We are currently searching a name for the software and a domain name for the download. There is some discussion in the forum about a name and maybe you can help. To narrow things down a bit, I will explain our current idea.
The key term is "Avatar". What we are creating is an avatar for the Web. We do not make yet another avatar system. This will be the first instance of THE avatar architecture for the Web and beyond. THIS avatar architecture is more general than the so called walled gardens of virtual worlds. All these closed avatar systems can provide their avatar as a web avatar. From the point of view of the Open Virtual World project, all virtual worlds are just very sophisticated avatar generators. Your real identity is on the Web. You live on the Web every day. Sometimes you dive down into a virtual world. But the Web covers them all. In a few years the separation between closed virtual worlds and the Web will come down. There will be just the Web (or the Net) where you walk around with an avatar and sometimes you enter a specialized world with the same avatar. Yet the outside world, the Web, will always be the largest world.
You have a web browser, Internet Explorer, Firefox or another browser. You use the browser to see the Web. The software you are using is called a Web Browser. "Web browser" or short "browser" is the category name. "Firefox" is a product name. The thing that it shows is the "Web" or the "Internet". You use an "Internet Explorer" to explore the Internet. This is a product name very close to the category name. The domain http://www.internet-explorer.com/ would be a good place to download that product.
What we are now searching is a category name and an associated product name and a domain name for the software download.
What is the product doing? It shows avatars. It gives you an avatar. Your are surfing the Web, but you do not see anyone? Just install an "Avatar". The Open Virtual World project makes "Avatars". "Avatar" is a very general term used in many areas. It is the term of 80x80 pixel images in forums, it is your character in Second Life (and soon the name of a movie). We believe, that what we start now will be THE Avatar. There will be other products, but the category name will be "avatar", maybe "web avatar", but like "web browser" it will be shortened to "avatar".
When the Web was invented, it was called the Web, because it is the World Wide Web. They did not call it any special product name, just THE Web. It is not operated by a single company. It is open and for everyone. The same is true for our project. Therefore we think, that the client software offered by the open Virtual World project will be one of the first products in the category "Avatar".
We would use the domain avatar.com. This is what you will download and install: an avatar. Where do you get an avatar? of course, from avatar.com. But as you might guess, the domain is already taken. This is where you can help. Maybe you have an idea how to call the product and the domain in the general direction of "avatar".
We are also still open to totally different suggestions. But "avatar" is our current direction.
Although this puts load on our small test server, we decided, that we would try to support these chats and let them continue. It turned out, that our test server can cope with the load. But the ongoing chats are sometimes disturbed by our internal tests. When we run tests or re-configure the server, then it happens from time to time, that the chat is offline.
