Over the weekend I played around a bit with “Forbidden City: Beyond Space and Time,” the virtual recreation of that massive, stately palace complex at the heart of Beijing that was home to 24 emperors of the Ming and Qing dynasties. This was a joint project between IBM and Beijing’s Palace Museum. Predictably, given IBM’s extensive involvement with Linden Labs’ Second Life, it borrows liberally from SL. Your avatar — you can be deck yourself out in various Qing-era garb, to be a eunuch or a civil servant — can interact with others in a limited way, chatting and the like. There are also tour guides you can follow around and explain what you’re looking at. Gorgeous and chock-full of information, it’s available in English and both simplified and traditional Chinese. Hopefully they’ll open up more of the side apartments to the palace; currently, it’s mainly the (admittedly stunning) courtyards and pavilions of the main central axis, but that’s plenty for now.

The window for pushing virtual tourism is now! With the economic meltdown, it’s a way to explore the world’s wonders during your “staycation.”  I’d love to see a virtual Louvre, or an Uffizi (hell, all of Florence, or Sienna). Actually UNESCO should do one for each of the World Heritage Sites. How cool would that be?