Archives for August 2010

1. VentureBeat (USA) – Intel and Nokia launch joint research on mobile 3D virtual worlds. “Smartphones have barely entered the 3D age, but Nokia and Intel are already racing ahead to do research on enabling 3D virtual worlds on mobile computing platforms. The two companies are announcing today a research center (pictured below) at the University of Oulu in Oulu, Finland, that will work on the technology required to make the mobile 3D virtual world possible.”

2. CNET (USA) – Virtual farm games absorb real money, real lives. “Last century’s cash crops included tobacco, cotton, and sugar cane. Now we have magic cauliflower and super berries, too–and even though they can’t be sold at market, some people still toil from dawn to dusk cultivating them. People spend not just real time but also real money growing these crops in virtual farming games that combine the allure of both games and social networking in what is usually a cute and deceptively simple package. They can be addictive: many users come back at least once a day to micromanage their farms and deal with other users’ requests. On average, the users of these types of games are spending anywhere from a few minutes a game to the greater part of an hour. Indeed, one individual who CNET spoke with said that it’s all she does between waking up and going to bed–and that’s every every day of the week.”

3. Huffington Post (USA) – Getting Physical in a Virtual World. “We’ve been talking about the ability to bring physical objects into the virtual (internet) world for quite a while now. Discussions have ranged from simply tagging physical objects and allowing humans to then attach metadata (something similar to what StickyBits does), to allowing objects the ability to be automatically tracked and to subconsciously attach and transmit metadata based on usage, location etc. There has been some speculation around Facebook’s dive (possibly called ‘Presence’) into this largely untamed world especially with reports of tests done during its F8 conference. As a marketer and a part-time anthropologist, I want to bring a cultural perspective into understanding what it might take for this marriage between the physical and virtual worlds to become a reality in our everyday lives.”

4. MediaPost (USA) – Virtual Goods Worth More than Real News: Curmudgeon. “I usually try to avoid making any statement involving the words “society,” “values,” or “priorities” — nouns which are all so vague as to be almost meaningless. I also usually don’t see any point in judging what other people do with their time or money, as long as they accord me the same indifference. But a recent realization has prompted me to (oh no, here it comes) question society’s values and priorities. Basically, it dawned on me that Americans will soon be spending more money on imaginary objects than the news. In fact, they already do. According to various estimates and forecasts, Americans spent $500 million on virtual goods in 2008, rising to $1 billion in 2009 and $1.6 billion this year. Fueled by the rise of social games like Farmville and Mafia Wars (and virtual worlds like Second Life, where sales continue to grow) U.S. spending on virtual goods may jump to $5 billion by 2014.”

5. American Medical News (USA) – Med students open to learning via new media. “Having been raised in an age of ubiquitous technology, medical students are game to using new media and virtual reality as part of their education, according to a new survey. However, students’ varied opinions about what games they would like to use, and the unresolved question of whether they would be effective, are barriers to overcome before medical schools add video games to the curriculum. Ninety percent of the 217 participants in the study — medical students at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health and the University of Michigan Medical School — said they would be inclined to use new media technologies if they helped to develop skills in patient interactions. Meanwhile, 98% said they think education should make better use of new media, according to the study, published online June 24 in BioMed Central.”

6. San Francisco Business Times (USA) – Fate Fickle In Second Life Too. “arely three years ago, the virtual world Second Life was all the rage, with exploding traffic numbers, eager investors, tons of news coverage and lots of interest from big corporations looking for ways to make money in the immersive online social world.
Today, the roughly 250-person San Francisco company that operates Second Life, Linden Lab, is getting a different kind of attention following a 30 percent layoff – some 90 people out of 300 – in June, the resignation of former CEO Mark Kingdon a few weeks later, and a current report from private shares trading company SharesPost showing that Linden Lab’s value plunged by 21.4 percent – or $100 million – in just the last five months. What went wrong, and how dire is the situation?”

7. The Guardian (UK) – It’s dodgems on the streets with everyone gazing at mobile devices. “I don’t walk down the street any more: these days I swerve, bob and veer my way past most of the other people occupying it. Why don’t they look where they’re going? Or is it just me? A current TV ad imagines how funny it would be if car-driving behaviour were adopted by pedestrians. Sorry, bright adperson, but your fantasy is no fantasy: I already experience pavement rage, because traversing it has become a species of dodgems. The street has become an extension of the living-room, used for so much more than walking – lighting up, for example. Smokers, ejected from public buildings, labour under the delusion that outdoors is a giant extractor hood, discharging smells directly into the heavens. They niftily forget that minor natural element known as wind, which can blow with such precision that, without swift evasive action, we passersby can feel like those notorious beagles compelled to puff smoke not of our own producing.”

8. Financial Post (Canada) – Tweens & Technology: The tiny power shoppers. “Meet Andrew. At age nine, the sandy-haired boy from Markham, Ont., is already a savvy shopper of electronics. When his mother told him the Nintendo DSi game he wanted was too expensive, he pursued a new strategy. He told family and friends to forgo birthday and Christmas presents and buy him gift cards to put toward the new device. Now he saves for the accompanying games — most recently Super Mario Galaxy 2. Next on his wish list: the iPod Touch. “My aunt has one and let’s me play with it when she visits,” he says. Jackie Macdonald-Bartkiw, Andrew’s mom, figures that by Christmastime, he will be lobbying for more gift cards to buy his own touch technology. “I’m amazed at his patience … and persistence.”

9. Big Think (USA) – Can Hollywood Redesign Humanity. “Most people do not come to Hollywood for deep conversation, but as we explained with respect to “serious games,” the entertainment universe is producing an impressive array of products that can educate youth to think more constructively about real-world problems through experimenting with solutions in online environments. There is also a new breed of film-makers who are advancing the cause of techno-optimism in ways that contradict the dystopian visions of robots taking over the earth. When we convened a salon of film-makers, online game designers, branding executives, and media personalities to discuss this construction of ever more immersive realities, they provided not only deep conversation, but also a sophisticated and controversial view of how Hollywood has moved beyond vanity and celebrity worship towards “world-building” that can inspire progressive behavioral change.”

10. Computerworld (USA) – Rocker raises money for first album in Second Life. “Keiko Takamura, a San Francisco indie rocker, raised some of the money to record her album and built a following by playing concerts in Second Life. She uses a broad array of other social media to find listeners and sell her music. Keiko and other indie musicians are worth watching by businesspeople as well as music fans. The music business model has been turned upside down by the Internet, and indie musicians are leaders at using the net to build new ways of finding customers. Their techniques are often applicable to traditional business.”

1. The Guardian (UK) – Virtual worlds: is this where real life is heading? “Recently a man bought a space station for $330,000, while last month Small Planet Foods, a subsidiary of General Foods, introduced a new brand of organic blueberries. What have these two products got in common? Neither actually exist. Well, not except as pixels in the virtual worlds where they are traded. Only the money is real. The space station was sold in the virtual world Entropia Universe, which has its own economy and currency. The buyer, who converted his $300,000 into 3.3m PED (Project Entropia dollars), is convinced that virtual shops on his virtual space station will produce virtual profits that can be converted back into real dollars. The blueberries represent a “brand extension” of a product that exists in the real world as US company General Foods aims to establish a presence in FarmVille, a game which exists as an application on Facebook and which at its peak has had nearly 80 million players. It is a classic example of a new genre.”

2. The Royal Gazette (Bermuda) – 3D concept adapted for the wider arena . “The use of 3D worlds on the Internet has been evolving from the gaming sector to a more expansive leveraging of the technique. Last week I wrote about how Citzalia, a site I am working on as editor, uses virtual 3D as an innovative means of navigating through information and for social networking. Companies, non-profits, government and other entities should also consider using the concept of creating 3D virtual worlds as a means of attracting and engaging visitors. Above all, they should keep in mind the idea of allowing users to have fun.”

3. IEEE Spectrum (USA) – Reducing World of Warcraft’s Power Consumption. “Massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) such as World of Warcraft consume a lot of their players’ time. They also consume a lot of energy, as more than a thousand servers can be required to create one game’s virtual worlds. Last year, Yeng-Ting Lee, a 26-year-old online game fanatic, began to wonder if there was an easy way to reduce their energy consumption. Lee, who is a research assistant at the Institute of Information Science, Academia Sinica, in Taipei, Taiwan, says he has found a way to cut MMORPG power consumption in half. Last month he revealed the solution at the IEEE Cloud 2010 conference.”

4. Inforum (USA) – Video game industry tailoring more offerings to female players. “or years, video games have been marketed toward male players with ads that showcase unreal action sequences or alluring female figures guiding players through virtual worlds. But as the video game industry expands its consumer base, some female gamers are feeling a little less ignored by an industry that has realized not only men play their games. In fact, women make up 42 percent of the 215 million Americans who play video games, according to the Entertainment Software Association.”

5. RTH Life (Switzerland) – Virtual reality you can touch. “Researchers at the Computer Vision Lab at ETH Zurich have developed a method with which they can produce virtual copies of real objects. The copies can be touched and even sent via the Internet. By incorporating the sense of touch, the user can delve deeper into virtual reality. Sending a friend a virtual birthday present, or quickly beaming a new product over to a customer in America to try out – it sounds like science fiction, but this is what researchers at the Computer Vision Lab want to make possible, with the aid of new technology. Their first step was to successfully transmit a virtual object to a spatially remote person, who could not only see the object, but also feel it and move it.”

6. Red Deer Advocate (Canada) – A virtual world to see, hear — and smell. “Virtual reality may seem all the more real in the future, with not only people’s sense of sight and hearing engaged, but also their sense of smell. A high school student from Elnora is part of the cutting edge research, having just worked on a project at the University of Alberta known as Smell-O-Vision. Ashley Brown, a Grade 12 student at Delburne Centralized School and the cyber school North-Star Christian Academy, was one of 60 high school students accepted into the Women in Scholarship, Engineering, Science and Technology (WISEST) summer research program at the U of A.”

7.Computerworld (USA) – The (better) future of tech support. “Right now, getting help when something unusual goes wrong is a frustrating experience for customers. They’ve come to stereotype the experience as waiting endlessly on hold, deciphering strangely cheerful foreign accents, humoring technicians who are incapable of understanding — let alone answering — their questions, and taking time off to wait for a tech who doesn’t show. Tech support pros are just as frustrated, experiencing the same issues from their vendors’ tech support and dealing with users who start the interaction expecting nothing, despite their own cluelessness. But even with these drags on their morale, many sally forward and poke around cryptic forums, hunting for answers among the rants to find an answer for their frustrated users and reaching out to fellow support pros through social networks and the like.”

8. Chicago Tribune (USA) – Despite some blips, most see technology as boon for family life. “At first, Andrea Pryor admitted, she was a little nervous about installing a computer in her Chicago home. What exactly was this thing? What would it do to her family. Years later, she has her answer: It brought them closer. “It has kept us connected, with family scattered across the U.S.,” said Pryor, 57, a retired teacher. “I’m getting to watch my nephews, nieces and grandchildren grow up.”

9. The Guardian (UK) – How the internet is altering your mind. “Like nearly all the Guardian’s content, what you are about to read was – and this will hardly be a revelation – written using a computer connected to the internet. Obviously, this had no end of benefits, mostly pertaining to the relative ease of my research and the simplicity of contacting the people whose thoughts and opinions you are about to read. Modern communications technology is now so familiar as to seem utterly banal, but set against my clear memories of a time before it arrived, there is still something magical about, say, optimistically sending an email to a scientist in southern California, and then talking to him within an hour.”

10. Virtual Worlds News (USA) – Linden Lab’s Value Down 21%, Teen Second Life To Close. “The value of Second Life publisher Linden Lab has plunged by 21.4% in the past five months on the private market, according to SharesPost. This drop in price has effectively sent the company’s value down by $100 million, with SharesPost now estimating Linden Lab’s value at only $271 million. The decline follows Linden’s announcement that it would cut 30% of its staff in June, shortly followed by the replacement of CEO Mark Kingdon with founder Philip Rosedale. Earlier today, the company also announced that it would shut down its Teen Second Life grid on December 31, 2010. Linden Lab was founded in 1999, while Second Life launched in 2003. Teen Second Life launched in 2005 as a solution for younger users who wanted to enjoy the virtual world but weren’t old enough to explore Second Life’s sometimes-adult grid freely. To compensate for Teen Second Life’s closure, Linden Lab will drop the minimum user age in Second Life to 16 on or before December 31, 2010. Accounts for 16 and 17-year-old Teen Second Life users will be transferred to Second Life’s Main Grid.”

1. Computing (UK) – Can virtual worlds make a real impact? “The explosion of social media has been one of the striking trends in internet use over recent years. Sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Myspace are used by private business and government bodies as a way of reaching out to their audience, especially the sometimes hard-to-engage younger demographic. But there is a new trend, one with a greater potential for interactivity than conventional web sites, and one that offers a fusion between networking and, well, fun. The new kid on the block is 3D multiplayer gaming. Massively multiplayer online gaming (MMOG) has been around for decades. One of the earliest examples was 1974’s Mazewar, which involved moving around a wireframe maze and shooting other players. Technology and user expectation have moved on since then, and today’s best-known multiplayer online game is arguably Blizzard’s flagship product World of Warcraft, with more than 11 million subscribers globally. Last year, the European Parliament’s Directorate-General for Communication released a tender asking “for the development and launch of an innovative web site which uses creative methods to generate interest and raise awareness about the role of the European Parliament”.

2. Gamasutra (USA) – Report: Google Buying Jambool/Social Gold. “In a move likely related to its rumored games-friendly social network, Google has reportedly purchased Jambool and its virtual currency payments product Social Gold for as much as $75 million. Jambool is based in San Francisco and was founded in 2006 by Amazon.com veterans Vikas Gupta and Reza Hussein. Last October, it launched Social Gold as an online payments and virtual currency platform that players could integrate into their free-to-play MMOs, virtual worlds, casual online games, and social games/applications. Though neither Google or Jambool have commented on the acquisition, TechCrunch cites multiple sources that suggest a purchase price of around $55 million for Jambool, with another $15 million to $20 million promised if the company reaches certain goals.”

3. Virtual Worlds News (USA) – Crisp NetModerator To Use Scotland Yard Pedophile Data. “Crisp Thinking is going to use Scotland Yard pedophile data to enhance the performance of its Crisp NetModerator software. NetModerator will use real conversations between convicted pedophiles and undercover officers to help identify and shield children from predatory behavior in virtual worlds and child-oriented MMOs. Crisp Thinking says it is the first company in the space to use real Metropolitan Police data to test and enhance its product’s performance.”

4. Minneapolis Star Tribune (USA) – Mayo Clinic lands its own fantasy island. “Dr. Paul Friedman insists he wasn’t distracted by the woman in the second row wearing a pair of wings and a rainbow bodysuit. And he didn’t even seem to notice when a visitor teleported into the audience, scanned the crowd and vanished into thin air. Friedman, a Mayo Clinic cardiologist, has given medical lectures worldwide. But last week he entered a new dimension, when he gave a presentation on the online fantasy world known as Second Life. To most people, virtual reality and avatars are the stuff of games. But the Mayo Clinic is one of a growing number of real medical centers that have established outposts in this fictional universe to explore new ways to teach and practice medicine.”

5. Gamasutra (USA) – Virtual Goods Monetization Firm SupersonicAds Raises $2 Million. “London-based start-up SupersonicAds, which runs a virtual goods monetization platform, has raised $2 million in a new round of funding led by former Skype chief executive Michael van Swaaij. Founded in 2007, the company is headed by Gil Shoham and has 32 employees. SupersonicAds’ monetization tool allows developers and publishers to reward players with free virtual currency for online titles, social games, and virtual worlds after they participate in targeted offers, watch commercials, or engage with brands in other ways. The firm, which also has offices in the U.S. and Israel, provides coverage in more than 100 countries in Europe, Asia, and Latin America, and it plans to offer the platform in 20 languages. It currently works with more than 450 advertisers and counts a number of publishers as its clients, such as Live Gamer, PlaySpan, NHN Usa, Bigpoint, Playdom/Disney, IMVU, and more.”

6. Hypergrid Business (Hong Kong) – The business of virtual sex. “Would be sim-commerce millionaires gathered at the Hypergrid Entrepreneurs Group meeting Thursday night on the Trombly Grid to discuss recent innovations in OpenSim hosting, currency systems, and selling real homes and real furniture in virtual environments. Towards the end of the meeting, the conversation somehow turned to virtual sex (okay, I turned it) and why there didn’t seem to be any grids in OpenSim dedicated to this pursuit. For example, I hypothesized, someone could rent, say 16 regions for around $10 a region from one of the providers at the meeting, create a central business area with clubs, shops, and other commercial destinations — and give away all the surrounding land for free to virtual escorts. The area would need a currency, with the G$ an obvious choice. (OMC from Virwox might also work, but only if its owners were okay with using the currency for adult purposes.)”

7. Virtual Worlds News (USA) – Second Life Relationships More Satisfying Than Real Ones. “Participants in the 3D virtual world Second Life are more satisfied with the romantic relationships they form in the virtual world than the ones in their real life, according to two studies conducted by Loyola Marymount University researchers. Even more remarkably, Second Life users who participated in the study reported that their level of sexual satisfaction with virtual world relationships was roughly equal to what they experienced in their real world relationships. Users surveyed as part of the studies rated their virtual world relationships better in the five categories of marital satisfaction than their real-world relationships. Half of respondents felt they could communicate better with their Second Life partner than their real-life partner. One-third of respondents said they felt a “stronger connection” to their Second Life partner.”

8. Smart Company (Australia) – Is IT a high enough priority in the upcoming election? “Australia has abandoned all but the most high tech of manufacturing, meaning that manufacturing is now a minor component of our GDP. We’ve also seen agriculture take a back seat in the economy. Due to this, our services industries are emerging as major players in the future of our nation’s GDP figures. And this means that IT and telecommunications are a very important part of the business infrastructure of the future. America has just suffered a serious downturn in employment and the financial reports are showing that the nation has learned to be more productive and more efficient as a result. Australia has not yet had this brute force applied, and is still complacent about productivity tools and building scalability and efficiency.”

9. Open Media Boston (USA) – Second Life Community Convention Brings the Metaverse to Boston. “his weekend, over 300 people from all over the nation and world will be descending on the Park Plaza Hotel “to network, build friendships and to discuss Second Life in a common forum” according to the leaders of AvaCon, Inc. – the non-profit behind the Second Life Community Convention 2010. This year’s SLCC is the sixth since 2005 and like its predecessors is entirely organized by active residents of the Second Life virtual world. The event is open to the public, and day passes are available for those who’d like to dip their toe in the digital waters of a sometimes exotic online universe.”

10. Wall Street Journal (USA) – China Approves ‘Warcraft’ Add-on. “Chinese Web portal operator Netease.com Inc. said Monday it received regulatory approval to offer the latest expansion pack for the popular “World of Warcraft” online game in China and plans to start letting players download the software next week. Regulatory uncertainty delayed the China release of the expansion pack, which launched in the U.S. in late 2008. The new version of the game could boost the company’s revenue by attracting more people to try the game and luring players into spending more time online. Netease, which operates the game under a license from Activision Blizzard Inc., said in a statement posted on the “World of Warcraft” website in China that it received approval to offer the “World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King” expansion pack from China’s culture ministry on Monday and from the country’s publishing regulator last month.”