links for 2007-07-16

• Second Life reality check: Virtual marketers have second thoughts
  Four years after synthetic world Second Life debuted, marketers are second-guessing their investment. Virtual stores are empty. Starwoood Hotels pulled out. Between May and June, the population of active avatars declined 2.5%. (From LAT)
  (tags: secondlife virtualworld syntheticworlds)
• Japanese candidates can't use the Web to campaign - it's the law
  Another Japanese oddity: in a country with some of the fastest broadband and wide internet adoption, once the campaign is started it is illegal for candidates to create new websites or update existing web pages. (BBC)
  (tags: democracy internet Japan)
• The future of search
  An interview with Peter Norvig, Google's director of research. "What are the best results for a given search query? There is no absolutely correct answer, it's subjective, and that's the question that Google's answering." (MIT Tech Review)
  (tags: google searchengine)