weblin at the Virtual Worlds conference 2008

The Virtual Worlds conference will be taking place in NY on April 3-4 and it is there that weblin will be making its first public appearance in the USA. Virtual Worlds is a small but important conference and exhibition where the who is who of the US scene meet up. From Linden Labs to Sulake, from Multiverse to Metaverse, from IBM to the Electric Sheep Company - they are all there as exhibitors at the relatively small number of 60 stands. weblin has seized the favourable opportunity, when calculated in dollars, and booked stand number 60 :-). We are really looking forward to our first close contact with the US market.

Lancia Online Press Conference with weblin Avatars

Things were ablaze on Thursday morning on the web page of the Lancia Momo Design Project . At 11.30, the Italian motor makers Lancia (FIAT Group Automobiles S.p.A.) held the world’s first on-line press conference with avatars on its own web page. Participants were real journalists and press representatives from Italy, the conference language was Italian. Together with the presenter, the Lancia hostess Angel presented the web page and the advertising campaign for the Lancia Momo Design Project. It is all about heaven and hell, about angels and the devilishly passionate characteristics of Lancia’s new Ypsilon model. The press representatives had installed the weblin software before the conference and then went on-line with their own avatars. The avatars designed by Lancia especially for the on-line campaign all have a Lancia Ypsilon logo on their t-shirts. Communication is quite simple; you write in your own speech balloon. The web page is, in a manner of speaking, the press conference room. Everyone who enters the web page with a weblin avatar can see and chat to all the others. Weblin connects the virtual world of avatars with real life, with people and with the real content of web pages. I do not wish to predict the worse but who needs an island in Second Life when much more is possible in the real Internet so much more easily?