Make the right impression. Your avatar’s appearance should be reasonable and fitting for the activities in which you engage (especially if conducting IBM business). If you are engaged in a virtual world primarily for IBM business purposes, we strongly encourage you to identify your avatar as affiliated with IBM. If you are engaged primarily for personal uses, consider using a different avatar.

- IBM Virtual World Guidelines

A pioneer, that IBM (IBM). A trend-setter. It was the first company to publish a code of conduct for workers enamoured of virtual environments. And soon it will be the first to create a virtual world of its own in Second Life. This morning, Big Blue announced a partnership with Second Life producer Linden Lab to create a secure, enterprise-class version of the popular Internet-based virtual world. By running a Second Life installation on servers inside IBM’s firewall, the two will homestead a sort of corporate gated community for security-conscious companies–one in which companies can conduct business without being set upon by a horde of animated flying phalli. A savvy way to drive adoption of virtual worlds in enterprise. And if all goes as planned, a host of other companies will be running Second Life inside their own firewalls by year’s end. “There has been so much hype and puffery around virtual worlds,” Ginsu Yoon, Linden’s vice president of business affairs told The Wall Street Journal. “It’s really important to Linden Lab to be able to demonstrate that it is able and willing to meet the requirements of companies like IBM.”