Patent ID: 8145725

Claim:
A method of updating virtual worlds, the method comprising: receiving from a user a specification of a data store of the user, the data store external to a virtual world, wherein the data store comprises records and the receiving comprises receiving a specification of one or more of the following types of data stores: bookmarked web sites; recently visited sites; RSS feeds; blogs; social networking sites; integrated e-mail alerts; calendar entries; encrypted vaults for passwords; cookies; form-fill information; documents; spreadsheets; data bases; music files; videos; pictures; and other media files; automatically gathering data from the data store of the user, responsive to the receiving of the specification of the data store of the user; generating a representation of the data; transmitting the representation of the data to the virtual world; updating a data store of the virtual world, based upon the representation of the data; and displaying the data store of the virtual world in a personal area of the user in the virtual world, the displaying responsive to the updating, wherein: the data store of the user and the data store of the virtual world comprise data stores of the one or more types of data stores; the data store of the virtual world comprises an object of the virtual world; and the displaying the data store of the virtual world in the personal area of the user comprises displaying an icon representing the data store of the virtual world in the personal area of the user and keeping the data store of the virtual world private to the user.