Lets face it. Web applications such as Flickr, YouTube, Facebook, Gmail spoiled us. Major services who are absolutely free to a vast majority of its users. Even advertising is almost frowned upon unless its very unobtrusive. The ‘we want it all, we want it now, and we want it free‘ mentality is something we wont [...]

Posted on: February 19, 2008 | 1 Comment »

This weekend was the weekend (16/17th of feb) of MetaverseU. Some of the worlds brightest and most entrepreneurial minds gathered at Stanford University to discuss the future of Virtual Worlds. The opportunities, progression since the start of the Metaverse Roadmap Project and shamelessly promote their own accomplishments, platforms and services. Here are some quick notes [...]

Posted on: February 18, 2008 | No Comments »

Just now I stumbled upon ‘Linden Lab thinks about RL/SL friends matching‘ over on the mrtopf.de blog, discussing an interesting proposal by Linden Labs (Second Life) VP Marketing & Community Developer Robin Linden:
“Yesterday at Robin Linden’s office hour she asked at some point if we are ok with the following idea: On signup to Second [...]

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‘Myth busted!‘ as Gwyneth Llewelyn puts it. A report of John Urpeth of the British ‘Creative Agency’ Proximity London claims to have debunked several statements and perceptions as they are often found in ‘mainstream media’ on Virtual Worlds. Gwyneth found it remarkable these rapports never seem to hit mainstream media. I was less surprised and [...]

Posted on: February 15, 2008 | 23 Comments »

In and earlier article I mentioned the 7 things marketers could learn from online games, and IBM published a report on how games can teach important leadership skills of the future. Now John Seely Brown, a scholar at the University of South Carolina and Douglas Thomas, an associate professor at USC’s Annenberg School for Communication [...]

Posted on: February 14, 2008 | 1 Comment »

Listed from top left to bottom right: MSN, AOL, Habbo Hotel, Reddit, Google, Gaia Online, YouTube, Yahoo, DailyMotion, World of Warcraft, Second Life

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Virtual Worlds and mobile internet has always been a big wildcard. Both are undeniably growing en enjoying plenty of interest from corporations with the power to make a change. This is why on the 26th of February some big shots in the mobile industry (Nokia amongst others) will get together with investors, advertisers and developers [...]

Posted on: February 13, 2008 | No Comments »

Replicating the five senses (vision, touch, smell, sound, taste) in virtual environments has been an inspiration for science fiction for as long as the genre has been around. Complete immersion in Virtual Worlds such as ‘the Matrix’ or ‘Snow Crash’ always seems to be the ‘final step’ into virtuality. But how far are we really [...]

Posted on: February 11, 2008 | 2 Comments »