When I posted ‘The Teen Dilemma’ it was already obvious how Linden Labs was missing out on the big potential for the next couple of years - the teen based worlds. Neopets claim of 30 million unique users, Club Penguins sale and nickelodeon’s announcement to open a series of virtual worlds made sure even the [...]

Posted on: April 8, 2008 | 9 Comments »

In an earlier article I stated how problems push acceptance. Innovation processes (both of the individual, social and corporate) are usually low the the ‘to do’ list unless you/we/they are faced with a problem. But once we do start looking for solutions to solve these problems, creative and innovative processes are set in motion and [...]

Posted on: March 6, 2008 | No Comments »

Virtual culture, future and business blogger Wayne Porter pointed me to the presentation of internationally celebrated inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil at the Game Developers Conference. He tells us (as I’ve said before in 2 earlier postings how games show Virtual Worlds the way): “The games industry fits in well with the acceleration of [...]

Posted on: February 29, 2008 | 9 Comments »

After the inspirational Dutch Virtual Worlds meet up of last month, the Eduverse team presents the ’sequel’ - The Eduverse Symposium. A meeting to take place this afternoon in deBalie - Amsterdam on the ever increasing phase we add information to the world, and how this influences our educational system. With a wide range of [...]

Posted on: February 27, 2008 | No Comments »

Exactly 10 days after valentines I found this article about how avatars (the user of Virtual Worlds) relate to each other differently than in the real world on the ‘This is HERD’ blog. It does a great job on defining one important aspect of online connections between humans, the relationships and the level in which [...]

Posted on: February 24, 2008 | 3 Comments »

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 »

Interesting months ahead for the gaming industry. The big gaming news of Q1 2008 was EA announcing its plans to release its FPS game Battlefield Heroes for free. It offers the game as a free download, and supports it trough micro-payments (you can buy in-game bonuses for real money or pay monthly fees for premium [...]

Posted on: February 9, 2008 | 2 Comments »