I'm not convinced about the value of virtual worlds as they currently stand. I'm happy to be flamed on this one, but for me it's just not "the thing" as they feel like a game-cum-escape. Yes, I'm aware that there are many millionaires resulting from Second Life, but I still don't see the point. Frankly, if I wanted to play a computer game, I would have held tightly to my Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego disks. Five and a quarter inch, of course. Those were the days.

But back to the topic at hand. I do like the idea of a lifelike web experience based on the real world, as opposed to a virtual world, and actually get quite excited at the prospect. I've heard this referred to as 3D Web, Hybrid Web, Real World Web and a number of other names, but to help you visualise what I'm talking about, here is a scenario that occurred the other day.

Walking down a main street, I saw a restaurant that I liked the look of, and made a mental note to go to that restaurant at some point in the near future. A week later, it snowed in London, which is a whole other blog entry. It's April, for heaven's sake. Anyway, it was at that time that I thought of that restaurant, and thought that takeaway from there would be perfect. But have you ever tried to find a store that you've walked past when you don't remember its name??

You can Google by street name and restaurant descriptions and hope that you get a hit. You can ask local friends. You can hope that Google Maps zooms that far in. But when it comes down to it, you're really rather stuck unless you have some key search terms (such as the elusive restaurant name) to go by.

In the end, we found a website called Street Sensation! which put us on the right track. Someone has gone along the main streets in London and taken a photo of each store, and linked each store with basic information such as name and telephone number. So I could "walk" along the street until I found the restaurant in question and could Google further.