The video:

The article: Scatological attack on Stephen Harper’s record goes viral

The awesome website that, believe it or not, doesn’t even scratch the surface: ShitHarperDid.com.

Beware of a public with tools to create its own media.

Quick summary:

A guy buys a Playstation 3. He then plays with the internal workings of the machine in order to get it to do even more stuff than it could before. Sony sues him for it… an action that, frankly, is hard to morally justify even if you can show paperwork that makes it legal to do so. Anonymous attacks Sony websites and starts harassing Sony executives.

In case you missed it: Sony is suing him for modifying a product that he owns. He didn’t “license” or “lease” or “rent” that product. He owns it. Apparently, that doesn’t mean what it used to, because even though he owns that product he isn’t allowed to do with it as he pleases. That’s like a food manufacturer suing you for distributing a unique recipe, or an auto part manufacturer suing you for using car parts in a different brand car.

That’s it in a nutshell.

Ars Technica recently covered the story with a focus on how people have been able to get information on these executives. To me, this focus is completely uninteresting. Detectives have been able to get personal information on other people since before electricity was discovered, and always will.

Others have focused on the specific actions of Anonymous, and whether “they” went “too far”. That’s a fun philosophical debate if you really want to kill a few hours, but doesn’t actually have anything to do with what happens next.

That’s the key: what happens next?

This latest round of attacks by “Anonymous”, the general banner for “whatever random people got ticked off enough to target Sony executives for being a bunch of jackasses”, is becoming par for the course. You can’t stop it. Anonymous isn’t an organization. It’s just the phenomena of a bunch of people acting out. They don’t know each other, they don’t “keep in touch”, and there is no leader. YOU are Anonymous.

So, if a corporation tries to hurt random people, the members of that corporation can expect backlash. This is the world we live in.

While I’m not crazy about “mob mentality” or “mob rule”, I understand why it’s starting to happen. After Enron demonstrated to the world that corporate executives are above the law even when they seriously harm people, the notion of random people being sued for doing things that hurt people only in the vaguest and most esoteric sense is more than the average Netizen is ready to handle. People who do real harm are immune to punishment, and people who do largely theorhetical harm are lynched by the system.

Since there is no government mechanism for maintaining the balance, mob rule rises.

I don’t have a solution to the problem, but I do know that we’ll see more and more of this. It will go a bit further every time. Executives responsible for random smack-downs on the public can expect more and more backlash.

For those of us that have nothing to do with this conflict on either side, expect to be caught in the crossfire. You will be able to do less on the Internet tomorrow than you can today in order to keep executives safe from being held accountable by Anonymous. Corporate services you wanted to use will go down occasionally due to Anonymous attacks. The trend will continue.

The solution? Maybe more transparency in the corporate structure, more accountability… or maybe a completely new model under which to build a business. Ah, but this is my stop folks… I’m not really the “ingenious solutions” guy, just the “understanding what the hell is going on” guy.

When I blogged about Spiral Moon Media Inc.’s recent viral attempt, I left it about as ambiguous as the company itself left things. Is this for real, or is this a prank? What’s going on here?

The difficulty is that people are going to get angry. If a person sees the video, spends time thinking about how stupid this whole thing is, and then discovers that it was just an ad for Spiral Moon Media, there’s a reaction at that moment. What you WANT is: “Gee, that’s great! I’ll hire them!”

In the case of the “Share The Air” viral campaign, I don’t think that’s the reaction being generated. I try not too swear too much on this blog so I won’t type out what people’s reactions are.

Take, by way of contrast, Opulence, I has it:

Dogs playing poker. Gold grapes. A miniature giraffe. Plus, as an added bonus, an entire hoax website for Sokoblovsky Farms, “Russia’s finest purveyors of petite lap giraffes.”

The website itself has gone viral, and people find it completely awesome whether or not they think it’s real. But… why?

When you “peek behind the curtain” and see the wizard back there, you smile and laugh along with him. He wasn’t trying to trick you. Rather, he was putting on a show for your benefit. This was about you, not him. More to the point:

• If you call people stupid, they’ll hate you.
• If you call people smart, they’ll love you.

This is true whether they are, in fact, smart or stupid. It’s also true if they actually believed the deception or not.

Also see The North American House Hippo:

Respect the audience at all costs folks.

Hmm. This has to be the cutest blog post I’ve ever done.

What got me off topic today was our book club. We’re currently reading one of my favorite novels: “Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom” by Cory Doctorow. (Read it for free here.)

It got me thinking about something called “the singularity” again. This is a term first coined by Ray Kurzweil to describe the point in the near future when the pace technological innovation becomes, for all intents and purposes, infinite. Here’s a short video describing one aspect of the phenomenon:

THE IMMORTALISTS – a short film by Jason Silva

Immortality is within our grasp. Yes, for real. Sounds great, doesn’t it? Sadly, there’s a catch. Even when humanity is smart, we’re still horrible at dealing with each other. Sooner or later someone will decide that what the world really needs is a good apocalypse.

After all, in an age where the pace of technological innovation is infinite, you’ll have about three dozen cheap and easy ways to end all human life listed on six dozen popular blogs.

It could be that this phenomena of knowing that anyone could end it all at any moment might be the new way people come to live with death. For a time, mankind won’t be fearing their own deaths, but rather the end of all civilization.

What will finally end it, of course, will be those who try to prevent the end from coming. As organizations are formed to lock down the “dangerous” information or censor “dangerous” people, there will be a backlash from people objecting to being controlled. The schism between the opposing points of view will rise until eventually it produces someone who can’t stand an eternity of humanity being controlled in this way.

So they’ll end it for all of us.

When people make guesses as to how the world might end, they usually point at natural phenomena or ecological disaster. I’m putting $50 on the singularity. Any takers?

Tell you what, its been a few days since I hit the news reader. Let’s see what kind of highlights I can pull out:

Design goes digital in Second Life
Architecture & Design does a big writeup on the recent unveiling of the National Portrait Gallery’s virtual world rendering.

The Virtual Whirl: Community guide to Virtual Worlds
Massively (an AOL property) opens a new section specifically for “virtual environments”.

WV University Creates Virtual Campus on Second Life
Marshall University joins hundreds of other universities in creating a virtual campus.

Avatars of Palin, Huckabee, Romney, Pawlenty, McCain, McConnell, Boehner, Cantor, Pence, Dobson, DeMint, Perry, Steele, and Others Virtually Descending on U.S. Capitol
Haiti support via some tiny paper-doll avatars, demonstrating that it doesn’t matter how non-immersive the environment, avatars still matter…

EA Joins VanEdge Venture Fund
Fresh VC cash to be had for virtual world builders.

Phoenix NAP Launches Virtual Data Center Tour
Pheonix NAP takes a cue from IBM and creates a sales tour / orientation space to help people understand their product better. See video:

Telepresence: Tandberg & Polycom Shine as Mid-Market & Small Business Interests — Event Platforms Look to Integrate with Mid-Tier Vide
Teleconferencing integration with virtual worlds is proving to be a great success, according to analysts.

Tool places learners in virtual world
Language education via a virtual environment called “RendezVu” gets an award.

Prototyping Environment in SL for Dow Chemical: Three Questions with Robert Emory from Scott & Miller Group
Dow Chemical creates a prototype environment. See video below.

ISN Virtual Worlds Rolling Out Platform For Elderly, Disabled
The Oasis Foundation creates an environment aimed at the elderly and disabled to provide education and training.

Building a 3D workspace
Hypergrid Business summarizes the history of technology and interface design, various studies, and shows how it all points to a virtual environment exceeding the efficiency of a real-world environment.

AI Learning Center Being Built in Second Life
IEEE moves its critical training in AI to the virtual environment.

That’s just four random days, two of which were a Saturday and Sunday. Please please puh-lease can we stop loudly proclaiming “I haven’t been paying attention so it must not exist” in the press now?

Thank you.

Good lord!

China’s perverse blanket censorship of the Internet was one thing – if the Chinese people want their thoughts to be controlled by a bureaucracy that’s their business. Public opinion influence and control by political entities is old news. But this is something startlingly new. This is them saying: “keep your filthy stinking money!”

Are they honestly that rich already?

Apparently China’s online games were worth over $900M in Q2 alone. So sure, maybe that’s enough… if there is such a thing as “enough” in modern economies. Still, can anyone really afford to slow down when things are moving so fast these days? Won’t this make foreign investors from a variety of industries flinch a little?

Morality (however you define it) is expensive, and it looks like they’re willing to pay the price. While I’m not entirely certain I agree with their particular philosophies, I have to admit: xenophobia in the digital age takes guts.

It will be interesting to see how this all shakes out five years from now.

Clever Zebra has been busier than ever (our work on OpenVCE being only one part) and until I’m 100% satisfied that everything is running better than anyone could possibly wish for and far ahead of schedule I’ll be just a blur in everyone’s peripheral vision.

Having said that, I did make a commitment to myself to keep this going lest I lose touch with what’s going on out there. Thus, a two-week edition!

Wait, did I really just use the word “lest” in a sentence?

Anyhow, I continue to operate under time constriction and now there’s two weeks of material to cover, so I probably missed something worth reading. If I did, please contact me or leave a comment!

• Archive page of past weeks of Business in Virtual Worlds News
• Connect with me on Twitter, LinkedIn, Blip.fm, or in Second Life as Onder Skall
• Suggest stories at info [at] calebbooker.com

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:

Top Stories

New partnerships and collaborations:

• Jay-Z’s Rocawear Comes to WeeWorld
• Dassault, Shanghai World Expo Ink Partnership

Report: VC Funding, Number of VC Execs Decline
Some data about 2008… well, it looks like data. I suspect I smell another hand-wringing “omg where iz teh hype” moment.

Shanda Q1 Earnings Spike, Even as ARPU Drops
More “seduction via numbers”. $162M in Q1 of 09.

$68M Invested in 13 Virtual Worlds-Related Companies in Q1 2009
More “seduction via numbers”.

Study: Reliance on Immersive Technologies On Rise
More “seduction via numbers”, this time with a super-sexy graph:

8D Taps Language Learners, Bots, Microtransactions
Nice overview of a language learning business founded last year.

Wipro launches “Innovation Centre” on Second Life
“[...] a replica of the actual lab that is situated at Wipro campus”

Perfect World Hit With Patent Infringement Lawsuit
They’re claiming that Perfect World “borrows too heavily from IQ’s patented process of creating a facial composite.”

Virtual world healthcare has real world benefits, Toronto researchers find
Another health care industry foray into virtual spaces.

The Future of Healthcare: 3 questions for Dave Taylor of Imperial College London
I’m at risk of over-posting about Imperial College London but it’s a good read.

Events

Study: Webinars Rule Digital Events Landscape
Things are coming along here…

ThinkBalm Leads Visualization Tours
Proof-of-concept tours regarding the enterprise case for entering virtual spaces. Hey Erica, funny we should end up touching base this week. This looks good! (A more in-depth look appears on the Linden Lab blog.)

Want to Hold a Virtual Event of Your Own?
Clever Zebra offers event support and white-label services for anyone interested in a branded gathering in a virtual space. Everything from venue setup and hosting to VIP orientation to speaker coordination.

Training and Education

Survey: Travel, Training Budgets Fall
Which, of course, is only good news for companies like ours.

Teachers Enroll in Second Life Webcasts
Pretty interesting stuff: “Called A Virtual World for Professional Learning, the session is the final in a series of webcasts and learning resources made available to teachers across Canada, by the Ontario Research and Innovation Optical Network (ORION) and the award-winning Advanced Broadband Enabled Learning (ABEL) program, from Toronto’s York University.”

Case Study: CIGNA’s vielife Makes People Healthier in Real Life
Educating the world on the evils of high fat diets.

Students Prefer Real Classroom to Virtual World
Maybe obvious but worth mentioning.

Government and Military

Philippines Department of Tourism Creates Virtual Island on Second Life
Let’s just make it official: if you are a Tourism Department, you are required to have a virtual world presence.

Worlds.com v. NCsoft Lawsuit On Shaky Ground?
… well that’s the end of them then.

‘Virtual Life’: EU’s three year, 3.3 million euro 3D virtual world project
That’s a pretty big project, and one that has some extremely unique notions of how a virtual world should work. It seems to be flying under most people’s radars from the look of things. (WARNING: some NSFW and possibly offensive images.) Discover more about the project on the official site: FP7 VirtualLife.

Army To Build Virtual Support Group for Amputees
Great application for the technology, reaching exactly the group that needs it most.

Gaming

GameGround Secures $4.1M in Funding
The scheme? High-score distribution to various web 2.0 profiles.

EA Confirms BattleForge Sales Forced Freemium Move
Bottom line: the MMO and games market is becoming very saturated, but microtransaction models can save the day.

Other gaming quick hits:

• CoinStar To Offer Prepaid Game Cards
• CyKash Announces Prepaid Multi Game Card
• Scoreloop Games Now Live On App Store
• Virtual Fairground Brings ClubGalactik.com on the Field
• GMG Partners With Redbana For Virtual Currency Cards

Nerds Only

Shaspa grid is a home to a virtual home
A very unique virtual world server that operates with the simplicity of a home appliance.

Newbs Only

Kossacks in Second Life
Kind of a “Second Life for Newbs” from the Daily Kos.

Second Life lecture – another lesson for antiquated law firms
A short and funny “ORLY?”

Sociological Oddities

Adult Content Changes in Summary
A final summary of the changes in Second Life’s handling of adult content that we’re soooooo interested in. Now, we could have just said: “if you don’t like sex, avoid entering brothels” and be done with it ages ago… but that would have involved people taking responsibility for themselves and nobody wants that…

Linden Lab versus the griefers
A weather report on griefer activity.

The Dares + Free Realms = New Guinness World Record
For whatever reason the Guinness people seem to think this is the first concert given simultaneously in the real world and the virtual one. Whaaaaaat??? (Clearly the Guinness people just needed some press here…)

College Plans Virtual Graduation for Online Students
Isn’t this cute?

Did I miss an important story? Got feedback? Leave a comment below, or email me at
info [at] calebbooker.com

Are lawsuits ever a superior option to engaging with your customer base?

(Answer in the comments!)

For whatever reason the issues of “interoperability” re-emerged this week, which is as “Nerds Only” as you get really. There have also been many, many articles this week about Linden Lab attempting to regulate adult content. I haven’t linked any of them… it’s already old news, and honestly, who really cares?

• Archive page of past weeks of Business in Virtual Worlds News
• Connect with me on Twitter, LinkedIn, Blip.fm, or in Second Life as Onder Skall
• Suggest stories at info [at] calebbooker.com

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:

Help Trinity! My daughter Trinity is gathering donations for the Heart and Stroke Foundation. Counting her offline pledge sheet she’s is over 70% of the way to her goal and just needs a couple hundred more to put her over the top. Please donate anything you can – every little bit helps!

Top Stories

New partnerships and collaborations:

• Visual Purple And BTS Partner To Transition Computer-Based Training For Virtual Worlds
• SceneCaster Partners With Mental Images For 3D In The Cloud
• PlaySpan Acquires SpareChange Micropayment Service
• ExitReality Gets Educational With Moodle And Blackboard
• Oracle to Buy Sun

Qwaq Simplifies Virtual Work With Forums 2.0, Announces Navy And Chevron As Customers
Nice to see Qwaq expanding, they’ve definitely earned the success.

Immersive Education adds realXtend as an officially supported platform
This is big. realXtend is like Second Life, but with the popular COLLADA 3D format support and many other features. This puts them up there with Sun’s Wonderland and OpenCroquet/Cobalt. Also this week: Reactiongrid partners with realXtend.

Viximo Repositions As Content Provider With New CEO And $5M In Funding
A full company tear-down and rebuild to focus on selling virtual goods to other companies.

Google Bringing 3D To The Browser (Again)
This functions as a browser plugin, see demo below. Apparently they killed Lively because they thought they were barking up the wrong tree, not because of any lack of faith in virtual spaces. Either that or there is no clear company strategy on the issue and they can’t make up their minds.

Events

BIZZin3D Meet Up
On May 31st in Berlin people will gather to “meet, talk & discuss about business opportunities in 3D Internet & Virtual Worlds”. No idea why this is being done in Berlin rather than the virtual world, but I suppose that’s their prerogative. Discussion of trends and expert analysts will be featured, and they will avoid Powerpoint presentations in favor of moderated panels.

Want to Hold a Virtual Event of Your Own?
Clever Zebra offers event support and white-label services for anyone interested in a branded gathering in a virtual space. Everything from venue setup and hosting to VIP orientation to speaker coordination.

Training and Education

Second Life: Buckeyes enjoy the virtual sights and sounds of campus
Ohio State enters SL. Nice screenshots at the article.

SSU is on an Island on Second Life
Shawnee State enters SL.

OCAD’s Second Life
Ontario College of Art and Design’s (OCAD) Integrated Media students enter Second Life. Article is very… ah… well they call Second Life a “computer game”. But it’s otherwise well written. Torontoist covers it too.

Students Bolster Learning With New Virtual Dental School
University of Maryland Dental School enters SL. A big step for a school founded in 1840! Video overview:

Government and Military

Taser International vs Linden Lab: Crack Den crackdown
Taser International sues a long list of defendants over various virtual goods bearing the Taser name (but not replicating the functionality), and other virtual goods simply using the word “Taser” in the name but in no way resembling any Taser products. Apparently the lawsuit is quite clumsily assembled and includes lots of fun pornography, but that’s not the point. The point is that this is yet another case where someone is suing potential customers instead of engaging with them. Dumb.

Marketing

“Angels & Demons” Promotion in Twinity
You have to hand it to Metaversum: they have this film promotion process really streamlined.

Gaming

Software That Guards Virtual Playgrounds
Keeping the creeps away from the kids everywhere.

Nerds Only

Virtual worlds and web ‘merging’
Mark Kingdon introduces the basic concepts of interoperability, which personally I think is a bit of a red herring in the quest for mass acceptance or the next quantum shift in virtual worlds… but hey, have fun with that guys. Intel tossed in their two cents on the interoperability issue this week too.

Newbs Only

It’s a Virtual World
One business-minded writer’s sojourn into the virtual world for the first time.

Sociological Oddities

AT&T Maps Your Family With Virtual Earth
Spy on your kids! Well, it’s better than a sub-dermal microchip.

Even with adult content regulated, Second Life is dead in ed
Wow. We’ve officially progressed beyond the era of ignorance and into some kind of bizarre pathology. With the constant, unending buy-in from educational sectors into virtual spaces (see every single past week for months), how anyone could possibly make this argument is beyond me. Something is seriously screwed up over at ZDNet; I haven’t read anything there that made any sense in ages.

Did I miss an important story? Got feedback? Leave a comment below, or email me at
info [at] calebbooker.com

Nothing cries “I’m a clueless moron” like a frivolous lawsuit. From the lady who sued McDonald’s after spilling hot coffee on her own lap to $67 Million over a $10 dry cleaning bill, these people have clearly given up. Legal arguments aside, these lawsuits are moronic and hurt society.

If one of these people applied for a job with your company, would you hire them? Would you enter into any kind of business relationship with them? Would you even want to risk selling something to them? Filing a frivolous lawsuit is an excellent way to make yourself into a pariah.

You would think that this was self-evident, but it appears that there are several companies and organizations out there who feel that acting like blithering idiots is the way forward. Here are three cases of legal threats and actions. Ask yourself: are you encouraged, or discouraged, from ever doing business with these people or those they represent?

RIAA

RIAA Took My House Away

Out of dozens of anti-RIAA videos I chose this one … and now watching it again I’m wondering why. Ah well.

Most people had no idea who the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) was until they started suing kids and dead grandmothers around 2003 for illegally downloading music. Of course, it wasn’t illegal until they lobbied to make it illegal – but hey, let’s not split hairs. At least, not until we’re in court.

The war against children encouraged the development of new kinds of digital rights management (DRM) which infected hard drives with spyware, crippled a number of devices, restricted the number of times you could play a file, and occupied a legal gray area nobody had the time or money to challenge. They eventually dropped this not because of the bad press, but because it cost a lot to produce and wasn’t getting results.

They also targeted internet radio stations, suing for 125% of revenue. I’m not completely sure why or what harm they were perceiving, but here’s hoping nobody tells them about “regular” radio.

In the aftermath, more and more bands started to realize that they didn’t need record labels this badly and started self-producing music or going with smaller labels that weren’t affiliated with RIAA. Independent music exploded and is continuing to develop in a viral fashion. RIAA itself has very recently dropped DRM and stopped suing people (although it is still pursuing pending lawsuits), and is trying to figure out just what the hell it’s supposed to do with itself.

For the record: artists never saw a dime of the money from the lawsuits. RIAA represents record labels only. One more postscript: Weird Al Yankovic’s “Don’t Download This Song” is viewable on YouTube, but oddly not embeddable, and has a “Download This Song” link to iTunes directly underneath.

Worlds.com

Worlds.com sues NCsoft

Worst. Report. Ever. Moving on…

The Worlds.com story has been breaking over the past few months. In December of 2008 the first news of any kind in years about Worlds.com was that they were hiring an IP firm over the ownership of the very concept of virtual worlds. That anyone could own such a thing is clearly ridiculous – it’s like saying you’re the only one allowed to make a blender or a car. We thought maybe this was a joke, especially considering the only thing anybody had heard out of Worlds.com in ages was some very amateur video.

Imagine our surprise when they actually filed lawsuit against NCsoft, creators of some fantastic MMORPGs. Why NCsoft, as opposed to anyone else? Well, the thought is that they’re big enough to serve as a good precedent for future lawsuits but small enough to perhaps not have the money to defend itself.

Later the Worlds.com CEO was quoted as saying We’re ‘Absolutely’ Going To Sue Second Life And World Of Warcraft. Meanwhile, even to this day, people are straining to remember who the hell Worlds.com even are.

For the record, they did make a world for Aerosmith. I had heard about it back in 2006, but the website sucked and I couldn’t figure out how to get in. As far as I can tell this is the only video of it out there.

No matter what the results of the lawsuits, I cannot imagine what would drive someone to do business with Worlds.com at this stage.

Associated Press

AP threatens station for posting AP’s YouTube videos

LOVE his look of shock!

I heard about this today from the TechCruch article which actually sparked the blog post. The Associated Press (AP) is a news clearinghouse, where reporters the world over send stories that then get picked up by other news affiliates for re-publication. They have a YouTube channel, but apparently have no idea how YouTube works.

It’s enough that we don’t really understand what the difference is between a reporter and a blogger. Now we have AP proudly ignorant of the way new media works, issuing a cease & desist against its own affiliate (ie: customer). It’s no wonder organizations like IndyMedia are thriving in the digital age.

Now, I’d like to toss an olive branch in AP’s direction here and say that no, it isn’t a lawsuit and yes, it’s awesome they even have a YouTube channel in the first place. It’s most likely just one guy working at the AP that’s acting up. The AP haven’t gone off the deep end yet!

Still, this truly underlines the importance of creating a new media policy, and bringing everyone in your organization up to speed on it. Lawsuits deny the reality of the Internet and try to make it all go away. If that’s your goal, good luck with that. The safer bet, though, is to accept the way things are and move accordingly.

This was the week of non-news news. There were more stories about nothing of significance than I have ever seen. I’ve done my best not to post any of them. I may have failed here and there. Apologies.

Oh, and for those of you who had been celebrating it on Saturday, I hope you had a happy Pi Day!

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:

Top Stories

New partnerships and collaborations:

• Virtual Heroes And Nortel Combine Thin, Web Client With Training And Tools Expertise
• Offerpal Media Adds Aeria Games To Managed Offer Platform
• Vindicia And Merchant E-Solutions Partner In New Payment Solution
• Stardoll Acquiring Piczo, Rebranding For Tweens

SuperSecret closes first funding round of $10 million for its virtual world
Another kids world with some unique features gains big development capital.

Worlds.com CEO: We’re ‘Absolutely’ Going To Sue Second Life And World Of Warcraft
Yes, Worlds.com is actually filing lawsuits over ownership of the concept of virtual worlds. No, Worlds.com is not making any friends anywhere on planet Earth. Yes, there are more opinions about this whole thing than you can shake a stick at… no point in augmenting the pile with mine.

Second Life: Celebrate Library Careers in Children’s Literature
The American Library Association’s (ALA) continues its investigations into virtual worlds.

Branded Virtual Goods Boost Purchase Intent By 20% Or More On Social Networks
Kind of a vague, niched statistic but the implication is Virtual Goods = Sales.

Events

“Virtual Worlds – Best Practices in Education” Conference: March 27-29, 2009
I wouldn’t normally link to an individual event, preferring to talk about the industry itself, but this should be a good one. Good luck and best wishes to the organizers!

Virtual business meetings etiquette
Not really directly about virtual worlds, but the principals hold true.

Want to Hold a Virtual Event of Your Own?
Clever Zebra offers event support and white-label services for anyone interested in a branded gathering in a virtual space. Everything from venue setup and hosting to VIP orientation to speaker coordination.

Training and Education

Second Life a tool for teaching in 3-D
University of Western Ontario does some Psych classes in SL. Nice overview at Canada.com, but I’m mostly linking it for the picture of these photogenic fellas. Smile!

Second Life brings virtual world to students
University of Nebraska-Lincoln enters SL.

Government and Military

US Rep. Kucinich blasts touring virtual reality game used for Army recruiting
Worried it glorifies killing. You know what… I gotta admit, it looks like fun.

Marketing

Hip-Hop Artist DMC Welcomes All To His Virtual World
Props go to the marketing team that wrangled this story out of NY1.

Webcam Brings 3-D to Topps Sports Cards
Ok, that’s a pretty cool gimmick. I might even buy some baseball cards this year. Haven’t done that since I was a kid!

Gaming

SOE Introducing LiveGamer RMT Service To Vanguard
So basically, you can now buy yourself the super-powerful character and equipment you always wanted with a little USD. Anybody have word on community backlash here?

Nerds Only

5 Open Source Virtual Worlds Set to Duke it Out in 2009
It’s a nerd’s paradise out there.

Hands Free 3D
A 3D camera is used as an interface for Second Life. Neat.

Newbs Only

Second Life dating- reality or fantasy?
This subject has been rehashed so often it is officially “Newbs Only” now.

Virtual dealings in Second Life pose real-life privacy risks: study
Whoops, it’s the year 2000 again and we’re all talking about this fancy dancy new “e-Commerce” stuff.

Second Life Still Gets Great Press, Even When It’s Dying
Whoops, Fast Company just confused itself with a third-rate tech blog.

Sociological Oddities

No, There Were No “Terrorists”
The Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) drops the whole notion of terrorists in virtual spaces. See the official report (PDF). I remember being completely baffled by all of these people warning of terrorists in virtual spaces back when it was in vogue to scream “everybody panic”! Glad its over.

paidContent.org – The New Virtual Red-Light District: Second Life Tackles Its Sex Problem
The official announcement went out this week and it’s all anyone can talk about it seems. Reasons this is a cue to sigh and roll one’s eyes:

1. Sorry, there’s a problem?
2. Isn’t this already dealt with by private islands?
3. The press won’t care that this is a “fix”. They’ll go wherever the smut is. Thanks for calling more attention to it and making it easier to find.

Did I miss an important story? Got feedback? Leave a comment below, or email me at
info [at] calebbooker.com