McKinsey: Ignore Second Life At Your Peril

We must all be doing something good if McKinsey, the top consulting company, is writing about virtual worlds. Times On-line reports on April 23:

Virtual worlds such as Second Life will become an indispensible business tool and vital to the strategy of any company intent on reaching out to the video-game generation, one of the world's leading consultancies has said.

McKinsey & Company, the management consulting firm whose observations about corporate behaviour are closely watched, said that virtual worlds were on the cusp of a major expansion - particularly as a way to reach younger customers - and that companies were "ignoring them at their peril."

OK, it is part of a much larger report on on-line marketing. But still nice quote.

Stephen Wiltshire: The Human Camera

I am often asked why 3D? Granted there is value to 1D, 2D, 2.5D. But basically our mind is designed to deal with 3D -- our productivity depends on that. This next movie demonstrates it.

Stephen Wiltshire has been called the "Human Camera." In this short excerpt from the film Beautiful Minds: A Voyage into the Brain, Wiltshire takes a helicopter journey over Rome and then draws a panoramic view of what he saw, entirely from memory.

Hands Free 3D: Second Life Navigation Demo

From Mitch Kapor. A nice combination of technologies. (The 3D Camera was already designed by Israeli 3DV Systems). For more info see this News Item.

"It’s only a mere 3 months since Mitch and I sat together and decided to kick start this project," notes developer Philippe Bossut on the Handsfree 3D blog. "It was just a hunch, an itch to scratch: we both thought that the status quo– limiting the totality of our interactions with computers to mouse and keyboard, wouldn’t stand for very long. Indeed, researchers have been looking to make computing 'pervasive' for a decade now, using more and more inputs from more and more devices. But, until now, they have all been clunky and expensive. The recent eruption in consumer products of things like multitouch for iPhone and gesturing in Wii demonstrates that this is changing and that a wide public is eager to move beyond that mouse and keyboard world we’ve been bound to for the last 25 years."

Over 50 Educational Usages of Second Life

Educational Uses of Second Life is amazing list includes works from Harvard, MIT and others... that demonstrate what IS BEING done today in second life. The list is detailed including screen demos and further resources.

Using Second Life for 3D math

One of the most interesting ways to look and use second life comes to us all the way from Paul Bourke from the The University of Western Australia. In his very well written web site "Representing and modelling geometry in SecondLife" he demonstrates some of the more unique features of generating objects automatically in second life.

Few of the pictures include: (There is also LSL code samples that explain how to build some of these programatically).

Virtual World Definition: Granny

OK this is so cool. (txs to Amnon S. for the Lead -- I'm looking for the source).
(Look at what she is really doing).

What is Chumby? (Linux , 3.5-inch touch screen and more)

A small cute things, CNET report on Chumby:
The Chumby is a plush, softball-size Linux computer that includes a 3.5-inch touch screen, speakers, and Wi-Fi. Its an adorable and adaptable machine for hosting music, photos, videos, and Flash-based internet widgets. The Chumby has geek appeal in spades.

See more here.

Evergreen fund annouce 50$K program for Reserach

This is an interesting concrete development in the relations of venture capital and research. Evergreen people should be commended. A simple and direct program to enhance ideas.

Evergreen Venture Partners launches a research fellowship program, endowing up to five research grants for high level PhD students whose research interests touch upon issues concerning technological, economic and social questions that coincide with themes of interests for the Israeli High-Technology industry. Evergreen strongly believes in cooperation between the academic and the commercial sectors in regards to High-Technology, and conceives such inter-sector cooperation as a key to the development of technology as well as higher education in Israel.
Research Priorities in 2008 In September 2006 Google announced the purchase of YouTube for the sum of 1.65 billion USD. Three months later, TIME magazine published its annual selection of “man of the year”. The selection of an anonymous person, “you”, that is, each and every one of us, the users of new technologies, fore and foremost the internet, marked for many the pick of a process that began as early as the first days of the World Wide Web, back in the 1980s.
The centrality of the singular user and of the particular usage experience brings up a set of questions concerning the conceptual, economic, cultural, technological, social and future-oriented aspects of this approach.
In 2008, the program will focus on the economic, technological and cultural potential of the domain of end-users and usage experience in the era of Information Technology, present and future.

See more info

History of Gaming: a PBS web site

A nice collection of facts re the history of computers. I especially liked the time-line. They key point -- there is an History to this field. see the web site here.

Filthy Fluno: Artist sell RL work in SL

A joint friend has introduce me to Filthy Fluno, a new kind of Artist. His take: he sends real art to his customers. Check his place (SLURL).

Inspire: Sir Ken Robinson on nurtures creativity, rather than undermining

20 Min Video of a unique talk as part of the Ted conference:

* We are educated out of creativity.
* Creativity is as critical as literacy.

Sir Ken Robinson makes an entertaining (and profoundly moving) case for creating an education system that nurtures creativity, rather than undermining it. With ample anecdotes and witty asides, Robinson points out the many ways our schools fail to recognize -- much less cultivate -- the talents of many brilliant people. "We are educating people out of their creativity," Robinson says. The universality of his message is evidenced by its rampant popularity online. A typical review: "If you have not yet seen Sir Ken Robinson's TED talk, please stop whatever you're doing and watch it now."

Txs to Adeena for the post.

FaceBook Cool App: My Hebrew Name

We know that facebook just got a big investment from Microsoft see here:

Microsoft will take a $240 million equity stake in Facebook during its next round of financing, valuing the company at a whopping $15 billion.

Why? because facebook is the first operating system that allow ISVs (Independent Software Vendors) to write applicaitons that use social context. Here is one example that made me smile.
Hebrew Names. Allow you to simply send your name and get a picture of your Hebrew name. Try it.

New Way to advertize: See www.dror-dakar.com

We all know about the 1 million$ pages (see here). Well Dror Cohen is taking it to the next step.
Dror, an X Israeli Pilot, wants to do the Dakar tour. So he will take ads and post them on his Car. What a way to participate.


The flash based web site (http://www.dror-dakar.com/) works like magic. Real pleasure.

IBM's Virtual World Employee Guidelines

From Virtual Worlds News:

IBM released its employee guidelines for virtual worlds today. The seven-page PDF outlines basic principles governing how to represent IBM in the virtual arena.

This is a simple straight forward document that guide employees as to how to behave in the virtual world. All common sense both for the employees and IBM.

This is the intro of the document:

VIRTUAL WORLDS GUIDELINES FOR IBM EMPLOYEES
Introduction
IBM believes that virtual worlds and other 3D Internet environments offer significant opportunity to our company, our clients and the world at large, as they evolve, grow in use and popularity, and become more integrated into many aspects of business and society. As an innovation-based company, IBM encourages employees to explore responsibly and to further the development of such new spaces of relationship-building, learning and collaboration. As we engage in these new environments, IBMers should follow and be guided first and foremost by our values and our Business Conduct Guidelines.

These Virtual Worlds Guidelines for IBM employees have been created to build upon those foundations and to address the some of the choices that individual IBMers may face in virtual worlds. These guidelines are not intended to address every situation you may encounter through use of a digital persona or personas. But reflecting as they do the input and expertise of a global team of experts--IBM’s Virtual Universe Community∗ --the guidelines are a good start at informing our collective engagement and exploration.

Cool new moodget from LabPixies

Always cool and simple things that make you smile and think:

History: The Sierra Network (ImagiNation) TV Ad - early 90's

Is this the first metaverse?

The ImagiNation Network, aka the Sierra Network, was the first online multiplayer gaming system. Developed by Sierra On-Line in 1989, and first available to the public in 1991, the ImagiNation Network was a unique online gaming network that gave subscribers from all over the United States of America a place where they could "play games, make friends and have fun". With a wide variety of games including RPGs, WWI aeroplane simulations, live trivia, and card and board games, almost every user could find something enjoyable to play. INN also featured an electronic post office, many bulletin boards, chat rooms, and the company boasted of having "more than 200 groups, clubs and special events online."

See Wikipedia.

First Holocaust Memorial in Second Life

Just now. In an emotional ceremony, we commemorated the Holocaust Memorial. Carter Giacobini hosted. People from all over the word gathers. This truly gives "memory" a new meaning. Inspiring.

[12:04] Carter Giacobini: Shalom and welcome to the first observance of Yom HaShoah in Second Life. My name is Carter Giacobini and I'll be officiating at this ceremony.

[12:04] Carter Giacobini: And, it struck me just how much we are a family... As a family, we help each other when we need it. We love and support each other. We bicker with each other. We laugh with each other. We come together to celebrate and to mourn. Today, we celebrate and mourn...

[12:05] Sheva Writer: ow

[12:05] Carter Giacobini: We mourn the loss of those that perished during the holocaust, we feel anguish at the thought of what the survivors of the Shoah must live with everyday.

See http://slurl.com/secondlife/Cuscus/16/115/89

Metaverse Work... see Amazon Mechanical Turk

Amazon has a service called the Mechanical Turk. This is a tool that allow people with a need for HIT (Human Intelligent Tasks) to find people that will do it for them. While tasks pay between few cents (to the simple ones) and up to a dollar or more for more elaborate ones. Sample tasks:
- Review my blog.
- Send 3D ultrasound photos.
- Transcribe something. (I did that).
- Review a web site and let me know how to improve it (I did that).
- Some of the tasks are generated by computers via API (and not by people); for example there is a tasks that slice a podcast into 9 min section for transcribing.

Now, take that into the the Metaverse. This means that you could hire hosts; have virtual guides, builders, things do not need to be in sync, work can be auctioned out. This is world wide 24 hrs a day.

Magniv 2007 Awards

On Thursday March 29, 2007 -- as part of the Israeli Search Afeka competion which I hosted -- I had the opputunity to give 5 unique awards. Magniv 2007. Magniv is Hebrew is "Stolen" -- it is used like cool, fun, unique, hot etc.

The Magniv 2007 awards were given to:
1. Brainpop -- where you can learn about anything.
2. Yedda -- where you tap into the mind of people.
3. Zlango -- a new visual langauge that make all smile.
4. The Robot -- that use CGAL to solve 3D puzzle in Second Life.
5. GeoSim -- where real cities can be viewed in the Metaverse.

Really cool stuff, all with Israeli roots. :-)

Go2web2 Founder Now Works for AOL

My colleague blogger Orli Yakuel now works for AOL to find new and interesting technologies and sites. Well done to this young lady who have been working on this for more than a year.
See her blog at http://go2web2.blogspot.com/.

Orli has and is doing an amazing job covering new web 2.0 ideas.