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Archive for May, 2008

Virtual worlds: $1 billion in

May 18th, 2008 Comments off

I had friends who played in virtual worlds in the late 1970s (they needed mainframe access back then.)

I didn’t get it then – and I don’t get it now – but whether I get it or not doesn’t matter.

This year $1 billion was invested in various "virtual world" ventures.  OK, there’s a lot of hot money around right now, but it can’t ALL be dumb money.

Also, if "community" is the key to the Internet, what could be more of a community than a place where you completely immerse yourself in another world with fellow virtual world inhabitants.

Two resources for you if you want to keep up-to-date with what’s going on:

!. Virtual World Management

The virtual world industry is big enough to have its own conferences, expos and industry analysts.

http://www.virtualworldsnews.com/

2. Machinima

What is it?

It’s "animated filmmaking within a real-time virtual 3-D environment."

Frankly, I’ve yet to see a good machinima (I haven’t looked all that hard), but clearly this is a medium to watch.  It’s growing fast and the current fan base is very passionate.

You can get a crash course here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machinima

Ken

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The cognitive surplus – Clay Shirky

May 12th, 2008 Comments off

A bit long-winded (he’s an academic) but when he finally makes his point at the end, it’s a pretty good one.

Actually, John Walker, co-founder founder of AutoCAD, made this same point brilliantly way back in the early nineties. The folks who are going to make a killing in software, he said, are the folks who create tools that let people make their own stuff.

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