There are far too many applications in the private beta phase are worth to be profiled in this blog, including this one, i.e. SmallWorlds. I’ll briefly explain its specific features, but I think you’ll be realized the full features of SmallWorlds when it opens its public access in June 2 next month.

SmallWorlds was developed by an Adobe partner based in New Zealand called Outsmart. They have several projects in their labs, and all of them are focus efforts on creating Flash or Flex related applications that can be leveraged in a Web-based technology. SmallWorlds considered as a grand vision for Outsmart, carried a motto which is “build your own world.” Since its unveiling, SmallWorlds has been full of surprise, including the praise of a Rich Internet Application Evangelist from Adobe, in an article entitled, “Smallworld: The coolest Flex application I’ve ever seen.”

Since SmallWorlds venture into the field of 3-D, it is inevitably be compared with another strong player Second Life or HiPiHi. Although there are no mature standards to determine what’s a 3-D player should act or behave in, but SmallWorlds has emerged itself as a strong contender in this field, particularly in view of its differentiation strategy, in terms of usefulness, and in the form of convenient.

1) SmallWorlds is available in any Web browser. In other word, an user will not need to download and install a SmallWorlds software to run it.

2) With a distinct URL address of a 3-D space, you can instantly share your discovery on SmallWorlds with your friends.

3) You can customize the avatar you created, and this should be critical for a 3-D lover.

4) You should expect the 3-D virtual space to evolve rapidly as the interaction of 3-D users evolve, and SmallWorlds set to capitalize on this direction. As SmallWorlds said, “Users can share experiences like playing games, watching YouTube videos, listening to their favorite band, browsing through photo galleries, and a whole lot more.”

5) The availability of full 3-D chat environment. A standard 2D Flex User Interface components projected into a 3D world, as mentioned in a 2007 post.

6) SmallWorlds is going to open its platform for the third-part application developers. This approach is proven popular, as more casual games are being rendered in this 3-D platform.

To know more about SmallWorlds, check out their latest post entitled, “A virtual world for the masses.” Stay tuned.

Second Life is a hot thing among the 3-D Internet users, but in China, there is another great startup that showed to the world that there’s another virtual world beside Second Life, i.e. HiPiHi. Frankly, I’m not logged-into it yet, my friend told me it’s not easy to sign-up successfully during the first day it offered the public access. In particular, it attracted huge traffic in the first day of their officially launched on the Web. According to HiPiHi (in Mandarin), they’re the creator of China’s first 3-D virtual world, and after they took a considerable amount of private beta, approx. one year, they’ve decided to launched their 3-D virtual environment on April 18th this month.

At present, they’ve 43 thousand users, most notably change for this public launch is the redesign of their username ID system. A new ID support numerical symbols, from 6 to 16 digits, as well as the Chinese character, minimum digit is 3. In other word, as a Chinese resides in South-East countries, I can sign-up by using my real Chinese name. In order to attract more potential users turn to this HiPiHi for experiment, they’ve a new interface design, with most of images are at dark grey color. For the non-Chinese users, a lot of 3-D images have been created to supplement the Chinese words, so that they’ll get to know more deeper about what happening during their experiment with HiPiHi. Of course, an user will get the overall look and feel of this HiPiHi as she explore this China’s first 3-D virtual world. Until today, HiPiHi community has been created 12084 homes, 572476 creations, and 510 groups, at the time of my writing.

Additionally, an user is entitled to search for the un-sold land to build her own house there. In near future, I expect users can also create and sell items online to the other HiPiHi users, and eventually make some profit in that environment, similarly to Second Life, where an user can earn Linden dollars and convert them to real money.

3-D virtual world is nothing new to the social networking arena, as HiPiHi users can get so much fun to be in that environment. An existing HiPiHi user called blackhumor is planned to get his darling to have a virtual marriage ceremony on HiPiHi. Understandably, users can take their HiPiHi social networking activities to the next level, in spite of all these activities will likely push HiPiHi to the edge, but when consider the partnership of HiPiHi and IBM, both agreed to continually improve HiPiHi’s platform, many beautiful things can happen.

Update: Below is the picture of HiPiHi’s virtual environment, with two of the motional avatars standing on the ground. While playing around with the avatar created with my friend, I hardly find members or houses on HiPiHi. A huge number of the users seemed to be not familiar on how to manipulate the avatars, in viewed of the avatars are jumping from one location to another.

Below is another picture on how a member interact with each other through the instant messaging service. An user can choose to communicate with the other by typing English or Simplified Chinese. A chat dialog box appeared on the left bottom side will include all of the messages.

Perhaps Second Life has made it simple for innovative academics to teach, experiment and collaborate with students and colleagues, and now one of the reputable universities in Asia South, i.e. National University of Singapore (NUS) has launched its Second Life campus. I’m aware of the fact that a number of well-known universities are turning to Second Life to experiment virtual classes, but NUS’s Second Life campus is the first in the South East Asia, if I’m not mistaken.

To know more about the NUS Second Life campus, you can go to its site (click here).

via [Entrepreneur 27 Singapore]

While everyone seem to be talking about the greatness of Facebook platform and why the small startups should explore the opportunities beyond it, but please don’t forget about Second Life. Second Life has released the voice first look viewer, a test version of Second Life viewer that replaced the WindLight. This viewer enabled users three different mode of voice chat, according to this post. Currently, this voice features are not perfect yet and bugs should be expected at this moment. But before an user starting to use this system, she is advised to check the voicemap to ensure that voice is enabled on her land.

I trying to understand the implications and impact of this voice first look viewer on the Second Life’s overall strategy. When Second Life takes care of the voice feature of the avatars at Second Life, might generate more bottom line impact than one can expected. As you know, the better voice enabled in Second Life will make life more easy for a lot of people in that virtual world. This is a project that should be never ending, the better voice chat, or voice gestures, more younger generation of people will likely to join Second Life in the future.

Meanwhile, Playboy and Comcast have building their foundations on Second Life. I wonder small startups are fascinating about the Facebook platform and in contrast, big corporates are attracted by the merchant opportunities available on Second Life. For Second Life, this is a virtual world and web-based voice push, what’s next for them? What I know now is, we starting to raise higher expectations for a transformational shift that happened at Second Life. Put simply, well done, Second Life.

I came cross the latest news at AOL that it is going to set up an area in Second Life. It is a project that called AOL Pointe and starting from 18th this month, AOL is accepting applications to participate in the beta test of AOL Pointe, the upcoming online virtual 3-D environment.

AOL Pointe will feature different sections, such as an amphitheater and an extreme sports park, in which the company plans to highlight AOL content and services like AOL Music, Moviefone, TMZ, and Lat34.com, as reported by this article.

This is a shrewd move by AOL. With the company positioned itself in providing the online services to consumers in the U.S., it seems that the creation of AOL Pointe will be a value-added and should be considered as a profit-center for AOL in the future. As I looked at the Economics Statistics of Second Life, the population, monthly spending power, and the transactions were huge and therefore, will be an ideal place for AOL to further conduct its merchandise sales there. In matter of fact, the way I see AOL, I believed it generate their revenues mainly from advertisements of merchandisers, commissions on merchandise sales, and fees from the listings on its directory. And therefore, AOL Pointe seems as another source of revenues for them on the web.