News I’m Following (Virtual World edition)

Whyville Has an Older Sibling: Numedeon, the company behind the kids virtual world Whyville, has launched its first world aimed at grownups. Called SportsBlox, it caters to, as the name would suggest, sports fans of all flavors (and nationalities) who want to talk sports with other avatars. Numedeon has several new virtual worlds in the works, according to News.com, including one for older adults.

An Intelligent Virtual World? From Forbes comes word that the US government is funding a VW application “to let uncommunicative U.S. intelligence agencies interact with each other more efficiently and with more trust.” Yes, according to the report, agents and counter-terrorism officials may eventually use the technology to sit in a virtual meeting room and “have personal interactions in cyberspace.” The companies behind the application are IBM and Forterra Systems, a California startup. There’s even a way for secret agents to identify themselves using the same authentication they use to log on to their own computer networks. Weird that it would take a virtual world to get intelligence agencies to actually start talking to each other.