Webware

If you're running a business that has a presence in a virtual world, market research firm Gartner thinks you might want to make sure your employees' avatars aren't dressed like Lady Gaga at the VMAs.

"Companies with codes of conduct for other Web activities, such as blogging, should be able to extend those policies into virtual environments," a release Wednesday from Gartner announcing its new report "Avatars in the Enterprise: Six Guidelines to Enable Success" explained. "However, because 3-D environments add the visual dimension, they will need to make sure that their policies also cover dress codes."

That means your avatar might want to lose the sparkly pink torpedo bra, metallic leggings, and giant bat wings. When it's representing your company, that is.

The presence of businesses in virtual worlds like Second Life is nothing new--and has been much derided in recent years. But according to Gartner, it's still on the rise, particularly when it comes to training and virtual meetings. "Avatars are creeping into business environments and will have far reaching implications for enterprises, from policy to dress code, behavior, and computing platform requirements," the release explained. Gartner estimates that 70 percent of enterprises will be regulating the avatars of employees who use virtual worlds for business.

Two years ago, Gartner put out a study detailing the risks and pratfalls of doing business in virtual worlds, among them the difficulty of brand and reputation management. Now it's getting more specific: Gartner now says that employees ought to know how to operate their avatars properly, use the same degrees of discretion and professionalism that they do on social-networking sites, and even keep separate avatars for personal and professional use.

Twitter recently changed its default user avatar--you know, the one that pops up if you haven't uploaded a picture of your own--to a cute little bird icon. Unfortunately, then the service got a little bit overzealous and started chomping up existing users' photos, replacing them with the defaults. Oops!

"Many people in my timeline suddenly have default user icons," Twitter engineer Alex Payne posted to his Twitter account on Thursday. "This is probably not intentional. I have inquired with colleagues."

By the time the end of the day rolled around on Friday, there were still plenty of missing user avatars.

"We're having an issue with disappearing user and background images," Twitter wrote on its status blog on Friday morning. "Those affected will have their custom images replaced by defaults. This is due to a caching error on our side which means that your images are not lost and have not been deleted. They are not displaying correctly and we are working to get them to load properly."

This is the second time that a disappearing-user-avatar incident has occurred on Twitter this year. Back in April, infrastructure problems resulted in many Twitter user icons temporarily disappearing--including CEO Evan Williams'. It's unclear whether the same or a similar error downed avatars this time around.

Weblin is a service that allows people to have avatars that appear on the Web pages they visit and communicate with any other Weblin users who are visiting the same pages.

(Credit: Weblin)

If you're a social media addict but think that visiting regular Web sites is a lonely experience, you might want to take a look at Weblin.

Created by a German company, Weblin is designed to make the experience of surfing Web sites social--or make services like Facebook or MySpace.com more social. It does so by letting users create an avatar that they can then, effectively, take with them as they move around from site to site.

If they then find themselves on a site that is being visited at the same time by other Weblin users, then they can communicate with each other.

Weblin's main model is a small download, but it is also about to launch a light version that will require no downloads or plug-ins and will simply auto-assign users an avatar rather than them getting to choose their own.

(Credit: Weblin)

The main Weblin service is a small download that allows users to register and then create their own avatar. But next week, Weblin plans to launch a light version of the service that requires no download or plug-in and which assigns an avatar to everyone who uses it.

That means that users would have less control over the experience, but at the same time they'd be able to use Weblin without doing anything except use the Web. Additionally, the light version will not require registration. Rather, users will just have to enter a URL into a Weblin page.

Down the line, Weblin says, it hopes to make it possible to integrate Weblin with users' existing avatars from some virtual worlds.

For the time being, of course, Weblin's utility seems like it only comes from there being a critical mass of users and when users visit sites that are popular with others employing the service. But over time, if it grows large enough, it could provide a fun alternative to the traditional way of using Web sites.

On June 10, Geek Gestalt hits the highways for Road Trip 2008. I'll start in Orlando, Fla., and visit many of the South's most interesting destinations. Stay tuned, and be sure to keep up, both now and during the trip, with what I'm doing on Twitter.

BigStage founder Jonathan Strietzel mugs in front of Steven Harwell's avatar.

(Credit: Rafe Needleman / CNET)

LAS VEGAS-- Intel CEO Paul Otellini's CES keynote was sparkling. In contrast to Bill Gates' pastel portrait of the future, Otellini presented a concrete vision of a personal, reactive Web, and the challenges to creating it (Silicon, Infrastructure, Context, and Interface). For a full rundown, see Dan Farber's writeup on ZDNet.

Intel loves where the Web is going. The more interactive and personal it gets, the more processing power is required and the more new chips Intel sells, for both servers and local workstations. The most interesting (and newest) product that Otellini brought to the stage in his keynote was an automatic avatar builder made by BigStage.

BigStage creates a model of anyone's head by using just three photos--head-on, rotated a little, and rotated a little more. The company processes these pictures on its own servers and ends up with a model that knows which pixels your eyes are (so it can move and blink them), where your mouth is, and so it. In the Intel keynote demo, BigStage found Jonathan Strietzel created an avatar of Smash Mouth singer Steven Harwell. It was eerily good--much better and less creepy than avatars I've seen previously.

The technology comes from a CIA-funded project at the University of California. It was originally intended for scanning surveillance cams, since at its core it measures the three-dimensional geometry of key points on a face, for example between eyes, or the shape of a person's cheekbone. The fact that the algorithm can extract a complete 3D model from only three images, and with what is now reasonably inexpensive computation (this is where Intel comes in) is what makes it commercially viable.

BigStage hosts the avatars and is looking at several ways to get them out onto the Web, to populate the virtual world with facsimiles of real people, instead of the cartoons that live there now. People will likely be able to create widgets of themselves that they can embed on blogs and social networks, and perhaps in existing virtual worlds like Second Life and gaming networks like Xbox Live. The company is also doing deals with brands and music labels. Strietzel told me that a big public product will be available that lets users put their mug in the "most popular music video of all time." (Thriller, right?)

I hope the company delivers on its demo. Look for public examples of BigStage technology in April or May.

See also: Gizmoz, Digimask.

We bet you know someone who does everything online, from banking to making friends, to kicking back. If you're stuck trying to find great gifts for the constant blogger, video vulture, or online socialite in your life, take a look at this virtual gift guide that shows you get it, and you care.

We're total suckers for video products that let us use our face. A few months back, Caroline put my head on a woman's body with the launch of JibJab's Starring You service, and shortly before that, Rafe played around with Fix8, which lets you overlay live video with avatar and object overlays. Both are vastly different technologies, but the idea is the same: quick entertainment with very little effort on the part of the end user. Along the same lines, Gizmoz, which has been providing 3-D face-mapping technology to the masses since late May, is launching a new product this morning called "be a star."

Be a star is essentially a really simple way to insert yourself into a variety of clips from TV shows, movies, and music videos. Using the same technology found in its basic talking avatar service, Gizmoz will take any photo of someone's face you throw at it, and convert it into a 3-D head that's capable of minute facial movements. You can sort through clips that use just one user face, or multiples that let you add up to three different people. The resulting video can then be stuck on a social networking page, or shared with a simple link.

For now you're limited to 10 clips, but the company is planning to add more every day. Eventually Gizmoz aims to let users use the same technology on any of its videos, allowing you to paste your friend's head on the family dog, or onto the Thanksgiving turkey.

I've embedded a sample video below, which I put together in just a few minutes. The facial processor only hiccupped once, but it was because of my crummy photo of Rafe's head. If you've already got processed 3-D heads in your gallery, it takes a little over a minute to put the entire thing together. My one qualm is that while depending on the original clip, the heads tend to be tiny and the video only comes in one size, although I think you'll agree this is a pretty great way to make embarrassing videos of your boss.

Screenshot of the U.B.Funkeys virtual world, Terrapinia.

(Credit: Mattel)

NEW YORK--U.B.Funkeys is a new line of vinyl figures from Mattel that double as avatars in a virtual world.

Instead of entering a code as with the Webkinz, you place your Funkey in a USB docking station. The character is then recognized in the virtual world of Terrapinia, a place filled with funk and other music.

The starter kit with USB docking station and two characters is available for $19.99, with additional Funkeys vinyl figures for $4.99 each. There are over 40 different Funkeys and each one has unique abilities in-world in addition to a bio and personality.

There are "normal," "rare" and "very rare" Funkeys. The more rare, it seems, the more power they have in-world.

Scratch, for example, is a character with a turntable for a face. He's marked "rare" and whenever Scratch plays music while in a room with other Funkeys, they are compelled to dance, according to his bio.

As with the Webkinz, owners can use their Funkeys for their corresponding vinyl figure to play casual games, earn points and buy virtual stuff for their virtual crib.

The funk music that plays in some areas of the world and the less cutesy non-pastel graphics, make the U.B.Funkeys a likely step-up as kids grow out of the Webkinz.

Adults will find them charming, too. The story and characters are written at a level of double-meaning that may go over kids heads, but will give parents a knowing chuckle.

Sprout

(Credit: Mattel)

Fallout

(Credit: Mattel)

Bones

(Credit: Mattel)

Tiki

(Credit: Mattel)

Vroom

(Credit: Mattel)

(Credit: CNET Networks)

The truth is, some people just don't have much style; and it's up to you to usher in the revelation.

That's one way to look at a Yahoo Messenger plug-in that helps you give your buddies' avatars a makeover (see special feature for more on avatars). Back in the old days, before plug-ins were invented, we had to coax and needle our contacts for permission to outfit them with some fancy new 'dos and duds. Now we can mount an indirect atta--suggestion--for avatar rebirth, all in the name of good chatting fun.... Read more

(Credit: World Market Watch, Inc.)

When you first look at 3D Mailbox, it almost seems like a joke, or an article from The Onion. "The world's first 3D e-mail client!" the Web site proclaims. Well, there's a reason for that. Most of us struggle with too much e-mail these days. Taking the time to add 3D animations to each message seems ludicrous...and it is!

3D Mailbox delivers almost exactly what it promises. It creates a 3D world in which your e-mail messages can live...and walk, shower, swim, or even shuffle about aimlessly. When you receive mail in 3D Mailbox, a 3D character representing each message walks in the front gate and talks to the bouncer (who decides if he or she is spam).

By default, the gender of the new avatar is determined by the (supposed) gender of the sender (it thinks Vladimir is a woman's name), and any questionable senders default to female. If the bouncer lets him or her through, the 3D character for each message takes a disinfecting shower, then walks extremely slowly over to the pool, climbs the high-dive platform, jumps in the pool, and swims laps until you decide to read it.... Read more