Tuesday, at the opening of the Virtual Worlds Conference in San Jose, California, IBM and Linden Lab, creator of Second Life, announced an initiative to develop standards that would ease the separate virtual worlds into an interoperable landscape.

"As the 3D Internet becomes more integrated with the current Web," users will want virtual worlds that are "fit for business," said Colin Parris, IBM's vice president of digital convergence, in a statement. The initiative will "help accelerate the use and further development of common standards and tools that will contribute to this new environment," he said.

Universal Avatars Just the Start

Linden Lab hopes to see its Second Life Grid emerge as the technology platform for the interoperable future. "Linden and IBM share a vision that interoperability is key to the continued expansion of the 3D Internet," said Ginsu Yoon, Linden's vice president of business affairs. He said "open-source development of interoperable formats and protocols" will accelerate the growth of the virtual worlds.

The companies said the collaboration would focus on five specific areas: universal avatars, security-rich transactions, platform stability, integration with Web and business processes, and interoperability with the Web.

Currently, users have to create separate avatars for each virtual world they want to inhabit. A universal avatar standard would allow users to create a personality once and use it across the virtual universe. "Now, for every world I touch I have to build an avatar," said Parris. "It's an obstacle to the development and spread of virtual worlds, both in the consumer and corporate space." Open infrastructure standards would allow avatars to cross from world to world much like they move from page to page on the Web.

Improving the security and reliability of virtual-world transactions "could allow users to perform purchases or sales with other people in virtual worlds for digital assets including 3D models, music, and media," the companies said, adding that integration with business processes would "enable widespread adoption and rapid dissemination of business capabilities for the 3D Internet."

AOL Proprietary Silo Redux? (continued...)

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