Business in Virtual Worlds News Roundup - Nov 02-09 2008

Headlines about virtual worlds just from the past week.

Question: should this weekly post become a podcast? What about a weekly video podcast? Post a comment or drop me an email, let me know if you’d listen.

Lots of stuff this week. I probably could have trimmed the fat a bit, but I have to admit that I just found it all very fascinating and noteworthy. Even the dumb stuff. Fasten those seatbelts!

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, my blip channel, the wind beneath your wings, etc etc etc… k here we go:

Business

Second Lifers Split on Linden Lab’s Open Spaces ‘Compromise’
PC World is getting whimsical these days, aren’t they? Summary: as a patch to last week’s OpenSpaces snafu, Linden Lab released a third package called “Homestead” that’s somewhere between a full server and an OpenSpaces server. Some are ok with it, some are clearly not, and some are overjoyed at the opportunity to continue their tirades of self-righteous outrage. It’s too late no matter what Linden Lab do now… mistake made, I don’t envy them. There’s no going back, really. Is there a fix for this? (More perspectives from The Industry Standard, Silicon Alley Insider, and the official Second Life blog.)

You know what? Let’s have some fun with it. Here, check out what the Second Life Herald served up: A Gallery of OpenSpace Price Protests (greets Pix!)

blinkx Partners With ExitReality to Introduce Video to the 3D Web
ExitReality is the king of strategic partnerships, I swear! Anyhow, this one seems like another win: blinkx’s massive amounts of searchable video can now easily be enjoyed with others. The hard question virtual world professionals need to answer here is whether or not blinkx would benefit just as much by including a simple javascript live chat box next to each video they host.

Training and Education

Second Life opens new world of opportunity to Ontario students
Nice overview of several educational institutions’ activities. Plus video of Ohio University’s Second Life campus.

What Does It Cost to Use a Virtual World Learning Environment?
A nice shot at making some numbers public. Use it as a very general guide, but if this is the kind of thing you’re looking for please do further consultation before jumping in.

College Second Life project extended
City College Norwich is reporting good results from their training and general info experiments, and are keeping it up for another year.

Suffolk prof invites students to explore virtual world
Accountants and Second Life seem to be a really good fit. Lots of accountant firms in there.

Government and Military

Real Taxes for Real Money Made by Online Game Players
Yikes! “Game Players” is disingenuous: this applies to all virtual currencies. I understand why they’d want to do this: QQ actually moves RMB at times. But a 20% blanket tax… this is going to be loophole hell for awhile.

Second Life Hosts Web 2.0 Government Discussion Group
MuniGov 2.0, a coalition of local/municipal governments focused on exploring the use and principles of Web 2.0, hosts some pretty interesting meetings.

Virtual world celebrates Obama’s win
Hey US, grats on a successful riot-free election! The press is pretty excited about people reacting to the election in online spaces for some reason… lots of stories similar to the AP one here.

Naval Undersea Warfare Center replicated in Second Life
I have no idea why they used Second Life for this, but hey, whatever floats your boat…

Cops get high-tech firearms training
Wave ‘o the future.

Marketing

Alphanim Developing Virtual World for Animated Series
MMORPG in development on a Disney property.

Other Glimpses of Second Life Use
This is basically a press release. It covers an old marketing effort by IBM in Second Life, and links to a book from IBM Press entitled “Use ANGELS and Web 2.0 Marketing to Drive Powerful, Quantifiable Results“. ANGELS is… a clumsy acronym.

Gaming

Funtactix Launches Moondo for Casual Gaming Community
The key to what makes Moondo important (apart from some great design choices) is that you can take your character from one game to another. Now the power of 3D space avatars comes into play: people identify with the representation of themselves on-screen, and invest emotionally in participating in your content far more than they ever would have. Longer, more frequent visits = bigger mindshare.

Nerds Only

Apple Researching Virtual Reality Headsets
Check out Apple’s latest patent application. The idea is to abolish conventional screens and make it seem like you’re sitting in a theater. Nerdcore!

Linden Lab Hires Big Spaceship to Improve “First Hour Experiences”
Finally! Whoever is responsible at Linden Lab for convincing them that they need outside help in this regard has just earned a raise! Big Spaceship seems capable, but we’ve seen other big guns fall flat in the virtual world so we shall see.

CityPixel Facebookizes
CityPixel is a 2.5D, simple, blocky, but kinda fun and very simple space that recently got itself a Facebook plugin. All the cool kids are doing it!

A Realer Virtual World
Forbes gives us an update on MIT’s continuing experiments in mapping virtual world data to the real world and providing information overlays through cellphones. Apparently Linden Lab is kicking in a little funding to make sure this tech works with their tech.

Newbs Only

The Magic Circle - is not so helpful, actually.
A great article from The Metaverse Journal about the struggles with terminology that legal professionals are going through. An important read if you’re having difficulty defining things, and an absolutely critical read if you don’t know who Jack Thompson or Something Awful are, and what role they play in all of this from a sociological point of view.

PlayStation Home to Be “Evolving, Living, and Breathing” Platform
This announcement is for newbs only because only someone who hasn’t been following this at all could possibly care what Sony has to say at this point. Delay, delay, delay, and no details that stick. The PS3, while a phenomenal bit of hardware, has not seen very good marketing. When they come out with a playable beta, or video of the actual interface with actual confirmed details, I’ll take them seriously.

Second Life: Megatrend-In-Waiting Or Just A Dumb Fad?
Focuses on Clay Shirky’s “stupid predictions show lack of value” myopia that ignores what is happening of value right now (for the record I love Clay Shirky, I just disagree on this particular issue), and contrasts it with an example of one person who has been able to show serious real-world value from virtual-world experiences. Of course, if you’d like more examples of practical real-world value gained from virtual worlds, see the rest of this post and past weeks (listed above).

Sociological Oddities

Gore Verbinski: Mobsters, pirates, and…avatars?
EW.com (no seriously that’s what they have at the top of every page) reports on an upcoming “Obsession With Second Life Leads To Disaster” flick. *sigh* Cue a thousand articles on the dangers of … electricity …

Second Life not immune from real-life vitriol
People don’t actually behave like computers when they use computers! I mean, you’d think they would right?

Posted on November 9th, 2008 under customer service, futurism, governance, new media, news, platforms, press, virtual worlds. RSS 2.0 feed. Leave a response, or trackback.

Caleb Booker