Crave

This has to be the weirdest and saddest crime-of-virtual-passion story I've come across.

Kimberly Jernigan--a 33-year-old woman from North Carolina--was apparently distraught after her online relationship with a 52-year-old man from Claymont, Del., came to an end.

The pair apparently met through the online community Second Life and began a virtual relationship. The two finally met in reality several months ago, and the alleged victim ended the relationship, sending Jernigan into a downward spiral.

Kimberly Jernigan met her virtual ex-boyfriend in Second Life.

(Credit: CBS3.com)

In early August, Jernigan allegedly drove to the victim's Pennsylvania workplace and attempted to kidnap him at gunpoint, according to local news station CBS3.com. When she was unsuccessful, according to the report, she returned two weeks later to track down the victim's Delaware address, and posed as a postal worker to do so. After four days of searching, authorities said she found residence in the Whitney Presidential Towers on the 7100 block of Society Drive in Claymont.

On August 21, police said, Jernigan broke into the unnamed victim's apartment with a Taser, a pair of handcuffs, a BB gun, her dog, and a roll of duct tape. He wasn't there, so she waited. When the virtual ex arrived home he saw what looked like a laser beam projecting on his chest. He immediately fled the apartment and contacted the Newcastle County Police.

Earlier this month, I wrote that Electronic Arts had made an announcement to members of its long-running but poorly received virtual world, The Sims Online, that it was re-branding the service as EA Land.

On Tuesday, however, EA announced on the official EA Land blog that it is now planning to shut the service down altogether.

Only weeks after informing The Sims Online members that their game was being re-branded as EA Land, Electronic Arts said it is shutting EA Land down.

(Credit: Electronic Arts)

"It is with mixed emotions that today we are announcing the EA Land experiment will soon draw to a close," the blog entry read. "Since 2002, EA Land/(The Sims Online) has attracted a very special group of players...and we certainly appreciate your participation in the EA Land community. The lifetime of the game has drawn to an end, and now we will be focusing on new ideas and other innovative concepts in the games arena. We'd like to thank everyone who has taken part in this online community as a unique experience in the virtual world."

According to the blog entry, EA Land will shut down for good as of August 1, 2008.

This is an odd turn of events. Why, for example, would EA go to the trouble of re-branding The Sims Online and then almost immediately shut down its successor?"

EA did not immediately return a request for comment.

However, fans of The Sims Online (TSO)/EA Land were not in a sentimental mood about EA's decision.

One commenter on the blog entry wrote, "I guess EA changed it all to EA Land, taking away the TSO name so they could close it without closing The Sims name."

That's a rather pessimistic view, of course, but it raises an interesting point.

The Sims Online was originally a much ballyhooed follow-up to The Sims, the best-selling PC game franchise of all time--which recently sold its 100 millionth unit. But TSO never caught on and was widely seen as a failed attempt to port the single-player game to an online, multiplayer environment.

Still, EA kept TSO running, even as it was eclipsed by other social virtual worlds, and it limped along with a small membership.

All along, one reason the game never really caught on was because it didn't give users the ability to create much of their own content.

But with its announcement of EA Land, EA promised that users would be able to finally create content.

Well, I guess not. Whatever the reason EA is shutting down EA Land, it certainly does put the period on the end of the rather depressing sentence that was The Sims Online.

A lot of people feel that if EA had decided to really champion the game, it could have been a hit. It had every advantage: Amazing name recognition, the spiritual guidance of master game developer and The Sims creator Will Wright, and an eager audience. But the company never got behind it, and it became a PR nightmare.

And now, finally, it is being put to sleep.

R.I.P. TSO.

This is the Genius Bar at Apple's new retail store on West 14th St. in New York. Does Apple have a bright idea for re-creating the interpersonal retail experience in a virtual world?

(Credit: Caroline McCarthy/CNET News.com)

A patent filing by Apple is prompting speculation that the Mac and iPod maker could be getting ready to open up Apple stores in the virtual realm--perhaps in Second Life.

On Thursday, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office published a patent application from Apple titled "Enhancing online shopping atmosphere," filed in September 2006. The PTO's action was first noted by the Mac news site MacNN.

Judging by the patent application, the company apparently is looking to do more than just spruce up its own Apple Online Store. Rather, it seems interested in creating a whole new experience for consumers looking to buy its products via the Web.

In dissecting the application, MacNN picked up on a number of clues that portend a commercial undertaking of the sort that have been popping up in the virtual world Second Life in recent years. And indeed, even a quick reading of the PTO document makes such an assumption quite plausible.

First this, from the Background of the Invention paragraph:

(O)ne drawback of online shopping is that the experience can feel sterile and isolating. Customers in such an environment may be less likely to have positive feelings about the online shopping experience, may be less inclined to engage in the online equivalent of window shopping (e.g., will not linger in front of a display), and may ultimately spend less money than their counterparts who shop in physical stores.

Other visitors to the site are represented by human shaped icons such as icon 118. Both Alice and one other visitor (118) are currently viewing the main page of the Acme website. They are represented by icons in entryway 120 accordingly. Other visitors are viewing other portions of the website.

People shopping at a site like Amazon.com, Zappos, or Store.apple.com don't get to see others while they're browsing and buying. On Second Life, by contrast, the core experience is all about seeing the avatars of other participants.

And Second Life is no stranger to commercial endeavors or the incursions of high-tech companies such as IBM. It's worth noting again, however, that the Apple patent application was submitted in 2006, during the first wave of corporate interest in what virtual worlds might offer to a profit-minded business.

So do take a deep breath before concluding that this is a done deal. As Wagner James Au says on the GigaOm site--while also noting that "when a Second Life user built an unofficial Apple Store last year, it generated tremendous buzz (as the 270K views of this YouTube video suggest.)":

So does this mean Steve Jobs is going to show off his avatar in a virtual Apple store at the next big Mac show? Possibly, but even with my pronounced Second Life bias, I'm more than a touch skeptical. Companies file all kinds of patents that go unused, as a way of preemptively staking out territory.

(Credit: Handipoints)

For parents, enticing kids to do their chores is often about making deals--a trade of sorts, like taking out the trash for extra time watching TV.

For George Zachary and his 10-year-old stepdaughter, that real-world exchange happens online through a site called Handipoints, a digital chore-list manager for parents and their kids. The Web site lets parents set a list of tasks for their children--like washing the dishes or filling the dog's bowl--and kids can rack up points for completing the list. With enough points, children can cash them in for digital gear in the site's virtual world, or for tangible goods with a few dollars from mom and dad.

"She earned points to get some Disney DVDs and books called The Warriors about an underground legion of cats," said Zachary, who as a venture capitalist knows about deal-making. "The site is her start page."

This arrangement could pay off doubly for Zachary. His venture firm Charles River Venture invested around $800,000 in Handipoints last spring with a group of angels that included former Googlers Georges Harik and Aydin Senkut, Inspiration Ventures, and Keith Rabois, an investor in YouTube.

Handipoints is one of a raft of new child-focused sites and virtual worlds that are competing with established kid favorites like Club Penguin, Gaia Online, and Webkinz. Like those sites, Handipoints runs its own virtual world with games and personalized avatars, but the company has a slightly different angle on fostering community. It's trying first to be a tool for parents and kids.

"We're trying to motivate kids to stay active in the real world," said Viva Chu, who founded the company in January 2007 after helping develop the architecture of Internet marketing company Adteractive.

The company makes money from the sale of goods from the site--books and DVDs, for example--and it plans to sell advertising that would be targeted toward parents. It also plans to charge subscriptions.

Since its launch last spring, the company has drawn about 150,000 registered users of both parents and kids. So it has a long way to go before it can compete with the big sites like Club Penguin, which draws millions of users every month. But Chu said the company, which employs 20 people in Oakland and overseas, expects to raise several million dollars this summer in a Series A round of funding to build out the service.

With luck, that won't be a chore in a tightening economy.

3DConnexion's SpaceNavigator mouse.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

It might not be a Wiimote, but it's still got that whole "immersive" thing going on.

Linden Lab, publisher of virtual world Second Life, announced Thursday that its members can use some officially-sanctioned new toys to navigate the metaverse. Logitech's 3DConnexion line of 3D mice can now navigate through Second Life, as a result of Linden Lab's decision to make its code open-source last year.

Second Life members can now use 3DConnexion's SpaceNavigator ($59, or $99 for a premium edition), SpaceExplorer ($299), and SpacePilot ($399) mice to control their avatars, fly, and build objects in-world. They can, of course, also perform more mundane two-dimensional functions, like tweak settings and preferences.

Both Mac and Windows operating systems will be able to handle the 3D mice, and according to Logitech representatives, Linux users should be able to use them, too.

The devices, the first to be made available to Second Life through a partnership with Linden Lab, are not yet compatible with other virtual worlds and 3D multiplayer games like There.com or World of Warcraft. The Logitech representatives, however, said that they will explore other gaming and virtual world opportunities after using Second Life as a first step.

Currently, the SpaceNavigator and its pricier brethren are used for design and modeling software as well as 3D applications like Google Earth.

Over at Wired, David Thier has a story up about theories being propagated by terrorism and intelligence scholars that virtual worlds could provide counterterrorism agents with a view into the activities of real-world baddies.

The theorists posit that virtual terrorism and diseases spread in World of Warcraft might paint a picture of what terrorists like Osama bin Laden are thinking when they're hunkered down, planning their attacks on the U.S. or other countries.

"People got really smart about figuring out how to cause the most damage to the largest number of people," Wired quoted Robert Allen, a WoW player who created a bioterrorist attack in the game, as saying.

The article also quoted Center for Terrorism and Intelligence Studies Deputy Director Charles Blair as arguing that online games like WoW might give counterterrorism agents a view into how cells come together.

Last month the Office of the Director of National Intelligence indicated that it's planning to study online games and "the emerging phenomenon of social (particularly terrorist) dynamics in virtual worlds and large-scale online games and their implications for the Intelligence Community."

Every few months, we hear about some theorist or academic who has determined that al-Qaida is using virtual worlds like WoW to plot disaster. And every time that happens, a bunch of government officials probably get very freaked out and think that maybe it's time to start running data mining projects in those environments, just like the Office of the DNI did.

But as I wrote last month and I will continue to write, just because someone theorizes it doesn't mean it's true.

It is true that scientists have studied how diseases spread in virtual worlds and the results have been fascinating, since virtual worlds present pretty sophisticated models of complex societies and how a virus might spread among large groups. But that just doesn't mean that orc you came across in EverQuest is a terrorist. Or is carrying a virtual virus.

For now, I think it's worth thinking about these things as problems. And it certainly makes for interesting reading. But what I'd like to see is people not get so freaked out about the dangers of virtual worlds since no one has proven that the environments have been used for any kind of real-world dastardly behavior.

Philip Rosedale, CEO of Second Life creator Linden Lab and founder of the virtual world, announced Friday that he will step down from his post.

He assured Second Life enthusiasts that he would remain on full-time at the company as chairman of the board.

Rosedale, known in Second Life by his avatar's name Philip Linden, did not provide a concrete date for his change in role, only saying that the company has "decided to search for a new CEO."

(Credit: James Martin/CNET News.com)

He continued: "This is a decision driven by my desire to best grow SL and match my job to both our needs and my passions. We don't have a specific timeline, and I don't expect my job to change while we are looking for someone."

It sounds like the company is looking for a veteran business professional rather than a futurist visionary. "I feel that the most important contributions I have made and will continue to make to Second Life are related to building both the product and the company through my direct contributions to vision, strategy, and design," Rosedale wrote in a post on the official Second Life blog.

"As we grow, the role of our CEO will increasingly be to hire and grow the right team--to lead and help the company scale--to thousands of people and tens of millions of users of Second Life."

Corporate upheaval at Linden Lab has been going on for some time now. In December, Chief Technology Officer Cory Ondrejka left the company, and leaked e-mails seemed to indicate that Rosedale had fired him over creative differences.

Second Life, meanwhile, has been going through some rough patches outside of the boardroom. A series of banking scandals earlier this year led the virtual world to effectively ban in-world banks. Issues with vandalism and political radicalism briefly shook the community, and it has still failed to rebound from the backlash that followed in the wake of breathless media hype about virtual worlds.

These days, when you hear about Second Life in the mainstream media, it's coming from dweeby Dwight Schrute on The Office. Linden Lab likely hopes to pull in a CEO who can change that.

This concept art for the forthcoming online game, 'Lego Universe,' is from a player zone of that virtual world.

(Credit: Lego)

SAN FRANCISCO--On a regular basis, two of the things I most like to write about are Lego and virtual worlds. So when I first heard about Lego Universe, a Lego-themed virtual world, well, I was more than a little interested.

Lego Universe, which, sadly, is still about two years from public release, will be a full-scale MMO (massively multiplayer online game) aimed at Lego's core audience, kids ages 8 to 12. But in keeping with the company's awareness of the millions of adults who are utterly devoted to the iconic toys, there is expected to be something for the big kids, too, said Mark Hansen, Lego director of business development and a guiding force behind the game.

In fact, Lego Universe is being developed by a Denver company called NetDevil, and not long ago, Lego flew 50 "partners" to the Colorado capital for some in-depth discussions about what the game should entail.

Exactly what came out of those meetings, of course, is secret, but it's safe to say they were about creating the types of environments the adults would like to see the game include and which would be suitable for children.

A big part of the game is expected to be building--as in letting players build houses, vehicles, and so forth, all out of the famous plastic bricks. Well, at least digital versions of them.

Another piece of concept art from 'Lego Universe.'

(Credit: Lego)

During a meeting Wednesday at the Game Developers Conference here, Hansen explained to me that Lego Universe is very much a part of the, er, Lego universe. That is, the game will be just the latest part of the huge ecosystem. Practically, Hansen said, this means that players--or their parents--will be able to order actual, physical, sets of their creations.

And that means that Lego is in the process of developing a logistics team, Hansen said, that would be able to put such sets together, package them up and send them off to their eager recipients.

Lego Universe players will start out with a fully customizable "mini-figure," the little Lego people that are so well known from all our many years of play. From there, they'll explore the virtual world, building, interacting with other players and potentially engaging in the kind of make-believe that kids the world over have been doing with Lego bricks for many, many years.

That is to say, they can build a castle, and then get invaded by a friend. Or vice versa.

"As you go through the game," Hansen told me, "you gain accessories and you gain bricks...You earn points through play. As you do that, you get more property, more property to build on (and) you get to explore more."

As the game development process moves on, Lego will work hard to get parents involved because it is very aware that to build a game aimed at kids but which will put kids in the same environment as adults, safety must be a major concern.

But Hansen said that Lego also wants parents' input on how to make the game a good place to work on the kind of child development and learning processes that the physical toys are good at.

Whether I really see a game like this as a tool for child development is not clear to me. But I can understand their point. Still, I view it much more as a tool for getting kids to demand that their parents pull out their credit cards so they can buy the real-world versions of their in-world creations.

For years now, the popular virtual world, Second Life has been available only for PCs, Macs, and Linux machines.

There has always been talk about whether SL might ever make it onto consoles like the Xbox or PlayStation 3 and some scattered discussion about possible mobile phone implementations.

Last year, in fact, I saw a hack that allowed someone to access SL, albeit in a very, very superficial manner, on an iPhone.

But now, according to a press release I got Tuesday morning, a company called Vollee is planning on releasing technology that will make it possible to run Second Life on 3G handsets via Vollee's streaming media service.

I have to admit, I'm skeptical. Second Life is difficult to use, is very graphics intensive, and requires a huge amount of streaming data. To run it on a 3G network might work, I suppose, but it would depend entirely on that network staying up, staying high-speed, and on the device being capable of presenting the SL environment in a pleasing, useful manner.

Or not. I suppose it's also possible that someone could use Second Life on a handset and not need all the graphics. Essentially, it could be little more than a communications medium, allowing users to chat with their SL friends, to move around to various locations, and to do some small tasks. Would they be able to use the building tools? I doubt it.

Basically, this is a workaround. I haven't seen it, though, so I can't say for sure. But given the constraints that SL presents, I'm just not sure how well it translates, even onto a device with a big screen and a high-speed connection.

Still, it's noteworthy that this company is trying, and that it got someone from Linden Lab, the publisher of Second Life, to offer a quote for the release. That implies coordination between the two companies, and that always makes something like this more likely to have been thought out.

But only time will tell.

Update (5:19pm): I went over to the Game Developers Conference this afternoon and got a look at Vollee's mobile SL implementation. And I have to say, I was impressed.

While the mobile version won't allow users--at least at first--to conduct any kinds of transactions or to use the building tools, what they have got already is pretty cool.

Mostly, it's because what they've built is fairly smooth, and the look and feel is consistent with the original version, albeit much smaller.

But, for example, the graphics--say, when you're flying--look right, as it does when instant messaging with someone in-world or looking at your contacts list.

This is clearly the result of an actual partnership with Linden Lab rather than a do-it-yourself type of workaround, like the one I saw last year.

And while this is no substitute for a fully working version, it's certainly enough for what many SL users do on a daily basis.