Data Protection Experts: Google Analytics Violates User Rights - well, this assessment was somewhat predictable. I'm curious to see what else will come up in the near future. Will Google give in? I doubt it. And even if they do - how credible would an (unverifiable!) assurance from Google be?
First Avatar Teleport from Second Life to OpenSim - sounds bombastic, but considering that only login credentials and no assets were transferred, it is not much more exciting than other distributed login systems such as OpenID. And about as exciting and impressive as exchanging an unprinted business card with a stranger.
Lively - well, everyone is certainly reporting on Lively, Google's web-integrated virtual world. I complain, of course - because there is currently only a version for Windows. Too bad. Hopefully there will be a Mac version to download at some point, I at least want to take a look.
Second Life counters Google's Lively - "That was quick. Only one day after the launch of Google's «Lively», Linden Lab surprises with a novelty from the recently struggling «Second Life»: Avatars should now be able to leave the closed world." - when you look at the quality journalism that the Netzzeitung delivers, you can only shout "yes, please!" at the news of the impending closure of the Netzzeitung. "Struggling" with the numbers that Linden Lab recently provided for their network (e.g., the millions in revenue in Second Life, the online hours, the growing virtual building area - which is also paid for by people, not just set up) is really not what comes to mind spontaneously. It's quite amusing how the press only understands either hype or anti-hype. There's a lot of room between hype and anti-hype for simply functioning. This doesn't mean that SL doesn't have problems - there are plenty. But "struggling" is certainly not one of them. Lively is now being hyped - but it's just a buggy beta from Google Labs, and not a competitor to SL, but rather, due to its structure, much more of a competitor to IMVU or Twinity or Whirled. Competitors to SL should probably be seen more in something like Multiverse or Vastpark, but they are not from Google. But to address all of this, the journalist would have had to be knowledgeable. (And that teleporting in SL was rather boring - also technically boring - I already wrote a link about that before)
VMware replaces CEO - and why didn't they just virtualize their CEO?