Some interesting developments bringing together social networking and virtual worlds:
Active Worlds announced today that they had launched the “Active Worlds 3D Avatar and World Explorer” application, allowing companies and developers to build virtual worlds on the Facebook platform. The company says the application is based on Internet Explorer and ActiveX from Microsoft to build on existing standards and to allow certain elements of the virtual worlds to interact with more traditional websites and Web 2.0 applications. “Since our Active Worlds technology continues to be standards driven, we feel this release sets a new milestone on 3D Internet implementation,” said JP McCormick, chairman of Active Worlds, “The push is on for interoperability and a set of standards which will drive Virtual World technology into the future. We believe that many of these already exist. By continuing to enhance our already standards driven application we greatly increase our value to e- commerce, education, entertainment, and social networking sites, as well as our core business with Fortune 500 companies.”
I’m not so sure I agree with the idea that Internet Explorer and ActiveX can be considered a true standard, widely used yes, but not a standard!
Which somewhat goes against the grain with what comes next:
Active Worlds was present at the IBM standards meeting last month and confirmed its commitment there towards building out standards for virtual worlds.
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