I kind of went light on the video embeds and inline images this week so that it all doesn’t seem so overwhelming. Dunno if that’s the best strategy. Well, we’ll try it and see… the wonders of it being your own blog ‘n all.
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, any of the other “Jack of All Strange” stuff that I do, etc etc etc… k here we go:
Canada Post hosts holiday retail on Second Life
“Canada Post’s Maple Grove [...] has built a retail city of 10 leading Canadian retailers to provide an online shopping and entertainment experience to the 380,000 registered Canadians visiting the site.”
Infogrames Acquiring Cryptic Studios
Infogrames, parent publisher of Atari, announced that it had entered into an agreement to acquire Cryptic Studios for $27.6 million and up to $20 million in sales-based incentives.
The Strangest Sights in Second Life
I was prepared to be all cynical about this, but as a matter of fact this is a great pictorial! Worth checking out!
Sex in Sony’s Home?
I don’t uh… know. Whatever. Here, look for yourself. (Totally SFW).
Prolific podcaster Crap Mariner posts a report on the latest US Holocaust Museum build. See here for full transcription. Some interesting backlash in the comments from viewers. Check it out and form your own opinion!
Headlines about virtual worlds just from the past week.
Big week! Take a second and get yourself a cup ‘o tea before you get started.
Hmmm. I need to find a way to work with this stuff a little more full-time, but I’m not sure a news blog is really in Clever Zebra’s gamut since Metaversed.com. Well hey, if you have a sack full of money and you’re interested in the project, let me know. Meanwhile, back to work!
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, any of the other “Jack of All Strange” stuff that I do, etc etc etc… k here we go:
The report outlines the key benefits of the current virtual worlds market as offring “unprecedented depth of engagement with consumers”; reaching a young, creative community that’s hard to find elsewhere; new worlds with better metrics systems; and virtual merchadising that “resonates with youth and can be very cost-effective.”
This stuff is always a compelling read for us industry-types, but it’s how we use the takeaways when communicating with others that will move the market.
GoFish Gets $22.5M in Financing
GoFish is doing quite well, incorporating a number of virtual worlds and a youth-oriented ad network. This funding should help them take it to the next level.
Army Launching Second Life Presence Next Month
Recruiting drive! Makes sense, considering how successful past corporate recruiting drives have been. C|Net offers up a video report, so good on them for supplying some visuals… although you’re forced to manually skip ahead to the 2:45 mark, and they noobishly claim that Second Life is “kinda over”. So I’ll just link instead of embed.
Meltingdots starts Weblin-based-services
Concerts in Weblin, courtesy of Japan’s finest content provider Meltingdots. (They’re great by the way, look them up if you want to see some impressive things. Unpaid endorsement! LOL…)
VirtualGoodsNews.com Launches: The Business of Microtransactions, V Goods, Gifts and Items
In a move that screams “we don’t need no stinking brand management,” VWN launches a second news website with a similar name. I get the theory here, I do… but I don’t know. I might have just started tagging stories “virtual goods” and made select tags visible along the top of the page. Brand dilution is very dangerous, no matter how important it is to keep up with the evolution of the industry. Coupled with the rebrand of “Virtual Worlds 2009″ into “Engage! Expo”, and the new “3D Training, Learning and Collaboration (3D TLC)“… this is going to take a LOT of marketing genius to maintain brand integrity. Best of luck guys!
Internet Addiction A Reality in A Virtual World
A rather compelling read from The Seoul Times about the struggles they’re having being saturated as they are with digital technology. One of those problems that sneaks up on ya.
realXtend offers a free open source virtual world platform with which you can create your own applications using it as a base.
The realXtend viewer is an open source browser (GPL license) that you can use to experience rich multiuser virtual worlds.
The realXtend server is an open source server (BSD license) with which you can make your own virtual worlds available to a larger audience. The server has a sample virtual world that you can utilise as it is or you can modify it to suit your needs. realXtend also offers free, high-quality content for your own worlds.
realXtend mission is to speed up the development of the global standardized 3D-web of virtual worlds by making the best technology available to everyone, and entirely free of charge.
http://www.realxtend.org/
Hard to believe this is at all based on Second Life. Last time I played with it I was already impressed with how smoothly it ran, both on my home server and on a remote one.