Some of you know one of the eventual aims of avatars is portability. Before that, however, comes the ubiquity of multiple avatars in multiple environments, and the need to manage them. Just like multiple email accounts or use of multiple Instant Message (IM) tools, eventually one either loses track of them all, or finds a utility to manage them.

This week, the Virtual Worlds forum was held in London, UK. A great article on BBC Online recapped the introduction of an avatar management application, which is newsworthy because it manages your avatars by linking them to the application and placing them on a single page for ease of use. You can see what events have happened recently, such as contact requests to one avatar, in-world events for another, and so on.

The application is called Myrl, the brainchild of ImaginVenture (Sweden). It's a web-based social network of sorts. Many virtual-world companies have signed up.

Intriguing, and definitely useful if you do have multiple avatars, Myrl is sure to be the first among several avatar management applications. Next up: portable avatars. Sun Microsystems has had that particular vision for a while now, and is working on ways to make it happen. Go, Sun!

The article can be found here.