As the internet becomes intertwined with the real world, the resulting Geoweb is another important stepping stone for the rise of the 3D Internet.

Geoweb (or The ‚Geospatial Web’) stands for the merging of geographical (location-based) information with the mainly abstract information that is currently found on the internet.

Geowebbing is about a reordering of the internet around a geographic interface. Geography and location become more and more important to index information.

This creates an environment where people can search for things based on location instead of by keyword only. The geoweb will allow users to perform searches without even having a need to type in keywords - one will be able to just browse around in a digital map.

Virtual globes or Geobrowsers such as Google Earth and NASA World Wind as well as mapping websites such as Yahoo Maps, Google Maps and Microsoft Live Search Maps (Live Local 3D) have been major factors in raising the interest in the Geoweb.

John Hanke, head of Google’s Earth and Maps division:

Geography is another way, a different way, to organise information. As human beings, we inherently understand geography.
Google Earth is turning into a map of historical significance. It is going to be a map of the world that is more detailed than any map that’s ever been created.

(John Hanke)

More and more real world data is being combined with virtual geographical data which results in exciting possibilities to make our lives easier: Locate nearby restaurants, get driving directions, or find your friends in a foreign city through your social communities.

If someone is going to a night club and wants to find related places and things of interest nearby, such as a hotel, it is usually more logical and more intuitive to search by location than to do a regular keyword-based search.

Mobile Geoweb and Geobrowser
Soon, we will see the mobile world jumping in: On location-aware mobile phones and personal digital assistants, people will be able to use digital maps and geobrowsers to find information about relevant places which are geographically closest and which are of the greatest interest to the user: Ask for a restaurant and your device will show you where you can finde the nearest one. It will indicate you directions directly on your GPS and even an option to book a table by text message.

The Geospatial Web will have a dramatic impact on managing knowledge, structuring workflows within and across organizations, and communicating with like-minded individuals in virtual communities. It will bring together people of similar interests, browsing behavior, or geographic location. Placeopedia for example combines knowledge (Wikipedia articles) with Google Maps. Flickrvision shows photos at the geographical location right where they were created.

Post-it notes on Web documents
The new Geoweb, or the reordering of the Internet around a geographic interface, will however only work if information on the Web is indexed geographically. This can be done by adding computer-readable tags to documents which indicate the locations to which they refer. Mike Liebhold, a fellow at Silicon Valley’s Institute for the Future, likens this process to “sticking Post-it notes on to Web documents.”

It is estimated that 60 to 80 percent of Web pages have geographically relevant information that can be indexed. The more detailed the geographical representations of the planet will be created, the more inventive and exciting the interplay between the virtual world and the real world will become.

The future of the Geoweb: Fully immersive virtual reality.
The goal of the Geoweb can be seen as the creation of a fully immersive digital environment, or virtual reality that mirrors our own reality. This would greatly improve our understanding of the world and its processes, allowing us to better manage our resources, find nearby services, meet people, and have fun.

Digital Earth by Al Gore
Digital Earth was a label given to a visionary concept by former US vice president Al Gore in 1998. He described a virtual representation of the Earth on the Internet that is spatially referenced and interconnected with the world’s digital knowledge archives.

Geoweb is gradually turning into this digital earth and will soon become the interface to just about everything users do on the Internet. It is one of the most important stepping stones towards the future digital playground called 3D Internet.

(www.internet3d.org)

Justin Rattner, CTO of Intel, about the future of virtual worlds and the rise of the 3D internet.

- As much as Second Life and the other virtual worlds like it are pretty cool, they’re not what we would consider or define to be the 3d internet. We want to see exceptional levels of presentation and cinematic quality in the graphics. We want to make user content creation much easier.

- We want the persistence to apply across virtual worlds not to be contained just in a single virtual world. We want higher levels of social interaction and better human-computer interfaces to enable that, and we like the behaviour, the way things act in the virtual world to be much more natural.

- Second Life is only an example because people are familiar with it, but there are literally dozens and dozens of these virtual worlds available on the internet today: Club Penguin, Webkins, Eve Online, World of Warcraft and others.

- MMORPG games (Massively multiplayer online role-playing game) are a rich 3d environment and the games have really pushed the 3d experience. If you want to look to the future and how the general experience will be, look at the games.

- There are different kinds of metaverses, the client-server variety like Second Life.
There are also peer-to-peer types like Croquet (a free software platform and a network operating system for developing and delivering deeply collaborative multi-user online applications. Croquet was specifically designed to enable the creation and low-cost deployment of large scale metaverses.)

- Paraverses are something like a mash-up of virtual worlds combined with the physical world. An example of this is virtual surgery where doctors can experiment, practice and learn complex surgical procedures and sort of operate in a virtual environment that is projected onto the real environment, what the actual patient looks like.

- Machinima (an artificial word, composed of "machine", "cinema" and "animation") …refers to movies or television programs  that are actually made entirely inside a virtual world. No casts, no crew, you create the characters and the environment entirely within the virtual space and make a movie of it.

- There are megatrends like social networking which has grown tremendously over the last few years. Increased bandwidth and user generated content is incredibly important. High-definition television is another important trend: users are getting increasingly accustomed to very high-quality imagery.

Another megatrend is this notion of the virtual economy that can exist in the virtual world and be connected to the real economies around the world. (In Second Life you can build and sell things and convert your ‘Linden dollars’ into real dollars.)

- It is now socially acceptable to be part of virtual worlds. Different countries around the world have embraced this new technologies in different ways. However, not just technological changes, but the social and cultural changes will really be the foundation for the growth and development for the 3d internet.

- Raytracing will be an essential technology in the move to the 3d internet. Users however will not be satisfied with just good looking imagery; they want it to behave in a very natural and realistic fashion.

- Human-computer interfaces are needed who will let us be an active and integral part of the 3d environment - the user must be really engaged in the 3d experience. For example the Novint Falcon (Forced feedback device) and the 3d mouse by 3Dconnexion.

-  One  can either create an avatar that looks nothing like you, or one can create an avatar that looks exactly like you. Trust is very important in the virtual worlds: When your avatar is dealing with another avatar you must be able to trust that avatar is an accurate representation of a member of the virtual space.

- We need to develop open environments, that are going to let us having these virtual worlds where we can move freely amongst them and we need to deliver much more rich content, and finally we need to created a trusted environment that is safe and secure.

Justin Rattner is CTO for Intel, Corporate Vice President and director of Intel’s Corporate Technology Group. He is responsible for leading Intel’s microprocessor, communications and systems technology labs and Intel Research.