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Living on the Web

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PCQ Bureau
New Update

While everyone's busy figuring out how to incorporate all the neat

interactivity features provided by Web 2.0 technologies into their portals and

Intranets, there's another revolution brewing quietly in the background. We say

quietly because it's already been happening for a few years now, and has gained

significant momentum today to garner attention. It's the 3D virtual world space

out there on the Internet.

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A virtual world, as the name suggests is a computer simulated 3D world

created on the Internet, where you can go, register yourself, and become a

'citizen'. It will provide you with all the facilities that you normally get in

the real world, such as a home, clothes, shopping and commercial complexes,

stadia, etc. In fact, the web is buzzing with lots of such virtual worlds.

You'll find a world for just about every age group, be it kids, teens, or adults

of different age groups. Each world has its own unique characteristics and 3D

realms where you can go and immerse yourself.

Anil Chopra, Editor

There are also 3D chat communities, where you can register for free and

create a 3D world to invite your friends to come and chat with you in.

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Several questions arise from all this. What do you really do in a virtual

world? Is it really worth your while as a busy professional to pay any attention

to it? Or is it something meant for kids or hobbyists who just want to

socialize? Let's understand this with a few examples.

Since the virtual worlds are 3D, they provide a completely immersive form of

interactivity. This very notion is grabbing the attention of many large

companies. IBM for instance, has actually setup a virtual business center in one

of the most popular virtual online worlds called Second Life. This world is

manned by actual IBM sales representatives 24x7, who interact with prospective

customers about IBM's products and services. They engage with customers just as

they would in the real world.

Similarly, there are many other software giants eying this space as well,

including the likes of Google. Plenty of international conferences are happening

to discuss the future prospects of such 3D worlds. They discuss over who can

benefit from such worlds, which applications and SDKs can be used to create

them, what kinds of policies to adopt for the people who live in them, etc. For

instance, one of the virtual worlds, called Active Worlds is in the business of

creating worlds for education institutes, where teachers and students can

interact.

All this makes one really wonder what will happen in the future. Who knows,

maybe one day we'll all go to virtual offices instead of real ones, have virtual

cabins, zip through virtual traffic, interact with each other virtually, but

will hopefully get paid in real so that our 'real' lives remain smooth and

comfortable!

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