John D. Sutter of CNN has written an article outlining the state of... 'Virtual currencies' power social networks, online games.  Here is an excerpt from John's article:

(CNN) -- When Santiago Martinez wants to give his friends birthday presents, he buys a cake or flowers or sometimes a teddy bear.

But the 41-year-old, who lives on Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, doesn't spend pesos or dollars. He buys the gifts with an online-only currency called hi5 Coins.

He also doesn't deliver the gifts in the physical world. They appear digitally on his friends' online profiles on a site called hi5, which is a social network like Facebook or MySpace.

"They can't eat the cake. It is an image -- the thing that it represents," said Martinez, an accountant with a wife and two kids. "You can send the feeling of that [cake] that you want to send."

In any given month, he spends the equivalent of $40 in this manner.

But Martinez is hardly alone.

Chrissay “Adida” Zeeman, UO Community Coordinator for Mythic Entertainment's Ultima Online, has posted on UOHerald.com an update of the... Log in Server Issues.  Here is the reprint of Chrissay's update:

16 May 2009 11:41:11

We are experiencing issues with the log in servers. We are currently working on a resolution. This will not affect players currently in game.Unfortunately, we do not have an estimated time for a resolution. We will update this thread no later than 1:40 PM EST with a status update. We apologize for this inconveinience.

UPDATE: Log in servers are back up. Have a good weekend!!