Caleb Booker

Headlines about virtual worlds just from the past week.

This is week three and I’m a day late. Sorry about that folks - long weekend up here. Turns out it’s a pretty slow newsweek - shortest one of these yet I think.

Also this week I’ve begun to include stuff that is seriously old news but is being reported as cutting-edge headlines. Scroll down to “Newbs Only” for those headlines with some commentary.

Past weeks:

• Aug 18-24 2008
• Aug 11-17 2008

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:

Business

Mellanium Caveut Workshop at UCLAN
Mellanium is presenting an incredible CaveUT (pictured, left) demo at ADSIP (Applied Digital Signal and Image Processing Research Centre) at the University of Central Lancashire, Preston UK. The CaveUT technology can put you right inside a scene - talk about immersive experiences! Watch out for Mellanium folks: they may not be “hip” and full of marketing mumbo-jumbo that impresses the New York / Silicon Valley set, but they are making some incredible innovations.

GoWeb3D Launches as 3DXplorer Developer for Business
This is the story of one company (GoWeb3D) that worked out the critical component to virtual worlds: provide solutions, not technology. There are a bunch of companies with technology that doesn’t have a direct application, and they’re just hoping for someone to walk in and make it all make sense for them. 3DXplorer should be appreciating just how lucky they are here.

Miele CAVE -VR design for around the home
A nice visual on how immersion is handy in the design process.

Virtual world ‘tricks’ patients into walking again
Yet another therapeutic use of virtual worlds.

BigPond’s virtual kiosk an Australian first
You can now get real customer service support from BigPond (a high-speed internet service) at a virtual kiosk.

Training and Education

Virtual world of trade training
Some cool demos of a “Virtual Spray Painting Simulator”.

Degrees in the Virtual World?
A serious look at higher education in the virtual world. Very good content here.

Forterra Systems Releases Media Sharing and SCORM Integration Features in Its OLIVE™ Virtual World Platform
Press release. This is good news for trainers using SCORM.

Virtual Worlds Industry Outlook 2008-2009
Technology Intelligence Group releases a projection report predicting “same as this year, but more”. A large section is devoted to legal issues. At 22 pages, it’s worth a quick once-over. (Direct download link to PDF)

Modeling Health Care Logistics in a Virtual World
Craig Thompson of the University of Arkansas gives a summary of how Second Life is used in logistics planning. Their College of Engineering has a nice website about their endeavors.

Government and Military

ECS Gets $1.4M Contract to Extend Nexus for Army Medical Training
Engineering & Computer Simulations is possibly the only company that comes close to Forterra for simulation. Good on ‘em.

VIC government shuts down Second Life presence
The experiment ends, analysis ensues, and what happens next is anyone’s guess.

Marketing

Dizzywood Lands $1 Million for Virtual World for Kids
Another “we sell ad space!” world. Kids worlds are the new cartoons.

Bitstudio Games Develops First Virtual World Tied to Children’s Book and DVD Series
Press release. FWIW.

Kohls Stardoll Promotion Case Study
Hard numbers on Kohl’s marketing effort. Long story short: the numbers look good.

Noted: Sears Gets Hip to Virtual World
Report on Business lets its readers in on Sears’ big efforts in this arena.

Gaming

MMO Gold Farming a $500M industry for 400k People
400k people working like dogs day in and day out to earn $145/mo. Gold farming is hell, but I suppose as sweatshops go at least there isn’t a lot of dangerous equipment. (Detailed report and statistics here.)

Nerds Only

EitaroSoft Provides Cellphone 3D Virtual World Software for NVIDIA’s APX2500 Next-Generation Application Processor at NVISION Event
A world in your cellphone = Nerdcore.

BabbleStream Launching Browser-Based VoIP
Make or break here would be if they opened up the API so that people could start integrating the tool without the input of individual platform builders.

Newbs Only

Life in the virtual world after Second Life
A reporter discovers that not every single company has had incredible success in Second Life, and that there exists more than one virtual world.

Second Life Website Offers Online World And Possibly Danger
Reporter warns of a “website” called Second Life that’s dangerous! Why? Because it has psychological hazards! Duh! They quote a computer specialist, who we all know are experts in human behavior, to prove their point.

Sociological Oddities

RudeVirtual.com, the Newest Addition to Utherverse’s Family of Virtual Worlds, Brings the Beach Party to Your Home Computer
“Beach Party” means “Sex” now, apparently. Not the first adult-oriented virtual world, and certainly not the last.

Posted on September 1st, 2008 under business, news. RSS 2.0 feed. Leave a response, or trackback.