3pointD.com

The UK’s Guardian newspaper reports today that among the television channels being brought to Second Life by virtual-world services company Rivers Run Red are the UK’s Channel 4 and, appropriately enough, the Sci-Fi channel. The story also confirms that user-created content will be part of Virtual Life TV, which is due to launch at the end of this month. I’m looking forward to seeing whether a machinima channel could fly in Second Life, I think it’s a great idea. Dust off your Alt-Zoom cameras and get to work.

Virtual Earth 3D (click for larger image)

I haven’t checked this out much yet, but Second Life resident FlipperPA Peregrine (creator of SLBoutique.com), sends words of Microsoft’s new beta release of Virtual Earth 3D, which runs in your Web browser and is available through a link in the left sidebar at the Live Search site. As you can see in the image of the Las Vegas strip above, the level of detail is mighty impressive. And wow, I just checked out the Golden Gate Bridge, it’s very nice. As James Fee points out, “It streams much slower than [Google Earth], but the detail is many times better.” If you haven’t seen this yet, install it now — in IE only, not Firefox, natch.

CNet’s Michael Parsons reports that a new version of isometric virtual world Habbo Hotel, to be releaseed this week, will include Web-based social networking functions that will let users interact outside the world, as well as within in. “Habbo users will get their own homepage, which is fully customisable with its own backgrounds, colours, friends list and the ability to send and recieve messages. In other words, Habbo’s going all MySpace,” Parsons writes. Though it looks a bit flat, Habbo is of course hugely popular, with some 7 million people having logged in last month, according to the CNet story. 3pointD is a big believer in Web integration for virtual worlds, so we see this as a good thing, and another indication of a small but growing trend.