Caught an update of sorts yesterday over on ProgrammableWeb.com (Link) to work being done by some Amazon.com programmers busy linking that service to Second Life. From the post:

In that virtual store you can search the Amazon catalog, discover items, add them to your cart, click the ‘Checkout’ button, and you’re taken straight to the regular Amazon checkout page.

Here’s some additional information on that store:

The Life2Life store is a little different from those around you as none of the items you see here are available in Second Life. All the products on sale are real-life items that you buy with real-life money and are shipped to your real life home – We will NEVER ask you to spend your Linden Dollars in our store, nor will we ask you for your real life contact information inside Second Life. All this store does is provide an interface between the virtual world, and the real world. We’re starting off with books and magazines, but will hopefully be branching out into DVD’s, CD’s, videos, and eventually to jewellery, clothes and even non-perishable food items. Want to see this happen sooner? IM either of the users at the end of this notecard.

The books and magazines around you cycle through a pre-programmed set of items – if you don’t like an item you see, just wait around and it will change shortly. If you see something you like, touch once for it to be added to your cart, or touch-and-hold for a few seconds to be immediatley transferred to Amazon for purchasing.

Don’t see anything you like? Try our search engine – click the rotating ‘?’ nearby for help on searching.

Maybe you’re done shopping, with several items in your cart. Click the rotating shopping cart to have your cart assembled and transferred to amazon to complete your checkout.

Any questions about what’s on sale – maybe you’ve written a book, or had an article in a magazine printed and want it featured, or even published! – just IM either of us for more information!

Thanks for shopping, and we look forward to seeing you shop real life items in the metaverse!

Check out our international search engine installation at Info Island(€), and watch out for our main store coming to Discordia sim soon!

Tabatha Hegel & Hugo Dalgleish

While people are debating Linden Lab’s progress (or lack thereof) on upgrading the client (specifically to make it look and work more like current game technology), I’d venture LL has turned their attention to the obvious business opportunity. Makes sense. The internet isn’t a game. It’s just 2D pages. So why should a 3D internet be more like videogames than the internet? (That’s a rhetorical question.)

Look for more of this in the near future. The RL brand explosion may be just around the corner.

{Image Source: Amazon Web Services Blog}