Forrester Research: 3D-Internet ist in fünf Jahren Alltag

3D-Internet: In fünf Jahren Alltag - pressetext.schweiz

Eher ein alter Hut und leider kein Verweis auf die Studie, auf die sich die Pressetext Meldung bezieht. Deshalb hier der direkte Link zu den verschiedenen relevanten Studien, die Forrester Research in diesem Jahr veröffentlicht hat. WEITERLESEN...

Sony Playstation: EyePet - Your Virtual Pet (coming in late 2009)

via tangent » Sony Playstation: EyePet - Your Virtual Pet

Cute virtual pet for PS3, reacting in real-time to actions in front of the in-built camera "PlayStation Eye". We are talking about consumer-friendly Augmented Reality here.


From the press release:

What makes a pet real? Introducing EyePet, the virtual pet that follows your every movement and command…(...) Working in ‘Augmented Reality’, EyePet is fully aware of people in the room and will interact with you and your environment. Place an object in front of the camera that EyePet hasn’t seen before and it’ll know exactly what to do with it, give it something new and it’ll examine it thoroughly. Tickle it by waving your fingers in front of the camera: it laughs, poke it: it jumps, roll it a ball: EyePet chases around the screen after it. (...) WEITERLESEN...

Retailers 'Sell' to Young Virtually - WSJ.com

The Wall Street Journal titled today: Kohl's, Sears Build Brands As Children Clothe Their Avatars Online



"Retailer Kohl's Corp. this month launched a new line of apparel, but the plaid skirts and printed T-shirts won't be sold in its 957 stores. Instead, it's selling them on Stardoll.com, a virtual community for teens and tweens where kids can fork over "Stardollars" -- purchased online at a nominal sum -- to buy apparel for their online characters. (...)"

Article: Retailers 'Sell' to Young Virtually - WSJ.com >>
WEITERLESEN...

Training und Kollaboration in 3D-Welten

managerSeminare hat heute einen Artikel veröffentlicht über die vielfältigen Möglichkeiten für Unternehmen, virtuelle Welten für Themen wie Weiterbildung, Teambuilding und internationale Kollaboration zu nutzen. Schöne Einführung in das Thema für Manager und Personalleiter, die sich mit dem Thema noch nicht befasst haben. Ich plane und konzipiere ja solche Maßnahmen - Corporate Training - regelmäßig für Unternehmen, Hochschulen und Agenturen und freue mich immer, wenn Fachmagazine etwas seriöser über die momentanen Entwicklungen neuer Medien berichten anstatt sich mit Flop-Meldungen à la "Endlich ist auch dieser Hype (den ich sowieso nie verstanden habe) wieder vorbei ..." zu begnügen.
Ich habe viele Trends kommen und gehen sehen (z.B. das World Wide Web) und bin mir mit Gartner seit Jahren einig, dass virtuelle 3D Umgebungen unterschiedlichster Arten für verschiedenste (kommunikative und edukative) Anwendungen in ein paar Jahren genau so Standard sind wie das (2D) Web heute. Das ist kein Vergleich? Dass das Web nur ein Hype ist, der schnell vorübergeht, haben in Deutschland noch 1995 viele laut und teils hämisch ausgerufen. Bill Gates gehörte übrigens auch dazu ("Internet is just a hype"). Well, the rest is history...

Gartner im Emerging technologies report 2008: "virtual worlds will represent an important media channel to support and build broader communities of interest."

Auszug managerSeminare: "Train and Meet in 3-D. Der Hype um Second Life ist vorbei. Viele Unternehmen ziehen sich aus der virtuellen Welt zurück – enttäuscht, weil der finanzielle Erfolg ausblieb. Dass virtuelle Welten mehr sind als nur ein zusätzlicher Werbekanal, ist den meisten entgangen. managerSeminare zeigt, welches Potenzial Second Life & Co. im Bereich Training und Kommunikation. (...)"



Der Artikel zeigt auch einen kleinen Überblick geeigneter virtueller Umgebungen für professionelle Anwendungen

Hier ist der vollständige Artikel (PDF)
WEITERLESEN...

Crowdsourcing: Products from the "people formerly known as customers"

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCM7w11Ultk]

Interesting (while promotional) video about the impact of Crowdsourcing on product development and change of whole markets. The author of the book he’s promoting with this trailer likes two definitions for crowdsourcing best:

The White Paper Version: Crowdsourcing is the act of taking a job traditionally performed by a designated agent (usually an employee) and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people in the form of an open call.

The Soundbyte Version: The application of Open Source principles to fields outside of software.

I liked a definition he offers in the video (near end) even better: “(the former examples) show how these successful forms of crowdsourcing came up organically from the people formerly known as customers, from people formerly known as the audience”.

By the way: Croudsourcing is a concept that has massively been played out in the sci-fi novel “Rainbows End” by Vernor Vinge, as my friends on FF know all too well ;-) WEITERLESEN...

Study shows: Social Media's strategic role acknowledged and adopted in the US corporate world

The University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Center for Marketing Research recently conducted one of the first statistically significant, longitudinal studies on the usage of social media in corporations. The new study compares corporate adoption of social media between 2007 and 2008 by the Inc. 500, a list of the fastest-growing private U.S. companies compiled annually by Inc. Magazine.

Review Summary:

• From familiarity to usage to importance, social media is expanding rapidly within the Inc. 500.


• The bottom line is that the Inc. 500 continues to learn about social media at a very quick pace.


• For the first time, growth in familiarity, adoption and importance to mission has been documented in a statistically significant, longitudinal study. If the Inc. 500 is embracing social media at this record pace, can the rest of corporate America be far behind?

Social Media And US Business Familiarity, Usage And Adoption: A Research Study Of The Inc. 500 - Robin Good’s Latest News »
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Kzero: Mapping the “Virtual Worlds” with Google insight

Kzero: Mapping the “Virtual Worlds” with Google insight

Interesting experiment by Kzero: they entered the term “Virtual Worlds” in Google new geographical trend tool and posted the resulting maps from 2005 through 2008. I think Asia might be under-represented in Google insight because Google rates only 3rd or 4th search engine in Korea … and according to an expert in the Asian digital media industry it is seen as highly deficient on features, even regarded as third rate. China has it’s “own Google”, too, Baidu, so imho these maps are highly inaccurate and show strictly the “western” world’s engagement in virtual worlds. Kzero’s article »

WEITERLESEN...

“Teens and tweens are making more and more of the purchase decisions, or at least influencing that decision. Mom already knows that Sears provides trusted value and quality, but we need to prove to the teens and tweens that we have the apparel and styles to help them “arrive” at school this year with confidence”

“Teens and tweens are making more and more of the purchase decisions, or at least influencing that decision. Mom already knows that Sears provides trusted value and quality, but we need to prove to the teens and tweens that we have the apparel and styles to help them “arrive” at school this year with confidence”
—

Virtual Worlds News: Q&A: Sears CMO Richard Gerstein on Marketing Across the Metaverse WEITERLESEN...

SLim: Thin Client for Second Life; Avatars Also to Get Phone Numbers (and a mailbox)

SLim: Thin Client for Second Life; Avatars Also to Get Phone Numbers (and a mailbox)

SLim will be an IM client with voice (like Skype) for computers that are prevented from accessing Second Life, either  by old hardware or IT departments and firewalls. This could help the Second Life Grid better suited for organizations and collaboration because people could oparticipate in inworld meetings using just a lightweight Instant Messaging client or even by phoning in with a normal phone.

WEITERLESEN...

PsyBlog: 7 Myths of Crowd Psychology

PsyBlog: 7 Myths of Crowd Psychology
WEITERLESEN...

Robot teacher divides experts over teaching of phonics -but kids just love him!

Robot teacher divides experts over teaching of phonics -but kids just love him!
WEITERLESEN...

Facebook Is Not Only The World’s Largest Social Network, It Is Also The Fastest Growing

Facebook Is Not Only The World’s Largest Social Network, It Is Also The Fastest Growing
WEITERLESEN...

Kinder ab 4 Jahre spielen mit dem eigenen Bolly Kuscheltier online

Kinder ab 4 Jahre spielen mit dem eigenen Bolly Kuscheltier online WEITERLESEN...

Eerily Realistically Rendered 3D World. Watch this!

Watch more than the first 30 seconds, because you’ll think this is clearly a fake (*) until you realize that those camera movements are simply not possible in real life. Later on they show avatars, lightning and embedding of all ther media like pics and movies etc. just with a click on the wall. Dusan Writer asked: What IS this??



UPDATE: Techcrunch: “little is known about LivePlace, other than that the WHOIS lists the domain’s owner as Brad Greenspan, one of the co-founders of MySpace. Note: It appears that in the 20 minutes since Techcrunch spoke to Greenspan about this post, someone was told to take LivePlace down (apparently nobody was supposed to find it)."

*) UPDATE #2: In fact there was discussion that the first 30 seconds were stolen from a different (pre-rendered) design project. WEITERLESEN...

Teaching language to robots - let them learn like kids do and then teach each other

Plymouth University researchers will build two robots using hardware and software allowing them to interact with humans and each other to exchange learned information like humans. They are equipped with cameras, speakers,  microphones and tracking devices in order to learn about nonverbal communication (gestures, pointing) and the meaning of words just like childrens would. The goal of the project is to teach concepts to robots including the meaning of words and enable them later to teach each other. The robots will then use the Internet as a medium to interact and are no longer limited by the slow real world to do “show and tell” teaching. Nice!

Teaching language to robots - let them learn like kids do and then teach each other >> WEITERLESEN...

Your brain is quicker than you think. What's wrong about that?

Your brain is quicker than you think. What's wrong about that?



While I am all in favor of the studies showing the value of not overthinking a decision (because your brain knows better), I can’t subscribe to the “humans don’t have a free will” conclusion. The thesis that humans may don’t have a free will seems to engage people continiously to date. I am not a neuroscientist (although I studied Psychology for a time) and this might be a very stupid statement but I am going to make it anyway: whenever I read about the experiment which showed that our brain knows about 10 seconds before we consciously know what we are going to decide (and thus concluding that we don’t really have a free will), I think the subjects just thought that was the moment they claimed it was (when they chose to push a button). They just didn’t recall it correctly because it wasn’t conscious. The brain did (no surprise here, nothing “eerie” about it). Which is why I trust my gut (=brain) whenever making complex decisions after looking at the facts but I don’t trust anybody who thinks that his brain imaging technique and push-button experiments tell us anything about free will. Then again, I have a pretty good relationship with my brain since it’s me. But wait a minute - who is telling me all my thoughts? Uh, right. WEITERLESEN...

Conformity magic in action: Elevator Psychology and The London Underground

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rciLxMnJL8]

Conformity (group pressure leads to actions against rational judgement) can do pretty spooky stuff, and if you think that today is any different than the fifties: find an elevator which has two doors, take some friends with you and do your own psychological experiment.

— Elevator Psychology and The London Underground (via feedly) WEITERLESEN...

“magicians and cognitive neuroscientists are getting at similar questions, but while neuroscientists have been looking at this for a few decades, magicians have been looking at this for centuries, millennia probably”

“magicians and cognitive neuroscientists are getting at similar questions, but while neuroscientists have been looking at this for a few decades, magicians have been looking at this for centuries, millennia probably”
—

How magicians control your mind - The Boston Globe

It’s all about the way our brain perceives things and who knows better than magicians, who fool your perception professionally, how that works? This article is about the beginning collaboration of neuroscientists and magicians (no joke). WEITERLESEN...

Virtual Worlds as the Catalyst for an AI Renaissance

Article (old but still interesting) on KurzweilAI.net: Artificial Intelligence Meets the Metaverse: Teachable AI Agents Living in Virtual Worlds by Ben Goertzel, Oct. 2007. I would like to know what happened to the ESC project of the virtual intelligent pets

Virtual Worlds as the Catalyst for an AI Renaissance WEITERLESEN...

“90 Per Cent of Corporate Virtual World Projects Fail Within 18 Months”

“90 Per Cent of Corporate Virtual World Projects Fail Within 18 Months”
—

Steve Prentice, Gartner Consulting, at Gartner Emerging Trends Symposium/ITxpo May 2008 in Barcelona

Well if you don’t want to be one of them contact me.

WEITERLESEN...

Dusan Writer’s Metaverse » Pink User Interface - From MyLife to Second Life?

Dusan Writer’s Metaverse » Pink User Interface - From MyLife to Second Life?
Pretty avatars in pink…”Think of it as training wheels for girls who will one day grow up to be long-legged blondes in Second Life. (…)” WEITERLESEN...