Early last week C|Net’s virtual news/real reporter Daniel Terdiman wrote a nice piece on VATSIM, “Into the wild blue virtual yonder” (Link). As I was under a deadline crunch I didn’t post anything about it but also noticed that most other virtual world-centric blogs I frequent didn’t mention it either. However, I did catch that Terra Nova had an entry (Link), and was hoping that it would spark some conversation. Unfortunately only two people (me being one of them) posted a comment on the TN site. I’m unsure why this isn’t getting more attention, the article has plenty of goodies related to hot button topics that get people posting and commenting.
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A few days back while posting that long list of links and visiting those sites, I left a couple of comments on the brandsizzle’s blog post discussing Second Life, “Trends: Second Life et al —The Future of the Internet?” (Link). One issue I’ve previously discussed and which I raised on brandsizzle is “griefing”; in regards to the post and my point regarding it: that there is a distinct difference between creating what I call “3D commercials” in heavily-controlled virtual spaces like videogames, and attempting to place a marketing message inside a relatively untamed space like Second Life. The above video – which I guess could be called Not Safe For Work except it’s really too childish to be offensive – is the kind of thing about which I’m talking.
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Just a quick post to alert people to an article on C|Net, “IBM’s virtual pioneer” (Link). The quote I find most intriguing:

We need to make it easy to interoperate with other virtual worlds on the Internet and be able to go back and forth between virtual worlds and Web sites in an easy way. The problem now is the lack of standards like we had with HTTP, HTML (languages for sending and describing Web pages), etc. We need to create them across virtual-world platforms as well as Web sites.

If you want more, I also noticed that Wired has an article today discussing virtual world taxation (Link); bit of a tired subject, but worth reading for those of you still new to all this.

About a week ago BusinessWeek’s Heather Green put out a call to Blogspotting readers (Link) for questions they might like to have answered by Etsy co-founder, Rob Kalin. I couldn’t resist.

The podcast is now available, both on iTunes (though I couldn’t find it a few days ago) and via an mp3 download. Worth a listen.
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The above video, part of a promotional campaign for the movie “Before the Music Dies” (Link) and found over on Gems Sty (Link), beautifully illustrates why I selfishly and emphatically argue against shortsighted activities like downloading pirated content and gleefully supporting the mindless cracking of DRM which, while often poorly implemented, is no more “bad” than any piece of code. As I’ve said before, the corporations whose music – signed over to them by willing creators – is being downloaded illegally, will still figure out a way to make money off of people’s Attention. In fact, quite a lot of the business world is driven solely by an attempt to get consumer Attention; over a half-billion dollars now famously up for grabs just to get our Attention for Wal*Mart. So while the mentally-unimaginative mistakenly believe they’re stickin’ it to the Man, guess what? You’re helping him.
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