Business in Virtual Worlds News Roundup – Sept 15-21 2008
Headlines about virtual worlds just from the past week.
Week after week I’m blown away at how much fresh news there is out there relating to the practical applications of virtual spaces. Things are moving fast!
This is the sixth week I’ve done this and it’s becoming an essential part of my life. There’s pretty much no other way to keep these things organized without losing them in a tag cloud somewhere or tucking them in a folder where I’ll never see them again. Here’s hoping you get as much value out of the experience as I do!
Past weeks:
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 power of positive thinking, the force of gravity, etc etc etc… k here we go:
Business
Second Life Tries For A Second Act
This article, while not the first to make these statements by any means, will probably be cited in another couple of years as the birth of the new hype cycle. Just remember: Hype does not equal ROI, nor does it equal opportunity. It’s just hype.
Hollywood Interactive Group Raises $5 Million Series “A”
Of course, maybe hype DOES mean VC funding floating about…
Scientists in Second Life
An overview of SciLands, where NASA the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (among others) do some good work.
Wipro’s SOA solutions lab on Second Life
Reaching out to their customers in a new way. Some innovative stuff actually.
Here Come the Millennials! Are You Ready?
Yep, it’s that time again: you’ve lost track of pop culture. It’s ok, it’s not your fault, it just keeps changing. Tune back in now…
Big Brother tracking comes to Second Life
A review of RFID tracking experiments for future hospitals.
Dolby Gets into Virtual Worlds with 3D Voice SDK
Oh yeah, I remember Dolby… welcome to the future guys.
Second Life sets techies on stability
I’ve deleted many page-length sarcastic tirades here, but bottom line: many businesses have left the platform due to horrendous stability issues that could easily, easily be addressed even through better communication. *delete,delete,pontificate,delete*
Immersive Workspaces: the first true corporate virtual world solution?
A quick review of the (non-embeddable!) video (because there’s no live demo available!) of Rivers Run Red’s Protosphere clone.
Vinidicia to Provide Fraud Prevention to Multiverse
This is going to be big business in the next short while, no doubt.
Training and Education
CCC prepares to give its students a Second Life using software program
Craven Community College faculty jumps on board and starts doing distance education in virtual spaces.
Second life encourages online classes to flourish at universities
Good overview.
Eager to practise together – virtually
English as a Second Language education in virtual spaces. They spell it “Engish”. Heh.
Professor Gets $100,000 World of Warcraft Grant
Enh, why not? Haven’t seen anything really conclusive about WoW from academic circles since Nick Yee.
Government and Military
A Second Life chance on the beat in WA
Recruiting police out of Second Life, this time in Australia. (See also.) A few police forces worldwide have had some successes here.
Army Taps Forterra to Add Intelligent NPCs to OLIVE
Good move to go with Forterra on this. You can’t beat neural-net AI for realism.
Second Life Garners Awards for Ontario Public Service Site
Misleading title alert: Ontario Public Service (OPS) Careers Island got the award, not Second Life.
Marketing
Pew: 10% of American Teens Use Virtual Worlds
… yep.
7 Days Brand Launches Bakery Theme Park
Big builds miss more often than hit, but you never know. Might be worth checking out. If successful, it lends hope to all would-be marketers of visceral experiences in virtual spaces.
AEG Live comes Meez Nation
Events company AEG reaches out to a target demographic. Good for them.
Mudvayne enters Meez
Oh, guys, no. If you’re trying to bill yourselves as a metal band, please join a world whose demographic isn’t 18 year old girls. Try a shooter video game sponsorship, or vSide, or even There.com… here, check out a Mudvayne video and you tell me if this was a good move:
Gaming
Lego Universe: From the child on the floor to the user online
Kind of a no-brainer really. This will be a great promotion for the Lego brand… imagine kids building something there and then realizing they could build it for real! Moooom! I need more LEGOs!
Next Island Announces the Virtual World of the Future
Difficult to tell exactly what we’re dealing with here – it appears a virtual world version of Carolines Comedy Club has been launched in Entropia Universe.
Google to acquire Valve?
Whoa, wait, what? Valve makes one of the greatest 3D engines ever created, they create some of the best content for 3D ever devised, and have one of the largest subscription-based video game distribution platforms anywhere. Add Google to that mix and everything could change for everyone.
Nerds Only
3DVU Enhancing Over 80 Million Nokia Phones with Navi2Go, 3D Virtual World Mobile Navigation
Ok, so maybe it’s just a glorified GPS system (for now), but don’t underestimate the future here.
ExitReality Launches to Public Beta: A Connector for the 3D Web?
I’ve written about ExitReality a few times now. If nothing else, they’re awesome at generating press for themselves and they’re making some good partnerships – a crucial step.
Quick Stat: 8 Billion Minutes of Voice Used in Second Life
Well now, there’s a pretty unabiguous stat.
Electric Sheep CEO Sibley Verbeck on the Virtual Shopping Mall
A largely speculative conversation about something we haven’t seen a real success in yet. Listen to the podcast.
Google to Release Interactive Gadget API
Google is making pretty much everything they’ve got available through Google Lively. Sweet!
Icarus Ports Platform to iPhone
Cellphone or die.
Newbs Only
Virtual worlds provide real interaction
Ok, so there are these things called “virtual worlds” where people make “avatars” and they “interact” in a very “real” way. “etc”.
So How Many People Actually PLAY Second Life?
This is one of the OLDEST questions about Second Life, and it’s answered here, poorly. Not his fault really: statisticians and specialists of all kinds have really given this topic a strong work-over already, so he’s coming into this little debate pretty unprepared. What’s more interesting I think is how many stories Kotaku suddenly seems to be posting about Second Life. Used to be nothing, now this is the third in a week. Something’s up…
Virtual space, real love?
Wow, it turns out people do things that people do when they use the Internet! I’d have thought they’d just do things that computers do! (Sorry, this is only the billionth article like this I’ve seen.)
Sociological Oddities
Gamers Make Good Citizens
An easy to read review of the “Teens, Video Games and Civics” report via Anne Laurent.
Teens gather online for peace
Wow, that wasn’t even planned. Nice follow-up though!
A big business in the virtual worlds scenario is the business of third party social network as Myrl, Koinup etc….that have built a community around the users of virtual worlds, second life and other metaverse
[...] Sept 15-21 2008 [...]