1. The Independent (UK) – Millions and millions of little monsters. “Virtual worlds are booming. This summer, market research firm Strategy Analytics projected that the population of virtual worlds would increase from 186 million inhabitants to 640 million by 2015. And a big part of this giant leap is going to be from young people. Apparently, children between five and nine will boost the market by 27percent while teens will bump it up by 21 per cent. And it’s already happening. ‘Club Penguin’ and ‘Habbo Hotel’ have record numbersofmembers, while the number of children playing online game ‘Moshi Monsters’ (above and left) has hit the10million mark, with one million new users signing up every month.”

2. TechRadar (UK) – Heritage Key VX review. “Before the web came along, virtual environments seemed like the next big thing in interface technology. We now have the processing power to do everything those old-school futurists dreamed about: telepresence, immersive filesystems, cyberspace applications… yet it’s still gamers that make most use of virtual worlds. Heritage Key VX may end up changing all this, though. It’s a mainstream application of a once niche feature that reminds us why we all thought it was such a good idea. While Heritage Key is predominantly an educational website aimed at amateur historians and fans of archaeology, its heart is the 3D virtual exhibit.”

3. Times Online (UK) – Real-world arrest for man who stole RuneScape virtual characters. “A man who hacked into accounts to steal virtual characters and their possessions on one of the world’s biggest multi-player online games has been arrested. In what experts believe is the first case of its kind in Britain, the man obtained log-in details for RuneScape, a web-based role playing game with more than ten million members, to steal their “virtual” characters. Players in the game have often spent years creating their online characters by completing set tasks and activities. Police believe that password details were obtained through a so-called phishing scam where a fake internet page tricks people into handing over their personal information.”

4. Government Computer News (USA) – Second Life demonstrates mingling of real and virtual worlds. “While the public version of the Second Life virtual world remains primarily a playground for self expression and social networking, military and government agencies are taking a more serious look at its practical applications now that its maker, Linden Lab, has created a version of the environment that can be run behind a firewall on private servers. But Second Life is only one of several environments for creating what are sometimes called 3-D Internet experiences. Like Virtual Battle Space 2, Second Life made cameo appearances at several booths around the show floor at the Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation and Education Conference in Orlando, Fla., this week.”

5. The University of Texas at Austin News (USA) – Innovator for Teaching with Virtual Worlds Passes Away. “University faculty member and instructional innovator Leslie Jarmon died on Nov. 24 after a 15-year battle with cancer. She was 57. Jarmon was an early adopter of instructional uses of virtual worlds, becoming a role model and advocate for colleagues looking to create new models in pedagogy through innovative uses of emerging technology. Jarmon designed and taught graduate-level courses at the university beginning in 1998 with the Office of Graduate Studies. In fall 2008 she joined the Division of Instructional Innovation and Assessment as a specialist in faculty development.”

6. The Industry Standard (USA) – UC Irvine offering four year video games program. “Well-known for its excellent courses in engineering, business, and medicine, UC Irvine is now pushing into a new area of expertise; video games. The university announced that it had established its Center for Computer Games and Virtual Worlds earlier this year by joining forces with the Institute for Software Research and the Game Culture and Technology Laboratory. Construction is currently underway on a 4,000 square-foot, 20-room “cyber interaction observatory” for faculty research, and the plans call for floor-to-ceiling projection screens, and advanced 3D displays.”

7. Virtual Worlds News (USA) – Unity Lays Claim to “Fastest Growing” App Platform. “Unity Technologies, a company that produces a game platform many virtual worlds run on, last year created a mobile platform specifically for iPhone app development. Today the company said its iPhone platform was “proving to be the fastest growing game development platform for the iPhone.” Twelve percent of games featured on AppShopper.com’s Top 25 paid-for apps were built with Unity iPhone, says Unity Technologies.”

8. The Globe and Mail (Canada) – When gamers become recruiters. “As 2009 winds down, the world of Facebook has fragmented into two camps: the people who are pretending to be farmers, and the rest, who are busy wishing a plague of locusts upon them. The last few months have witnessed the meteoric rise of a new kind of online time-waster: Facebook games with names such as FarmVille, FishVille, Island Paradise and Cafe World that are calibrated not toward fun, but toward the recruiting of friends and the disgorging of credit card numbers. They propagate with an almost organic zeal – and they have tens of millions of customers to show for it. The question is: How can something so dreary have become so popular?”

9. Calgary Herald (Canada) – An eco-friendly message for young minds. “If we really want to reduce our carbon footprints and make the world a healthier place, we’ll need new generations committed to the ecological cause. A Vancouver startup company says it has found a way to reach young minds, delivering an eco-friendly message that is not preachy and allows kids to have fun. And the future for the company may be green in more ways than one.”

10. TechCrunch (USA) – Second Life Gets A Life 2.0 At Sundance. “Does anybody go to Second Life anymore? It seems like a ghost town these days, although every now and then you hear rumblings of a quiet comeback for the proto-virtual world. Well, at the very least Second Life will be getting a second life at the movies. A documentary called Life 2.0 will be screened at the Sundance Film Festival. Life 2.0 was produced by PalmStar Entertainment (which is theglobe.com co-founder Stephan Paternot’s indie movie company) and Andrew Lauren Productions (The Squid And The Whale).”

1. DNA (India) – Virtual worlds will provide real security: Indian origin scientist. “A scientist of Indian origin has determined that advances in computers are making possible virtual worlds in which defense analysts can explore and predict results of many different possible military and policy actions. The scientist in question is VS Subrahmanian, a Maryland computer science professor and director of the University’s Institute for Advanced Computer Studies (UMIACS). According to Subrahmanian and John Dickerson, a UMIACS computer science researcher, “Defense analysts can understand the repercussions of their proposed recommendations for policy options or military actions by interacting with a virtual world environment.”

2. Canada.com (Canada) – Embracing the future of fitness. “It wasn’t that long ago that running with a Discman was considered cool. Of course, so was talking on a cellphone the size of a brick. Today, people run with a phone that not only plays music and takes calls, it maps your run while tracking speed, mileage, pace and calories burned. And runners aren’t the only exercisers being courted by technology: There are smartphone apps for cyclists, gym junkies, triathletes and swimmers. Even those without a smartphone can hop on the technology bandwagon: Nike and Apple have teamed up to track runners’ stats through an in-shoe transmitter and an iPod. Stationary bikes take cyclists on virtual rides through scenic routes, and provide the opportunity to compete in a virtual race against the cyclist beside you or in the next country.”

3. VentureBeat (USA) – Next Island to launch sci-fi adventure virtual world — with time travel. “Next Island is the latest company to launch an ambitious virtual world. But this sci-fi adventure paradise comes with an interesting twist: time travel. The company is announcing today that it is building a world in MindArk’s massively multiplayer online virtual universe, Entropia Universe. That means it has licensed virtual world technology from MindArk, whose technology is behind Planet Calypso, which until now has been the only virtual world in the Entropia Universe. Next Island will be the “planet” going live in the virtual universe. Its private beta begins in less than 30 days.”

4. brand-e (UK) – New life for Second Life. “Online sharing. It’s time to brand the virtual world. That’s why UK-based Corporation Pop is making use of the Second Life platform providing a secure place for folk to meet and communicate. So, even when individuals are hundreds of miles apart, they can almost shake hands thanks to their virtual avatars. The environments Corporation Pop creates can be used for anything from team training and game-based learning to consultations and ceremonies. And they include nifty extras like embedded external video, as well as voice technology.”

5. Marketing Web (South Africa) – Real-world value of virtual markets. “News headlines for the past year have been dominated by the effects of the global recession. This trend has affected almost all industries, with computer gaming being one of the few exceptions. Shortly before the recession kicked in computer gaming overtook movies in entertainment spending, and was on track to surpass music too. When the recession hit it wasn’t immune, but the gaming growth curve lasted longer, and has kicked back in sooner, than many other industries. After a dismal September 2009 the industry has seen the first signs of turn-around as initial Q4 sales data is starting to come in.”

6. Wired (USA) – World of Warcraft Quests Remain Compelling, 5 Years On. “After five years, it’s hard to imagine a world without World of Warcraft. Released Nov. 23, 2004, the massively multiplayer online role-playing game has set the standard for the genre. More than 11.5 million players from around the world, from all walks of life, spend hours a day in the world of Azeroth. They embark on epic adventures, battle other players or just hang out. And each of them pays developer Blizzard Entertainment $15 per month for the privilege. Players create characters and develop them over time, forging relationships with other gamers and going on quests to gain experience or loot. Whether they play with strangers, friends or alone, Warcraft’s polished virtual world proves easy to get into and hard to get out of.”

7. Hypergrid Business (Hong Kong) – Virtual goods hit $1 bil in U.S. “The U.S. virtual goods market doubled in size from 2008, to reach $1 billion this year, according to a new report from Inside Network. “While virtual goods have been driving revenues in Asia and Europe for years, 2009 will be remembered as the year virtual goods-based businesses began to scale in the United States,” said Insight network editor Justin Smith in a statement. The size of the Asian virtual goods market reached $7 billion in 2009.”

8. The Telegraph (UK) – Advertisers pile into augmented reality. “The technology origin myths say that the Model T Ford made cars, books made e-commerce and pornography made VHS. It seems that augmented reality, which takes the real world as seen through a mobile phone camera or computer webcam and adds images, digital models and data, is to be made by advertising. Not passive advertising like billboards or television commercial breaks, where you lie back and let the spending opportunities wash over you, but active advertising that you seek out and voluntarily engage with.”

9. PsychCentral (USA) – The Proteus Effect: How Our Avatar Changes Online Behavior. “The other day, a commenter asked whether people “truly represent themselves for who they are, do they take on different personality characteristics while in their online persona, and how is their level of tolerance for disagreement affected?” One way to examine this question is to look how people provide based upon their choice of avatar — the pictorial representation of themselves in an online environment (such as virtual reality game).”

10. BBC (UK) – ‘Virtual graduation’ for students. “A university is to hold a “virtual graduation ceremony” for students on a distance learning course. Edinburgh University will broadcast the ceremony at its McEwan Hall on to the Second Life web community.
The move will ensure students on its E-Learning course who are unable to travel to Edinburgh do not miss out on the graduation celebrations. They will be able to download robes for their online avatars, and gather in a virtual bar after the ceremony.”

1. The Huffington Post (USA) – Real Man Traded for Cartoon Rabbit. “Getting people to change their opinion of you is tough – especially if you are a rodent who has generated billions of dollars and has become a global icon like Mickey Mouse. Mickey wasn’t Walt Disney’s first star creation, that was another big eared little mammal, Oswald the Rabbit. Oswald was taken from Walt by his employer, Universal Studios. Disney soon left Universal to start his own company. Since he didn’t have the rights to Oswald, Disney shortened and rounded Oswald’s ears and created Mickey Mouse, one of the world’s most enduring fantasy characters.”

2. Hypergrid Business (Hong Kong) – A Wayback Machine for virtual worlds? “One of the joys of exploring virtual worlds grids is finding new fantastic new regions and builds. Then comes the pain of virtual worlds — you bring your friends back to visit, and the builds are no longer there. Maybe it cost too much to keep the region up and running, or the owners decided to put up something else, instead. As Second Life and the various OpenSim grids evolve into a true 3D Web, these early builds will become items of historical interest. It would be a shame if they all disappeared forever.”

3. San Francisco Chronicle (USA) – 3D Web will save high-performance computing industry, Intel CTO says. “Three-dimensional Web technologies will save the high-performance computing industry from its current state of financial stagnation, Intel CTO Justin Rattner predicted at the SC09 supercomputing conference in Portland, Ore. Tuesday. Delivering the opening address, Rattner said the HPC market is struggling, with a compound annual growth rate of about 3.6%. Based on current trends, there is no sign of a future upswing. “This is not a healthy business,” he said. Demand for high-performance computing capability is limited to small markets, but Rattner believes that virtually the entire population can benefit from HPC if given the right platform.”

4. allmedia Scotland (Scotland) – Ready to Check Out the 3D Me? “For all the talk of Generation Y, you don’t really have to be young to ‘get’ social media. As an employer, I follow, with interest, reports about the imminent flood of hungry young workers about to transform the jobs market with all their net savvy ways. It’ll be great for business to welcome in a workforce who grew up with social networks and see the obvious benefits without the need for a seismic shift in thinking. However, there are already plenty 30 and 40-somethings who are changing mindsets and working practices to embrace new and social media. I include myself, since I am blogged-down, Tweeted-up and Facebooked-in; fluent in audio, video and other rich content, as well as the trusty, old written word. Still, though, there is one aspect of the newfangled communications I have real trouble with: virtual worlds.”

5. Gulf News (UAE) – Virtual policing: Training for Dubai Police. “Police detectives have sealed off a violent crime scene at a Dubai flat and are busy picking up clues leading to the suspect’s arrest – and they didn’t even have to open the front door. The officers are actually Dubai Police trainees playing “serious games” that digitally rebuild real crime and accident scenes from the city onto a computer screen. Be it a celebrity murder, jewellery shop robbery or a massive car crash, the police force’s virtual training and crime scene reconstruction sections put cadets in the middle of the action. The games use actual case file details like photographs, security camera footage, documents – plus three-dimensional scans of rooms or streets – to create life-like virtual worlds where cadets can “walk around” and uncover evidence.”

6. The Globe and Mail (Canada) – THE $350 MILLION PENGUIN. “The most surreal moment of Lane Merrifield’s career came on Oct. 24, 2008, when the young B.C. entrepreneur found himself standing on a stage in the middle of New York’s Times Square, surrounded by hundreds of adoring children and crowds of equally enthused parents. It was three years to the day that he and two partners-Lance Priebe and Dave Krysko-had launched Club Penguin, a virtual world where millions of preteens meet, chat and play games via 2-D penguin proxies. The three men had plenty to celebrate.”

7. news.com.au (Australia) – Virtual world opens doors for autistic. “A VIRTUAL “thinking head” generated by hi-tech computer software is teaching autistic children to recognise and respond to facial expressions. Flinders University research has found the computerised tutor helps the children improve their social skills and communicate more effectively with bullies. Children are shown facial expressions corresponding with specific emotions and are encouraged to respond.”

8. BBC (UK) – What happened to Second Life? “Not long ago Second Life was everywhere, with businesses opening branches and bands playing gigs in this virtual world. Today you’d be forgiven for asking if it’s still going. Once upon a time Second Life had a Twitter level of hype. Even those without a cartoon version of themselves couldn’t plead ignorance due to blanket coverage in newspapers and magazines. Second Life is a virtual world started by the US firm Linden Lab in 2003, in which users design an avatar to live their “second life” online.”
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9. Sydney Morning Herald (Australia) – BigPond pulls plug on Second Life. “Telstra has decided to close its doors on Second Life, evicting the residents of its virtual BigPond Island and revoking their unmetered usage, in a move that has infuriated some subscribers. BigPond’s islands will cease to exist on December 16, signalling an end to its two-year “experiment” with Second Life, and residents of the swanky virtual Pond Estate have been given a month to relocate elsewhere.”

10. WarCry (USA) – Five Years of Warcraft: Speaking With Blizzard’s Rob Pardo. “Mega-MMO World of Warcraft turns five this month, and to celebrate, our sister site The Escapist sat down with Blizzard’s VP of Game Design, WoW mastermind Rob Pardo to chat about the lessons they’ve learned, the mistakes they’ve made, and how they’d like to beat themselves at their own game.”

1. Science Daily (USA) – Avatars Can Surreptitiously And Negatively Affect User In Video Games, Virtual Worlds. “Although often seen as an inconsequential feature of digital technologies, one’s self-representation, or avatar, in a virtual environment can affect the user’s thoughts, according to research by a University of Texas at Austin communication professor. In the first study to use avatars to prime negative responses in a desktop virtual setting, Jorge Peña, assistant professor in the College of Communication, demonstrated that the subtext of an avatar’s appearance can simultaneously prime negative (or anti-social) thoughts and inhibit positive (or pro-social) thoughts inconsistent with the avatar’s appearance. All of this while study participants remained unaware they had been primed. The study, co-written with Cornell University Professor Jeffrey T. Hancock and University of Texas at Austin graduate student Nicholas A. Merola, appears in the December 2009 issue of Communication Research.”

2. Computing (UK) – From ancient to virtual worlds. “he notion that your customers are only 10 seconds away from your competitor’s web site still holds true. But while the server and network infrastructure needed to deliver a web site that stays up 99.999 per cent of the time is one aspect of delivering a good online experience, the phrase “content is king” is equally relevant, and just as important for customer retention. Would a better way to engage customers be by spicing up that dowdy site with some visually stunning graphics, tied into standard e-commerce transaction middleware? For visually stunning graphics, read virtual worlds, whose genesis can be traced back to the multi-user dungeon program MUD, which originated in 1978 at Essex University. But it was many years before what people now think of as a virtual world was realised – a 3D, immersive world, available 24/7 via a web connection.”

3. Financial Times (UK) – Habbo Hotel creators hope to welcome older users. “Creators of virtual worlds and other online communities are hoping their members will continue to pay for digital goods as they grow older. Sulake , a private Finnish company, is hoping to build on its success with Habbo Hotel, a virtual world visited by 14m teenagers every month, with a new mobile version for young adults, Bobba Bar . The application, launching today on Nokia and Apple smartphones, is only available to over-17s. It allows members to create a unique digital character and chat to other avatars in themed rooms, such as sports, technology or “romance”.”

4. Virtual Worlds News (USA) – Kid Command Set For Launch. “Today, Collin Caneva will take his Kid Command virtual world live. The world, targeted to kids and tweens, hopes to instill an appreciation of the environment and world’s fragile eco-system. As the growth of virtual worlds, social networks and web-based entertainment explodes, Omaha-based Caneva hopes to carve out a special place in that digital eco-system that will taps kids’ curiosity and innate intelligence, talking up to their intellect rather than down.”

5. The Economic Times (India) – Endgame for reality. “Technology, like much else in life, seems to come with a built-in ‘dual use’ possibility. Take computers, and all else associated with them: the internet, gaming et al. There is, of course, the information revolution, the educational benefits, or just plain downright entertainment that comes with this. And then there’s the dark side. The world of pervasive online porn, of cyber terrorists, of even computers or the net so taking over people’s lives as to over-rule the real. A recent report has it that among the plethora of existing execrable violent games , which seem to have legions of addicts across the globe, a new one is based on the ‘raping skills’ of players. ”

6. Techdirt (USA) – Virtual Goods, Scams, Investigative Reporting And The Media. “For many years, we’ve been quite skeptical of any business model in virtual worlds/social networks that rely on “buying virtual goods.” That’s because these are all based on artificial scarcities, and as we all know (hopefully, by now), relying on artificial scarcities for a business model is incredibly risky, especially once people realize the scarcities are artificial. And yet, over the past few years, a number of businesses have been built on this very premise. In fact, Silicon Valley is crawling these days with businesses built on selling virtual goods, and if you talk to many VCs about it, you’ll quickly note that they’re positively giddy over the fact that people are paying for this stuff. What they don’t seem to realize is that it’s unlikely to last. ”

7. Business Standard (India) – Virtual classrooms go commercial. “Ramesh Thorat (not his real name) is at home. But sitting on his computer, he is intently watching and listening to a lecture on the internet. He has a broadband connection, a webcam and even a microphone to interact with the lecturer if he has any question. In fact, Thorat is one of the many engineering graduates from the Pune Institute of Computer Technology (PICT) who studies in a “virtual classroom” called “kPoint”. Developed by Pune-based Great Software Laboratory Pvt Ltd (GS Lab), this virtual classroom tool “kPoint” is a concept which is fast catching up in the city. It has been successfully deployed at outsourced product development (OPD) firm Persistent Systems, too, to train newly-recruited engineering graduates at its Nagpur campus from its parent facility in Pune.”

8. CBS News (USA) – Scams Target Gamers on Social Sites. “Farmville, Mafia Wars and Restaurant City are Internet-based games that can be played on sites like Facebook, where millions of people have signed up. But click on the wrong places in these virtual worlds, and you could lose real money without ever knowing it. CBS News Science and Technology Correspondent Daniel Sieberg reported where there’s a popular online trend like these games, advertisers are sure to follow. But the legitimate ads aren’t the problem — it’s the ones that promise a free trinket or virtual cash to be used in your game. And if you’re tricked into clicking, they start draining your money.”

9. Information Week (USA) – Second Life Steps Into The Enterprise. “Second Life is attracting a cult following among businesses, who say the virtual world gives them richer collaboration than teleconference calls or video conferences. But Second Life still has limitations that pose barriers to enterprise adoption. Ericsson has become the first vendor to prove end to end interoperability in TD-LTE, another standard of 4G radio technologies designed to increase the capacity and speed of mobile telephone networks. One of the major limitations is that Linden Lab, which developed and operates Second Life, runs the service on its own server farms. This software-as-a-service model creates problems for user control and confidentiality of sensitive conversations.”

10. The Korea Herald (South Korea) – Second Life withdraws from Korean market. “The virtual world community game Second Life has effectively withdrawn from the local market.
According to industry sources, the U.S.-based developer of Second Life, Linden Lab, failed to extend the contract with the local game company Barunson Games Corp. Barunson was first contracted to operate Second Life services in Korea in October 2007. However, the Korean Second Life community Sera Korea will continue to be serviced. Linden Lab’s official position is said to be temporarily closing local operations. However, the company is reported to have no plans to revive the operations as yet.”

1. CNN (UK) – Virtual businesses: Going to the office in Second Life. “As travel budgets are squeezed and slashed in the recession, companies are increasingly seeking innovative ways of bringing employees together for conferences and meetings remotely. Virtual community Second Life is seeking to tap into that market by creating a new tool that allows businesses to have virtual meetings on their own computer networks. The company’s Enterprise tool will let employees’ avatars — animated alter egos — meet in virtual worlds from the privacy of a company’s own network, rather than the public networks used in standard Second Life. That extra security could encourage more companies to take up the technology.”

2. Boston Globe (USA) – To build up real business selling virtual goods, firms change tactics. “ust after Labor Day last year, Pano Anthos flew out to San Francisco to unveil his new start-up, Hangout Industries Inc., at a major technology conclave, the TechCrunch50. It was an opportunity to show off the three-dimensional virtual environment his Boston company had been working on, intended to attract young Internet users and allow them to deck out online rooms with all sorts of branded merchandise – some of which they might also decide to buy in the real world. Then, they could invite friends over to socialize. Hangout, Anthos told the crowd, would combine some of the best elements of MySpace and Facebook, the two massive social networks, and The Sims, a popular video game. After his presentation, Anthos got feedback – much of it positive – from a panel of on-stage experts that included Marissa Mayer, a senior executive at Google, and Ron Conway, one of the investors who bankrolled the search company in its earliest days.”

3. Reuters (USA) – Can Virtual Worlds Provide Support to Military Amputees? “Virtual worlds can provide military amputees with an opportunity to enhance their overall quality of life, expedite their reintegration into society, and improve their physical and mental wellness. ADL Company Inc. (ADL) and Virtual Ability, Inc. (VAI) announced today the start of a project to establish best practices and protocols for the provision of on-line peer-to-peer support services to this community, with funding from the Telemedicine and Advanced Technology Research Center (TATRC) of the US Army Medical Research and Materiel
Command (USAMRMC). “For individuals with disabilities, virtual worlds are a powerful way to connect with others, to access peer support, and to participate in activities that might not otherwise be possible,” said Alice Krueger, President of Virtual Ability, Inc., a not-for-profit corporation. “This project will establish the best way to adopt this technology for the unique needs of the military amputee community.”

4. New York Times (USA) – Virtual Estates Lead to Real-World Headaches. “Two avatars, Leto Yoshiro and Enchant Jacques, met in the virtual world of Second Life in 2005. They married online the same year and built a house together on an island they had brought out of the waves that covered much of that world. In real life, Leto was a film producer from Michigan, Enchant an accountant from England. In 2008, after three years together for the couple, several real-life encounters and thousands of hours logged in, Leto died of liver failure while awaiting a transplant. About six months later, the island where they had lived, along with everything on it, was erased under the terms of service that Leto had signed with Linden Lab, the company that created the platform for Second Life. It had been bought in his name in Linden dollars — on Friday, $1 bought 259 Linden — and Enchant decided she could not pay the fees to maintain it. All that remains are a few objects of which she had copies.”

5. New Scientist (USA) – How your brain sees virtual you. “As players who stay up all night fighting imaginary warriors demonstrate, slipping into the skin of an avatar, and inhabiting a virtual world can be riveting stuff. But to what extent does your brain regard your virtual self as you? Brain scans of avid players of the hugely popular online fantasy world World of Warcraft reveal that areas of the brain involved in self-reflection and judgement seem to behave similarly when someone is thinking about their virtual self as when they think about their real one.”

6. VentureBeat (USA) – Max Levchin on Slide’s big virtual goods bet, scams and — mating. “Slide, which started in photo-sharing, moved into Facebook widgets and then raised funding at a reported $550 million valuation last year, shifted gears this year and went aggressively into virtual goods. The company’s looking to become a mainstream version of Second Life, where there’s a virtual economy at work of real people buying and selling goods. Instead of churning out new apps like many of its competitors, the company has focused its existing ones — including seven on Facebook like SuperPoke, Top Friends and FunSpace, with about 27 million users between them. Slide introduced a virtual currency into its SuperPoke! Pets application, where you can raise and care for a virtual pet. You can earn gold through the game or you can purchase 10 pieces of Slide Gold for $1.”

7. Massively (USA) – Exclusive interview with Linden Lab CEO Mark Kingdon. “Mark Kingdon, Linden Lab’s CEO, has been a bit of a mystery figure since his appointment about a year and a half ago. While he has not been uncommunicative, it’s been hard to get a very good sense of the man at the helm of Linden Lab, his passions, interests and direction. We were very pleased, therefore, when he took the time to sit down with us and answer a whole grab-bag of questions, about himself, about Linden Lab, and – of course – about Second Life. Bear with us, because we’ve got a lot of ground to cover.”

8. Kotaku (USA) – Visually Impaired Gamer Sues Sony. “GameSpot reports that a man has sued Sony, Sony Online Entertainment and Sony Computer Entertainment of America, contending the company violates the Americans with Disabilities Act for not making its virtual worlds more easily navigable by the visually impaired.”

9. Data Center Knowledge (USA) – Virtual Goods and the Cost of Infrastructure. “In an economy built atop virtual goods, how do you manage capacity and sort out whether the business model is able to pay for the infrastructure required to power it? That’s an important questionas as virtual item purchases become a key revenue stream for fast-growing social networking platforms like Facebook. Managed hosting specialist GNi, which offers an Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) hosting platform for online games, offers a window into the evolving infrastructure requirements of virtual economies. In the U.S., popular understanding of online gaming has been shaped by the popularity of World of Warcraft and other virtual worlds that generate through monthly subscription fees. That approach is increasingly yielding to a “free-to-play” business model.”

10. TechCrunch Europe (Germany) – 20 years on, explore the Berlin Wall in Twinity’s virtual Berlin. “With only days away from the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, how best to mark the occasion? Rebuild it or at least a virtual two kilometer stretch. That’s the approach being taken by Metaversum, the Berlin-based company behind virtual world Twinity, who have constructed a replica section of the wall in-world. Visitors to Twinity’s virtual Berlin will be able to travel back to 1989 to explore a two km-long, true-to-scale section of the Berlin Wall, from the Reichstag, past the Brandenburg Gate and Potsdamer Platz, ending with a realistic replica of Checkpoint Charlie. Along with the wall itself, visitors can also access various multimedia content, including video and audio guides at seven key points describing the building of the wall, important dates in its history, witness accounts and, of course, the climatic events of 1989. The exhibition is a collaboration between Metaversum, the Berlin Senate and media partner Berlin.de.”

1. The Hindu (India) – Brave new worlds beckon. “Everyone has indulged in a little escapism sometime in their lives. The need for an outlet from the relentless glare of reality is felt by many and the possibility of an alternate lifestyle hidden from public view can be a powerful attraction. This a lternate role-play starts at childhood with girls playing make-believe games with dolls and boys dreaming up war games with their action heroes. As age advances, the need for fantasy it seems, does not always diminish, it sometimes gets hidden under the wraps. In the past, people’s fantasy world went as far as books or movies could take them. Today the Internet can transport you to worlds beyond your wildest imagination.”

2. TechCrunch (USA) – PlaySpan Strikes Deal With Nickelodeon To Power Microtransactions. “We just wrote about PlaySpan’s recent study showing positive growth in the exchange and e-commerce of virtual goods exchange. PlaySpan powers micro-payments across over 1,000 video games and virtual worlds and has virtual goods storefronts on Facebook, MySpace, within games and on its standalone site. Today, PlaySpan is announcing a fairly significant deal with Nickelodeon to power payment services for virtual goods and microtransactions for the Nickelodeon Kids and Family Virtual Worlds Group.”

3. PhyOrg.com (UK) – Researchers bring noise to virtual worlds. “When you kick over a garbage can, it doesn’t make a pure, musical tone. That’s why the sound is so hard to synthesize. But now Cornell computer scientists have developed a practical method to generate the crashing and rumbling sounds of objects made up of thin “harmonic shells,” including the sounds of cymbals, falling garbage cans and lids, and plastic water-cooler bottles and recycling bins. The work by graduate students Jeffrey Chadwick and Steven An and Doug James, associate professor of computer science, will be presented at the SIGGRAPH Asia conference in Yokohama, Japan, in December.”

4. CNET (USA) – Virtual-goods resellers on the rise. “Gamers are not just making purchases to enhance their gaming experience but also selling virtual assets to other players, according to new research from video game market research firm VGMarket.
Sales of virtual goods are expected to reach $1 billion this year and already generate near $4 billion annually in China. But there are some challenges, primarily the fact that once you convert your real money to virtual cash you can’t readily get the dough back out.”

5. The Guardian (UK) – Google Earth beware: the Brits are coming. “I intended to give the 3D internet a miss for a while after writing last week. But that was before Mike Fotoohi, a freelance software engineer from London, emailed me. When he told me that he and a few friends, working for five years in their spare time, had built a 3D version not just of capital cities, as others have, but of the entire planet that was better than Google Earth, my first reaction was to get off the phone pronto.”

6. Reuters (USA) – Shapiro Negotiations Institute Opens New Training Centers Inside the Sistine Chapel, at the North Pole, at Camden Yards, and on Mt. Everest. “Shapiro Negotiations Institute (SNI) today launched a new online, 3-D approach to corporate training and education that delivers dramatic results and has the potential to change perceptions and expectations of such programs worldwide. Virtual Training Partners moves the experience of learning from conference rooms to the online, virtual world of Second Life, where participants and instructors interact as avatars in dynamic, ever-changing environments. The result? A program that costs dramatically less to provide, avoids lengthy time out of the office, and delivers effective new skills for participants that can be implemented immediately. ”

7. The Straits Times (Singapore) – Street cred in a virtual world. “I AM a midnight voyeur. But it’s not what you are thinking. Not the type that stares out of the window in the middle of the night, through high-powered goggles, searching for live porn action. My time is spent flipping through the profiles of my friends on Xbox LIVE – the online part of the Xbox 360 game console, which among other things, lets me connect to my friends and challenge them to virtual death matches. And this I usually do at the stroke of 12, which is when I get my free time in my daily busy working schedule. What I am looking for? Xbox Achievement points.”

8. VentureBeat (USA) – China’s growing addiction: online farming games. “A new agrarian revolution has occured in China, but only in the virtual worlds of social games. Social farm games now dominate all major Chinese social networking sites — RenRen (formerly Xiaonei), Kaixin001, 51.com, and QQ’s QZone. The May launch and 2H 2009 adoption of QQ Farm — a version of China’s already popular Happy Farm game built to run on Tencent’s estimated 228 million active-user QZone platform — may very well have transformed China into the leading country of online farmers. According to Five Minutes, Shanghai-based game developer of the first and largest social farm game, Happy Farm has now surpassed 23 million daily active users (DAU) across QZone, RenRen, and 51.com.The DAU count is the total number of users who log in during a 24-hour period.”

9. The Guardian (UK) – The rise of urban gaming. “Although we’d all like to think that we can completely separate our virtual and real-world experiences, it’s never quite as simple as that. Who hasn’t, at one point or another, emerged from a ten-hour Counter Strike session only to scour the street for camping spots? And conversely, surely you’ve had moments where you spot a cool building or rundown industrial area and think, ‘that would make a hell of game level’. I think, through the omnipresence of game culture and conventions, and the growing popularity of virtual worlds in general, our sense of reality is becoming more plastic; our interactions with the world around us more playful. I don’t think parkour could have evolved in a pre-videogame world – it’s games that have taught us to see scenic objects as potentially interactive components. ”

10. Christian Today (USA) – Brick-and-mortar pastor defends virtual churches. “The Christian church is engaging far less than one per cent of the 70 million people who are active in the virtual world. This means the virtual world is by far the largest unreached people group on planet Earth, says one pastor. Douglas Estes, a pastor from San Jose, California, has no vested interest in virtual or internet churches – a relatively new phenomenon – but given the large “unreached” population on the internet, he says he has a desire to see healthy churches proliferate “regardless of context”. Although he leads a brick and mortar church – Berryessa Valley Church – Estes defends virtual churches against critics in his new book, SimChurch: Being the Church in the Virtual World, maintaining that they are real churches with real people.”

1. Business in Vancouver (Canada) – Virtual worlds now delivering genuine business opportunities. “As video games, social networks and virtual worlds increasingly star as stand-ins for reality, development shops are exploring new ways to monetize fantasy by creating virtual marketplaces replete with digitized goods and services. Fuelled by micro-transactions in which users buy virtual goods and services for as little as pennies, virtual marketplaces are not only driving user engagement for technology companies, but also adding new revenue streams. During a recent panel discussion at the Mobile Monday Vancouver event, where local Internet entrepreneurs gather monthly, roughly 90 attendees heard how B.C. companies are monetizing virtual goods.”

2. Gamasutra (USA) – The Effects of Imaginary Value in Real Virtual Worlds. “Like, I feel, a large portion of my generation, most of my learning has been through books or the internet. I think that’s helped, or maybe forced, me to parse through things logically. And an unexpected outcome of pushing myself to write more is that I find out what I really think about something when I’m forced to type out the facts and read them back to myself. So with that preface, I’ve been trying to figure out why I like Warhammer Online. In a previous post I think I gave the impression that it was a nostalgia fix, and it is to some extent. But sheer nostalgia shouldn’t hold my interest like this, so there must be something more concrete here that’s affecting me. It’s confusing because I think I’m done with the MMO. WoW was my first, and I hopped on that bandwagon right away out of Warcraft fandom. I deposited years into that beast, and I don’t entirely regret it. But after WoW I was worn out — never again would I trudge through a world so huge that I was made as powerless as I am in the real world. Because in reality I’m in the lower tax echelon, work all day and don’t own a badass axe.”

3. New York TImes (USA) – No Budget, No Boundaries: It’s the Real You. “IT may be raining pink slips, and some people may be hard-pressed to make the rent, much less splash out on a pagoda-shoulder jacket from Balmain, but Vixie Rayna is hardly feeling the pinch. Not a month goes by in which she isn’t spending as much as $50,000 on housing, furniture or her special weakness: multistrap platform sandals, tricked out in feathers and beads. Recession or no, Ms. Rayna isn’t reining in her fantasies, or her expenditures — at least not in the virtual world. In a simulated universe like There.com, IMVU.com or Second Life.com, the granddaddy of avatar-driven social networking sites, Ms. Rayna, an avatar on Second Life, and her free-spending cohort can quaff Champagne, teleport to private islands and splurge on luxury brands that are the cyber equivalent of Prada waders or a Rolex watch.”

4. The Guardian (UK) – The real-world boom in online cities. “The internet has been evolving into three dimensions for years without most people noticing. The change has been confined to niche activities, even though some – such as World of Warcraft or Second Life – are big niches. Now there is a worldwide move to bring the 3D web to a mass market, led by the building of “virtual” cities where avatars can walk, shop, club or whatever with links to “real life” activities. From Tokyo to Helsinki and from Paris to Philadelphia, cities are being constructed at a pace that recalls 19th-century railway mania; except, mercifully, it is a lot cheaper and won’t have serious economic effects if there is a crash. ”

5. New York Times (USA) – A Virtual Clinic to Treat the Stresses of War. “Many veterans are coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan with serious problems, like post-traumatic stress disorder, but only one-third get medical help. One researcher has built a healing center for veterans in a virtual world, where she hopes they will be more comfortable seeking care. Jacquelyn Ford Morie is a senior researcher at the Institute for Creative Technologies at the University of Southern California. She formerly did animation for Disney. She calls her current project, which she presented at the Web 2.0 Summit on Thursday, Coming Home.”

6. INSEAD Knowledge – Capitalism thrives in virtual world: Second Life gives commerce a second chance. “In the beginning, the online virtual world was a place for action video games such as Grand Theft Auto, or hanging out and chatting. Today, it’s a very different place. Commerce and capitalism have entered the picture. “A big change happened when the virtual worlds decided to give ownership to assets (there), which gave rise to an interesting and thriving economy,” says Miklos Sarvary, the new Dean of Executive Education at INSEAD and creator of the school’s campus in a virtual world called Second Life.”

7. VentureBeat (USA) – With 3 million fans, Fantage formally launches virtual world for kids. “While many kids virtual worlds have come and gone, Fantage has quietly built an audience of 3 million registered users. Today, it is formally launching its web site. The company has managed to do what lots of other kids sites have failed to do: get an audience by offering fun games and social activities in a safe, parent-friendly setting. And they did so just by observing kids, building what they like, and starting over when things didn’t work, said Peter Bae, vice president of marketing, in an interview.”

8. InformationWeek (USA) – Is There A Business In The Virtual World? “Much has been made of the premature obituaries for Second Life, but while the virtual world manufactured by Linden Labs has prevailed long beyond its presumed expiration date, the business model seems too arcane and forbidding to inspire many imitators. His unprecedented ability to manipulate individual atoms signaled a quantum leap forward in in nanoscience experimentation and heralded in the age of nanotechnology. After all, a business that depends on writing dauntingly complex code running on giant server farms to lure users to a bandwidth-hogging digitized playscape where they can flirt or do business — all in the hopes that they will purchase so-called “in-world” Linden Dollars using actual American dollars for the privilege of purchasing pink see-through blouses and imaginary islands — is a little bit daunting to say the least.”

9. Financial Times (UK) – Social games to change the world? “Social games are oft criticised for being little more than drivel. It’s a fair charge. After all, there’s not much intellectual value in games like Sorority Life and Mob Wars. Nonetheless, they have become among the most popular activities for users of social networks. Zynga, the largest maker of social games, says it has 50m daily active users of its various games, most of those on Facebook. In turn, Zynga is raking in cash through the sale of virtual goods.”

10. Huffington Post (USA) – Augmented Reality: Here to Stay. “There’s a new phrase around town — “Augmented Reality.” For a period of time, Virtual Reality (VR) was the hot new thing. Folks could create avatars, pretend to be other people, and buy and sell ‘virtual’ goods. You know, fake stuff. But alas, for most of us, there was just too much to get done in our daily lives to allow us to vanish into the ‘virtual worlds’ of Second Life or such. But now the combination of the web and technologists seem to have found a way to bring the ‘virtual’ world of the web into the real world of our daily lives. And shockingly – it’s pretty darn helpful.”

1. The Guardian (UK) – Are online currencies striking gold? “Money. The stuff that makes the world go round. Every day we earn it, spend it, exchange it and lose it. But you won’t find any Linden dollars, Eve ISK or Facebook credits down the back of the couch. Virtual currencies like these are used for transactions in online worlds and social networking sites. While real-world currencies are on the slide, many virtual ones are going from strength to strength. In the second quarter of the year the equivalent of $144m (£91m) was traded on the LindeX, the official currency exchange of Second Life, where residents buy and sell Linden dollars for their US counterpart – a 20% increase on the previous quarter, while the US economy shrank by 1%. Trading activity increased by 6% in the last quarter of 2008.”

2. Financial Times (UK) – Trading in online virtual goods set to top $1bn. “Revenues from the sale of virtual goods will top $1bn this year in the US, according to analysts, a 100 per cent leap over last year that signals the arrival of a new online industry in the largest internet market in the western world. The findings, to be released in a report today, show that sales are expected to double again next year, with particularly fast growth noticeable in the social games category. Analysts and entrepreneurs have been following developments in virtual goods and social games closely. But the report will give the most complete picture to date of virtual goods sales trends in the US.”

3. VentureBeat (USA) – Electronic Arts exec says social gaming bubble resembles mobile games hype. “The social gaming bubble is getting bigger and it resembles all of the hype that used to envelop the mobile phone games and virtual world markets a few years ago. So says John Schappert, the newly appointed chief operating officer at Electronic Arts. When EA agreed to buy Jamdat Mobile for $680 million in December, 2005, that was a peak moment for the mobile games bubble. Venture capitalists funded lots of mobile game startups in the hopes of getting a similar outcome, only to see the peak shift to virtual worlds as Second Life.”

4. Signal Magazine (USA) – Virtual Design Challenge Opens To All. “A new competition is opening up the process of developing and improving virtual training environments by streamlining the rules and requirements for participation. The U.S. military spends billions of dollars developing and improving virtual environments to train its personnel, but this process can seem complex and difficult for individuals and firms without government contracting experience.”

5. Reuters – China Q2 online game revenues hit $906 mln -research firm. “Revenue from China’s online game market grew 39.5 percent in the second quarter from the previous year to 6.18 billion yuan ($906 million), according to data from research firm Analysys International on Tuesday. Tencent Holdings (0700.HK), which runs China’s largest online messaging platform and operates popular free-to-play games domestically, emerged as the market leader with 20.2 percent of the market and 1.24 billion yuan in revenues.”

6. Computerworld (USA) – Linden Lab CEO on Second Life’s growth, future. “While the recession has been brutal on most technology companies, one venture that has done relatively well is Linden Lab, the parent company of Second Life. When we first interviewed CEO Mark Kingdon in January, he said the company was profitable and growing. Last month, Linden Lab released figures showing increased usage of the virtual world, and a near doubling of the size of the in-world economy. The Standard recently caught up with Kingdon via email to see how the company’s enterprise push is faring.”

7. MTV.com (USA) – Project Natal May Provide Dance Controls, But ‘FaceAPI’ Could Let You Talk Or Make Out. “From what Microsoft has shown off so far, Project Natal looks like it will track various body movements for controls dealing with first-person shooters, sports games and maybe even lightsaber fights. PhD candidate Torben Sko, is concentrating on face movements in his work right now, though, and he says he’s found a way to track mouths, eyes and head movements nothing nothing more than a camera. “Using a program called ‘FaceAPI,’ it’s possible to track a person’s facial features using nothing more than a standard Web camera,” he explains in a video posted to TorbenSko.com. “In turn, we can use this information to drive the expression of a virtual character.”

8. Air and Business Travel News (UK) – Comparing real and virtual meetings. “In a bid to compare the virtual and real life, the UK and Ireland Institute of Travel and Meetings (ITM) and Eventia held two events, one a real meeting at the NEC in Birmingham, the other in the virtual reality computer programme Second Life. The same content was included in both events, held on September 22 and 23, after which the delegates were asked to complete a survey about their experience. The two meetings organisations wanted to use the events to test out the business viability of Second Life technology. After comparing the feedback, ITM and Eventia recently released the results of the experiment to be mixed.”

9. Sydney Morning Herald (Australia) – Teen net addicts at risk of mental health problems. “Obsessive use of the internet could create a mental-health epidemic, with up to 10 per cent of adolescents at risk, a Sydney academic warns. World studies have documented dangerous levels of “internet addiction” – computer use that interferes with daily lives – says Lawrence Lam, a behavioural epidemiologist at the University of Sydney and the Children’s Hospital at Westmead.”

10. World Politics Review (USA) – Social Media, Virtual Worlds and Public Diplomacy. “On Sept. 1, 2009, the new U.S. Ambassador to Kenya Michael E. Ranneberger, a career foreign service officer with deep experience on the African continent, started a Twitter feed. The seven or so tweets he posted between then and Sept. 29 were lauded as another example of “Twitter Diplomacy.” Shashank Bengali, blogging for McClatchy, declared that the ambassador came out “swinging” with highly charged comments about Kenyan presidential appointees and in support of Kenya’s need for reform.”

1. The Industry Standard (USA) – Gartner: Rise of virtual worlds will lead to dress codes for avatars. “Don’t get too attached to that avatar of a punk rock angel you spent five hours designing in Second Life. According to Gartner, if you think you’ll be doing work-related tasks in virtual worlds in the coming years, chances are your employer is going to establish dress codes that governs how the avatar looks and behaves — and halo-wearing, flying rockers just won’t cut it. The research firm says by the end of 2013, “70 percent of enterprises will have behavior guidelines and dress codes established for all employees who have avatars associated with the enterprise inside a virtual environment.”

2. GigaOM (USA) – Is Augmented Reality Just the Beginning of the 3-D Revolution? “Augmented reality — a group of technologies that marry the virtual world with the real one — has been around for decades, and has traditionally required the use of expensive and specialized equipment. But the proliferation of smartphones that have cameras, displays, and even GPS and other sensors on them has enabled a whole host of new mobile applications — Soundwalk, Wikitude and Layar, for example — that offer a glimpse at how online digital information and offline physical worlds could be combined. With such tools, virtual and real worlds have moved one step closer to one another.”

3. Earth2Tech (USA) – As Virtual Worlds Grow, More Ways to Cut Carbon. “Take one slumped economy, add some high travel prices, stir in a healthy dose of climate change anxiety, and you’ve got the perfect recipe for an emerging market: virtual worlds for businesses. According to the new GigaOM Pro report “Virtual Worlds for the Enterprise Market” by Kris Tuttle and Steve Waite of Research 2.0 (subscription required), these factors are driving annual revenues for the space for businesses up to $8-10 billion by 2015. While I’ve been skeptical about the emissions-reducing potential of virtual meetings in the past, Tuttle and Waite’s report indicates that the growth of enterprise-focused virtual worlds could have some real green benefits, by helping companies eliminate a higher percentage of business-related travel over time.”

4. Wired (UK) – ‘Visual Walkman’ merges real and virtual worlds. ” new augmented reality helmet that mixes the real world with computer-generated images has been developed by a student from the Netherlands. During his course at Delft University of Technology, Jurjen Caarls developed image processing technology that allowed the “mixing and filtering of information” from a range of different sensors.”

5. Kansas City Star (USA) – It’s not all play for a degree in video gaming. “Menacing, metallic and mega-gun brandishing, the cyber super soldier looms over Richard Fleming’s desk. Not exactly stereotypical for a professor’s office at Johnson County Community College? Well, as the “Gears of War” crowd might say: “Eat boot! Suck pavement! Get back into your hole!” This professor under the “Halo 3” figure teaches video game development. So lock and load, zappers of Nazi zombies or the locust horde. All those hours wearing out your thumbs in front of “Halo” or “Gears” actually could mean a college degree and fast career path.”

6. Hartford Courant (USA) – Wonder Rotunda Fills A Niche. “‘I think this is educational,” observes my 8-year-old stepson, about half an hour after logging on to Wonder Rotunda, a website aimed at kids that was recently launched by a suburban dad. I wonder briefly if the jig is up, but he continues to explore the virtual theme park, intrigued by the prospect of winning and spending the game’s “wonder dollars” to buy virtual food and loot with which to decorate his virtual treehouse.”

7. Wall Street Journal (USA) – Your Second Life Avatar Is Dressed Inappropriately. “Don’t show up to your company’s virtual meeting wearing a tail. And by all means, do not come dressed as a goblin. That’s one of the takeaways from a new Gartner report on corporate avatar etiquette. As businesses use virtual environments such as Second Life, Gartner researcher Jim Lundy said he’s been fielding more questions from companies about protocols for appropriate business use of avatars and virtual environments. He predicts that by 2013, most of them will have such guidelines in place.”

8. AFP (USA) – Imagine Peace Tower lights in Second Life. “Just hours after Friday’s annual lighting of the Imagine Peace Tower in Iceland, a virtual version of the tribute to late Beatle John Lennon opened in online world Second Life. “I hope we will all come to visit it when it lights up every sunset time, as it spreads our wishes of peace throughout Second Life,” Lennon’s widow Yoko Ono said Friday in a message at her imaginepeace.com website. “Remember, each one of us has the power to change the world.” Ono’s avatar spoke at the Second Life lighting ceremony, and then danced with others until a virtual dawn.”

9. CNET (USA) – The future of iPhone games. “With the release of “2012,” the iPhone app tied to the forthcoming Sony Pictures film of the same name, a group of developers may have kicked off the future of games on the hit smartphone. While the game itself is fairly simple and lasts just minutes, it incorporates features that may never have been tried before, and as such, could be among the small number of titles that are showcasing what will soon be considered par for the course. In the minds of many industry observers, thanks to its integration of a functional operating system, an accelerometer, GPS and a camera, and the fact that thousands of developers, big and small, have released games for the iPhone, the Apple device has already surpassed Sony’s PSP and Nintendo’s DS as the most important, or at least most adaptable, portable gaming platform.”

10. Stuff.co.nz (NZ) – Review: Aion. “It’s impossible to review a MMORPG without making a comparison to World of Warcraft. With its huge following none have come close to being able to match it, although a few recent games have tried. This has now changed, because with Guild Wars, Lineage and City of Heroes under its belt NCSoft have finally released what can only be described as a work of MMORPG art. Set in the world of Atreia, the lands are split between the Seraphim Lords (the Elyos) and the forces of the earth (the Asmodians). As a new player you must select between either of these two races. ”

1. Reuters (USA) – Virtual economies in videogames used as case studies. “Virtual economies set up in videogames as players trade items are being used as case studies to track and model real-world economies. As more people join massively multiplayer online (MMO) videogame worlds like Activision Blizzard’s “World of Warcraft,” NCsoft’s “Aion” and Atari’s “Champions Online,” real money is being used to purchase virtual items through micro-transactions. As a result, game worlds are creating virtual economies. With the global recession impacting consumer spending — and the sales of videogames — a research group is using Sony Online Entertainment’s “EverQuest II” as a case study to explore how virtual economies mirror real-world economies.”

2. Jerusalem Post (Israel) – New Worlds: ‘Virtual white cane’ helps familiarize the blind with new environments. “Software developed at Tel Aviv University can help the blind and visually impaired maneuver through unfamiliar three-dimensional environments. Dr. Orly Lahav of TAU’s School of Education and Porter School for Environmental Studies invented the new tool, which is connected to a joystick that interfaces with users through the sense of touch. Today the visually impaired are very limited in their movements, which necessarily influences their quality of life, says Lahav, but this solution could help them find new options, like shorter routes from train or bus stations to their homes.”

3. Mediaweek (USA) – Virtual Worlds See Shakeout. “A couple of years ago, MTV seemed to be onto the next wave in digital media, as it introduced to much hype several virtual worlds tied to its hit series Laguna Beach and The Hills. Last week, even as the new season of The Hills premiered, the Laguna and Hills worlds were nowhere to be found. The site virtual.mtv was still live—but it featured a nearly empty theater designed for fans to gather and watch the MTV Movie Awards—which took place last June. It appears the conventional wisdom that Generation Y was about to become the avatar generation may not have been so wise. For example, The CW quietly shut down its two-year-old Gossip Girl-themed virtual world a few months ago. Earlier this summer, the teen-targeted vSide.com shut down. And in August the once-promising young adult hangout There.com drew just 265,000 unique users, per comScore.”

4. PCWorld (USA) – Twitter vs. Second Life: A N00b Takes Another Look. “Overhyped technology poster child of 2009, meet your counterpart from 2006. We’re talking about Twitter — which, by our reckoning, entered the mainstream at the beginning of this year — and Second Life, the virtual world which went through its own hype phase in 2006 (BusinessWeek: “Virtual worlds abound in useful business applications!”) before being brought roughly back to earth. But not all hype is created equal. In a June 2009 blog entry for AdAge, PR executive Chris Abraham compared the two services, and concluded that Twitter’s hype cycle is more sustainable than that of Second Life. Why?”

5. Advertising Age (USA) – Has Second Life Cut Its Mullet? “At the end of June I wrote a simple blog post for DigitalNext addressing why I believe the hype currently associated with Twitter will be more sustainable than Second Life’s. Long-story short, “Twitter is light, cheap, open and permanent, whereas Second Life is heavy, expensive, closed and ephemeral.” Twenty-one comments and a series of responses later, I was invited by Second Life to return to the virtual world that I stopped visiting back in 2007. My complaint, and why I never returned, is that the client, called the viewer in SL parlance, was too resource intensive, incompatible with my executive laptop (which favored lightweight and slimness over horsepower and graphics cards) and required too much bandwidth, preferably a LAN connection instead of Wi-Fi.”

6. Kotaku (Australia) – Australian Film School Offers Games Course For 2010. “The Australian Film Radio and Television School is now taking applications for a 2010 course in Games & Virtual Worlds. AFTRS is Australia’s national screen arts and broadcast school. Loads of successful filmmakers are graduates: Alex Proyas, Jane Campion, Andrew Lesnie, to name but three.”

7. VentureBeat (USA) – IMVU, the 3-D avatar chat room company, hits $25M in revenue. “IMVU has been fairly quiet about its success in virtual chat rooms, where people can create their own dressed-up 3-D characters and socialize in graphically beautiful settings. But today it’s starting to trumpet loudly that it has established a strong business with a $25 million annual revenue run rate.
Cary Rosenzweig, chief executive and president of the Palo Alto, Calif.-based company, said in an interview the company has doubled its revenue in the past year in spite of the recession and the cooling off of the virtual world hype. IMVU now has more than 40 million registered users and six million unique visitors a month, according to comScore. For the past three months, the company has been profitable, Rosenzweig said.”

8. Kotaku (Australia) – Littlest Pet Shop Online Has Cutest Hourglass Ever. “Why spend your evening waiting in an queue to play Aion when you can watch an hourglass spin around in EA’s new MMO, Littlest Pet Shop Online? The Hasbro / EA partnership is fully realised today with the launch of Littlest Pet Shop Online, an immersive online world filled with animals desperately struggling to keep from being crushed under the weight of their own massive skulls. The game is all about decorating, customisation, and of course, mini-games, offering fun for “girls” whether they opt to play for free or buy a subscription for $US6.95 a month.”

9. Crispy Gamer (USA) – F-Secure details World of Warcraft scams, trojans. “Players of Blizzard’s ultra popular MMO World of Warcraft are under attack by a phishing scheme that lets the attacker steal players’ gold and rare items by luring players with an offer of “free in-game mounts,” anti-virus and security researchers at F-Secure point out. This is common knowledge to many WOW players (read the official forums for proof), but not to those few of us that don’t play World of Warcraft, or security experts who don’t pay too much attention to virtual worlds.”

10. Media Asia (Hong Kong) – Sector Insight… Taiwan gaming firms look to offline advertising. “The growth of the online gaming industry in Taiwan has created a new group of big-money advertisers. Taiwan’s publishers of insanely popular, massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs) are relying more and more on good old offline mass media to recruit players to their virtual worlds. TV is the medium of choice, and commercial breaks feature video grabs of evil demons in deadly action, or cloyingly sexy animated pop idols inviting all to dance and sing. This year’s advertising onslaught began last spring as university students prepared for final exams. Heavy promotion pushed PC/online game adspend to NT$510.9 million (US$15.6 million) for the first half of the year, up a whopping 283 per cent year on year, according to Nielsen Taiwan. Ninety per cent went on TV (77 per cent cable; 13 per cent terrestrial), with six per cent spent on OOH, and a mere four per cent shared among newspapers, magazines and radio.”