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.

We Live in Public – 2008, 18A, 88 minutes

Ondi Timoner’s documentary chronicles a decade in the life of Internet pioneer Josh Harris, who instigated an “artificial society” experiment in which more than 100 artists lived under 24-hour surveillance in an underground compound in New York City. After FEMA broke up the project, Harris turned the cameras on himself and his girlfriend. Timoner’s provocative film (winner of the Grand Jury Prize: Documentary at Sundance) includes clips from Harris’s projects as well as her own original footage.

Keep it digital and catch it on Netflix. It’s scary and awesome, although the ending is a little weak. The point, through, is this notion that we are all encouraged to make our lives public. It is the way forward. “Web 2.0″, “User-created content”, “Social media”, assorted buzzwords yadda yadda…

Now that we’ve lived with these ideas for a few years, the hipster movement makes sense. After all, you can’t be cool all the time, and in an age of constant surveillance and recording you’re bound to do something stupid that people will take notice of. As a result, people claim it was “supposed to be ironic”.

That, or your idiotic status update was “just trolling lololollol”… sure, we believe you. No, really, I’m not typing sarcastically or anything.

The older generation got flinchy about public perception by doing what they always do: hiding behind “professionalism”. The number of dry, sterile public profiles that tell you nothing about the person in question is staggering. People have thrown themselves into mediocrity enthusiastically in order to keep the all-seeing eye of the Internet from making them look like an ass. So, instead, they look ignorable.

Now, if “ignorable” is part of the job description, then your resume is perfect. For the rest of us, its time to just be guileless and let the chips fall where they may. Either you’ll run your business yourself, or you’ll let the world run it for you.

Which one has your best interests at heart?

The Social Network is a movie based on the construction of Facebook.com. Its another story about a quirky genius who lives for his art, doesn’t care about money, and just wants to be loved. Just take that, mix in a bunch of standard “going into business movie” tropes, and you have this. In a sense the only thing that makes it unique is that most scenes are filmed in David Fincher’s preferred “dark-green-o-vision” to indicate the murky and manly depths of introspective turmoil, and lots of low-angled shots to force us to be impressed by everyone’s godliness.

It’s fine. A fair rating gives it 3 stars (of 5), or 4 stars if you really love this genre.

Most people don’t want to give it a fair rating though. They’re screaming “5 stars!” as loudly as they can with fingers in their ears to block out any dissenters, and telling everyone who will listen to get in to see this thing. The buzz has been unbelievable. People are even talking about Academy Awards for the leading actors, despite the lack of any moments in the movie dramatic enough to justify this.

Why?

1. People hope that this makes it cool to spend too much time on Facebook.
2. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs fanboys want another hero, and hope that could be Zuckerberg.
3. Dreamers hope its true that if your girlfriend dumps you, you could get drunk, write some code, and make a billion dollars.

As of October 31st the movie had grossed $132.9 million at the box office. So, what have we learned? The same thing that we learned when those horrid Twilight movies hit it big: insecure people love to spend money. Pander to them.

Lady Gaga Telephone (Pomplamoose cover)

See also Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It) – Beyonce. Hipsters are just loving this stuff. Ironic takes on popular songs make people feel so good about how very clever and “above it all” they are. Please remember to wear an expression that encapsulates focused disinterest or you’ll spoil it.

From a technological point of view, however, the above video represents how cheap and easy media has become to produce. Two people accomplish here what used to take dozens, using equipment that used to carry a prohibitive cost. A sign of the times, to be sure.

The issue I take is when people talk about us being able to do something fundamentally new here. Cheaper and faster, sure, but this isn’t actually anything new. The fact is that the same “hipster appeal” media can be produced without even using electricity:

Ukranian Polka Band playing “Hot N Cold”

Ok, sure, they’re not true hipsters because they sniggered before they started but it’s counter-balanced by the retro instrumentation. The point is that 20-somethings always consider themselves innovators by default, but pretty much always try to accomplish the exact same thing no matter what decade we’re in.

There’s a difference between new technology and true innovation.

While pop sociology isn’t what I’m primarily interested in, it’s necessary to point out that technological progress is having a ripple effect through the world of business at the moment. First websites, then email, then cell phones, and now smartphones have forced themselves into our daily lives whether we want them to or not.

Those seeking a competitive advantage often ask: “What are the kids into these days?” Many execs still feel scorched from missing the big scores of the dot-com bubble days, and want to know what’s being hyped as the next big thing before it gets forced down their throats.

This works itself out in both positive and negative ways: we sometimes find faster and cheaper ways of being productive, but we also occasionally spend time and money on things that are irrelevant. The real magic happens when we apply a little innovation.

Spinning Flax Into Gold

Take Twitter, for instance. When it first launched it was a waste of time. 90% of the content was completely useless, and only appealed to voyeur celebrity stalkers or friends who were enjoying a new way to chat. Since we were all so paranoid about missing the “next big thing”, however, massive resources were dumped into supporting the platform.

So many people had put their reputations on the line promoting Twitter that, with their backs up against the wall, they were forced to innovate. (Cue defensive technophiles rushing to the comments to tell me how unbelievably useful Twitter was even before it was released etc etc etc… guys, have a quiet moment of honesty with yourselves.) Eventually people figured out how to make it productive, shoehorning in social networking opportunities, hash-tag protocols for live on-location news updates, and quick polling for instant feedback.

The fact is that there was nothing inherently wonderful about Twitter. It was later innovation that turned it into a useful tool.

Here’s another great example: MySpace. Once the darling of the interwebs, everybody just had to be on it. Of course, then people realized that Facebook has a better interface, LinkedIn a more focused network, and custom made websites more flexibility. MySpace started to die.

How did it survive? Innovation. That MP3 player plugin, combined with some good deals with record companies, turned MySpace into one of the easiest and fastest ways for bands to promote themselves to an audience that might never listen to them otherwise. The built-in e-commerce system was a nice touch as well.

Virtual environments have the same issues. They can be a waste of time, or with a little applied innovation, the pivotal tool your business uses to create a serious competitive advantage.

The latest gadget will not save your company. Only innovation will.

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

Interview with Mark Kingdon, CEO, Second Life
Talking about Second Life as a business tool:

ProtonMedia Upgrades ProtoSphere
Includes 250 person auditoriums, single-port firewall traversal, and a healthy bundle of gadgets.

The Bottom Line on Second Life 2.0
My attempt at being both succinct and in-depth at the same time about the new viewer upgrade.

Events

UPCOMING: Monday, March 1st at 2pm Pacific – Anders Grondstedt, President of The Gronstedt Group, as he tells us how Schneider Electric and IBM have found a strategic planning solution in Second Life. Attend the live event here.

Virtual Fashion Offers Opportunities for Designers
Using virtual environments to launch fashion products.

Why We Sold Our Real Building and Went Totally Virtual
Presentation on the transition into using virtual environments as training and collaboration tools.

Real World Expos in Virtual Spaces
How sales were impacted by having a virtual component to a real world expo.

Training and Education

Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education Conference – March 12-13
The “big show” in education. Don’t miss it!

Problem-based learning in Second Life: new resource
University of Derby and Aston University releases “Best Practices in Virtual Worlds Teaching: A guide to using problem-based learning in Second Life”, download it here.

Government and Military

Second Life at Work
The Department of Agriculture seeks to use Second Life as a meetings and collaboration tool.

Gaming

Child’s Play Goes Virtual: CBSNews.com Visits Engage Expo Floor
See video below on CNN’s coverage of the Engage! toy fair:

Watch CBS News Videos Online

Advertisers are disappointed with Sony’s virtual world as an ad platform
… because it sucks. Sorry Sony.

Health

Imagine Solutions: Transforming health care through a patient-focused delivery system
The Mayo Clinic looks at SL.

Virtual Poster Session = Green Travel
Pharma covers a global pharmaceutical firm conducting a virtual poster session in ProtoSphere.

Second Lives Clinic: demonstrating autologous stem cell transplant in Crohn’s disease
Take THAT Crohn’s disease!

Nerds

Scientific Research in Virtual Worlds
Detailing efforts in Sociology, Psychology, and Engineering. Lots of cool stuff here.

Newbs

Is ‘Virtual World’ replacing reality?
Everybody panic!!!

Misc.

Virtual worlds pose compliance risks
A fantastic breakdown of the issues surrounding communication, behavior and archiving risks in virtual worlds.

Why sales of virtual goods are soaring.
Forbes takes a look at virtual goods.

Linden Lab boss: sex isn’t the key to Second Life
PC Pro is embarrassed into thinking before typing. Kudos to Linden Lab for responding to this kind of thing; a good change in policy.

• Myst Online is back! Why does this mean anything? Well, it failed twice. The game just isn’t financially viable. The creators, however, just switched the lights on and aren’t even worried about making any money out of it. That’s how cheap it has become to run these things!
• Apple gets a patent for a 3D shopping destination! Apple fans are fanatical. We have now officially bought ourselves a few million supporters of 3D environments.
• Layoffs Won’t Stop Project Wonderland – The latest from a GigaOM affiliate blog about the Wonderland team’s determination, stating that the project has enough momentum to carry it forward without any need for Oracle’s help and a number of companies are taking a serious look. Isn’t this exactly the kind of thing we started seeing just prior to the first dot-com bubble?

These are three specific examples, but in general I can tell you that there’s more virtual worlds news trying to cram itself through my news reader than ever before. I’m also hearing a lot of behind-the-scenes chatter of some huge announcements coming this summer. Brace yourself folks, 2010 is going to be a big year for virtual worlds.

—

Want some hard facts, but don’t want to go through hundreds of articles to find it? I can’t blame you. Here, chew on these PDF links:

• BP Improves Online Collaboration, Reduces Costs With Protosphere – A straight-forward case study.
• Engage! Exhibit Hall Cheat Sheet – A list of companies who are selling virtual goods and reaching out to people at a physical conference.
• The Enterprise Immersive Software Decision-Making Guide – Great if you need a quick overview of what’s out there.

Ask yourself: if the meeting is easier to attend, was the meeting just as worthwhile? More? Less?

Oddly enough, since most of us instinctively equate sacrifice with worth, many feel that spending four figures on a flight and blowing a few days of work off to attend a meeting will be more beneficial than saving ourselves the time and money and absorbing the same content in our office. This despite all survey and testing evidence that says online meetings are just as beneficial and enjoyable. Still, can you blame people for “going with their gut”?

This is why I think NMC is making the right move with their SL Pro! conference, to be held in Second Life February 23-25. They’re going ahead and charging $99 in real-world dollars to attend virtually. By charging a real-dollar amount to attend they’re creating a perception of value in the content.

I wouldn’t be surprised if paid attendance online events started to become a lot more common in 2010.

Last week I put some notes down about what I wanted in a virtual world largely as a thought exercise to help me collect ideas as I worked on a project for Clever Zebra. Interesting pingback links and comments came in, but one stood out (thanks Claus):

I agree with everything except the need for 1,000 or 10,000 concurrent users, in one shared space. The benefit of a virtual environment is the interaction with other people. You can interact with 30,40 people, even 100 will stretch it. 1,000 or 10,000 is a broadcasting event. Unless you break it down again into 30-40 smaller groups.

This is a common objection to the concept of allowing more than 50 avatars to share a space. Many bright people from both academic and technology circles argue that the need for many concurrent users to share a single 3D space is unnecessary and irrelevant.

At the moment virtual worlds just aren’t built that way: get too many people in the same room and the whole thing chokes. Many of the world’s brightest people consider this issue to be very low-priority.

They’re dead wrong.

I have all sorts of arguments, but let’s put my nerdyness on hold for a second and ask a simple question: which of these two clubs would you rather hang out in?

vs.

Go with your gut here, because that’s what using a 3D space is all about: your gut reaction.

If the issue is settled for you then get to work filing bug reports with your favorite 3D platform that they aren’t supporting nearly enough people in a given place, and that until they do everything else they accomplish is irrelevant. If you’re an Auditory-Digital thinker and the issue is still far too vague for you, read on.

The facetious, in-your-face argument:

If the whole point of using a 3D virtual space is its similarity to being in a physical space, ask yourself this question: in the real world, are conference centers important to business? Are large rooms important? What about auditoriums and theaters? How about trade show floors?

A lack of concurrency forces us to slice all of these things up into small classroom-sized rooms. This is unacceptable. Period.

Take every one of your arguments in favor of small “multiple-venue solutions” or the fact that you can’t chat with more than a few people at a time and apply them to eliminating REAL-WORLD large venues. Do they still hold water? No, of course not. They don’t apply in the virtual world either.

The perception of value argument:

Which of these two speakers at the UN is saying things the world considers important to think about?

vs.

Note: you could tell without even knowing who was on stage, couldn’t you? Shared presence matters on an instinctive level.

Seeing lots of avatars manned by real people adds a huge perception of value, but it isn’t just a visual phenomenon. Audio comes into play here as well.

One of the most important features of a recent trade show we ran (using four separate servers at once to support a mere 200 people at a time) was the chatter in between the booths. That background hum was something that you can’t fake with a looping crowd sound-effect. The real thing makes a difference.

That sense that something big is happening right here, right now, is huge. It beats the hell out of even a live video broadcast.

The rebooting server argument:

Which server is less likely to crash: one that can support 1000 users, or one that can only handle 50 at a time? I mean, all things being equal, a high-capacity machine can handle one or two extra avatars joining a meeting or sneaking into a lecture much more safely, can’t it?

The “on paper” vs. “in practice” argument:

Bottom line: nobody should be rationalizing what should be important. They should just look around and figure out what seems to be important, based on observation of how things are done in the real world.

This is a chronic problem in both academia and technology circles. People discover a new way to sound clever and stop paying attention to what people are actually inclined to do. This results in user-punishing interfaces, the necessity for hour-long orientations, and the Zune. Check yourself guys.

The “stop saying that’s impossible” argument:

Ok, last one, and then I’d better get back to work… won’t really be proof-reading this either… again…

One thing a lot of people assume is that high concurrency is impossible. The fact is, it isn’t even hard.

Take Activeworlds: you can cram a ridiculous number of people into a single room. Chat his handled gracefully, and on the client side if your computer can’t handle displaying that many avatars at once it just displays them as 2D cutouts in the distance.

A number of other platforms simply reduce the detail level on avatars that are far away. As a result the client doesn’t nag at the server for a ton of data it won’t use, and everything scales. Again, a client-side fix, easy to roll out.

Even voice can scale! Vivox is just one of many companies finding new ways of mixing audio based on proximity, allowing you to see someone in a conversation across a crowded room and walk over to them with your business partner without all sorts of technical hacks and craziness.

Ok, I’m out of time…

which is why this is so long. Usually I ramble, grab a bunch of pictures from Google Image Search to break it up, and then start cutting the text way down… but you’ll have to suffer the length this time, sorry. So, how do I wrap this up? Concluding thoughts?

Concurrency is a make-or-break for business. For games, who cares. That argument I’ll buy for a myriad of reasons. But when it comes to making these things into practical, meaningful tools, worrying about an extra team of 20 observers from the branch office not being able to fit into the venue is just stupid.

We’ve just barely been able to scrape this technology together into something that isn’t a toy in the last few years, but the true explosion of virtual worlds is held back by the inability to do anything large-scale. Delivery of virtual crowds will be the true dawn of the virtual world.

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

What is the biggest missed opportunity in virtual worlds today?

(Answer in the comments!)

Kept it short and fast this week, but what’s here is actually pretty big.

• 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:

• PlaySpan Partners With Bigpoint.com
• How green was my virtual valley? Linden Lab pairs with Terremark

Daden Develops Virtual War Room
“[...] allows users to zoom into maps, plot geographic data, view CCTV and webcams, plot 3D data, show slides and objects, view RSS and Twitter feeds, and analyze GPS and earth-sensing data all in a shared immersive environment.”

Over 15 Billion Minutes of Voice Have Been Delivered in Second Life
Well it’s an interesting statistic, but I’ll leave it up to you to decide what it means. See related story under “Nerds Only”.

Philippines Department of Tourism Creates Virtual Island on Second Life
We had tourism boards entering virtual worlds every week for awhile, but they seem to be taking a break for the season. Still, welcome Philippines!

Events

Singapore fund manager to hold virtual annual meeting
Another instance of an increasingly common and necessary cost-cutting measure.

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

New corporate training options include virtual worlds
A basic overview of the phenomena.

Case Study: Northrop Grumman’s Simulated Training and Prototyping Programs in SL
A good look at training people on the use of remote-controlled robots for disarming bombs.

Government and Military

The FBI joins Second Life
Well now don’t we all feel safer.

Intersecting Interests: Virtual Worlds and the Law
Metanomics interviews James Gatto.

Naval Undersea Warfare Center: Training, Innovating, and Saving In Virtual Worlds
Navy trains submarine crews using Qwaq Forums.

Gaming

Hello, an Avatar Is Calling You
Looks like SOE is adding VOIP to SWG and EverQuest.

Nerds Only

Second Life to Add Voice Morphing Controls, Voice Mail and Avatar Phone Numbers
That voice morphing function is going to cause more problems than it solves.

Evolve your 3D avatar
Neat gadget that creates a 3D model from data or image import and exports in a variety of virtual world friendly formats.

Newbs Only

Security expert warns of virtual world risks
A security company’s executive says that you should really look into hiring them.

Businesses Seek a New Lease on Second Life
Yet another foolish writer paying attention exclusively to hype rather that what people are actually doing.

Sociological Oddities

Second Life takes you to the moon (almost)
I link this because space travel, as it is today, is purely a sociological oddity.

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