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    If Mosaic made the web, Cobalt could make the metaverse

    http://justingibbs.com/if-mosaic-made-the-web-cobalt-could-m...
    176 days ago in Justin Gibbs — that virtual worlds story guy · Authority: 8

    If Mosaic made the web, Cobalt could make the metaverse justingibbs — Wed, 2008-06-11 14:29 I finally got some time to take a real look at Cobalt and was really impressed. I've been tinkering with Croquet, on which Cobalt is based, for over a year but as I'm not a programmer I was a bit limited. I could always see the potential, however seeing Cobalt that potential has become all that more clear. First Cobalt is a metaverse browser. Think of it as Mosaic browser, predecessor to Netscape Navigator. One of the wonderful things Mosaic unleashed on the world and created the modern web was images. Cobalt is the natural extension of that, introducing 3D. And if Mosaic/Netscape sparked the explosion of the web, think of what Cobalt will do? Maybe that is getting ahead of ourselves, though you can see why people are excited. What has me more excited is Cobalt spaces or worlds. Mosaic and Netscape Navigator incorporated editors, so you could not only view pages but build your own through the editor. Hosting those pages was a different story. With Cobalt however you have the editor and since it is based on peer to peer, as long as your computer is online so is your world. This power led Americo Damasceno to post to the Croquet user group: Paul, I believe that the future existence of millions of discontinuous and independent little personal spaces/virtual-worlds , like Cobalt creates, having independent sources for their lives, could be the inspiration for interesting stories. Like we have millions of blogs, we will have millions of virtual Cobalt islands, with different rules and cultural styles... Independence. This is what Second Life doesn't has... Many "Federations", off course, having" similar costumes, can be created . Someone can be called "United Spaces", for example. Americo In some ways that vision looks similar to the virtual spaces some companies are hoping to bring to the web - taking a little bit of the metaverse, 3D spaces, and making them available to users on the web. Companies like Vivaty, SmallWorlds, and even Metaplace. Vivaty's virtual spaces are available through a Facebook widget. Cobalt is more than that, but even it understands the potential of taking the metaverse to the users as they plan to build a browser plugin. However not everyone is convinced this move to 3D is a good thing, as the comments show on the post Social networking sites to go 3D. Why do people insist on trying to impose 3D over what is fundamentally best presentated as a 2D medium? Three dimensional virtual reality websites for shopping was meant to be the future 10 years ago, which turned out to be completely wrong - given that they are actually harder to navigate than a 2D interface. The cutsey 3D desktop interfaces like Microsoft BOB also failed, not bringing anything better to the table other than making everything look 3D. You actually have to show why these 3D worlds are superior for navigation and information presentation than any current technology. Of course I remember a time when they built 2D virtual malls on the web. They died and Amazon came to define the market. I want to see what Amazon's Cobalt will bring about. Cobalt