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October 23, 2007

Virtual World Advertising Dollars Poised to Tenfold
by: Alain Thys

Whether and how the numbers make sense is hard to estimate, yet Park Associates has just released a study claiming that the US Virtual World Advertising spend is poised to tenfold from $15 million in 2006 to $150 million in 2012.  According to the researchers this is only "advertising in existing worlds" and the amounts exclude virtual worlds set up by brands themselves.

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July 25, 2007

Wired, Too, Bearish on Second Life
Last fall, Wired published a huge "travel guide" on Second Life. "[...] This exotic realm can seem bewildering and strange to first-time visitors," the magazine wrote then.

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July 17, 2007

Media Pendulum Swings On Second Life
Yeah, the media's honeymoon with Second Life is clearly over. Time mag has listed it among five worst sites to avoid: "We're sure that somebody out there is enjoying Second Life, but why? You interact in the space through an avatar, but creating and personalizing this animated representation of yourself is tedious. Movements feel clunky and there can be a terrible lag."

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Serious Games: Second Chance Trees Reforestation Project

Via: Second Chance Trees and and The Click Heard Round the World

Second Chance Trees, conceived, designed and developed by Converseon in support of its project partner Plant-It 2020, utilizes the power of social media to support proper planting, maintaining and protecting as many indigenous trees as possible.  

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July 14, 2007

Top 10 Features of China's Second Life

by: Dominic Basulto

Hipihi If you've ever experimented with virtual worlds such as Second Life, you may have heard the rumors that the Chinese were working on a souped-up version of Second Life for Chinese-speaking avatars. Jason Stoddard, CEO of new media agency Centric, has done some heavy beta-testing of HiPiHi and put together a list of the Top 10 features of China's Second Life - everything from water effects, in-world weather, swimming capabilities for each avatar; and cool new flight engines that mimic the look and feel of helicopters. Plus, there are neat things that only hard-core tech developers will appreciate, like new distance algorithms and on-the-fly ground retexturing. But here's the #1 reason why HiPiHi rocks:

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July 13, 2007

Virtual worlds and the future of TV

by: Dominic Basulto

Second_life_sundance_channelIn the Sunday New York Times, Dave Itzkoff explains how and why TV networks and cable stations are experimenting with virtual worlds such as Second Life. It's all part of their attempt to remain relevant for young audiences, while at the same time, making TV-watching a more social experience. In some cases, they are creating virtual avatars to interact with consumers, and in other cases, they are hiring companies like Electric Sheep to build entirely new worlds for viewers of their shows. In a best case scenario, argue technologists, virtual worlds like Second Life could become a complementary technology for TV:

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The Niche of Mass
Joel Greenberg has a blog entry (Link) worth reading regarding Suzanne Vega’s upcoming concert inside Second Life. Some of what he’s getting at has come up here before (reLink). And of course scarcity is something I’m often thinking about, given my particular interests.

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July 12, 2007

Virtual Meetings with some Meat
I caught an interesting article over on the Technology Review site yesterday to which I wanted to call attention. From “Unreal Meetings” (Link):

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July 9, 2007

Gibson To Ghost Second Life
Via Media Bistro comes word (Link) that cyberpunk author William Gibson intends to rez inside Second Life as part of a marketing effort to promote his latest book, Spook Country. From the Media Bistro post:

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Art Institute Goes Virtual
Via The Online Universities website comes word (Link) that The Art Institute Online has established a presence inside Second Life. No surprise here. But also no surprise is that so many other art schools have failed to establish a presence. This is especially odd considering the recruiting possibilities in a virtual space where there is so much emphasis on content creation.

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June 26, 2007

CNN International: The future of virtual worlds

by: Dominic Basulto

Second_life_characters As part of its innovation-themed Future Summit series, CNN International is running a special segment on the future of virtual worlds starting tomorrow: "CNN Future Summit: Virtual Worlds will premier on June 13th on CNN International. Originating from Singapore and Palo Alto, California, the program features creative visionaries and entrepreneurs leading us into a new age of creativity and imagination." (Hat tip: 3PointD.com)

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June 23, 2007

Virtual Goods Summit 2007 Roundup
Virtual World News has done an excellent job posting a record of the Virtual Goods Summit I mentioned earlier (reLink), and there’s plenty of documentation elsewhere. I’ve not read everything yet but wanted to at least make those people who stop in here - especially Industrial Designers - aware of the interesting and relevant topics being discussed.

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June 11, 2007

Layers of Peer-to-Peer Worlds
The first time I experienced a virtual simulation was in 1985. The military systems on which I was being trained were usually nothing more than big interactive screens inside a mocked-up space; not nearly as fun as firefighting training in blazing boiler rooms full of smoke, or ship flooding trainers where you had to team together to escape through a hatch leading to a flooded room above you (tough to do). Those primitive systems were still interesting to me though, mostly because of my passion for filmmaking, with which I saw obvious similarities. It wasn’t until a few years later when I read Gibson’s “Burning Chrome” that I saw the potential which sparked my return to college for a second degree.

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June 10, 2007

Economist Interviews Spaceman Shuttleworth Who Talks “Croquet”
Yesterday evening I stumbled upon mention over on The Weekly Squeek blog (Link) of an Economist article interviewing millionaire space tourist and Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth. Here’s an excerpt from that interview (Link):

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XBox Island a Future Gateway?
Via Tateru Nino on the Second Life Insider comes word (Link) that a “Microsoft XBox” island has broken the virtual surface in Second Life. As Tateru says, Microsoft’s presence isn’t news, but their intentions will certainly fuel speculation, especially with Sony’s Playstation 3 “Home” (reLink) in beta and full release on the horizon.

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June 7, 2007

Opportunity Fading: Why The New Second Life Offers Less for Business
Those following virtual worlds have probably heard about recent “changes” to Linden Lab’s position in regards to how they - or supposedly their residents - will police Second Life to make it “safe, together” (Link). While I’ve been involved in the debates, there is a separate opinion I’ve formed regarding what’s occurred that I consider worth mentioning here: the less like the Internet Second Life becomes, the less reason there is for a company to stake a claim inside it.

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June 4, 2007

Adsense Edges Towards Virtual Worlds
Via Mashable (Link) comes word of the entirely expected: Google is bringing AdSense - and then some - to Google Maps. The way they’re doing this, however, is interesting. It’s more than just text they’re offering. Mapplets, as they’re called, will likely carry much more since this feature allows developers to build their own applications within Google Maps.

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HiPiHi Report Adds Salt to SL Wounds
Via the Metaversed blog comes word of a post over on media agency Centric’s blog listing “The Top 10 Things About HiPiHi (Link)“. I won’t list them all, but will instead cull the top three I think matter most and list them in order of importance:

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June 3, 2007

Serious Games @ BBC: First TV Show Broadcasting in SL

Via: Digital-Lifestyles

Last Friday saw the first BBC TV programme broadcast in Second Life.

The Money Programme is the BBC's flagship business affairs programme. It has been reporting on the business and financial world for the past 37 years and has won many awards for its coverage.

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May 24, 2007

Smart Vending

I suppose there are a few people who wonder why I find vending machines interesting and blog about them. I’ll try to keep this short and to the point:

1) Vending machines can fabricate an item on demand. Example: the Pouchlink system (reLink)

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Starwood Shutters SL ALoft Effort {*Update*}
The first time I blogged about Starwood’s CEO, Steven J. Heyer, it wasn’t because of their use of virtual world Second Life, it was because of a video interview where Heyer talked extensively about consumer Experience. I titled that entry using a key quote from the interview, “We Deliver Memories” (reLink).

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May 20, 2007

Serious Games For Virtual World Travel Packages
Via: Synthravels - A real-world travel agency that books virtual-world travel packages

Synthravels is the first travel organization to offer a guide service to anyone who wants to tour highly-hyped virtual worlds like Second Life or World of Warcraft. The increasing complexity of virtual worlds is making them more interesting, fun and potentially lucrative. But it's also creating a considerable threshold for newbies, especially for those who have little or no experience with online gaming...

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May 18, 2007

Met’s Digital Simulcasts Proving Virtual Experience Profitable/Marketable
I’ve previously mentioned in comments that I’d been explaining both the immersive benefits of virtual worlds and the potential uses for digitally-enabled movie theaters to my senior citizen mother. I’ve also recently mentioned that she’d been attending digital simulcasts broadcast to a local theater from the New York Metropolitan and was raving about how immersive the experience was for both her and other attendees. Well, it seems that the simulcasts are a hit. The New York Times is reporting (Link) that the effort was a brilliant success. From the article:

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May 17, 2007

Serious Games Best Practices: Globals Kids Modeling The Future
Via Global Kids Digital Media Initiative


Personal Note

I have been posting on Global Kids major breakthroughs since the very first days of this blog.

Even though I have already published 18 posts under a dedicated category, I felt compelled to transcribe Rafi Santos most recent article which, in my view, is a superb showcase on GK best practices for bringing a youth development model into Teen Second Life. Besides, it works as a summarized retrospective of Global Kids most successful journey in the field of Serious Games.

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May 14, 2007

Playboy Soon in Second Life



Playboy Island in Second Life is opening soon. Look for Playboy in group search, join, and you too can be a playmate (that's the title group members get automatically). I bumped today into someone who said the island was actually open, but when I tried, the teleport failed. Don't you love the island's shape, though? It's one of the few businesses for whom Second Life is a natural fit, given how many of the residents spend most of their time.

Original post: http://adverlab.blogspot.com/2007/05/playboy-soon-in-second-life.html 

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May 11, 2007

News, Links, Stories

Much to my chagrin, I again find myself in the mindset where anything beyond a small listing of links just won't tick right.

So here we go again. First off, you might've noticed that people started blogging about the latest panic wave that hit Second Life. It took a large portion of my will to refrain from making any comments of any nature, but here's a good observation from csven, picked up from the comments on this post:

 

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May 8, 2007

Serious Games Making Money Leap From Virtual Into Real World
Via: CNN International.com - Virtual Worlds, Real Money

Via: The Next.Net - Entropia Sells Virtual Banking Licenses

The line between the virtual and the real economy just got blurrier. Swedish-based MindArk, maker of the online virtual world Entropia Universe, announced last week that it sold five banking licenses for a total of $400,000.

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May 4, 2007

In Other News
Having been somewhat busy lately, I couldn't find the time for more than briefly scanning my feeds list. Like a good news monkey however, I do have to share those links that caught the eye.

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April 24, 2007

Contextual Advertising in Second Life
Billboards that listen to the conversations of people in their vicinity and displaying all the ads that fit to show, now in Second Life:

"A ContextAds board listens to the conversations of those avatars around it, displaying advertisements when certain keywords are mentioned. Advertisers can bid on keywords, with their account only being charged when their ads are actually shown. Avatars can click on advertisements of interest to them, and can be offered a website, or a teleport to an in-world location."

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April 18, 2007

Endemol Takes Its Shows To 3D


Apparently inspired by the successes of MTV's Virtual Laguna Beach and its own Big Brother show set in Second Life, Endemol is teaming up with EA to build Virtual Me (virtualme.com redirects to EA press room), a virtual world that will allow "avatars to compete in online versions of Deal or No Deal, Fame Academy and Big Brother." Coming soon.

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April 2, 2007

Conference Notes From Virtual Worlds 2007

by: Karl Long

An old friend and colleague just sent me these notes he had written up for the Virtual Worlds 2007 conference that just took place in NY.

main point being there is a lot of stuff happening out there and SecondLife is just one player.

DEFINING QUOTES:
“We are at the silent movie stage.”
“This is one freaky, geeky 21st century we are moving into.”
“A lot of this is going to happen and a lot of it is not going to happen.”

 

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March 30, 2007

Virtual Earth As Gaming, IM Platform
CNet reporting on ETech: "Microsoft executives are also holding regular discussions on where to take Virtual Earth in the realms of entertainment, gaming and commerce, according to Curlander. For example, Microsoft might open up the software so developers can create games for the Xbox 360 out of Virtual Earth.

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