Archives for May 2010

1. Los Angeles Times (USA) – A real-world battle over virtual-property rights. “Architect David Denton spends much of his time on a lush tropical island, where he experiments with cutting-edge building designs and creates spaces for artists to showcase their work. Never mind that the island only exists in the virtual-reality world of Second Life, a popular online venue where people interact via digital avatars. Denton, 62, said he purchased the island for about $700 — real money, not virtual cash — from its former owner, and considers it his property.”

2. VentureBeat (USA) – TinierMe launches Japanese-style anime virtual world. “Japanese comics known as “anime” have become popular among young Americans. And TinierMe is planning on capitalizing on that with the launch of its anime-focused virtual world. After six months of beta testing, TinierMe is formally launching its virtual world today. The U.S.-based virtual world is a separate version of a two-million strong virtual world in Japan. Already, thanks to the beta test, the English-language version of TinierMe has 700,000 registered users, said Masaru “Nogi” Ohnogi, chief executive of the company, which is owned by Japan’s GCREST.”

3. CNN Go (India) – GoJiyo: What India’s first 3D virtual reality world is like on the inside. “I have a love-hate relationship with virtual reality. When I first heard about Microsoft’s Second Life — a virtual interactive 3D environment, launched seven years ago — I chucked my default life for three whole days and nights, pausing only for the occasional nap and a few bare-minimum human necessities. Realising that I might lose myself to the real world forever, I got out of Second Life for good, cleaning the software off my hard drive completely. I have a love-hate relationship with online social networking sites, too, spending days on end immersed in Facebook’s voyeur/exhibitionist way of life before setting it aside to be used only when absolutely necessary. So when I heard about the launch of GoJiyo, Godrej’s new browser-based 3D virtual reality social networking environment tailored for the Indian market, I cringed and whooped simultaneously. Marketed as “India’s first online virtual world” that blends online gaming, virtual reality and social networking, GoJiyo is admittedly a brand repositioning exercise for the Godrej group, which makes appliances and furniture, aimed at capturing a younger, hipper audience.”

4. Hypergrid Business (Hong Kong) – Resilience during virtual disasters. “Virtual worlds have been offered up in recent weeks as alternatives to physical events because they are disaster-proof. No volcano or tsunami can take down the whole Internet. And virtual events are particularly budget-friendly during that other kind of recent disaster — a financial crisis. But virtual worlds are prone to their own kind of disasters, as yesterday’s shutdown of Second Life demonstrated. OpenSim isn’t immune either, with both local outages and widespread failures possible. For example, this past weekend, the owner of Aesthetica found that his entire region was gone, and several months of scheduled backups had never taken place at all — a combination of hardware, software and management failures. Last summer, a hacker took out servers running over a hundred thousand websites — and around a hundred OpenSim regions were destroyed in the attack as well.”

5. Virtual Worlds News (USA) – Worlds.com Settles NCSoft Suit; Short On Funds? “After a little over a year since Worlds.com filed suit against NCSoft for patent infringement on Christmas Eve in 2008, the parties have settled the matter. According to Patent Arcade, the court ordered dismissal with prejudice due to a binding settlement agreement between the two companies on April 23. NCSoft began the litigation process by telling us that it would defend itself “vigorously,” but the terms of the settlement seem to be confidential, so there’s no way of knowing how it shook out for certain. Based on a recent SEC filing, though, it may be that Worlds.com needed some money or, at least, didn’t want the cost and trials of litigation.”

6. nebusiness (UK) – New school is virtually there. “South Shields Community School was mulling over the idea of creating a virtual replica of its school when it came upon a Journal article about Second Life and Gateshead firm Vector 76. It decided to contact the firm, which designs content for 3D virtual worlds on the internet, to talk about building a three-dimensional plan of the school. The new £20m South Shields Community School in Nevinson Avenue won’t be open in the real world until September 2011, but the virtual version is opening its doors from today for curious parties to have a look around. Deputy head Chris Roberts was approached with the idea by Key Stage 4 culture and heritage co-ordinator Graham Trick, who wanted to create an interactive version of the architect’s fly-through he had seen in the school hall.”

7. Times Live (South Africa) – Japan’s women love gaming. “They have been hooked on everything from hula dancing and oxygen bars to electronic darts and foreign exchange trading, but Japan’s housewives have finally settled on the ultimate addiction: on-line role-playing games. Once relied on as the “good wives and wise mothers” behind the country’s economic miracle, women have begun burying themselves for days in elaborate virtual worlds, emerging only sporadically to carry out their chores. Sometimes they play flint-hearted assassins, sometimes fluffy animals. Often – bizarrely – they play housewives. Classic online combat titles such as World of Warcraft are popular, but much more so are games that broadly emulate real life.”

8. The Standard (Hong Kong) – Living Doll. “Paige Gabriele loved her dolls – once. At eight, however, the girl has abandoned them. Barbie gets slim face time, and the single American Girl doll, a gift from her grandmother, sits on her bureau – untouched. Playing with dolls “gets boring after a while,” said Paige. She was more interested in a basketball, and gushed about social websites such as moshimonsters.com, where she nurtures pet monsters. It used to be that dolls held girls’ interest at least through elementary school. But these days, they are dropping such playthings at ever younger ages, replacing the childhood mainstay with technology-driven activities, even as the toy industry battles to attract the coveted market with new products.”

9. The Yorker (UK) – Generation CoD. “I had my first addiction when I was about 12. Luckily, by the time I came to take my GSCEs, I’d gotten over it. Otherwise, I’m not sure I would have got the grades I did. Now this addiction wasn’t alcohol, or drugs. It was a computer game – Age of Empires to be precise – but I maintain it could have been equally as dangerous had I let it continue. Little did I realise that the problem, although fairly rare, was widespread and spreading. An article in The Sunday Times Magazine the other week highlighted that increasing numbers of gamers are becoming addicted. But when does a game cease being fun and turn into a life-ruining obsession? And what will this new addiction do to a generation of young people in this recession having to cope with increasing uncertainty over the security of their futures?”

10. Forbes (USA) – IMVU Adds Former Second Life Exe. “IMVU, a social networking and instant messaging client which uses 3D avatars to represent its users, announced Thursday that they have hired David Fleck to serve as vice president of marketing for the company. Fleck served in a similar role for the company behind Second Life, Linden Lab. Forbes spoke with Fleck and IMVU’s CEO Cary Rosenzweig about the move and what the future holds for the company. After Fleck left Linden Lab in 2004, he focused on helping start ups in the social entertainment/social networking field get on their feet. It was through these start-ups that he became acquainted with Rosenzweig. Fleck says that discussions with Rosenzweig about the company quickly got his attention. “…It just became really clear and obvious to me how incredible this place is, and from a success standpoint, to the level that I couldn’t actually ignore it. I had to pay attention to what he was telling me,” he said.”