Virtual World

The world, initially a vast stretch of never-ending terrains,seas and deserts, started evolving slowly but with a very fast pace. The whole of the world is now at your finger-tips, thanks to the virtual revolution brought by digitals. Here is a collection of virual realities which have changed our way of life in recent past.

• Maps and satellite and Ariel Imagery:
  
  While the baton is carried by Google Earth and Google Maps, Microsoft Virtual Earth(combines MapPoint and Local Live Search) and Yahoo maps are making the competition tougher.OpenLayers ( an Open Source venture) and Ask.Com are also catching the race. Most of these include local search with GPS functionality which helps giving driving directions and lots more. There are also freely availabe APIs for these maps, so that they can be embedded in your site at your disposal and convenience.
  
  
• Virtual Computers/Platforms
  
  The virtual computers or platform helps to test all varieties of application to check for compatiblity different hardwares and platforms. Gone are the days when one used to acquire a lot of hardwares to test a single software.VMWare provides players for virtualization over windows and linux systems. Microsoft's Virtual Server provides a virtualization platform that runs most major x86 operating systems in a guest environment, and is supported by Microsoft as a host for Windows Server operating systems and Windows Server System applications. Microsofts Virtual PC also provides a similar though slightly depreceted facillty.PVM (Parallel Virtual Machine) is a software package that permits a heterogeneous collection of Unix and/or Windows computers hooked together by a network to be used as a single large parallel computer. Thus large computational problems can be solved more cost effectively by using the aggregate power and memory of many computers.
  
  
• Virtual Keyboard
  
  Tired of typing SMS or emails on your Cell or Handheld? The solution is in the virtual world where you can project a virtual qwerty keyboard from your handheld onto any flat surface and could experience a real keyboard typing. Shown here is an example of I-Techs's Virtual Kbd which both infrared and laser technology to generate an invisible field and project a full-size virtual QWERTY keyboard on any surface.


• Chat Bots
  
  Chat bots are chat robots, who are such programmed through artificial intelligence that they give very human like answers in a chat session and they learn more and more as they go through the length of chat with wide variety of people. Here is a good list of these online artificial nerds.