November 29, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Anshe Chung's million-dollar profit in real-estate sales over 30 months wouldn't be all that impressive, really, were it not for one thing: The land she sells is made entirely of pixels.
Chung is one of some 1.7 million denizens of Second Life, a virtual 3D world that, frankly, reminds me a bit too much of "The Matrix" for my liking.
But Chung clearly has enjoyed success there -- and not just socially: After plunking down 10 bucks for membership three and a half years ago, she started an aggressive campaign of buying, dividing, and selling Second Life property (which is quite visually impressive). Her holdings, which include not only land but virtual malls, chains, and store brands, are now worth "several million Linden dollars" (the currency of Second Life), which she asserts is convertible into at least one million dollars, American. She claims that makes her the virtual world's first millionaire.
Her operations have since grown to include the development and sale of properties for large scale real world corporations, and have led to a real life "spin off" corporation called Anshe Chung Studios, which develops immersive 3D environments for applications ranging from education to business conferencing and product prototyping.
Now, this isn't the first instance of individuals reaping real monetary success from a virtual world. I remember back in the day of text-based RPGs such as Gemstone III, players were willing to fork over real-world cash for powerful weapons. That trend has continued with graphical RPGs such as Everquest and World of Warcraft.
But Second Life clearly has opened up a whole new world of financial opportunity, and it's not just entrepreneurial types like Chung who are taking advantage. As reported by InfoWorld Lead Analyst Jon Udell, companies like Sun have attempted to leverage the success of the virtual universe -- though with arguably limited success. (Media companies also have staked ground there.) Udell attended a "block party" IBM held there and found the experience to be less than satisfying: The venue seemed to detract from the experience more than enhance it.
And at least back in October, Udell's prediction for Second Life serving as the next big business platform was not particularly optimistic: "[If] history repeats itself, we'll find that fancy 3-D designs will ultimately prove no more compelling than fancy Web pages."
Virginia Hines, InfoWorld's VP and General Manager of InfoWorld.com, dipped her foot into the virtual waters of Second Life recently to investigate its b-to-b potential, as well as its applicability to a future version of InfoWorld IT Exec-Connect. Though she was impressed by the system's underlying technologies, deeming Second Life "a fascinating experiment and laboratory for all the social sciences," she came away with some healthy skepticism about the medium's business potential.
Among other things, she noted that it's not sufficiently usable and navigable to attract and retain new users. Moreover, the current residents of the world are more focused on playing than working, which means that "any effort to use Second Life for B2B marketing purposes will probably require enticing a new demographic into the community, as opposed to attracting current members."
Finally, she said that "many of the current corporate ventures in Second Life are hard to locate, fail to attract traffic, and offer little user value. Without a more grounded value proposition, the concept of being in Second Life just to 'establish a presence' doesn't seem very fruitful."
Have you had any experience in Second Life? Do you think there's potential here for some serious business opportunities?
Posted by Ted Samson on November 29, 2006 11:33 AM
August 23, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Update: Microsoft fights cyber-sex predators
Updated Aug. 30, 2006: Contrary to statements provided by the CEOP and quoted in this article, Microsoft has stated that is has no plans to add a Report Abuse button to any version of Messenger outside of the U.K.
Microsoft has teamed up with a U.K.-based child-protection agency to take on potential sex offenders posing as youngsters' innocent online buddies.
Through the efforts of the CEOP (Child Exploitation and Online Protection) Centre, Microsoft is adding a "Report Abuse" icon to its popular Microsoft MSN and Live Messenger IM clients. The icon will provide users one-click access to resources for reporting potential abuse.
"Behind the report abuse button will sit police and intelligence officers who have been specially trained to tackle child sex abuse," said Jim Gamble, chief executive of the CEOP Centre and chair of the Virtual Global Taskforce (VGT). "We will tell you how to capture information and how to seize online discussions and then proactively do all we can to track down the perpetrator."
The VGT is an international alliance of law enforcement agencies working to make the Internet safer for children and young people. Its members include the CEOP, the Australian Federal Police; the U.S. Department for Homeland Security; the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and Interpol.
"If you make a report as a U.K. citizen then we at CEOP will investigate," said to Carrie Bogner, senior director, Citizenship, Windows Live. "If you make a report as a user from other countries then our counterparts in the U.S., Australia, Canada, or Interpol will take the matter further. That is a truly global response to a worldwide issue.”
A CEOP spokesperson told Kable's Government Computing News: "Because the reporting is not anonymous it will filter out malicious reports."
Posted by Ted Samson on August 23, 2006 10:52 AM
August 11, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Think of it as handwriting analysis for the 21st century.
The BBC reports that researchers are studying the text-messaging styles of various people in the hopes of applying their findings to crime-fighting.
Team members at the University of Leicester will spend six months poring over hundreds of SMS messages, scrutinizing such things as spelling, writing style, and omitted words.
"Being able to say who wrote a particular text message sent from a particular phone has many potential forensic applications," says Dr. Tim Grant, a forensic linguist at the university.
Grant cites a 2002 murder case in which an alibi was broken based on the evidence that the murderer -- not the victim -- had sent text messages from her phone in an effort to deflect suspicion.
From the study, researchers hope to determine just how consistent users are in their test-message-writing styles. They'll also be searching for patterns that shed light on the sex and age of the author.
The researchers are looking for at least 100 volunteers to participate in the study who are willing to contribute 10 text messages. The study is anonymous.
Interested participants should go here.
Posted by Ted Samson on August 11, 2006 11:47 AM
August 09, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Cisco CEO John Chambers announced earlier this year that telepresence would be a multi-billion dollar product line for the company in coming years.
Cisco's not the only major player investing in the technology. HP has already injected telepresence-like features into its Halo Collaboration Suite. The companies may be on to something. Over the next decade, telepresence technology will find its way into virtually every major Global 5000 company, according to a report released today by Human Productivity Lab (HPL) titled "Telepresence, Effective Visual Collaboration and the Future of Global Business at the Speed of Light."
(HPL, by the way, bills itself as both an independent research company and a consultancy for the telepresence industry. The paper was sponsored by ATK Services, Destiny Conferencing, Digital Video Enterprises, HP, MedPresence, Polycom, Telanetix, and Teliris -- all players in the telepresence industry.)
As the HPL defines it, "telepresence is the science and art of creating visual conferencing environments that address the human factors of the participants and duplicate, as closely as possible, an in-person experience."
Deployed in telepresence studios, the technology employs high-speed IP audio and video, enabling users from disparate locations to hold meets as if they're virtually in the same place.
That may sound a lot like video conferencing, but HPL cites some advantages of telepresence: "life-size remote participants, fluid motion, accurate flesh tones, studio quality acoustics and lighting, true eye-contact or the approximation of eye-contact, and immersive and/or mirrored environments that establish a consistency-of-quality among disparate locations."
Those benefits aside, the report declares there's a potential cost savings to be had using telepresence in favor of having employees travel to far-off destinations. Travel expenses, of course, can vary greatly from company to company, so your mileage may vary.
To give a sense of the potential costs of telepresence, though, the report says the "solutions from HP and Teliris can run north of $10,000 dollars per month, per location. Deploying a site to an international location with limited fiber optic capacity can run as high as $40,000+ per month."
In addition to creating virtual board rooms for traditional meetings, the report states that "specialized telepresence solutions have been developed for diverse applications such as neurological operating rooms, pharmaceutical research and film production."
The HPL's report can be downloaded from here.
Posted by Ted Samson on August 9, 2006 04:33 PM
July 10, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Lotus Notes on Linux: Time to bite?
Officially, a version of IBM's Lotus Notes client for Linux wasn't supposed to arrive until "Hannover," the planned next release of the Notes platform. But IBM surprised customers today with the announcement of a Linux version of Lotus Notes 7.
It's available now for the latest edition of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, according to IBM, with support for Suse Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 expected shortly after that product ships.
The new version of Notes gives Linux users a full-featured alternative to Microsoft's Exchange enterprise messaging environment, something that's become increasingly important as companies rely more and more on messaging for their daily business. But IBM may be late to the game, as many Linux users have already begun moving toward other products, such as Evolution, Scalix, and Zimbra.
The Notes client for Linux won't be a freebie, either, which means it's unlikely to win IBM any new customers from among the Linux faithful, many of whom are cost-sensitive above all else. Still, more telling is the fact that existing Notes licenses will be fully transferable -- a workstation that's running Notes on Windows today can re-install with Red Hat and the Linux version of Notes for no additional charge.
We're seeing the begininng of a concerted effort on the part of companies like IBM and Novell to challenge Windows for a piece of the corporate desktop. The question that remains is whether the uncertainty around Windows Vista is enough to persuade customers to bite.
Posted by Neil McAllister on July 10, 2006 10:54 AM
May 05, 2006 | Comments: (0)
AOL adds free phone service to AIM
AOL this month will begin offering its instant messaging users a phone number that lets them receive free incoming calls from regular phones while they are online. The AOL Phoneline service will compete with popular Internet telephone provider Skype.
AOL will also offer an upgrade to the Phoneline service that allows users to make an unlimited number of outgoing calls for $14.90 per month, or an introductory price of $9.95 a month.
In another sign that AOL is going on the offensive, the company also plans to introduce a blogging service, AIM Pages, in an attempt to compete with News Corp.'s popular MySpace.com social networking service. According to a New York Times report, a preview version of the service will be available to AIM users by the end of next week.
The moves are clearly aimed at revitalizing AOL, which still holds the lead in the messaging market. As Jupiter Research VP David Card says in today's New York Times article, "There's life in the old dog yet."
Posted by Caroline Craig on May 5, 2006 05:38 AM
April 19, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Text messages over Skype are the latest to join the censored list in China.
EBay's Skype joint-venture partner in mainland China, Tom.com, said it edited messages containing words considered politically sensitive by China's government.
Among them were "Falun Gong" and "Dalai Lama", the Financial Times reported Wednesday.
SMH.com.au reports: "Skype, the revolutionary online telecoms service, has defended its mainland partner's censorship of text messages in China, saying the company was obeying local laws."
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Posted by Mike Barton on April 19, 2006 02:08 PM
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