Another virtual world – Entropia Universe

I have just discovered another virtual world called Entropia Universe. I wondered if any readers of my blog go here? It looks amazing! There is a conference here in Stockholm on 14 June concerning how companies can make money in the virtual worlds. Could be interesting to go….

“The Entropia Universe is a massive online virtual universe. Set in a distant Sci-Fi future where man has developed amazing mind powers, participants assume the roles of colonists who must develop the untamed planet of Calypso. Adventure across continents from snow covered mountain tops to ancient underground caverns. Discover an outback populated with fierce and dangerous creatures, the wilderness on Calypso is also rich in minerals and ore, all of which can be lucrative sources of income for would-be colonists.

The Real Cash Economy means that the Entropia Universe currency, the PED, has a fixed exchange rate with the US dollar, where 10 PED = 1US$. “

Swedish ECPAT in SecondLife

Apologies for this article in Swedish. Bascially what it is talking about is that the Swedish Embassy is hoping to be the first with a virtual embassy in SecondLife, and and Swedish newspaper “Sydsvenskan” is already there. However the focus of this article is concerning the attraction that SecondLife has for paedophiles (see the article I posted last week) and ECPAT -that are an organisation that fight against the sexual exploitation of children- in response to this is looking to setup base there.

The Nigerian Spammer turned Butterfly Guy!

Take a look at this for some fun reading. Seems there’s a community that actually responds to those funny emails we receive asking for a business venture in transferring money from Nigeria or somewhere else. When the recipient of the spam responded, seems that she took these spammers for a ride too 🙂

Seems a bit far-fetched that a spammer is actually so stupid as to fall for this scam as a result of his scam, but according to this epilogue, seems that several have!

ratemyteacher.co.uk available for pupils to rate their teachers online

Sites such as ratemyteacher.co.uk and bebo give pupils the chance to anonymously praise or castigate their teachers from their own homes. Teachers are clearly disturbed by this development. I don’t know what to think, clearly this is something that happened before anyhow by ‘word-of-mouth’, now to have it digitally preserved could be quite damaging to a teacher’s career, and maybe not all allegations made by pupils are fair? I am not sure that I would like to be a teacher today.

Changing Generational Notions of Privacy

Take a look at this article and related discussions in Bruce’s blog. I wasn’t surprised by this. I see big money-making opportunities in the future for those businesses that ‘clean’ information residue (linked to identities) as some of the younger generation become adults and realise that recruitment agencies are ‘googling’ them before they are considered for the most sought after jobs.