Virtual Worlds and E-commerce: Technologies and Applications for Building Customer Relationships

Just released by IGI Global is the culmination of extraordinary efforts from a collaboration of some of the brightest minds in the industry. Virtual Worlds and E-commerce: Technologies and Applications for Building Customer Relationships. Author/Editor Dr. Barbara Ciaramitaro (Walsh College, USA), gathered an amazing group of industry experts to author this groundbreaking and insightful book, bringing it to the public.

The book presents various ideas on how the use of digitally created worlds is changing the face of e-commerce and extending the use of internet technologies to create a more immersive experience for customers. Containing current research on various aspects of the use of virtual worlds, this book includes a discussion of the elements of virtual worlds; the evolution of e-commerce to virtual commerce (v-commerce); the convergence of online games and virtual worlds; current examples of virtual worlds in use by various businesses, the military, and educational institutions; the economics of virtual worlds: discussions on legal, security and technological issues facing virtual worlds; a review of some human factor issues in virtual worlds; and the future of virtual worlds and e-commerce.

Virtuals Worlds Expert, Technology Trend Forecaster and Founder of Andromeda Media Group, William Burns, contributed his insights by authoring Chapter 17 of this academic book, The Future of Virtual Worlds in E-Commerce.

Below you will find the abstract for William’s Chapter:

The future of the evolving, collaborative communications structure will be impacted to an enormous and ever increasing degree by the merging of e-commerce and virtual worlds. Such media outlets will bring new and innovative methods by which to interact with clients and customers, as well as business to business. As these technologies continue to evolve, bringing higher definition, realism, and the power to manipulate potential customer experiences, increasing numbers of people will come to the realization that virtual worlds and similar environments are an essential part of an online communications experience. Evidence of this paradigm shift can be noted in the multitudes of brand names which also inhabit these virtual environments through countless offerings and marketing campaigns.

To order a full copy, visit IGI Global


DOI: 10.4018/978-1-61692-808-7.ch017 ISBN13: 9781616928087
ISBN10: 1616928085
EISBN13: 9781616928100

Update of Doom

So among the things I was up to today, updating the website was one of them. I had previously thrown in a ton of AJAX and javascript for the site but never actually put them to use, instead simply laying the foundations for a later date. While I am not completely finished with this AJAX thing, I did manage to accomplish quite a bit for this round. And then something entirely odd happened...

Firefox decided it no longer wished to display PNG files. Actually, I should rephrase that - Firefox refused to display one particular PNG file I was trying to use for the new design. The image in question happened to be the new header image with the AW Gate, of which I originally saved as banner1.png on the server. No big deal, I figured, since I had already used PNG format for most of the site.

So I go to load it up in Firefox to check what it looks like and it simply doesn't show up.

Weird... so I crack open Internet Explorer 7 and it shows up fine. Stranger still. Then I ask a friend to check out the page using Opera (you know, the code nazi) and it shows up in Opera. Now I'm totally baffled...

Once again I open Firefox and still it doesn't show up. At this point I start tearing apart the HTML by hand to see if there is a missing div tag or something that IE7 would overlook... no dice. For all intents and purposes, the code was fine and it should have worked.

So after about an hour of tearing out my hair and using words reserved for less of a family occasion, I finally just open Photoshop thinking "This is a stupid reason for Firefox not to see this... it can't possibly be the reason..."

So I open the graphic and simply rename it. Uploaded it to the server and bingo... it worked in firefox.

What the heck just happened here? The world may never know... in any event, along with using the reflect tag for some images on the site (I had previously set the framework up for this but never used it) I also redid the Updates section to match the theme of the website. Again, I used a framework I had set up but previously didn't use (being the AJAX RSS feeder) to pull the RSS for this section you are reading into the custom layout for the website.

While I was at it, I decided to make a few more graphics for the website (logo for the Metaverse EX listing on the products page, and also the AW2EX) and throw the reflect on them. So all in all, things look good. There are still some things I need to work out for later (like the header for the templates section) and I am thinking about changing the Updates link to read News instead - apparently this may be confusing for some readers.

I also decided (out of shear boredom) to place a Digg link on the first page as a private joke to try and get a story about VR5 Online buried. Seriously, I wanted people to bury the story just out of boredom... lol. Either way I didn't care, but just wanted to see what would happen.

Also changed was the wording for the About Us section to reflect our laid back attitude (or more importantly, mine) and also to announce that VR5 Online apparently qualifies as a Web 3.0 company. Seriously I have no idea what that means, I was trying to validate some AJAX on the site to make sure it registered and the site that did the validation said we do not qualify as a Web 2.0 company, to which I raised an eyebrow.

Further down the list it was overjoyed to inform me that we were a Web 3.0 company instead. Now I'm just outright confused, but my train of thought says that 3.0 is better than 2.0 any day. So if Web 2.0 is the next big thing, then Web 3.0 must be like a religious experience to geeks or something...

Anyway, that's my news for today... other than that, I'm still messing around with the AJAX stuff. Oh wait.. one more thing...

I noticed recently that there seems to be two prominent frameworks for AJAX being used. In one corner you have Prototype and in another JQuery. Now, I know people from either camp could go on for years about the benefits of either, but here's the deal - I use JQuery simply because it more or less makes my life that much easier to code. I haven't had a chance to mess with Prototype in detail yet, but it seems a hell of a lot harder to work with than JQuery.

So what is the concern? Well the Web 2.0 validator looks specifically for Prototype when checking for Web 2.0 and not JQuery (or both). So many of the things that would normally qualify as Web 2.0 and AJAX simply are a no show to this validator because there is no instance of Prototype being used.

Just something that came to mind on the spur of the moment. Why is it that Web 2.0 has to be ridiculously hard to deal with in order to garner any credit? I mean, if somebody creates an easy to use framework, then why try to discredit it?

I don't think I'll even understand how this works... and trust me, I have over ten years in sociology, so you would think I would be able to have a bit of insight. After all of these years, the only thing I know for sure is that people in general are lunatics.

And I mean that in the nicest possible manner, of course...

Heavily Medicated and Enjoying the Padded Room - Darian Knight