UgoTrade

EOLUS One - Where Creative Minds Come Together

I met Eolus McMillan from Implenia on Second Life yesterday. And, I heard the extraordinary story of how creative minds from different backgrounds, IBM, SAP, Wago, Zumtobel and Implenia amongst others, have come together to make a major leap towards 3D internet. The fruits of this collaboration will be unveiled on July 6th, on Second Life. The picture above shows a birds eye view of EOLUS One on Second Life.

The most important aspect of this breakthrough is the EOLUS focus on Real Life and Second Life interactions that serve to make a better world - addressing many aspects from CO2 Reduction, Energy Management, Health, to Education, Collaboration , Networking, and more.

I hoped that positive global development would be embedded in the DNA of 3D internet. And, almost all my writing in the last few months has been with this in mind. But now, in the work of Eolus McMillan, positive global development and 3D internet have come together.

“I can’t convey just how big this is as a leap towards 3D internet.”

This is how I first heard about EOLUS One from Aleister Kronos. He is first on so many ground breaking stories on Second Life! He talked to Eolus McMillan hours before leaving for vacation in Japan. But, he sent me a condensation of his thoughts before he left. Here are some of them, lightly edited by me.

EOLUS One is a number of things:
A forum or think tank for creative minds looking to explore how SL can help make a better planet (does that tweak your interest? LOL).
A technology solution to integration to back-end systems, using not just SL but any kind of “I/O device” (like Roo controlling his house from his mobile?)
The construction of virtual operations centers to manage the environmental controls of a house/housing estate.
The definition of Virtual Worlds Communication Interface.

For me, it was a revelation. I’d stumbled on an IBM site (Boblingen or some such) a long time back, which showed similar operations centers, but Eolus are launching for real next week (6th July) and will have proper integration with RL systems- including an integration with SAP supply chain and CRM systems. I will rephrase that, you will be able to buy stuff in SL, using SL currency, that gets handled by a back-end RL system (here, SAP) that will deliver the goods to your RL address… and you can track the order in SL.

And, then there’s the “better planet” think tank!

My mind started racing at the news. I immediately logged onto Second Life and contacted Eolus McMillan to arrange a meeting. And then, Eolus gave me a teleport to EOLUS One. What follows is what I have learned so far about this wonderful story.

One of the first places Eolus McMillan took me on the EOLUS One island was an art gallery currently showing an exhibition of Eshi Otawara’s real life paintings. Eshi Otawara is a talented Real Life Artist and the 3D Experience Architect for EOLUS One.

I am impressed that Eolus wanted me to see this first. This kind of respect for others and their creative work gives you an idea why Eolus and Ansi have managed to spark the kind of creative collaboration across disciplines and enterprises that any major leap towards 3D internet had to accomplish to succeed.

So lets take a journey through time to find out how the story of EOLUS (which means fast moving/flexible in Greek) began.

EOLUS - The Birth of a Virtual Corporation.

The story of EOLUS One is told visually in a museum on the EOLUS One Island on Second Life. And, there will be an official global press release out soon. As a virtual corporation EOLUS has been able to work faster and more creatively than any real corporation could.

The story began, March, 15th, 2007, at the European Computer expo called CEBIT, when a Paradigm Pioneer, from Implenia Global Solutions (who was soon to become the avatar Eolus McMillan), and Ansi Orochi (Lead Architect, Virtual Worlds, IBM Research and Development) met because they both had a booth at the IBM stand. Eolus McMillan the avatar was born, March 20th, 2007.

The German Chancellor Checks Out The Implenia Model House

At the opening of CEBIT, Implenia got a chance to tell their story to the German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Eolus remarked, “we initially got 4 mins from her people, but she found the story so interesting she stayed for 15 mins. Then Ansi (Lead Architect Virtual Worlds, IBM Research and Development) presented the concept of Virtual Worlds using Second Life to her for a few minutes.

In this picture Angela Merkel the Chancellor of Germany is peering into the Implenia model house. Anette Shavan Minister of Education is on the right behind the house. And, the General Manager of IBM, Germany, Martin Jetter is standing in the back against the backdrop of the IBM banner.

Real Life Mashups

Eolus and his newfound friend Ansi have engineered a paradigm shift, from conception to successful trials of use examples, in three short months. And, the lynch pins of this lightning fast success are two of the most powerful tools for collaborative visualization available to us today - the napkin (typically found at a table with a sympatico mix of creative minds and good wine), and the great virtual napkin of collaboration and innovation (the world scale dinner table where artists, futurists, inventors and uber geeks of all stripes come together) - the think tank for a “better planet” - Second Life.

During one of those late night expo dinners, Eolus and Ansi met and the napkin is drawn. And, they decide to take their vision to reality - building automation components to IBM Websphere to SAP ERP2005 linked to Skype and IP Factory. They also took down some basic ideas for the island on Second Life and defined some simple use cases that would relay the message of how useful Second Life/Real Life interaction can be. Just a few of the many examples shown:

Building Automation

Energy Monitoring

Alert Management

Preventive maintenance

Virtual eshop

Here is the first paper napkin, which I hear still exists.

A Time-line Showing The Trajectory of EOLUS One Over the Last Three Months.

The pictures starting bottom left show the Implenia demo at CEBIT where they showcased their work on intelligent building, advanced metering infrastructure, energy monitoring/management, and facilities management.

The house in the bottom left corner of the picture is a copy of a real life house. Eolus said that sensors, collecting data on energy (e.g. electricity, gas, oil, water) and security plus other relevant data - temperature, humidity, setting of devices, errors that come from devices etc., are installed at his home, office and a large shopping mall in Zurich.

Before CEBIT Implenia had already completed a field test on 35 buildings with a total of 170000 SQM over a period of two years where Eolus says, “we managed to reduce the cost by 34 swissfrancs per sqm per year.”

VWCI - Virtual World Communication Interface

From this meeting at CEBIT other innovators came on board, including a German University student Panini Lane, who wrote his thesis on VWCI. And, EOLUS One, a world changing project, began to evolve. A key part of the EOLUS technology solution is the EOLUS Virtual Worlds Communication Interface (this is a working title).

VWCI is a piece of hardware and software that on one hand solves the problem of ‘talking’ to the various protocols in building automation (LON, KNX, Enocean, ZigBee, CANOpen, Profibus, Modbus…..) and on the other hand links RL buildings to SL to allow for a drastic improvement on facility management processes, reducing the carbon imprint of everything from commercial buildings, individual homes to shopping malls, industrial facilities, and more. VWCI uses IBM’s MQtt messaging protocol and the IBM WebSphere portal in the backend (see my earlier post on IBM Senior Inventor C.J Chowderhead).

Meeting A WebSphere Genius From IBM and an Automation Guru From Wago

And, as Eolus McMillan points out, VWCI is only the enabler. The conditions are defined at a field level e.g. sensor readings, part numbers etc. Then you define a communication path to an object that knows what to do with the information. The information is transfered using a messaging protocol (MQtt) and the database stores it then triggers the action which might result in a transaction in an ERP other external system which would result in a work order being issued.

Hence two other important members of the EOLUS team are a WebSphere Genius from Böblingen, IBM Lab Germany, Hattori Kurosawa, and Sika1972 McMillan a building automation guru from Wago. Both were on EOLUS One when I visited. This picture shows Eolus McMillan, Eshi Otawara (the EOLUS 3D architect), Sika1972 McMillan, and myself.

Eolus and the team are working seamlessly across both worlds. In fact during this meeting in the EOLUS One Control Room he was called to a RL meeting and handed my tour over to 3D Architect and Real Life Artist Eshi Otawara. She kindly took time from her work to show me some of the many features of EOLUS One even though the build will open July 6th. Here is a picture she took during our tour.

Energy Monitoring: A Massive Contribution To Reducing Carbon Footprint

Using EOLUS to indicate when things go wrong before they do!

Eolus described how energy monitoring can drastically reduce the carbon footprint of houses and large facilities. By looking at the state of our systems, we can know when things start to go wrong. People can be doing things wrong in their house, in a large facility, or building management operation for years in, terms of energy management, and not know they are wasting vast amounts of energy.

By tracking the interaction and integration of different systems, e.g., heating, cooling and fuel consumption, energy leaks that cannot be understood from a single data stream can be identified and resolved. The following example of using the EOLUS technology for State of the Art Call Center Managment shows how EOLUS will also enable a much more effective interaction between people and data.

State of the Art Call Center Management

Eolus gave an example of an Alert Management Scenario, and how a control room on Second Life (with 24hr 365 day uptime, of course!) could transform Building Automation Management.

For example, in a traditional Building Automation System, a person would sit in a control room and watch a number of screens that show the state of the various systems. HVAC, Lights, Access Control, Elevators etc. A user might have to monitor a number of buildings and in the information overflow might miss an alert, or might not be fully trained and misunderstand the info, or even worse not have enough practice on certain alert handling issues that only happen ever now and then. These are just some of the many pitfalls of traditional building monitoring.

We are actually drastically expanding the possibilities with what we have in mind here using virtual worlds. We are adding a new dimension.

Let me give you an example. Now Safeway or other large supermarkets have a few thousand stores and a huge number of maintenance staff, some better trained, some less, some know the equipment they work with but they might not know the current configuration, or are out of practice to change a setting.

At present they have a number of screens they must monitor, and often systems are not linked - one system for AC, one for heating, one for the refrigeration, one for the lights, one for this one one for that! The people that know one system within a store might not know how to handle the same system in another store, because there might be new firmware there, or a special setting, or 1 million reasons for that.

Now imagine you had a system that could talk to each device, interface with it and tell it what to do. And then imagine that instead of looking at a monitor in a control room, you simply define a set of rules for certain categories of stores, rules that tell you when interaction is needed, and which information to provide to the maintenance person at the time.

A virtual environment creates new possibilities for data representation and communication, Eolus explained further:

And then think of a rack full of virtual ‘shoe boxes’ each box representing a store, to each box a set of rules attached to it. Depending on the rules set for the store (box) it would indicate its present state in relation to a particular user. In a normal condition the box is green.

And, for example, if the avatar of a technical person approaches the box, they would see the status in regard to the technical rules set for the building(s), a financial person would see the status based on financials (vacancy rate, cost, income, net income, yield, etc.).

New Tools for effective management of work flow :

Now lets assume that one of the rules applies which might mean that a person could be stuck in an elevator which would require immediate attention.

The box would signal that by a change of color, and the dispatcher sitting there would then see which person (avatar) is close to the incident, drop the pic of the avatar on the shoe box and then the backend system, in our case SAP, would initiate a work order and pass the required info to the technician.

He/she would go there fix the issue, give feedback on the incident (mins/hours taken to fix, material needed, persons involved…) by mobile or PDA, and the case would close meaning the box would return to its initial color - green.

Next Generation Building Automation and Much More!

At EOLUS One one of the key challenges was to create and integrate new concepts that would address many of the common issues found in technical facilities management.

Configuration-/ Product Lifecycle Management

Preventive Maintenance

Conditional Monitoring

Training of technical Personnel

Data Representation

These are some of the most interesting aspects of the EOLUS One Initiative. So if you come Friday, July 6th, you will hear lots more about building automation.

There is a virtual model house currently under construction - one on a website (web control panel and image from internet camera), and one in Second Life. They will be fully implemented by July 6th. Then, you can have a little fun controlling the Implenia model house in the real life EOLUS laboratory using one of the virtual Houses, either in Second Life or on the web. Here is the model house on Second Life (currently under construction).

EOLUS working with Spimes and Wranglers

EOLUS is a project all about spimes and wranglers, in my view. The model house, as it has evolved from CEBIT to Second Life, has become more and more spime like. If you know Bruce Sterling’s work or have read, Shaping Things, you are familiar with “spimes” and “wranglers” - technosocial concepts at the core of Sterling’s vision of a shift from archaic forms of energy use and production to a sustainable world. Why do Spimes Matter? Because Spimes Can Save the World. Spimes are:

manufactured objects whose informational support is so overwhelmingly extensive and rich that they are regarded as material instantiations of an immaterial system.

Spimes are visionary concepts - both a thing plus a lot of information about that thing and a technosocial interface. (Biots - another Sterling concept for tomorrow, or rather tomorrows tomorrow, are at the interface of cybernetics, biotechnology, and cognition).

If you think about about things in your life, e.g. your shoes, most of the information is still trapped in the shoe and only accessible through a direct connnection with the shoe, if you lose your shoes you can’t (yet!) in Sterling’s famous opening line “google your shoes.” (see the historian of science and futurist, Alex Soojung-Kim Pang’s blog, The End of Cyberspace. He unpacks some of Sterling’s visionary thought).

But, this current disconnect between objects and information about them is very costly to society not just ‘cos you can’t google your shoes (or keys!) when you lose them. And, the massive energy waste in our homes and other facilities because we lack information about the state and interaction of the systems is just one example of where spimes (like the Implenia model house) can help us make a better world.

And, as Soojung-Kim Pang points out, while spimes aren’t prevalent yet they are coming.

They’ll pose challenges, but we can design around them; “the future is yours to make.” (Sterling)

Spimes must have wranglers. And, in my view, designing wranglers is also what EOLUS is about. A wrangler must crunch the complexities. Their interfaces must make our relationships to objects feel much simpler and more immediate (Sterling).

Bruce Sterling writes:

Real air traffic control systems are grim complex bureaucracies heavy with fail-safes. Who can make objects that integrate elegantly and dependably within an Internet of Things? Who can make that system as relatively simple and inviting as, say, the Internet’s Web browsers and Weblogs? It’s a design space rife with profound opportunity.

And, I guess the ideas of Edward Tufte - dubbed the Leonardo Da Vinci of data will be important here. Tufte is famous for his analysis of the shortcomings of Power Point (see my earlier post) that “disrupts and trivializes,” and whose poverty of information he points out has not only turned business meetings into arenas of excruciating boredom, but contributed to calamities like the Columbia Shuttle disaster in 2003.

And, of course, the brilliant work of Hans Rosling, (see my earlier post and the amazing Gapminder.org videos of Hans Rosling, presented at TED - see TED blog) has changed our relationship to data in profound and world changing ways.

Dealing with world scale development on issues like poverty, global health, or even the rate of growth of a developing world like Second Life, it is very hard to get a handle on events that occur on this kind of massive scale. Hans Rosling (see Gapminder), shows through amazing, animated, interactive statistical analysis how new ways of visualizing data can debunk conventional pessimistic views on beating world poverty - and other major “Myths about Developing Worlds.”

3D eCommerce

The combination of an interactive 3D environment with a back-end Real Life system (SAP) will open almost limitless new possibilities for people to become active participants in the act of shopping, designing their own products, arranging for the delivery of goods in SL to a RL address… and tracking orders purchased in SL.

On EOLUS One an example of 3D eCommerce has been implemented using the shopping floor and its articles, linked to the backend SAP ERP2005 system to illustrate how the store of the future could look.

Any new visitor will receive a little questionnaire (5 question) when he enters the island. After successfully answering that he will receive a gift voucher with 100 credits. He can step into the gift shop to pick items for those 100 credits , things like a baseball cap, an umbrella…. After he is done with the selection he drops his virtual shopping basket onto the cash register.

A backend process is started, a form is opened, the user enters his RL name and address after which all the info is passed to the SAP system, an order is generated, and the estimated time of delivery will be announced.

There are so called ‘magic boards’ all over the shopping floor, when an avatar comes close to it the current status of his orders will be shown. In the backend the order is placed. The producer of the goods will complete the order have it picked up by a local courier who then updates our backend system with the status of the parcel until it reaches the destination. The user can at any time go to the magic board and find out the details.

Another example:

The picture above was taken on the IBM 10 island where there is an IBM/Sears project for remodeling your own kitchen - you can select appliances, configure panels as you like and much more. If this project was linked to EOLUS each configuration would be a different article number in the back end system and once you were done designing it the way you wanted, you could press the purchase button. The complete configuration then passes the parts to the back end where transaction is being handled in SAP.

I asked Eolus McMillan what was the plan re ID authentication, an important part of making eshopping in virtual worlds viable. Eolus replied that he was in discussion about using products from RSA for strong authentication.

A Creative Context For A Better Planet

The idea of the EOLUS One initiative is to create a platform for creative minds to come to together to evolve the Better Planet theme. On July 6th there will be an opportunity to hear more about this and become part of the vision.

The EOLUS One build is designed to give people the opportunity to engage the different interests they have in Real Life.

For example energy conscious visitors will find areas on EOLUS One devoted to this. But, artists, or educators will also find things to do. Five more islands are planned - one for innovation, one for health care, one for education, one for business, and one for creative arts.

The picture below shows a project that Eolus is working on. SODIS - “a water treatment process used at a household level” - is a project to bring clean water to developing countries. It shows how very simple technologies can often make a big difference. In this case, ordinary plastic bottles are used to remove dangerous bacteria from water by leaving them out in the sunlight for six hours. SODIS, has been organizing funding and support to get this simple technology, and the knowledge of how to use it, to the people who need it. The story of SODIS will be included in an exhibition of projects for a better planet on EOLUS One on Second Life.

Eshi and I both took some pictures during my tour of EOLUS One. Below is a mashup of some of them. The exteriors are Eshi’s pictures the interiors are the ones I took.

July 6th Launch of EOLUS One on Second Life

I just heard from Eolus that Ansi will be at the launch. He has been away on projects, so I did not get a chance to meet him on my tour. Sounds like there will be an opportunity to talk with many members of the EOLUS team this Friday, July 6th.

I was very fortunate to be at the sound check for Jaynine Scarborough who will be performing for the launch. Get ready for a real treat!

3D Ecommerce, 3D Internet, 3D Internet on Second Life, Alert Management, Ansi Orochi, beautiful data, Boblingen, Bruce Sterling, Building Automation, Call Center Management, CEBIT, CO2 Reduction, Edward Tufte, Energy Management, Energy Monitoring, EOLUS, Eolus McMillan, EOLUS One, Eshi Otawara, Gapminder, Hans Rosling, IBM, IBM MQtt, IBM Research and Development, Implenia Global Solutions, Implenia Model House, Jaynine Scarborough, Mirror Worlds, Myths About Developing Worlds, Preventive maintenance, Real Life Second Life integration, SAP, Second Life, spime wranglers, spimes, TED, The Metaverse, Virtual Corporation, Virtual eshop, Virtual Reality, Virtual Worlds, Wago, Web 3.D, Web 3D, Websphere Zumtobel

Today, I had what felt to me like a ground breaking meeting with Alanagh Recreant on Second Life (a.k.a. Dorette Steenkamp in Real Life). Dorette Steenkamp is Executive Director of Uthango Social Investments, Cape Town, South Africa. Uthango is the first African-based NGO with a presence in Second Life.

You can visit Uthango’s newly established offices on Second Life here! SLurl: Uthango in Second Life.

Ginsu Linden, Linden Lab, told me earlier this month there was interest from Africa in the Linden Lab Global Provider Program. So, I was very excited to meet Alanagh in person, or rather in the pixels, and hear that an initiative to create an access portal and community for Africans on Second Life was actually underway.

“Not exclusively [for Africans] but with the exclusive aim to promote access to virtual reality.”

Uthango have just begun establishing their presence in Second Life. Their current offices are a first base from which to address the digital divide. But, please watch for more news about Uthango projects on Second Life to be announced shortly!

Uthango is an investment company specializing in finding and creating sustainable programs - connecting corporate/government with communities through collecting local intelligence and translating it to the business sector. But, “we only work at the invitation of communities. We are a relationship broker and bridge-builder between diverse interest groups to create mutual benefit.”

Uthango is serious about access for all. They will be working in parallel at establishing internet hubs in communities. And, they are seeking partnerships with mobile telecoms on mobile applications for Virtual Africa, and to develop links between mobile space and Second Life.,

They are putting together an Uthango Global Advisory Board that will be an innovation team both socially and commercially - to put out and receive ideas concerning producing a viable Virtual Africa Platform.

It is so exciting to see the first steps towards realizing a vision for a Virtual Africa being taken by Uthango. This group is deeply experienced at working on the ground with rural communities on sustainable development and poverty relief. And, they are expert at creating commercial partnerships with social value.

Uthango won the Centennial Award from Rotary International for Sustainable Projects in Communities in 2005, for District 9350, and The National Impumelelo Innovations Awards in the same year for Innovation in Private/Public Projects for their micro-enterprise project affecting a community of 45000.

I am especially impressed with how Alanagh, while very committed to expanding the possibilities for mobile technologies in sustainable development, is equally committed to the idea that Africans should not be excluded from high quality internet connectivity, access, and the potential that Second Life, as an immersive virtual world, has for Africa.

These are exciting times for African innovation!

Tags: Second Life | Virtual Africa | Africa on Second Life | Uthango Social Investments | Web 3.D | Linden Lab | Linden Lab Global Provider Program | Sustainable Development | Digital Divides | Poverty Relief | African Innovation | Africa Sustainable Development | Ginsu Linden | Alanagh Recreant | Web 2.0 | Dorette Steenkamp | mobile phones in Africa | mobile phones and sustainable development | mobile space and Virtual Worlds | Mobile Phones and Second Life | Metaverse | Virtual Reality | Virtual Worlds | World 2.o | virtual realities |

Metaverse Meetup at Jerry’s Loft - A Generation Y Think Tank

Jerry Paffendorf’s loft is a true Generation Y think tank, tingling with orgone energy radiating from a new cosmos of connectivity, social networking and mobility, where immersive virtual worlds are a natural habitat.

Generation Y - 20 to 35 years old [a.k.a the 3pointD generation], are living demonstrations of the potentiality of digital and electronic media in supporting/shaping our social environment (Wonderlust).

Current metazens of JLoft include Metaverse Architect Christian Westbrook a.k.a Christian Prior, rising Machinima star Pierce Portocarrero, who has recently come to town to work on his upcoming machinima sitcom for Virtual NBC, and the legendary Glitchy - a contributor to 3pointD who “stands astride a number of virtual worlds.” Mark Wallace notes, Glitchy is “a card-carrying member of the 3pointD generation.”

This was the setting for a Metaverse Meetup, last Thursday, on the topic of Global Online Cities: Trevor F. Smith and Ogoglio. The meetup was packed with metarati listening, questioning, and giving Trevor F. Smith feedback on his new metaverse technology, Ogoglio (click here to listen to the whole talk).

Ogoglio is inspired by car free city design - city planning based on human scale space. Ogoglio takes ideas of city planning online to create virtual cities by dropping 3D spaces into the web where they can connect using existing patterns of web development.

Satchmo Prototype a.k.a. Chris Carella - the Creative Director, Electric Sheep Company, and Becky Carella, Software Developer at The Electric Sheep Company, Hiro Pendragon a.k.a. Ron Blechner, CTO of Infinite Vision Media, and Murat Aktihanoglu of Holoscape, creator of Unype - the multiuser Google Earth experience, and Donald Schwartz, Image Link Productions, and many other movers and shakers of the metaverse listened and asked important questions about Ogoglio.

While this post is going to focus on this real life Metaverse Meetup in Jerry’s loft, I would like to point out that thanks to the miracle of Second Life you don’t have to live in the New York area to participate in a full on Geek Meet. Nick Wilson has organized The Metaversed Geek Meet:

a weekly networking event where we discuss the weeks business and technology news, make new friends swap blog and twitter urls and more. Join us today at 11am SLT/PST at the this landmark!

Dreaming Up A New Social/Virtual Environment - First Some Back Story to A Metaverse Meetup

The ideas of Tufte - dubbed the Leonardo Da Vinci of data - are resonating with the 3D generation. Tufte is famous for his analysis of the shortcomings of Power Point that “disrupts and trivializes,” and whose poverty of information he points out has not only turned business meetings into arenas of excruciating boredom, but contributed to calamities like the Columbia Shuttle disaster in 2003.

As new ideas of virtualizing reality are integrated into immersive worlds and reworked in 2.o thinking, mirror worlds, or whatever you want to call them, are going to become rocking places to hang out in.

To get a glimpse of some of the ways the high end technology is developing see Photosynth. Photosynth combines the Seadragon technology which obliterates limitations of screen resolution with 3D photo tourism, allowing people to create immersive 3D worlds from hundreds of thousands of different photos and form interconnected user generated environments.

(more…)

Mirror Worlds on Second Life

Epredator (a.k.a Ian Hughes) and Yossarian Seattle a.k.a Rob Smart, both of IBM and Eightbar, gave Destroy TV a guided tour of Hursley. “The Unofficial Tourists’ Guide to Second Life,” says “the IBM island Hursley, is being kept strictly under wraps.” But, thanks to Epredator, Yossarian and Destroy TV, a tour of this inner sanctum of innovation - invention and insight, IBM’s incubator for pervasive computing and the meaningful virtualization of reality and more, on Second Life, is documented and searchable online in Destroy TV’s Flickr stream. Destroy TV has created the most searchable archive of Second Life to date.

“Innovation has to be part of your life.” (Andy Stanford-Clark)

The Real Life house pictured above is IBM Master Inventor Andy Stanford-Clark’s Real Life farm, and Llama trekking business on the Isle of Wight, UK. On the right is the virtualization this house which is part of a Second Life Real Life Home Automation project. The pictures in the bottom row shows Stanford-Clark’s Real Life Llamas on the left and their virtual counterparts on Second Life on the right. Real and Virtual Llamas are linked through GPS and MQ telemetry so that Andy S-C can be a good shepherd when away from his farm (see this IBM podcast).

Pervasive and Mobile Computing and Virtualizing Reality: Why High End Business Executives Care

“because it’s what enables an event-driven, on-demand business.”

While his Llama mapping project began because Andy S-C needed to protect his trekking lamas from theft and misadventure, it evolved into a solution to a customer demand for “Pay As You Drive” insurance for Norwich Union.

If you want a detailed explanation of how IBM inventors are using Second Life and IBM’s MQtt messaging to virtualize and make meaningful data from Real Life on Second Life there are many relevant posts on Eightbar. Also see my earlier post on C.J. Chowderhead’s virtual lab.

Virtualized Worlds Are Key To Sustainable Development

Also, described in the IBM podcast and virtualized in Second Life (and visited by Destroy) is the bridge below where in Real Life Andy Stanford-Clark invented a flood monitoring system that has wide applications not only to the insurance industry for better flood prediction, but for monitoring the effects of global warming.

If you have read Ugotrade before you will know that I try to explore the possibilities of virtual realities and 2.0 thinking, pervasive and mobile computing in positive global development. The work of virtualizing reality has incredible significance for a sustainable future.

From an uber visionary perspective, this is a future where “green” means, perhaps, eliminating the need to build anything at all. This remark comes from Keystone Bouchard, Virtual Architect for Clear Ink, who was also visited by Destroy TV - more later this post about Keystone, and 3D Experience Architecture.

On Ugotrade I try integrate an expansive view that imagines an end to this era of industrial production, all it’s horrors of inequality, waste, pollution and scarcity, with an on the ground perspective that not only tracks corporate innovation, but looks at how people in developing economies (including Second Life) are using virtual realities in innovative ways, for example:

Mobile phones have enabled Africans to leapfrog lack of banking infrastructure and invent virtual banking. And, how ordinary people all over the world are reinventing their lives and careers in Second Life.

Virtualized Business on Second Life

Destroy’s visit to the IBM Business Center is also worth a mention. So much of business reporting on Second Life has focused on whether Second Life is “working” from a very narrow and often poorly conceptualized marketing/sales perspective. This kind of reporting on Second Life has been all too common lately, even by reputable business writers. But, it has been rife with inaccuracies and is based on many misconceptions - see here for a thorough analysis.

I found out, on the ground, some of the innovative ways IBM is developing their Second Life Business Center as a place to relate with their customers, on what is approaching a 24/7 basis, on Destroy’s Flickr stream!

A Searcheable Guide To Second Life

Destroy TV has, in the last ten days, created, an extraordinary guide to Second Life (which will be released as a DVD later). But this guide is available now as a searchable Flickr stream of more than 99,000 photos and the accompanying chat. You can check out Destroy’s flickr tags that logged every place she has been and every avatar she encountered here. Flickr tags were created from the Second Life chat lines and are correlated with a SLurl.

This is the first time that such a vast searcheable document of Second Life has been created. Perhaps, you can, tell how powerful it is by the way I was able to match up Second Life photos from Destroy’s record with Real Life photos I found through Googling Hursley Park on the web.

A toast to Destroy’s accomplishment!

The cover of “The Unofficial Tourists’ Guide to Second Life” is held in front of the camera streaming the Fuse Gallery event into Second Life.

Sharing The Experience Of Second Life

Steve Nelson from Clear Ink notes:

I think both machinima and exported live feeds will be an important part of one of the hurdles of SL, namely the learning curve. The more people are acclimated to the environment before they enter for the first time, the more accelerated I think their introduction to SL will be. It’s like visiting a new country after having seen videos - it isn’t as much of a shock when you actually get there.

As Destroy toured Second Life her adventures and chat were not only streamed live to the web at Destroy TV, they were also projected on a wall in Fuse Gallery, New York City, where people could watch and interact with the avatars. Also what was happening in the Real Life Gallery in New York City was streamed back into Second Life to the GHava{SL} Center for the Arts. This was quite a conceptual and technical achievement.

Pictured above is Clear Ink’s 3D Experience Architect, Keystone Bouchard. When Destroy accompanied by Jerry Paffendorf encountered the team from Clear Ink (one the most visionary agencies working on Second Life), they found people who really got the significance of the multiple levels of reaction this project created (photo from Destroy’s Flickr stream).

A good opportunity to check out Clear Ink and their work on SL will be this event on Autodesk Island HERE (SLurl), June 14, 10AM PST Chris Luebkeman : Future Challenges: Global Creative Contexts.

Annie Ok writes of this extraordinary meeting of minds in a long comment on this post on 3pointD. Here is an excerpt:

the exemplary moment of Destroy’s potential educational/informative application has been the happy accident of running into Keystone Bouchard and him immediately TP-ing in Theory Shaw and the ensuing tour they gave to destroy of architecture island and the Wikitecture project.

Keystone talked to me later about the Clear Ink encounter with Destroy. There are several key-points Keystone touched on:

Sharing The Experience of Second Life with People In Real Life

At Clear Ink, we had several people watching on my screen, who could see both my avatar’s movements and Destroy’s view through my browser. So, on my end, there were several people viewing both portals simultaneously. But, what makes it really interesting is that through this virtual medium, it ended up being both absorbed and transmitted through a multitude of experiences. Because, on their end, they had the virtual scene being projected onto the wall of a real life gallery with several people in real life witnessing the phenomenon - even taking pictures of themselves standing next to avatars - as you would in a real life gathering. It blurred so many lines - it was quite extraordinary.

Interacting With An Avatar On Second Life To produce A Shared Narrative

We could see what Destroy was looking at through the browser. I could see her camera so, when she would move her camera over to a certain build, I could describe what she was looking at, so the people in the gallery could read what i was describing. In a sense, we even transcended our avatars - and became invisible cameras - flying around the island looking at, touring and describing the entire island - while our avatars stood still. Plus, at Clear Ink, it was a great way to engage my co-workers, and show them a really unique experience - using SL in a way it hadn’t ever been used before.

Sharing Avatar Viewpoint To Enhance Collaboration On Second Life

Architecturally - in a virtual environment - understanding the avatar’s gaze is absolutely critical - and one of the biggest challenges in a virtual environment. Because, I can design something using Mouselook - and it could be visually compelling based on the way I use my camera - but another user would have an entirely different experience based on the way they use their camera. So, you have to design a building to accommodate many levels of approach and viewpoint.

Being able to see what Destroy was looking at did truly provide a missing link. I was able to give her a more thorough description of the island. At one point, I was describing the Wikitecture experiment. But I could see that Destroy was looking at the Architecture 101 build - so I shifted the conversation to describe that. At which point, Destroy started going from project to project, knowing that I could continue the narrative. The collaborative potential is something we’re very interested in and actively building experiments around on Architecture Island.

The Metarati In Action

Jerry Paffendorf at Destroy’s wrap party last Saturday at Fuse NYC watches Destroy’s visit to Relay For Life - the American Cancer Society’s SL adventure that has sparked enthusiasm and creativity from Second Lifers (three years on SL now!) Destroy was welcomed by a large crowd of avatars.

Jerry Paffendorf, Metarati and Futurist in Residence for the Electric Sheep Company (this is an independent project) teamed with artist Annie Ok, curator and collaborator, and Christian Westbrook (Metaverse Architect ESC) to create Destroy TV. Ben Byer, who is from Apple BSD technology group, was visiting from California, (on right). He came up with the name for Destroy TV.

It is an extraordinary feat of vision combined with some coding genius. They pulled off the extended two way streaming, projection and logging to Flickr with only a few minor burps. This is no minor feat. See Christian’s blog for a post on what happened when their Flickr stream topped 99,000.

Turning Extreme Lifelogging Into Meaningful Virtual Experience

I talked at length with Jerry Paffendorf at the closing party at Fuse Gallery about the challenge of extreme life logging in virtual worlds both from a technical and expressive point of view. Just like there is a need for a new language of virtual architecture as Keystone points out - “a more interactive, reflexive architecture” - there is a need to find an expressive language for life logging. Jerry Paffendorf has been pushing the envelope on this and has some very interesting projects in the pipeline (which I will let him reveal).

Flickr, the poster child of Web 2.0, began as a user generated virtual world.

Jerry talked about how Flickr is a big influence on his thinking right now. Flickr as he notes is the poster child of Web 2.0 - it gets better the more people that use it and interact with each other inside it. But, Jerry also pointed out something about Flickr that may not be so well known, i.e., it started out as user generated virtual world called Game Never Ending.

It is fascinating how Destroy TV by using Flickr to document Second Life begins to reconnect with this initial conception. Jerry noted that it is possible Destroy TV was the most prolific poster to Flckr in the world, during Destroy’s ten day adventure.

Also, Jerry sees the Destroy Project as a sketch for how we are our going to record and organize our own Real Lives - remembering the places that we have been and the people we have been around. This is what Destroy TV does, and documents. Like Game never Ending turned out not simply to apply to organizing a virtual world, Destroy TV is also about inventing ways to organize our experience of the real world, and bridge the imagination gap needed to do this (also see 3pointD on Ambient Gaming: Life Logging in Disguise). Talking about the future of Destroy TV, Jerry said:

What I want to see happen is that anybody who logs into Second Life, or any virtual world, can record absolutely everything that they see and create a lifelog of their Second Life experience.

Virtual Worlds have a big advantage over the real world re life logging because they have built in wireless, RFID, meta data and geolocation, so it makes sense for this to be a place we will proto-type life logging.

The search for a an expressive language for extreme lifelogging -where the traces and tracks of real life can be expressed in virtual space in meaningful ways - is where 3D experience design and the virtualization of real life merge to create innovative hybrid realities.

A 3D Experience Architect- building a new language for virtual design.

I have been meaning to visit Architecture Island for a while now, and seeing Destroy’s Flickr stream inspired me to go yesterday. First, I talked to Keystone Bouchard.

Keystone Bouchard is a Real Life architect who has recently transitioned exclusively to a virtual mode as a “3D Experience Architect” with Clear Ink. He is standing here in an experiment he is working on. You can click on the video grab below to see a short machinima.

The blurring of lines between familiar and unfamiliar experiences of music and space create an other-worldly environment that is cinematic yet still an invitation to interaction.

Keystone observed avatar movement and behavior on a Architecture Island, then wrote a piano score that approximated that movement. Then he transposed a video of him playing that score and imported the video. His goal is to make the architecture interactive so that it understands where you are and what you’re doing - and provides an audible reaction to it.

Wikitecture On Second Life

Keystone is also interested in the crossroad between the professional practice of architecture and virtual environments, as well as the development of a new language of virtual architecture. Keystone and Theory Shaw, pictured below, have teamed up to use virtual worlds as a tool for a collaborative approach to architecture in the Real World. Theory Shaw has outlined how virtual world can be used in the the planning of future cities.

The central build on Architecture Island is the Studio Wikitecture experiment - an open source approach to architecture that everyone is free to join - co-creating projects and participating in collaborative design.

Theory is an architect living in Chicago. He is currently researching the prospect of using an open source (or wiki) type paradigm toward the improvement of architecture and city planning.

I feel our cities are so complicated that no small group of people can possibly design them from the top down….it’s a such a grand problem, that we need to set up a framework (or platform) where people can come together and tackle the problem from a local perspective.

My ultimate goal is to use Second Life, or what will be ultimately the next metaverse, (and the tool you utilize for open source architecture should be just as open), as a tool for the world’s population to come together, and solve collectively, how architecture should be defined.

The Studio Wikitecture experiment needs a complete post, so I will not go into all of the interesting aspects of this project Theory mentioned in our chat right now. But, Theory has written a program and protocol for the experiment - available here.

Tags: Extreme Life logging | life logging | 3D experience architecture | Second Life Builders | Second Life | Web 2.0 | Web 3.D | Web 3D | mirror worlds | virtualizing reality | wikitecture | open source architecture | architecture island | vitual architecture | Destroy TV | virtual experience | IBM Virtual Business Center | virtual business | machinima | virtual worlds | metaverse | sustainable development | virtual banking | pervasive and mobile computing | virtualized worlds |

Fizik Baskerville (a.k.a Justin Bovington) says:

“Web + TV + Print + Virtual Worlds = Powerful”

This week Virtual Life and World 2.0 entered a new era with Destroy TV and virtual lifelogging in full swing, and the opening of the Sky News sim on Second Life. Sky News launched with a live event and live simulcast from the Guardian Hay Festival. Sky News has partnered with Rivers Runs Red on this watershed project for Second Life. And, the impressive Second Life replica of the real life Sky News headquarters was packed for the launch.

Web 2.0 is a mindset that leaves behind the negative forces of monopolies, and one-way communication. Web 2.0 is not a new version of the internet but the coming of age of the original vision of the internet to serve the interaction and cooperation amongst people (see Daniel Orsolic). And, it will be very interesting to see how Sky News develops 2.0 concepts, e.g., citizen journalism, user generated content on Second Life. For a good round up of a range News 2.0 phenomena see, “What is news 2.0 to you?” It is very exciting to see mainstream news media beginning to explore the collaborative potential of Second Life.

The 2.0 view has now been expanded to all aspects of our world - you can google news 2.o, sex 2.0 (I didn’t actually check the links on this), and enterprise 2.0 - lots of buzz about that (and if you want an inside view on what enterprise 2.0 is about check out IBM on Second Life). And, then there is World 2.o to encompass all the 2.0ed phenomena.

The 2.0 movement can be understood as a drive to revise the world into something better (Orsolic). And, part of the magic of Second Life is that the social and immersive qualities of SL are the quintessential expression of the 2.0 principles of user generated content, community, and collaboration - the heart and soul of 2.0 culture.

I was fortunate to log on, Sunday, at almost the exact same moment that Fizik Baskerville (a.k.a. Justin Bovington), CEO and Executive Creative Director of Rivers Runs Red, arrived in Sky News on Second Life after a 5hr road trip back from the live event (picture above). And, despite being, “at it for 48hrs,” he took the time to talk to me. Also, I saw on my Twitter stream that he even visited Destroy TV later! As the live event was held in the morning, UK time, I missed it. I am a New Yorker, and while virtual worlds herald the death of geography, I am not ready yet for the end of sleep!

But, Epredator, Andy Remblai and Aglernon Spackler from IBM (see Eightbar ) were all there, and three Lindens. And, you can catch up with what happened at the event on Second Life on the
Eightbar blog. Also see a very good post on MindBlizzard, and Sky New’s own advert/machinima for the event. The video grabs below are from this. On the right is Justin Bovington.

Rivers Runs Red now has a team dedicated to Sky News 24/7. Justin explained to me:

a dedicated content team will be on hand for updates - just like breaking news it need to be a 24/7 approach. We’re going recreate scenes when needed. We could in the future reproduce courts etc. Augmented reality - we are really into that. We have partnered with Sky News because they want to explore it too…..adding value, as in Second Life compliments, not detracting from another medium.

We can now step into the news room as it happens. The headlines are specially updated 5 times a day. Future events like the Hay Festival will also be incorporated, plus a lot of surprises to come. Sky News is very excited you just had to watch Sky News over the weekend to see the enthusiasm for all this [also see Adam Boulton's Weblog].

The Level Playing Field and The End of Geography

On Thursday of last week, I went to hear Mitchell Kapor (avatar on the right) and Philip Rosedale speak about The Level Playing Field Institute and Second Life. Philip Rosedale described how:

He was lucky enough to find Mitch at a time when no-body really would have gotten behind what we were doing - the idea of Second Life itself was something that was just outright crazy at the time that Mitch first made his investment in Linden Lab. And, for several years to follow, when Second Life was but a few hundred people using it, Mitch and a small group of angel investors that he inspired were the ones who believed.

Philip Rosedale spoke on the role of Second Life in creating a better world.

Second Life is changing the world, at least in part, by lowering the barriers to doing things for a lot of people around the world. There are people who are able to learn new things, and make new careers for themselves, to change their lives fundamentally because they have access to this environment in which the costs of doing things are reduced to almost zero. And, the barriers between people and the kind of reasons and judgments that people make about each other are virtually eliminated. And, we are left in this new world in which we all have the same opportunity. And what we are seeing in Second Life is that if you give everybody the same opportunity everybody does well. And that’s something that is very exciting and maybe surprising to some people out there in the world to see. But, it isn’t surprising at all for me. And, I really know it isn’t surprising for Mitch, and for The Level Playing Field Institute.

Mitchell Kapor spoke on the “death of geography”

We have lived under the tyranny of geography for all the millennia of human history. And, if you wanted to get together with people you really had to be in the same room. I am in a room full of people and I am part of an event on Second Life………..this is the future that we are making together. You are all pioneers in how we will make this new world.

Then, via IMs to Brainy Aleixandre of the Levelers (the LPFI’s Second Life group), Mitch Kapor fielded questions about the work of The Level Playing Institute. To learn more, please go to the web site. Mitch Kapor presented an open invitation for dialogue and collaboration. Also, see The Levelers blog.

In response to a question that came in from Real Life from a student in SMASH (see picture below from Smashcast blog), “What was the spark you saw in Philip?” Mitch made some interesting comments. Some things he mentioned were:

passion, determination and creativity …… and in addition [Second Life] has never been just a business, never been just about making money, building something bigger, or being successful. Integral, and we saw this very early on, was that it was about making a difference, about making a better world. And, we also see that from our students [in SMASH].

SMASH (Summer Math & Science Honors Academy) is one of the innovative projects to come out of The Level Playing Field Institute.

World 2.0 and Virtual Life

The virtualization of life - the joining of physical and virtual space in meaningful ways - begins to manifest the full possibilities of a 2.0 world. Something that is quite unexpected to some people is that this, the linking of the virtual and the physical, is the key to creating a sustainable future.

Bruce Sterling imagines how computers can help us find a way out of an industrial society that is not sustainable and is thoroughly inequitable.

The Emergence of Virtualized Communities

Many projects are still in the research stage. See Ian Hughes’s report on his visit to Tweakfest, and the IBM Zurich Lab, for some interesting examples of research into linking physical and virtual space. The work of Jeffrey Huang and his Swiss House project seemed particularly interesting to me.

The aim here to connect swizz ex-pats with their home country and fellow swiss in other countries. This ‘house’ is in Cambridge, MA between Harvard and MIT. The aim is to create a physical space but have the presence and linkages to other spaces, not by one video conference screen but lots of types of walls, projections, virtual/real world tools.
There are some pictures here of the sort of space created.

Uber Lifelogger

Then there is MyLifeBits, the ultimate lifelogging project from the legendary computer scientist Gordon Bell.

For the past seven years, Bell has been conducting an audacious experiment in “lifelogging”–creating a near-total digital record of his experience.

For an excellent report and a guide on How To Build Your Own MyLifeBits see Fast Company. And, if you really get inspired, you can follow some links in earlier posts on Ugotrade that will give you clues on how you could virtualize your data on Second Life in meaningful ways!

Virtual Space is the New Infrastructure:
Africa Pioneers Mobile Banking.

The development of mobile banking in Africa is showing that economic obstacles created by lack of physical infrastructure and difficulties with currency exchange can be overcome by innovative use of the mobile virtual space. Trading in minutes is so successful in Africa that major banks are setting up m-banking divisions (thanks Neil Caudwell for this link).

GigaOM writes:

While, most in the developed world fret about developing elegant and complex mobile transaction systems - folks who need mobile banking figure out things on their own. Using a little bit of common sense.

Read the full story over on iAfrica.com

Enterprise 2.0 meets Sports 2.0 for a Virtual Tennis Match

As Tara5 Oh, I went to IBM 7, Monday morning, where I met Andy Remblai, Laronzo Fitzgerald (builder and scripter), and Iorek Rasmuson - a tennis fan interested in technology who said he’d come to watch another Second Life first:

I’ve used the IBM online scoreboard for Wimbledon before and I guess this is the next generation.

Andy and Laronzo were working on the build which is open to the public, but still in an early experimental stage. Iorek and I were enjoying virtual tennis despite the appalling weather at Roland Garros. And, it was very interesting meeting the IBM virtual architects (see the IBM on Demand Scoreboard here).

Ian Hughes, who has pioneered this tennis project with others at IBM, sent me a message from Second Life earlier, in response to my questions about when tennis on Second Life would open to the public:

The tri board has schedule, completed matches and matches in progress, the main court will be showing live current match (all being well) or a replay of a match some videos and other things around. We are doing this quite gently as its the first tennis one we have gone public with.

Ian Hughes now has a post and video up describing Tennis in Second Life - Roland Garros. And, 3PointD has an interesting interview with Epredator (Ian Hughes). Virtual journalist, Walker Spaight, does some participatory exploration. Epredator invites you to come on over and take a look.

I mentioned earlier in this post that if you want experience enterprise 2.0 from the inside you may want to visit the IBM sims on Second Life. The IBM Impact 2007 SOA (Service Oriented Architecure) conference (see my earlier post) was an extraordinary example of the convergence of enterprise culture, 2.o thinking, and virtual worlds. SOA is particularly interesting re an understanding of Enterprise 2.0. SOA might be described as IT solutions with a Web 2.0 attitude. Although, there are convergences and divergences between SOA and Web 2.0 as Dion Hinchcliffe explains.

Be there!

The Destroy Television project continues, and it seems anything can happen and does. I dropped in this weekend and found out that hanging with Destroy seems to be a good way to meet interesting people.

Tags: Virtual Reality | Augmented Reality | Mixed Reality | Second Life | Virtual Worlds | Web 2.0 | Enterprise 2.0 | News 2.0 | Sports 2.0 | World 2.0 | The Internet | Sky News | The Hay Festival | Philip Rosedale | Mitchell Kapor | Gordon Bell | SMASH | The Level Playing Field Institute | Destroy TV | Lifelogging | Business 2.0 | Virtualized Reality | Virtual Life | Virtual Communities | Virtual Banking | Mobile Phones in Africa | m-banking |

These two pictures are from Nicolas Nova’s Media and Design Lab, Mediamatic Workshop, Amsterdam, May 2007 (see Pasta and Vinegar). The picture on the left is what hybridization is NOT about - rather think from a less utilitarian point of view as in picture on the right. (Nicolas Nova).

This IS What hybridization is about!

Destroy Television (DTV)

If you live in New York City, or can get here, you have an amazing opportunity to participate in a full on hybridization experience, this Wednesday May 23rd:

Go to the Other Here to get:

some background and details (when, where, who, what, why/vision) on the Destroy Television art show at Fuse Gallery, GHava{SL}, dtv.sheeplabs.com, and in Second Life. Take a look, come hang out in New York or Second Life during this Wednesday’s opening, and plan your performance if you want to make a splash in Destroy Television The Movie. On this…..

Invitation To Attend And Participate In The Destroy Television 10-Day Second Life Avatar Lifelogging Art Show Movie…Thing

Destroy Television is the name of an avatar in Second Life who streams live video of her life and adventures to dtv.sheeplabs.com, where you see and chat and influence her movement and camera controls in SL from the web. But wait! There’s more! Destroy Television, or DTV for short, records and shares her life through a process called “lifelogging” or “lifecasting” (to define terms, logging is keeping the record and casting is sharing it live — a popular example of real life lifecasting is the 24/7 mobile camera at justin.tv).

An avatar of Justin in Second Life

We wonder if lifelogging in virtual worlds, that is, taking advantage of virtual worlds having essentially baked-in wireless internet and communications, cameras, GPS, RFID, and meta data about people and locations, will help prototype a more transparent, searchable, and personally and socially and globally understandable real world — the reeeaaally flat world.

Data Blogging - an advanced form of blogging.

Collecting the traces of new interaction partners is a trend in hybridization.

Question: Why would objects want to blog? Why would I be interested? (see Julian Bleeker’s blog on Techkwondo)

Answer: Traces (where you have been where you are going in a geospatial sense), history, (”turn a history on interactions into a continuous experience - object to learn from their histories”), content production (see The Aibo [the toy dog] That Blogs), and agency - e.g., having a voice in cultural circulation on public networks -streams, feeds, trackbacks, permalinks, wiki and blog posts.

Critter Cams from Nicolas Nova

And, we cannot ignore, reality mining and lifelogging’s shadow “big brother” (Justin cop helmet cams are all the rage too now).

Hybridization at an “Unconference”

Jose Marinez, at MobileCampNYC, presenting on, “The Poor man’s SMS Gateway.” There are instructions for setting up the SMS gateway on his blog

On Saturday (May 19th) our whole family went to MobileCampNYC. For a very generous description of our presentation, “Metaverse and The Mobile Space: Intersection or Inclusion,” see Marshall Sponder at WebMetricsGuru.

Nokia (who unveiled a beta mobile web server) lavishly sponsored the event and supplied an abundance of Nokia 95s, some of which were given away. A bit disappointed not to get one the Ugotrade family went shopping for their N 80 IE’s that evening with our co-presenter on “Metaverse and The mobile space, Rich LaBaca.

While as Dave Winer, Scripting News, commented:

People don’t seem ready yet to accept that knowledge is distributed through the room, we’re here to be taught.

I felt MobileCampNYC, an “unconference,” did maintain the feeling of a hybrid event. Presentations from corporate giants rubbed shoulders with more down to earth innovations such as “The Poor Man’s SMS Gateway,” Dave Harper, founder of Winksite, Cocoa UltraSMS, Paul Notzold - txtual healing ” (see Marshall Sponder for an excellent write up ), “Mashup your phone with GPS” - WHERE.com, Mexuar - who will soon be announcing a very interesting new app. for Second Life, and then there was the Ugotrade family road show!

Akaalias uploaded this picture of Ugotrade junior to MobileCamp’s Flickr pool noted:

This DS contained a Revolution R4 card with a microSD memory card embedded in it. I wasn’t expecting to get out-teched by a someone under 10. (noted by Everyplace )

Many thanks to everyone who played with UJ while I participated. As Akaalias observed in the title to this picture, Ugotrade Junior was on a mission to “Remote Control the Camp.”

Also, Timo Arnall flew in from Norway, just for this conference, and gave an inspiring presentation on Physical Hyperlinking.

Timo covered a lot of ground. He outlined many technologies for physical hyperlinking, and their creative uses in intereactive marketing and community projects. Go to Timo’s blog to really get a feel for how creative and far reaching his thinking is.

Timo has put many of his wonderful slides up too - RFID, “smart posters,” Bluetooth marketing - “turn on bluetooth to receive something naughty,” building size QR codes, Semapedia’s hyperlinking, experimental and niche market projects such as one to tag the provenance of craft items and unusual interpretations of QR codes, and much more.

Metaverse Roadmap

I have been quite absorbed with the Mirror World, Augmented Reality, and Lifelogging quadrants of the Metaverse Roadmap lately. This picture is from Jerry Paffendorf’s (futurist for The Electric Sheep Company) blog. See here for much more on the Metaverse Roadmap project and where lifelogging and reality mining all fit in a vision of the 3D Web.

Jerry Paffendorf points out that:

massively multi-user avatar environments in whatever form, are and will become even more of a driver of the other areas [in the picture above] because of their capacity to purely simulate things digitally and because they inherently have RFID, GPS, WiFi, and metadata out the kazoo baked right into them.

You can, for example, prototype any imaginable augmented reality application inside of a virtual world, which may also be a mirror world, before you put it out onto the street, or inside of a building, or wherever out in physical space.

He also explains the importance of lifelogging and indicates what might be