The Metaverse and 3D Web, as blogged by Mark Wallace and friends

There’s so much metaversal news these days that it’s impossible to make a blog post out of everything that crosses my browser. (It was impossible before, but it’s getting more impossible now.) In an attempt to cram yet more news onto the blog, then, 3pointD is happy to introduce “D-Briefs,” an occasional roundup of short news items, some big and important, some trivial but interesting. Look for D-Briefs to appear on a consistently every-so-often basis. Today we have news of a Sony/ClubPenguin deal, a new immersive world from Shanda, IBM getting Torqued, and a million bucks tossed at a startup world.

• According to a report on PaidContent, Sony is in talks to buy ClubPenguin for close to half a billion dollars. [Via Mashable.] Interesting news, coming as it does concurrently with Sony’s continuing financial woes in its games business. That said, the company as a whole is forecasting record profits for the current fiscal year. Perhaps ClubPenguin can help with that.

• Chinese online game company Shanda Entertainment is also developing a Second Life-like virtual world, according to the Financial Times. The FT also has more on Shanda’s strategy.

• A start-up immerswive world company called Timeless Cities, run by an Israeli artist and the co-author of a business book, just won $1 million in funding.

• Last but certainly not least, IBM is trying out the Torque game engine for its intraverse — i.e., its internal 3D workspace. Interesting choice, given that IBM has been looking at both Second Life and Multiverse quite closely. (Not that they’ve stopped their activities in Second Life; in fact, just the reverse.) It seems Torque can support enough concurrency to give IBM what it needs, for the moment. This was Slashdotted today, although to tell you the truth I don’t think it’s terribly earth-shattering news. What IBM does behind and between such 3D platforms will be far more interesting.