can be valuable places where children rehearse what they will do in real life, reveals research. They are also a “powerful and engaging” alternative to more passive pursuits such as watching TV, said the BBC-sponsored study. The research was done with children using the BBC’s Adventure Rock virtual world, aimed at those aged 6-12.”

5. Computerworld (Norway) – When virtual worlds die. “Think pulling the plug on a relatively small and slightly aged social virtual world is easy? That’s what Disney apparently thought, when it announced plans to shutter its free Virtual Magic Kingdom service. Even though the VMK userbase is small (just over one thousand were online when I checked this morning, and now almost 4000 are online at 7:30 in the evening, eastern time) they are extremely dedicated, and are taking news of the closure quite badly, according to the Wall Street Journal and other sources. There have been petitions, angry blog posts, and even a tiny real-world demonstration outside of Disney HQ.”

6. The Associated Press – Researchers teach ‘Second Life’ avatar to think. “Edd Hifeng barely merits a second glance in “Second Life.” A steel-gray robot with lanky limbs and linebacker shoulders, he looks like a typical avatar in the popular virtual world.
But Edd is different. His actions are animated not by a person at a keyboard but by a computer. Edd is a creation of artificial intelligence, or AI, by researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, who endowed him with a limited ability to converse and reason. It turns out “Second Life” is more than a place where pixelated avatars chat, interact and fly about. It’s also a frontier in AI research because it’s a controllable environment where testing intelligent creations is easier.”

7. The Age – Second Life provides virtual classrooms. “Two Queensland universities are using an online virtual world to reach students. The University of Queensland has commissioned a builder to construct a virtual Great Hall on the three-dimensional online virtual world Second Life – where millions of “residents” from across the world build their own homes, go shopping, go on holiday and interact with each other.”

8. Times Online (UK) – The office psychologist. Second (corporate) Life. “The boundaries between work and personal life have been blurring for years, but the next generation of office technology will mush them into a social gloop. Software designers have leapt on to the social networking bandwagon to make communicating with colleagues more fun. After all, what’s the difference between sitting in front of a screen updating your Facebook biog and sitting in front of a screen typing marketing reports?”

9. The Age – Kremlin critic gets genital reminder about who’s in charge. “rmer world chess champion turned Kremlin critic Garry Kasparov has been on the receiving end of an unconventional prank launched by his political foes – one that draws its inspiration from the virtual world of Second Life. Kasparov was attending a weekend meeting of a coalition of opposition groups which had assembled in Moscow to launch a symbolic alternative parliament. As he was addressing the gathering of more than 500 delegates, he was buzzed by a remote-controlled flying phallus.”

10. IGN – Age of Conan First Impressions. “You may have noticed the lack of a review for Funcom’s Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures on IGN. It’s not because we’ve been avoiding play time. Since the game launched in the United States on Tuesday, we’ve been slugging our way through its content every day. The simple fact of the matter is games of the massively multiplayer online genre are enormous; they’re meant to be played and enjoyed for years. It’s not exactly a quick, efficient process when trying to decide how to deliver any kind of definitive word.”

1. International Herald Tribune (France) – Ikea and EA strike real deal in virtual world. “Last week, Electronic Arts, the video game publisher, announced an agreement with Ikea in which its furniture would be featured in “The Sims,” a series of games that allows players to simulate the actions of a fictional family. For around $20, players will be able to buy a “stuff pack” that will let them fill out their Sims abodes with Ikea designs.”

2. ZDNet – Nortel Demos Virtual World Platform. “Nortel demoed a virtual world prototype here in a Ottowa at a day long event. Dubbed Web Alive, the virtual world is the first project to come out of Nortel new research effort that imposes a VC-like model for funding research. Like other virtual worlds, Web Alive allows avatars to interact with one another in a virtual landscape. Web Alive differentiates itself through the use of proximity based voice and a thin client.”

3. Times Online (UK) – The latest trend in medicine – virtual reality. “Imagine the scenario: you’re sitting on a plane, strapped in and ready for take-off. But you’re terrified of flying and are suddenly hit by an uncontrollable urge to spring from your seat and run screaming out of the aircraft.”

4. Information Week – Most Business-Launched Virtual Worlds Fail, Gartner Says. “The vast majority of virtual world projects launched by businesses fail within 18 months, but the impact of the collaborationtechnology on organizations could eventually be as big as the Internet, a market research firm said this week. Fully 90% of business forays into virtual worlds fail because organizations focus on the technology rather than on understanding the needs of the employees using it, Gartner said.”

5. Magical Mountain – Disney Interactive Studios Launch Virtual World For Nintendo DS. “On Thursday, May 15th, 2008, Disney Interactive Studios formally released DGamer, an avatar based community for Nintendo DS owners. It is a free service offered to US residents. “DGamer is our opportunity to work with Disney Interactive to make sure we have this connected environment and to make sure we reach our guests wherever they are, including a player on a Disney Interactive DS title talking to a player in ‘Pirates of the Caribbean Online”, says Paul Yanover, executive vice president and managing director of Disney Online.”

6. Canada.com – Virtual world disputes landing in real-world courts. “Some very real money was on the line when a Pennsylvania lawyer recently sued a San Francisco-based company over a online property deal that went sour. The real estate at the centre of the dispute was entirely imaginary. The lawyer, Marc Bragg, was seeking thousands in damages for breach of contract and unfair trade practices after he purchased virtual property in Second Life, a 3-D world that exists only online. And when owner Linden Lab terminated his account, he sued. The dispute was eventually settled out of court in a confidential agreement.”

7. Law.com – ‘Virtual Law’: It’s Not Your Father’s Law. “”Virtual law,” as specialists call it, is not your father’s law. And according to some aspiring lawyers, it is the next big thing. Of the 50 or so tech-savvy lawyers around the country conversant in the language of orcs, avatars and toons, Brian Pyne, 23, says, “They all know each other. I’m trying to become one of them.”

8. WIVB.com (USA) – Welcome to the World of Warcraft! “It’s one of the hottest video games worldwide. Some might even call it, an addiction. Welcome to the World of Warcraft! It’s not a secret society, but if you enter it, you may not want to leave. Jonathan Weiss said, “It’s like digital crack, pretty much.” Mark Preston: “It really is addicting. If you start playing, you’ll be hooked.”

9. Wall Street Journal – My Virtual Summer Job. “While his friends scramble for jobs flipping burgers or bagging groceries this summer, 18-year-old Mike Everest will be working as a trader in the fantasy Web world of Entropia Universe, buying and selling virtual animal skins and weapons. His goods exist only online, but his earnings are real. In the past four years, he’s made $35,000. Mr. Everest, of Durango, Colo., is among a new breed of young entrepreneurs seeking their fortune online in imaginary worlds.”

10. Foreign Policy – Fake China. “China is about to re-create itself on a massive scale. This July, the Beijing Cyber Recreation District (CRD), a state-owned enterprise, will launch the first of several “virtual Chinas” planned for popular online realms known as massive multiplayer online role-playing games. The first “virtual China,” which they call “Dotman,” will be found inside Entropia Universe, a 700,000-player gaming world run by the Swedish technology firm Mindark. Capable of hosting 150 million avatars, or virtual citizens, it will be the largest virtual nation in the world.”