Catching up on virtual worlds platform related news this week the following stories caught my attention. Raph Koster finally lifted the veil on his Areae project by demoing Metaplace at the inaugural TechCrunch40 conference. Jonathan Fields has a good write up of the offering complete with a video demo. Raph has not disappointed with first signs looking very promising indeed.

Metanomics 07 is off to a good start with this weeks guest speaker Sandra Kearney, Global Director of 3D Internet and VIrtual Business at IBM. Sandra gave an interesting and interactive one hour presentation on IBM’s involvement in the metaverse. VIdeo archives of all Metanomics 07 sessions are available over on the Second Life Cable Network.

Justin Ratner gave a keynote titled Virtual Worlds – The rise of the 3D Internet at the Intel Developer Forum. A webcast of his talk is available here for those interested. After Intel’s recent acquistion of Havok and partnering with Qwaq Forums on an enhanced virtual workspace product its Virtual World declarations of intent are noted.

Last but not least Sony pushed back the launch date for Home from Autumn 2007 to Spring 2008. Having followed beta developments since April 2007 it still requires work and Sony is doing the right thing. With a steadily growing PS3 online user base of 2.7M worldwide it is eagerly awaited.