worlds

It starts with the "zombie march." Then the "march booty swim," followed by the "shuffle ha slide" and the "hip n' roar."

Remember those phrases and you're on your way to becoming part of "Thrill the World," one woman's effort to get people around the globe to simultaneously perform the "Thriller" dance from the iconic Michael Jackson music video.

Dance instructor Ines Markeljevic is the mastermind behind the event slated to take place October 27 and 28, and she's hoping to draw enough participants to … Read more

Peace and happiness are all well and good, but apparently not as enticing as a new Vaio.

In a just -released survey by the Consumer Electronics Association, computers topped respondents' holiday wish lists of top-five gifts--followed by peace and happiness, big-screen televisions, clothes and money.

Notably, the big-screen TV moved up in the 2007 survey to No. 3 from 11th in 2006. The teen wish list remained unchanged: clothes, MP3 players, video games, computers and cell phones (with international human rights way down the lineup, just under skateboards).

In its "14th Annual CE Holiday Purchase Patterns" study, the … Read more

I spent the last couple of days at the Virtual Worlds conference in San Jose, Calif., and one of the more interesting things I came across was the fact that on Tuesday about two dozen tech companies and other institutions gathered to discuss the idea of interoperability between all the various virtual worlds.

It's a very interesting idea. Whether it can work is very much up for debate. But you can read my story on the subject, which ran this morning on CNET News.com.

The question is: Can these worlds work together? Will the publishers agree to let … Read more

SAN JOSE, Calif.--I wrote earlier that I has asked the super-connected virtual worlds expert Jerry Paffendorf what the best thing he had seen at the Virtual Worlds conference here and that he had pointed me to inDuality.

Not long afterward, I ran into another friend, the also super-connected virtual worlds expert Eric Rice and asked him the same question. He pointed me to a technology called Movable Life, which he proudly said allowed him to run Second Life on his iPhone.

Well, I had to check that out. So a little later, I found my way over to the … Read more

SAN JOSE, Calif.--Can a legacy company known for polished storytelling stay relevant to a generation of kids growing used to telling their own stories?

That's the tough question for Paul Yanover, executive vice president and managing director of Disney Online, which runs Disney.com and the newly acquired virtual world Club Penguin. Yanover spoke here Wednesday at the Virtual Worlds conference and admitted that growing Disney's Internet properties is a work in progress. After all, one of the world's most popular brands for children ended up buying newcomer virtual world Club Penguin for $350 million this … Read more

SAN JOSE, Calif.--Venture capitalists have sweetened on 3D playgrounds for kids online since Disney bought the virtual world Club Penguin for $350 million earlier this year.

Just ask Jim Bower, CEO of Numedeon, which runs an 8-year-old virtual world for the 8-to-14-year-old set called Whyville.net. Here at the Virtual World conference, Bower, who's also a professor of computational neuroscience at Caltech, said his life has changed a bit since that acquisition.

"We certainly get a lot of calls from VCs now," Bower said, adding that he has turned down at least one buyout offer from … Read more

SAN JOSE, Calif.--The Virtual World conference got off to a quick start this morning when The Electric Sheep Company, a leading developer of corporate projects in Second Life, announced that it has released a new viewer for the popular digital 3D social environment.

The idea behind the new technology, which is called OnRez, is that it would allow Second Life residents to use the virtual world through a Web browser-like system. It would also make it easy to buy all kinds of in-world products through the OnRez shopping system, which has been around for some time.

One thing that … Read more

SAN JOSE, Calif.--I'm down at the Virtual Worlds conference here, and one of the most interesting things I've noticed is that everyone is trying to differentiate themselves from Second Life.

It actually makes sense. The attendees of this conference are largely people who are only recently coming to the concept of virtual worlds, and if there's one everyone's heard of, it's Second Life.

So, this differentiation is happening in two ways.

First, in panels, like the one I'm sitting in right now, titled "Blurring the lines between virtual and real worlds," … Read more

Starting Wednesday, most of the movers and shakers in the virtual-worlds business will be descending on San Jose for the Virtual Worlds conference.

I'm very interested to see how this show turns out. I covered and spoke at the spring edition of this show, which was held in New York, and I really wasn't overly impressed. At the time, I felt that the hundreds of people who attended weren't entirely sure why they were there, though they knew they should be.

On the other hand, as a veteran of such shows, maybe my standards were too high. … Read more