Build Your Personal 'Second Life'

Metaplace wants to let users create and host their own virtual worlds
By Laila Weir,  Newser Staff
Posted Jan 11, 2008 3:59 PM CST
Build Your Personal 'Second Life'
A screen shot of Stroker Serpentine, the "Second Life" avatar of Kevin Alderman, is shown on his computer in Lutz, Fla., on July 12, 2007. Alderman is involved in a groundbreaking lawsuit to stop others in the popular online world from copying and selling the code that allows characters to simulate...   (Associated Press)

Ever dream of creating your own virtual world, a la Second Life or World of Warcraft? Soon you’ll be able to, thanks to Metaplace, a company that lets users host virtual worlds online, building them the same way they’d create other Internet content, reports Technology Review. Using a Flash client, creators can embed their worlds anywhere from a social networking profile to a blog.

  "We think virtual worlds are just a new medium," says the company’s president. "Like pictures, audio, and video--virtual worlds are eventually going to start being ubiquitous on all sorts of Web pages." It will be possible to build a basic world within five minutes, he said. Metaplace’s system has been released to a small group of beta testers and will be more widely released in April. (More virtual worlds stories.)

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