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Reader Martin Scheffler sends the news that free open-source peer-to-peer virtual world-making platform Croquet has just got a version 1.0 release for its SDK. Nice.

The kit provides developers with a flexible tool to create virtual spaces with built-in networked telephony and a “late-binding object-oriented” programming language that allows multiple users to jointly create, animate or modify 3-D objects and dynamic simulations. Developers can also import and share resources, such as 2-D web applications or multimedia content, from their own systems. Working together across multiple locations, they can change simulations while they are running and work together to create new applications — all in real time.

3pointD would love to hear about any work being done in Croquet. Feel free to send updates to themetaverse [at] gmail [dot] com.

The L Word build in the virtual world of Second Life (created by the Electric Sheep Company, sponsors of this blog) has apparently generated quite a following, and is reportedly one of the more successful corporate VW communities in Second Life. Now an interesting thing has happened: Fatty Cardiff, one of the earliest L Word in SL members, has put up a MySpace page for her avatar (including an amusing rap song about the place). According to Electric Sheep Chris Carella, Fatty has been in The L Word in SL from its first or second day, and was founder of the Lesbian Mafia group [UPDATE: see below for a correction], a very large and active user-created group in SL. Fatty is not the first avatar to have a Web-based social networking page, of course, but I love that the in-world L Word community (three times fast) is pushing itself onto the Web in this way. If nothing else, it speaks to the fact that Second Life users want more powerful tools of social networking and self-expression than SL can currently provide. Worlds like Kaneva, Metaversum and Sony’s PS3 home may go further, but based on how those have been described, I’d bet we won’t really be happy until there’s a really deep integration between 3D virtual worlds and some of the social networking services that already exist on the Web, like MySpace and Flickr, to name only two.

Also interesting to note: My discovery chain for this story consisted of a single Twitter update. Nice. (more…)

Virtual Worlds 2007, the new conference that kicks off tomorrow here in New York, has sold out, according to its organizers. Way to go. They’ve also set October 10-11 as the dates for Virtual Worlds Fall (perhaps unfortunately named?), to take place at the San Jose Convention Center out in California. I’m on a panel on the future of virtual worlds on Thursday morning, and I’m looking forward to most of the panels, actually, as the conference seems a cut above the usual fare. If you’re in town, do get in touch, as there should be plenty of hanging out time Thursday evening, and the metaverse meetup Friday night. See you there.

As Jerry notes, Negin and Kimmy’s latest Nerd of the Week has been posted, this one examining the Second Life Nerd in detail, based on interviews conducted at our latest metaverse meetup with all your favorite Second Lifers. (The interviews are actually interesting, FYI.) If you haven’t seen Nerd of the Week, check it out immediately. Negin and Kimmy turn out to be excellent filmmakers, and their short NOTW episodes are definitely worth your while. And if you’re interested in the metaverse meetups themselves, there’s one happening this Friday in Manhattan, open to all. Read more details here. [UPDATE: Added Revver link so Negin and Kimmy can make some coin from this.]

After I saw the I-D Media team in Berlin, I met up with Jeremy Snyder of the Berlin-based Metaversum, which I learned is currently working on a virtual world that will feature Web 2.0 integration that sounds along the lines of what’s being done in Kaneva, though perhaps with some extra features. Metaversum’s world has been in development since July of last year, and currently has about 40 people working on it, Jeremy says. (There’s also a hiring notice on their site.) First, though, the company is building out the social networking piece of things, a service known as Yumondo. This is described as “a Web 2.0 platform that will integrate with the world,” and will feature social networking, photo sharing, collaborative event planning and perhaps some other features that have yet to be decided. Look for that in April or May, with any luck. The world itself will be coming “later this year,” and will integrate with the Yumondo platform. The world will feature user-generated content, but it doesn’t sound like it will be quite as free and flexible as that found in Second Life. (Perhaps more like Sony’s PS3 home service? Remains to be seen.) However, it looks like importing of 3D models may be supported, which would be a nice feature. (more…)

Gideon May, Birgit Frenzel and Dirk Lusebrink (l to r) of I-D Media, the team behind Lifecrawler

Faithful readers may recall the Lifecrawler service I blogged about a couple of weeks ago, which looked like it would give users the chance to put a streaming Second Life window on their Web page. I had the opportunity to meet up with the team behind it while I was in Berlin, and learned a bit more about what’s planned for the service and the company behind it while we hung out surrounded by techie hipsters at the Sankt Oberholz on the edge of Prenzlauerberg. Lifecrawler is the project of a small R&D team within German marketing agency I-D Media who’ve been given more or less free rein to start pushing into the virtual world of Second Life. Though they’re just starting out in the virtual services space, I-D Media plans to leverage the company’s 20-year track record in marketing to bring new and existing clients into the virtual world. Besides the streaming service, the team is also designing a metrics package that will be offered to clients. (more…)

The Virtual Holland being set up by Dutch bankers ING in the virtual world of Second Life is beginning to take shape. It’s just over a month since I blogged the launch, and several recent blog posts are now giving us a peek into what’s going on there. Aleister Kronos (from whom I’ve stolen the pic above) has a bunch of images and a link to a list of resident ventures that have been chosen to populate the area. ING is taking a similar approach to Pontiac’s Motorati project in SL: choosing from among submitted resident projects that aren’t necessarily related directly to ING itself. Nice. (Motorati is one of my favorite corporate projects.) There’s a bit more info at Shaping Thoughts, which is written by an employee of an ING subsidiary, and Scott Weisbord (aka SL’s Theodore Raymond) at Experience Planner has some more images. [Shaping Thoughts also lists some possible ING partners in the project, and has an interesting architectural comparison of ING’s real and virtual builds.]