If you grew up reading William Gibson novels or bad science fiction movies based on William Gibsonesque novels, we can see how you'd be a bit disappointed by today's internet. Instead of "jacking in" to a virtual world where you can access data by walking around and entering buildings, you have to sit in front of a computer and type away on a keyboard to access your bank records, office documents, and time-wasters.

Planet of the Internet aims to make the internet a bit more like that virtual world we've all been waiting for. And it does a really horrible job of it.

The concept is straightforward enough. Anyone can sign up for a free account that lets them wander around a virtual map and peek in houses and office buildings. Individuals can purchase a house and create a profile with links to their web page, blog, or other sites. Companies can purchase larger buildings that act as virtual billboards. Except that billboards are only useful if you put them somewhere that people will find them. And since it's pretty hard to tell one building from another and all the streets look the same, good luck with that.

Not only is Planet of the Internet ugly, but the site design is a bit too simple for our tastes. It took us a while to figure out how to navigate the map because we kept trying to drag and drop it until we noticed the scrollbars on the side of our window. How quaint.

We suppose if someone could raise a million dollars selling pixels on his homepage, Planet of the Internet could make a few bucks. But while the site might work as an ugly advertising platform, we're a bit skeptical of the company's claims that the site is "poised to completely change how people surf the Web." Because as much as we'd like to have a direct connection to the internet on a computer chip in our brains, this kind of virtual world just doesn't make any sense.