Fun & games at becomeanmm.com: first, create a character for yourself. Mine's above.

Now, how long till can I use this little guy as my Second Life avatar??
Once you've created a character, you can use M&M partner Zazzle's service to put it on hats, shirts, etc.
The M&M site also includes a fairly basic World (pseudo-virtual - just a bunch of images you can click on, no real navigation or experience); and a couple of Flash games (couldn't get these to work on my visit).

Also fun is the ability to insert your character into a little Flash movie:

Link

Sanrio are in beta with the new "Hello Kitty Online"
I've signed up for an account, and will post more when I get a chance to get in there and poke around. So far it looks like a standard advergame sort of thing.

More screenshots:



Here's the developer's tag:

Burda:ic GmbH markets and distributes so-called Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOG) throughout Europe such as 'Ragnarok Online' and establishes interactive gamer communities like www.alaplaya.eu. Hubert Burda Media views gaming as a key medium for young target groups. www.burda-ic.com

Link Warning - obnoxiously cheerful music that you can't turn off.

Crowne Plaza have opened up a reservation system for their virtual conference rooms in Second Life. The reservations page looks more or less like any hotel reservation page... but it's not entirely clear whether they're charging for the use of the rooms. More info when I get a chance to check it out in-world.

Link

Not as dramatic as this murder case, but perhaps more symptomatic of general acceptance of this kind of property. Question: if thieves see value in virtual furniture, can the tax man be far behind?
From the article:

Dutch police have made their first arrest of an online thief -- a 17-year-old accused of stealing virtual furniture from rooms in the Habbo Hotel -- a popular teenager networking Web site.

Boing Boing Link

Original Yahoo story
Habbo Hotel

AR Façade is an augmented reality version of the desktop-based interactive drama Façade.
In AR Façade players are able to move freely throughout a physical apartment and use gestures and speech to interact with the autonomous characters who appear graphically imposed in the space using a video-mix head-mounted AR display.
Technical teaser:

The player wears an eMagin Z800 3DVisor headmounted display, mounted on a medical headband. The display has two bright, high-contrast OLED displays and a 40 degree diagonal field of view, and is integrated with an extended-head Point Grey DragonFly camera (pointing forward) and an Intersense IS-1200 Vistracker (pointing upwards).

Some preliminary observations on what people actually do in this scenario:

Players play the role of an old friend invited over for drinks at a make-or-break moment in the collapsing marriage of the reactive characters, Grace and Trip. While some players attempt to pacify the characters, others break the ice with comic relief, performing for friends who can observe the unfolding drama from outside the exhibit. The uneasy social situation becomes all too real as players are able to move freely throughout a physical apartment and use gestures and speech to interact with the autonomous characters...

Link (via Slashdot)
Original Façade online game here.

Friday eye-candy time.
These folks are in Dublin. Ran into them on Virtual Worlds Connect.








Big Bad Wolf

Virtual Worlds News notes NFL Rush Zone, a new, somewhat cartoony environment for, obviously, NFL fans. Still in beta (but then,aren't we all?)


Virtual Worlds News article

CSI:New York's Feb. 6 episode will include a Second Life component. Viewers will be able to experience additional content by going in-world via a special, newbie-friendly app from Electric Sheep.

MIT Technology Review has more here.
CSI: New York site here

Thanks to Rob Webber for that lead.

Meanwhile, over at CW,

[There's the network's] new drama "Gossip Girl," about prep-school students living in Manhattan's Upper East Side. To promote the show, CW's half-owner, Time Warner's Warner Bros., worked with Millions of Us to build a virtual Upper East Side neighborhood, where users can shop on Madison Avenue or see the school that characters from the show attend. The world, which just recently opened, uses the same underlying technology as Second Life, but visitors enter through the "Gossip Girl" Web site.

-Wall Street Journal

More info here

Mashable notes the debut of Kinset, an immersive shopping application (Windows only at this point).

Notes Mashable's Adam Ostrow:

It’s cool technology no doubt, but is there really value for customers?

Perhaps the answer is to make Kinset social – allow you to interact with other shoppers as you navigate the store and discuss the items you are viewing. This seems to be missing at the moment, but would make the shopping experience more realistic and potentially much more worthwhile.

Now, combine this with the ability to move your avatars between virtual worlds (Link) and you'll be able to shop with friends from anywhere. Conversely, I can imagine a portal being opened from an RPG or Second Life-type environment - why not just step into a bookstore in-world?

Link


Review coming soon, once I'm back in Parallels...

IBM and Linden Labs (creators of Second Life) are collaborating on a technology that will allow users to move their avatars between different virtual worlds. Clearly some sort of language spec will have to be agreed upon. What's not clear is how a character finely crafted and tuned to the social environment in one world will translate into another. For example, if you've got a lot invested as a warrior in WoW, how does your persona come across in the decidely unwarlike SL? Do people now start crafting more generic personae?

Quote:

A virtual character, or avatar, for all the virtual worlds in which people play is the goal of a joint project between IBM and Linden Lab. The computer giant and the creator of Second Life are working on universal avatars that can travel between worlds. The project aims to open up virtual worlds by introducing open tools that work with any online environment. The companies hope to boost interest in virtual worlds as well as make them easier to navigate.

Usability News - Universal Avatars bestride Worlds

BBC News article