Already, it boasts mashups from Microsoft's Virtual Earth map service on Marriot's Web site.

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Maps or Microsoft 's (nasdaq: MSFT - news - people ) Virtual Earth.

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Maps or Microsoft 's Virtual Earth.

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When critics charge that Facebook, the largest virtual community on earth connecting more people than ever before, is a closed system, the terms seem to lose meaning.

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It is the Goliath of the Web, with search, e-mail, e-commerce, instant messaging, classified ads, and even its own virtual planet with Google Earth -- all adding up to one mega-market cap.

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China maintains enormous industrial and economic leveraging through a virtual monopoly on supplies of vital rare earth elements used in virtually all advanced electronic products.

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Mr Wladawsky-Berger's hospital would similarly crunch patient-data using the internet, or grid, as if it were a single, giant virtual microprocessor, but for a more earth-bound purpose.

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Additionally, only those fans will be able to adopt one of the one million trees being planted on behalf of Earth Day and receive a virtual hometree they can locate on a map to see where it's actually planted.

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And earlier this year the Live Earth concerts were streamed live to the inhabitants of Second Life, garnering a sizable virtual audience.

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