Noteworthy: Glubble & Kid Browsing

If you have children under the age of 12 and you’re always concerned that they’re going to accidentally access some sleazy website, then Glubble may be the answer you’ve been looking for.  Glubble is a Firefox extension that allows you to create separate accounts for you and all of your children to use while browsing [...]

Gross: 80 Kids Plan Brawl Online

A potential fight involving up to 80 children, some as young as 11, was averted by police in the UK, after they received a tip.  Riot police were called on Saturday afternoon after reports a brawl had been orchestrated by children from 3 different schools, who used the social networking website Bebo, as well [...]

Noteworthy: Tips for Online Communities

This was a post specifically about cretaing a space in Second Life, but I believe it has completely valid paralells to the tips you should think about when creating any community space online, 3D/Virtual or not.
Tips on creating an online community « Joi Podgorny

Joi sites several tips from the Virtual World newsletter– very helpful to [...]

FYI: Sony out of the Penguin Club

Sony No Longer in Running to Buy Club Penguin
Last month Sony was in early talks to buy kid-themed virtual Club Penguin for $450 million. After the price went above $500 million, Sony backed out, reports PaidContent.org. PaidContent also speculates that the deal breaker may have been over concerns with churn and Club Penguin’s dedication [...]

Pondering: Perhaps Virtual Field Trips not far off?

This virtual road leads to Rome
A 10-year collaboration between UCLA, the University of Virginia and the Politecnico de Milano produced Rome Reborn 1.0, a virtual 3D model of the ancient city as it looked on June 21, 320 A.D.The researchers studied information on Rome’s topography, urban infrastructure, buildings and monuments, then filled in the rest [...]

The Social Network heavy-hitter Battle Wages On!

viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace
Over the last six months, i’ve noticed an increasing number of press articles about how high school teens are leaving MySpace for Facebook. That’s only partially true. There is indeed a change taking place, but it’s not a shift so much as a fragmentation. Until recently, American teenagers [...]

Neopets Takes Another Step towards Cross Platform fun

Nickelodeon will launch Neopets “mini-shows” this Saturday, June 23, 2007. The interstitial shows will include Neopia specific story information, like characters outsmarting each other, taking chances or setting evil plans in motion.

More news from Neopets, which will launch beta testing Thursday, June 28
for its new virtual NC Mall.  The NC Mall will allow Neopets
members [...]

Kooky Wednesday Fun: Duh Naaaa!

It’s a gorgeous day outside.  Have you checked out wis.dm yet?  That’s great for randomness & time wasting.  I’ve been exploring it for like a week… week and a half now.
This has been the week of reform for my social network profiles… I’ve gone through oldies, newbies, greenies, and blue-ies.  I [...]

Yikes: Sony, wrong numbers, and TMI for a 12 year old

A 12-year-old boy in Washington State got stuck in a particular level of the PlayStation 2 game Ratchet and Clank, so he called the tipline printed on the game disk and found he’d called a phone sex line, KNDO TV reports. “The number appears on multiple games, including top sellers like Hot Shots Golf, and [...]

Virutally Good…ies?

People spend over $1.5 billion on virtual items every year. Pets, coins, avatars, and bling: these virtual objects are nothing more than a series of digital 1s and 0s stored on a remote database somewhere in the ether. What could possibly possess people to spend real, hard earned cash on ‘objects’ that have no tangible [...]