Posts Tagged ‘ virtual-worlds ’

Get $200 Off at Engage! Expo

Use code MWVIP to get $200 off an all-access pass to Engage! Expo, happening September 23-24 at the San Jose Convention Center. Looks like a nice line-up, including: * New keynotes include: Jeremy Liew, Managing Director, Lightspeed Venture Partners and Mark Pincus, Founder and CEO, Zynga. * 125 speakers covering the subjects of virtual goods, [ READ MORE ]

Engage Expo in NYC: Last Day For Discounts

If you’re planning on heading to New York for the Engage! Expo (formerly the Virtual Worlds Conference) on March 10-11 — as I am — you can still get an early-registration discount today. (Prices go up tomorrow.) My co-conspirator Jerry Paffendorf will be jowboning there, and it looks like I’ll be moderating a panel as [ READ MORE ]

Metaverse U, February 16-17 at Stanford

I’ll be out in California for a few days in mid-February, mostly for the Metaverse U. event that’s being held at Stanford. This is a spin-off or evolution of the State of Play conferences that originated at New York Law School, I believe. Should be some very interesting brains there, all trained on virtual worlds [ READ MORE ]

Castronova’s Arden MMO Opens, Book Out

Edward Castronova’s MMO, Arden, is being released today. It’s available to play, download, and modify as you wish. His new book, Exodus to the Virtual World, is also now available. I’ve been flipping through a copy, and it looks pretty interesting. Whether or not you agree with the thesis — that game mechanics are going [ READ MORE ]

Mike Liebhold at Nov. 8 Metaverse Meetup

Mike Liebhold was one of the participants at the original Metaverse Roadmap Summit last year, which produced the Metaverse Roadmap Overview, and I remember him as one of the more forward-thinking and impressive presenters. Now, he’s presenting tomorrow at the first Metaverse Meetup at Stanford University, talking about “3D data for real world virtual worlds.” [ READ MORE ]

Second Life Herald Book Party, November 3

It seems like forever since we first started working on it, but at last our book about the Second Life Herald — and about the metaverse in general — is being published (in a matter of days), and we’re planning a party to celebrate the fact. In case you missed it, I’ve written a book [ READ MORE ]

Millions of Us Draws Investment From Omnicom

Millions of Us, led by Reuben Steiger, has drawn an investment from global advertising and marketing agency Omnicom. Press release below. 3pointD hears the investment values MoU at quite a healthy number[ READ MORE ]

Ludlow and Wallace on MITP Podcast

That’s Ludlow as in Peter Ludlow, who founded the Second Life Herald, and Wallace as in myself, who occasionally does some work over there. We’re interviewed on Episode #2 of the MIT Press podcast, which you can listen to via this link. (You have to listen through some advertisements for the podcast itself at the [ READ MORE ]

Join the Visionaries at Virtual Worlds 2007

I’m off Monday for the Virtual Worlds 2007 conference in San Jose next week (online registration ends tomorrow! see below), where I’ll be moderating what should be a very cool roundtable on the future of virtual world platforms. We go on Thursday at 11am, on the strategy track, with a very flattering title: Visionary Panel: [ READ MORE ]

Turner Uses Kaneva For Virtual World Presence

Turner Broadcasting System has signed a one-year deal to use Kaneva to build out virtual-world extensions of its entertainment properties, according to a press release. “The agreement will grant Turner access to Kaneva’s technology and tools to create and use Web communities and Virtual Spaces on the Kaneva Web site and in the virtual world [ READ MORE ]

AOL to Launch World of Warcraft Social Net?

Michael Arrington is reporting that the AOL Games Group may be getting ready to launch a social network for World of Warcraft players, since the company owns wow.com. Could AOL’s reach make wow.com a category-killer? Sean Fanning’s Rupture, another WoW socnet, hasn’t particularly taken off, as I understand it. New entrants to virtual world social [ READ MORE ]

Google Virtual World Back in the Rumor Mill

Is Google building a Second Life-like virtual world? Google-watching blog Google Operating System thinks they might be, given that Arizona State University students will have the opportunity to test a new product that sounds very virtual worldy and that also sounds like it will require a Gmail account. Apparently to be “publicly launched later this [ READ MORE ]

Anshe Chung Draws Venture Capital Investment

Anshe Chung Studios, which produces digital content and services for virtual worlds like Second Life, IMVU and others, has drawn a round of funding from New York venture capital firm Gladwyne Partners, who were early investors in the Electric Sheep Company. Sources at Gladwyne tell 3pointD the investment closed today, but wouldn’t reveal the amount. [ READ MORE ]

$5,000 Reward For GoPets Avatar Bill of Rights

GoPets CEO Erik Bethke is set to break new ground in the area of virtual worlds by proposing to turn his service’s end-user licensing agreement and terms of service document into a plainly written bill of rights. [Via GamePolitics.com, pointed out by Nate Combs.] In a recent LiveJournal post, he offers $5,000 for help in [ READ MORE ]

Taking a Virtual Break at TUI

While many residents of the virtual world of Second Life have taken themselves off on a short break to Chicago for Second Life Community Convention (SLCC) 2007, I have had to settle for a virtual holiday instead. Courtesy of German travel company, TUI, I have been rafting, scuba-diving, and exploring wrecked pirate ships at their [ READ MORE ]

South by Southwest Season: Pimp That Panel

It’s South by Southwest season again, or at least the run-up to it. For the last two years I’ve headed to Austin for the excellent South by Southwest Interactive festival, a fun week of geeks and great conversations that takes place each spring in one of the greatest small cities in America. The process of [ READ MORE ]

Metaverse Roadmap to Singapore

The fifth annual State of Play conference on legal and social issues in virtual worlds is under way this week in Singapore. I had to cancel my trip out there, which is a shame, since SoP is consistently one of the most interesting gatherings of VW thinkers. Jerry Paffendorf is there, though, and reports that [ READ MORE ]

CMP Launches Metaverse Services Division

CMP Technology has become “the first global media company to be certified by Linden Labs as a full-service content developer in Second Life,” according to a press release. (Though maybe Linden Lab should be careful that their certified devs at least spell the name of the company correctly.) CMP, of course, runs the annual Game [ READ MORE ]

Congress Hears From Entropia on VW Taxation

It looks like MindArk, the company behind Entropia Universe (whose virtual currency is pegged and freely tradeable at 10 to the U.S. dollar), is getting in on the Washington lobbying act. Congress has been looking at issues of taxation related to virtual worlds since at least last October, and the Joint Economic Committee is long [ READ MORE ]

10 Percent Off Virtual Worlds 07 Fall Conference

For those of you who are headed out to San Jose to join us at the Virtual Worlds Fall Conference and Expo, you can get 10 percent off your registration fees just because you’re reading 3pointD! That’s a savings of $60 to $100, depending on when you take advantage of this. Details after the jump[ READ MORE ]

Cold Hard Cash: Second Life Coins Available

God bless IBM. Of all the big bad corporations doing business in the virtual world of Second Life, these guys — and, on an individual basis, the company’s employees — are near the top of the “most creative and ambitious” league table (mostly, I suspect, because they can afford to be). The latest: an IBM [ READ MORE ]

Ambitious New Second Life Maps Mashup

I hadn’t heard of Mappa Novus until someone dropped it in the comments here. The Mappa crew is doing interesting work creating maps of the virtual world of Second Life that seem to be mashed up with the Google Maps interface, and overlaid with data layers about population, land sales, etc. On top of that, [ READ MORE ]

Two New Virtual “Worlds” For Kids

With the success of Nicktropolis and even more so WebKinz, Club Penguin, and things like GoPets and more (Animal Crossing, anyone?), virtual worlds for kids have become the hot ticket this summer. Two new ones are on their way: one an educational 3D theme park, the other a cool 2D “world” designed in part by [ READ MORE ]

LFG: Social Limitations in Second Life Groups

Groups are a standard feature of the virtual world of Second Life. They provide communities for avatars with mutual interests, and can range across every interest or specialization known to avatar-kind. Within Second Life an avatar can be a member of up to 25 groups. Sometimes they are used to restrict access to specific areas, [ READ MORE ]

Guardian Lays Out Potential of Virtual Worlds

The Guardian had not a bad story the other day about the potential for virtual worlds, focusing mostly on business uses. In contrast to some other recent takes on this in the press, the Guardian story seems more balanced to me, acknowledging that things are still at an early stage, and also tipping their hat [ READ MORE ]

Second Life Running on Nokia n800

Check out the mobile wizardry of Second Life resident Wrestling Hulka, who has a limited version of the virtual world running on the Nokia n800. [Via Metaversed, from whom I've stolen the pic above.] Cool stuff. Recall there was another mobile client for Second Life that was developed earlier in the year. 3pointD hears that [ READ MORE ]

Getting Social: Connecting in Virtual Worlds

I won’t be able to make this, unfortunately, but what sounds a really interesting panel will be held this Thursday, July 19, in the virtual world of Second Life. Kicking off at 6pm SL time (9pm Eastern), the panel will be a “Virtual Roundtable,” discussing “what drives the virtual human connection.” Moderated by Giff Constable [ READ MORE ]

AjaxLife: Browser-Based Second Life Viewer?

I couldn’t get this to work yesterday and I still can’t today, but one of the Electric Sheep got it working and it sounds fascinating. Someone (said to be a teen) has created an Ajax-based client for the virtual world of Second Life. Is this the start of browser-based SL use? That’s a potentially revolutionary [ READ MORE ]

Graph of Second Life’s Feted Inner Core

Virtual worlds researcher Aleks Krotoski, who’s been working on a Ph.D. about social networks in virtual worlds, has posted about some of her findings, which are available in the form of an excellent video presentation you can find at the Subject Centre for Information and Computer Sciences (scroll down). You can also download the accompanying [ READ MORE ]

Amazon’s Askville is Human-Powered AdWords

The latest company to catch on to the fact that computer games provide compelling feedback mechanisms is Amazon.com, which recently launched its Askville service, where users earn virtual currency for answering other users’ questions. A lot of attention has been paid to the accompanying Questville, which, according to the Askville FAQ (at Experience Points, Levels [ READ MORE ]

UK Conference: Virtual Worlds for Professionals

There’s yet another virtual worlds conference that’s just popped up in my email. This one’s Serious Virtual Worlds, September 13-14, in Coventry, England, of all places (it’s being put on by something called the Serious Games Institute and sponsored in part by Coventry University). It’s bloody expensive, as our British friends would say, but only [ READ MORE ]

Tao On StageSpace: Java-Based Virtual World

Blogger and Second Life resident Tao Takashi has posted a good review of a new Java-based virtual world from Germany called StageSpace, which is still in alpha. While there are some technical problems to overcome in this area, these kinds of worlds could become very popular in future. Why? Tao writes: “The main idea is [ READ MORE ]