"One of the weaknesses of worlds such as Second Life is their inability to handle collaborative works with data. OpenSim, the community open source project that is beginning to rival Second Life, has HTML on a prim - but is HTML enough? We're really talking about a difference between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0, as much as I hate those terms. I can haz AJAX?"
I never have really understood the obsession with HTML on a prim within virtual worlds, let alone AJAX. Until you have totally immersive VR, the virtual world experience is always going to be like any other application - in a window, on a screen with other windows along side it. And in those other windows, you can run other applications.
Of course, it's neat to be able to collaborate with other avatars in a virtual space. But does that offer a better user experience than simply using document collaboration tools like, say, Google Docs? Or shared workspaces? I think the answer is "no" - and until we have immersive VR, I think that's going to stay the case.
