Carl's Jr./Hardee's Revolutionize The Internet--In 3D!!

I'd be lying if I said that the thought of visiting Carl's Jr. or Hardee's Web sites had occurred to me in the past. In fact, I'm not really sure why anyone would visit a site devoted to a fast-food chain, except for the occasional promotion or contest.

That said, maybe I'm missing out on some great technological breakthroughs. After all, CKE Restaurants, the company that owns both chains, has heralded the fact that it "partnered with Web pioneers, ExitReality, to offer the new technology, which allows users to experience traditional, 2-dimensional Web sites as 3-dimensional spaces." Yep, Carl's Jr. and Hardee's are pioneering 3D web apps to bring people the type of Internet experience they've been craving all along: the consumption of virtual-world lamp-heated burgers.





Shockingly, it gets better:

Users with the ExitReality browser enhancement can even convert their profile pages on social network platforms, such as MySpace, into 3D environments and move around in them as photo-realistic "avatars," which are human figures with many possible movement options. Visiting "friends" using ExitReality will also appear as avatars for a more real-world type of interaction online, complete with the ability to make one's avatar gesture, laugh and talk in text form.

"Avatars?" "Friends?" I'm sold. Naturally, I had to sign up. And with that, I took my first trip to the life-altering presence that is CarlsJr.com. On the off chance that you've been to the site, you're already acquainted with the intro Flash animation, which features a hamburger being eaten along with the accompanying sounds--in a strange and subtle way, it's one of the most unsettling uses of the technology I've encountered.

The WAV file of a guy biting into a chili-bacon cheeseburger lingers in my head and haunts me as I write this. Naturally, it only gets worse as the sound file gives way to a MIDI rendition of "The Chicken Dance." I searched frantically for the button that would bring me to the 3D site they'd been plugging--and more important, far away from that terrible "Chicken Dance."

Launching the site requires an Exit Reality plug-in and a browser restart. But once all that's installed, boy howdy! The 3D Carl's Jr. universe, it turns out, is like a low-rent version of Second Life, but with a stronger focus on hamburgers and smiley-face stars. Also, it's browser-based, and despite--or perhaps because of--this fact, it makes my little IBM ThinkPad want to weep tears of blood--which could also describe the technological equivalent to what happens to your body when you scarf down a bacon-chili cheeseburger 20 minutes before bedtime.

With that in mind, this is really the next great step in bridging the gap between the real and virtual worlds. How far we've come.