As announced earlier, Sears got itself some Second Life presence on IBM's island. Right next to it is a Circuit City building (press release). Unlike many other corporate builds, these ones offer a degree of interactivity. Both solicit visitor feedback that can by simply typed into the chat line. Like Dell, Sears allows to place orders for certain items through its website, which opens in a separate browser window.
But the main component of the Sears build are showrooms on three floors for kitchen appliances, garage stuff, and media rooms (four possible layouts of the latter you see above). The devices are supposed to represent real-world goods, the flat-screen TVs are Sony Bravia and, I think, Panasonic.
A nice interactive installation shows the possibilities of Craftsman: you click on the poster and the assorted stuff flies from the floor and right into the cabinet.
Circuit City's build is apparently in its first stage and there isn't much to do there yet. Washington Post writes that the company got the build for free and that it uses the showroom to "observe virtual world behavior and get feedback". The big screen to the left plays an IGN trailer for a Ubisoft game.
On the second floor (of two), you can press arrows to move the couch and the screen on the wall changes in size. The set-up is called Digital Advisor and is apparently designed to help people make up their minds about flat screens.
A bunch of iPods. They, unlike the bootlegs that were circulating around a year ago, are not preloaded with music, but instead are tuned into different radio (streaming, that is) stations.
