Much like the early incarnations of the web itself, there are a few tried and tested ways of making money in Second Life: porn is one, of course, and another is financial confidence trickery. The jury is still out over whether Ginko Financial – a Second Life banking scheme that offered 60% (yes, sixty) interest on deposits – fits the latter category; what is certain is that, after a sudden rush of withdrawal requests, Ginko don’t have the liquid assets to give the money back … and they’re none too forthcoming about what exactly they’ve done with it all, either. Common consensus seems to label the whole thing as one huge ponzi scheme, but only time will tell … probably very little time, in fact.
There are other ways of making money in the metaverse, though, with new ones appearing or rising to prominence all the time. Maybe virtual property is a smart business investment for the near future. [Image by Tanya Ryno]
Another new tool appears in the arsenal of marketers for their eternal crusade to make us buy overpriced crap we don’t need – the FogScreen projects imagery onto a vertical sheet of engineered water mist, effectively creating a billboard that can be walked through without physical harm. As someone who subscribes to the Bill Hicks philosophy on marketing [YouTube, very NSFW], I’m not looking forward to having to step through one of those for every few yards of street I walk down.
Talking of advertising, BoingBoing draws our attention to the exploits of Cayetano Ferrer, who produces billboards decorated with pictures of the things that the billboard hides with its bulk. Maybe he also shares the Hicks philosophy, and this is some way of deconstructing the advertising paradigm. Then again, he’s an artist – so he’s probably just trying to sell himself. Quelle paradox!
First the good news – scientists may have cracked a way of making objects levitate. Now the bad news – this jiggery-pokery with something called the Casimir force only works at the nanoscale so far. [OhGizmo!]
Which means it’s no use for making commercial flying machines, of course, which is a shame. But new environmental pressures are bringing new ideas and designs to the aviation table – I’d really like to see this ‘flying saucer’ aircraft concept make it into the commercial arena. [BeyondTheBeyond]
Transient Lunar Phenomena (aka TLP) are bursts of light on the lunar surface whose origins have been a mystery for nearly four centuries since their discovery. But now an astronomer reckons he has the answer – these optical flashes could be the result of gas eruptions on the Moon. [SlashDot]
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