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new "The freaking wild wild west." While many long time Second Life residents bemoan the influx of freeloaders, griefers, and large corporations like Toyota and Addidas flooding the world with their products, and the Second Life Liberation Army sets off atomic bombs in front of corporate stores, some residents explore creating their own virtual worlds using Multiverse. (Alana Semuels, LA Times, Feb 22, 2007) Read

new Tools for developers to create their own virtual worlds Multiverse hopes to be the Netscape of virtual worlds, providing tools for developers to create virtual worlds, and for users to navigate them... are virtual worlds the Next Big Thing or the Next Big Nothing, and can Multiverse escape Netcape's fate? (Mitch Wagner, Information Week, Jan 22, 2007) Read

Sweden to open virtual embassy in Second Life Sweden plans to open an embassy and information center in the virtual world Second Life. “It will have answers to questions on all aspects of Sweden,” Olle Wastberg, general director of the Swedish Institute, an organization which promotes the country’s image abroad, said on Tuesday. (Reuters, Jan 30, 2007) Read

Google To Create Its Own Virtual World? Google Earth has become a very popular application among users wanting to explore various parts of the globe via satellite imagery. Rumors are now circulating that Google is looking to take its technology a step further and implement facets of Google Earth in a project aimed a creating a virtual environment, much like that of Second Life. (Joe Lewis, Web Pro News, Jan 26, 2007) Read

Sundance Film Festival holds first time ever screening in 'Second Life'. Never before had Sundance Film Festival audience members been part fox, used names like "NeoConD" and "Apparatchik," or had the power to teleport away. Marking a first for both Sundance and cyberspace, these viewers were avatars watching a feature-length festival film Monday from a screening room in the virtual world of Second Life. (Michelle Meyers, CNET News, Jan 24, 2007) Read

Charity raises funds with homeless avatar. A Spanish charity group has raised enough money through its Second Life awareness campaign, which featured a homeless avatar, to provide a month of healthcare and education for a real-life child. (Reuters, Dec 20, 2006) Read

Dan Miller, senior economist and WoW Night Elf Priest, on virtual world taxation. “The first thing to make clear is that, contrary to what you may have read, the Joint Economic Committee is not seeking to impose a new tax on virtual economies,” Miller said. “If you look at our body of published work, you’ll find a very clear track record of supporting lower taxes and free markets. We are planning to do a study on virtual worlds, and (we) hope to have something published in the first part of next year.” (Reuters, Dec 4, 2006) Read

Cyberspace, the Wild New Yonder. The US Air Force mission statement has been amended to include cyberspace as an operational area, along with air and space. The new command will be part of the 8th Air Force based at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana, a unit made famous during the combined armored offensive in Europe during World War II. (Wired News, Nov 2, 2006) Read

IBM eyes move into Second Life ‘v-business’. IBM has embraced Second Life to an extent unmatched by any other major company — it has more than 230 employees spending time in-world, and it owns some half-dozen islands. Some are open to the public, but most are private, with restricted access for the public. The company is also eyeing revenue opportunities that could have it vying with Second Life design firms to bring real-world businesses into the virtual realm. “E-business was a strategy for us, why not v-business?” (Reuters, Oct 24, 2006) Read

Virtually dead in Iraq. "This is a way to communicate a sense of loss and frustration with the fact that soldiers are dying over there and life just seems to be going on like normal over here," says University of Nevada, Reno's Art Department chairman Joseph DeLappe, who has has turned the US Army's $10,000,000 online video game America's Army into a war protest and a memorial to dead soldiers. (Rebecca Clarren, Salon.com, 9/16/06) Read

Experimental AI Powers Robot Army. Robots currently being developed by the U.S. Air Force will have to find their way into underground bunkers, map unknown facilities in three dimensions and identify what's in them while avoiding detection - all without any human control. This is well beyond the capability of any existing system, but the Air Force Research Laboratory is putting its hopes on new software that lets robots learn, walk, see and interact far more intelligently than ever before. Perhaps the most impressive - and spookiest - aspect of the project is the swarming behavior of the robots. In computer simulations, they acted together to tackle obstacles and grouped together into defensive formations where needed. They also worked out how to deal with defenders, and spontaneously devised the most efficient strategy for mapping their environment. (David Hambling, Wired News, 9/14/06) Read

Avatars Need Personal Space Too. Psychologists have long known that unwritten rules govern our social interactions. Now researchers have observed similar behaviour in Second Life, and other researchers have used Second Life as an experimental platform in studies of learning techniques and simulations of the hallucinations experienced by schizophrenics. Also, economists are conducting experiments not possible in the real world, such as tweaking an exchange rate and observing the effect. (Jim Giles, nature.com, 9/11/06) Read

Synthetic Worlds Initiative. The Synthetic Worlds Initiative is a research center at Indiana University whose aim is to promote innovative thinking on synthetic worlds. Synthetic worlds are immersive digital spaces that can host many online users on a persistent basis. The most popular applications of this technology today are massive video games. The goal is to learn about this technology and deploy it for research and education. The Initiative holds a bi-annual series of conferences, the Ludium, and is building Arden: The World of William Shakespeare, a massive synthetic world. (Synthetic Worlds Initiative at Indiana University, 2006) Read

Google moves into virtual worlds. Real estate companies have started showing off virtual versions of their buildings (for sale in the real world) on Google Earth. SketchUp allows them to build entire models of their apartments, right down to the microwave oven. Google Earth general manager John Hanke has said that Google Earth was partly inspired by Snow Crash's metaverse. The result could be that we'll soon populate a virtual version of planet Earth instead of the made-from-scratch metaverses like online games or Second Life. The main element Google Earth is missing today is avatars, but at least one observer believes those to be added soon. (Chris Taylor, CNNMoney.com, 5/12/06) Read

Possible US Presidential candidate visits Second Life. Mark Warner, former Virginia Governor and founder of Nextel, is considered a possible candidate for the US Presidency in 2008. He recently made an appearance in Second Life. (Wagner James Au, Second Life's New World Notes, 8/31/06) Read

When a virtual world bank fails because of fraud, is it actionable real-world fraud? Eve-Online players could deposit in-game currency with the Eve Intergalactic Bank, which would pay interest of a few percent a month and would loan the funds to promising investment projects but James Grimmelmann writes that "... it was all a scam. Or rather, if it wasn't one at first, it became one as its principal proprietor ... at some point decided to take the money and run. This being EVE, there wasnt much anyone could do about it once he made that call. He now has enough wealth to be utterly and absolutely pimped out at all times." What are the virtual and real world legal implications? (James Grimmelmann, LawMeme (Yale Law School), 8/26/06) Read