IBM faces virtual reality’s first picket line today at the company’s offices in online community Second Life. Workers have taken their industrial relations dispute online and have received attention and backing from all over the real world. Click here to read the rest of the story. It may be that this is the very first Strike 2.0!

Machinima as a production technique concerns the rendering of computer-generated imagery (CGI) using real-time, interactive (game) 3D engines, as opposed to high-end and complex 3D animation software used by professionals. Why not check out the SL section of Machinima.com? 

Edward Castronova’s book ‘Synthetic Worlds The Business and Culture of Online Games’ explores the implications for business and culture of online games. A recommended book for those interested in MMORPGs.

Deadline: 1st of December 

Millions of users from around the globe participate in massive multiplayer online role playing games (MMORPG), such as Second Life and World of Warcraft, 3D worlds that are often considered the next generation Web. With their user base growing at an exponential rate we are already experiencing the development of a phenomenon that may be as significant as the Web itself. The rapid development of MMORPGs and metaverses is likely to bring about significant business as well as social, legal, policy, methodological and technological opportunities and challenges. This special issue aims to explore these and contribute to this rapidly expanding field by focusing on issues relevant to electronic business and management.

For more information please click here.

Plan your first life trip to Holland by experiencing it before you arrive! New Holland: a great place to meet someone! And in case you have not figured it out, New Holland is the island of the first National Tourism Board in SL. Who said the hype is over?

The island has the look and feel of the city of Amsterdam, with a large canal crossing the entire island. It features cobblestone streets, bicycles, boats, typical Dutch architecture, bridges crossing the canals, Dutch flags, and tulip fields near a Dutch windmill. Visit “Club Gogh Gogh” or a brown cafe offering, a museum with Dutch masterpieces or simply visit
the island to obtain tourism information, located throughout “New Holland.” What is free? Postcards and tulips are given away to each visitor, enjoy a bike ride, a canal boat tour and drinks at the club. Not bad!

What do you get if you put Google Earth, Google Map and Google SketchUp-3d together? Perhaps a potentially good platform for Google’s MMORPG played on planet Earth with some 6billion concurrent users.

To visit the September the 11th Memorial in SL please click here.

From a post at 3PointD.com quoting Joe Miller, vp for platform and technology development at Linden Lab, makers of the virtual world of Second Life:

• They’ll be open-sourcing the back end so sims can run anywhere on any machine whether trusted by them or not.
• They’ll be delivering assets in a totally different method that won’t be such a burden on the simulators.
• Very soon they’ll be updating simulators to support multiple versions so that they don’t have to update the entire Grid at once.
• They’ll be using open protocols.
• SL cannot truly succeed as long as one company controls the Grid.

If all the above goes ahead and Linden Labs changes their business model then SL essentially solves the scalability issue to a great extend effectively adopting a model similar to that of the Internet. Of course the more exciting things would probably happen when a simulator is connected to the grid (like a web server on Internet), but it can be useful to have a simulator by itself (like an Intranet).

“When discussing Second Life, students felt that games and virtual worlds as part of learning could easily become “tragic” – technology being used for its own sake, and used rather childishly. They would need to understand the educational benefits of virtual worlds or games, it is not enough that they are simply ‘new’.”

To download the full report please click here.

WWF have joined the club of RL organisations that have a presence in SL. Check out a few other examples in our RL organisation list.

A few weeks ago Ginko Financial,  a SL bank, collapsed raising questions about unregulated banking and financial services in metaverses. This could potentially lead to RL intervention, similar to what happened with gambling in SL. Of course there are arguments from both side of the coin as to whether intervention is needed and if it’s going to beneficial for the community. For similar cases not to occur in the future, both the operator and the community itself should be more proactive in protecting themselves.

IFIP WG 9.5 International Working Conference on Virtuality and Society: Massive Virtual Communities

Scope & Theme
Prominently within the gaming community, but also within other communities on the internet, very huge virtual communities begin to evolve. In games, an average number of people that is comparable to a smaller city is online at the same time, thus forming a proper society. People share their pictures and videos, they meet and date in virtual communities. In Second Life, even big companies start virtual branches to enhance customer relations. It is likely that this phenomenon will become even more significant in the near future for gaming, for business and private purposes, maybe even for administrative and political functions.

It is already obvious that those massive virtual communities will have a substantial impact on society, economics, art, and -last but not least -technology. The workshop will bring together experts of that field to collect insights on a emerging major subject.

July 1st and 2nd, 2008, Leuphana University of Lueneburg, Germany

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The 27th annual Advertising and Consumer Psychology Conference will be held May 1-2, 2008 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. (more…)

The Metaverse Summit 2007 will be held at the Estrel Convention Center in Berlin, Germany, on December 06 - 07, 2007, and will include

• Keynotes and presentations of well-known industry leaders
• Panel discussions and roundtables
• Showcasing and demonstration of the latest technologies and services from leading companies
• Unparalleled networking opportunities

For more information please visit: http://www.metaversesummit.com/