It seems like all the big tech sites are now picking up on our city’s idea of creating an online version of our little burb.

Both CNET and Wired have shown great interest in the concept. And while CNET is concerned that the idea would inevitably be polluted by porn, Wired seems to like it.

For starters, they’d have to clear a lot of the ignorance out of the air — critics will almost certainly dismiss the effort with the classic “traditional methods work fine, so this is pointless” argument. There’s also the latent fear of computers that permeates much of society, though an argument could be made that clicking on a virtual town hall and chatting with your neighbors could be easier than attempting to participate in a forum or chat room discussion, particularly for those who can’t physically make it to the real-world meetings. It will likely all boil down to who is chosen to develop the interface, and how accessible the end result is.

And after sorting through all the tech-drool and scorn over this issue, probably the most tangible comment I discovered was this one over at Game Politics (which was one of the first to bring this issue to light)

If they want to do a virtual city, I think they would save time piggybacking on Google’s street view feature. At least for the city exploration part. And then add on the interactive landmarks in their own discretion. Google provides development tools to integrate these features into another site, so why reinvent the wheel?

Could be a much cheaper option.

After all of this free publicity, I wonder how many RFIs the city will get on this project.