Penguin Lives in Whyville

Mediapost has an interesting post about the virtual world whyville and how the site is being leveraged by Virgin, Penguin and the University of Texas Health Science Center. The virtual world has over 2.4mm active users between the ages of 8-15 and is billed as place where children can gain an understanding and appreciation for math and science. It is also a place where companies can advertise there products as long as the advertising is 'active brain advertising'.

Here is what Mediapost said about Penguin's activity:

For Penguin Books' kid-friendly adaptation of Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth," Whyville created an entire Global Warming program--complete with in-world climate changes and tropical storms. Kids were able to band together for community clean-up activities after a storm trashed the Whyville beach, and take CO2 and temperature readings of the island at the Penguin-sponsored Climate Center. Almost 400,000 members visited the Climate Center within months of its launch at the end of June.