Intelligent environments for next-generation e-markets

A complete, immersive, distributed virtual trading enviromnent is described. Virtual worlds technology provides an immersive environment in which traders are represented as avatars that interact with each other, and have access to market data and general information that is delivered by data and text mining machinery. To enrich this essentially social market place, synthetic smart bots have also been constructed. They too are represented by avatars, and provide "informed idle chatter" so enriching the social fabric. The middle-ware in this environment is based on powerful multiagent technology that manages all processes including the information delivery and data mining. The investigation of network evolution leads to the development of new "network mining" techniques.