Second Life has lost some of its buzz in the past year. Growth has leveled, and media investigations have highlighted possible fraud and child pornography within its borders. Early hopes of Second Life's potential to market real-world brands largely failed in practice. But with 1.2 million active users, it is still the dominant player in a rapidly expanding virtual worlds industry, with the most content and a highly loyal fan base.

It may surprise readers of Au's book to find that Linden Lab originally wanted a simulation of the natural world. What actually transpired is quite different.

While many people have a Second Life character -- called an "avatar" -- that looks like them, others pick talking cartoon animals or blinking robots. The environments are similarly varied, from reproductions of European cities to areas with a fantasy or science-fiction theme.

Repeatedly, Linden Lab set out to offer one product, only to find a combination of financial restraints and input from their customers pushing them into marketing something very different.

ACCIDENTAL FLIGHT

For example, one of Second Life's most distinctive and memorable experiences is flying. With the click of a button, an avatar will soar gracefully into the stratosphere, exactly as one might imagine Superman does it.

But flight, as Au recalls, was practically an accident. In a virtual world filled with hills and buildings, no one had the time for the more difficult task of programming an avatar's ability to climb.

Similarly, Linden Lab assumed it would create an in-world experience for avatars to play in. It was only after programmers started using their own product they realized it would be better to allow their users to build their world for them.

Linden's users quickly began constructing their own buildings, clothing, and nightclubs. Pleased to have their users create content, Linden tried to encourage the practice with a system of ratings. An avatar could register an endorsement of a particularly attractive home with the click of a mouse.

"It's fair to say the voting boxes began to be abused almost the very moment they were introduced," Au writes.

Cliques of users banded together to vote positively or negatively en masse, in exchange for favors or to pursue petty vendettas.

The ratings system was eventually abandoned. Like so much else in Second Life, including the in-world currency called the "Linden Dollar," the ability to buy and sell land, or the popularity of adult-themed virtual goods and services, users had their own ideas about the technology and what best to do with it.

Au dedicates his book to those creators of content. "They're more important to the world's success than the company which actually owns it," he said.

As new virtual worlds come online and try to lure some of Second Life's users and hype, the story of how Second Life came to be may provide a road map for others.

"Second Life isn't the only model, but ultimately I think it's the only reliable one," Au said. "Otherwise, a company will be forced to produce content to an ever-demanding audience of largely passive consumers. That's destined to fail."

"The mainstream media did its job of trying to play down the most shameful part of the incident. It is a blow to Singapore's image as being efficient," Seah Chiang Nee, a political commentator and former Singapore newspaper editor, told Reuters.

"The more Internet savvy would not depend on the mainstream media for news of what's happening in the country, they would go to the Internet," said Seah.

Mas Selamat bin Kastari, the alleged leader of the Singapore cell of al Qaeda-linked Jemaah Islamiah, a group blamed for the 2002 Bali bombings that killed 202 people, escaped on Wednesday last week from the toilet of a detention center.

Security experts said the escape was embarrassing for a country that prides itself on tight security. The escape sparked an unprecedented manhunt in the small island and a rare apology from the government, who blamed a "security lapse." But few further details of his escape have since been released.

Cherian George, an ex-Straits Times journalist and media lecturer, wrote on the Internet that the Singapore media had not answered the "immediate" question of how Kastari escaped.

"The question is so natural and so obvious that you'd think anyone barely paying attention would ask it. Unless, apparently, one worked for the national news media," George wrote.

LOSS OF CREDIBILITY

George said the absence of this question was due to media management by the government and that the main result would be a loss of credibility for the national media that would push readers to other sources.

Letters to The Straits Times have also poured scorn on the government's handling of the crisis and flow of information.

"I am disturbed by the security lapse ... more explanation is required," wrote Rosemary Chwee Keng Chai in a letter.

Patrick Daniel, editor-in-chief of the Straits Times, told Reuters by email that the paper took its responsibility to readers seriously and that George was "utterly wrong" in his conclusion or that its journalists had never asked questions on how Kastari escaped.

"If Cherian had checked with us, we would have told him that we asked that question, and many others too, many times," he said, adding the paper had run an article exploring the issue headlined "How did he manage to escape?" on Friday.

Reuters, a global news and information provider, repeatedly asked the Ministry of Home Affairs for more details on the escape but was either referred to its initial five-line statement or was unable to reach its spokeswoman on by telephone.

Singapore retains a tight grip on its national newspapers through a comprehensive legal framework that requires, among other things, a publication permit to be granted at the discretion of the minister. A substantial shareholder of a newspaper company must also gain approval of a minister.

"I think that there was tacit understanding between the government and the media," Catherine Lim, a prominent local author and political commentator, told Reuters.

"It's a good working relationship. Local media would never be as inquisitive, probing or rambunctious as the Western media."

Some bloggers had a field day, morphing Kastari's face onto a poster for TV series Prison Break and saying even students doing examinations in the city-state were accompanied to the toilet.

"We are not like those free-wheeling and chaotic governments from Western democracies that make their leaders accountable for every little thing," wrote Lee Kin Mun, better known under his online moniker 'Mr Brown', Singapore's most famous blogger.

"I know today that you have many amazing technology choices available to you, but I'd like you to bet on us," Ozzie told an audience of Web developers.

Microsoft has been pushing for a "software plus services" strategy that uses the Internet to augment traditional software that runs on a computer's hard drive.

Ozzie also extended an olive branch to Yahoo, the Web pioneer that Microsoft is targeting in a unsolicited takeover offer, saying Yahoo has "creative people and interesting online properties."

Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft provided a first look at Internet Explorer 8. IE 7 was released in October 2006.

Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser is used by three-quarters of the world's Web users, far more than Mozilla's Firefox, which has a 17 percent share of the market, and Apple's Safari with 6 percent, according to data from Web site analytics company Net Applications.

The browser is also part of the ongoing battle between Microsoft and arch-rival Google.

Firefox is closely affiliated with Google, which in 2006 provided around 85 percent of the $66.8 million in revenue of Firefox's parent organization, the Mozilla Foundation.

Google distributes Firefox as its preferred browser software in a number of its products. Firefox counts 160 million unique active users of its browser alternative.

Microsoft's new browser is available to developers at http://www.microsoft.com/ie/ie8.

FEATURES IN IE 8

Internet Explorer General Manager Dean Hachamovitch showed some user features of IE 8, but he did not give a launch date for it.

One feature called "Activities" lets users highlight an address on a Web site, then see a map within the site with a single click. Users can also highlight a product name and see if the item is available on eBay. Another feature lets users save work done on a Web site to the local computer when an Internet connection goes down.

Earlier this week, Microsoft said it would drop its traditional resistance to industrywide standards for how its software renders Web pages and, by default, make its Explorer browser work more easily with other Web coding tools.

That means Web sites will essentially look the same regardless of browser, and developers will not need to do multiple versions of Web sites for different browsers.

It is a departure from what Microsoft did in IE 7 and is seen as a move to assuage developer, regulatory and legal concerns.

The European Union has launched an antitrust investigation into Microsoft to probe complaints from Norwegian browser maker Opera Software  about how Microsoft ensures rival Web browsers are not fully compatible with Internet Explorer.

Critics argue that Internet Explorer is inferior to rival browsers in terms of security, speed and navigation features and that Microsoft maintains its lead because Explorer is packaged along with the company's Windows operating system.

Microsoft also said it was making available a public test version of its Silverlight 2 multimedia technology. Silverlight 2 is the next version of Microsoft's competitor to Adobe Systems' Flash technology.

And it released a test version of Expression Studio 2, the latest version of Microsoft's software suite targeted at Web designers and developers.

Privately held Facebook and the four major music companies--Universal Music Group, Sony BMG Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group, and EMI Group--were not immediately available for comment.

At Microsoft's MIX08 online technology conference, Dean Hachamovitch, general manager of Microsoft's Internet Explorer team, provided a first glimpse of the successor to IE 7, which was released in October 2006.

Microsoft's Internet Explorer Web browser is the world's most widely-used Web browser with a greater market share than Apple's Safari or Mozilla's Firefox. The browser is also part of the ongoing battle between Microsoft and arch-rival Google.

Firefox is closely affiliated with Google, which provided around 85 percent of the revenue of Firefox's parent organization, the Mozilla Foundation, which was $66.8 million in 2006, according to filings published last October.

Google distributes Firefox as its preferred browser software in a number of its own products. Mozilla continues to receive revenue from Google under a contract set to expire in November 20, 2008.

Microsoft's presentation was catered heavily toward Web developers, but Hachamovitch showed some user features of IE 8. One feature allows users to save work being done on a Web site to the local computer when an Internet connection goes down.

Another feature lets users highlight an address on a Web site and then see a map within the Web site with a single click. Users can also highlight a product name and be able to see if the item is available for sale on eBay.

The new browser is available to developers at http://www.microsoft.com/ie/ie8.

Earlier this week, Microsoft announced the new browser would use the most-standards-compliant mode by default in rendering Web sites.

That means Web sites will essentially look the same regardless of browser and developers will not need to do multiple versions of Web sites for different browsers.

It's a departure from what Microsoft did in IE 7 and seen as a move to assuage developer, regulatory and legal concerns.

The European Union launched a new antitrust investigation into Microsoft to probe complaints from Norwegian browser maker Opera Software about how Microsoft ensures rival Web browsers are not fully compatible with Internet Explorer.

Critics argue that Internet Explorer is inferior to rival browsers and Microsoft maintains its lead because Explorer comes standard with the company's Windows operating system.

Microsoft also said it was making available a test or "beta" version of its Silverlight 2 multimedia technology.

Reuters is a customer and minority investor in Pluck.

Pluck said it operates the world's largest blog syndication network, called BlogBurst, that connects newspapers and other media sites to selected blogs.

"Pluck lets us spread social media across the Web," Demand Media Chief Executive Rosenblatt said in an interview.

Rosenblatt left MySpace after News Corp's 2005 purchase, and founded Demand Media.

Since 2006, Demand has acquired a collection of relatively unknown sites and relaunched them with social networking features and video capabilities that serve specific niche interests such as ExpertVillage.com that features "how-to" online videos.

In January, Rosenblatt's company struck a deal with the Lance Armstrong Foundation to create, Livestrong.com, a social network for health and fitness.

Santa Monica-based Demand Media said in a statement it has raised over $350 million since 2006. Rosenblatt said the company generates about $150 million annually and is "very profitable." Its network of sites has attracted 64 million monthly unique visitors, the company said.

Founded in 2003, Pluck has built up a portfolio of media clients aiming to add its service to their Web sites. These clients include media conglomerate News Corp, world affairs and business media website, Economist.com, Gannett and The Washington Post Co.

Pluck also offers SiteLife, a set of Web services for media publishers and broadcasters to add interactive features to their own sites.

Pluck's other investors include venture capital firms Mayfield Fund and Austin Ventures. Digital media blog paidContent.org said Pluck has attracted about $17 million in funding. Reuters invested about $7 million in 2006.

The undersea cables will be to Japan and the rest of Asia, AT&T India Chairman V.S. Gopi Gopinath said at a media roundtable.

AT&T would also build nodes, or switches to route network traffic, in Europe, Asia and the United States.

The company will initially offer virtual private local area networks over ethernet in 14 cities in Europe and Asia and will have a presence in 29 countries by the end of the year, AT&T said in a statement.

Ethernet is a family of frame-based computer networking technologies used for local area networks.

AT&T will also build a data center in the Indian software hub of Bangalore by December, Gopinath said.

He declined to give a forecast about revenue from India or the Asia Pacific operations for 2008.

In 2007, Asia Pacific revenue that included India grew 22 percent from a year earlier, making it the fastest growing region for AT&T, Gopinath said.

Revenue from India, which is now a separate region, grew by 85 percent in 2007, he said.

When a user winks, movement in their skin is detected by sensors clipped to their glasses or headphones, said Kazuhiro Taniguchi of Osaka University's Graduate School of Engineering Science, who developed the "KomeKami Switch" or "Temple Switch."

The infrared sensors then generate an electric signal that a micro computer uses to work Apple's iPod.

Wink strongly for one second with one eye to rewind, use the other to skip to the next song, or close both eyes to pause and play, Taniguchi told Reuters in an e-mail interview.

But what if users accidentally blink only to find themselves in a completely different soundtrack?

"It doesn't happen at all. This system doesn't malfunction even if the user eats, talks, walks and runs," Taniguchi wrote, saying there were differences in movement between an accidental and an intentional blink or wink.

"The computer can judge the difference of those signals," he added -- even if other people around you may be left wondering what message your eyes are sending.

Branson said the new business will court the approximate $30 billion market for booking private air travel by letting operators market availability and allowing customers to bid and book online.

He aims to make booking charter flights as easy as booking commercial flights on services such as Expedia, an online travel booking service.

Scott Duffy, Virgin Charter Chief Executive, said the new service is a combination of three of the best ideas on the Internet: the user and seller reviews provided by online auctioneer eBay; Priceline's ability to let consumers offer their own bids on flights and the simplicity of Expedia and Travelocity.

"They (charter operators) will have to get quality right," Mr. Branson said in an interview.

"They can't just get away with it (bad service) anymore," Mr. Branson said, recounting one recent flight from San Francisco to Los Angeles on a chartered jet that he described as "dire" after a glass of water crashed into his head while he napped.

Most charter flights are currently booked by phone through a broker in a process that can take the assistants of millionaires, celebrities and business travelers as long as a week to complete, executives said.

Virgin Charter, majority owned by Virgin USA, aims to bring a level of transparency and simplicity to a business that does not exist today.

The company launches in the United States, but will be expanded to other regions soon, Mr. Branson said.

Virgin Charter is targeting the 2,500 operators of private aviation companies as well as thousands of U.S. customers who currently pay brokers or have to dial-up dozens of operators by phone before booking a flight.

Booking through Virgin Charter's site will shave some 20 percent off the cost of traditional methods by cutting out the broker, a Virgin Charter executive said, as well as days off of the process.

Moreover, the company said its service lets operators maximize bookings and fuel consumption by offering them a way to market flights that are returning empty from an outbound or return flight on an already-booked trip, under a section called "hot deals" on the site.

As part of the launch, Virgin Charter has struck a partnership with Travelocity Business to offer its service to Travelocity's business clients, Virgin said.

Mr. Duffy said the company is participating only with operators who have been screened by the company for safety and quality. At launch the service will offer access to about 100 operators, with access to 1,000 private planes.

The service competes with traditional brokers as well as companies that let frequent flyers invest in the jets with other partners.

Well-known for his grand entrances--just this week he jumped off the Hilton hotel in India to launch Virgin Mobile in the region--Mr. Branson arrived in New York for a round of press interviews quietly on a charter flight booked by his secretary.

With the new service, "She will be able to pick the best price," Mr. Branson said.

Bookmarking tools are anything but new -- Yahoo's own del.icio.us is one -- but Yahoo says mobile phones, with their small screens, require a different approach and far greater emphasis on sharing.

Yahoo is driving to outmaneuver Google's clear lead in computer search and advertising by custom-building elegant services for cell phone users and forming alliances with telecoms carriers.

OnePlace also leans on two other Yahoo mobile services -- OneSearch and OneConnect -- by tailoring the content behind the bookmarks to match the location of users and the preferences of friends and contacts who use the service.

"We're not reinventing forms of mobile content or getting into the content business but there are places where you have stuff that you care about, that you're passionate about, that you follow," said Marco Boerries, head of Yahoo's mobile drive.

"Whether it's in Facebook, in YouTube... it's all over the place and it's locked up on your PC."

Users will be able to gather their favorite Web places either by choosing them on their PC and then synchronizing with their cell phone, or directly on the mobile phone itself.

As with results from OneSearch, actual information rather than Web links, often awkward to negotiate on a cell phone, will be displayed as a matter of preference.

Boerries cited examples such as flight information, news about favorite music bands or sports teams, or local weather and restaurant reports as favorite things users might want to be updated on the go.

Customers would be able to access the service either through telecoms carriers who have deals with Yahoo such as Deutsche Telekom, Telefonica or Vodafone or directly download it from Yahoo, Boerries told Reuters.

"It's not Web links you can click on but it's smart bookmarks that are alive and will give you current information," he said in a telephone interview.

"There are 52 content types that OnePlace understands," he added, naming videos, cities, musicians, albums or stock prices as examples of categories. "For all of those types, we have implemented algorithms for what's most relevant for that type."

Users can also choose to automatically direct content they mark in social bookmarks manager del.icio.us, post on Facebook or star in Google newsreader to OnePlace, he said.

They can also sort their bookmarks by local relevance or popularity with friends and contacts.

Sony's game unit had said in January it was delaying the introduction later that month of the Skype service for PSP users in Japan, as a microphone it planned to start selling for the new service did not meet Skype specifications.

But the same microphone has managed to pass the Skype requirements on condition that it is sold with the recommendation that it be used within 10 centimeters of the mouth of a user.

Sony Computer Entertainment now plans to start selling the microphone on March 19 in Japan for 2,500 yen ($24), enabling PSP users to make free Web-based phone calls to other PSP users and to users of PCs equipped with Skype software.

It started offering the Skype service on the PSP earlier this year in overseas markets.

The PCs will include IBM's Lotus Symphony software based on the Open Document Format, a rival format to Microsoft's Office Open XML document format, which the latter is trying to get adopted as an ISO internationally approved standard.

IBM, which has sold its PC business to China's Lenovo, said the hardware would be made by partners of VDEL and LX Polska.

Russia, where many large corporations and public-service bodies are building large computer systems for the first time, is emerging as a key battleground between Microsoft and rivals offering open-source alternatives.

Microsoft is active in IT education campaigns in Russia and last month signed a deal with MTS, Russia's largest mobile phone operator, to offer services and cut-price laptops installed with its Vista operating system for small businesses.

IBM said the Linux PC line it would offer with VDEL and LX Polska, called Open Referent, would cut desktop computing costs for buyers by up to half.

It said chief information officers from Russian organizations including the Ministry of Defence, airline Aeroflot <AFLT.MM> and private bank Alfa Bank had been among those who had requested an open-source PC.

An IBM spokesman declined to give any sales forecasts on behalf of its partners.

The German version of the site represents Facebook's third language, as volunteers translated a version of the site into Spanish early in February. Facebook has also said it plans to release a French language site.

Roughly 60 percent of Facebook's 66 million users live outside the United States.

Matt Cohler, Facebook's vice president of product management, said in a statement that Facebook counts more than a million active users in German-speaking countries.

The Silicon Valley-based company was founded in 2004 as a social site for students at Harvard University and spread quickly to other colleges and eventually into workplaces. Its popularity stems from how the site conveniently allows users to share details of their lives with selected friends online.

Germany does not rank among the top 10 countries for Facebook users. After the United States, Britain is No. 2 with 8 million active users and Canada is 3rd with 7 million users. Turkey is fourth, followed by Australia, France and Sweden.

As the company releases new features, Facebook said it plans to rely on volunteers to help it translate the site into non-English languages, borrowing a strategy popularized by Wikipedia, the anyone-can-edit Web encyclopedia.

Facebook will soon release the translation application to independent software developers to allow them to translate their Facebook programs into German, the company said.

Users who added the Facebook translation application were allowed to submit translations online while browsing the site. Facebook users then approved all translations through a voting system, the Palo Alto, California-based company said.

Facebook members who wish to use the site in German can now change languages in their account settings to German or Spanish. Any one who signs onto Facebook from a German-speaking country will automatically see the site in German.

Facebook is playing catch-up on the international front to rival News Corp's <NWSa.N> MySpace, which has national sites in more than 20 countries. MySpace offers versions of its site in Spanish, French, German and Italian, including a site for U.S. Spanish speakers and another for French Canadians.

Last year, Microsoft started subscription-based online services to run its Exchange corporate e-mail program and SharePoint collaboration software on Microsoft's own computer systems as an alternative to customers buying their own hardware to run licensed software.

Microsoft initially limited those services to companies with more than 5,000 workers, but the company said it will now offer the service to businesses of all sizes in the second half of 2008, after a testing period. The company did not disclose how much it will charge customers for the services.

It will also begin to offer a free download of a software called Search Server 2008 Express that allows companies to search files and documents inside their network. The product will rival Google's Search Appliance.

Microsoft plans to unveil the news during a speech on Monday by Chairman Bill Gates at a conference for SharePoint, one of its fastest-growing applications, which allows workers to share documents and plan projects on secure Web sites.

Hosted web services are gaining popularity among business customers, because companies do not need to spend a lot of money upfront to buy and maintain powerful computer servers.

Instead, companies can rent space on a computer server from a service provider for a monthly fee and avoid being locked into multiyear corporate agreements that are used by Microsoft for many of its core software offerings.

It also lets smaller companies get applications normally reserved for large organizations.

"This is a market that is really starting to pick up. I believe it is going to going to get very large," said Karen Hobert, an analyst at Burton Group.

Google, Salesforce.com  and a host of start-ups are aggressively targeting Microsoft's traditional business customers with web applications that can be less expensive and easier to install on computers and run.

Last week, Google announced that it is offering a simple Web site publishing tool for office workers to set up and run their team collaboration sites.

Google Sites, as the new publishing service is known, is a stripped-down version of SharePoint that is free to users of Google Apps, a set of business applications that Google offers at a fraction of the cost of Microsoft's comparable products.

Some companies such as Salesforce see web services eventually replacing traditional packaged software, but Microsoft is pushing a "software plus services" strategy with the promise that this option combines the best of both worlds.

"Microsoft is starting to feel the pressures of the Googles of this world," Hobert said.

Microsoft's rivals have begun making inroads into the corporate market. Google says it has signed up more than 500,000 businesses over the past year to use Google Apps. One appeal is the ease with which office workers can get started and run their own team Web sites, without technical support.

But Microsoft said technology administrators in large organizations are concerned about losing control over access and usage of the software.

Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft said the products will work the same as existing offerings, but the software will run on Microsoft's computer servers. Administrators, according to Microsoft, will maintain nearly the same level of control as if the software was on their own computers, but have fewer headaches managing related hardware, storage and software.

Microsoft has invested billions of dollars to build enormous data centers packed with thousands of powerful computer servers and storage systems to offer services to both regular consumers and customers in large organizations.

In order not to jeopardize corporate agreements that underpin many of its businesses, Microsoft said any company who wants to switch over to its services will be credited for the remaining portion of an existing contract, which can be applied toward monthly subscriptions.

Customers such as Autodesk , Blockbuster and Ingersoll-Rand have signed up for Microsoft's services, according to the company.

Visto said the agreement involves "cash and non-cash consideration" but gave no other details. Both companies will dismiss all pending legal claims.