Two more recent articles in the Guardian have featured Twinity. First, in The Rise and Rise of Virtual Worlds, Victor Keegan revisits some of his earlier talking points, as noted on this blog previously.

twinity.com where, when I get bored with such things as watching videos or looking in a virtual mirror (that reflects your avatar and the wall behind you), I can go outside and walk about in a virtual reproduction of Berlin. Twinity is building a virtual London as well, in a race with others.

In the second piece, Art, music, gossip – it’s (virtually) all there in my parallel universe, Keegan goes on to discuss some of the latest news from virtual worlds, and the escapist appeal of virtual worlds. Keegan also highlights some of Twinity’s strengths.

Twinity is in a superior league to some recent worlds, such as Google’s disappointing Lively. In my apartment I can easily download a picture frame of whatever size I want – sadly, you can’t create your own content in Twinity – and then use it to stream television or radio or import pictures from my online album at Flickr.com. I can link the frame with one click to a web address enabling me to read The Observer (full screen if desired) from inside a virtual world. I downloaded a mirror for the wall which reflected my avatar and what’s in the background, a quite spooky imitation of the real world. You can import photos of your face to graft on to your avatar so it looks lifelike and if you are walking in the street you can see what the temperature is in that part of Berlin in real life.

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Not yet formally launched so sparsely populated, but takes virtuality to a new level with realistic reproductions of cities and user-friendly links to other media.