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Press release: Daden builds 3D teaching environment for City Academy Norwich Birmingham UK — Within weeks of being commissioned by City Academy Norwich, immersive solution specialists at Dadem Ltd. have designed and delivered a new 3D virtual teaching environment for City Academy Norwich. The environment consists of a 1:1 model of theRead More →

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Press release: ProtonMedia Unveils ProtoSphere 2.1 Featuring Unprecedented Microsoft Outlook Integration PHILADELPHIA, PA –ProtonMedia, the developer of ProtoSphere®, the market-leading virtual collaboration environment for the enterprise, announced today the release of ProtoSphere® 2.1. Featuring a wide range of new tools and capabilities designed specifically for the enterprise, ProtoSphere® 2.1 is aRead More →

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If you’re a tech-savvy grid owner, there’s a good chance you’ve heard of Bitcoin, a new virtual currency that’s completely private, untraceable, and isn’t backed by any company or government. For some, Bitcoin is the future of online payments, an alternative to our current, outmoded, failing financial system. But before youRead More →

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If you are a grid owner, you’ve probably already considered creating a virtual currency for your residents. Virtual currencies make it easier to have an in-game economy, have lower transaction costs than PayPal or credit card payments for small payments, and can bring in additional revenues for the grid operators.Read More →

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I had fun recently playing with using the Xbox Kinect sensor paired with OpenSim. The project I work on is called PLANE, Pathways for Learning Anywhere, anytime — a Network for Educators. One of our core missions is connecting educators from all sectors such as state run, independent and CatholicRead More →

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Press release: Easier building and deployment of immersive 3D learning scenarios with OOPAL Birmingham UK — Educators and trainers can now create engaging immersive learning exercises more easily and rapidly using an innovative web-based application called OOPAL, developed by learning and visualisation specialists Daden Limited. OOPAL (Object Orientated Practice and Learning) letsRead More →

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Experiential learning — learning by doing — is a hot topic these days and getting hotter. I’ve been evangelizing the benefits of experiential learning for over a decade. But, as much as I believe in the power of experiential learning, it’s important to recognize its limitations. There are two waysRead More →

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In December 2009, Germany’s Talentraspel virtual worlds Ltd. set a world record by squeezing 500,000 prims into one OpenSim region. That record stood for two and a half years until Ener Hax decided to see if she could beat it — and was quickly followed by OSGrid president Michael Emory Cerquoni — alsoRead More →

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For most people, NPCs — non-player characters — are the princesses you need to save in video games, dragons you need to defeat, and shopkeepers who give advice about how to proceed in your quests. But for David Prior, CTO at Simudyne , NPCs are a way to model emergency evacuation plans forRead More →

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SoftPaw Estates announced a free land give-away on OSGrid today, where residents can get free parcels for personal use. The parcels are located on regions were landscaped by well-known OpenSim designer Linda Kellie and OSGrid resident Raz Welles, to provide a interactive community atmosphere. According to SouthPaw Estates founder Timothy RogersRead More →

The big spinning V is the OMC in-world payment terminal. (Image courtesy Speculoos.)

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The Belgian Speculoos grid is adopting the OMC virtual currency from Virwox. “It is crucial that users can use their money outside of our single small world,” said grid owner Gudule Lapointe in an announcement today. “It is also important for us that money is backed by a specialized company, thatRead More →

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A great number of pixels have been used to praise or critique Cloud Party over at Hamlet Au’s New World Notes. True, one needs a Facebook account, and sacrifices anonymity, to use the service fully. Anonymous logins are possible at the link I gave above, but they only permit limited interactions and theRead More →

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Content creators may worry about preserving their content in an era of ubiquitous hypergrid connectivity, but most users have a different worry — preserving their stuff. Hypergrid 1.5 rolled out security measures that protect rogue grid owners from dipping into the inventories of hypergrid visitors and causing trouble. But thereRead More →

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The top 40 OpenSim grids reported a total of 19,926 regions this month, up slightly from last month’s 19,668 regions — despite another round of housekeeping on OSGrid. OSGrid, the largest grid on the OpenSim platform, dropped from more than 9,000 regions earlier this week to under 7,000. According toRead More →

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Firestorm will have support for OpenSim grids, the developers announced today. Firestorm is a third-party viewer that can be used to access Linden Lab’s Second Life grid, and which also has some existing support for OpenSim grids, as well. However, licensing issues have forced Linden Lab to restrict third-party usersRead More →

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As Forsyth County Schools’ NOBLE Virtual World begins to generate more teacher interest, one question that repeatedly comes up is “How can math best be taught in a virtual world?” One suggestion is to use the virtual world to provide practical application of the math concepts in an authentic wayRead More →

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Press release: WorldWizards and Playmatics announce the MyWorld Project. BOSTON — Three online game industry veterans want to give you the chance to design and create your own World of Warcraft-like game. To this end, Boston based-WorldWizards and New York-based Playmatics have teamed up to launch the MyWorld project onRead More →

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Press release: Avination donates often requested function to OpenSimulator LONDON — Avination Virtual Limited announced today that it has released code for llCastRay to the open source OpenSimulator project, as promised at Linux Day in Berlin last month. “Once again, Avination wants to set an example with the release ofRead More →

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OSGrid president Michael Emory Cerquoni — also known as Nebadon Izumi in-world — set a new world record today by putting a million cubes on a single OpenSim region. The previous record, of 576,000 cubes was set earlier today by Ener Hax., using her Sim-on-a-Stick distribution of OpenSim. She hadRead More →

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Press release: EON Creator 4.8 Sets a New Benchmark in Virtual 3D Learning The new features of EON Creator 4.8 offer expanded support for more stereo devices, expanded file support, new exploration interaction and improved Quiz creation IRVINE, Calif. – EON Reality, the world’s leading interactive 3D software provider, todayRead More →

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Kitely continues to move ahead with its infrastructure improvements. Just a few days after telling me the details of how they planned to roll out in-world payments, they announced today that they’ve done it. Kitely users can now buy and sell things with the Kitely Credits virtual currency, and trackRead More →

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Metaversum, the developers of the 3D mirror world Twinity, today announced their acquisition by 3D Internet company ExitReality. Twinity has been having some problems recently. It hasn’t had any news announcements since May 2011, and only two blog posts this year — in one of which, the CEO attempted to dispelRead More →

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Press release: CyberLightning Expands the 3D Internet, Launches CyberTeam Virtual Environment for Business Collaboration OULU, FINLAND — CyberLightning Ltd. today introduced CyberTeam, a virtual world meeting tool that supports collaborative group work in hosted networks or as a cloud-based service. CyberTeam provides an immersive, interactive meeting environment for up toRead More →

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Update: In-world payments have been enabled. Kitely, the on-demand OpenSim hosting company, will be enabling in-world payments this month, both for resident-to-resident sales and for hosting fees. “There are already thousands of dollars sitting around in people’s accounts in unused Kitely credits, burning a hole in their pocket,” Kitely CEORead More →

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I was recently a guest on Designing Worlds, discussing virtual projects that got real money from Kickstarter — or are trying to. Fellow guests included  Zayn Till and Wynx Whiplash, Tinies from Raglan Shire, who just successfully raised $11,112 on Kickstarter for their JazzPaws project, handily exceeding their original goal ofRead More →

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Students learning to drive in Vermont are getting an edge on their written exams thanks to an online tutorial with animation filmed inside Second Life. Vermont’s Department of Motor Vehicles reported this month that would-be drivers passed their written tests significantly more often after it deployed a virtual tutorial createdRead More →

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Press release: Piney Grove Middle School students complete first project in the NOBLE world ATLANTA, GA – Students at Piney Grove Middle School in Cumming, Georgia recently completed their first learning adventure in the NOBLE Virtual World, a 3D virtual learning environment designed especially for project-based learning. NOBLE is availableRead More →

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One of the worries for customers of Kitely‘s pay-by-the-minute OpenSim platform has been that an avatar accidentally logged into the grid could drain a user’s account. This is a particular issue for owners who opt to pay for their visitors’ usage time. Kitely addressed this problem today with a newRead More →

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For the past two and half years at my real job as the head of learning and collaboration, we’ve been early adopters of a virtual world product called AvayaLive Engage, developed by a company named Avaya. It was formerly known as Web.Alive, and although I’m not a fan of theRead More →

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Last week, I attended the Federal Consortium for Virtual Worlds annual conference. I realize the theme for the conference was “Inspire the Future,” but an underlying theme I sensed was “Keeping up with the Future.” Our society and the technological changes are hitting us at an exponential rate. Like oneRead More →

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Press release: Havok Enters Enterprise License Agreement with Kongsberg for Havok’s New Simulation Technology Industry Leader in Military Training and Simulation Standardizes on Havok’s Technology to Deliver High-Quality Simulation Training Across Multiple Training Programs SAN FRANCISCO — Havok, a leader in real-time simulation and 3D visualization technology, has entered intoRead More →

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“Inspire the Future” was the 2012 theme of The Federal Consortium for Virtual Worlds conference that convened this past week in Washington, D.C. at the National Defense University’s iCollege, and it drew about about 300 physical world and an estimated 3,000 virtual world attendees. Several virtual worlds were demonstrated at the conference,Read More →

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Press release: New version of VastPark runs in the browser, uses HTML5 Washington, DC — Today at the Federal Consortium for Virtual Worlds conference, VastPark demonstrated a preview of VastPark VP2, the new all-in-one solution for organizations seeking to engage their users, run collaborative events and train in 3D immersiveRead More →

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I frequently want to know if some far-away region is up or not.  Say, for example,  I have a blamgate up to my favorite shopping mall. I want the gate to be nice and bright when the destination region is up, and go dark if the destination region is down.Read More →

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Here on Island Oasis, we spent most of March developing and testing our own internal currency. This feature was implemented on April 7 and has been running without issue since. Until then, Island Oasis was using VirWoX OMC as our primary currency. This solution was more than sufficient initially when we launchedRead More →

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There was a lot of turmoil on the hypergrid this past month, as many smaller grids disappeared, and OSGrid did another round of cleaning. As a result, the total number of regions on the top 40 grids fell to 19,668, a drop of 491 regions. In addition, the total numberRead More →

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If you work in Second Life, you don’t have to worry about provenance. The Lindens take care of it with their permissions system. Or, at least, that’s how it’s supposed to work. And you already know that you can’t bring anything from Second Life to OpenSim unless you’ve checked withRead More →

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There’s an old saying that 90 percent of new businesses fail within a year, and they fail because of a lack of capital. Fortunately, that’s a myth. According to the U.S. Small Business Administration, 70 percent of new businesses survive at least two years, and more than half were stillRead More →

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I have been involved with education in virtual worlds for several years now, and at discussions and conferences I often hear the question asked, “Why recreate a classroom with desks and PPT presentations in a world where anything is possible? Why create buildings with roofs and walls in a placeRead More →

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An English teacher based in southern China has launched an OpenSim grid for English students. Currently, over 100 of his college-age students are using the grid, as well as students from Italy, Russia, and Japan. They practice English, and interact with English speakers who teleport in from other grids —Read More →

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Some newcomers to OpenSim have major concerns with hypergrid technology and these concerns should not be taken lightly. Many of these risks, however, are exaggerated, while others are present in all virtual worlds. These concerns may cause some to fear moving to OpenSim worlds. Creators and merchants, in particular, may fearRead More →

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Kitely, the OpenSim grid offering on-demand and easy region setup, has added support for groups and profiles, the company announced today. With groups, Kitely users can specify who can enter individual regions, and who can build on them. Groups can also be used to send out instant messages to allRead More →

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Press release: Utherverse Reports Substantial Increase in Global White Label Platform Adoption with Average Franchise Monthly User Growth Rates Over 12% Company Boasts 13,500,000 Platform Users Worldwide and Interest from Large Corporations, Online Casinos, Real Estate Firms, and Government Agencies Vancouver, BC – Utherverse, the world’s Virtual World Web platform,Read More →

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Some grids reported an increase in logins or registrations yesterday during Second Life’s protracted network outage. According to InWorldz co-founder David Daeschler, also known as Tranquillity Dexler in-world, the grid saw a peak of 352 simultaneous users on Thursday afternoon, at a time when the grid normally averages between 200 andRead More →

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Tor Books, the largest science fiction publisher in the world, just announced that it will be removing digital rights management — DRM — from its ebooks. “Our authors and readers have been asking for this for a long time,” said president and publisher Tom Doherty in the announcement. “They’re aRead More →