Pixels and Policy

The Growth of Cybercrime and Cybercrime Prevention in Virtual Worlds

Virtual worlds are no longer the backwater playgrounds of a few computer-adept programmers. They are multi-billion dollar worldwide industries spanning the fields of entertainment, communications, information technology, and increasingly law enforcement. In short, there's money to be made, and with an expansive, loosely-regulated product like virtual worlds comes the potential for cybercrime.

I wrote several months ago about how law enforcement agencies are increasingly turning to virtual world account information to provide breaks in real-world legal cases, but what about crimes committed entirely within a virtual sphere?

Several news outlets from around the world are increasingly looking at what is required to secure a profitable industry from brazen exploitation by scammers, money launderers, and cyberpirates. Regulators are calling for cybercrime task forces within physical police departments. The frontier of virtual worlds seems poised to get some new lawmen.

Does Augmented Reality Have Broad Market Potential?

Every once in a while I get a really interesting letter about the potential "game changing" business applications of the super-hyped augmented reality "industry." I'm deeply skeptical about AR's ability to change anything until comprehensive standards are developed to define exactly what constitutes an "AR product," but the article I received deserves closer review.

Today's interesting article comes straight from the tech blog Vision Mobile. In the article, Andreas Constantinou, one of a new crop of reporters looking at augmented reality, discusses the unique economies created by augmented reality and virtual worlds with an eye towards the future.

But is Constantinou overly optimistic about the transformative power of augmented reality?

From the Vision Mobile article:

What's interesting is when entire new economies emerge, new systems for creating value and monetising from that value. I would argue that in the last few years we have been witnessing the creation of Augmented Economics, the economy formed by superimposing value on top of our physical world. But let me take a step back to explain.

Let's take a look at the market potential of augmented reality services, both tethered to the webcam and desktop computer model of today as well as some new innovators hoping to bring augmented technology to new and interesting areas of traditionally old-technology business.

How Evolving Laws and Workplace Needs are Bringing Companies into Harmony with the Virtual World

The sputtering global economy could have a silver lining - companies looking to cut travel costs are turning to the virtual world for more business services than ever. As a reader recently pointed out, this means more than traveling to a meeting in the virtual world instead of trekking across the country. It also means that important training and workforce development projects are finding happy homes in the Metaverse.

As CNN reports, companies are increasingly turning to telecommuting and virtual conferencing in graphical virtual worlds as a means of shaving costs and remaining competitive in an economy where credit is still tight and government life preservers are harder to come by. Let's take a look at just how serious this trend is.

A Closer Look at Public Schools and the Rise of Virtual Learning Technology

In light of the great job done by public university entrants in the Army Federal Virtual Worlds Challenge, it's time to take a fresh look at just how universities around the world are adding virtual world literacy to their core curriculum. I've made it a point to report on individual schools and organizations with innovative new approaches to digital education and virtual world understanding, but there is relatively little out there about the overall effect of virtual education initiatives on education as a whole.

By creating novel ways of looking at old disciplines or by facilitating low-cost, long-distance education in virtual environments, classrooms with major virtual world components are slowly turning  calcified education system into a highly flexible, modern machine.

I've talked in the past about how schools that adopt virtual worlds as major parts of the learning process can - and have - upended established elite universities. Now let's take a look some new academic research that argues interactive virtual world education will pay dividends to students as well as institutions.

Turning Words into Pictures: A Pixels and Policy Proposal

Virtual communication allows for all sorts of fun and interesting innovations on the traditional written word. Here's one of my favorites. This is a word cloud that contains the most-used words in Pixels and Policy's recent article, "A Commentary on the Ethical Dilemmas of All-Virtual Workplaces."

Click the thumbnail for a full-sized image.

Not surprisingly, virtual was the most-used word, but honesty and communication also pop up frequently. I'm considering including these word clouds at the top of every article to give readers in a hurry the quick gist of a piece. 

Data and content visualization is an emerging hobby of mine, and I think it makes for a much more interesting reading experience - in addition to providing something that both looks good and offers a bit of content consolidation.

What do you think?