United Gamer Online (UGO)

by Mike Smith
Buzz up!

April 29 2:59 P.M.

We thought we were pretty hot at Bejeweled 2.

But we've got nothing on steel contractor Mike Leyde, of Riverside, CA., who managed to score so many points, he broke the game.

Leyde became the first person in the world to reach the game's maximum score of 2,147,482,575, after which the game simply can't process any more points. It took him over 2,000 hours of gameplay -- the equivalent of about three straight months of 24/7 play -- to amass the score, which the game's makers, Popcap, had thought impossible to reach.
"While developing Bejeweled 2, we debated endlessly whether it was even possible to best the 2.147 billion 'maximum' score," said Popcap co-founder John Vechey. "We deemed it impossible...and thus kept the cap at 2,147,482,575 knowing we were safe."

Safe, that is, until Leyde came along. His winning score saw him collect over 4.8 million gems and reach the game's 439th level, though his three-year commitment is apparently par for the course for the skilled gamer.

"If you're going to invest time in something, you might as well be as good at it as you possibly can," Leyde said. "I really enjoy the thrill of victory – like when I won my first stock car race or when I bowled a perfect 300 game."

Although Leyde actually completed his feat in March 2009, Popcap wanted to be sure it was genuine before crowning him King Bejeweled.

"We took some time in validating the score to make sure it was real," a rep told us -- and holding off on the record-breaking news let the achievement be part of Bejeweled's 10th anniversary celebration, which happens this month.

by Ben Silverman

While that may sound ludicrous to old-school Scouts, the new "Video Game" award is intended to make Tiger, Cub and Webelos Scouts more responsible gamers.

Rather than shooting their way to success, they'll have to accomplish a number of far more mundane tasks to earn the new belt loop and pin, such as explaining the importance of the video game ratings system, working with an adult to build a schedule that includes chores, homework and gaming, and playing a game designed to boost math, spelling or other school-oriented skills. Belt loops and pins are the cub scout/webelo equivalent of merit badges for boy scouts.

Of course, earning the game award involves playing games, too. Scouts will have to show their shopping savvy by comparing games at different retailers for the best prices, install a gaming rig, and -- toughest of all -- play a game with a friend for one hour. Is there a statute of limitations on getting Cub Scout pins? Because I earn this one pretty much every day.

To be fair, the requirements do seem to fall in line with the overall Boy Scout mission of being a responsible citizen. And with harsh language and intolerance plaguing online gaming, anything that helps instill good sense into young gamers is okay in my book. You can check out the full list of Video Game award requirements here.

So does gaming has a place in the Scouts, or should they pull the plug on this in favor of more traditional outdoor activities? Earn your 'Commenting' badge and sound off!

Published: Thursday, 29 Apr 2010 | 11:09 AM ET
By: Chris Morris
Special to CNBC.com

Bungie Studios, the development house behind one of the most successful franchises in video games, has found a new home—and Activision may be on the verge of having its third billion-dollar franchise.
Bungie and Activision Blizzard [ATVI 11.26 0.33 (+3.02%) ] on Thursday announced a 10-year exclusive partnership that will bring the next franchise from the creators of “Halo” to the company behind “Call of Duty” and “World of Warcraft.”

For the past 10 years, Bungie has made games exclusively for Microsoft [MSFT 31.003 0.093 (+0.3%) ].

“This partnership is great for Activision because it strengthens our long-term growth prospects,” says Thomas Tippl, chief operating officer of Activision Blizzard. “Our unprecedented partnership with Bungie will enable us to broaden our pipeline of exciting new games as we continue to strengthen our industry position and pursue long-term growth opportunities.”

Bungie was a Microsoft-owned studio until 2007, when it successfully negotiated a split from the company. The separation is widely viewed as one of the most amicable developer/publisher breakups in the industry’s history.

Activision, of course, is on the opposite side of that coin, with the acrimonious split from several key staffers at its Infinity Ward studio (creators of the “Call of Duty” franchise).

Both the former studio heads and a coalition of 38 other employees (both former and current) are suing the company for hundreds of millions of dollars in unpaid bonuses. And Jason West and Vince Zampella, who founded Infinity Ward, recently launched a new studio that will work exclusively with rival Electronic Arts [ERTS 19.80 0.17 (+0.87%) ].

The Bungie alliance is a sign to the video game world that despite the bad press, top developers are still eager to work with the publisher.

“We liken it to the equivalent of signing a 10-year deal with Stephen Spielberg,” said Ben Schachter, an analyst with Broadpoint AmTech. “More importantly for the stock, in our view, is that the announcement should put to rest any concerns about whether the well-publicized issues at Infinity Ward would limit Activision’s ability to attract key developers.”

The “Halo” games are largely responsible for the success of Microsoft’s entry in the console space, having generated more than $1.5 billion in revenue and sold more 25 million copies. Fans have played more than 2 billion hours of the series’ multiplayer component—the equivalent of more than 228,000 years.

Everything Bungie has done in the console world has been an Xbox exclusive so far. That will change with this next franchise, however. The agreement gives Activision the right to publish all of Bungie’s games in the new franchise on multiple platforms and devices—meaning it’s a virtual certainty the game will appear on Sony’s [SNE 35.34 0.64 (+1.84%) ] PlayStation 3 and quite likely on an Apple [AAPL 268.64 7.04 (+2.69%) ] device.

Bungie will retain the intellectual property rights to its game and remains an independent company. That gives it ultimate control over the look, feel and frequency of new titles in the franchise.

That same issue was part of the sticking point between Activision and the Infinity Ward founders. Activision owns the “Call of Duty” franchise and can dictate when new titles come out. (Bungie and Activision began negotiating their alliance nine months ago, long before the PR nightmare surrounding Infinity Ward began.)

While Bungie has not revealed any details about its next franchise, fans are already eager to see what it has in store. Analysts say they expect the first title to be released no later than the end of 2011. (Bungie will release its final “Halo” game this fall for Microsoft.)

While it won’t have the built-in fan base of “Halo,” Bungie’s new franchise will have a wider potential audience, since it will be multiplatform. That could help it equal or better “Halo’s” sales numbers, which could be particularly important if the fallout surrounding “Call of Duty” begins to impact sales of that franchise.

“It’s probably not worth as much as the ‘Call of Duty’ brand, but it could supplement any degradation of sales in that franchise,” says Michael Pachter of Wedbush Securities. “The Bungie guys are pretty good with 10 million unit selling games.

The question is: Can they do 15 or 20 million—‘Halo’-like numbers—with this next franchise? Maybe they won’t hit $1 billion with a single game, but with the franchise? Definitely.”

April 28, 2010 Dean Takahashi


Virtual worlds, those fully-formed, three-dimensional renderings of the real world, are waning as apps take off on social networks and mobile phones. But the mother of the virtual-world craze, Second Life, is bucking that trend and growing.

What’s more, Linden Lab’s Second Life virtual economy is adapting to the new business model of virtual goods. Last year, in the midst of the recession, Second Life’s virtual goods economy in user-to-user transactions was $567 million, up 65 percent from the year before. And in the first quarter, the growth continued, according to Mark Kingdon, chief executive. The world remains the largest user-generated virtual economy.

San Francisco-based Linden Lab is announcing today that March user-to-user transactions topped $57 million. For the quarter, user-to-user transactions were $160 million, up 30 percent from a year ago. The company’s monthly unique user number peaked in March at 826,000, up 13 percent from a year ago. This was at a time when virtual worlds such as There.com, Vivaty and Metaplace were closing down.

“It has been a vibrant market, and has become a full-time job for some people,” Kingdon said in an interview. “We set another record in March.
While user-to-user transactions make money for Second Life Residents, as members are called, they indirectly benefit Linden Lab, which makes money through sales of virtual land, premium subscriptions, and sales of Linden dollars, the virtual currency which Residents use to engage in transactions inside the world.

Kingdon believes that Second Life has continued to thrive because it nailed a particular kind of customer: the creative class. These are the artistic people who have fun creating avatars, or virtual characters, goods, and homes inside the virtual world. They put those goods up for sale, making the world more fun and the economy more vibrant.
On a trip to Paris, Kingdon met a Parisian boutique manager who designed her own fashions in Second Life. She quit her real world job to work on a Second Life business that had partner designers in Japan. Members are creating 250,000 virtual objects a day and are uploading them for sale in Second Life. That’s a long way from the giant beanstalk, which was the first virtual item created in Second Life, back during its beta test in 2003.

On top of targeting a creative class, Linden Lab has poured resources into attracting new users. It is doing a small amount of search engine ads and affiliate marketing deals, and it is also making improvements in its user interface. Back in December, the company started offering homes to new users. With a single click, a user could move into an incredible Japanese home or a cabin in Lake Tahoe.
It has also redone the experience that users have when they first log into the world. On March 31, the company launched a new viewer, which is used to view the world. It was designed to make 3D browsing feel more comfortable for new users and to make it easier to find places in Second Life.

Second Life has come a long way from its hype cycle a few years ago, when everyone in the media from Time magazine on down predicted a huge gold rush for virtual worlds, led by Second Life. Journalists opened up shop in Second Life, as did major corporations. Reuters opened up a virtual bureau and dedicated a full-time reporter, Eric Krangel, to the beat.

Knockoffs proliferated. At one point, there were more than 200 virtual worlds just for kids. Many have collapsed.

Inside Second Life, lots of companies left ghost towns. But about 1,400 businesses remain, and the online voice chat they engage in generates billions of minutes of usage. Companies such as IBM are staging virtual conferences inside Second Life.
“A fair amount of the press left,” Kingdon said. “The customers stayed.”

Even as Facebook grows past 400 million –dwarfing the numbers of Second Life — more than half of Linden Lab’s customers report that they are active on Facebook. Hence, Kingdon argues that Second Life is complimentary to other social media, which generates traffic for the virtual world.

Linden Lab has 350 employees, but they aren’t creating virtual goods for the company to sell. Linden Lab leaves that up to its Residents, while most of the company’s employees work as developers or in customer support. The developers are hard at work on ways to connect Second Life to the social Web more explicitly, so that content created in Second Life can flow into other places.
“Our strategy is to bring more of Second Life out to the Web,” Kingdon said. “The distinctions between Second Life and the Web will blur more and more.”

April 28, 2010






Today Linden Lab announced that Second Life's economy had grown to an all-time high in Q1 2010, defying recent trends toward decline in virtual worlds. Users spent $160 million in user-to-user transactions, a 30% gain year-over-year and a new all-time high. Over half a million Second Life residents were active in the world's virtual economy and over 800,000 unique users logged in repeatedly every month. Second Life continues to be the world's single largest virtual economy, despite the record-breaking sums spent in rival virtual world Planet Calypso.

In its report, Linden Lab attributed its economy growth to several different factors. Perhaps the most important was Valentine's Day, which is usually a major virtual goods-selling holiday. Linden Lab reports that this year's Valentine's Day saw the highest-ever single day sales of virtual goods on the Xstreet SL marketplace.

Xstreet SL sold $2.3 million in virtual goods throughout the quarter, up 82% year-over-year. Xstreet Valentine's Day 2010 sales were up 28% over the previous all-time high for single day sales, Christmas Eve 2009. Linden Lab noted that it made changes to the Xstreet marketplace that made it easier for users to access their L$ balances through the Web interfaces, which drove a 25% overall increase in purchases.

Linden Lab also attributes a major cultural factor to Second Life's growth in Q1 2010, the release of the James Cameron film Avatar. Linden Lab believes the popular film's themes may have sparked new interest in exploring virtual spaces, by making the concept of online avatars easier for mainstream audiences to understand. Avatar was screened widely in 3D, which Linden Lab believes may have driven desire to interact in an online space rendered in three dimensions. Linden cites, as evidence, increased traffic to Second Life's Web destinations and increased search traffic.

Coincidentally, Linden Lab had chosen Q1 2010 to begin an advertising campaign designed to attract new users. Advertisements for Second Life began appearing in Google searches, on Youtube.com, in display ads, and in affiliate website programs. Linden Lab reports that the amount spend on advertising was not significant, but probably acted as a key driver in the overall increase in number of repeated monthly repeat logins that occurred during the quarter.

New Features, New Growth

This quarter saw Linden Lab introduce a new feature, Linden Homes, that it believes increased the overall number of premium subscribers. In particular, Linden Lab states that many Residents reactivated lapsed subscriptions in order to gain access to a Home for their avatar. Linden Lab also believes that Homes helped drive Xstreet purchases during the quarter, with users purchasing furniture items and media players for use in their new virtual living spaces.

Other factors cited by Linden Lab include technology upgrades, like moving critical databases to new generations of server hardware and migrating the Second Life data center from San Francisco to Dallas. Linden Lab believes these moves increased uptime, decreased latency, and overall helped hold onto new and returning users through increased performance.

Linden Lab believes winter seasonal issues like fewer daylight hours may have driven more users into Second Life from northern hemisphere territories. A trend toward declining user hours spend in the virtual world reversed itself, with users spending a total of 116 million user hours in Second Life. While this number is still a 6% decline from Q1 2009, it is a 3% increase from Q4 2009. Linden Lab expects further growth in Q2 2010, driven by ongoing efforts to promote Second Life.

By Jessica Poitevien, Sun Sentinel

4:40 a.m. EDT, April 28, 2010
Ten weeks of intense competition among senior citizens across America has all come down to this: the Spring 2010 Senior Wii Bowling Championship.

The defending champs, SAS Strikers of St. Andrew's Estates in Boca Raton, will face off with The Wood Choppers of Lakeland on Wednesday.

"This time we're up against much stiffer competition," said Duane Webster, 88, a returning member of the SAS Strikers.

More than 800 bowlers from senior living communities in 23 states competed via Skype webcam in the second Nintendo Wii bowling championship hosted by the National Senior League.

This all-Florida showdown will be the culmination of what these senior citizens have been working toward for months. Members of the final two teams practice several times per week with some sessions lasting five hours.

"It's pretty wonderful to have competition at my age," Webster said

Sat, Nov 8, 2008
What’s the most downloaded catalog track in iTunes history? Before you jump out your seat and guess ‘Jack Johnson’, keep in mind that a catalog track refers to a song released in the pre-digital era, but later re-released as a digital download. So any guesses? Here’s a hint: think Power Ballads.

Well, it turns out that the most downloaded catalog track in iTunes history is actually “Don’t Stop Believin” by Journey. In fact, it’s the first catalog song to ever reach 2 Million in digital sales. Originally released in 1981, the song topped the Billboard charts at #8. The song, however, has made a modern day comeback and has become something of a pop culture phenomenon after being featured on popular TV shows such as Laguna Beach, and more famously on The Sopranos.

In fact, after the song was featured on the last episode of The Sopranos, sales of the song on iTunes increased by over 428% in just 3 days. SoundScan has the full scoop over here. And below, check out the final scene from The Sopranos.

Vol 4, No 6 (2010)

Special Issue--Thinking After Dark: Welcome to the World of Horror Video Games

April 26, 2010


Today Habbo parent Sulake released data from a survey of 5,300 of the virtual community's teen users regarding their interactions with brands. According to the survey, 72% of teens in Habbo are willing to declare a brand their friend in the virtual world. Sulake compares this to the findings of Razorfish's annual FEED survey, which found that only 40% of adults were willing to declare a brand their friend on the social network Facebook.

Sulake argues that this outcome reflects a fundamentally different attitude toward brands among teens, who use brand identifications to help build their personality. Teens don't differentiate the online and offline worlds the way adults do, so they're also likely to incorporate brand affiliations into their online persona. This can be through incorporating branded clothing into an avatar's digital outfit, or simply through participating in brand promotions in a virtual world or social network.

Comparing Habbo's survey to FEED Razorfish's also reveals that teens are more willing to participate in brand activities online. Only 70% of adults on social networks said they would participate in a brand activity on the social network, while 92% of Habbo's users said they would participate in a brand activity in the virtual world. In addition, 93% of Habbo's users were willing to keep displaying branded virtual items or badges after a given brand promotion had ended.

Roughly 80% to 85% of Habbo's revenue is generated through direct sales of virtual goods to users. The rest is accounted for by advertising deals. Habbo clearly sees a bigger advertising focus as a way to grow revenue, especially if they can get brands interested in using virtual spaces and goods to reach teen audiences. Given that brand advertising is booming on social networks now, it seems like Habbo should be able to get brands interesting in their virtual world, too.

From Audi digitally marketing their new electric car to a slew of virtual reality themed Hollywood blockbusters, focusing on virtual worlds as a potential revenue source is all the rage. But as companies have repeatedly shown by high-publicity failures, marketing in the virtual world is a tricky proposition.

Pixels and Policy looks at how to effectively market products to eager eyes in the Metaverse.

Pioneering the Virtual Marketplace

Few real-world corporations make lasting impressions on the Metaverse. The poster child of flawed real-to-virtual marketing is, of course, American Apparel. The clothing giant reportedly paid Aimee Weber handsomely to develop a Second Life presence that went belly-up a year after disappointing sales figures.

Today’s advertising landscape is decidedly more diverse than even a generation ago. A corporation hoping for any measurable amount of brand expansion must effectively advertise across four mediums: Television, radio, print, and the Internet. The Internet is a beast all its own.

The Internet multiplies the payoff of an advertising blitz, but its ever-shifting terrain also creates unique challenges. A viral campaign may become a phenomenon on YouTube, or it may peter out unnoticed. The latest release of Firefox blocks once-profitable banner ads by default.

Increasingly, advertising a brand is about getting that brand to new terrain first, whether by quirky campaigns or sheer brand-name inundation. This demand for new terrain, new eyes, and new tactics brought corporations to the virtual world.
Advertising in the Metaverse

A successful ad campaign in the virtual world can create a great deal of attention, and the Metaverse draws marketing departments for two main reasons: Inexpensive inputs and potentially massive positive gain. Let’s take a quick look at why marketing on the Metaverse is a deceptively inviting prospect.

Marketing in the virtual world is cheap. As we outlined a month ago in an article about political campaigning in Second Life, a well-managed outreach campaign can reach tens or hundreds of thousands of avatars with only several thousand dollars of input. Multiply the input by a hundred times, the American Apparel thinking goes, and the output will similarly explode.

This thinking is flawed. As the Virtual Economy Research Network has shown in its research, publicity in the virtual world is subject to harsh diminishing returns beyond the initial layout of development capital.

A virtual store with an ad campaign will get more visitors than a virtual store without, but a virtual store with an advertising campaign ten times the scale won’t see much difference.

Why is this? Avatars get burned out. By the end of American Apparel’s first month in Second Life, foot traffic at the virtual location dropped precipitously.

This is because American Apparel expected to draw constant traffic to a store that rarely changed its style, offerings, or incentives to visit. In the Metaverse, users are accustomed to an ever-changing experience. Companies that fail to grasp this will not perform well.
How Can Companies Improve?

Companies like Wells Fargo create virtual presences in the Metaverse, publicize them heavily, and then spend a similar sum announcing the novelty of their new presence in a virtual environment.

Print and television media may report on this story, but it’s going to draw relatively few new users through a sign-up process and the initial task of navigating a new virtual world, especially if they have no previous experience.

How can companies considering a virtual world marketing plan move forward without duplicating the failures of American Apparel and countless others? Here are two major tips to get ad executives thinking Metaversically:First and most importantly, Metaverse users should be treated not as an extension of a traditional marketing campaign, but as a demographic that is significantly different than the real-world population.

Users of virtual worlds, though human, willingly accept the new social norms of their virtual world of choice. These norms must be taken into account when developing an advertising plan.

Second, virtual worlds thrive on new content, and any space that is not constantly offering something new and interesting will quickly be replaced by a space with greater “fun potential.”

Virtual worlds users are active consumers – they want to do, especially in worlds that allow limitless content creation and manipulation. Avatars will not sit through a video, but they will play a game that makes the same point.

These are just general guidelines, but from my experience with virtual worlds and interviews with other players, they are largely accepted.

What this means is simple: Corporate marketing agencies can continue to pursue outmoded strategies designed for the real world to little or no effect, or they can evolve just as the Metaverse evolved. The choice is theirs.

By JESSE J. HOLLAND, Associated Press Writer Jesse J. Holland, Associated Press Writer – 26 mins ago

WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court agreed Monday to decide whether California can ban the sale or rental of violent video games to children.

The court will review a federal court's decision to throw out California's ban. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Sacramento said the law violated minors' rights under the First and Fourteenth amendments to the Constitution.

California's law would have prohibited the sale or rental of violent games to anyone under 18. It also would have created strict labeling requirements for video game manufacturers. Retailers who violated the act would have been fined up to $1,000 for each violation.

The law never took effect, and was challenged shortly after it was signed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. A U.S. District Court blocked it after the industry sued the state, citing constitutional concerns.

Opponents of the law note that video games already are labeled with a rating system that lets parents decide what games their children can purchase and play. They also argue that the video games are protected forms of expression under the First Amendment.

The high court's action Monday was surprising, given that justices just last week voted 8-1 to strike down a federal law that banned videos showing animal cruelty. The California case poses similar free speech concerns, although the state law is aimed at protecting children, raising an additional issue that affect the high court's consideration.

California lawmakers approved the law, in part, by relying on several studies suggesting that some video games can be linked to aggression, anti-social behavior and desensitization to violence in children. But federal judges have dismissed that research.

The supporters of the law say the same legal justifications for banning minors from accessing pornography can be applied to violent video games. They point to recent Federal Trade Commission studies suggesting that the video game industry's rating system was not effective in blocking minors from purchasing M-rated, or mature-rated games, designed for adults.

But courts in other states have struck down similar laws.

Interview by Adam Smith
Apr 21, 2010

Blue Mars / Jim Sink is the CEO of Avatar Reality, a locally–based gaming company. Its first game is Blue Mars, a 3D virtual world that will remind you of Second Life at first glance but aims to be the next generation of virtual worlds. Before working with Avatar Reality, Sink worked at Microsoft’s Xbox Live division and managed business development at Foundation9, the world’s largest producer of independent video games. Honolulu Weekly sat down with Sink to talk about some of his projects and the state of the high-tech industry in Hawaii. In short: things are not heading in the right direction.

How is Blue Mars different enough from Second Life to attract new players?

The development of Second Life has been stagnant for a while now. We’re making a massively scalable secure world that other software developers can build off of. No one else is doing this right now. Currently, you can only have 60 players in one area in Second Life… in Blue Mars, you can have thousands of players together, which is great for virtual conferences, music concerts or rallies.

How are you guys doing, how’s the company growing?

We currently have less than 100,000 registered players but we’re growing that base at 10 percent a month.

I downloaded and played Blue Mars before we met up. The game was beautiful but really slow on my PC.

The current version of the game is slow on older PCs. We’re adopting a new technology called the Cloud Fusion Server this summer though that will allow anyone to play Blue Mars online.

Wow, that will really open you up to a new audience.

That’s right, and allow us to put Blue Mars on Facebook so you can play with your friends in our 3D virtual reality world. Most of the growth in the gaming industry is in social gaming right now.

How has it been, running a high-tech company in Hawaii?

It’s a challenge. CNBC placed Hawaii 49 out of 50 in its Top States for Business 2009 rankings. We have the second highest cost of living in the country, fifth highest personal tax rate and a very challenging business climate. Our office space is expensive. Actually, everything about doing business here is massively expensive. I recruited an attorney from Seattle and she needed a 30 percent raise, just to remain even.

Do you hire locally or recruit from the contiguous United States?

We’ve hired several candidates directly from UH. There have been talented candidates from the journalism department and the MBA program. When it comes to software engineers, we recruit from the mainland.

So why did Avatar choose Hawaii as the home base to create Blue Mars?

The company’s founders, Kaz Hashimoto and Henk Rogers, both have roots in Hawaii and wanted to build the firm here. Also, when we launched in 2006, there were financial incentives provided by Act 221, [which] offered tax credits for anyone who invested in an approved high-tech project in Hawaii.

Act 221 was repealed last year. How has this affected your business?

Every time we speak with investors from the mainland, the first question they ask us is, “what are you doing in Hawaii?” for a lot of the reasons we’ve been talking about. In the past, we’ve been able to say that we’re here because of the excellent tax incentives the government offers high tech business. I can no longer say that. The money being spent on tax credits was drawing high paying jobs to the state. The average salary in the software industry is a lot higher than in other industries, and the money we make gets spent here.

There’s now a bill, Senate Bill 2401, working its way through the state Legislature that would defraud people out of the credits they’ve already invested in under Act 221 [Editor’s note: SB 2401 proposes to delay payment of tax incentives until 2013]. Not only is this probably Constitutionally illegal, it’s also really, really stupid.

Doing business in Hawaii is hard, and they’re making it harder. The tech community here is small and it makes it difficult to share best practices and cross-pollinate ideas. Then, Furlough Friday made Hawaii a laughing stock. Shutting down the SuperFerry really damaged investor confidence.

Then they killed the 221 program. If they pass this thing about the credits, it’s like they want us to leave. Firms are going to leave and they’re not going to come back.

Do you plan to move then if they pass this law?

No, we don’t have any plans to leave. But I’ll tell you, I got a call from the Austin Chamber of Commerce last week. They offer very attractive incentive packages for software companies, there’s a critical mass of software engineers, it’s an excellent place to live, they have a great university and the cost of living is way cheaper then here. My company doesn’t have a factory. We have desks and an Internet connection; we can work from anywhere. We want to work here, I’m willing to pay my employees more to work here, but I’m getting clear signals from the Legislature that they don’t want us.
Weigh in on the state of Hawaii high-tech at http://[facebook.com]

By Mike Bantick
Friday, 23 April 2010 09:41

Your IT - Entertainment
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Well (as a collective) plenty have, the World of Warcraft Celestial Steed hit the virtual fantasy universe created by Blizzard, and lots of Warcraftians were willing to jump in the saddle.
The Celestial Steed mount and Lil’XT Pet (!) went on sale over at Blizzard from the 16th of April (or 15th depending on where you live), and it seems that folks that fossick around in World of Warcraft are pretty sick and tired of their current modes of transport, and want to try the new.

At a price of US$25 the queue to download the Celestial Steed alone was 140,000 and seven hours long at launch. This is a nice windfall of US$3.5 million for the Blizzard massive multiplayer juggernaut.

Blizzard marketed the virtual pony well, describing the mystical mount as:

Freshly born from the Twisting Nether, the Celestial Steed flying mount lets you travel in style astride wings of pure elemental stardust. So saddle up, because this supernatural warhorse will fly as fast as your riding skill will take you, and it will travel at 310% speed if you have at least one other 310% mount. Once activated, this World of Warcraft in-game mount key applies to all present and future characters on a single North American World of Warcraft license.

Who wouldn’t want one of those? In response to worries from the WoW community that there would be no mounts left in the Celestial stables by the time there position in the queue was reached, a Blizzard spokesperson said: "The number of available mounts is limited in the sense that there [are] a fixed number of codes available in the store. These codes are not generated automatically with each purchase; instead they are generated separately and then added to the store in batches,"

"The Celestial Steed is not supposed to be a limited time offer only, so we will of course add more codes in case the current batch of codes gets sold out."

So you can hold-your-horses and take your time WoW fans, there will be plenty of star-nags for everybody.

Linden Lab's plans for Second Life are as visionary as ever -- "to enhance and improve the human condition." But the company is working to marry those dreams to more practical goals for the immediate future.

"I'll settle for a million active users by the end of the year," said Tom Hale, chief product officer for Linden Lab, which develops and operates Second Life. The service now has about 700,000 active users, who spend more than an hour per month logged in, up from 680,000 active users in February.

One million active users is a big goal, but it's more modest than the dreams of the Second Life boom a few years ago, when Linden Lab founder Philip Rosedale talked about Second Life becoming bigger than the Web in 10-15 years. For example, see this 2008 video of Rosedale at TED Talks.

What's the plan today? "Our mission is pretty clear, and it's pretty broad. It's to enhance and improve the human condition," Hale said. "I think that's a pretty noble mission. If you think about what the experience, and the product, and the platform actually enable, they enable people to communicate, express themselves, and connect in a rich, immersive, shared context. That's fundamentally what it's about."

He added: "People talk about Second Life as a place where you go and look at things, but I think it's actually more of a place where you go and communicate with people."

I interviewed Hale on my podcast, Copper Robot. Listen here:


DOWNLOAD

We talked about version 2.0 of the Second Life viewer, and the new orientation areas, which new Second Life users visit immediately after they register. I interviewed Tom on March 31, when Viewer 2.0 went out of beta and the new orientation experiences launched.

The new software and orientation experience are the culmination of nearly a year and a half working to improve the "first hour experience" for new users, and improve the rather dismal rate of people who continue in Second Life after first trying it. As part of that effort, Linden Lab worked on improving the service's stability, Hale said.

Now, the company plans to turn its attention to improving the experience for content creators, including support for mesh import, to allow people to use standard 3D authoring tools like Autodesk Maya or 3D Max, to create objects for Second Life.

Much of the discussion was taken up with complaints from Second Life users about Viewer 2.0's usability. Some said it was a giant step backwards from the previous Version 1.2. Hale said it was designed with new users in mind, making the client more simple and easy to use, and experienced users might very well be put off by some elements. Creative people complained loudest, saying the new viewer makes it more difficult to build 3D objects in Second Life, and publicize events. Hale said the viewer is a work-in-progress, with changes coming out on a quarterly basis, starting with Version 2.1 this summer.

PHILADELPHIA (CN) - Linden Research, creator of the massive multiplayer "Second Life" Internet game, induced thousands of players to invest as much as $100 million in real money in "virtual" properties, then took the properties back without just compensation, four former players say in a federal class action.
Plaintiffs Carl Evans, Donald Spencer, Valerie Spencer and Cindy Carter say that throughout the early 2000s the company and its founder, Phillip Rosedale, promoted the concept of property ownership and commerce in Second Life through press releases and media interviews.
Linden Research and Rosedale claimed they would protect rights to virtual property and that the virtual real estate could be used to earn money for its owners.
But the plaintiffs say they were duped into increasing the value of the company in anticipation of an initial public offering or sale of the Internet platform to another entity.
They seek declaratory and injunctive relief, compensatory and punitive damages on claims of fraud, conversion, intentional interference with contractual relations, unjust enrichment, wrongful expulsion, and violations of California's Consumer Legal Remedies Act, False Advertising Law and Unfair Competition Law.
Developed by Linden Lab and launched in June 2003, Second Life enabled its users, called residents, to interact with each other though avatars traversing a three-dimensional virtual world.
Entry into the realm of Second Life is free, requiring users to download Linden Lab's software. A premium membership allows for a fuller experience, including participation in Second Life's "market economy."
Unlike other virtual or role-playing type games, such as Blizzard's World of Warcraft and Sony's Everquest, which retained rights to anything occurring within the games, Linden represented Second Life as a platform in which participants could secure actual property rights for "land" purchased from Linden, and retain intellectual property rights for any virtual items or content the participants created.
"Desperate for a participant base to generate profits, Linden made a calculated business decision to depart from the industry standard of denying that participants had any virtual items, land and/or goods," the plaintiffs say.
Linden Labs announced the policy in a November 2003 press release titled "Second Life Residents to Own Digital Creations."
"Until now, any context created by users for persistent state worlds, such as Everquest or Star Wars Galaxies, has essentially become the property of the company developing and hosting the world," Rosedale said in the statement. "We believe our new policy recognizes the fact that persistent world users are making significant contributions to building these worlds and should be able to both own the content they create and share in the value that is created. The preservations of users' property rights are a necessary step toward the emergence of genuinely real online worlds."
A subsequent press release was titled, "Now Selling: Real estate on the Digital Frontier."
In an interview with the London Guardian in 2005, Rosedale said, "We started selling land free and clear, and we sold the title, and we made it extremely clear that we were not the owner of the virtual property."
The plaintiffs compare Second Life to Disney World, where "shops selling merchandise exist and a variety of transactions occur."
Unlike Disney World, however, Linden was also in the business of selling the land inside the theme park. "Thus, Linden no longer owns the very world they created, instead choosing to sell the world/land to consumers," the plaintiffs said.
Under the arrangement, participants could not only "buy" virtual parcels, they could resell it, subdivide it, even rent or lease it.
But the class claims that the business model - and Linden's relationship with the players - began to change markedly in 2006, after another player filed a consumer lawsuit.
During that case Rosedale, admitted that representations of ownership were "in fact, false and misleading," according to the complaint.
Shortly thereafter, the plaintiffs say, Linden Labs began removing such representations from its Web site and began to deceptively and quietly strip ownership rights from players.
At no time did Linden Labs make any attempt to compensate what the plaintiffs estimate were as many as 50,000 participants who bought virtual land based upon the earlier promises.
The class action, the plaintiffs say, will put corporate entities that own virtual worlds on notice that "where large amounts of real money flow, legal consequences must follow."
The plaintiffs are represented by Jason A. Archinaco of Pribanic, Pribanic & Archinaco in Pittsburgh.

"We've got to tell people about it," said Phil Eisler, general manager of Nvidia's 3-D Vision, which makes graphics cards with 3-D processing power. "Hollywood has done a fantastic job of educating consumers and marketing to them about the wonderful experience in the theater. We need to tell consumers about the wonderful experience that games are in 3-D."

For many modern games, the leap to 3-D is actually just a step. The medium is well suited for 3-D because the majority of today's games are created in three dimensions, making conversion a snap. Eisler said more than 400 current PC games, including "Battlefield: Bad Company 2" and "Resident Evil 5," can be played in 3-D with the right equipment.

"You're seeing it now," said "Avatar" producer Jon Landau. "People are going to want 3-D in their homes. I think 3-D is going to become ubiquitous in everything we do. From what I understand of the initial TV sales at Best Buy, everything went out the door. Why? Because it's of a certain quality, and I think that's what we have to make sure we protect."

The biggest hurdle for 3-D gaming is perhaps the simplest: Those glasses are just plain annoying. Michael Cai, a video game analyst at research firm Interpret, found in a recent survey of players who had experienced 3-D games that having to don shades was the overwhelming aversion to the medium. However, many had no qualms about 3-D gaming at all.

Sony and Nintendo have already unveiled their initial plans to enter the 3-D realm. Sony began updating PlayStation 3 consoles this week for future 3-D gaming features, which are expected this summer. Last month, Nintendo revealed a 3-D version of its top-selling handheld DS system — called 3DS — that wouldn't require 3-D glasses due out later this year.

"One of the big advantages of the gaming market is that it's extremely viral," said Neil Schneider, president of 3-D gaming advocacy group Meant to be Seen. "If there's a way to capture the interest of just a handful of these gamers, it's the consumers that could help drive this industry forward, perhaps more influential than a retail display at Best Buy."

___

On the Net:

http://www.3dgamingsummit.com/

Drew Brees has another prize to put next to his Super Bowl MVP trophy: He’s the cover model for this year’s edition of the “Madden NFL” video game.

EA Sports announced Thursday that the New Orleans Saints quarterback would be featured on the front of “Madden NFL 11,” the latest installment of the best-selling football franchise.

Brees, who led his team to a 31-17 victory over the Indianapolis Colts in this year’s Super Bowl, said landing the cover of “Madden” was “a great way to cap off an amazing year.”

The “Madden” gig is one of the most coveted honors in sports—even though it has been connected to a much-discussed curse. Such superstars as Donovan McNabb, Michael Vick and Shaun Alexander suffered serious injuries during the season each appeared on the cover.

Brees isn’t worried. “I believe in fate, and if it’s meant to be, it’s meant to be,” he said. “But destiny is stronger than any curse, and this team is destined for great things.”

Brees joined the Saints in 2006, less than a year after New Orleans was devastated by Hurricane Katrina. He has become a highly visible spokesman for the city’s reconstruction, while the resurgent Saints gave its beleaguered residents something to rally around.

Brees said he hopes the presence of the Saints’ fleur-de-lis logo on the “Madden” cover “keeps people focused on what happened to New Orleans, and what the people of this city have overcome.”

The Saints quarterback was chosen by fans who voted online to determine the game’s cover athlete. The other choices were Indianapolis Colts wide receiver Reggie Wayne and Minnesota Vikings defensive end Jared Allen.

“Madden NFL 11” will be released by EA Sports on Aug. 10.

By BRAD STONE

Published: April 22, 2010

SAN FRANCISCO — Mark Brooks wants the whole Web to know that he spent $41 on an iPad case at an Apple store, $24 eating at an Applebee’s, and $6,450 at a Florida plastic surgery clinic for nose work.

Too much information, you say? On the Internet, there seems to be no such thing. A wave of Web start-ups aims to help people indulge their urge to divulge — from sites like Blippy, which Mr. Brooks used to broadcast news of what he bought, to Foursquare, a mobile social network that allows people to announce their precise location to the world, to Skimble, an iPhone application that people use to reveal, say, how many push-ups they are doing and how long they spend in yoga class.

Not that long ago, many were leery of using their real names on the Web, let alone sharing potentially embarrassing personal details about their shopping and lifestyle habits. But these start-ups are exploiting a mood of online openness, despite possible hidden dangers.

“People are not necessarily thinking about how long this information will stick around, or how it could be used and exploited by marketers,” said Chris Conley, a technology and civil liberties fellow at the American Civil Liberties Union.

The spirit of sharing has already run into some roadblocks. Amazon.com was so wary of the security ramifications of Blippy’s idea of letting consumers post everything they bought that, for several months, it blocked the site from allowing people to publish their Amazon purchases.

In March, Blippy sidestepped Amazon by asking its customers for access to their Gmail accounts, and then took the purchase data from the receipts Amazon had e-mailed them. Blippy says thousands of its users have supplied the keys to their e-mail accounts; Amazon declined to comment.

There is no way to quantify the number of these start-ups, but they are the rage among venture capitalists. Although some doubt whether the sites will gain true mainstream popularity — and whether they will make any money — the entrepreneurs involved think they are on to something.

Blippy, which opened last fall, was the first site to introduce the notion of publishing credit card and other purchases. Last month it attracted around 125,000 visitors and closed an investment round of $11 million from venture capitalists. It hopes to one day make money by, among other things, taking a commission when people are inspired to imitate their friends’ purchases posted on the site.

The people behind Swipely, a site soon to arrive and similar to Blippy, are also optimistic.

“We will help people discover a great restaurant or movie through their friends and make it easy to recommend their own purchases,” said Angus Davis, 32, a veteran of Netscape and Microsoft who is testing Swipely with a limited group of users. “I really believe that the lens of your friends is fast becoming the most powerful way to discover things on the Internet.”

Mr. Brooks, a 38-year-old consultant for online dating Web sites, seems to be a perfect customer. He publishes his travel schedule on Dopplr. His DNA profile is available on 23andMe. And on Blippy, he makes public everything he spends with his Chase Mastercard, along with his spending at Netflix, iTunes and Amazon.com.

“It’s very important to me to push out my character and hopefully my good reputation as far as possible, and that means being open,” he said, dismissing any privacy concerns by adding, “I simply have nothing to hide.”

This new world owes its origin to the rampant sharing of photos, résumés and personal news bites on services like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, which have acclimated people to broadcasting even the most mundane aspects of their lives.

To Silicon Valley’s deep thinkers, this is all part of one big trend: People are becoming more relaxed about privacy, having come to recognize that publicizing little pieces of information about themselves can result in serendipitous conversations — and little jolts of ego gratification.

DailyBooth, founded in London but moving to San Francisco, asks users to publish a photograph of themselves every day. “It’s the richest and quickest way to share how you are doing and what you are feeling,” said Brian Pokorny, a Silicon Valley investor who recently became the company’s chief executive.

While the over-30 set might recoil from this type of activity, young people do not seem to mind. The site, which gets around 300,000 visitors a month, according to the online research company Compete.com, appears to be largely populated with enthusiastically exhibitionist teenagers.

Still, only two years ago, Facebook members rebelled when the site introduced its notorious Beacon service, which published members’ online transactions back to the site — essentially the same concept as Blippy and Swipely.

A decade ago, Dennis Crowley was trying to get people to share information about their geographic location with a service called Dodgeball. For years, he said, he faced a barrage of questions about why anyone would want an update on where someone was having a beer.

“After we sold the company to Google and they shut it down, we left those questions to Twitter, and they did a great job of answering them,” said Mr. Crowley, who went on to create Foursquare, which Silicon Valley venture capitalists are competing to finance. “This kind of sharing makes people feel connected to each other,” he said.

But there is the worry about identity theft.

“Ten years ago, people were afraid to buy stuff online. Now they’re sharing everything they buy,” said Barry Borsboom, a student at Leiden University in the Netherlands, who this year created an intentionally provocative site called Please Rob Me. The site collected and published Foursquare updates that indicated when people were out socializing — and therefore away from their homes.

“Times are changing, and most people might not know where the dangers lie,” Mr. Borsboom said.

The business plans for these start-ups are no sure thing, either.

“These companies are betting they take this data, monetize it or resell it,” said John Borthwick, an entrepreneur based in New York who advises companies like DailyBooth and Hot Potato, which lets people share plans and experiences of live events. “But the assumption that every scrap of data is actually useful to individuals, or even companies, will be tested.”

News Corp.--the newspaper, TV, and film company built by media mogul Rupert Murdoch--sees something in digital music it likes. News Corp. has acquired a small stake in music start-up Beyond Oblivion, which plans to enable consumer electronics makers to preload music on handhelds, computers, and other gadgets, according to multiple music sources.

Beyond Oblivion did not respond to interview requests. Allen & Co., the well-known boutique investment bank, was also part of the $10 million series B funding round.

With MySpace Music, News Corp., already has acquired a significant position in digital music. That site is run in partnership with the four major recording companies. MySpace Music has yet to take up a leadership position with the likes of Apple's iTunes or Amazon. Overall, the digital music sector with the exception of iTunes has failed to generate much excitement among the general public.

According to multiple sources, Beyond Oblivion still has to acquire music rights. Managers there have approached the major music labels about acquiring licenses for the United States.

Details are scant about what exactly Beyond Oblivion offers, but it sounds like this company wants to offer something similar to Nokia's Comes With Music, a service that loads music on handsets sold in European and Australia. Nokia offered free access to the songs only for a specific period.

NEW YORK – Facebook is spreading its wings to the broader Web with new tools that will allow users to see personalized versions of websites they visit elsewhere.

The move could change the way people experience the online world, though it could come with deeper privacy implications. By accessing Facebook's tools, websites will be able to customize the experience based on the list of friends, favorite bands and other things users have shared on their Facebook profiles.

"The Web is at a really important turning point now," Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said at a conference for Web and software developers in San Francisco. "Most things aren't social and they don't use your real identity. This is really starting to change."

It already has, with Facebook among its earliest pioneers. The world's largest online social network has long insisted, with varying success, that its users go by their real identities when they sign up for the service, offering a contrast to the culture of pseudonyms common elsewhere online.

And Facebook has sometimes transported those identities beyond its own service. Facebook Connect, announced last year, lets people use their Facebook log-ins to sign in to other websites, without needing a separate account.

The latest changes take this a step further. It means Facebook users will be able to see a Web tailored to them based on their interests and social connections, as long as they are already logged in to Facebook. So when visiting a news site for the first time, they could see which of their Facebook friends liked recent articles. A music site such as Pandora, meanwhile, could start playing music from the user's favorite bands.

Users will also be able to share items on their Facebook profiles without leaving the other websites, simply by clicking "like" buttons next to the news article or other items they are reading.

Zuckerberg told developers at the f8 conference that the experience will mean a more personalized, social, smarter Web.

"There is an old saying that says when you go to heaven, all of your friends are there and everything is just the way you want it to be," Zuckerberg said during his keynote, wearing sneakers and a dark sweat shirt. "So together let's make a world that's that good."

If it works and users embrace it, Facebook could gain valuable insights that could help it sell more advertising, potentially rivaling online ad leader Google Inc., which typically tailors ads based on keywords in search terms and Web content.

"If I were Google I would be really scared because Facebook might to end up with a lot more intelligence than them," said Alain Chuard, founder of social marketing firm Wildfire. "Google is just an algorithm, but Facebook could rule the Web."

But Facebook's plans could backfire if it doesn't make it clear what it's trying to do. Facebook needs to make it easy for individual users to choose not to have their outside activities posted on Facebook's website, said Greg Sterling, an Internet analyst who also writes for SearchEngineLand.com.

"How many people are really going to want all this information about them shared?" Sterling said. "That's the big unanswered question here."

___

Liedtke reported from San Francisco.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 has set the world record for the best launch day, in terms of U.S. dollars, in the history of the entertainment industry, Guinness World Records announced Wednesday.According to Guinness, Modern Warfare 2 grossed $401.6 million in a single day when it launched on November 10. The game easily shattered Grand Theft Auto IV's previous record of $310 million in revenue on its launch day back in 2008. Halo 3, which tallied $170 million on its first day of availability, is the third-highest-grossing entertainment product of all time.

Although the top three spots in Guinness' entertainment roundup are held by games, it's worth nothing that the calculations include movies, as well.

"Video game releases such as the Call of Duty series have outperformed the launches of major Hollywood blockbusters for several years and the day-one sales for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 proved once again that video games have become cultural events in their own right," Gaz Deaves, Guinness World Records Gamer's Edition Editor, said in a statement.

Although the news that Modern Warfare 2 is the top-grossing entertainment title of all time isn't all that surprising, it's important to remember that Guinness' figures are based on gross revenues. Since games launch at about $60 per unit, while movies are substantially cheaper, it's admittedly much easier for a game to take the top spot than a film.

But that shouldn't take away from what gaming has achieved in recent years. Growing out of its niche beginnings, gaming is now a mainstream industry which, at least in the eyes of gamers, is just as important to the wider entertainment sector as films and music.

By JESSICA MINTZ, AP Technology Writer Jessica Mintz, Ap Technology Writer – Tue Apr 20, 7:18 pm ET

SEATTLE – Blockbuster iPhone sales helped Apple Inc. blow past Wall Street's expectations with a 90 percent leap in net income for the most recent quarter. Shares of the company skyrocketed to an all-time high in extended trading Tuesday.

Apple said it sold a record 8.8 million of its popular iPhone smart phones in the three months that ended March 27, more than double the number sold a year ago. Revenue from the phones made up 40 percent of Apple's total revenue. The previous high was 8.7 million phones sold in the October-December quarter last year.

Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster was astounded by the iPhone results. He said such ongoing growth is unheard of for a successful three-year-old device.

"It's defying the law of gravity," Munster said. "Internationally, it's catching fire."

Peter Oppenheimer, Apple's chief financial officer, said in an interview that strong sales came from both existing and new mobile carriers. Although AT&T Inc. remains the exclusive U.S. carrier, Apple has been selling phones through multiple carriers in other countries.

After a brief trading halt, investors sent Apple's stock bounding up $13.71, or 5.6 percent, to $258.30 in after-hours trading Tuesday, surpassing its previous high of $251.14, which had been set Friday. Earlier Tuesday, the stock had shed $2.48 to close at $244.59.

Apple's net income and revenue were its highest ever in a non-holiday quarter, Oppenheimer said. Earnings rose to $3.1 billion, or $3.33 per share, from $1.6 billion, or $1.79 per share in the same period last year.

Revenue rose 49 percent to $13.5 billion from $9.1 billion in the year-ago quarter.

Analysts had expected Apple to earn $2.45 per share on $12 billion in revenue, according to a survey from Thomson Reuters.

The company said it sold 2.9 million Macs, a 33 percent increase. IPod unit sales edged down 1 percent — but Apple still sold 10.9 million of the digital players.

Apple didn't start selling the iPad, its new touch-screen tablet computer, until after the fiscal second quarter ended. During a conference call, analysts pressed for more details on Apple's decision to postpone by a month to late May the international launch of its new tablet computer.

Tim Cook, Apple's chief operating officer, said there are no production problems with the iPad. The international launch has been delayed only because of demand in the U.S., where Apple said it sold more than 500,000 iPads in its first week.

"It has shocked us, the level of demand, at least initially. We'll see what happens from here," Cook said.

Brisk iPad sales will drag down Apple's gross margin in the current quarter, which ends in June. Gross margin is the profit Apple makes on each dollar of revenue once the costs of making products are subtracted. In the second quarter, gross margin rose because a greater share of Apple's revenue came from its profitable iPhones.

New products such as the iPad are generally less profitable until companies can buy parts in higher volumes to drive down prices. Cook also said Apple was aggressive in setting low prices for the iPad.

Apple also said its margin would be lower in the current quarter because of a "future product transition." That's likely the next version of the iPhone, which analysts expect Apple to unveil in June.

On Monday, technology blog Gizmodo published details about what appears to be a new iPhone model. Apple claimed the device belonged to the company but did not say whether it was an actual prototype. Gizmodo had paid an unknown person $5,000 for the phone, which was found in a bar in the Silicon Valley. Apple has asked for the phone to be returned, and Gizmodo said Tuesday it would do so.

By Dan Whitcomb Dan Whitcomb – Tue Apr 20, 1:17 pm ET

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – A third of U.S. teenagers with cell phones send more than 100 texts a day as texting has exploded to become the most popular means of communication for young people, according to new research.

The study by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, which offers a glimpse into teen culture and communication, found that texting has risen dramatically even since 2008, eclipsing cell phone calls, instant messaging, social networks -- and talking face-to-face.

The Pew Research Center said that three-fourths of young people between the ages of 12 and 17 now own cell phones and of those that do, girls typically send or receive 80 text messages per day and boys, 30 per day.

"Texting is now the central hub of communication in the lives of teens today, and it has really skyrocketed in the last 18 months," Pew researcher Amanda Lenhart said, attributing the rise in part to payment plans that allow unlimited texting.

The study's authors also say that, unlike phone calls, text messaging can be quietly carried out under the noses of parents, teachers or other authority figures and, unlike computers, it can be done almost anywhere.

"We've kind of hit a tipping point where now teens expect other teens to respond to text messaging and to be available," Lenhart said. "There is definitely an element of text messaging that fits so seamlessly into their lives."

Text messaging has become so much a part of teenagers' lives that 87 percent of those who text said that they sleep with, or next to, their phone.

Study author Scott Campbell said focus groups conducted by Pew also offer insight into the subtleties of teen communication and culture, revealing for example that, while boys don't typically use punctuation, for girls such nuances are critical.

"If a girl puts a period at the end of a text message (to another girl) then it comes across as she's mad," Campbell said, which explains the prevalence of smiley emoticons.

"They have these practices because they've learned that texts can lead to misunderstandings," Lenhart said. "It's a deliberate thing and it's also part of a culture that's interested in differentiating itself from adult culture."

The percentage of teens with cell phones who sent at least one text message a day increased from 38 percent in 2008 to 54 percent in September 2009, according to the study.

Meanwhile 38 percent of teens said they daily make at least one cell phone call, 30 percent said they talk on a landline phone and 24 percent said they used instant messaging.