The Firestorm viewer now has an office on OSGrid, project developers announced yesterday. According to Jessica Lyon, lead developer at Phoenix Firestorm Project Inc. the office is located on two regions donated by Walter Balazic, owner of the Littlefield Grid and founder of the Littlefield community on OSGrid. OSGrid is theRead More →
Achievements, like badges and leaderboards, are one of the cornerstones of gamification, ways to increase user engagement and loyalty. The are also known as goals or quests. The achievement can be a reward in and of itself, can be used to give recognition to players, or can be combined withRead More →
The most important thing to know about Cloud Party is that it’s a Facebook app. Yes, they have their own website, but the only thing on that website is a link to their Facebook app. Which, considering all the bad buzz going around about Facebook apps right now, was almost enough toRead More →
A recent interview done by NPR with Constance Steinkuehler, a senior policy analyst at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy reveals that the White House is looking into the benefits of using video games in education. A lot of the research done on video games in theRead More →
According to a recent paper from the 22nd International Conference on College Teaching and Learning, virtual worlds offer many benefits for language education. The authors — David Parrott and James Lenze from Indiana University of Pennsylvania — argue that the social nature of virtual worlds combined with the elements ofRead More →
In the first quarter of the year, the OMC virtual currency has gained both popularity and usefulness, with both the total currency in circulation and the number of grids it’s available for use on growing, which has also been reflected in the growing number of users. The OMC, or Open Metaverse Currency,Read More →
New research released in March shows that OpenSim development is becoming increasingly led by entrepreneurs, hobbyists, and large corporations. While entrepreneurs remain important in the development of OpenSim, hobbyists are becoming more essential, said report authors Robin Teigland and Zeynep Yetis of the Stockholm School of Economics and Paul M. Di Gangi of Loyola University in Maryland.Read More →
At the 2011 Second Life Community Convention (SLCC) in Oakland, California, Linden CEO Rod Humble announced that in the next few months Linden Lab will release a new version of Second Life for the web and tablets. This new software will be separate from the current Second Life, not justRead More →
People pay the same amount of attention at virtual and physical events, says a  new report from the Professional Convention Management Association, UBM Studios, and the Virtual Edge Institute, detailing the behaviours of people in regards to virtual events that will be released Monday. “Too often the argument centers onRead More →
Kitely, a company that offers virtual worlds on demand, plans to make virtual worlds more accessible to all, said company CEO Ilan Tochner in an interview last week. The interview was conducted at the MetaMeets 2011 conference in Amsterdam, Netherlands, by the blog MixedRealities. Kitely plans to make “the existing SecondRead More →
The number of OpenSim grids accepting the multi-grid, hypergrid-enabled Open Metaverse Currency (OMC) has continued to grow in the first half of this year, now at an all-time high of 29 grids. Meanwhile, the number of registered users has tripled since the start of the year. In addition, the totalRead More →
The number of OpenSim grids accepting the multi-grid OMC virtual currency reached a record high in the first quarter of this year, as has the number of users of this hypergrid-enabled currency from Austian virtual currency exchange Virwox. In the first quarter of the year, the OMC, or Open MetaverseRead More →
In the past year, the OMC virtual currency has gained both popularity and usefulness, with both the total currency in circulation and the number of grids it’s available for use on growing. The OMC, or Open Metaverse Currency, is a virtual currency from Austria-based VirWoXÂ Â that can be used to buyRead More →
Colleges and medical institutions have been trying out immersive virtual environments for training and teaching for years, but one new service, CliniSpace, is trying to take ease-of-use a big step forward — into the browser. Los Altos Hills, CA-based Innovation in Learning, Inc. launched CliniSpace in September of 2010, andRead More →
OSGrid — the biggest and oldest virtual world running on the OpenSim platform — celebrated its second birthday July 22. The celebration included several days of events, including a presentation on the history and future of the grid, live music, and dance parties. Since it first launched two years ago,Read More →
When you first open up an OpenSim browser – Hippo, for example — it seems pretty straightforward. Logging in is a snap, just type your name and password. But once you log in, it’s a different story. You start out as some faceless person in ugly clothes, although it canRead More →