Merged realities – events and issues for virtual worlds
1. The University of Western Australia continues to by the dynamo of Australian Second Life presences, announcing a fourth sim, Virtlantis as well as announcing the February winners of its ongoing 3D Art and Design Challenge. A record 74 entries were submitted for the month. It’s hard to imagine a larger or more dynamic art [...]
Viewer 2.0: after the afterglow
It’s been a couple of weeks since Second Life’s Viewer 2.0 launched, and as always there’s been no shortage of comment. Gauging the balance is always a challenge, but I think it’s fair to say that overall the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. The fly in the ointment has been the new search functionality, particularly [...]
The Watch – virtual worlds in the news
1. The Australian (Australia) – Is putting real-life law into an avatar’s hands viable? “The difficult business of enforcing law and order in virtual worlds — and resolving the messy consequences when problems spill into real life — needs to be debated before knee-jerk political responses. Over the past fortnight Facebook memorial sites for murdered [...]
Momentum continues with counselling in virtual worlds
This post appeared earlier this week over at Metaverse Health.
It’s coming up to a year since we interviewed DeeAnna Nagel and Kate Anthony and discussed counselling in online environments broadly and in virtual environments more specifically. Over that time, the Online Therapy Institute has continued to grow. One example of this is the announcement [...]
Merged realities – events and issues for virtual worlds
The news and events keep on coming thick and fast:
1. There.com has announced its imminent closure due to funding issues. It’s always sad to see a growing virtual world cease operation, particularly one that offered at least some level of content creation.
Frenzoo are offering lifetime VIP accounts to content creators on There.com. All the [...]
Book Review: Total Engagement
Byron Reeves is a Stanford University Professor and Co-Director of the Human Sciences and Technologies Advanced Research Institute. J. Leighton Read is a serial entrepreneur and CEO with an interest in the psychological aspects of gaming.
The premise of the book is the potential for games to become central in the workplace. It sounds a [...]
