BY JULIETTE LORD
Summer is approaching and thoughts turn to the annual vacation. Change it is said is as good as a rest, so why not take a virtual vacation to one of the other grids out there and see what is available. Kitely is one such world, set up by Ilan Tochner and business partner Oren Hurvitz, it opened in March 2011. All you need to travel there is the OpenSim-compatible version of Firestorm. It won’t cost you anything to visit many of the worlds on Kitely. In fact you can use Kitely to get your own free island which allows you an astonishing 100,000 prims and will support up to 100 avatars. You’ll be able to use that island without charge for six hours and then an additional two hours a month in later months. You will be sure of a relaxing trip too because Kitely is refreshingly lag free. What makes Kitely different is the concept of a “virtual world on demand,” which revolutionizes the way the virtual world is operated and allows for much cheaper access to virtual real estate making it much more affordable to have a virtual presence. The easiest way to comprehend the difference between Kitely and the competition is to use the analogy of a mobile phone. Kitely operates a timebased billing system whereby the user pays by the minute. Included in the package is your own free “island” which you can use to socialize, teach a class or run a business. When you are not using your island, the simulator automatically closes down, unlike other virtual worlds where the “land” exists indefinitely. By doing this, Kitely drastically reduced the costs of maintaining land, which has been a growing problem for users in other virtual worlds where the cost of running an island has become increasingly prohibitive. Educators in particular have been leaving other virtual worlds ConJULY 2013 mymaniera.com | MANIERA | 73