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I have previously highlighted the application of Nortel innovation in the form of web.alive in e-commerce applications, specifically as used by Lenovo in their e-Lounge virtual storefront.

But the applications of web.alive go well beyond e-comm environments.

We recently announced our first customer application in an e-learning environment, specifically with Virtual Heroes.

Virtual Heroes is best known for creating the US Army Game training platform and HumanSim, a medical training world (check out this ABC News video - it's a great example).

This is the title of an article by Tara Seals of Xchange, based on an interview she did with yours truly.

Thought you might be interested. If you're wondering about our partnership with Intel, this was in error in the article.

Like many, you probably have a more powerful PC at home than at work. The Games computers your kids are using have much more wallop than your PC, certainly for multimedia. Podcasting, Wikis and iPhones, introduced for consumers, are finding their way into enterprises.

Meanwhile, as a business/IT person, you're faced with the economic realities of the day including: meeting budget challenges; retaining existing customers and acquiring new ones; keeping your remote staff skill sets up to the task; and providing more effective collaboration tools to your distributed knowledge and information workers.

So you may ask yourself: how can an enterprise leverage consumer-driven technologies to solve business problems in today's tough environment?

Nortel is one of the first to do just this- leveraging gaming technology for business.

We just announced a tight partnership with Epic Games. Epic's Unreal Engine 3 is the current holder and three-time consecutive winner of Game Developer magazine's Best Engine Front Line Award. Epic's breakthrough game, "Gears of War," sold 5 million copies and won over 30 Game of the Year awards. The Unreal gaming engine provides an array of core technologies, content creation tools, and support infrastructure essential to Nortel's web.alive application.

I highly recommend you listen to Nortel's Arn Hyndman and Epic's Mark Rein discuss this industry-setting partnership.

We are thinking outside of the box by creating revolutionary communications experiences to improve the way businesses interact with their employees, partners, and customers.

The Lenovo "eLounge" virtual store is being showcased at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas this week at the Venetian Hotel's AquaKnox.

But most of us business folks don't get to go to CES, so check out Lenovo's eLounge virtual store yourself.

As Ajit Sivadasan, VP Global eCommerce, Lenovo, one of the largest PC manufacturers and a ecommerce pioneer says: "Nortel's web.alive technology could help provide a potential next step in improving the online shopping experience for Lenovo's customers by allowing them to take a virtual tour of our online store, including browsing through Lenovo products, talk with our staff, look at video clips and meet other shoppers in an immersive 3D environment."

Imagine buying your next PC on-line and inviting your techie friends (wherever they are) to the eLounge virtual store to help you get the machine that best fits your needs and budget.

I've talked about web.alive before. It is a collaborative, browser-based virtual world application for enterprise use that provides an immersive, interactive and web integrated world with 3D voice and graphics. Web.alive facilitates customer interactions over the web in real time.

It won't stop there, we are also engaging customer in using web.alive to bring new dimensions to business collaboration and virtual training.

Innovation lives at Nortel, revolutionizing the communications experience not only for your customers, but also for your business at large.