The London School of Journalism will offer free lectures on journalism in SL. If you are interested, read more about this here.

Linden Labs announced their new CEO, Mark Kingdon (SL name: “M Linden”).

Good luck!

The US Patent and Trademark Office just published Apple’s patent for an enhanced online shopping atmosphere. In an article posted on The Macintosh News Network and Gizmodo, Apple wants to create a more lively online experience when shopping for Apple products. Apple acknowledges presently their online store allows 24/7 service, the ability to recommend associated products, quick and easy search functionality, and most importantly - allowing customers to shop in their pajamas. However, Apple wants to expand these features with a more lively experience that could more closely match the real world experience of visiting an Apple retail store. To quote the MNN: “one drawback of online shopping is that the experience can feel sterile and isolating. Customers in such an environment may be less likely to have positive feelings about the online shopping experience, may be less inclined to engage in the online equivalent of window shopping (e.g., will not linger in front of a display), and may ultimately spend less money than their counterparts who shop in physical stores.”

The question being asked on the internets is if this virtual world store will promote Second Life, or renew Apple’s failed 1994 eWorld (an exclusive mac-only online community) marketing experiment. I’d like to predict Apple’s investment in Second Life, however knowing Steve Job’s need for control, I sense the economics of the Linden Dollar and the empty streets of major recreations of customer-flocking busy retail streets won’t create the robust virtual-shopping environment Apple is wanting to achieve. If Apple wanted to join Second Life, they would have done so already.

Like many filed patents that don’t find the light of day in the end, this one here reveals Apple’s ambition to figure out this whole new market of metaverses. If something does come of this, I believe we’ll see the start of the next Second Life - actual metaverse websites, self-sustained.

A big debate in the virtual worlds is agreeing exactly how much virtual worlds can be worth? It’s troubling enough to evaluate the worth of Facebook. A benchmark has been set. In Second Life, Amsterdam’s red light district has been recreated. According to InformationWeek, via ZDNET: “Amsterdam is one of the most popular sites in Second Life. It’s detailed reproduction of several streets in the real-world city, including a canal, parked Cooper mini cars, a street car, and bicycles. Other features: a large, European-style public square, canal with canal boats, train station and train, and hundreds of shops.”

The article continues: “Most newcomers to Second Life visit Amsterdam early on, because of both the titillation factor and its attractive, detailed design.” Amsterdam was auctioned off for $50,000.

Jon Stewart hosts the Daily Show, a satire news show on Comedy Central. On April 8th, his show had a segment mocking the United States Congress for their committee to discuss the ’speculation’ that terrorists are using Second Life. You can watch the hilarious video clip on Comedy Central.

Even though this satire clip pokes fun at the concept of virtual worlds, it details the importance of virtual worlds to government. In a prior post, virtual worlds are being used to create a more efficient communication channel between goverment agencies.

IBM are pushing forward on the metaverse front by unveiling a plan to host SL on theirservers as a stepping stone to greater adoption of virtual worlds across the enterprise. Introduced at an early stage April 3 at the Virtual Worlds conference in New York, the Second Life Grid lets companies create public or private virtual environments using Linden Lab’s 3-D virtual world technology. Read more more about this story here.

On Monday, 2nd June, the AVEA project at Helsinki Institute for Information Technology (HIIT) organizes an open research seminar on so- called virtual economies.

In the seminar we focus on the following question: “Why should economists and social scientists be interested in virtual economies?” Through discussion and presentations by academic researchers and industry representatives, we investigate the potential of conducting quantitative research on virtual economies that is of interest to mainstream, “serious” researchers.

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