2. Ed Clarity TV 3-15-2010 (Second Life)

3. Dance Sequence 113 – COUNTRY LINE DANCE IN SECOND LIFE

It remains a fairly succinct overview of the opportunities presented by virtual environments in the enterprise, as well as identifying some of the misconceptions around. The updated version now contains some discussion on trends for the coming 12-months (partly based on our 2010 predictions post) as well as a wrap-up of the major platforms to watch.

You can download Virtual Worlds and business: 2010 overview for free by going to this page.

As always, if there’s omissions or alterations needed, please don’t hesitate to let us know.

2. The Independent (UK) – Digital disguises: Who do they think they are? “It was a boring corporate job that piqued the interest of the photographer and video artist, Robbie Cooper. “I met a company boss who was divorced and had bad access to his children,” Cooper recalls. “So they met every evening in Everquest, an online 3D virtual world”. Cooper asked the man what he and his children did as they carried massive swords around a land populated by fire-breathing dragons. “They talked about homework, their mother and school,” Cooper says. “I was fascinated by the idea of this really banal but emotionally important conversation going on in this vivid fantasy world.”

3. The Big Money (USA) – Forget Invisible Hands. What About Virtual Hands? “Back in 2008, it seemed like only one thing was certain about the government’s Troubled Asset Relief Program: It was a gamble. A really big one. The economy’s problems were unprecedented and the potential remedy untested, which meant that economists could do little more than speculate about how hundreds of billions in bailout money would affect the country’s overall fiscal health. In a New York Times article from February 2009, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was quoted as saying of TARP, “We will have to try things we’ve never tried before.” But, some economists are beginning to ask, what if such broad economic policies could be tested first? Not on living, breathing, tax-paying citizens, mind you, but on goblins, wizards, and intergalactic space pirates.”

4. Washington Post (USA) – Second Life’s virtual money can become real-life cash. “Dana Moore sells rain. He sells a lot of it, for about a buck per reusable storm. “I don’t know why people love buying rainstorms,” he said, watching his product drizzle last week, “but they do seem to like them a lot.” The attraction isn’t rain, per se, but Moore’s rain, which can deluge swaths of land on command. The rain falls not in Bowie, where he lives with his wife of 37 years, but in the virtual world of Second Life, the Web portal where he also markets snow, clocks, University of Maryland basketball T-shirts, Duke basketball T-shirts (grudgingly), two-story Tudor-style homes, pinup posters from the 1930s and the sounds of barking dogs.”

5. The Province (Canada) – Finding backbone in virtual world. “When faced with creating an avatar, you can bet your mouse that no one is dreaming up their virtual doppelganger. Snoop around the online fantasy front and you’ll find lots of King Leonidas and Zena: Warrior Princess types — not so many Ed Grimleys. It’s a misrepresentation along those lines that is at the heart of the new play Spine, here in Vancouver as part of the Cultural Olympiad. Spine opens with a 40-year-old disabled man (James Sanders) losing his job and his relationship. He retreats to a place he feels the most empowered — the rehab facility he spent time in after suffering a spinal-cord injury. It’s there he meets a much younger and newly injured patient who turns him onto the virtual role-playing world.”

6. Virtual Worlds News (USA) – Sometrics Launches GameCoins Platform; IMVU Joins Up. “Today Sometrics announced the launch of GameCoins.com, a virtual goods marketplace and social platform designed to help virtual worlds and online games both grow their reach and monetize. GameCoins.com will feature user blogs and friend lists that allow users to recommend games and virtual worlds to each other. Users will be able to obtain virtual goods and currency for favorite games through GameCoins.com using the Sometrics Offer Solution, an ad offer network. “This is the first time we’re going to consumers directly with our virtual currency products,” said Sometrics CEO Ian Swanson, in a press statement. “Until now, our solutions for earning that game’s virtual currency have lived within the individual games themselves. But with GameCoins we can broaden the reach for all the publishers and games that partner with us. It serves as a hub for consumers, to enable them to share their enthusiasm for a game with others and, while there, discover new games for themselves.”

7. New Scientist (USA) – Amputees could get a helping hand in the virtual world. “WHAT is the best way to for someone to get used to their artificial limb? Put them in a virtual environment. So says Anthony Steed, a computer scientist at University College London, who has been studying how the rubber hand illusion works in virtual worlds. In the standard illusion, a false hand is placed on a table in front of a volunteer whose real hand is out of view, and both are stroked at the same time. After a while people feel a sensation in the rubber hand, even when it is the only one being touched. Steed has now discovered that people relate to virtual appendages so strongly that much of the set-up work normally needed to pull off the illusion is unnecessary in virtual environments. For example, people automatically experience ownership of their virtual limbs, without needing simultaneous stroking in the real world, claims Steed.”

8. Washington Post (USA) – Teleporting to reality: Reporting in Second Life. “Earlier this week, I wrote about the booming economy in Second Life, the online portal where people spend lots of money to outfit their avatars with fancy shoes, nice eyes, long hair, short hair, tight jeans, business suits, bathing suits, and anything else you could buy in Tysons Corner. Although the stuff in Second Life is digital — just pixels on a screen — the materials people buy, and the land they rent to build their houses, seem every bit as real as the place where you are reading this blog. For a reporter, interviewing people in Second Life offers opportunities that sometimes seem harder to come by these days — namely, interviewing subjects in their homes.”

9. Wall Street Journal (USA) – Warcraft row: An industry game-changer in China. “NetEase is a veteran of Chinese online gaming, with seven years of industry experience. So it was stunned when a seemingly straight development path suddenly descended into a dark maze after the company sought government permission to operate China’s version of “World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade,” an online role-playing game enjoyed by millions of Chinese. NetEase eventually succeeded. But along the way, the company lost a lot of money and had to play games with a pair of competing bureaucracies that each sought an upper hand in regulating the online gaming business.”

10. TechRadar (UK) – Blizzard: World of Warcraft unlikely to appear on console. “Blizzard has said that its massively popular MMO World Of Warcraft will likely never arrive on home console. World of Warcraft is currently available on the PC and on the Mac and, according to the game’s lead producer J. Allen Brack there are a lot of reasons why it won’t appear on Xbox 360 or PS3 anytime soon.”

2. Coco Latzo with Miron Batista

3. *SLAP* Second Life I See You

Educators familiar with virtual environments will perhaps find this a useful advocacy tool when trying to get a point across in a short timeframe. Those totally new to the area may find it straightforward enough to be interested in finding out more.

It’s also timely given the 3rd Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education is running over the weekend.

There’s never any shortage of new and innovative work going on in regards to education, but the challenge remains in (dare I use a non-word) ‘mainstreaming’ these activities, and machinima is certainly one of the weapons in that arsenal.

Anyway, here it is:

2. Linden Lab and John Lester (Pathfinder Linden) have parted ways – with lots of discussion ensuing on whether it’s part of a change in tack by Linden Lab in regards to dedicated resources for educators. In less reported news, Linden Lab’s General Manager Enterprise and expat Aussie Chris Collins finished up in February.

3. Got an iPhone or iPod Touch and haven’t noticed our bombardment of info on our new application? Read all about it here.

4. The US Army has announced the finalists in its virtual worlds challenge. It’s another example of the US Government’s fairly hefty commitment to exploring opportunities in virtual environments.

5. Pooky Amsterdam has a more extended machinima or her in-world interview with Holocaust survivor Fanny Starr. The three-plus minute intro could have been cut in half but this is a very interesting piece. A warning: it does contain graphic images of the Holocaust.

You can download it here for free.

What is it?

It’s essentially an RSS reader with two sections. The first is our own RSS feed . The Second is a ‘Wider Metaverse’ section, which features a range of virtual worlds related feeds from around the world.

There’s only a handful at this stage but we’ll certainly be adding more – there’s been some issues with non RSS 2.0 feeds on some sites, which we’re working with the owners to rectify.

The ‘Submit a Story’ section is purely a contact form if you want to make contact.

Why wouldn’t I just use my RSS Reader?

For some, a broader RSS reader may indeed be preferable. However, we’ve had a lot of feedback that people like a quicker option of a handful of feeds easily accessed. The Metaverse Reader is exactly that. And at under 200KB in size, it’s also doesn’t take up much room.

Can I suggest a feed to add?

Absolutely – just contact us with the details.

Where do I get support for this app?

Right here.

Are there plans to expand the app?

Version 2 is already underway – if you have suggestions for improvement, we’d love to hear from you.

What does the app cost?

Nothing

Who developed the application?

I do need to give a huge plug to the developer who created the application from the specification provided. Phillip Street is an Australian iPhone developer and contributing writer who happens to live pretty close to me. I couldn’t be happier with his responsiveness and price competitiveness and I’ve already contracted him to work on the next version.

So if you have an iPhone, iPod Touch or have managed to be one of the world’s first iPad users, give the Metaverse Reader a whirl and critique away!