Last night, nextNY hosted a Dodgeball tournament down in the West Village/Soho area. There were roughly 40 people who came out separated amongst 6 teams. As the tournament was for nextNY members, we had the general mix of content, media, technology, venture capital and services companies represented.

I captained Team IGA and with the help of Andrew Gottlieb (Conducive Corp), Seth Bestmertnik (Link Experts), Christina Vidaic (IGA Worldwide), Brian Kelly +1 (IGA Worldwide), Brooke Wagner (Partnership for Drug Free America), Marc Lefton (Half Fiction), we beat Union Square Ventures in the finals.

We had a wonderful time playing with everyone and want to send a special thanks to Charlie who organized the event. Fantastic job to all the players and I look forward to the next event!

It’s not a game. Don’t get caught saying it. Second Life is a virtual world that could have games within, but as a whole, it’s a virtual world. This persistent world is an extension of reality - not another world. I believe that it should not be looked at as another universe or an alternative world… it should be looked at as an extension of Earth.

The issue with Second Life is that the hardcore users are the dominant residents as they are the early adopters. For Second Life to really take off, they need a tipping point to occur where the mainstream folks enter and exist in the world. This tipping point is where mainstream folks will understand and appreciate what this virtual habitat is- not just some sci-fi uber-geek world. This is bound to happen and there are a few ways that it can (with time on its side)…

As Jeremiah Owyang so rightly put it, there are significant business opportunities within that will lure casual users within:

- Clothing creation and sales
- Event promotion and collaboration
- Create an attraction
- Create places of business such as music stores
- Virtual real-estate
- Many, many more…

Lots of great opportunities within Second Life and other Virtual Worlds and it’s certainly a place where major attention will be given over the course of the next few years.Â

I came across PeerMindâ„¢ this afternoon as I was doing some research as to which games are currently being pirated across the world. PeerMind is a service by Nareos that shows detailed reports, online chart data and provides custom research based on 24/7 monitoring of major peer-to-peer networks.

The research that they are currently showing on their website provides information for music, movies, games, software and ringtones. They currently are monitoring eDonkey2000 and Gnutella with Bittorrent and FastTrack coming online soon.

For example, this week, The Sims 2 has been downloaded 208,522 times compared to 395,975 last week. That’s quite a bit of downloading…. Illegally.  I am also excited to see the music charts. This allows me to see which bands are being downloaded all over the world (though, I’d imagine they’ve got this broken down by geographic regions somewhere) and will allow me to play virtual A&R and find new talent.

Tags: peermind, market research

Yesterday, IGA Worldwide Inc announced that they have signed Simbin, the world leading game developer to a multiyear in-game advertising agreement.

Games to be added to the Radial (R) Network as part of the deal:  GTR (based on FIA GT) and a new series based on the World Touring Car Championships

Why this deal is important:  contextual in-game advertising.  Automotive games lend themselves fantastically to in-game advertising.  Most automotive games are realistic and they already have brands within generally (autos, etc).  With signing these games from Simbin, IGA Worldwide instantly brings in world class games and also, is able to deliver advertisers premium content and substantial reach.

Who dares to compete against me on Xbox Live or Playstation? Bring it. Now that the Underground Exchange (http://www.ugx1.com) is up and running, it’ll allow two people (or a team) to play for cash.

This business model is exactly the same as one of my previous company ideas, BattlePay, which allows emcees (MCs) to battle against one another (think 8 Mile) and the winner takes the purse.

I’d be interested to see how the Underground Exchange does… The legality, etc. If spectators could gamble on the games, it could open up a whole new frontier of gaming.

Tags: gaming, gambling, video games, xbox, playstation

Just look around grade schools, college campuses, and the park… the majority of under 27 year olds are consuming media in some format or another.  Some people are playing their PSP, text messaging on their RAZR, listening to their nano, or checking their RSS feeds… but nevertheless, their paying attention to your brand and your message.

Today in Advertising Age’s MediaWorks column, Abbey Klaassen talks about how the opening message from the National Cable & Telecommunications Association show was about the under-30 crowd.

"We’ve been looking at a group called millennials, which are people ages 8 to 27," said Anne Sweeney, president of Disney Television Group. "In this group 40% go home at night after work and school and use between five and eight different technologies. Then you have 40% of baby boomers who go home at night and watch TV. That’s what’s directing so many of our efforts in technology and content, especially as we look at our brands going forward and how they’re going to be used going forward."

Article: http://adage.com/mediaworks/article?article_id=108570

Most of my friends know that I’m an avid Mac fan but I’m equally comfortable using an Windows based PC.  The announcement of Apple utilizing Intel processors resonated greatly with me because I can now start to use Macs within the office environment as they will become much more compatible with our current setup.

I haven’t really looked too much at the benchmarks to date about the Intel based Macs but this post on Macologist really sums it all up:  http://www.macologist.org/showthread.php?t=2602

One of the least fun parts of business is actually sending out invoices and chasing them. Lots of times, consultants and early stage companies don’t have the capabilities (both human and software) to prepare professional style invoices.

Enter Blinksale, a company that allows you to track your invoices online as well, as send professional invoices straight to ones email box. You can even subscribe to the invoices using ical (mac) or RSS.

Quickbooks offers the service of emailing invoices and does it extremely well. However, there are tons of people who want to issue invoices who aren’t set up with a professional bookkeeping package or don’t want to make the monetary investment.

Tags:Â blinksale, invoices, startup

I had the chance to lead/captain the IGA Worldwide/nextNY dodgeball team last week at Chelsea Piers. Our team, comprised of Brian, Noel, Andrew, Ashley, Christina, Kenny, and myself ended up in 3rd place which was a huge triumph! We fought off teams from AOL, MSN, Google, Happy Corp, Flavorpill, Yahoo, and Root.net and had an amazing time while doing it!

Special thanks to the Root.net folks who joined us in the later rounds as our team members had to leave. Looking forward to the next one! Congrats to MSN for winning the trophy!   Â

What is an avatar? According to Acad.org, an avatar is a graphical image of a user, such as used in graphical real-time chat applications, or, a graphical personification of a computer or a computer process, intended to make the computing or network environment a more friendly place.Â

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Today, lots of different applications are using avatars. However, 95% of applications make the user select an avatar from a list. The point of an avatar is to make the person playing the game create a personal presence within the game, not a faceless impersonal existence within the game. By selecting an avatar from a pre-determined list, how can a user create a personal and original presence?

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In the past few years, we’ve had a couple of companies emerge into the custom avatar space. These companies were highlighted in yesterday’s posting. Meez, IMVU, Comverse Technology and Oddcast (as well as many others) are allowing users to custom create their own avatar. In under 10 minutes last night, I created my Meez character that resembled pretty much who I am.

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While defining and creating my Meez character, it was a fun and “cute� process. It got addicting and I could see why kids and teens have a good time doing this. Though, when it came time to take my character and export it to my blog/website or a picture, it lost the true feeling of becoming “alive.� It went from a 3D character with behavior to a 2D static image. A bit less impressive.

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Now, there is no doubt that Meez and their team of developers/designers are going to innovate and create a file format or transport layer that will allow Meez characters to stay alive. I don’t question that at all. If these avatars are going to take off, this will need to happen as we’re tired of 2D images. Isn’t this Web 2.0? Where are the 3D images?

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I was talking with a friend in the venture capital community today at the Tuscan Square Restaurant here in

New York

and we were talking about the recent investments into the avatar space. We got into thinking about how avatars can be used in different types of applications and what it would take to make it happen… and one word emerged: standards.

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Lets say that game developer THQ was developing a MMO game that utilized personalized avatars. They also had an XBOX 360 game that used avatars as well. Then, a casual game network such as WorldWinner allows for external avatars to be used. Factor in MySpace, AOL, and Typepad and you’ve got lots of integration needed to occur. In order for all of this to happen- the creation, distribution, and aggregation of avatars, there needs to be open standards of the file formats and the sizes. For the avatar industry to really take off, publishers and developers must adopt these standards and give another 1-2 years after the fact so that enough games, virtual worlds, and other applications exist for them to be used.

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Nevertheless, it’s still a fascinating industry emerging. I’ve always said that the web isn’t very friendly. If I walked into a store that treated me the same way that Amazon.com or Prada.com treated me, I’d probably walk right out. The retail business is about service; even Walmart has greeters. Service with a smile. When was the last time a website smiled back at you? It’s going to be nice to see expressions online now – something that has been non-existant. I’m looking forward to following this all – and one day, maybe our avatars will meet up in a mass multiplayer game.

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Tags:Â avatar, Meez, virtual worlds, IMVU, and standards