Two interesting pieces of news emerged on virtual worlds: At the Virtual Worlds Conference, IBM and Linden Labs announced plans to develop a set of open standards that would allow avatars to traverse from one virtual environment to another. Multiverse Network is building tools that will allow virtual world developers to access and incorporate elements [...]

We’re back this week with the final five top ten lists! Today’s list contains tools and Web resources to help people start leapfrogging now. Note: It’s hard to create an innovative tools top ten list while omitting services from Google – but, for the purpose of this list, Google is left off because everybody wants [...]

Google hosts a “Gapminder” tool that uses Flash technology to turn otherwise tedious or boring data into readable, interactive animations. Gapminder is a foundation based in Stockholm, Sweden. Funding has been mainly by grants from Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, Sida, and the data presented are gathered in collaboration with the United Nations Statistic Division. [...]

The Ottawa Business Journal reports that Google, is poised to replace email as the most-used digital thanks to higher-speed connections and the ever-growing mountain of digital data. The company predicts the scope of search, while still based on text-based key words, will expand to include digital data held on devices such as PCs, mobile phones, [...]

From the Economist: “Google was started by two Stanford students who turned an intellectual obsession into a quest, says Mr Moritz. And what is that quest? Merely upstaging Microsoft would be almost banal. “We’re not trying to build a better operating system,” says Mr Schmidt (although that will not kill the rumour). Part of the [...]