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HP's decision to open source its webOS mobile operating system may have met with some early cheers from observers glad to see the company's indecision come to an end, but much of that relief has been increasingly tempered by sentiments of a darker kind. "WebOS is doomed to fail" read one headline.

There's no doubt some companies have succeeded in using virtual worlds for branding and interaction with their customers, whether through in-world stores, billboards or other means. Wells Fargo, for instance, has been operating its Stagecoach Island aimed at young customers for roughly four years an...

It wasn't long after the launch of Linden Lab's Second Life back in 2003 that companies and organizations around the globe began to sit up and take notice. The prospect of millions of potential customers -- all flocking to the same destination and congregating there -- is enough to whet the appetite...

Universities and government agencies, even a few private corporations, are going all "mad scientist" on us in the realm of virtual worlds. But why are they experimenting there and why are so many drawn to virtual worlds like a dying man to a priest? "As a new part of the real world, virtual worlds a...

Universities and government agencies are conducting all kinds of research, both scientific and sociological, in virtual worlds -- but is this merely a newfangled boondoggle or is the research really real? "My general perspective is that virtual worlds are at least as real as many parts of the so-cal...

About eight months ago, the owners of a sporting goods company contacted their attorney, Doug Wolf, a partner at Wolf Greenfield. It seemed a company was using the firm's logo and trademark without proper authorization. Setting the matter right should have been a straightforward task for Wolf -- exc...

Copyrights are perhaps the most common type of intellectual property (along with trademarks), and are the first stop when it comes to protecting software-based products. This is because copyrights, which protect a particular expression of an idea, exist automatically upon fixation of an author's wo...

A patent represents a grant from the United States government to an individual for the exclusive right to make, use, import, sell, and offer to sell an invention. In order to obtain a patent, an inventor must prove that the invention is new, useful, and not merely an obvious improvement over what wa...

For developers who have fallen in love with .Net/C#, but aren't married to running their applications on Windows, the Mono Project aims to let Microsoft .Net-based apps run on Linux and Mac OS X, among several other platforms. Sponsored by Novell, the Mono Project has released Mono 2.0 of its cross-...

Social media may be hailed as the savior of sagging sales these days, but few have figured out what social media are, much less how to wield them. Even fewer realize that games are the first, and arguably the most viable and sustainable, social medium in the mix. Unlike newcomers MySpace, Facebook, ...

Law and order is one of the cornerstones of a civilized society. Establishing rules of conduct, spelling out acceptable and objectionable behavior, defining the consequences for anyone who violates those laws and deciding who will enforce them are all essential to maintaining peace and harmony. In t...

If you already thought it was a Google world and we're all just living in it -- well, now you can with the introduction of Lively, Google's free 3-D virtual world application that brings game-like qualities to the concept of Internet chat. "The Lively team wants to help people experience another dim...

Virtual worlds, despite all the press attention of late, are still in the early stages of development. Virtual worlds came into existence several years before YouTube, MySpace and Facebook, but their adoption rates pale in comparison to these services. Only 7 percent of Internet gamers ages 13 and o...

Now that NASA has entered the virtual world with its two islands in Second Life, public outreach, collaboration and space exploration may never be the same again. On its CoLab Island, outreach and collaboration are the focus, as Part One of this two-part feature explains. Its other island, called "E...

For those of us old enough to remember life before the Internet, the term "virtual space travel" probably conjures memories of childhood visits to the local planetarium. Fast forward to today, and things are just a little different. In today's Internet-enabled world, ordinary citizens can explore th...

Second Life is no place for kids, a Republican congressman declared Monday. U.S. Representative Mark Kirk has sent a letter to the Federal Trade Commission requesting a consumer alert warning about the dangers of Second Life, which he charges could expose kids to child predators and registered sex o...

No less true today than it has been since the notion of private property became one of the main pillars of Western society, investing in real estate is one of the most popular means of amassing wealth. Now, a new breed of "virtual" real estate investors and developers is emerging. Massively multipla...

Sony Computer Entertainment pushed back its open beta test for the launch of Playstation's Home, a 3-D virtual world, from the summer to the fall, marking the second time the company has delayed the launch of the product. Unlike traditional games, Home is a sandbox world designed to allow players th...

IBM is putting its heft behind a project that could morph into new way of doing business in Second Life, Linden Lab's virtual 3-D community. The two have partnered to build a protected enclave in Second Life where the company can conduct serious business without fear of marauders. While there are mo...

Virtual worlds such as Second Life are making an impact on how companies conduct employee recruiting and workforce management activities. According to an ever-growing group of experts and companies in the employment business, that impact has the potential to be profound and far-reaching. Not everyon...