There is a neat post on Mashable about the virtual online world SmallWorlds:
“SmallWorlds is a new web-based virtual world offering that is looking to combine several aspects of current trends, with a great focus on social media. So you can use Flickr images as posters in your virtual bedroom, or watch YouTube clips on your 3D living room television.
Other applications, like Grafiti, that have become popular on networks like Facebook, are also present in SmallWorlds. Games, such as pool, can also be played within SmallWorlds, in a similar fashion as gameplay on a portal like Yahoo Games. ”
This feels like another step toward the kind of online worlds envisioned in books like SNOW CRASH and NEUROMANCER where all the elements of your online life are sythesized into an actual environment that moves away from “pages” and “links” and incorporates everything from your email to your videos to your calendar.
By allowing you to pull in existing sites, SmallWorlds doesn’t force you to rebuild your “life” from scratch as you sort of have to do in SecondLife.
Not sure this will be wildly popular since these worlds still feel slower than just accessing the net directly but there is clearly interest in finding “skins” to place over the feed so that it all becomes a bit more familiar and, well, homey.
The WSJ has a pretty neat look at the small (but growing) number of kids who have found ways to earn money in various MMO’s like Second Life and World of Warcraft:
“As the pool of traditional summer jobs shrinks, tech-savvy young gamers are honing their computer skills to capitalize on growing demand for virtual goods and services. Some work as fashion designers, architects and real-estate developers in Second Life, a fantasy world populated by digital representations of real people. These so-called avatars shop in malls, buy property, hang out with friends or sit “home” watching TV, all manipulated by their real-life counterparts with computer key strokes and a mouse.”
Although many in the adult world have seen little economic benefit to in-game businesses you might be surprised to learn that, “On a typical day, Second Life players spend close to $1.5 million on virtual clothes, jewelry, homes, cars and real estate.” That’s real (ok US$) money.
It’ll be interesting to see how fast the most successful kids in this realm are bought out or co-opted by the major corporations that have failed to make a dent in the same marketplace.
I’ve been posting a bunch the past week about kids and the many elaborate virtual worlds and MMOs that have sprung up to serve the under-12 market. These sites have so far catered to the 7+ market and really on the 10+ market from what I’ve seen.
Now comes word (via CNet) that it might never be too soon to get your kids into VR:
“Knowledge Adventure, the maker of kids’ educational game software JumpStart, plans Monday to begin selling virtual world software for 3- to 5-year-olds. The software, called JumpStart Advanced Preschool World, will encourage kids to learn their ABCs by playing games in a 3D version of the beach or a jungle, with heavy use of voice and images instead of text. And it will give young ones their first taste of creating and decorating an avatar.”
While this seems like an inevitable evolution I wonder what the effect of having kids that young playing in virtual worlds before they’ve figured out much about the real world.
I honestly don’t think most parents have a clue just how advanced and multi-faceted and complex and mind-boggling it is to ponder just what today’s “tweens” (i hate that term…) are getting into online – and it has nothing to do with pedophiles and creeps.
This article in the NYT is a must read but I am going to pull a few key chunks below. It follows a mother’s step through the lookingglass and into the world of alternate realities her 10-year-old daughter inhabits. Prior to diving in the mother already admitted:
“Already, when Clementine plays online Scrabble, she tells her opponents she is a French single mother of twins (Jacques and Pierre) and has recently moved stateside to improve her English. And at Zwinky.com, another of her haunts, she pretends to be a college student in a dorm.”
Let’s try to overlook the fact that she named her kid Clementine and accept that her kid is on the edge of precocious. Instead, look what happens when they get online together:
” But before I had finished the thought, Clementine had figured out how to take us to a planet called Funkitron. Then, as terrible pop music began blaring, she coolly scrolled through the selections of an onscreen jukebox (where did that come from? I still don’t know) to change the tune.
“Now what are you doing?” I asked, as she clicked on a little box.
“I’m buying hair,” she said, adding with a frown that they don’t have much choice.
Next she clicked quickly and intuitively through all the features on the menu bar before concluding: “This site is made for kids, not teenagers. See how you see your person onscreen as a little kid?” In other words, it was w-a-a-a-y too uncool to be aspirational for 10-year-olds who read Seventeen magazine (but who won’t read it in seven years). ”
If you have a kid and you haven’t asked them for a tour of their life online then you are missing out on a big part of your own kid’s life.
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May 22, 2008 5:19 pm | 
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