Launched in 2003 by Philip Rosedale, alias Philip Linden in Second Life, first-time residents make up a first name, choose a last name from a list and choose a graphic identity (an avatar).

For more on Second Life and what vendors are doing, read "Making The Second Life Connection." I tried to join the hip crowd last week for an IBM experiment: a storage product launch it chose to ...

Our avatars bumped into each other after teleporting to a seaside world modelled on a strange rundown 1960s Scottish fishing village. He told me he had been spending time in Second Life for about ...