Caleb Booker

Headlines about virtual worlds just from the past week.

This is a big news week, partially because everybody waited until during the big conventions to make announcements. Lesson being: this is a rotten week to make an announcement guys. You get lost in the shuffle. Even the biggest announcements are dwarfed by the sheer volume.

Believe it or not I cut out a lot here. Massive numbers of articles that might apply didn’t make it because they were either A) old news sold as new, or B) rumor/unverified/blatant ads. Inevitably things that should be here didn’t make it, and things that should have been cut weren’t… but after many hours of sifting through everything I’m done and it gets published as-is. Man, I’m seeing double… I’ve got to find better ways to spend my weekends…

Past weeks:

• Aug 25-31 2008
• 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, the Hostess Munchies, Molson Brewery, etc etc etc… k here we go:

Business

Convention Shows There Is A World Outside Second Life
Second Life Community Convention (SLCC) in Tampa - 800 people

That’s a Wrap: 1,300 Participate in 2nd Annual VW Expo
1300 in Los Angeles at the Virtual Worlds 2008.

A third life for marketing in virtual worlds
… oh, but here we’re saying SLCC only saw 400. Enh, who knows. Regardless, SLCC as an event seems to have received more press. Most stories about the VW 2008 were focused on specific announcements, with the expo itself as an afterthought. Hmmm… something in the way the content is presented I suppose. Worth further study.

IBM Drinks Second Life Kool-Aid, Makes More For Lotus Users (IBM)
IBM integrates some secure instant messaging tools (Sametime) into Second Life. Here, check out the totally nerdtastic video:

Will Second Life Transform the Way We Do Business?
A general article touching upon meetings, events, education, training and recruiting. It’s also a reminder that librarians seem to be very, very interested in Second Life. I must remember to interview one and really get a deeper understanding about why…

Health Care Providers Begin To Branch Out Into Second Life
A very well-researched article about various health care companies. There were a few projects I hadn’t heard of yet here. Worth a read.

Random House Group Hosts E-book Exhibition In Second Life
Many people don’t realize that ebooks get ISBNs, and are ordered and cataloged through distributors just like physical books. This is really a promo event for the Sony Reader but probably worth your time if you want to find out more here.

Journeys: A Virtual World Mashup With Real-World Destinations
Flickr + Yahoo Maps = Journeys. Might be serious competition for Lively, but it’s too early to tell. Worth jabbing with a stick for a few minutes, but I wish they wouldn’t force me to log in… Myrl is starting to sound like a good idea.

Rivers Run Red Enters Exclusive Partnership with Linden for Immersive Workspaces
Another re-broadcast news story. Anyhow. A purpose-built immersive workspace needs to be built for SL to compete with Qwaq, no question, but without having seen it myself it’s difficult to endorse the idea. For all we know it could be great or a complete disaster. Rivers Run Red projects have seen mixed mixed results, so jury’s still out on this one until we can do live demos ourselves.

The Venue Network Begins Beta Testing for Enterprise Events in VenueGen
Kind of a press release. VenueGen is going to be an on-demand browser-based virtual venue space… but no screenshots, no video, so no clue about it.

Virtual Job Candy Launches Office and Interview Space in Second Life
Another virtual world services organization that, eventually, launches a virtual world presence.

3Di Announces Browser-Based Open Viewer for Virtual Worlds
It’s not the first, but previous attempts were indie products. Hopefully this one will stick. Here’s the English-language website.

Linden Lab positions Second Life as cost-effective telepresence
More on what makes Second Life different than “telepresence” (despite the title’s implication), and musings on the business applications for Second Life, including meetings, interviews, and project collaboration. (Link to the video interview you’d be much more likely to watch if ZDNet allowed embedding instead of locking down their content like a bunch of pre-Web 1.0 old-media fossils.)

Think the property market’s in a state? Be thankful you live in the real world
A pretty decent cost analysis of virtual real estate.

Training and Education

Border Crossing: Future Canadian Border Guards Train In SL
28% improved result with the simulation. Not too shabby! Check out the video:

Second Life used to teach foreign languages
Yes, it is. Easy to illustrate things there, after all.

Global Kids’ Will Launch Cutting Edge Second Life Curriculum in Tampa and Los Angeles
A great retrospective on Global Kids’ virtual world efforts. Too bad nobody wrote a post-analysis of the announcement. Check out Global Kids, they do good work.

Altadyn Offering Meet in 3D Promotional Packages
Another attempt to make 3Dxplorer practical and easy to use. A “Meet in 3D” button seems like a move in the right direction.

Government and Military

Taking intelligence analysis to the virtual world
Another story on A-SpaceX, the intelligence community’s virtual world / social network mashup.

MyBase, 3D On-line Training Environment Software
Some official documentation on the U.S. Air Force’s latest project. Pretty hot stuff!

Marketing

There.com Launches Mac Platform, Lightweight IM, and Facebook Integration
Wow, that’s a lot all at once. There.com is playing their A-game.

Twinity moves to public beta
“Public beta” = “open, but with tiny bugs”. Today’s a good day to try it out, I’d really like to hear what you have to say about it.

Club Penguin gets it right
A great writeup from the Denver Post (I know!) about why Club Penguin was worth Disney’s $700M.

Multiverse touts extensible virtual-world effort
Kind of a re-packaging of old content here (the only real news is that they’re packaging everything under the name “Places”), but in case you hadn’t heard: they’re going to replicate a bunch of real world places. Times Square is pretty impressive, worth checking out.

Twentieth Century Fox Licensing & Merchandising and Multiverse Announce ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ Virtual World
Sounds like a winner. The show’s been off the air just long enough for everyone to forget just how depressed they always felt watching it, it’s filled with guilt-free killing, and it’s a great way to sell DVDs. I’m very interested in seeing how the Multiverse platform holds up here.

Multiverse Begins Development of Titanic Virtual World
Ah, there we go! I knew there had to be a third Multiverse story out there somewhere…

DinoKids Opens to Public for Demo
Yet another kids world.

Cartoon Doll Emporium to Launch CDEBoys; Partners with Wix.com for Mooyaka
… and another.

Dizzywood Hits 500K Registered Users
Flash-based kids worlds continue to rock the Casbah.

Webkinz World is Now Worldwide
I knew Webkinz would be big but they’re proving to be a monster! Last year I had to go to a specialty gift shop downtown to find one for my daughter - who was the only kid in the neighborhood with one. Now even the pharmacy on the corner keeps them in stock, and every kid in the neighborhood has at least three. Madness.

Gaming

PayByCash Launches Virtual Ultimate Game Card
A prepaid card that covers over 200 worlds. Pretty handy service - if I was an entertainment world builder I’d probably sign my world up.

Can You See Me Now?
(via Kzero) Can You See Me Now? is a game that happens simultaneously online and on the streets. If you follow blogs like this one you’ve probably heard the term “Augmented Reality” knocked about here and there. This is the very definition. Check out the cool video:

Nerds Only

The Electric Sheep Company Opening Webflock to Third-Party Developers
Although we had expected that web-based worlds would be big, I don’t think any of us expected a downright glut of them. There are dozens! By opening it up to 3rd party developers, The Electric Sheep Company is making a critical step for survival. Success online these days is measured largely in how well a company plays with others.

Forterra Adds COLLADA Support to OLIVE
COLLADA is a widely-used 3D object file standard, and OLIVE is a great simulator. A match made in heaven.

Vivox(R) Announces Vivox Open Initiative to Drive Innovation and Expand Reach
Last week I commented on the BabbleStream story: “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.” Gosh, I guess the gods were listening… can’t wait to see what new voice tools get developed here. It would be extra exciting if some 3rd party company formed around a really unique niche application for the technology. Someone make the killer biz app!

VastPark Developing Open-Source, Web-Based Player; Announces Educational License and Developer Program
If you haven’t checked it out already, spend a little time with VastPark. It’s the world’s most underestimated platform, and this is just another bit of proof.

Second Life mobile beta soars
Vollee’s big SL-on-a-cell release. Lots of hoopla here.

SceneCaster Announces Support for COLLADA
Scenecaster makes a smart move and supports a big 3D standard. Now if they could find someone to start selling specific applications for their technology they’d be in business.

The Empire Strikes Back as Second Life Announces Instant Messenger SLim
Another story about SLim, the upcoming instant-messaging client that lets you interface in voice and text with Second Life without the 3D. Screenshots!

Vivaty Rolls out Firefox Support, New Scenes, and Early Facebook Gift Integration
Good news about Firefox… it was quite the hack trying to get it to work before.

Newbs Only

The Ethics of a Sex Life in Your Second Life
Guys, it’s the same as the ethics of phone sex. New technology doesn’t necessarily change the rules every time. Why do we make life so complicated…

Sociological Oddities

Teleport to Israel Through Second Life
What I found interesting about this bit wasn’t just the way funding came together, but how the story came together. A reporter was checking it out, happened to run into someone, casually mentioned they were interested in writing about it, and suddenly they were talking to the creator. Try that in Web 2.0.

The kids are taking over virtual worlds
I love this title! Think about the presupposition: “Virtual worlds have, up to this point, NOT been for kids!”

Linden Lab put the bullet in ad farms
What I find fascinating about “ad farms”, those plots of land filled with blinking/spinning/animated towers of ads that blight the landscape, is how it compares to real-world urban planning, zoning laws, etc etc etc. Big topic, not good to get into in a newsreel… some other time.

At ESPN, Play-by-Play Goes Virtual
I’m kicking myself for not predicting this. OF COURSE they’re doing this… a new in-depth football simulation has been released every year (see MADDEN) since the 90s. Image courtesy of the New York Times… who will probably ungratefully fuss over the repost but we’ll cross that bridge if/when…

What a week!

Posted on September 7th, 2008 under business, news. RSS 2.0 feed. Leave a response, or trackback.