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A patent filing by Apple is prompting speculation that the Mac and iPod maker could be getting ready to open up Apple stores in the virtual realm--perhaps in Second Life.

On Thursday, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office published a patent application from Apple titled "Enhancing online shopping atmosphere," filed in September 2006. The PTO's action was first noted by the Mac news site MacNN.

Judging by the patent application, the company apparently is looking to do more than just spruce up its own Apple Online Store. Rather, it seems interested in creating a whole new experience for consumers looking to buy its products via the Web.

In dissecting the application, MacNN picked up on a number of clues that portend a commercial undertaking of the sort that have been popping up in the virtual world Second Life in recent years. And indeed, even a quick reading of the PTO document makes such an assumption quite plausible.

First this, from the Background of the Invention paragraph:

(O)ne drawback of online shopping is that the experience can feel sterile and isolating. Customers in such an environment may be less likely to have positive feelings about the online shopping experience, may be less inclined to engage in the online equivalent of window shopping (e.g., will not linger in front of a display), and may ultimately spend less money than their counterparts who shop in physical stores.

And then this, in Detailed Description, after Apple has titled a hypothetical visitor to the online store "Alice":

Other visitors to the site are represented by human shaped icons such as icon 118. Both Alice and one other visitor (118) are currently viewing the main page of the Acme website. They are represented by icons in entryway 120 accordingly. Other visitors are viewing other portions of the website.

People shopping at a site like Amazon.com, Zappos, or Store.apple.com don't get to see others while they're browsing and buying. On Second Life, by contrast, the core experience is all about seeing the avatars of other participants.

And Second Life is no stranger to commercial endeavors or the incursions of high-tech companies such as IBM. It's worth noting again, however, that the Apple patent application was submitted in 2006, during the first wave of corporate interest in what virtual worlds might offer to a profit-minded business.

So do take a deep breath before concluding that this is a done deal. As Wagner James Au says on the GigaOm site--while also noting that "when a Second Life user built an unofficial Apple Store last year, it generated tremendous buzz (as the 270K views of this YouTube video suggest.)":

So does this mean Steve Jobs is going to show off his avatar in a virtual Apple store at the next big Mac show? Possibly, but even with my pronounced Second Life bias, I'm more than a touch skeptical. Companies file all kinds of patents that go unused, as a way of preemptively staking out territory.

For parents, enticing kids to do their chores is often about making deals--a trade of sorts, like taking out the trash for extra time watching TV.

For George Zachary and his 10-year-old stepdaughter, that real-world exchange happens online through a site called Handipoints, a digital chore-list manager for parents and their kids. The Web site lets parents set a list of tasks for their children--like washing the dishes or filling the dog's bowl--and kids can rack up points for completing the list. With enough points, children can cash them in for digital gear in the site's virtual world, or for tangible goods with a few dollars from mom and dad.

"She earned points to get some Disney DVDs and books called The Warriors about an underground legion of cats," said Zachary, who as a venture capitalist knows about deal-making. "The site is her start page."

This arrangement could pay off doubly for Zachary. His venture firm Charles River Venture invested around $800,000 in Handipoints last spring with a group of angels that included former Googlers Georges Harik and Aydin Senkut, Inspiration Ventures, and Keith Rabois, an investor in YouTube.

Handipoints is one of a raft of new child-focused sites and virtual worlds that are competing with established kid favorites like Club Penguin, Gaia Online, and Webkinz. Like those sites, Handipoints runs its own virtual world with games and personalized avatars, but the company has a slightly different angle on fostering community. It's trying first to be a tool for parents and kids.

"We're trying to motivate kids to stay active in the real world," said Viva Chu, who founded the company in January 2007 after helping develop the architecture of Internet marketing company Adteractive.

The company makes money from the sale of goods from the site--books and DVDs, for example--and it plans to sell advertising that would be targeted toward parents. It also plans to charge subscriptions.

Since its launch last spring, the company has drawn about 150,000 registered users of both parents and kids. So it has a long way to go before it can compete with the big sites like Club Penguin, which draws millions of users every month. But Chu said the company, which employs 20 people in Oakland and overseas, expects to raise several million dollars this summer in a Series A round of funding to build out the service.

With luck, that won't be a chore in a tightening economy.

Numedeon, the 9-year-old company behind kids' virtual world Whyville.net, is taking a leap into producing simulated environments for adults, starting with a sports theme. Called SportsBlox, the site launched in beta this week as part of March Madness.

Created by scientists from Cal Tech, Numedeon is also growing up in another way. For the first time in its history, it has taken money from an institutional investor in a series B round of financing.

In a sign that investors are particularly excited about virtual worlds, the company plans to raise between $1 million and $2 million, according to Numedeon's Chief Operating Officer Jay Goss. (Numedeon plans to formally announce its funding partner April 2.) In its nine years, it has raised roughly $3 million from private investors, including the game show host Pat Sajak.

Like Whyville, SportsBlox lets people customize a virtual persona, chat with friends, and use digital currency to buy gear inside the world. Unlike Whyville, which is designed for kids age 8 to 15, SportsBlox caters to the jock set and other sports junkies, primarily men between the ages of 18 to 35. Instead of beaches and educational outposts, the site will largely feature virtual watering holes.

Goss said he hopes SportsBlox will help niche sports enthusiasts, from Nascar lovers to kite surfers, find each other inside the "corner" bar. For example, the site has Gahden (a play on the Boston Garden), a virtual hangout for Boston sports fans; Break Lights for L.A. sports fans (because of all the traffic in Los Angeles); and Curve Ball, a virtual hot spot for baseball fans. In all, the site has 20 sports bars and a "tailgate" area. As a means to make money, Goss said he hopes to bring on branded environments from marketers, too, if and when the site grows popular.

"This is indicative of where the company is now headed," Goss said. "We've spent nine years understanding the experience of virtual worlds and we've decided to become a media company that has multiple virtual worlds."

The company plans to run at least five virtual worlds by the end of the year, including launching its own enthusiast site in an area such as music, politics, or entertainment. This summer, it expects to unveil an international version of Whyville for kids in the European market, and it will introduce another world for older Americans.

Goss added that with the funds, Numedeon plans to buy its first virtual-world company this year. He did not say to whom the company is talking.

Online kids playgrounds are more popular than ever. Disney Online said Tuesday that it will add to its online services for children with a new virtual world called Pixie Hollow, based on fictional characters like Disney's Tinkerbell and building on the site DisneyFairies.com. Similar to Disney's Toontown and Club Penguin, the company's newest virtual world will feature instant chat, games and tools to personal the environment. Disney did not specify when Pixie will launch, but it said that it will open the first phase later this year.

Also on Tuesday, AOL said that it will relaunch its kids site KOL with newly featured content from National Geographic Kids, among others. The new site will also let kids customize the page, sign up for a personal e-mail address and play as many as 100 games.

The sites were unveiled at the Toy Fair in New York.

Steve Parkis, Disney Online's senior vice president for online products, said the company also introduced new Disney Fairies toys that will connect to the Pixie Hollow virtual world and let girls make friends, among other activities. "Fans have already created millions of Fairy avatars on DisneyFairies.com, making it evident that there is a strong desire for additional content around these beloved stories and characters," he said in a statement.

Habbo, a virtual world for teens, signed a deal with the William Morris Agency, one of Hollywood's oldest and largest talent agencies. As part of the deal, WMA will promote its celebrity sports and entertainment clients within the digital world and help Habbo forge new promotional partnerships in Hollywood.

Financial terms weren't disclosed, but the two companies will likely seek shared revenue by selling virtual goods to teens. Habbo, which is run by Finland-based Sulake Corp., draws as many as 8 million teen visitors from around the world, with 1.3 million coming from the United States, according to the company.

The agreement comes on the heels of a partnership with the movie studio Paramount Digital. Under that deal, Habbo will promote virtual characters and merchandise from Paramount films, including Beowulf, Mean Girls, and the upcoming The Spiderwick Chronicles.

Those kinds of promotions could grow exponentially with the WMA deal, raising questions for parenting advocates about the commercialization of virtual worlds targeted at teens. Still, WMA sees it as a positive.

"William Morris' Digital Group will be a key partner helping Habbo develop ideal business and marketing opportunities with the leaders of the entertainment industry," Jim Wiatt, chairman and CEO of WMA, said in a statement.

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom is doing his part to take away the stigma of being a geek.

In a fireside chat in the virtual world Second Life, Newsom responded to a question from Philip Rosedale, CEO of Second Life publisher Linden Lab, about virtual worlds not just attracting geeks.

The mayor laughed and offered a wonderful response: "Why are you so sensitive about geeks? It's all good," Newsom said. "We're all geeks."

Second Life may have nudged its Grid onto the mobile screen, but it's Gemini's EXplo platform for enabling mini virtual worlds that earned a spot on Deloitte's Wireless Fast 50 list at the CTIA Wireless conference (coverage).

In S'town, a game built on the EXplo platform, users can chat on screen, buy products, stare at advertising billboards, and meet up with online friends, even whooshing to a meeting point on the other end of the expansive world. That's in Japan, where impressive phones on the Softbank network are already attracting a demographic of "young, active, and 'fun'" 18 to 24 year-old women who don't mind expressing themselves in one of 11 rudimentary avatars.

North America's S'town is apparently a much different world. This audience will be able to integrate with services like YouTube and Facebook. In a demo, Stephen Sims, Gemini's Director of Product Management for EXplo, walked a bouncy, pig-tailed avatar into a Facebook gallery whose virtual walls were decked with album images. In another view, pressing the phone's soft key button reeled through images vertically as if on a giant turbine, from the far "wall."

North American carriers will begin marketing games like S'town using Gemini's platform "sometime in 2008," Sims assured me. Europeans will likely get them much sooner; carrier talks are underway.

Correction: This blog initially misstated the day of the announcement. It is Tuesday.

More toy makers are joining the virtual worlds' fray. Playhut, a toy company known for making physical play structures like inflatable fire engines or playhouses for kids, is trying its hand at online virtual worlds for the 6 years and older set.

On Tuesday, the company said it launched two online worlds--one for boys and one for girls--under the brand GoLive2.com Kraze. The free sites enable members play games, dress up virtual characters and chat with friends--once parents send a permission slip via e-mail to the site.

Playhut has stiff competition online, however. Rival toy brands Mattel and Hasbro run online game sites for kids that are among the top 15 most-visited among children, according to research firm ComScore. Mattel's Barbie brand also recently opened a new virtual world for girls that is pegged to a line of MP3 player dress-up dolls.

SAN JOSE, Calif.--Can a legacy company known for polished storytelling stay relevant to a generation of kids growing used to telling their own stories?

That's the tough question for Paul Yanover, executive vice president and managing director of Disney Online, which runs Disney.com and the newly acquired virtual world Club Penguin. Yanover spoke here Wednesday at the Virtual Worlds conference and admitted that growing Disney's Internet properties is a work in progress. After all, one of the world's most popular brands for children ended up buying newcomer virtual world Club Penguin for $350 million this summer.

"It's a new space for us to figure out," Yanover said.

On the Internet, the company is focused on three things: fun, safety and integrity, Yanover said. That means that Disney's sites must be engaging and safe for kids, but they also must hold to an established story line consistent with the company's brand and delivering on parents' expectations. For example, Yanover joked that he'd have a hard time putting up a digital billboard in Disney's upcoming Pirates of the Carribean virtual world.

That's why Disney Online veers toward structured environments built around a story or game, and the company will continue on that path, he said. But down the road it plans to explore offerings that give kids more control over their experience. It's already dabbled in that area. In January, Disney Online allowed kids to create their own fairy, and run a Web site around the animation. Three million kids participated.

Still, a parent in the audience asked that Disney offer tools to kid members of Club Penguin so that they could build things in the virtual world. Yanover said he liked the idea, but hinted later that it might take some time to bring in that functionality.

"We're a polished content company. But we're moving down the spectrum of participation and user-created additions," he said.