My Virtual World IS My Reality
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By John McBride, The Charlotte Observer, N.C.  Feb. 25--Every night after the kids have gone to bed and the house grows quiet, I go upstairs and enter a digital world. I'm a sick man.   I start my computer and get to work.
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A "safe, secure" virtual world which children can inhabit and interact with is being planned by the BBC.
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Spotlight hits political activism in virtual world. Naturally, mainstream media wants to know if terrorism is next.Images: In-world griefing attacks
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San Francisco-based company Second Life has opened up its virtual world to the mobile phone, and is looking for interested beta testers to put the application through its paces.
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The company's move into the virtual reality of "Second Life" is an innovative one.
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Big Blue is investing big to see how it can make 3D virtual environments pay off for the company and its customers.Images: Big Blue in 'Second Life'
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Media Groove launches Chipuya Town, a virtual world accessible on any Flash-enabled keitai. Users create a custom avatar, then step into a cute-ified version of Tokyo's Shibuya shopping district that's accurate right down to the advertising overload.
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A free web-based tool is launched that allows people to build a virtual world in less than a minute.
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By Paul Gromosiak  I must admit that I am a bit of a Luddite, but I have accepted my fair share of technology in my daily life. What concerns me is how rapidly technology seems to be taking complete control of our lives. Once our servant, I think it is now our master.
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(InfoWorld) - As the number of virtual environments increases, standards and vendor collaboration will help make teleporting between different worlds a smooth experience, ensuring, for instance, that your avatar arrives in a new world still wearing the clothes it donned in your home world. Currently, Linden Research Inc.'s Second Life is the most popular virtual world, outshining a number of alternative universes such as Active Worlds and There. "A lot of people are looking at Second Life and saying, 'Let's do one of those,'" said Bob Sutor, vice president of standards and open source at IBM Corp. "The last thing you want is a lot of different ways to do the same things. You need standards for how to teleport between different virtual worlds and to bring objects with you." Besides an avatar's clothes, those objects could include the money it was using in your home virtual world as well as a presentation you might want to share with your colleagues or potential customers. Issues to consider include the mechanics of teleporting between worlds, Sutor said. If you invite someone from another world to come and visit your world, would they need to become a member of your environment or could you simply issue a guest pass? Can a person retain their home world identity in a new world? He also wondered how people will communicate across worlds, for example, via IM (instant messaging). That could be achieved by agreeing on a common service or setting up gateways between different IM systems. IBM's set to debate these issues on Friday at a virtual worlds event it's cohosting with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology at the MIT Media Lab in Cambridge. Sutor will be there along with Mitch Kapor, the chair of Linden Lab, and a variety of academics and companies including Toyota Motor Sales USA Inc. and PepsiCo Inc. Sutor applauded Second Life's move in January to make the source code for its end-user viewer application freely available. The viewer enables users to do a variety of things in the virtual world, including controlling avatars, communicating and buying and selling objects. "They've set a very interesting precedent," he said. Sutor expects that other virtual worlds will follow suit. Like the open-source movement, "virtual worlds are fundamentally about communities coming together," he added, looking forward to the establishment of a global community of developers focused on building worlds based on open standards. Sutor has been using Second Life actively since November and has been detailing in recent blog postings his virtual world requirements . That's a common experience for users once they've adjusted to moving around in a virtual world, he believes. "After they've finished walking into walls, they probably say, 'This is OK, but I really wish it did X, Y or Z'," Sutor said. "The odds are other virtual worlds have that. Looked at in total, we probably have much of what people would like implemented already available somewhere." For example, World of Warcraft, a hugely popular multiplayer online role-playing game, has many features that could be applied in other virtual worlds, he added. Businesses are experimenting with virtual worlds, particularly inside Second Life. "They're mostly translating 2-D marketing ideas into a 3-D world, which is more or less successful," Sutor said. But looking ahead, questions arise around the meaning of the retail experience in a virtual world. For instance, what kind of artificial intelligence will companies use to determine how sales assistants in virtual stores behave when a customer walks in? Will the customer be approached by the sales assistant closest to them or by the assistant who looks the most like them, Sutor wondered. Alternatively, will the sales assistants be programmed to examine the customer's avatar to determine what you're likely to purchase and therefore which assistant could be of the most help to you? Â
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Walking past a crack in a wall in the computer game Broken Sword, players feel a draft of air in the real world. When a virtual plane flies by on the screen, a strategically timed breeze -- generated by a set of fans parked next to the monitor -- tries to make gamers feel as if they're standing next...
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Games will soon be able to interact with the virtual world using their thoughts and emotions alone.
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A number cruncher wants to use the cost of in-world oral gratification to compare virtual worlds' economies. In Game|Life.
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As a petri dish for examining what makes many of us tick, Second Life reveals just how deep-seated the drive is to fit in, look good and get ahead.
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Researchers in England and Switzerland use video cameras and virtual-reality goggles to make subjects observe "themself" from elsewhere in the room. They learn: "The brain can trick itself."
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Blog: What would the Second Life experience be like if it was in the first life. The makers of a video have the answer.
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The third annual Second Life Community Conference features plenty of hopeful talk about lofty new possibilities for the virtual world.