Perhaps it is just because I'm old...well, old-ish...but most computer games have never really appealed to me much. It doesn't matter whether it's Tetris or BioShock, they mostly seem overly complex in comparison to the amount of "fun" they deliver, require the reaction time of a cheetah if you are to be successful, demand that you remember a load of otherwise useless information or develop unnatural motor skills, and they always leave me with the feeling that I'm just wasting time.

(To be honest the one game playing exception for me has been the Star Wars-derived “Pod Racer” game which I found incredibly entertaining despite the fact I’m no good at it at all.)

Anyway, these reasons may explain why most virtual worlds have been generally unappealing to me. For example, Second Life is technically fascinating and fairly easy to use, but at the end of a session in Second Life I usually feel like I’ve just done something fairly pointless.

I have, however, just found a virtual world that is actually so easy to use and potentially valuable enough that I might actually use it. The virtual world is Weblin, a free services published by Zweitgeist GmbH.

Weblin is a somewhat different concept to services such as Second Life or Small Worlds that I recently discussed. The biggest difference is that rather than having its own, special environment, the Weblin virtual world overlays the current page loaded into your Web browser.

You can either run the Weblin “Light” version from the Weblin home page or you can download and use the full Weblin application. The former works on any OS while the latter is only for Windows - both work with IE and Firefox. A Mac version of the application is due at year-end.

Your avatar (which you can chose from a library or build your own) appears on top of the browser status bar along with the avatars of other Weblin users browsing the same page.

You can conduct conversations publicly or privately with other users, have your avatar execute behaviors (wave, dance, etc.), and move your avatar horizontally to a new location. You can also give virtual gifts to other users, which you pay for with Weblin’s virtual money. You are given the money for free by Weblin and your funds are topped up as you use the service.

Mark Gibbs is a consultant, author, journalist, columnist and blogger.