Current interactive systems enable users to communicate with computers in many ways, but not taking into account emotional communication. A PhD thesis presented at the University of the Basque Country puts forward the use of avatars or virtual Internet personages as an efficient form of non-verbal communication, principally focusing on emotional aspects.

IBM (NYSE: IBM) researchers today unveiled a prototype visualization software that allows doctors to interact with medical data the same way they interact with their patients: by looking at the human body.

IBM today announced that live sales avatars from Australia, Singapore and Malaysia will staff its virtual IBM Business Center at http://slurl.com/secondlife/IBM%20Business%20Center////.
This team will also help clients from New Zealand.

What's nerdier than creating an online avatar that fights dragons and raids strongholds? Creating a virtual pendulum that you can sync up to your real-life pendulum. Leave it to physicists to do just that, resulting in a mixed reality state in which the two pendulums swing as one.

It happens in school, at work, physically, verbally, even by email and text - now researchers at The University of Nottingham say there's no escape in the virtual world.