Virtual Player in Virtual World Becomes Online Millionaire

When you sign up at Second Life, a virtual world, you get assigned a character with $250 in virtual pocket money--each Linden dollar is worth about four-tenths of a real-world penny. To pump up your account, you could buy more Linden dollars using your real ones. You could sell products or services for Linden dollars. Recently, a Second Life user claimed to have become a millionaire based on her Second Life exploits.

Where Should Public Relations Go from Here?

The ICCO (International Communications Consultancy Organisation) World Summit is taking place this week in India. This conference is bringing together senior public relations people from around the world to discuss "next practices." One of the highlights from Paul Holmes (Holmes Report):

PR people should be used to dialogue, for reaching out to multiple stakeholders, to using a wide array of channels rather than a single communications vehicle -- all the characteristics of this new environment. In all, it's a great chance for PR to redefine itself as much more strategic in redefining the art of conversation as a marketing and communications vehicle.

Blogger Ruins Research in Motion New Product Introduction Surprise

If current customers or potential customers have knowledge of an amazing product coming out in 6 months, why would they bother buying the current one? This blogger is potentially squashing demand for their current offerings. Read about it here.

Is municipal Wi-Fi the right approach?

Looks like Boston is the latest North American city to jump on to the municipal Wi-Fi bandwagon. Boston will turn to a nonprofit corporation to blanket the city with 'open access' wireless Internet connections, under a plan unveiled last week. Click here to read Mark Evans' blog posting.

P2P keeps getting interesting...

The company behind Morpheus (the music/video downloading service), StreamCast has filed a lawsuit against Skype (recently bought by ebay). Read more about it here.

At the core of the complaint is the FastTrack P2P technology, which went from Kazaa to Sharman and eventually ended up in Skype. StreamCast claims that it had the first dibs on this technology, which they say is part of Skype. The whole suit begs the question of, how much, and how carefully, did EBay do their due diligence before their 2-4 billion dollar purchase?

Like Father, Like Sun?

Have Scott McNealy and Sun Microsystems been copying ads and pitches from his father's former company, American Motors Corp(AMC). In 1974, amid the decade's oil troubles, AMC promoted its Gremlin as the car to buy to "relieve the fuel shortage." And this year, with oil costing more than $60 per barrel, Sun has chosen to spotlight the energy efficiency of its T1 servers. "Sip energy, gulp data," one ad reads, while another pictures a server chained to a tree slated for harvesting. Read more here.

Sun's McNealy Recalls Expensive Dinner at McDonald's

Interesting piece on CnetNews.com on how Sun Microsystems CEO Scott McNealy had to be wined and dined at a Silicon Valley McDonald's before he gave up his reluctance to help launch the workstation maker in 1982. He and the other Sun co-founders, Vinod Khosla, Andy Bechtolsheim and Bill Joy held a panel discussion at the Computer History Museum this week.