Caleb Booker

Headlines about virtual worlds just from the past week.

This is the second week that I’m giving it a shot. Last week was a real long list, and this one is even longer, so I’ve attempted some rough categorizing.

This time I decided to include some stories that go a little further afield, including stories about marketing, kids worlds, and some human interest stuff. My summary and commentary follows each link.

Disclaimer: As with everything on my blog, the opinions expressed here are mine and do not reflect on Clever Zebra, the vBusiness Expo, my friends, my family, my cats, Spiderman, etc etc etc… k here we go:

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Business

The Virtual Worlds BusinessCast interviews Robert Gehorsam of Forterra, Inc.
If you haven’t yet, tune in to this podcast. By far one of the best virtual world podcasts that exists.

A second income on Second Life
Kind of a “we just noticed Second Life exists” article. Good if you’ve never heard of selling virtual goods.

Virtual Advertising in Second Life
Press Release, and their website is pretty amateur, but looking at the video it looks like they might be providing some decent low-budget solutions.

Few lives left for Second Life
Typical “the sky is falling” article.

Kim MacKenzie hits back on negative media coverage of Second Life
A direct response to the last article.

Quick Stat: Sears’ Success in Virtual Worlds
Article boils down to two statistics:

• 500,000+ visits to the Sears virtual store on Zwinky.com
• 700,000 Sears items have been “adopted” so far in Meez

GoFish Loses $3.6M in Q2; Down from $5.9M Last Year
How it’s even possible for an ad network to lose money, I don’t know. They’re getting a new CEO now. Good move guys.

Nortel Acquires DiamondWare to Launch Enterprise World
This is inked to Project Chainsaw that we’ve been telling people about in Clever Zebra circles. It sounds like they’ve integrated extremely sophisticated audio tools. Here’s the video overview:

Charity, Non-Profit and Not-For-Profit

Second Life - Monogram Virtua Sponsors the Operation Kid Equip Fundraiser in the Virtual World
Press Release. Go fundraising!

Virtual fund-raisers draw real donations
A good recap of the recent Relay-For-Life event supporting cancer research.

Government and Military

UK and US Armies Conduct Joint Training Experiment in OLIVE
A logical extension I suppose. They train together in real life, and the US Army has been using virtual worlds for quite some time, so this was bound to happen.

Presidential Candidates Ignore Second Life
So last week politicians were trying and failing. This week they aren’t even trying. This is me, shaking my head hoping that the world snaps back into focus.

Second Life and Social Media: Networking Gold Mine or Time Sink?
Well now, there’s an important question! Here’s the Slideshare:

Marketing

Virtual Worlds Management Report: 150+ Youth-Oriented Worlds Live or Developing
Some inflation of the numbers for shock value is typical here, but regardless, I suppose I can’t ignore kids worlds no matter how much I really, really want to.

Worlds & Paid, Inc. Partner To Deliver Advanced 3-D Virtual World with e-Commerce For Darryl ‘DMC’ McDaniels
I haven’t seen a successful band-specific world yet, but hey, who knows. Worlds made an Aerosmith world years ago. Have you ever even heard about it?

Retailers ‘Sell’ to Young Virtually
Kohl is selling virtual clothing in Stardoll.

CineStar Group Launches with Dark Knight Theme in Twinity
Something tells me Twinity is going to surprise us in the long run. They are doing a bang-up job of bringing in these large-scale promotions.

There.com Rolls Out Virtual Goods for Four New Retailers
K-Swiss, Eberjey, Bravado, Bebe, and the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum
are now selling virtual goods in There.com.

Nielsen: Virtual Worlds Lead for UK Kids
If your business targets the youth market, this week’s news carries one message: get into virtual worlds somehow, or die.

Nerds Only

Pirates of the Caribbean virtual world getting mobile spin-off
Much is touted about marketing and product development for cellphones, but I can’t relate. Still, people are producing content, so if you’re a developer it’s something you absolutely need to work into your model.

Linden Lab Gives Mono to Second Life
It’s a new programming language you can use to do cool stuff. Harder, better, faster, stronger.

MGM to make digital novel into TV series
Online comic-book thingy about virtual worlds is being brought to TV. Here’s the preview:

Vivaty Adds Avatar Customization and More
Vivaty needed more features. Now if they could only get it to work in Firefox without a crazy workaround.

Just Leap In Puts a Virtual World in Your Browser (The Startup Review)
User-created content, looks like it ran really smoothly, and was very simple. Promising, but as with all things in this arena we have to remain in wait-and-see mode until we can determine its usefulness for ourselves. Very cool demo reel though:

New Virtual World Headquarters Opens on Virtual Worlds Day August 20
Press Release. The Association of Virtual Worlds, an online social community for people who just luv them virtual world thangs, has a virtual headquarters. Odd that it took this long, now that I think on it.

An Introduction To OpenSim: the “Apache of Virtual Worlds”
If you’re nerdcore enough to know what they’re referring to by “Apache”, but not nerdcore enough to already know what “OpenSim” is, you’re in a very special place.

Google’s Lively Unloved
Yet another writer screaming: “I don’t understand anything so everything must suck!” The guy doesn’t even get Second Life… and he still thinks he should be typing in public.

Gaming

Virtual world economy drives developing world economy
Someone discovers gold farming for the first time. See my May 2007 writeup: What Is “Gold Farming”?

Reality Check: GT Academy Moves From the Virtual World to the Tarmac
This will be interesting. They’re taking the best drivers in a video game and putting them on the track. Will they crash and burn, or will they rock? What will this teach us about games as learning environments, or as places to talent scout?

Sociological Oddities

Woman Attempts To Kidnap Ex-Virtual Boyfriend
Only been happening in chatrooms and social spaces forever, but since it’s virtual world related I’m sure we’ll hear all sorts of crackpot theories now on how people’s sense of reality are being distorted…

Father tells of virtual world reunion
Again, been happening in chatrooms and social spaces forever, but since it’s virtual world related…

Posted on August 24th, 2008 under business, news. RSS 2.0 feed. Leave a response, or trackback.