The Network - Technology

Second Life in the Media

nospam@example.com (Allison) — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 11:12:13 -0700

I won't go into a deep analysis on the following articles about Second Life, other than to point out a couple of things. First, as opposed to the trends in the recent past, where the press was content to create a salacious image of Second Life, that trend might be changing if these two articles are an indication of things to come.

Second, despite what many pundits predicted, Second Life has continued to grow and thrive, albeit not at the hype rates seen in 2007. As such, this would seem to a clear indication that Second Life is in the Slope of Enlightenment phase of the Gartner Hype Cycle (see my earlier posts on this blog for more info on that topic). Nonetheless, we'll keep an eye on it to see if this is truly a trend or an anomaly (however, I tend to believe it is the former).

From the first article:

Last year, as the physical economy withered, the economy of "Second Life" blossomed, with user-to-user transactions topping $567 million in actual U.S. currency, a 65 percent jump over 2008. About 770,000 unique users made repeat visits to "Second Life" in December, and the users, known as residents, cashed out

$55 million of their "Second Life" earnings last year, transferring that money to PayPal accounts.

The big purchases in "Second Life" are land and the material goods that residents put on that land. It isn't real land, obviously, but digital space that looks like land. Users control the intellectual property rights to whatever they build, giving them economic incentive to create things.

From the second article:

While the rest of the world lumbers from one financial crisis to another, the Second Life economy is enjoying a boom companies the world over would be envious of. User micro-transactions hit an eye-watering $567 million an increase of 65% over 2008 figures. Were this to be a multi-national, the CEO would easily make the Time Person of the Year shortlist.

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MySpace to Sell User Data

nospam@example.com (Allison) — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 09:06:20 -0700

One thing you might notice as you traverse the web is the growing trend of having people login to comments sections and other areas using one of their social networking accounts. While on the surface this is a matter of convenience (after all it lessens the number of account ID's and passwords one needs to remember), it also means there is a loss of privacy.

To those who are promoting the idea of a ubiquitous social identity, this loss of privacy is no big deal, and nothing to be alarmed about. At least that is what they are trying to sell, and as Facebook and Twitter grow, it appears that the users of these services agree with that idea, or are oblivious to the longer term implications. From the side of those who stand to make a lot of money from you giving all your information them is this:

At a technology conference in January, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg told his audience that Internet users don't care as much about privacy anymore. The 25-year old said that, in the seven years since he started the company, "people have really gotten comfortable not only sharing more information and different kinds, but more openly and with more people--and that social norm is just something that has evolved over time." Zuckerberg defended the company's decision in December to push users to reveal more, saying "we decided that these would be the social norms now and we just went for it."

Certainly Facebook has reason to push this meme, after all, your information, and the more they know, is vital to their future business model. And that future business model will very likely include selling your data to eager marketers who will then target you with narrowcasted ads. And further, the marketers who target you, as they have success in selling to you, will use your data to sell to other marketers. In short, they will know everything about you. Perhaps it doesn't bother you, or perhaps you think it will never happen. Nonetheless, it appears that MySpace is heading down that very path:

MySpace has taken a bold step and allowed a large quantity of bulk user data to be put up for sale on startup data marketplace InfoChimps. Data offered includes user playlists, mood updates, mobile updates, photos, vents, reviews, blog posts, names and zipcodes. Friend lists are not included. Remember, Facebook and Twitter may be the name of the game these days in tech circles, but MySpace still sees 1 billion user status updates posted every month. Those updates will now be available for bulk analysis.

This user data is intended for crunching by everyone from academic researchers to music industry information scientists. Will people buy the data and make interesting use of it? Will MySpace users be ok with that? Is this something Facebook and Twitter ought to do? The MySpace announcement raises a number of interesting questions.

Indeed it does bring up interesting questions, and underlying the article quoted above there does seem to be a concern about all of this:

In February we profiled Pete Warden (The Man Who Looked Into Facebook's Soul), a developer who planned on putting a huge pile of Facebook user data online for academic analysis. As we wrote in that article:

If what people call Web 2.0 was all about creating new technologies that made it easy for everyday people to publish their thoughts, social connections and activities, then the next stage of innovation online may be services like recommendations, self and group awareness, and other features made possible by software developers building on top of the huge mass of data that Web 2.0 made public.

Still feel safe posting everything about your life onto a public social network?

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Second Life Enterprise Usage

nospam@example.com (Allison) — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 09:13:58 -0700

Back in early 2007 Second Life was the big thing for corporate marketing, and seemingly every company and marketing firm was rushing into SL in order to establish a presence. As we know, that mostly fizzled out as hype, but Second Life continued to develop and build. Fast forward to late 2009 and suddenly some positive media coverage and analyst reports are beginning to appear.

Case in point today, GigaOM Pro, while it may not considered to be quite Gartner level quality by some, is research analysis, and does provide insight into this market space. They have the following to say:

Enterprise 3-D virtual world applications have proliferated during the past several years. What began as fun and games is becoming a serious business with a lot of upside.

Further, GigaOm's network site, WebWorkerDaily says the following:

According to the new GigaOM Pro report “Virtual Worlds for the Enterprise Market” by Kris Tuttle and Steve Waite of Research 2.0, business use of virtual worlds is a growing market — one that we shouldn’t ignore...

Develop a plan. Companies should develop a plan for use of enterprise, private 3-D virtual world environments for both internal and external use.

Technology continues to evolve. The “in world” experiences of these new virtual environments will be leaps and bounds ahead of that currently offered by Second Life.

* Don’t underestimate the market. The market for enterprise 3-D worlds may seem small today, but according to the report, it’s doubling year over year, with estimated annual revenues of $8-10 billion in 2015.

That last bullet point is vitally important. Those of us who are working in the 3d worlds market space need to be prepared for rapid growth because if the market doubles in size year over year, the next decade is poised to be a rocket ship ride in growth. Another important item to note is that Second Life is being used in the article as a jumping off point, rather than the end all be all of 3d worlds. But if we step away from the specific platform, and look at what the article notes as important areas in which to focus, we get the following list:

1. Maneuvering an avatar in a 3d space

2. Interacting with others in a 3d space

3. Communicating with others using voice and text chat

4. Presenting in a 3d space

5. Teaching and learning in a 3d space

6. Collaborating with others in real time

7. Branding via an avatar

8. Promoting and new methods of marketing

9. Building and design skills for 3d

That isn't a bad list, however I would revise the list and go for something like this:

1. Social networking using 3d

2. Integration of 3d space with enterprise data and the enterprise web

3. B2B using 3d spaces (collaboration, commerce)

4. Use of micro-commerce capabilities provided by 3d spaces

5. IP issues in 3d spaces (copyright, trademark, patent)

6. Technical skills required for 3d design and deployment

7. Use of 3d spaces for "green" initiatives

The point is that 3d immersion is far more than just learning how to communicate, rather it holds the possibility of radically altering the way in which enterprise processes operate, and if businesses simply view 3d spaces as just another marketing tool they are completely missing the point. In any event, I will be continuing my work in this area and look forward to seeing this market space develop and mature.

Fasten your seat belts, it's going to be a wild ride.

The GigaOm article can be found by clicking here

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Linden Lab Hits Back at Copyright Infringers

nospam@example.com (Allison) — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 10:17:38 -0700

Content creators in Second Life have long complained about the outright theft of creations in Second Life that it has become almost a ritual for complaints to surface weekly. For those who are unaware of the issue, or for those who believe that copyright infringement is not the same as theft, the situation is as follows.

Content creator A will make some sort of virtual item and market in SL, setting permissions to however she or he decides is appropriate for distribution. In most most cases this will either restrict modification of the item, or restrict transfer of the item, or restrict duplicating the item, or any combination of the three. Content thieves however, bypass these restrictions, create duplicates, and pass themselves off as the original creator, thus trying to muddy the DMCA process.

There is much more involved here, but if you want more info, go to the SL forums and search for threads about content theft and you'll find plenty to keep you reading for a while. This particular post is focused on what Linden Lab is starting to do to combat theft, and it is good news:

In any case, it seems there was this particular asset that many users with... let's call them non-conformant viewers were grabbing and replicating. As we understand it, the Lab slipped the asset out from under the UUID, and replaced it with something (that we presume was quite similar) that called up the Lab and let them know who the naughty person who copied it was.

The NeilLife viewer creator (if 'creator' is the appropriate word as it was just another after-market viewer with some exploits added) and quite some tens of the users of that viewer had their accounts banned pretty much outright. Not because they were using a non-conformant viewer, but because they were using it to infringe (and apparently doing it pretty darn stupidly at that).

As a bonus, there would now be a documentation trail supporting US Federal criminal charges should the Lab find that any of the banned users are overly vexing or troublesome.

Well-played, Linden Lab. We – along with the vast majority of your users and customers – are rather looking forward to hearing about more actions like this.

Content thieves pay special attention for your days are numbered: "As a bonus, there would now be a documentation trail supporting US Federal criminal charges"

The original article can be read by clicking here.

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Media Warming up to Second Life Again?

nospam@example.com (Allison) — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 08:59:33 -0700

It's too early to really call it a trend, but over the past couple of days there have been signs that the media may be warming up once again to Second Life. Back in late 2006/early 2007 Second Life was the media darling, similar to what's presently happening with Twitter and Facebook. But whereas Twitter and Facebook may be enjoying a much longer hype cycle than did Second Life, the inevitable media backlash did give SL a change to focus on core competencies and develop the possibility of real value as opposed to pure hype.

But now it is getting renewed media attention, sans the sensationalism and yellowish journalism that has marked some of the coverage for the past 24 months or so. A blog post in Ad Age on Monday has this to say:

it is now feasible to choose Second Life as a much more pleasant and inviting place to host your meetings and conference calls, especially in a world rife with swine flu and chopped travel budgets. You can easily set up an office space or a conference room and all meet up in-world, together, to engage in negotiations and collaboration. What's more, thanks to something like SkypeIn and SkypeOut, you'll soon be able to loop in all the folks who can't make it to SL through a telephone-to-Second Life number. And soon, denizens of Second Life will be able to send and receive SMS text messages via their in-world cell phone to their friends who are outsiders, according to Linden Labs' Kingdom (sic).

Then today we have this in PC World:

Second Life is very disruptive -- as disruptive as a video game. Twitter and Facebook can exist in the background and follow me in my pocket in my Android G1 phone. With SL I need a DSL land line, a badass laptop or PC, a headset, and some time "away" with which to completely focus. I work and watch TV or listen to NPR while using Twitter and Facebook and Email and IM all at once (and that is appealing to someone with aggressive ADHD like I have) and they're not disruptive.

This may not yet be a trend, but it certainly does appear that SL is beginning a rebound, so we'll keep an eye on coverage and provide updates as they happen.

AdAge Post click here.

PC World story click here.

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Tutorial: 3d Work Using Motion

nospam@example.com (Allison) — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 14:11:47 -0700

We're going to try something new on this blog. Typically I post items of interest regarding the IT industry, with a focus towards the "immersive web" or what some prefer to call the "3d web" (although I don't care for that particular term).

In any event, in addition to posting articles covering what Gartner and others have to say about this general topic area (which I admit is fairly broad on this blog), I'm going to take a look at some particular applications that are dealing with 3d design. To start, we'll look at Motion 4 from Apple. I've included a short tutorial from a domain expert on the Motion app, and it shows some interesting possibilities about what can be done in the application.

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About Second Life and the Australian Net Filtering

nospam@example.com (Allison) — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 09:30:19 -0700

By now most of those who use Second Life on a regular basis have likely heard about the nefarious plan of the Australian government to start mandatory filtering of web content, including video games and Second Life. Or something like that.

I'm not sure about the facts as they are being reported by various sites, and while the idea of any government doing any sort of mandatory filtering smacks of censorship, and is a cause for general concern, the idea that Second Life is going to be banned outright appears to be sensationalist speculation. As part of the Second Life Solution Provider group we received an email yesterday from Madhavi Linden, Glenn Linden, and Katrin Linden regarding this subject, and it should help put to rest some of the panic:

Statement from Linden Lab
Linden Lab has received no indications from the Australian government that it plans to block Second Life and will keep our community apprised of any developments on that front. In the meantime, we want to assure Australian Residents that Second Life remains accessible and functioning in your region.

Australia has and will continue to be an important market for Linden Lab, and we’re committed to providing the best possible Second Life experience for the users in that market. Some of the most exciting uses of Second Life have come out of Australia, a diverse community of Residents that includes major universities, large enterprises and many thousands of consumers, who spend hundreds of thousands of hours inworld each month.

We will continue to keep you up to date on any new developments. Please contact us with any questions on either the comments section of the SP blog post or at.

For the Linden Lab Solution Provider Program team,
Madhavi, Glenn and Katrin

Sounds good.

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EU Betting on "Virtual Life"

nospam@example.com (Allison) — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 10:15:55 -0700

By now you've probably heard about the Gartner quote that by 2011 80% of users will have a Second Life style avatar. There's much debate elsewhere on the web about what that means, whether it's accurate, and so on. What I feel it underscrores, however, is the recognition that despite the hype and deflation of expectations around Second Life the past few years, what it has started is a very real trend that is in the early stages, and will be the next revolutionary era of the web.

This is not to say that Second Life will be Web 3.0, but rather, that deeply immersive 3d experience through personal avatars will be, complete with micro-economies, virtual currency, and a blending of the real and the virtual. Which brings up an interesting item that isn't getting a lot of press yet, but should taken seriously. The European Union (EU) has funded a project dubbed Virtual Life which aims to democratize the idea of social networks and virtual worlds via a P2P architecture.

VirtualLife aims to provide an immersive and secure environment, combining a high quality 3D virtual experience with the trustiness of a secure communication infrastructure.

VirtualLife constitutes a new form of civil organization, finalized to the creation of secure and ruled places within the virtual world, where important transactions can occur. The aggregation in communities and the collaboration between users is encouraged in order to reach a management of common and private interests. This collaboration is achieved through the definition of common rules that take care of all the involved cultures. A standard collection of laws, the Virtual Constitution, finalized to the creation and regulation of a secure and trusted environment (Virtual Nation) will be studied.

In order to reach high quality 3D metaverses and provide a rich user-experience, the Virtual World will be based on a peer-to-peer network with nodes connected using a secure protocol. Thus the resulting Virtual World will not be hosted on a central server cluster but will be based on a network of Virtual Zone Servers (VZ Servers). This gives the end-user the full control on the fundamental components of the Virtual Zone Server and the protection of his sensible data.

The peer-to-peer architecture will enable easy and fast sharing of contents without third ruling partners: the only ruling entity will be the law in force, defined by the users’ community and accepted by those users who join the community afterwards.

Each VZ Server simulates all the entities in the zone and gives the users the possibility to create and share contents, media, and data in a very intuitive way.

This is a very interesting approach, and if successful will certainly threaten to tear down the walled garden approaches to the current social and virtual networks out there today in much the same way that HTML undercut the walled gardens such as AOL. It's a seriously funded effort (to the tune of $3 million euros, so it has a chance of actually getting off the ground.

Stay tuned.

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Notes on SL6B

nospam@example.com (Allison) — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 11:47:30 -0700

Yesterday marked the official opening of the Second Life Sixth Birthday (SL6B) celebration with a keynote address from Philip Rosedale (Linden). The talk was short and to the point, and essentially inspirational. If you are a believer in what Second Life has to offer, you understand. If you are a believer, you are also a bit crazy (in a good way) and definitely a pioneer, for it is clear that this a brave new world we are creating, and there is no going back. As Philip essentially said, we are creating something as profound as exploring the far reaches of outer space.

Hyperbole? Perhaps, but somehow I doubt it. Consider that we call it virtual reality, with the key word being "reality." It is every bit as real as anything else in that we see, we experience, we learn, we create, we love, we win, we lose, we experience all those things that make us human. It is perhaps the most powerfully human technology we have ever created. This week I will devote blog posts to some of what I come across at SL6B and encourage you to visit it.

First up, this is an exhibit called Once a Thought by Grace Loudon, and is an homage to the early video games that brought us here today. You'll recognize Pong, PacMan, Tron, and others. You can find it by clicking here.

Click image for fullsize

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SL6B Looks Awesome

nospam@example.com (Allison) — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 12:08:10 -0700

The annual Second Life birthday celebration, known as SL6B, opens up this week to the public. As one of the exhibitors I have access to the sims and have to say it looks awesome. This really begins to show the potential of Second Life and I encourage you to visit.

I won't give too much away, but this year the exhibit has a theme and is completely futuristic based. In it I feel like I am being transported to a completely different world, which is far different from the usual SL fare. It really demonstrates strongly what can happen when large areas are dedicated to a theme and all the builds support that theme. Be sure to check it out, and hopefully I'll see you at my exhibit there.

Here's a sneak peek:

Click image for fullsize

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US Navy Demos Value of Second Life

nospam@example.com (Allison) — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 14:50:38 -0700

The following is a short video from The Naval Undersea Warfare Center Division Newport and is a nice overview of some of the possibilities of virtual worlds and especially Second Life. Of particular note is the section where they discuss design and reconfiguration of vessels, something which is not possible in many virtual worlds due to the lack of user generated content control. This remains one of the big selling points of Second Life, although I don't understand why this aspect is not marketed more aggressively.

Anyway, here's the video:

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Social Media Demographics - Over 35 Dominates

nospam@example.com (Allison) — Sat, 09 May 2009 11:10:24 -0700

Do you use Second Life? LinkedIn? Facebook? Twitter? If you answered yes, then you are likely to be over 35 years old according to studies that are covered in an article over at Social Computing Journal.

These demographics go totally against the notion that SL, Twitter, et al are filled with younger people (gen Y) and teens. In fact, gen Y and teens are almost totally absent from these platforms:

Facebook opened up, Second Life created a virtual world for everyone to live in, LinkedIn connected all the older white-collar professionals, Twitter jumped on the scene and let all the narcissists scream, "Look at me," and Facebook followed the trend with their new redesign.

But Generation Y is not inventing the new web. Older people are. The new web is all about hyper-connectivity, real-time updates, and living your life online. And mainstream twenty-somethings aren't buying into it.

Some of the details are eye opening, such as:

According to Comscore, the majority of Twitter users worldwide are 35 or older. Young adults 18-24 only make up 10.6% of the Twitter population in the US and are less likely than the average user to tweet. 45-54 year olds are actually 36 percent more likely than average to visit Twitter.

That is nothing compared to this:

Facebook is growing at an unparalleled speed, and the new adopters are older folks. The 35 to 54 Year old demographic grew at a rate of 276% over the last six months and the 55+ demographic grew more than 194% over the same time period, while 18-24 year olds only grew 20%.

Are you still holding that pre-conceived notion that the social web is overrun with youngsters? Not so:

A recent Accenture survey concluded that Baby boomers, defined in Accenture's survey as those 45 years old or older, are embracing popular consumer technology applications nearly 20 times faster than younger generations. Compared to a year ago, Gen Y consumers between the ages of 18 and 24, are decelerating their use of consumer electronics and related services including social networking, blogging, listening to podcasts and posting video on the Internet. Yet, there was a 67 percent increase among baby boomers reading blogs or listening to podcasts.

What does this all mean? Basically, if you drop the notion that social media is filled with young people and acknowledge that older (over 35) dominate the platforms, you can thus improve your marketing to capture those folks and become more effective. It's all about ROI, and the good news is that it is the over 35 people who have the money to spend.

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Second Life: Positive Media Coverage on Adult Changes

nospam@example.com (Allison) — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 10:25:12 -0700

If you are a current user of Second Life, you probably already know that Linden Lab plans to separate "adult content" from the general grid. While this move has been met with a large hue and cry from part of the current user base, the press coverage of the changes appears to be yielding positive results.

Whether or not you believe that separating adult content on the grid is a good or bad thing, what is important is that the PR, at least initially, seems to be working. In addition, there are valid business reasons for the changes, so consider that the very survival of SL as a viable platform may be dependent on a successful transition to this new model. Here are a few samples from the past few days that address the topic:

From the Salt Lake Tribune:

Second Life is getting a little less steamy for people who want to use the virtual world for a myriad of PG-rated experiences, such as taking classes, prototyping buildings or designing virtual goods.

...

Second Life's users, who must already be 18 or over, will be able to block adult content in their searches, similar to the way Google allows "SafeSearch" filtering for images or text by blocking Web pages with explicit sexual content. Unlike Google, though, Second Life will let people specifically search for adult-only items, excluding everything else.

From PC World:

Moving mature content to a gulag will be an important first step in turning Second Life into what it once promised to be: a limitless world where everyone is free to explore. Of course, that won't be the only step. Take away all the sexed-up silliness, and there's not a lot left. To complete the transformation, Linden Lab will have to focus on creating a there there. Hopeful as the idea of a user-created world may be, there are too few users creating anything of note in Second Life, and there's still very little to do if you're not into putting on a digital fashion show or playing around with goofy gesture scripts.

...

But if Linden Lab can put Second Life's tawdry past behind it and get focused on creating a compelling user experience that incents ordinary people to keep logging in, the company may yet have a shot at delivering on the promise of virtual reality. While the demands of users may be complex and varied, the demands of businesses are simpler: Give us an audience that we can sell stuff to, and don't tarnish our brand images with a torrential downpour of giant phallic symbols.

From PC Magazine:

Existing and future content categorized as adult will be moved to its own "continent" within Second Life. Linden Lab is still in the process of figuring out specifics for the migration to this porn island of sorts, and will publish guidelines later this quarter.

From the BBC:

Second Life has always been an "anything goes" environment. But the tawdry Sin City is about to get cleaned up.

Linden Lab, the firm behind Second Life, is about to enter the world of "regulation".

Those who want to engage in the digital blending of pornographic pixels will now have to do so on a standalone "continent" built purely for such pursuits.

The important thing to remember in all this is that Second Life has developed a perception in the mind of the mainstream press as being little more than a seedy place for virtual porn and escorts. While some may be quick to point out that there is indeed more to SL than porn, what matters is public perception, and that is exactly what Linden Lab is trying to repair with these changes. Further, if you are basing a business on the Second Life platform, consider this:

.

..the devolutionary spiral left many of Linden Lab's most influential business customers feeling burned and looking silly for all the time and treasure they spent constructing ethereal online palaces that nobody visited. That's particularly sad, because it not only hurts Second Life's chances at a recovery, but also poisons the well for any other innovators looking to take a crack at building on the same model.

What are the primary reasons for the changes? It's simple, attract those who have gone to Facebook and Twitter:

Last month unique "residents" with repeat logins users hit 732,526, up on the previous month and the world held a peak of about 88,000 users concurrently.

The figures may be pointing up but they remain exceedingly modest next to the successes of Facebook, with 200m users, and Twitter, with 10m users, both of which have emerged in the time it has taken Second Life to go from hot to not.

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Intel's Ten Predictions for the Next Decade

nospam@example.com (Allison) — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 18:02:06 -0700

Predictions and prognostications from analysts are always interesting especially given that the nature of high tech is to look forward towards innovation. Whether the predictions actually come to pass is another story, but nevertheless when a new top ten list comes out, I like to examine it and analyze to determine if it tracks with the trends that I am seeing at the present time.

So the latest list I've run across is courtesy of Intel, and lists their top ten technology predictions for the next decade. So let's take a look:

Prediction One - new classes of portable devices with ten times more battery life

There's nothing to dispute with this one, given that efficiencies should improve over time, and battery technology should improve as well. But, we don't know what portable devices will even look like or be capable of in ten years, so this is one of those that is subject to change as circumstances change.

Prediction two - low-cost silicon photonics for faster, more reliable data transmission

Intel is probably in a better position than most on this one, so I'll have to believe what they say.

Prediction three - new heights of realism in visual computing

Prediction four - realistic computer generated images

These two are similar, and I'd have to agree. As we move forward, especially into 3d landscapes, the boundaries between reality and computer imagery will become more and more blurred.

Prediction five - malware will become a thing of the past

Erm, yeah, I'll believe it when I see it.

Prediction six - personal internet devices will be truly personal

Very likely to happen. Many components of the iPhone are already showing this trend.

Prediction seven - interactive computing devices make 'composable computing' a reality

This one I'm not so sure about. Intel's description of it ("impromptu assembly of a logical computer from wireless components that are nearby") sounds too much like the vision of free metro wifi. In short, this one sounds idealistic rather than realistic.

Prediction eight - next-generation TV will not be about pixels

Perhaps, but perhaps flat 2d screens will be a thing of the past too. This one doesn't excite me much, unless we start talking about holographic viewing, which may be where Intel is going with this, but they don't specifically state it as such.

Prediction nine - seamlessly connected 3-D worlds

Without a doubt this will be true. Coupled with higher bandwidth and ever more realistic graphics, I believe the immersive capabilities of the network will be a big emerging area in the next ten years.

Prediction ten - and finally a spectrum revolution is looming

This one may already be true, but yes, it will happen in all likelihood. So there you have it, Intel's top ten for the next ten years. What do you think?

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Video: Philip Rosedale on Virtual Identity

nospam@example.com (Allison) — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 08:41:00 -0700

The video below is an excerpt from a presentation given by Philip Rosedale on the topic of virtual identity. In the excerpt he talks about how the customized avatar is actually more reflective of the "real" individual than our real life avatars portray, and that this is just starting to be understood by researchers. It's a fascinating discussion and if I can locate more of the talk I will post it later.

Enjoy

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