* A virtual community is a group of people primarily or initially communicating or interacting with each other by means of information technologies, typically over the Internet, rather than in person.

Additionally, many contemporary knitters have an interest in blogging about their knitting, patterns, and techniques, or joining a virtual community focused on knitting, such as Ravelry, affectionately known as Rav to fiber-lovers around the world.

Emerging collaborative P2P systems are going beyond the era of peers doing similar things while sharing resources, and are looking for diverse peers that can bring in unique resources and capabilities to a virtual community thereby empowering it to engage in greater tasks beyond that can be accomplished by individual peers, yet are beneficial to all the peers ..

The open Squeak implementation has an active community of developers, including many of the original Smalltalk community, and has recently been used to provide the Etoys environment on the OLPC project, a toolkit for developing collaborative applications Croquet Project, and the Open Cobalt virtual world application.

A sysop (; an abbreviation of system operator ) is an administrator of a multi-user computer system, such as a bulletin board system ( BBS ) or an online service virtual community.

The book served to demystify the subject, making it more accessible to less technical researchers and enthusiasts, with an impact similar to that which his book The Virtual Community had on virtual community research lines closely related to VR.

To the extent that organization is achieved in Falun Gong, it is accomplished through a global, networked, and largely virtual online community.

The extent of Falun Gong's reliance on the internet as a means of organizing has led to the group's characterization as " a virtual religious community.

Though virtual currencies are not ' local ' in the tradition sense, they do cater to the specific needs of a particular community, a virtual community.

* QuakerVille, the Quaker Parrot virtual community

* PortLudowToday-Digital Village A non profit organization providing a virtual collection of activities and current events surrounding this master planned community.

* Dulwich OnView, a local virtual community

The wide availability over the internet of freeware add-on files for the simulation package has encouraged the development of a large and diverse virtual community, linked up by design group and enthusiast message boards, online multiplayer flying, and ' virtual airlines '.

One of the most pervasive types of virtual community include social networking services, which consist of various online communities.

The term virtual community is attributed to the book of the same title by Howard Rheingold, published in 1993.

However, if one considers communities to simply possess boundaries of some sort between their members and non-members, then a virtual community is certainly a community.

Early research into the existence of media-based communities was concerned with the nature of reality, whether communities actually could exist through the media, which could place virtual community research into the social sciences definition of ontology.

The embedding of virtual community in the experiences of everyday life and its reflection of and influence on the communication practices and patterns of identity formation make online community a colossal research enterprise which requires continuous investigation and theorizing.

Since the hero, a sterling and upright fellow, is a rich Brown senior, while two Yalies are cast as virtual rapists, I suppose I should disqualify myself from sitting in judgment on `` Where The Boys Are '', but I shall do nothing of the sort.

Also, a therapist might choose to have the subject partake in what is called " exposure therapy " where the person is exposed to virtual spiders and then eventually live spiders little by little until they have overcome the phobia.

Although the hardware is limited to four separate sound channels, software such as OctaMED uses software mixing to allow eight or more virtual channels, and it was possible for software to mix two hardware channels to achieve a single 14-bit resolution channel by playing with the volumes of the channels in such a way that one of the source channels contributes the most significant bits and the other the least.

The VPI is useful for reducing the switching table of some virtual circuits which have common paths.

If the traffic on a virtual circuit is exceeding its traffic contract, as determined by the GCRA, the network can either drop the cells or mark the Cell Loss Priority ( CLP ) bit ( to identify a cell as potentially redundant ).

Static circuits ( permanent virtual circuits or PVCs ) or paths ( permanent virtual paths or PVPs ) require that the circuit is composed of a series of segments, one for each pair of interfaces through which it passes.

In ATM this is called a virtual circuit ( VC ).

It can be a permanent virtual circuit ( PVC ), which is created administratively on the end points, or a switched virtual circuit ( SVC ), which is created as needed by the communicating parties.

This is because a virtual LAN ( or VLAN ) is technically a broadcast domain.

A virtual printer is a piece of computer software whose user interface and API resembles that of a printer driver, but which is not connected with a physical computer printer.

One hypothesis is that dark energy is the energy of virtual particles ( which mathematically must exist in a vacuum due to the uncertainty principle ).

Another option is to have virtual GKOS keys positioned towards the sides of a touch sensitive screen.

If a scene is to look relatively realistic and predictable under virtual lighting, the rendering software should solve the rendering equation.

Primary memory stored on secondary memory is called " virtual memory ".

Only the kernel deals with files, but it handles all user-space interaction with ( virtual ) files in a manner that is transparent to the user-space programs.

In the 21st century it is possible to find a map of virtually anything from the inner workings of the human body to the virtual worlds of cyberspace.

Prior to the internet, virtual communities ( like social or academic organizations ) were far more limited by the constraints of available communication and transportation technologies.

Secondly, cyberspace is the site of computer-mediated communication ( CMC ), in which online relationships and alternative forms of online identity were enacted, raising important questions about the social psychology of internet use, the relationship between " online " and " offline " forms of life and interaction, and the relationship between the " real " and the virtual.

* Hub Culture, a social network that merges virtual and physical places

The history of modern Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games ( MMORPGs ) like World of Warcraft, and related virtual world genres such as the social virtual worlds exemplified by Second Life, traces directly back to the MUD genre.

Some researchers have explored the benefits of enabling virtual communities to self-organize and introduce incentives for resource sharing and cooperation, arguing that the social aspect missing from today's P2P systems should be seen both as a goal and a means for self-organized virtual communities to be built and fostered.

The most notable archetypes are Street Samurai, characters who have heavily augmented their bodies with cyberware and bioware and focus on physical combat ; Adepts, characters who have magical abilities that increase their physical ( and sometimes mental ) combat abilities ; Faces, highly charismatic characters who specialize in negotiations and social manipulation ; Hackers ( aka Deckers ), specialize in electronic surveillance, security, and augmented / virtual reality monitoring, combat and response ; Riggers, who augment their brains to achieve fine control over vehicles and drones ; and Magicians who cast spells and can view emotions and call spirits from astral space.

There has been an increase in interest in the potential social impact of new technologies, such as virtual reality.

A society, or a human society, is a group of people related to each other through persistent relations, or a large social grouping sharing the same geographical or virtual territory, subject to the same political authority and dominant cultural expectations.

Social capital development on the internet via social networking websites such as Facebook or Myspace tends to be bridging capital according to one study, though " virtual " social capital is a new area of research.

In contrast, the new e-learning places increased emphasis on social learning and use of social software such as blogs, wikis, podcasts and virtual worlds such as Second Life.

In addition to virtual classroom environments, social networks have become an important part of E-learning 2. 0.

The virtual classroom also provides a social learning environment that closely replicates the traditional " brick and mortar " classroom.

In her autobiography Ecstasy and Me, Lamarr described Mandl as an extremely controlling man who prevented her from pursuing her acting career and kept her a virtual prisoner, confined to their castle home, “ Schloss Schwarzenau ,” Though half-Jewish, Mandl had close social and business ties to the fascist governments of Italy and Germany, selling munitions to Mussolini.

They allow users to interact over a shared passion, whether it be through message boards, chat rooms, social networking sites, or virtual worlds.

The explosive diffusion of the Internet since the mid-1990s has also fostered the proliferation of virtual communities taking the form of social networking services and online communities.

His comment on the first page even illustrates the social networks in the virtual society: " My seven year old daughter knows that her father congregates with a family of invisible friends who seem to gather in his computer.

Many of these take the form of discussion forums and other virtual communities, as well as college or university social clubs.