Thanks for the great analysis. As an IBMer who has been involved in our efforts around virtual worlds for several years, I wanted to let you know about our use of the web.alive platform for our Analytics Virtual Center (AVC). http://bit.ly/ibmavc. I’m also a big fan of our OpenSim efforts around Sametime 3D.

One thing that has been true as we seen the virtual worlds front mature — with the emphasis on plural — is that there is room for a wide landscape of 3D or immersive experiences. For example, for the AVC, we appreciate the ease of use, simplicity of controls and good integration of voice interaction that web.alive offers. Many people still find virtual environments daunting to operate and interact in, so a light, practical and agile platform is what drew us to WA for this particular project.

But I expect virtual innovations to continue to proliferate with different objectives and feature sets as the utility and value of virtual interactions in a global economy come into focus.

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Regarding portability, I wonder if the industry will adopt standardized exchange formats, which would allow users to migrate from one proprietary platform to another. We never thought the telecommunications industry would support local number portability – but now it's a given

Dennis Shiao

InXpo Product Marketing | Blogger at It's All Virtual

I thought your readers might want to know that web.alive has been purchased by Avaya – a very large enterprise communications company (www.avaya.com). Although not mentioned in your article, web.alive has one of the best integrated positional voice solutions out there. You can find out more about web.alive at our microsite http://www.avayalive.com.

http://www.lansing.com/oldtown

As for as the future goes what is your take on how searching for stuff will be down on the hypergrid Will there be a google for the grid?

Virtual World: Activeworlds (www.activeworlds.com)

Annual citizenship (membership) approx $69 which may also be paid monthly.

Private worlds within the AW universe start at approx $79 all the way up to $1200+ ranging from 5-20 users; Sol Servers range from appox $1000-1200; Galaxies between $2,000 and $10,000; Universes between appox $10,000 to $60,000+

*Purchase of worlds may also be accompanied by free citizens.

*These prices do not include hosting but various hosting services are available online or you can simple choose to host the world yourself.

*Nicely integrated Web browsing,content creation and VoIP capabilities.

*Supports objects stored as RenderWare script RWX (and the RW3+ binary equivalent DFF), and trueSpace objects COB, as well as DirectX "X" objects.

*Users can use publicly accessible object paths or create their own with their own models.

ActiveWorlds in my opinion is pretty easy to use and is a fantastic starting point for anyone (individuals or businesses) beginning to explore virtual worlds. The "ecosystem" has seen better days but there is plenty of in-world and on-line support helping new users and providing products and services. While the renderware engine is somewhat outdated, there are talks of an update.