Gemsta.com, which launched in December last year, was developed by real world architects, landscapers, interior designers and programmers to create a photo-real world across a number of ‘islands', complete with light reflections on rippling water and the sound of rustling palm trees. Using the latest Flash animation technology, visitors can travel through different virtual arenas, browsing various shopping categories and clicking on brand ‘posters' to be taken through to that retailer's website. 

At Gemsta, you can buy everything from mobile phones and insurance to women's fashion, homeware or gifts. The first ever 3D Virtual Farmers Market (vfmuk.com), which launched this January, takes care of your food and drink. Using the latest games technology, this site lets you ‘stroll around' a 3D farmers market and ‘meet' the producers behind the products.

So whats the future?
In an era of iPlayer, Xbox and Playstation, when we take virtual exercise on our Nintendo Wii and watch movies such as Avatar in 3D, it seems only natural that we should be able to shop online in the same intuitive way. On Second Life, the virtual world, users interact and carry out activities via avatars, which they can send in to shops to pick up and try on items of clothing and pay with virtual money. While Gemsta and Virtual Farmers Market are not quite at this stage yet, at the rate technology develops, such an experience - but this time using real money and buying real items - cannot be far away.

The future of shopping - to be continued.

JESS3 / The State of The Internet from JESS3 on Vimeo.

This article on Advertising Age's website discusses how Starbucks has progressed it's social media strategy even further and started to cross the divide between Starbuck's physical and online environments. Chris Bruzzo, VP-brand content and online, says "that the company is benefitting from a trend toward this intersection between digital and physical. We're seeing the beginning of that," he said. "The experiences you have online can translate to rich offline experiences."

They are also doing loads of neat things with Facebook and iphone apps too. Read the full article here

The much talked about Google Buzz launched last night, Twitter was buzzing with comments about it all night.  While there is a lot of excitement round it some commentators are a bit cynical about just what a success it will.  But like all things Google I bet they have plans to make it bigger and better over the coming year.

Today is apparently 'Cyber Monday', the name given to the busiest online shopping day of the year. The trade body for online retailers (IMRG) expect that we'll spend more than £5billion online this year which is up 14% from last year, with today delivering £350million of that.  All of that said online retail still only accounts for about 4% of total retail sales!

I wonder if zazzle.com are expecting bumper sales of this T-shirt today.

I really hope not. 

 (UPDATE: 1.43pm on Monday 7th Dec 2009 was the busiest online shopping minute ever with £1.4million spent online in just that minute.)