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In the September issue of Computer
Massively multiplayer online worlds differ from other game services by providing support to users creating their own unique content in the virtual world. This places significant demands on servers, clients, and the network. As virtual worlds evolve to support more users, types of interaction, and realism, these demands will increase by orders of magnitude. In this issue, we feature two articles that address these challenges. We also look at next-generation RFID applications, XML document parsing, interconnection networks, and data-sharing systems.


>>See the full table of contents for the September issue.



Features September 2008 Cover FeatureSecond Life and the New Generation of Virtual Worlds Sanjeev Kumar, Jatin Chhugani, Changkyu Kim, Daehyun Kim, Anthony Nguyen, Pradeep Dubey, Christian Bienia, and Youngmin Kim Unlike online games, metaverses present a single, seamless, persistent world where users can transparently roam around without predefined objectives. An analysis of Second Life illustrates the demands such applications place on clients, servers, and the network and suggests possible optimizations.
News September 2008 News Features
The Known World September 2008 Click Here to Empty Trash David Alan Grier We are beginning to assess the impact of digital technologies and are starting to devise strategies to handle the changes that computers have wrought upon the environment.
IT Systems Perspectives September 2008 Toward the Deep Semantic Web James Geller, Soon Ae Chun, and Yoo Jung An The Semantic Deep Web fuses aspects of the Semantic Web with the use of ontology-aware browsers to extract information from the Deep Web.
Web Technologies September 2008 The Social Web: Research and Opportunities Ed H. Chi, Palo Alto Research Center Web 2.0-based technologies advance both collective and individual intelligence.
The Profession September 2008 XML Does Real Programmers a Service Ian Gorton, Pacific Northwest National Lab Having ingeniously morphed their external personae to become almost mainstream, the future looks bright for real programmers.
Past issues of Computer, from 1988 to the present, are available for free to IEEE Computer Society members. For online access to Computer articles, members need to sign up for a free Web account. Single article downloads are available for $19 to nonmembers