Alternatives to Second Life (continued, again)

Here is a companion post to two previous posts on the topic:

Alternatives to Second Life

Alternatives to Second Life Continued

If you know of more, please feel free to add in the comments section.

web.alive

Short "flyby" of Nortel's web.alive.
This is Nortel's entry into the 3D space. web.alive is an enterprise ready, network secured virtual world platform designed to solve business problems of working together over distances in real time and the costs associated with travel and training on complex equipment or in hazardous areas. The project was formerly known under the codename of "Project Chainsaw" and was built specifically for integrating into business applications already existing within the enterprise. Look for it to break out in the near future.


Activeworlds

Location in Activeworlds.

This platform has been around for a while and has the usual features such as customizing an avatar, online stores and the ability to own a home online. Businesses can license the Activeworlds technology to have their own looking for your own virtual world separate from the main Activeworld's Universe. For educational users, Activeworlds launched The Active Worlds Educational Universe (AWEDU). The AWEDU is an educational community that makes the Active Worlds technology available to educational institutions, teachers, students, and individual programs in a focused setting. Via this community, educators are able to explore new concepts, learning theories, creative curriculum design, and discover new paradigms in social learning.


Metaplace (Shut down January 1, 2010)

See Not a Good Week for Virtual Worlds.

Screen capture from Meteplace.

Is a Flash-based virtual world platform that allows players to buy and sell items, own property and play online games. Because it is Flash-based there is no download required. Another particularly interesting aspect of Metaplace is that it can be embedded into a webpage. This means that a user created "portal" into a virtual world can be accessed from web location. You can add content from other web locations like Amazon or videos as well. Formerly Meteplace was known Areae.


Twinity


Here is a movie showing how to dress in Twinity to give you and idea of the world.

This is a "mirror-world" so it mirrors real places. So far it is mirroring Berlin and Singapore and London is on the horizon. The world allows for creating an avatar and exploring historical as well as modern day locations. One interesting thing is how the world can contrast things like Berlin today and Berlin during the cold war. This has a number of interesting educational applications when you consider the historical value of exploring what cities and locations looked like in the past and what they look like today. Currently it is in Beta which you can join for free.


If you want to learn how to implement and successfully deploy collaboration and training within a virtual world, check out Learning in 3D which will be released January 15, 2010.

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