NAVIGATING THE NET.(Company Business and Marketing)

Vios weaves the Web into a 3D virtual landscape using its proprietary interface

The number of Internet sites has exploded during the past decade, as the small-town population of URLs has grown into a massive metropolitan city of Web addresses and links. Navigating through this tangle of sites using a standard text-based search engine can be tiresome, if not frustrating. Vios, a start-up in Cary, North Carolina, is trying to make the search experience more exciting and fruitful for users by turning the Internet into a 3D visual world. Through its 3D Internet interface and environment, also called Vios, the company is delivering the entire Web--URLs, ftp sites, e-mail addresses, and the like--in a shared, navigable 3D landscape that is populated by major cities, rivers, mountains, trees, deserts, and other real-world features.

According to Bruce Milligan, chief marketing officer at Vios, using a 3D environment makes it easier for users to comprehend, navigate, and interact with the tremendous amount of digital content residing on the Web. The application also makes the Internet fun, he notes, by bringing static information to life. The data is organized visually--within cities and towns, and throughout the landscape--rather than in hierarchical text lists. (See the news item about Antartica on pg. 9 for another example of graphical Web organization.)

Molding the Landscape

To begin the 3D "homesteading" process, Vios populated numerous primary cities and towns within the application with approximately 15,000 "seed" sites that represent what the company believes are some of the best URLs currently on the Web. About 100,000 others appear as graphical representations, while the remaining sites are represented by a generic icon.

Beginning this month, owners of these sites can lease any available real estate space within the environment, whether it's a complex of buildings, a single building, or even a simple billboard. For instance, a toy store may opt for a coveted spot next to Disney, one of the seed sites, while a dive or sports shop may choose to lease space along the ocean, which is populated with dolphins, fish, and seagulls. Pricing is based on real-world factors such as location and building size; hence, leasing space in a densely populated area is more costly than renting a site in a locale with fewer occupants.

Once the location is leased, the tenant can create his or her own 3D building (with signage) for placement on the site, or commission Vios to create a structure that fits into the specific area, such as a high-rise office building in a downtown area or even a virtual representation of the client's actual company architecture. Most building models simply support company logos, but some contain navigable interior spaces. As visitors navigate through the landscape, they can click on the 3D Web site representation and automatically be transported to that particular Internet location. "Some Web addresses may have multiple links to various sections of their site, represented by various objects in some type of grouping like kiosks," notes Scott Martin, Vios art director.