Mashing the real world with virtual worlds a monetizing opportunity

Virtual worlds and social networks in general are emerging phenomena which can benefit from information in the real world. For example, since its introduction in 2003, Second Life has grown explosively, and today is inhabited by nearly 10 million residents from around the globe. A fair number of the residents make part of or their entire real world living by running business on Second Life. Communications in this vast digital continent happen between avatars and make use of web facilities. Leveraging context aware capabilities such as presence, location, identity, anchored in the real world opens monetizing opportunities for the service providers. Services on the real word were mashed with Second Life used here as a typical example of a 3D virtual world. The authors present in this paper how the integration of these two worlds was achieved. This integration leveraged rapid application prototyping, development and deployment and brings the potential of a dramatic reduction in service lifecycle costs.