PASSING the Eiffel Tower you briefly join in a conversation about Parisian politics, before checking the balance at your bank and teleporting to the Virgin Megastore to listen to the latest chart hit.
All this and more can now be done with a few mouse clicks at Deuxieme Monde (Second World), developed by Canal Plus Interactive, a division of the French media group, together with games company Cryo and Cap Gemini Innovations, the research arm of Cap Gemini.
Second World is a PC based system that links a three dimensional digitised Paris with the Internet. The aim is to provide an easy interface for electronic shopping and services and a social space for users to chat.
The system's finances are underpinned by shops such as Virgin Megastore and Le Printemps, the Paris department store, which each pay an average of FFr100,000 (about £10 750) to produce identical copies of their stores in the city. Some stores include shop assistants, represented by customisable avatars, the same 3D digitised figures that represent the users.
The service will be launched this month and is expected to be very popular; the creators are hoping for 40,000 subscribers by the end of the year, although it will be free until September. Cap Gemini hopes it will start to break even by early 1998.
The interface is very similar to 3-D computer games such as Doom, and despite the lack of cars the streets are recognisable - as Paris. The high resolution graphics are stored on CD-Rom to protect users from slow Internet connections - allowing the system to include features such as virtual weather.
But apart from the graphics software - which allows users to customise the appearance of their avatar and the virtual apartment each receives - the system is essentially just a way of bringing together well known Internet technologies.
Purchases from the shops are made by launching a web browser such as Netscape Navigator and using its built in transaction software, and online chat using the keyboard has been possible for years, both on the thousands of Internet Relay Chat (IRC) channels and in "MUDs", multi user dimensions (or dungeons).
Both of these, however, can be difficult to set up and use. "Second World is really a way to simplify access to the Internet," says Anne Callewaert, marketing manager of Cap Gemini Innovation.
The system is marketed for French users, and is in French, but it could be used from other countries via the Net. Similar projects are under development elsewhere, with Sony, British Telecom and the BBC testing an online 3 D chat room called The Mirror and Online Technologies Internet telephony.
Second World is the only system driven by electronic commerce, not simply a "chat room". It also has the most ambitious graphics. Callewaert says discussions are under way with potential partners in Japan, the US and Britain about creating local versions.
. GOING STATESIDE: New York City's new official tourism (at http://www.nycvisit.com) in cludes a Java based "lottery ticket" to win a weekend in the city. It also has events calendars, where to stay and where to eat sections, sample itineraries and an "image bank" of pictures of the Big Apple.
Another new Internet lottery was launched last week to raise funds for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.
Dwight Mihalicz, director for revenue generation at the Federation, said the new PLUSLotto game was a potentially huge source of donations.
Tickets cost 40p and players choose six balls out of 40 providing odds of one in 3.8 million for anyone hoping to scoop the jackpot, Mr Mihalicz said.
"With 30 per cent of the total proceeds earmarked for charity it will be one of the most philanthropic lotteries in the world," he said.
Ironically, the race to create online lotteries coincides with the introduction of a Bill in the US Senate last week to outlaw all forms of gambling on the Internet. It was introduced on the same day as the US Supreme Court heard arguments about a 1996 law banning transmission of sexually explicit material on the Internet to anyone younger than 18.
The Clinton administration argued that the law should be upheld to protect young children.
Opponents said it violated free speech rights of adult Internet users and should be found unconstitutional. A decision in the case is due by July.