Virtual Worlds

Fashion - especially luxury fashion - came slowly to social media and related ad technologies. However as the industry quickly catches up, gaming appears to be the next format it will adopt.

"Talk to Me," the latest exhibit from the Museum of Modern Art includes nearly 200 pieces of interactive art. To kick off the show, New York's venerable museum partnered with gaming magazine Kill Screen to produce an Arcade party highlighting some of the most artful creations in the world of video games.

Sony's PlayStation Network, an online entertainment hub for all Sony PlayStation platforms -- original programming, game integration, and Home, a social network -- is getting creative with in-game ad opportunites.

In collaboration with AOL and brand entertainment company A Squared Entertainment, "Martha & Friends" features a 10-year-old Stewart as a problem-solving, craft-loving kid who, along with her three best friends and two dogs, Francesca and Sharkey, takes viewers through various do-it-yourself projects.

"This is really addicting," I admit to my wife after more than an hour of my distracting her from reading with a new iPad app called Video Time Machine. From gangster films of the 1930s to Ford commercials of the mid 60s, Wonderama in the early 70s to Chet Huntley explaining to Dick Cavett why he was signing off from the Huntley Brinkley Report, this app is a trove of historically indexed video for the hard and softcore media mavens.

Sony promised a "huge lineup" of new downloadable games, demos, add-on content, themes, avatars, and videos. The company also added new full game trials, free games and DLC, free avatars, and more discounts, according to a blog post.

The $10 billion private valuation of FarmVille-maker Zynga and mounting anticipation over the company's expected IPO filing is testament to the sizzle that surrounds social gaming. But even with a whopping 250 million people playing casual games a month, a new Forrester report finds U.S. marketers aren't trying to capitalize on the craze.

Fashion retailer Forever 21 is using holograms in the place of live models in a series of fashion shows being held this summer and fall. The retailer conceived of the promotion with digital agency space150 and the first show was held in Vienna last week. The other six shows are scheduled in Brussels and London in June and July. In the fall it comes to New York City.

Even though gamification as a marketing tool has been gaining velocity - as well as skepticism - in the last few years, Bunchball has been "gamifying" websites since 2005 and is arguably the frontrunner in the space. Gamification is the practice of introducing social gaming elements into marketing campaigns or customer loyalty programs to enhance engagement.

Kaku, author of the new book "Physics of the Future: How Science Will Change Daily Life by 2100," combines those two loves on the Science Channel, where he hosts "Sci Fi Science" and a tech-themed segment introducing reruns of sci-fi series "Firefly," which airs at 10 p.m. ET Sundays.