Kaneva

How's this for a mash-up? Sat in my apartment in the Kaneva virtual world, watching a machinima made in Second Life, on YouTube.

Probably shouldn't judge Kaneva too early since its only in Beta, but initial impressions are:

- look and feel not much beyond SL, certainly not FF standards
- movement more like There, better than SL
- interface a bit fiddly with lots of floating menus that get in the way
- very laggy, even worse than SL, but is in Beta
- looks like its going for a fairly closed approach - ie user construction is controlled
- love the ability to paste in YouTube embed links
- extensive use of AI avatars as shop keepers. If AI avatars are going to be this prevalent then that alone should cut a few years off the Turing test, you just get used to having human looking AIs around
- you buythings through the AI avatars, that means that in a shop people cluster round the shop assistant, not the goods (as they do in SL)
- use of the web for many functions (eg adding media) actually gets in the way
- apartments are disembodied, so its teleport all the way, even more than in SL

All in all its an interesting experience but no substitute for SL. But not everyone wants/needs SL. What it probably does do though is give a good view of what Sony Home might be like. Kaneva's best bet might be to sell out to Microsoft fast to get Kaneva onto the XBOX.