Archive for 'Virtual Business, Finance and Economics'

QQ – The Skyrocketing Virtual Currency

by Onder Skall QQ finally made headlines in the Wall Street Journal. Largely ignored here in the west, the hottest virtual currency in China is the QQ. Created by Tencent Holdings Ltd, “QQ Coins” were originally invented as a means for trading virtual items in online worlds and through their popular instant messaging program. For [...]

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Sheep Warned After Violation of Dreamland Community Covenant

By Prokofy Neva, Corporate Watch Anshe Chung, owner of Anshe Chung Studios (ACS), creators of Dreamland, a popular Second Life residential and commercial region with more than 500 islands, has written to the leadership of the Electric Sheep Company regarding violation of her company’s covenant. Anshe Chung announced to the Herald this evening that she [...]

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Casino Owners Unimpressed With Linden Crackdown

by Pixeleen Mistral, National Affairs desk While Azno Simons seems particularly eager to comply with the Linden lab staffers attempt to clean up at least the gambling aspect of Second Life – other metaverse casino owners have a different perspective. Mr. Simons may be a unique case, since he more interested in advertising his web-based [...]

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Interview with PalmVegas Honcho Azno Simons

Sim owner uses off-limits casino to promote web gambling site -lures noobies with innovative automated SL cybersex classroom by Pixeleen Mistral, National Affairs desk Azno Simons on duty keeping US Citizens out of the PalmVegas Casino Hoping to explore the motivations for an SL casino owner who sent out high profile press releases to media [...]

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FBI Investigates Metaverse Casinos

G-men to consider punishing players? by Onder Skall Reuters reports that the FBI have been snooping around Second Life’s casinos and debating what laws are being broken here. After all, playing unregulated Poker for money is illegal – which of course means that those of you who’ve been playing Poker all this time have been [...]

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PR Stunts Japanese Style

Netage Purchases 150 Million Linden Dollars by Onder Skall Netage Capital Partners has joined forces with Meltingdots to create a bridge between Japanese business and the virtual world. Most companies just build an island. These guys, though… they don’t mess around. Promised services to the Japanese business community include an OEM registration page and a [...]

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Virtual Worlds 2007, Report #5: Venture Capital and The New School of Athens

by Urizenus Sklar As I reported Wednesday, much of the Virtual Worlds 2007 conference reeked of the anxiety of marketing guys and gals trying to catch up with the next wave. The fear was palpable. Why else would those people be sitting in that auditorium taking notes like they were Gorean slaves pressed into service [...]

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Virtual Worlds 2007, Report No. 4: $5 Million Worth of Worlds

Prokofy Neva, Corporate Watch So they had this big conference with 600 of the most influential people in the world, in terms of middle management or even CEO level, from major broadcast media, online games, social media, advertising, development companies, educators and government. It was kind of scary, in fact, thinking of what a terrorist [...]

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H&R Block Heads

by Onder Skall Just do me, baby! H&R Block recently announced the construction of H&R Block Island. The story goes that SL residents (at least, those from the US) can swing on by and get some free tax advice. “Fifty years ago, we changed the tax preparation landscape by opening up our first office on [...]

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SL Makes Meta Fonts Free For 4 Million+ Residents

Should be Linden Lab be sharing the love this way? by Pixeleen Mistral, National Affairs desk Typeface geeks may be pleasantly surprised to find that the Second Life software includes a pair of commercial (not freeware) TrueType fonts which are trivial to extract from the SL software and install into Macintosh or PCs for general [...]

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