ODE: Construct Internet Design

Still hot - and very defunct - is Construct Internet Design. In the 90's some of the most innovative work in the web was being done there. Browse through their products page to get an idea for what they were doing. I was lucky enough to work there for a time.

They did a lot of advanced interface design including virtual worlds work. Two memorable projects were the ZKM Difference Engine and the Sony Dating Game.

The Difference Engine allowed web users to interact with real world visitors to the ZKM Mediamuseum in Karlsruhe, Germany via a VRML world. Integral to this was the generation of avatars of the real museum users (grabbed by cams) that then wandered the VRML world before living eternally in a 3D avatar rouges gallery called the "Purgatory". Lynn Hershman Leeson has a good little video on it at her site. It was her concept.

The Sony Dating Game was notable for the engine that allowed the building of avatars (yes, avatars again) and being an early experiment with an online community using Internet Relay Chat (IRC) as its technical foundation.

It was the 90's but I still think there are legs on the concepts underlying these and other projects Construct cranked out.

You won't get flawless links on the site since it now lives on Archive.org but poke around. ...some cool stuff.