Orange County Register

Lots of news should be coming out of this week’s Virtual Worlds Conference & Expo, which starts Wednesday in Los Angeles. Here in Orange County, Makena Technologies is adding a bunch of stuff to its own world at There.com, a free online 3D community with more than 1 million users.

There’s going to be a Mac version (for OS 10.4 and later), plus a tool for users to add their There profile to Facebook. But possibly the most interesting new feature is the new instant messaging tool called ThereIM.

There fans won’t need to be inside There.com to use this new messaging tool. You’ll be able to chat with friends inside or outside There from your computer. Consider it There Lite.

For those unfamiliar with these virtual 3D worlds, these are online hubs where people become cartoon avatars, make friends, and converse using thought bubbles. But the irony of these virtual places is that members must download a huge piece of software to their PCs to participate. This way, most of the graphic-heavy “world” actually lives on the computer, while Internet is only used to update text conversations or view incoming avatars.

ThereIM nixes the huge software download with one that is smaller and, hopefully, less processor intensive. See the photo on right to get a better idea of what this is like. (Image courtesy of Makena. Click image for larger view.)

ThereIM is not a just a messaging service. There are still avatars having cartoon-bubble conversations. They can change clothes and use emotes, which are special text commands like ‘twist’ that can send avatars into a frenzy of dance moves. ThereIM is meant to be used when a person wants to do other things on a computer but still keep an eye on the world.

But if a buddy inside the world invites an ‘offline’ buddy inside There, the avatar can be teleported inside the world, which technically means launching the full There software.

But IM is limited to There members. For now. In a few months, the company plans to integrate ThereIM with other IM services, such as AIM and Microsoft’s IM.

Launch dates for the three products were vague. All are expected “later this year,” says the company.

Makena also handles the technology for several MTV virtual worlds, including Laguna Beach, The Hills, Real World, Pimp my Ride, VMAs, Rob and Big, and Life of Ryan.  There are no plans at the moment to extend the new features into these worlds.

Related:

• Virtual world There.com gets a corporate sponsor (Gadgetress)
• Virtual Laguna Beach wins Emmy for MTV (Gadgetress)
• Scion allows users to design “club cars” in Laguna Beach’s There.com (Gadgetress)
• How There.com came to live in Laguna Beach, (OC Register, Feb. 20, 2007)
• Makena CEO Mike Wilson takes us inside the virtual community (OC Register video)

Have you been too busy to catch all the Orange County business news? Here’s our cheat sheet on some of the most intriguing stories of last week:

• Is that a cell phone in your TV? Broadcom hopes so
• Demand to buy O.C. homes doubles in a year
• Doctors propose more work on Hillary Clinton’s 60-year-old face
• Poll: How’s the new 714 phone dialing going?
• SoCal leading indicator slides below 2004 level
• California ranks 2nd in mortgage fraud

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