_knowscape is a virtual community that lets you browse the web in a multi-user mode.

The idea behind _knowscape is to build virtual spaces and avatars made out of users' browsing choices…

Each user has his/her personal 3D world (_knowscape_id) and his/her own avatar called _knowbody. These two entities are the key elements of the _knowscape project which give information about you, about what you are doing online and what you are looking at.

_knowscape allows other users of the system to visit your world, to discover your 'browsing self', your electronic identity, to chat with you and to follow your links.

_knowscape, which is based on our multi-user system rhizoreality.mu V2.3, demonstrates the ability of a user to modify a 3D shared world.

Persistence: _knowscape can be modified globaly, by adding new 3D objects permanently to the virtual world. Even if the user who added these objects leave the world, his/her modifications will stay visible and available for other or new users. This feature implies the management of persistence at the server level.

From HTML to VRML: The conversion from HTML to VRML is a standalone service independent from the multi-user application. It is invoked by the multi-user server according to user's requests. The convertor gets the HTML pages, analyzes them and generates a VRML world. Then the resulting 3D scene is communicated back to the multi-user server that dispatches it to the right user. This solution avoids to overload the computer of the end-user with some low level network tasks as well as going around security problems link to the Web context.

Real time distribution: Of course, these changes in the graphical user's representation are distributed in real-time to all other connected users. These changes can reflect the activity of the user or can be driven by any automatic and indepedant process.

_knowscape is the global world. his size is 200x200x200 and allows 1000 users to be simultaneously connected. even if it has a size, this cubic _knowscape space has neither real beginning nor it has an end. the transition between outside and inside cannot be precisely detected. when browsing the world from this point of view a user can see an information landscape that translates the personal activity of each user connected to _knowscape. it's a temporary landscape or infoscape that changes all the time and which is built in real time by all the users.

_knowscape_id is a 20x20x20 cubic virtual space which has no defined scale. each user has his/her own _knowscape_id. this is his/her particular territory (house) where the browsing takes place, represented by smaller cubes, which give a quick view of the online interest of each particular user of the system.

_knowbody is the user's avatar. it is basically made out of a number surrounded by urls. this number is the ip address of the online user while the links are the ones he entered in the command line to browse the web. _knowbody is an electronic body made out of links that can be clicked on by the other users to follow your links. it translates your online interests and gives information on your online identity.