Every day, people spend more than $2m on goods and services in the three-dimensional online fantasy world called Second Life. Land, houses, tables and chairs, clothes, entertainment - pretty much anything that people can buy in real life is for sale in Second Life. It is one of the most popular of the growing number of "virtual worlds" inhabited by avatars, electronic characters that can resemble human beings or anything else, from weird aliens to animals.

It is not just individuals that inhabit these worlds: companies from IBM to Reuters have set up offices, hold meetings or advertise on Second Life. People do things in these virtual worlds that, in real life, could result in imprisonment. Paying a child for sex, for example.

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http://www.ftd.de/karriere_management

BRITISH police will post pictures of missing British girl Madeleine McCann in the Second Life virtual world.

Investigators are in talks with Second Life to prominently display pictures of the missing four-year-old, said Jim Gamble of the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP). 

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http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,21892235-5005961,00.html

By Miguel Lopez

A consortium of academic institutions has created a detailed virtual model of Rome, circa 320 A.D. Named Rome Reborn 1.0, the model is collaboration between UCLA's CVRLab and Experiential Technology Center, the Reverse Engineering Lab at the Politecnico de Milano, and the University of Virginia's Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities.

http://blog.wired.com/games

Changing consumer trends and the new generation of young "digital natives" are forcing drinks giant Diageo to exploit new digital marketing channels such as the virtual world Second Life.

Robin Dargue, Diageo's CIO and business process director - recently voted one of the UK's top 50 CIOs - said the company now has a presence in Second Life to market the company's brands, which include Baileys, Guinness, Johnnie Walker and Smirnoff.

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