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The Second Life and OpenSim platform are the best bet for educators, according to a white paper released today by virtual worlds research firm Daden Limited. “It is the only one offering reasonable graphics with in-world building tools, and as a result high levels of flexibility,” wrote author David Burden.Read More →

(Image courtesy Unisfair.)

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Press release: Annual Unisfair Marketing Survey Probes 500 Technology Marketing Professionals on ‘The Future of Tech Marketing’ Data Reveals Lead Generation as Top Priority and Virtual Events as Emerging Marketing Channel Menlo Park, CA – Unisfair, the leader in virtual events and environments, today announced new research that provides aRead More →

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Japan’s PR News, a press release distribution service, will hold free virtual seminars this summer on how to use Twitter and other social media for marketing and promotion, the company announced today (English translation here.) The seminars will be conducted in a virtual world — OpenSim — and accessed viaRead More →

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Press Release: Ford Recruits Virtual Soldier to Boost Quality; Santos Feels the Same Strains That Humans Do Santos was created for the U.S. Department of Defense as part of the Virtual Soldier Research program at the University of Iowa; the military employs Santos to find ways to ease the physicalRead More →

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Press Release: Enterprise Human Capital Management Goes 3-D RWD Technologies, LLC and ProtonMedia forge partnership to deliver world’s first 3-D immersive workplace for human capital management BALTIMORE & LANSDALE, Pa. — RWD Technologies, LLC , a global company that develops and implements human and organizational performance solutions, and ProtonMedia, theRead More →

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Developers released a new version of OpenSim this week, with support for group management of land, the ability to offer teleports to other avatars, and other minor improvements and bug fixes. Many OpenSim users would already have seen these features on OSGrid, the Diva Distro, and other grids running theRead More →

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Altadyn, the developer of 3DXplore, a Web-based virtual world platform, announced this week that its immersive worlds can now run in the cloud, allowing users to scale up conferences quickly to handle thousands of simultaneous attendees. Today, the company also integrated a voice platform into its system. Previously, customers hadRead More →

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Press Release: U.S. Department of Agriculture Awards Virtual World Contract to SAIC Company to Provide Enterprise Grade Software Platform OLIVE to Help Build and Host 3D Virtual Worlds MCLEAN, Va. — Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) today announced it has been awarded a new prime contract by the U.S. DepartmentRead More →

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Press Release: The Virtual World Web Network Reaches 25,000 Independently Developed Virtual Worlds Webmasters Become ‘Worldmasters’ in Internet’s Next Generation VANCOUVER, B.C. – Virtual world developer Utherverse Digital Inc. today announced that the 25,000th virtual world was created in the Virtual World Web (VWW), a network of independently developed, interconnectedRead More →

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Press Release: USDA Awards Contract for Teleplace as a vGov Virtual World Platform Teleplace to Provide Secure Virtual World Environment for Federal Government Agencies REDWOOD CITY, Calif. – Teleplace, Inc., a leading provider of trusted collaboration solutions, today announced that the U.S. Department of Agriculture has awarded a contract forRead More →

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The world’s top public OpenSim-based grids slowed their growth rate this month, possibly due to the growing popularity of standalone grids. As of today, the top 40 grids totaled 11,240 regions, up 7.2 percent from 10,588 regions in mid-April. However, half of that growth was due to ongoing scalability testingRead More →

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Press Release: 3Di, Inc.’s 3D Virtual World Technology Powers Language Learning Service Offered by NTT Learning Systems and ALC Press “Virtual English Conversation Class” Service Opens, Enabling Avatar-Based Learning in 3D Virtual World 3Di, Inc. , which develops and offers 3D Internet solutions, announces the deployment of its 3Di OpenSimRead More →

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Press Release: Cisco Virtual and Hybrid Events Take Top Honors with Grand Ex Award Cisco Sweeps Global Event Awards Program With Virtual Events in Two Categories and Takes Top Honors Among All Global Brands with Grand Ex Award. Chicago, IL – May 5, 2010 – Virtual Events emerged as aRead More →

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Press Release: Kaplan EduNeering and ProtonMedia Announce Alliance Partnership to combine Kaplan’s online compliance and knowledge solutions with ProtonMedia’s leading 3-D virtual environment, ProtoSphere, to help life sciences companies speed collaborative decision-making while meeting regulatory requirements PRINCETON, N.J. & LANSDALE, Pa. — Kaplan EduNeering, a leading provider of compliance andRead More →

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Today, Hypergrid Business officially launches the Hyperica directory of hypergrid regions, covering more than 200 destinations on 47 different grids. “We’re seeing the beginning of the 3D Web,” said Hypergrid Business editor Maria Korolov. OpenSim, though still considered “alpha” software by core developers, became stable enough for non-mission-critical applications lastRead More →

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The owner of the Aesthetica sim — a rich and detailed artistic build created over the course of several months — learned on Monday that his region was gone for good. And five months of scheduled nightly backups? Never happened. What happened to his region could happen to other regionRead More →

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Press Release: ProtonMedia Named “Cool Vendor in the High-Performance Workplace” by Leading Analyst Firm Vendors selected for the “Cool Vendor” report are Innovative, Impactful, and Intriguing LANSDALE, Pa. —ProtonMedia, the developer of the ProtoSphere virtual collaboration environment for the high-performance workplace, announced today that it has been included in theRead More →

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Press Release: UK Company wins U.S. Federal Virtual Worlds Challenge Birmingham, UK — UK Virtual Worlds solution provider Daden Limited has won first place and second place prize respectively in two categories of this years inaugural U.S. Federal Government’s Virtual World Challenge (FVWC). Birmingham-based Daden entered both its PIVOTE andRead More →

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Two more grids have switched to the recently-released hypergrid-enabled OMC (Open Metaverse Currency) from Virwox, FrancoGrid and Avatar Hangout, bringing the total number of grids using the currency to six. The other four grids supporting the currency are Grid4Us, GermanGrid, OpenNeuland, and WilderWesten. Between them, the six grids total overRead More →

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Press Release: Murrow Center 3D Newsroom Debuts in Second Life A Shared Media Experience and Citizen Journalist Training Center Sponsored by the McCormick Foundation PULLMAN, Wash. – The Edward R. Murrow College of Communication at Washington State University and the McCormick Foundation are partnering for the creation of the MurrowRead More →

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The world’s top 40 OpenSim-based grids gained 1,055 regions over the past month, from 9,533 to 10,588, an increase of more than 11 percent. By comparison, Second Life grew just 1.4 percent during the same time period, according to data from Grid Survey. As usual, OSGrid was the single biggestRead More →

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Press Release: Virtual Runway Helps Fashion Designers Accelerate Their Sales and Marketing Fashion Research Institute launches immersive, interactive runway show for apparel industry NEW YORK —  This month, fashion leaps forward at warp speed as Fashion Research Institute launches Virtual Runwayâ„¢, a 24/7 on-demand 3D runway show service for fashionRead More →

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Former Linden staffer Meadhbh Hamrick has vowed to continue her fight for virtual worlds interoperability. However, the commitment on the part of Linden Research is unclear, and the project is currently being overshadowed by the success of the hypergrid, an alternative method of bridging worlds. Hamrick — also known asRead More →

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Clever Zebra is about to roll out its Campus toolset for educators in OpenSim, company president Nick Wilson tells Hypergrid Business, with work already underway for the first beta customers. OpenSim is an open source platform for creating and serving virtual worlds, which uses the same viewers and interface asRead More →

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Press Release: The Hypergrid Worlds directory of hypergrid-enabled destinations indexes 100th regions yesterday The Hypergrid Worlds directory of hypergrid-enabled destinations has indexed its 100th regions yesterday. The directory, a service of Hypergrid Business, is a hierarchical, categorized listing of sites accessible via hypergrid teleport in more than 30 worlds runningRead More →

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Press Release: Immersive Education 2010 Summit Attendees to Receive $2,500 in Permanent Virtual World Land BOSTON, Mass. – The Immersive Education Initiative today revealed that it will provide permanent virtual world land for one year to every school and non-profit organization that has at least one teacher, administrator, or studentRead More →

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New Orleans law firm Jones Walker has been conducting meetings and training programs in Second Life, the company announced this month. “We created office space where we could conduct meetings, make presentations, provide training, and explore the applications of Second Life to the law firm environment,” said chief marketing officerRead More →

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Press Release: First On-Demand, Photo-realistic Virtual Meetings & Events Platform Launches at DEMO Spring 2010 March 22 /PRNewswire/ — [DEMO Spring 2010]  Today, VenueGen (www.venuegen.com) announced the official launch of its open beta at Demo 2010 in Palm Desert.  After successful pilots resulting in overwhelmingly positive reviews from beta customersRead More →

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Business media giant UBM will triple the number of its InXpo virtual conferences this year, the company said in a statement. According to an agreement the two companies signed earlier this month, UBM will hold 100 virtual conferences this year, up from 30 in 2009. Under the agreement, UBM’s UBMRead More →

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Press Release: Queen’s University Faculty of Law will host Canada’s first virtual law conference on March 18. Roughly 20 academics from Canada, the U.S. and around the world will gather at the Queen’s University Faculty of Education Island in the virtual world of Second Life to discuss the relationship betweenRead More →

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Coca-Cola’s virtual presence in There.com is now history, but few other enterprises will be affected by the loss of this virtual world, experts say. “Unfortunately, There.com ceased operations,” Coca-Cola said in a statement. “As CCMetro is part of the larger There.com environment, CCMetro closed as well.” The company said itRead More →

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The world’s top 40 OpenSim-based grids gained over 900 regions over the past month, from 8,626 to 9,533, an increase of more than 10 percent. As usual, OSGrid was the single biggest gainer, with 609 new regions. The biggest growth was at OSGrid, which gained 847 regions. OSGrid allows anyoneRead More →

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Press Release: More than Half of Social Gamers Willing to Complete a Marketing Action to Earn Virtual Currency Data also shows strong incremental lift from new alternative payment methods San Francisco – March 10, 2010 – While most game developers struggle to monetize even three percent of their users throughRead More →

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Press Release: Open Wonderland Foundation Launch St. Paul, Minnesota, March 10, 2010 – Today Ken Miller, the CEO of Virtual Learning Labs, announced the formation of the Open Wonderland Foundation and the creation of the Open Wonderland virtual world platform. The Open Wonderland platform is a “fork” of the ProjectRead More →

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PRESS RELEASE: 3DXplorer Cloud-Based Full 3D Immersive Platform For Virtual Events Powers CloudSlam’s Virtual Expo Hall and The C-Level Networking Lounge Irvine, California & Toronto, Canada – CloudSlam’10, a virtual conference produced by Cloudcor Inc March 23 – March 25 2010 developed to promote collaborative analysis of the latest trendsRead More →

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PRESS RELEASE: Introducing the New COMDEX, the Next Generation in Virtual Events Creating a Global Connection for the Technology Sales Community Framingham, MA, March 4, 2010 – Everything Channel, a UBM company and the leader in technology sales channel media and services, today announced the re-launch of COMDEX as aRead More →

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OpenSim moved one step closer to full support for Second Life Viewer 2 media on in-world surfaces this week, with the completion of an extensive project to rearchitect the way the open-source software works. Last week, Linden Lab released a new viewer for Second Life — and compatible worlds likeRead More →

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Press Release: There.com is closing on March 9th, 2010 In 2003, There.com was launched as a 3D Immersive Virtual World for everyone. Unlike other products, There was designed from the beginning to be a welcoming and comfortable place for everyone – not just gamers, not just people over 18, notRead More →

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Anders Gronstedt, president of the Gronstedt Group, presents a case study about how high-level executives make some of their biggest decisions in Second Life today at 2 p.m. Pacific, 5 p.m. Eastern time at a live taping of the Virtual Worlds Keynote program. Anders Gronstedt, someone with tremendous experience bothRead More →

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Press Release: ThinkBalm’s “The Distillery” — an immersive technology selection experience Source: ThinkBalm What do whiskey and enterprise immersive software have in common? Not much, unless you’re on ThinkBalm Island in Second Life (or, shortly, the ThinkBalm region of ReactionGrid). We are excited to announce that construction on The DistilleryRead More →

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OpenSim users will have to wait before they are able to use the new Second Life viewer on their grids because the core OpenSim software is currently being rebuilt, developers say. The are compatibility issues between Second Life Viewer 2 (Beta) and the current OpenSim virtual world server software, butRead More →

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Press Release: New Report Signals Fundamental Shift in Marketing Industry as Virtual Events Further Integrate into Traditional Marketing Mix The newly released 2010 Virtual Market Outlook report from the Virtual Edge Institute and George P. Johnson Experience Marketing indicates that major brand marketers, top agencies and software companies are shapingRead More →

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Hélène Zuili, CEO of MakeMyWorlds presents a case study titled “Real World Expos in Virtual Spaces” in Second Life today at 2 p.m. Pacific, 5 p.m. Eastern time at a live taping of the Virtual Worlds Keynote program. “If you’ve ever wondered about a true marriage of real and virtualRead More →

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Virtual world users continued to show their love of OpenSim this month, with a record-breaking increase in total regions counts on the biggest public grids. The top 40 OpenSim grids reached a total of 8,561 regions — up almost 8% from 7,942 in January. However, these numbers are distorted slightlyRead More →

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Press Release: New release extends ProtoSphere’s lead as the enterprise-ready 3-D virtual world for collaboration, meetings, and learning LANSDALE, Pa.–Today ProtonMedia released ProtoSphere v.1.4, a milestone update of the company’s market-leading 3-D virtual world for business. The new release boasts the seven major features most requested by global life sciencesRead More →

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Project Wonderland developers say they will continue working on the virtual world platform, despite being laid off after Oracle’s takeover of Sun Microsystems. “I was laid off along with most of the rest of the team,” said Project Wonderland leader Nicole Yankelovich. “Most of us are working on the projectRead More →

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Sun’s open source virtual world platform — Project Wonderland — will not be receiving any support from Oracle, which is currently in the process of acquiring Sun, according to the developers. “We found out on Friday that development resources are no longer being applied to Project Wonderland,” said Nicole Yankelovich,Read More →