Virtual Worlds News

Who's New to Virtual Worlds - February 29, 2008, Wrap Up

Anantara Solutions, an outsourcing firm, has launched its Consulting, Technology and Outsourcing practice for Second Life. More info.

Cisco and Palomar Pomerado Health opened the hospital with Millions of Us in Second Life. More info.

 

IBM launched Virtual Healthcare Island in Second Life to show off a proposed overhaul for the healthcare infrastructure. More info.

Ashlee Simpson took a stroll through Virtual MTV. More info.

Avnet, a technology distributor, opened a site in Second Life. More info.

David Rumsey took his historical map collection, one of the largest private  collections in the U.S., into
Second Life. More info.

Advanced Content Services announced an online talent contest that would include Second Life. More info.

Rock Valley College is exploring the use of Second Life for education. More info.

Western Illinois University's College of Education and Human Services is entering Second Life. More info.

Circuit City, which previously entered Second Life with IBM , is now relaunching on its own. More info.

Snapple has entered into a product placement deal with Meez and AIM. More info.

Interview: Gaia Driving Traffic to MTV

In November MTV launched an experimental program in the browser-based Gaia Online looking at how users would interact with 2.5D versions of its downloadable, 3D own virtual worlds. While the network still considers the program to be in testing mode, the results so far have been monumental: When I spoke to MTV and Gaia at the beginning of the month, the last 65% of all referrals to MTV's virtual worlds landing page were coming from Gaia's MTV Hills. "When the project started off it was going to be just the Hills, but MTV decided to make it virtual Hollywood to incorporate the other L.A.-like properties," said Joe Hyrkin, VP of Business Development for Gaia. "The intention is that it will expand beyond The Hills and we'll see where it goes. The numbers have been fantastic. Gaia Online is driving more engagement into their 3D worlds than MTV's sites."

Carbon Project Gets $100k National Science Foundation Grant for Geosocial Networking

Carbon Project, a company working on geosocial networking software, has received a $100,000 National Science Foundation grant and is eligible for a total of $1.1 million in future grants. Carbon Project's tool, ((Echo))MyPlace, lets users share location-based information over CarbonCloud, a p2p social networking app. It looks like all of that can be tied into the Gaia 3 viewer, which access map data from Microsoft Virtual Earth, Yahoo! Maps, Google Earth KML/KMZ, OGC GML, ESRI Shapefiles, OGC WMS, WFS, WCS services and more. CEO Jeff Harrison says the company plans to raise $3 million in VC from New England investors in addition to the funding it has already received from individual investors. The Microsoft Live Earth blog says the company is looking to launch with a wide release in the summer. [via Mass HighTech]

Virtual Worlds Europe and Asia Professionals: The Falling Dollar Welcomes You to New York

The Dollar continues to fall (3 year low vs. Yen and record low against the Euro). While we're not a big fan of falling dollars around here we would like to point out that it does make it cheaper to attend Virtual Worlds 2008 in New York. Even with the current attendee rate of only $895 to attend - that's only 583.30  Euros or 445.35 British Pounds or 91,120.84 Yen.

Mirror Worlds Company Virtual Worlds Changes Name to Amazing Worlds

Virtual Worlds, the Singaporean company aimed at creating a mirror world for tourism promotion and more,  has changed its name, pending shareholder approval, to Amazing Worlds. The new name and domain are aimed at taking the company international, because, as we discovered, it's hard to write about a virtual worlds company named "Virtual  Worlds." CEO and Director Terence Mak explained that was his goal all along when we spoke to him back in January. “The Name change from Virtual Worlds to Amazing Worlds will be more in tune with the company goals and will also serve as a easier branding for mass market  adoption, the new AmazingWorlds.com domain will also reflect a more international site and serve to be the base for all our global connections” explained Mak.

Indiana U. Gets $1.8M MacArthur Grant for Kids World

Indiana University's School of Education has received a 3-year, $1.8 million grant from the MacArthur Foundation to expand its kids world, Quest Atlantis, designed to teach students between 9 and 12 years old across all the disciplines. With programs using the world already in the United States, China, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Malaysia, Turkey, and Singapore,  Sasha Barab, Associate Professor and Jacobs Chair in Learning Sciences and Instructional Systems Technology, hopes to use the new funding to expand his reach. “It’s been really exciting to feel like I’m part of this bigger movement,” Barab said. “In large numbers, multiple countries, moving from 2 or 3 thousand to 20 or 30 thousand kids and in these different countries start to help us learn what it means to connect kids from inner city North Carolina, to the beach in Australia, to downtown somewhere in Bombay.“

New Yorker Hotel Room Rates Lowered for VW08 Attendees

We got the New Yorker Hotel (the official hotel for VW08) to knock an additional $15 off the already discounted rate of the price of a Queen room for conference attendees. The new rate is now $229 per night for the Queen Rooms rather than $244. Prices on the Double Rooms remain the same at $249 per night. Booking must be made by March 18th to secure the discount.  More info can be found on our hotel reg page here. See you in New York.

realXtend Brings Avatar Portability to OpenSim and Second Life

Earlier this month, realXtend joined the OpenSim project. February 15 saw their first release, now just weeks later, they've come out with a new update featuring a whole host of new developments, including avatar portability between different OpenSim worlds and Second Life, HTML as a texture, and an improved avatar modeling system. All that goes to letting people follow links between worlds hosted by individuals without having to create a new avatar each time. "We have been testing and fixing bugs as much as possible and we have a few new major features. One of the new features is the Avatar system, under realXtend your avatar has been completely redesigned to support transfer between virtual worlds. Earlier avatar systems used by other virtual worlds have been tied to one world or grid only and could not travel with the user," said realXtend project manager Jani Pirkola.

Habbo Left China Because of Shockwave (and Business)

When Habbo Hotel left China in August, there were rumors that it was due to the the low level of Shockwave adoption in a country that largely used Internet cafes to access virtual worlds. The company, however, told Virtual Worlds News that "There's quite many reasons why we closed down Habbo in China (for the time being). Yes, we had some technical challenges with Shockwave, but that was not an obstacle for us. This was mainly a business decision." It now looks like Shockwave was an obstacle, but only one among several.

9You Launches GTown (Not Affiliated with Google)

9You, a Chinese music and casual games distributor, announced its first virtual world today: GTown. Redline China reports that GTown was developed in-house to tie the existing online community of 280 million registered avatars and casual gamers together in a place where they could download and continue to play 9You's existing casual games library. A quick Google Translation shows that the company spent 2.5 years and $1.4 million to develop the virtual world, though Redline says that no release date has been set.