Technically Speaking

EveryScape debuted today in historic Lexington, Massachusetts. Now with EveryScape, visitors to Lexington can virtually walk through Lexington Green or see the famous Minuteman Statue in full detail. Along with Lexington, Aspen, Boston, Miami and New York are currently online.

Web surfers can visually explore Lexington landmarks, travel any street, find local businesses by category or name, as well as look up any location. The EveryScape platform enhances this visual search with one- click access to additional destination information from websites like Yelp, Flickr, YouTube, Wikipedia and Yahoo! Local.

This is a page where I was looking at Laguna Beach, CA:

Businesses can showcase their physical locations with a “Storefront Listing” or with an enhanced “Mini- WebScape” that provides a 3D experience of the businesses’ interiors. These listings create virtual foot traffic. If you are interested in creating a self-service business portal, they have a page where you can do that.

EveryScape is headquartered in Waltham, Mass. and is venture backed by Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Draper Fisher New England, Draper Atlantic and LaunchPad Venture Group.

Technically Speaking, I think this is a much better idea than another Second Life, First Life - that’s where the real people are.

light fixtures

Weblo, a site that believes the virtual world should be for you to take, also believes that you should be able to monetize your Facebook, MySpace, and other social networking pages. Their theory is that you created the content and these sites wouldn’t be where they are without your content.

Now Facebook says that advertising is against what they would like to see happen. Without saying those nasty 3 letters, we all know this really means “against their terms of service”.

Facebook does not allow users to sell ads on their profile pages. Chris Kelly, Facebook’s chief privacy officer, told me on Nov. 6 that is because Facebook does not want people’s profile pages to become cluttered.

“We don’t want a free-for-all,” he said.

Taking a look at the Weblo site it seems they are more than about selling ads on social networks. They really want you to own the virtual world. Quite an interesting concept.

Weblo is a parallel universe that is the only virtual world based on the real world. Members own and manage websites that are virtual replicas of real cities, states, properties, domains and celebrities. Members earn real money via hits, Internet ads and by selling or auctioning assets for a profit. Members enhance their online portfolios by claiming popular social networking profiles, blogs, emails and videos in Weblo’s Calculate Your InterNET Worth section.

Technically Speaking, on one hand I believe they do have some validity in what they are saying. On the other hand it seems to be an extension of the million dollar page theory. Either way, Weblo is a site that you may want to keep your eye on, or join if you want to make some real money in a virtual world. Corvette wheels

VLES (Virtual Lower East Sides) is something that caught my eye last night. I decided to sign up, and of course, Kristen beat me there! She was already browsing around on the site. Being the social media person these days, I figured I’d wait for her report which is always good stuff to read.

What did I think of it? I think it has pretty good potential as an online game such as SIMS, Second Life. I like the fact they are putting in a dose of reality and using a “real” place that has a lot of cool things going on. I also like the fact they are incorporating bands and music there.

Technically Speaking, you had me with the music hook! Oh one last thing - if you join up and than find that everything isn’t working yet — please don’t come and b*tch at me about it. It’s still in a Alpha-almost-Beta mode release right now. If you don’t like pre-release stuff, than just stay clear.

I guess the Second Life has really kicked off a bunch of these virtual worlds. It is now going to have to run the course. There will be new life in the SV and elsewhere. Companies that will form, and get funding to create the better Second Life.

Technically Speaking, I have a pretty good source that says the reason that they are leaving Second Life is that it’s a load of crap and they wanted to check out REAL LIFE!