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Alter Ego on SBS, and thoughts on vocabulary, identity, truth and perspective

December 15, 2009 By

wolfie-alterego-smlSo, here I am, watching the Alter Ego documentary on SBS. Indeed, it is still running at the time I am writing this. I’m not really quite sure what I expected. Not the usual sense of regretful chagrin that I’d expect at a documentary on Second Life, because Writer/Director Shelley Matulick is basically a good sort.

Nevertheless, the emotion that most comes to the surface right now is one of frustration.

“Real world”, “virtual world”, “real”, “fake”, “virtual” terms and prefixes are thrown around with little consistency, and make me wince or cringe.

It’s not really anyone’s fault, exactly. The users presented on the program lack the vocabulary to clearly express their experience. They obviously have a firm emotional and instinctual grasp of it, but not the conceptual vocabulary to clearly explain it to others.

For the part of the viewer, the average non-virtual-environment-user, well, without enough first-hand experience or a few doctorates in philosophy it’s really hard to absorb the concepts. Until we take our lives online in a decisive sort of way, we don’t really give much thought to core issues like identity or the fundamental nature of humanity – issues that remain relatively intractable after thousands of years of thought by the best minds that our species has to offer.

With such vast conceptual gulfs, how do you convey the obvious?

Good luck trying to explain it to someone who doesn’t have the common experience of a different perspective. Remember in Sesame Street, they had a number of animations that explained communication? One figure with a series of coloured shapes in their head, and as they spoke, the other person wound up with similar coloured shapes in their own head.

What we lack is a vocabulary to express the colours and the shapes. I tell you that there’s no difference between virtual identity and non-virtual identity.

In interviews with the BBC, I was often asked “What is the difference between virtual identity and real identity?”

The obvious and correct answer is that there isn’t any difference. If that doesn’t make sense, then it’s because you’ve misunderstood the nature of identity itself, rather than the nature of virtual identity.

It’s simple, it’s obvious, and if it doesn’t convey the proper concepts to you, then as a message it’s wrong, even if it’s the truth.

This is why the parable (παραβολή) was originally developed – sometimes a fictitious story can convey more truth than the factual one. If simpler truths cannot be grasped, metaphors, analogies and parables need to be employed. Rectitude is not only in possessing the truth, but in effectively sharing it.

Virtual environments, somewhat paradoxically, tell us more about the nature of our ordinary mundane world and selves than actually living it, because in order to grasp the nature of something very large or very close, you need perspective.

If you’re paying attention, a year of using a virtual environment will teach you more about humanity, identity and gender than 30 years of actually experiencing those things first-hand. If you’re not paying attention, though, it may teach you nothing at all.

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Filed Under: Australian News, Op-ed, Virtual worlds in the media Tagged With:

The Watch – virtual worlds in the news

December 13, 2009 By

1. San Francisco Chronicle (USA) – FTC: Explicit Virtual world content easy for minors to see. “The Federal Trade Commission today said minors can access explicit sexual and vilolent content in 70% of the virtual worlds it reviewed in a congressionally mandated report and urged virtual world operators to make key enhancements aimed at reducing the risk of youth exposure to such content. The report, The Virtual Worlds and Kids: Mapping the Risks, looked at 27 online virtual worlds — such as Poptropica, Runescape and Zwinktopia — divided among those specifically intended for young children, teens and those intended only for adults. The FTC found at least one instance of either sexually or violently explicit content in 19 of the 27 worlds and observed a heavy amount of explicit content in five of the virtual worlds studied.”

2. Defence Systems (USA) – Second Life demonstrates mingling of real and virtual worlds. “While the public version of the Second Life virtual world remains primarily a playground for self expression and social networking, military and government agencies are taking a more serious look at its practical applications now that its maker, Linden Lab, has created a version of the environment that can be run behind a firewall on private servers. But Second Life is only one of several environments for creating what are sometimes called 3-D Internet experiences. Like Virtual Battle Space 2, Second Life made cameo appearances at several booths around the show floor at the Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation and Education Conference in Orlando, Fla., this week.”

3. Crispy Gamer (USA) – Buying Influence: how anti-healthcare reformists use virtual currency. “How much is your voice worth as a United States citizen? 100 virtual coins or a fake hat in your favorite virtual world? And are social game users willing to do anything to earn such things to get ahead in their favorite games? These are the questions being asked as real-world political positions and influence are being purchased by fake dollars and intangible baubles in virtual worlds. The story begins with a trade group representing the health insurance industry that is using a third-party offer in some social network games and virtual worlds to send letters to congress expressing opposition to President Obama’s health care plan, according to a report in Inside Silicon Valley. This questionable third-party offer came to light when a company called OMGPOP tipped the publication off, providing it with a screenshot of the offer in progress.”

4. TechCrunch Europe (Germany) – Twinity’s virtual London opens for business. “Twinity, the virtual world that mirrors the real world, has finally launched a beta of virtual London. And if mirroring the real world includes replicating London’s reputation for delayed construction works, then Berlin-based Metaversum, the company behind Twinity, is doing just fine. The virtual world, which distinguishes itself from the likes of Second Life by building exact replicas of well known cities, launched back in 2006 and while London was always planned to follow Berlin and Singapore, it feels like it’s been a long time coming. And tough luck if you are on a Mac – the 3D browser only supports Windows XP and Vista.”

5. WoW.com (USA) – How the WoW community is about to push the self-destruct button. “This post is going to be very meta in some regards, and it’s going to touch on a few things that deal with the WoW community’s very existence. We’ve wrote this article in hopes that it might help calm the waters, or at least bring some will on the part of the multitudes of individuals not to jump on the wrong bandwagon. If you’ve been paying attention to the role forums and the “Ghostcrawler drama” this past week, you know what I’m talking about. If not, we’ll begin with a brief rundown.”

6. The Guardian (UK) – Gamesblog Christmas Book Corner. “We’re rarely sent videogame-related books for review, which is shame as I’m always happy to cover them on the blog – especially when they’re rather esoteric and intellectual, thereby providing raw material for some of my more, erm, ‘conceptual’ postings (i.e. pretty much anything through the slow summer months). Anyway, The MIT Press has sent over two books that I’m currently reading simultaneously, and they’re both worth a look if you’re interested in reasonably heavyweight game theory.”

7. The Toronto Star (Canada) – Avatar: James Cameron’s new world. “In science fiction, they call it “world building” – the long, often-exhausting process of imagining not just a story but the whole vast new environment it takes place in. James Cameron had Pandora, the world filmgoers will visit this week when they rush to see Avatar, in his head for two decades – but it was Peter Jackson who showed him that it could be brought to life.”

8. NPR (USA) – In Which Virtual World Will You Choose To Spend What’s Left Of Eternity? “You won’t read about it in the headlines, but deep in the high-tech corporate campus of the Research Triangle Park, in Durham, North Carolina, desperate refugees fight for survival against mutant cannibals in a dystopian wasteland where civilization is just a dim memory. No, it’s not a hyperbolic recession metaphor (at least not exclusively), it’s Fallen Earth, the post-apocalyptic virtual world created and maintained by RTP game company Icarus Studios. Fallen Earth, you see, is a video game — one in which thousands of players play simultaneously via the Internet and their personal computers.”

9. The Irish Times (Ireland) – Research reveals video games are stimulating to the brain. “PARENTS BUYING video games this Christmas will draw comfort from new research suggesting that, in contrast to conventional wisdom, they do not turn kids’ brains to mush. Just as the physical activity-based Nintendo Wii console convinced parents that computer games and sloth do not have to go hand in hand, new research suggests that video games stimulate the brain. A multidisciplinary team of neuroscientists at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, Canada, has discovered that video games increase brain activity.”

10. The Guardian (UK) – The internet’s dirty carbon secret. “We’ve been told about the environmental costs of motoring, industrial farming, long-haul flights, big oil, deforestation in the Amazon and buying sweat-shop produced, throwaway fashion. Some of us have taken this advice on board, cycling more, flying less, choosing renewable energy schemes, and seeking out ethical, organic products. We can make these choices because appliances and cars are rated according to their energy consumption, and Fairtrade or organic products have prominently displayed certification logos. The information we need to assess whether a service or product is environmentally friendly is either accessible or it’s just common sense – hopping on an aeroplane every weekend is hardly sustainable, after all. But there’s one particular aspect of most of our everyday lives whose environmental consequences are not so well explained: the internet and online activities.”

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Filed Under: General News, Virtual worlds in the media Tagged With:

Weekend Whimsy

December 12, 2009 By

1. Circuito Brasileiro de Surf no Second Life 2009

2. Nobody There

3. Second Life – Insilico part 2

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Filed Under: General News, User-generated Tagged With:

Merged realities – events and issues for virtual worlds

December 10, 2009 By

copenhagen-sl-sml1. As we’ve covered previously, there’s an enormous amount of activity going on in Second Life. There’s regular presentations as well as streaming of parts of the real-world COP15 event. Here’s where to check it out for yourself.

2. The Australia Council initiative, The Australian Centre of Virtual Art, has put a call-out for artists to participate in its 2010 virtual art lab. There will be a three-day intensive program in Melbourne for up to 10 Australian artists, with the remainder run virtually for the next 6-9 months. ACVA emphasise that: “SL artists are welcome, but we’re encouraging anyone working with networked art to apply”. Here’s where to do so.

3. Twinity has launched virtual London this week. If you have the Twinity application (still Windows only at this stage), you can check out London here.

4. Want some Christmas entertainment with a twist in Second Life?

Does your Christmas look less like Norman Rockwell and more like Norman Bates? Does your family put the “Diss” in “Dysfunctional”? Does your Uncle Fred use the Andy Williams’ Christmas Albums for target practice? Well, welcome home Buckaroo! The actors of the Avatar Repertory Theater (A.R.T.) invite you to “The Real Christmas Story”, starring Y.A.D.F. (your average dysfunctional family). These original Christmas stories will premiere on Friday, December 11, at 5 pm pst at the Dove Theater. Two other performances will be presented on Saturday, December 12 at 3 pm pst, and Sunday, December 13 at 2 pm pst.

Written by three members of the A.R.T., “The Real Christmas Story” presents three views of the pain and pleasure of the holiday season. Sodovan Torok, Kayden Oconnell and Rowan Shamroy have googled their internal computers and found stories that embrace the past, endure the present and anticipate the future. Scrooge may have survived the spirits, but Tiny Tim might need counseling after spending time with these ghosts.

5. Linden Lab have an interesting post on their blog outlining some of the emerging virtual worlds courses available at some universities and colleges.

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Filed Under: Events, General News Tagged With: , , ,

‘Alter Ego’ finally hits the small screen

December 8, 2009 By

Alter Ego Poster SmallIt’s coming up to a year since Alter Ego was being completed, and finally SBS have committed to a screening date. It’s showing next Monday, 14th December at 11.25pm. More on the screening time later, but first:

The Mini-Review

I had the opportunity to watch Alter Ego a few months back. Directed by Shelley Matulick, this documentary takes a very close look at Second Life from the perspective of four people. Three of them are Australian, the other from the United States. All have very different stories but their commonality is the role Second Life has played in bringing them closer to other people. I think there’ll be some very different reactions to the portrayal of the subjects. It’s fair to say each have had significant challenges in their lives, with Second Life being a central activity for each.

There are a few aspects of the story that could easily be used by virtual worlds detractors who speak in terms of “get a real life” – that would totally miss the point as what this documentary shows in a stark way is the mixed bag of opportunities and challenges virtual environments present. Overall, Alter Ego is an engaging, well-made documentary that firmly illustrates the role virtual worlds are playing in modern life. Veteran Second Life residents will find areas to criticise – it’s far from a full picture painted, but like any powerful documentary it’s the power of individual stories that can make the difference and Alter Ego certainly achieves that.

Although SBS deserve some kudos for screening Alter Ego, I can’t for the life of me understand why it was relegated to late night just before Christmas. This is a quality Australian documentary that has appeal well beyond those who are involved with Second Life – surely a repeat of Inspector Rex could have made way for a documentary?

Wolfie’s perspective

Over the past three years I’ve gotten to know one of the documentary subjects, Wolfie Rankin. One of the first things I did after watching Alter Ego was to contact Wolfie and ask for his thoughts on the documentary experience, which you can read below:

I had no idea what I was in for, I thought a crew would come around and Shelley would interview me a bit and that’d be it, but it took a lot longer than I realised. Shelley would drop in now and then just to record me on voice, using a digital recorder… and then later she bought the crew. I think they were here about eight or more times, gathering bits and pieces.

The interesting thing for the technically minded was that no tapes were used, everything either went to hard drive or flash card, The High Definition camera which was used had two large flash cards in which it recorded about 20 minutes of footage which was then dumped to a laptop with a 1TB hard drive hanging off of it.

My house was an absolute mess, well I live alone, so if my house gets a bit messy, it doesn’t matter. So I cleaned up like mad and threw any excess stuff into the spare room and closed the door. What I didn’t realise was they’d bring a truck load of stuff, lighting and cables which had to go somewhere and ended up in the spare room too.

I hadn’t cleaned my bedroom or the bathroom either, so guess where they wanted to film, good grief. Oh yes, and the garden, which had been horribly neglected.

I used to be a keen gardener, but my parents were living with me then so we all had our own jobs to do, but now I live alone I find I have very little time for everything, and as everyone knows, I spend a long time each day on the computer. I’m thankful for Katie, my dog, who insists on about three daily walks or I wouldn’t get out quite as often.

My advice to anyone who might find themselves doing a doco, clean clean clean, inside and out. Although the funny thing was that all the scenes showing my house were mostly cut out. Marko, who was in the kitchen, cooking… in his rat suit, as you can see on Youtube. I watched the tape back and saw a kitchen which hadn’t been that clean for years. I have been trying to maintain that ever since.

Marko really wishes he could do a sort of kids cooking show, and I think it’d be great to see him do this, though how he manages to do anything much in that suit, I don’t know.

In another scene which didn’t make it (you can view it on YouTube here), Marko and I went to the local deli. I loved that, it was a really funny experience. Marko got into his rat suit “Rattus”, and then we all walked out into the street, Marko as Rattus, Shelley, Bart (The sound guy), Zach (our Cameraman) and myself… and got into Shelley’s not so roomy car, with Marko in the front passenger seat. If he’d been driving, that would have looked even funnier. Shelley drove, and us three guys were cramped up in the back with all the equipment. We got to the deli about five minutes later and all piled out, then Marko and I went to the deli and went through a routine where we’d buy cheese (of course) and other items which we’d take home and eat while talking about furries and so on later that night. Marko would point at various cheeses and I’d buy them, he asked me to get blue vein, and the strange thing was he didn’t actually like it, I asked him why he wanted it, and he said Rattus wanted it, not him. How do you respond to that logic?

Marko thought Bart looked cute, but he doesn’t want anyone to know so you’d better leave this bit out. ;) There’s a nice scene in the deli of Rattus being stroked by Bart, but then Shelley hugged him and I was walking around the shops holding Rattus’ hand. I remember something about a woman gently telling Rattus to behave and be a good boy, and Rattus nodding. There was something really warm about that, a shame we didn’t get that on tape, it was beautiful.

Rattus also went into the Bakers Delight a few doors down from the deli, and hugged all the girls who were working there, it’s interesting to see the effect of a fursuit on people, many don’t look, they feel shy or embarrassed, but others love it, and I’m talking about grown people, kids are generally really keen on the idea, but the adults who have this wonderful positive response to it, it’s a lovely thing to see.

Last year I had no heater, and we were filming during winter. The house was frozen, and the doors were usually wide open because the crew kept coming in and going out a lot. So I was usually in a beanie and coat, and shelley whipped my beanie off before each scene which explains the wayward hair :)

Shelley picked Katie and I up to film a scene in the forest, she lives up near where Puffing Billy is and drove all the way to Footscray to pick us up. We got to her home, and what amazed me was her driveway is almost vertical, the steepest driveway I’ve ever seen… anyway, Katie and I went to this place in the forest which Shelley thought looked like a European pine forest. Well we were planning the shot when Katie stuck her nose into the dead pine needles and pulled out this hideous lump of meaty something. I know that baits are used up there so I feared the worst, even if it wasn’t a “proper” bait, it could have been left by one of those nuts who hate dogs and want to poison them, so we raced to the vet with Katie, and she was looked at and was fine, but she’d scared all of us. Jamie who composed the music for the doco was driving and we were almost hit by another car on the way, and Shelleys little boy was hot and upset. So we didn’t end up with any film at all that day which was a real shame.

The forest scene was difficult, I don’t have the fastest connection, and that sim lagged like mad. I couldn’t walk anywhere, and Shelley had to TP me to her most of the time. It’s a wonder she got the footage that she did. The video of me howling was added to the scene digitally later on.

It was suggested that we talk about sex, which I think was appropriate, but I suggested that if we must show genitalia that we show the furry stuff, because there have been other docos where human ones were mentioned, so perhaps we should try this to be different. But the funny thing was that because we had to compress things down and have one thing lead neatly into another, the film kind of gave the impression that I hang out at furry penis vendors, hoping to meet newbies and take them to strange parties in the forest, which was supposedly my Rezday.

It was a bit of a shame that I couldn’t show the kind of rezday I would normally have, a party with friends at the Kookaburra pub, with friends like Kath and Ryu, Simon, Gumby, Vermus, Quadrapop and Lowell, of course… and the performers we usually have, like Komuso and Jaggpro, but it was thought that the forest would be more visually pleasing, which it is.

We wanted a lot more people in the shots but those who we were after were usually offline when Shelley was filming, which we found really frustrating.

I didn’t like the last scene in the doco, I think what I said should have been edited better than that, and I told Shelley. I don’t know if the version which goes to air will still be the same, but I hope they can change it. While trying to explain how I felt, I found myself flip-flopping with ideas which sounded really weird and confusing, but the visuals on that final scene are really beautiful. so just absorb the music and visuals and mentally filter my voice out, please!

What I did was just kind of waffle on about ideas that popped into my head, knowing they’d be edited later, or hoping may have been a better word. I don’t think I do a good job explaining myself when there’s a mic or camera in front of me, I feel that if I can sit and write, then I am more likely to get the idea across much better… but I gave it a go.

I thought they did a really good job on the Second Life visuals, they were almost as good as what we saw in the CSI episode earlier in the year.

One of my favourite scenes in the doco is the one where Alf was laying down with his keyboard on his lap and his LCD screen hanging from an angle, He’d drilled a hole in it and tied a bit of string through it, unbelievable!

Marko is my very dear friend, who I met online around 1996 I think, and we’ve been the best of friends ever since. And he’s been here for me whenever anything bad happened, he’d come to see me, and I’m very very grateful for that, we’re soulmates, I’m sure. We met on a group he’d set up called Ozfurry, which is still around but Marko has gone onto other things.

Marko would like to do a serious doco on the furry culture, and I think he’d be the perfect one for it. He knows a lot about the scene, the people and has travelled to the US a number of times to see friends and visit furcons.

Shelley, our director, is this wonderful, very good looking, intelligent woman, who aims to produce more docos in future, under her own steam. She’s studying more about film production at Swinbourne uni at the moment. She told me that she doesn’t want to be in front of the camera, she mostly wants the people in her films to tell their own story, which I think is fine, but I’m trying to pursuade her to go out the front and be in the film too, I think she’d so a fine job of it.

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Filed Under: Australian News, Events, Virtual worlds in the media Tagged With: , , ,

UWA 3D Art and Design Challenge – November round winners

December 7, 2009 By

uwa-nov2009-winnerThe latest round of winners in the University of Western Australia’s 3D Art and Design Challenge have been announced. The momentum of this competition continues to grow, with a huge number of entries and the addition of Linden Lab CEO Mark Kingdon to the final judging panel.

All the details on the November winner from Jayjay Zifanwe:

Glyph Graves & Silene Christen take the NOVEMBER Awards by Storm

A sublime submission called ‘Tendrils‘ by the jewel in the crown of Australia, Glyph Graves took out top spot for the IMAGINE Challenge for the november round of the UWA 3D Art & Design Competiton. Not to be outdone, some incredible work by Silene Christen of the Balears Islands in Spain saw her winning the top non-scripted IMAGINE entry for ‘Jackob’s Stairs’ as well as the FLAGSHIP Challenge, where the challenge is to build and Art Gallery that could perhaps be built. With this, Silene became the first person to win the major prizes in both the IMAGINE & FLAGSHIP categories.

A total of 58 entries were submitted for the IMAGINE challenge for November and 7 entries to the FLAGSHIP challenge of the University of Western Australia’s 3D Art & Design Competiton. Co-hosts Jayjay Zifanwe and quadrapop Lane were astounded by the rise in entries month to month and the also how the entries coming in were spread across the globe, with artists and builders taking from Canada, the USA, the UK, Scotland, England, Spain, France, Brazil, Denmark, Holland, Portugal, Tunisia, Germany and Australia.

With the year long competition growing from strength to strength, it was announced during the award ceremony that the judging panel for the Grand Prize which already included Second Life personalities from the art, architecture & journalism world, including Frolic Mills, Will Dreadlow, Sasun Steinback, Lowell Cremorne and White Lebed was boosted by the CEO of Linden Labs, M Linden joining the panel!

An artist book prize was also awarded for the month of November. This was won by Oldoak Merlin for his work Offenes Buch (Open Book). Book prize panel chair, Juanita Deharo commenting on the piece said ‘The words and print won’t stay on the page but float and swirl, sometimes forming words, sometimes not. The work asks us to consider the nature of words, story and text, while staying within the known bounds of ‘bookness’. The dedication to Ramon Llull gives us an indication of the creator’s intent. It is a very well concieved and aesthetically pleasing work that operates on a number of levels, and is well deserving of the prize.

Commenting on his win, Glyph said ‘There was a lot of high quality work in this month so I wasnt expecting anything. My piece, Tendrils is a portrait of a person … both closed and open to the world showing a different facet of themselves depending on who and how many are around them. Theres an undocumented feture that I’m not sure many saw .. the sphere will change colour depending on how many people are inside it. Oh and of course it sends out tendrils .. of sound and colour’

Stunned by the double award, Silene said, ‘I’m happy, and surprised. Suprised for several reasons. Jackob’s Stairs is..very conceptual very ..in my style..and I didn’t think it would be ‘in vogue’ in SL at the moment. So I was really suprised. The FLAGSHIP prize… well, this is an honour. To see people dancing and walking and looking at the things in it makes me feel … extremly happy. I made things for people, and is very great for a builder to see poeple using them::)))’

A number of other awards were also preented including the People’s Choice Award taken by Dusty Canning’s ‘Letting off Steam’. Other winners included Miso Susanowa, Jedda Zenovka, Sledge Roffo, RAG Randt, Sabrina Nightfire, Nyx Breen and Ichiko Miles who took 2nd prize in both the Imagine Challenge and the SArtist Book prize (full list below).

The competition is now receiving entries for the month of December. Location is http://slurl.com/secondlife/UWA/64/132/250

WINNERS FOR THE NOVEMBER ROUND

IMAGINE CHALLENGE – 3D Art
1st Prize: Tendrils by Glyph Graves ($L5,000 + Custom T-Shirt)
2nd Prize: Consolation of Philosophy of Ichiko Miles ($L1,250)
Best Non-Scripted Entry: Jackobs Stairs by Silene Christen ($L1,250 + Custom T-Shirt)

Honourable Mention (Simple Beauty): Budding by Sledge Roffo ($L500)
Honourable Mention (A Short History of Everything): Offenes Buch / Open Book by Oldoak Merlin ($L500)
Honourable Mention (Immersion): Sweet Sid & the Singing Sidlets by Jedda Zenovka ($L500)
Honourable Mention (Behind the Veil): Primary Emotions by RAG Randt ($L500)
Honourable Mention (Atmosphere): Turbulence by Sabrinaa Nightfire ($L500)

FLAGSHIP CHALLENGE
1st Prize : Art Galery by Silene Christen ($L5,000)
2nd Prize: FUTURELab by Nyx Breen ($L1,250)

ARTIST BOOK PRIZE
1st Prize : Offenes Buch / Open Book by Oldoak Merlin ($L2,000)
2nd Prize: Consolation of Philosophy of Ichiko Miles ($L500)

THE EXCALIBUR AWARD (for new / returning artists)
Miso Susanowa: 1000 prims in perpetuity at Excalibur Aquitaine compliments of Phillip Vought

PEOPLE’S CHOICE AWARD
Letting off Steam by Dusty Canning ($L500)

—-

With thanks to iono allen (via the UWA blog), here’s a machinima of a number of the November works:

The University of Western Australia 3D Art & Design Challenge from iono_allen on Vimeo.

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Filed Under: Art, Australian News Tagged With:

The Watch – virtual worlds in the news

December 6, 2009 By

1. The Independent (UK) – Millions and millions of little monsters. “Virtual worlds are booming. This summer, market research firm Strategy Analytics projected that the population of virtual worlds would increase from 186 million inhabitants to 640 million by 2015. And a big part of this giant leap is going to be from young people. Apparently, children between five and nine will boost the market by 27percent while teens will bump it up by 21 per cent. And it’s already happening. ‘Club Penguin’ and ‘Habbo Hotel’ have record numbersofmembers, while the number of children playing online game ‘Moshi Monsters’ (above and left) has hit the10million mark, with one million new users signing up every month.”

2. TechRadar (UK) – Heritage Key VX review. “Before the web came along, virtual environments seemed like the next big thing in interface technology. We now have the processing power to do everything those old-school futurists dreamed about: telepresence, immersive filesystems, cyberspace applications… yet it’s still gamers that make most use of virtual worlds. Heritage Key VX may end up changing all this, though. It’s a mainstream application of a once niche feature that reminds us why we all thought it was such a good idea. While Heritage Key is predominantly an educational website aimed at amateur historians and fans of archaeology, its heart is the 3D virtual exhibit.”

3. Times Online (UK) – Real-world arrest for man who stole RuneScape virtual characters. “A man who hacked into accounts to steal virtual characters and their possessions on one of the world’s biggest multi-player online games has been arrested. In what experts believe is the first case of its kind in Britain, the man obtained log-in details for RuneScape, a web-based role playing game with more than ten million members, to steal their “virtual” characters. Players in the game have often spent years creating their online characters by completing set tasks and activities. Police believe that password details were obtained through a so-called phishing scam where a fake internet page tricks people into handing over their personal information.”

4. Government Computer News (USA) – Second Life demonstrates mingling of real and virtual worlds. “While the public version of the Second Life virtual world remains primarily a playground for self expression and social networking, military and government agencies are taking a more serious look at its practical applications now that its maker, Linden Lab, has created a version of the environment that can be run behind a firewall on private servers. But Second Life is only one of several environments for creating what are sometimes called 3-D Internet experiences. Like Virtual Battle Space 2, Second Life made cameo appearances at several booths around the show floor at the Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation and Education Conference in Orlando, Fla., this week.”

5. The University of Texas at Austin News (USA) – Innovator for Teaching with Virtual Worlds Passes Away. “University faculty member and instructional innovator Leslie Jarmon died on Nov. 24 after a 15-year battle with cancer. She was 57. Jarmon was an early adopter of instructional uses of virtual worlds, becoming a role model and advocate for colleagues looking to create new models in pedagogy through innovative uses of emerging technology. Jarmon designed and taught graduate-level courses at the university beginning in 1998 with the Office of Graduate Studies. In fall 2008 she joined the Division of Instructional Innovation and Assessment as a specialist in faculty development.”

6. The Industry Standard (USA) – UC Irvine offering four year video games program. “Well-known for its excellent courses in engineering, business, and medicine, UC Irvine is now pushing into a new area of expertise; video games. The university announced that it had established its Center for Computer Games and Virtual Worlds earlier this year by joining forces with the Institute for Software Research and the Game Culture and Technology Laboratory. Construction is currently underway on a 4,000 square-foot, 20-room “cyber interaction observatory” for faculty research, and the plans call for floor-to-ceiling projection screens, and advanced 3D displays.”

7. Virtual Worlds News (USA) – Unity Lays Claim to “Fastest Growing” App Platform. “Unity Technologies, a company that produces a game platform many virtual worlds run on, last year created a mobile platform specifically for iPhone app development. Today the company said its iPhone platform was “proving to be the fastest growing game development platform for the iPhone.” Twelve percent of games featured on AppShopper.com’s Top 25 paid-for apps were built with Unity iPhone, says Unity Technologies.”

8. The Globe and Mail (Canada) – When gamers become recruiters. “As 2009 winds down, the world of Facebook has fragmented into two camps: the people who are pretending to be farmers, and the rest, who are busy wishing a plague of locusts upon them. The last few months have witnessed the meteoric rise of a new kind of online time-waster: Facebook games with names such as FarmVille, FishVille, Island Paradise and Cafe World that are calibrated not toward fun, but toward the recruiting of friends and the disgorging of credit card numbers. They propagate with an almost organic zeal – and they have tens of millions of customers to show for it. The question is: How can something so dreary have become so popular?”

9. Calgary Herald (Canada) – An eco-friendly message for young minds. “If we really want to reduce our carbon footprints and make the world a healthier place, we’ll need new generations committed to the ecological cause. A Vancouver startup company says it has found a way to reach young minds, delivering an eco-friendly message that is not preachy and allows kids to have fun. And the future for the company may be green in more ways than one.”

10. TechCrunch (USA) – Second Life Gets A Life 2.0 At Sundance. “Does anybody go to Second Life anymore? It seems like a ghost town these days, although every now and then you hear rumblings of a quiet comeback for the proto-virtual world. Well, at the very least Second Life will be getting a second life at the movies. A documentary called Life 2.0 will be screened at the Sundance Film Festival. Life 2.0 was produced by PalmStar Entertainment (which is theglobe.com co-founder Stephan Paternot’s indie movie company) and Andrew Lauren Productions (The Squid And The Whale).”

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