Poor Mojo's Newswire

As of this moment, I have in my possession a book entitled Annals of the Caliph's Kitchen. It is a fairly remarkable book, as it's a translation of Kitāb al-Ţabīkh, a tenth century Arabic cookbook. From a historical perspective, Kitāb al-Ţabīkh is remarkable as it is the earliest known culinary documentation found from the medieval era. From my perspective, it's the perfect document to provide some insight into what people...err, well-off people, were eating during the mid 900's. I immediately went to the desserts/sweets glossary, and found, not one reference to honey, but thirteen. Honey is defined by its color, texture, and how clear of detritus it may be. It takes into account whether water has been added to the honey, or whether the honey has been boiled. There's even a distinction between honey that has foam retained within it from boiling, and honey that is free from foam. "Yeah, yeah, yeah," I can hear you say. "Their focus on honey is all well and good, but what about their candy?" Good question, and something interesting does come up.

Intlibber Brautigan notified the Herald today that he has applied to join a virtual land class action lawsuit against Linden Lab and Philip Rosedale which was filed April 15th. The complaint alleges that after inducing players to join Second life with claims they "would receive and retain all right, title, interest, copyright and intellectual property rights to the land, objects and virtual property", unilateral changes to the Second Life Terms of Service and other action on the part of Linden Lab – including banning players from the virtual world – have deprived the plaintiffs of their property without compensation. The complaint claims that at least $5,000,000 USD in damages are possible. Attorney Jason Archinaco, of Pribanic, Pribanic, and Archinaco LLC of Pittsburgh has set up VirtualLandDispute.com to help locate other members of the class. While Herald staff continue to digest the 64 page complaint Marc Bragg provides some interesting analysis here. . . .

In case anyone thought that virtual item sales weren't a big deal in the traditional MMO world, this morning Blizzard announced the online sale of a new "celestial steed" for use in WoW. These mounts cost $25 (on top of the retail price plus $15 monthly subscription). So in a world of free games and virtual items selling for a dollar or two, how popular could a $25 sparkly flying pony be? Well, the queue for their purchase was at least up to over 91,000 people waiting in the queue earlier today. When I took a screen shot, it had fallen to "only" about 85,000. 90,000 X $25 = $2,250,000. In one day. From one item. In a game that isn't free to play anyway. Something tells me we really, really haven't mapped the extent of the market for fast, frictionless sales of online goods -- "objects" that have a low cost of creation and essentially no cost of duplication. Even 90,000 times.