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The top 40 public grids lost 20% of their reported area this past month — from 11,717 to 9,343 regions –  due to summer cleaning at OSGrid. The largest OpenSim-based grid lost more than a third of its land area, falling from 7,530 to 4,962 regions as grid administrators clearedRead More →

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Press Release: UBM Studios Introduces the Virtual Seminar Center, a 3D Environment for Conferences Chicago, IL — UBM Studios today announced a new 3D environment to help companies take advantage of the growing market opportunities in virtual business. The Virtual Seminar Center is an interactive environment integrating webcasts, training andRead More →

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Some event planners just know that they want to produce a virtual event.  Others take a circuitous route to a virtual event, considering other options first.  For those of you “on the fence” – you’re interested in virtual, but not sure if a virtual event makes sense right now, readRead More →

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Ever since Second Life made virtual world a common reality, people have been trying to find ways to utilize this new-found platform for unimaginable reasons. Soon enough other companies cropped providing quick similar features. These include Active Worlds and Entropia Universe. They all mainly started as a virtual social gameRead More →

(Image courtesy Unisfair.)

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The virtual event space has heated up over the last year.  That’s what a recent Unisfair survey of 500 technology marketing professionals revealed:  40 percent polled considered virtual events “one of the top emerging channels for lead generation in 2010 and beyond.”  Companies today look for an experienced virtual platformRead More →

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For the past year that I’ve been attending meetings in Second Life and OpenSim, I’ve been thinking of the virtual platforms as another kind of collaboration tool. I compare it to Web-based conferences and seminars. A few days ago, however, I read a blog post by Avril Korman, where, inRead More →

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Press release: Professional Virtua Designers Society Announced An integral part of the Fashion Research Institute is the Fashion Research Foundation, a 501(c) 3 nonprofit organization located in New York.  FRF is engaged in educational research using virtual worlds for education. Today, we are pleased to announce two upcoming sessions introducing theRead More →

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The New York-based Fashion Research Institute, Inc. is giving away five copies of its ground-breaking butterfly exhibit to researchers or educators. The exhibit, available in the form of an OpenSim archive file (an OAR) includes a copy of the entire Shengri La Chamomile region from Intel’s ScienceSim grid, with overRead More →

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Press Release: Researchers Find Link Between Immersion and Virtual Buying Habits Planet Calypso and Florida State University proves selling items in a virtual space can yield better results than print, internet or TV advertising GOTEBORG, Sweden — First Planet Company, developer and publisher of the largest real cash economy MMORPG,Read More →

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A new report was released today, providing a baseline measure of the state of the 3D Web, with contributions from Hypergrid Business writers and editors Maria Korolov, Jie Hu and Ankush Chibber. “We’ve only had the hypergrid for a little over a year, so it’s too early to see significantRead More →

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According to information presented at a recent U.S. International Trade Commission hearing, piracy may be hurting companies less than previously though. Fritz Foley, an associate professor at Harvard Business School, told the commission that content producers often assume that a pirated copy of a product blocks the sale of anRead More →

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Press release: Linden Lab Announces Management Changes SAN FRANCISCO, June 24 — Linden Lab®, creator of 3D virtual world Second Life®, announced today that company founder Philip Rosedale has been named interim CEO, and CFO Bob Komin has assumed the additional role of COO.  Linden Lab also announced that MarkRead More →

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Avination, a new OpenSim-based role playing virtual world focusing on combat play, has chosen the XR JEVN e-commerce platform from Extreme Reality, Inc., the companies announced today. Philadelphia-based Extreme Reality acquired the JEVN networked vendor system earlier this month. The platform is already widely used in Second Life, where itRead More →

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Press Release: Merck and ProtonMedia Win Microsoft Life Sciences Innovation Award 2010 Microsoft Recognizes Merck’s Industry-First Scientific Poster Session Held in ProtonMedia’s ProtoSphere 3-D Virtual Environment LANSDALE, Pa.–Microsoft Corp. has named Merck and Company, Inc. and ProtonMedia winners of the company’s Life Sciences Innovation Awards 2010. The awards, announced atRead More →

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Tokyo-based 3Di Inc., will release the new version of its OpenSim server software on June 25, and the new release will allow the use of separate account registration systems. For example, if a retail company, say, allow customers to register on its website, those same registrations can be used toRead More →

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The top 40 OpenSim grids totaled 11,717 regions this month, a respectable 4 percent increase over last month’s 11,240. However, adjusted growth is up a record-high 1,377 regions — an increase of 13.3 percent. Why adjusted? ScienceSim has been running scalability tests, loading up 1,024 regions on a single serverRead More →

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Press Release: ProtonMedia and LiquidHub Form Technology and Services Partnership Companies team to provide life sciences organizations 3-D virtual collaboration and communication solutions integrated with Microsoft SharePoint and OCS LANSDALE, Pa.–ProtonMedia, the developer of the ProtoSphere virtual collaboration environment for the high-performance workplace, and LiquidHub, a global technology consulting andRead More →

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Press Release: VenueGen Offers Free Migration Solution for Second Life Business Customers RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, NC- –  VenueGen, provider of a 3-D virtual meeting platform for collaborative meetings, training, and events today announced a migration solution for users of the Linden Labs Second Life virtual world platform. Linden Labs Second LifeRead More →

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Press Release: Citizant and Cranial Tap Partner to Develop 3-D Environments for Collaboration, Training and Data Visualization In Federal Agencies Second Life environments will add new dimension to transparency and performance CHANTILLY, Va. — Citizant, a leader in federal information sharing and business modernization solutions, has partnered with Cranial Tap,Read More →

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Yesterday, Linden Lab CEO Mark Kingdon promised that Linden Lab is going to develop a Web-based viewer for Second Life. This is, potentially, a major turning point for the company. It could become a portal to the broader 3D Web — or just another closed virtual world, one of thousandsRead More →

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Tokyo-based 3Di, a leader in developing commercial viewers for Opensim, today announced a viewer that will run on Android smartphones. The company is currently recruiting industry partners to develop practical applications of this technology, and will share its platform with them. The platform can be used to develop online games,Read More →

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Linden Lab announced 30 percent staff cuts today, and also promised a Web-based viewer for Second Life. While a Web-based viewer would be a significant benefit for companies interested in using virtual worlds for quick meetings and public conferences, a more sobering note is that the announcement of  “strategic restructuringRead More →

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Press Release: IBM and ProtonMedia Form Joint Development Partnership IBM  and ProtonMedia have entered into a teaming agreement that will result in the delivery of innovative, 3-D virtual collaboration and communication solutions engineered specifically for global life sciences organizations. Under the terms of the agreement, ProtonMedia’s ProtoSphere technology will beRead More →

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Press Release: Serious Games are Effective Learning Solutions for ‘Soft’ and ‘Hard’ Skills From leadership and program management, to emergency evacuation or electrical safety – games, simulations and virtual worlds provide an effective learning experience. Through interactive case studies, attendees at the 2010 Learning and Entertainment Evolution Forum at HarrisburgRead More →

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Hollywood celebrities can now get their own virtual islands — at no cost — through Virtual Celebrity Islands, launching at this Sunday’s 2010 MTV Movie Awards. Between 70 and 80 celebrities will be able to get their islands at the Virtual Celebrity Gifting Lounge, sponsored by Los Angeles-based GBK Productions,Read More →

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Hypergrid travelers are more likely to be looking for shopping than any other kind of individual destination, according to May visitor statistics of the Hyperica hypergrid destination directory. The top five pages viewed overall were the full list of hypergrid-enabled grids, the hypergrid-enabled regions on OSgrid, the list of hypergrid-enabledRead More →

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Virtual events platform provider On24 has rolled out a suite of social networking tools this week, including integration with Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. “We have a standard Twitter widget that can be embedded in a virtual event,” said Denise Persson, On24’s chief marketing officer. “You can see the conversation goingRead More →

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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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There are three ways in which a particular platform or service can be considered to be “open.” One is whether it runs on multiple systems, or is locked into a system from one particular vendor. For example, Apple’s Leonard operating system only runs on Apple computers. The Windows operating systems,Read 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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Second Life, Openism, Blue Mars, 3D Explorer.  If these mean nothing to you today, they certainly will in future.  They are all example of Virtual Worlds and this evening in Manchester I had the job of Chairing a really interesting mixed reality debate called The Death of Distance.  Around 800MRead More →

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These days, we are experiencing a period of extraordinary growth in the Virtual Events space. Let’s face it, air travel isn’t getting any easier as long security lines, service reductions and flight delays take their toll on traveling executives. Recent pandemics from bird to swine flu prompted companies to implementRead More →

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Today, Web space is free. Almost. You can get free accounts for blogs on Blogger.com and WordPress.com — among many others. And storage space is so cheap that some Web hosts offer virtually unlimited storage. At Dreamhost, for example, you can add new sites to your hosting package for noRead More →

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Virtual events platform provider InXpo rolled out a suite of social networking features last week – including built-in support for Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn – as well as a social gaming platform. InXpo is a “pseudo 3D” virtual meeting platform. InXpo’s Web-based virtual meeting platform combines multimedia – video, presentationsRead 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 →