Tuesday, April 07, 2009

Building Intelligent Organisations

Last month I've blogged a bit about what the important SOCIAL factors are in creating corporate social networks. Today my colleague Patrick Savalle published a first presentation on the TeamPark approach which is designed to help organisations successfully implement corporate social networks and become more intelligent organisations.

In every organization processes can be identified that do not function optimal in the normal, so called bureaucratic or formal structure.

Finding people or expertise, sharing and leveraging implicit knowledge, exploiting the wisdom of the crowd, using the special talents of people, driving sustainable innovation. Many processes run more efficient and are more effective using the social networks of the organisation.

Many tasks can be accomplished better by organizing people in communities instead of teams. An organization that knows how to use communities, social networks, crowd-sourcing, broadcast communication, self-organization and other ‘2.0’ concepts has an advantage over competitors and offers an appealing working environment.

The Intelligent Organization knows; build it with TeamPark

At the SlideShare presentation you'll also find a transcript to go with the presentation.

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Thursday, March 19, 2009

Corporate Social Networking

All around us, companies feel the need to go Social. As the web grows and companies see their employees blog and interact, share knowledge everywhere, suddenly we have to take Social Networking behind firewalls and create a corporate walled social garden.

It's not that big of a surprise senior management sees merit in embracing social networking as communities are pretty loyal and dedicated. It would be nice if we could bind our employees so strongly and also use their creativity to get better. It's probably no surprise either that they just don't quite get the essence of social networking. In the end it is about information, about knowledge that is the company's main asset, isn't it?

It's not in the functionality.

The next thing your senior management will probably ask for is a thorough analyses of requirements and a turn up a full list of features. A Social Networking site should have blogs, wiki, forum, chat, and so on. Over the past month I've been doing just that and made a thorough comparison between Microsoft MOSS 2007, IBM Lotus Connections and Telligent Community Server. Drawing up comparison charts, listing the functionality is a cumbersome job. Especially when the result is that there hardly is a difference. All platforms offer more or less the same functionality.

They're all the same, or not?

When it's all about the same, the obvious choice for senior management is to stick to what they know and we already use inside the company. From this reasoning, many companies will probably go for Microsoft MOSS 2007 (or MOSS 14 if they can wait until 2010) as it will offer the basic functionality you would want and integrates well with the other corporate software, and even allows you to keep sharing those all important documents.

It's like playing in a rockband.

Last week I attended a presentation by my Swedish colleague Andreas Sjöström, who founded the website inarockband. In his presentation he said working for Sogeti was like playing in a rockband:

inarockband.com builds on the analogy that working for Sogeti is like playing in a rock band.

Just as rock musicians we are serious about our passion, instruments and customers. In our creative work we understand that everyone in the project plays and important role, just as every instrument counts.

Working with Sogeti is not about working your career, but about your passion. Be passionate about your work, try to excell and in excellence delight the crowd.

In my opinion, Corporate Social Networking also fits this analogy. Blogs are a stage to enthuce and delight, communities a place to share passion. When we look at platforms to support this we are looking for simplicity, easy to use software instead of massively complicated configurable packages. The most suitable software for the job is Social, Organic, Collectively Intelligent, Alive and Linked.

It needs to be S.O.CI.A.L

We at Sogeti are passionate about our job. We like to excell. Small wonder we are constantly working up new books on best practises, creating new standards and methods. One of the latest books we've come up with is about moving from Crowd to Community. The second part of the book deals with the Teampark idea, a method to implement and adopt social software inside companies. In the next release this part will be extended and worked out into a full approach.

In the acronym S.O.CI.A.L my colleague Patrick Savalle has tried to capture what the elements are that empower social software:

These are the key elements for Social Software. From this vantage point, there is a clear winner when it comes to Enterprise platforms: IBM Lotus Connections. Whereas MOSS will excell in sharing explicit knowledge, LC will tap into the implicit knowlegde of your workforce.

Into the Magic Quadrant

I'm not saying Lotus Connections is the perfect match, but from an enterprise point of view, it's closing in on the magic quadrant, as Gartner puts it:In the graph IBM is not yet in the Magic Quadrant, and Microsoft isn't far behind. Don't get me wrong, MOSS isn't a bad product, not at all and I'm not saying IBM has done the trick yet, but they're slightly ahead at this point in time. In June last year, the CIO magazine also ran an article on IBM vs. Microsoft in the Social Software space and concluded:

While both vendors showed their products could integrate with existing e-mail systems (especially e-mail systems that they sell, such as Notes and Exchange), IBM’s Lotus Connections looked, at minimum, a year or more ahead of SharePoint in its social computing capabilities out of the box.

It was a lot prettier looking, too.

If we look at the road ahead, this conclusion still stands with Lotus Connections 2.5 going into Beta in April and expected to go Gold by Mid July whereas Microsoft MOSS 14 is due for early 2010. However, it is more than just release dates. It is about the core focus of the product. In terms of S.O.CI.A.L aspects, LC2.5 still has a more informal, organic, people centered approach than MOSS 14, which (from what I have seen under NDA) still is more formal and hyrarchical focussed on information, despite all it's slick tricks.

Scaling the Walls

Identifying the right triggers to create Social Networks is not a guarantee for instant succes though. On the one hand, setting psychology loose on Social Webdesign to delight the crowd and direct communities, creating emergent behaviour is tricky, but on the other hand we have the issue of the walled gardens. Companies will try to contain these platforms behind their corporate firewalls.

About a year ago I did a project in wich security played an important role. The client went into extremes to protect its data. However, all it's corporate knowledge, its value, could be found on Wikipedia for free. Knowledge and creativity are hard things to contain, they will find a way. Take blogging for instance.

From a bloggers point of view, his main drive will probably be to build a reputation. Blogging is more than just jotting down short things you are passionate about. You want to excell and gain authority. A global audience will probably suit you better than a limited corporate stage can offer.

Regarding this, Hutch Carpenter wrote an interesting article on his blog "I'm not actually a Geek" where he asks how much scale is actually needed in Enterprise 2.0 Employee Adoption.

Blogs: The nature of a blog is a single person’s thoughts, observations and ideas. Inside companies, these applications can be tools for the ongoing recording of things that fall outside the deadlines and process-oriented activities that make up the day. Making them public is a great way to share these contributions with other employees and establish your record of what’s happening. If only a few key people blogged inside a company, there will be value in that.

The article raises many interesting issues, but the question remains if we should take it all behind walls. It is quite true that Blogs do not require a large scale adoption, It will take justa few catalysts to start interesting corporate blogs, but if you want your employees to excell, to put effort into this Social Environment you have to offer them a worldwide stage. Have them interact with the world instead of limiting them to peers.

From a knowledge point of view we really have to consider which information really is actually a corporate asset. Is it knowledge on technology (which probably is out there on the web anyway) or is it about privacy, personal data and sensitive information about competitors or clients?

It's a brave new world

When you carefully look around in your company you might find these catalysts; passionate people who engage and delight the crowd. These thoughtleaders and visionaries inside your company probably have their own blogs, as they will be sharing their passion, having a global stage to build their reputation. Do we really want to confine them inside corporate walled gardens? Will they combine the pursuit of their personal passion and delight the corporate crowd? You will undoubtedly find out they will put more effort in personal blogging than in corporate blogging if we rigidly put our Corporate Social Network behind firewalls.

The current Social Networking trends focus on aggregation, pulling together updates from a variety of media into a single lifestream. If I look at my Plaxo Pulse stream for instance puts my twitter messages and my blogposts into a single update stream which is visible for all my connections. The next challenge will be to move from this information convergence to information divergence. This divergence will allow me, as a blogger, to write one passionate article and distribute it to the medium I chose and the audience I choose. This divergence will even more require personal and professional digital presence to blend, calling for better identity management and privacy measurements. In short, getting into the Magic Quadrant of Corporate Social Networking will not be about more features, but about smart blending of corporate and private digital identities.

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Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Credit Crunch key to future of Social Networks

A variety of newsfeeds on different topics was poured onto me today, through various media. Snippets I picked up on the radio, television, conference calls at work, twitter feeds etcetera. The mashup my brain made led to an interesting thought (I think) on how the credit crunch and recession will affect social networking, for better or worse.

Primarily old media are pouring out negative news on the crisis, credit crunch effects and recession worldwide. I bet you can't get away from the news either. Most of my social networks barely mention it, except for the occasional twitter / friendfeed / blog rant of Scobleizer. Why don't they? Is it because they are all new start ups, dependant on Venture Capital and VC might be the first thing to save money on?

I think not. I'm beginning to think the credit crunch and social networks are totally incompatible entities. They just don't mix.

Business is going Social ?

Let's start with social networking. Throughout the day I've been working on collaboration platforms and how to implement social software inside companies. When you're working at a company which is 'considering' to go social, you know the hassle. It often fails as corporate structures are incompatible with the social networking way of life; not bound by corporate hyrarchy but organic. Corporations still have the idea to implement communities through a top-down decree.

One of the articles I read today which touches this subject is a report by McKinsey, titled "Six ways to make Web 2.0 work for companies" (Thanks to @AlexKaris). Another quote that triggered me was from the presentation by Cisco's CEO John Chambers at the MIT World. I found his speech at OpenZine in an article called "Business is Social"

John Chambers held this speech at the MIT World back in october last year.


At about 3.00 minutes into the video John says:

"And when you look at the future of companies, I think you are about to see the most fundamental change in businesses and governement on a global basis that you have ever seen, moving from command and control to collaboration and team work"

Will we see this change, or won't we see this change? Everybody is talking about it, but will it happen? In reflection today, the credit crunch will play a crucial role in this process.

The Anglo Saxon business Model

Switching to old school media, one of the stories I heard on the radio was a Dutchmen who lived in Japan talking about business models. The Asian businessmodel looked very similar to our Dutch "Rhineland" model, or negatively connotated "the polder model". He gave a few examples.

The example from Japan was the CEO of Japan Airlines who had to take drastic steps in his company. As a result, he himself took a huge payment cut and came to work by bus to give a good example to his employees. This relates to the attitude we have had for many years inside the Netherlands, where you expected your CEO to come to work by bycicle and have lunch with all his employees in the canteen, bringing the same ham and cheese sandwhiches from home as his employees did. In both these models, the company is the center of the attention. It is about stability, security. It is about the role the company has in a social environment, limited to its employees, or in a broader sense to the city or other communities.

This is very unlike the Anglo Saxon model in which the shareholder has become the center of attention, the model which originated in the United States and the UK. This model is about short term satisfaction and profits. During the 90's we, in the Netherlands, have adopted this model too, and CEO's get filthy rich. This model results in corporate leaders who take enormous risks to gain short term profits and shareholder approval.

Crunch to make or break Social Networks

Don't get me wrong, John Chambers is saying a lot of sensible things on how corporations should act during a recession, and how innovation is important during these troubled times. However, if we "are to see the most fundamental change in businesses and government" it will be the challenge to do so on a business model scale. Yes, there are companies out there -even in the United States - who are able to adapt to web 2.0, but the majority will fail due to the business models described above.

Worldwide, companies sense the need to go social again. They feel the need to do something with social networking in order to leverage the latent potential inside their companies, to gain a stronger commitment from their employees, to facilitate knowledge exchange or simply to boast about their tech-savvyness.

The Anglo Saxon business model focus on shareholders and short term profits might just be the key issue to the future of social networks. It blocks long term commitment to a community and it causes corporate leaders to cling to their position. Managers and CEO's are protecting their little kingdoms, their expertise, their budget and their staff to remain in control. This is corporate politics on the balance of power, fueled by hunger for a big bonus and shareholder approval. This is where the fundamental change has to start to really empower Business 2.0, to facilitate corporations going social and capitalize on the billions of dollars of VC funding which have been invested into social networking sites. This is where the fundamental change has to start to temper the recession and this is where the fundamental change has to start to create long lasting communities and receive employee commitment.

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Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Experts on The Future of the Internet (1)

Timing is everything, but I see I get fed interesting news at wrong times all the time. Just as I was about to hit the sack early, @malburns put up another interesting link on twitter on a recently published report by the Pew Research Center.

A survey of internet leaders, activists and analysts shows they expect major technology advances as the phone becomes a primary device for online access, voice-recognition improves, artificial and virtual reality become more embedded in everyday life, and the architecture of the internet itself improves.They disagree about whether this will lead to more social tolerance, more forgiving human relations, or better home lives.

Here are the key findings in a new report based on the survey of experts by the Pew Internet & American Life Project that asked respondents to assess predictions about technology and its roles in the year 2020.

The overview and report is filled with captains of industry in the internet market, and I do believe they put up a likely scenario, but it's the wrong scenario. To be blunt, it's crap.

Why is it a likely scenario?

It is a likely scenario as most of the experts questioned are making a ton of money from the way the internet works right now. They have everything to gain in keeping the way things are. Just slight improvements, no big changes.

Why is it a wrong scenario?

Let's have a look at a few remarks from the report. I hope I'll find the time somewhere to get into these in detail later.

"You cannot stop a tide with a spoon. Cracking technology will always be several steps ahead of DRM and content will be redistributed on anonymous networks."

- Giulio Prisco, chief executive of Metafuturing Second Life, formerly of CERN

Cracking technology will always be several steps ahead of DRM as long as record labels sell content at rip off prices. Consumers, music lovers and fans will very likely to be willing to pay reasonable prices for works of art, directly to the artists. As long as record companies take in the motherload and throw a few pennies to the artists, no wonder we'll see piracy till the end of days. Music and other IP-protected material will likely to be distributed at fair prices through social networks in 2020.

"Viciousness will prevail over civility, fraternity, and tolerance as a general rule, despite the build-up of pockets or groups ruled by these virtues. Software will be unable to stop deeper and more hard-hitting intrusions into intimacy and privacy, and these will continue to happen."

- Alejandro Pisanty, ICANN and Internet Society leader and director of computer services at Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico.

This is so true when you make money of the current internet architecture. ICANN stands for The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers and is the organisation responsible for domain name registrations, a business worth 25 Billion dollars a year. Sure you won't give away your source of income if it would benefit the world and the safety of your children?

The group of experts is sure the internet will not be redesigned, they have a Laissez faire mentality to the architectural faults of the internet when it comes to privacy, protecting our children from evil as it is a multi billion dollar industry that gets into their own pockets. Alternatives are readily available, for instance the Handle architecture, orginally designed by Dr. Robert (Bob) Kahn who invented the TCP protocol and worked out the IP protocol along with Vint Cerf, hence, in creating the TCP/IP protocol laid the foundation for the current internet.

Almost every answer given in the Pew Research Report on the Future of the Internet III (and I must admit I skimmed the report due to the late hour) is the obvious answer. Obvious from the line of work the respondents are in, but failing to take a few things into consideration.

The most important oversight is that the outcome of the report is an extrapolation of current trends without paying attention to the equivalently growing deficits. Yes sure, it's easy to predict that the web will get more and more mobile, it is a trend that has already started. However, take into account that more and more we hear about Identity Theft and abuse of personal data. Take into consideration another trend that Governments and Social Networking platforms alike are tying together more and more databases and more of our real and digital identities will be up for grabs. Take into consideration the safety of your children from perverted souls and all screams for a redesign, a place which is focussed and built upon protection of your personal data. This is the plug in the ocean that needs to be pulled.

As said, it's getting late and I hope I'll find time to explore this report some more. Take care andtake heed ;)


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Saturday, November 08, 2008

Crunch back with Visual CV

A Credit Crunch and recession do funny things with people. All of a sudden we are all looking for a new job. Well, I personally am not, but professional networking sites like LinkedIn report an increase of 25% in activity and new connections made.

On the other hand, Headhunters seem to turn down their activity a little. Over the past yerar I received at least two annoying calls a month, but it's been pretty quiet over the last two months. I guess it's pretty much a US thing to use LinkedIn for finding and hiring people, here in the Netherlands we kinda stick to old fashioned, not networked sites like Monsterboard or Nationale Vacaturebank.

Anyway, if you're looking out for a new job, you might want to check out a new startup called Visual CV. It opened up for beta in early 2008 and offers a whole range of cool features to pimp your resume with video presentations and so on.

"...VisualCV is a clever idea to update the traditional resume. It also allows applicants to stand out in the job market, and cuts out unnecessary steps (phone and in-person interviews) that make it more difficult for employers to see a body of work. Plus, it is entirely free..."

Read full article at Killer Startups.

One of the example resumes that stands out of course is the one of Barack Obama, the president elect of the United States of America. One slight comment, analysts say Barack is the first internet president, with all his neat web 2.0 ventures, like on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and the Obama Blog. His resume is a little outdated though, it still states Presidential Candidate. However, a striking example of how leveraging the power of internet can help you get a new job.

Visual CV Barack Obama

One example down the road, we find the Visual CV of Torley Wong, better known as Torley Linden or @torley, neatly wedged in between Barack Obama and former Apple evangelist Guy Kawasaki in the "Influencer" category at Visual CV. Not sure if this is on the same level, but one could say Torley is the people's president of Second Life, or officially Resident Enlightenment Manager at Linden Lab.


Well, time to get out there and pimp that resume.It's easy to do, create then share.


Some more press coverage from early 2008:

"...New to this field is VisualCV. With an online resume at VisualCV, you can showcase your work in a visually appealing way. Although VisaulCV may sound like they're just jobster, version 2, take note - VisualCV already has 50 participating companies onboard receiving VisualCVs and their names may surprise you...

...VisualCV offers a unique feature that lets you track who views your profile after you've shared it, but unlike resumes you post on other job sites, VisualCV's members have more control over their resume's privacy - there are no backdoors for recruiters or marketers to access your resume..."

Read full article at Read Write Web.

VisualCV, a free service for individuals offered by a Reston, Va., start-up, lets job seekers create an online résumé that can include work samples, references' video testimonials and a visual for accomplishments, such as a chart showing surpassed sales targets...

Read full article at Wall Street Journal.

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Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Fire up that blog - Social Spark

Last week, the ReadWriteWeb, wrote an article titled "How Much Do Top Tier Bloggers and Social Media Consultants Get Paid? We Asked Them!" which probably is an interesting question to many bloggers out there.
Are you one of those that think they're making fortunes with their sponsored blogs, and would you like to do the same? Well, here's what ReadWriteWeb came up with:

Most people who are paid to blog are paid per post. What kinds of rates are our respondents seeing? The low end of the scale was $10 per post for very short posts. Almost everyone else said they were paid $25 per post. One person said they were paid $80 per post! One respondent said they were paid $200 per item of long-form writing; bloggers often do other kinds of writing as well.

Paid blogging is usually parttime stuff. Yes, people like Robert Scoble or the founders of big blogs like Download Squad and Engadget probably make a lot more. The question is, can you get paid to blog?
Well, actually, that's pretty easy these days if you sign up at Social Spark. Social Spark is a social network with two types of accounts: bloggers and advertisers. Start profiling yourself and your blog, add tags and start meeting the sponsors and advertisers.
On the homepage you see the latest sponsorship offers, featured blogs, cobloggers and the hottest blogs in the system. There are basically three types of rewards you can get at the marketplace at Social Spark: Sponsored posts where advertisers pay an amount for a reasonable blogpost with enough references, Sitewide sponsoring, just put up some ads on your site and finally, there's Affiliate sponsoring, which in my opinion goes somewhat into dark territory.
Once you put up your blog, you (or potential sponsors) can find a number of statistics about your blog, such as visits, real rank and alexa rank as well as demographics.

Okay, I signed up and there were actually a number of sponsored posts which I would be interested in doing but, alas, the MindBlizzard blog cannot participate as it has several guest authors. One of their criteria is that you and you alone own and create the blog. So much for this sponsorship deal as I value the input of my guestwriters more than making a few bucks on posts.

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Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Connect - Again?

It's been around for a while, but somehow it hasn't reached critical mass yet in Europe. It was not untill yesterday that I noticed Yahoo had a nice new app out on the web: oneConnect. It was launched as early as februar this year.

Yahoo has upped the ante in its campaign to rule the mobile Web.

On Tuesday, the company announced at the GSMA Mobile World Congress here OneConnect, a new tool that allows mobile phone users to aggregate their social-networking updates and messaging in one spot on their phones. The service integrates directly with a phone user's address book and allows people to share status updates and messages from a variety of messaging and social-networking platforms. This means it can provide status updates from Facebook or MySpace.com as well as provide access to e-mail and archived instant-messaging chats. [Read full article here at CNet]



Okay, here we go again. Time for yet another tribal migration, another MeToo social networking app where we can leave our personal data up for grabs. Right now every new web 2.0 app is about converging streams, plugging things into something else, creating more of the same data stream, to pretty much the same people. Why is this different than say Facebook, or Plaxo?

Let's have a look at some of the features.

There is a distinct difference. oneConnect does connect. It doesn't require building a new profile like Facebook, LinkedIn and Facebook. It simply leverages my existing social networks in their current states which saves me going through the hassle of importing contacts and extensive profiling once more.

oneConnect services the usual stuff, converging contacts and lifestreams from multiple sources, but also adds some new features into the mix.

This is what I consider oneConnect's biggest advantage over the existing competition, it allows you to post across different platforms. Better yet, it let's you select which platform you want to push your content to. And although we often use these platforms for specific purposes, often we'd like to update our status to all of our networks, or just to announce a new blogpost without starting up Pownce, Twitter and Jaiku.

Another new one (to my knowledge) in the social space is the integration with Instant Messaging applications making oneConnect one of the most versatile communication platforms out there at the moment.

Now does this all make oneConnect the next killer app for the web? Not yet. It isn't stable yet, it's buggy and has performance issues. It doesn't support enough feeds or services yet and you're pretty limited in the amount of contacts you can add.

Aside from the number of feeds and sources to leverage, there are a few other things that are still lacking to get the next revolution going. We still need some innovation to make the next level of social networking. Yes, oneConnect has some nice extra features over other lifestream aggregators and social portals but it isn't enough to herald a new massive tribal migration on the web just yet.

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Friday, September 26, 2008

Twones: Something new or yet another me2?

It's that time of year again... No, it's not yet Christmas, but september has been a blast with the Virtual Worlds Conference & Expo, TechCrunch Top50, PICNIC 08, EmTech and one on Digital Content Distribution all in one month. No wonder one or two new and exciting startups get overlooked.

Today I came across yet another new startup: Twones, which just went into private Beta. People say it's cool, so let's have a look.


Twones is a music service lets you store, organize, find & share music played all over the web (tracking many services, see image above) or on your computer (like iTunes) to one single point of access. Twones ties all music together and let's you share your taste with others in its most direct way.

It basically works in 4 steps:

  1. Track
  2. Store
  3. Socialize
  4. Discover

I'm not much of a music freak myself, well yeah, I'm an 80's fetishist, but I usually play CD's and don't listen online to music. I've tried Last.FM, it didn't bring me what I needed. So I'll pass on this one as there are enough other lifestreams and aggregators to follow, so for me, Twones is just another Me2 site whcih yet again fails to crack the code. If you are a music lover and use all sorts of media sites you might still wanna check it out.

The good new is that it is yet another Dutch startup like the übercool Project E, which I blogged yesterday.

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Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Can "Hello My Name is E" cure the identity confusion on the web?

I've been discussing the need for better Identity Management in the web 2.0 era for a long time now, see for instance my blogposts on Identity Confusion and the tribal migration between social sites. Earlier today I ran into "Hello, my name is E." which is was launched today at the PICNIC 08 event in Amsterdam and is currently selecting beta testers.

"Nice to meet you!
I’m your online life, right inside your pocket.
I integrate your social services and make sure you can share your online identities in real life.
I am the physical link to social networking.
My name is E. "

That sounds very welcoming. Small print says you'll need a mobile device capable of internet access, such as a Blackberry or iPhone. Does this exclude simple pc users? And, does it exclude new Google G1 users (since that was also launched today) too?


I can't wait to actually start beta testing this. We really do need to find ways to keep our data centralised, one account to rule them all so to say. One single point of entry with the ability to distribute content through different (media)channels to a variety specified contacts and groups.

I don't wan't to go to twitter, pownce or jaiku any more to type that I've blogged this to a selected audience of my twitter followers, then go through the same motions of spreading the word on LinkedIn or Hyves or Facebook, not even daring to think of autosyncing with Xing, Ning, Plurk, and so forth, yet I do want some control over whom I sent the information to as well. This last bit... that will be the challenge to tackle for the folks over at Hello My Name is E. or any other social media. I do want to discriminate. My family can see more of me (or less), my colleagues can see different thingies and my social network (and my virtual network) can see yet again other things. I want to be able to manipulate these datastreams with preconfigurable settings.

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Thursday, September 04, 2008

In a world...

"In a world where man fought machine... and machine won...".

Imagine this to be the opening line of a movie trailer, with the voice of Don Lafontaine, the king of voice-overs who just passed away, and you'll be sitting up straight, ready to watch a blockbuster movie, like Terminator - Judgement Day. Well, maybe you are. We're watching the Terminator-Google Mashup.

The Google Empire

Yesterday I blogged about the newly released Google Chrome browser ready to take on Internet Explorer and Firefox. I'm noticing I'm using Google products more and more often. It almost scares me how much I like Google products. It probably started because of my dislike of Microsoft, being too big and too dominant, but now Google itself is becoming such a monolith. Google gets into your life.

  • Google Search: They know what you do on the internet, know your interests (even your most private ones).
  • Google Mail: They get into your email, know your contacts and the contents of your mail.
  • Google Docs: Now they know even the things you don't mail and it won't be long untill the Google writer and spreadsheets move into the office space.
  • Google Android: Has the power to compete with the top producers of the mobile phone market. Now they can also follow your phone conversations and know where you are.
  • Google AdSense: They try to gigure out what you do, add sense to it and create desires in you to buy. It won't be long untill AdSense gets into your banking account to cross-advertise on every purchase you've made.
  • Google CheckOut: Now they're not only advertising you tyo buy products, they actually start making the transactions too.
  • Google Maps: Along with their mobile technology they know where you are, and where you wanna go. project this into...
  • Google Earth: and they'll have a 3D rendering of you and everything around you. It's Big Brother watching you.

It's SkyNet

Is Google turning out to be the Skynet of the present, moving towards domination? In Science Fiction and Cyberpunk novels (such as Neuromancer) we see that massive companies rule the world and have taken over command from national governments, often creating a dystopian society. The question is: "is it Science Fiction, or is it becoming reality?"

If you read Adjiedj Bakash, Hollands premier trendwatcher, it is becoming reality. he observes the birth of a new economic world order as one of the big megatrends of the next decade. I'm not sure if we're there yet, but it's starting to look very creepy with Google at the helm. Maybe it isn't Paradise lost yet, but it sure is Privacy Lost.

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Thursday, August 21, 2008

Integrate or wrap up

Many will agree that Virtual Worlds are wonderful tools when it comes to visualising hard to explain stuff and offer a range of quite useful possibilities. Yet NVE's are still a niche market and have obviously failed as marketing tools. They don't hold the power to overturn the internet yet and become mainstream applications.


In my opinion the key lies in integration with mainstream and social networking tools. Virtual Worlds such as Second Life are still mainly social worlds, used for social interaction for certain special interest groups and in this regard they are a mere 3D Chat addition to social networks. In this day and age these social networks are in charger of the internet with Facebook, Myspace etc. holding vast communities. If Virtual Worlds are to stand more than a "snowballs' chance in hell" in this web 2.0 battle for numbers they have to bridge the gap.


I think I've mentioned Kaneva in the past as pioneering this with their user profiles with blogging, etworking features etc. to enhance the social power of their virtual world. I've mentioned integration a number of times in the articles here on MindBlizzard and in presentations I did in the past year and a half.

Just over a year ago I wrote:

"One of the great features of Kaneva is the personal homepage that you get as a resident - a good start to integrate Web 2.0 and Web 3D into one environment. Think of the power of integrating Second Life with Flickr, Blogger, YouTube, Twitter/pownce and Facebook all in one!"

We've seen a small Facebook widget appear last year in which you could linkup with your Second Life friends, an attempt to integrate Second Life with Joomla, but now the integration takes a step forward as Tribal One integrates Facebook and OpenSim in a first step towards a new approach to 3D/Web integration

As usual, UgoTrade, has a very extensive and thorough blog on this integration:

The picture above shows the in the left pane fetched pictures from Stefan’s Facebook photos. As Stefan explains a hybrid web app is talking to the region to change the picture accordingly and pull the photos into frames on the wall (for a more detailed technical explanation see here).

read more at: UgoTrade.

More to come

There's bound to be more to come on cross platform interfaces and 3D/Web integration. Check out Digado for example with it's accounts on the "Second Life Interface Debate", and here's a vid from Smashing Magazine on "Futuristic Interfaces"


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Wednesday, June 04, 2008

Reviews on Hypecycle Keynote

It's always nice to get quoted, or get good critics. Yesterday I stubled upon two articles on a presentation I did back in February this year. It was at the Virtual Worlds convention at the Hogeschool van Utrecht, where I held a presentation on how virtual worlds are subject to Gartners Hypecycle and how to navigate the hype.

First article is from a well established blog, TweePuntNul (2 dot 0) and reads:

Door middel van een analyse met de zogenaamde “hype cycle” werd Second Life als case besproken. Het blijkt dat Second Life nu in de Enlightment-fase zit, na een periode van teleurstelling. Een zeer uitgebreide analyse die in een korte tijd werd gegeven.

Aan deze twee keynotes zullen we aparte posts besteden, aangezien ze zeer de moeite waard zijn. Simpelweg omdat de rest van de keynotes voor ons oude koeien waren, en we denken dat deze ook voor de gemiddelde TPN-lezer zullen zijn.

In English it comes down to this:

VeeJay gave a very extensive analysis of virtual worlds in a very short
time. This keynote will get a dedicated blogpost instead of a summary as this
one was very interesting

The second one is from Rico DB blog on Marketing and Communications thought the presentation I gave was a very clarifying view of the future of VW's as it wrote :

Johan Vermij van Sogeti presenteerde een verhelderende visie op het voortbestaan van de Virtual Worlds.

The article (in Dutch) has a pretty good summary of the keynote I did.

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Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Sogeti Kicks Off in Second Life

Earlier this evening I was present at the Sogeti Netherlands Kick Off party 2008 in the Heineken Music Hall. Over 2000 colleagues filled the hall to the max.

This years' kick off was titled Sogeti 2.0 and the keywords 'innovation' and 'participation'. Sogeti Netherlands is one of the leading IT companies in the Netherlands, so off course we used lots of web 2.0 stuff in the presentations. First of all, Sogeti CEO Jeroen Versteeg started the kick off from Second Life.

Contrary to previous years the CEO speech was not prepared in advance but was user generated as colleagues were asked not to turn off their phones but instead sms their topics for the keynote which generated the tagcloud below:

Menno van Doorn and Sander Duivestein of the Sogeti VINT research institute lifeblogged the event at the Vint.Sogeti blog (in Dutch) and a group of 32 Young Professionals who are currently at the Ohio University Without Boundaries (who also have a very strong SL presence) were plugged in through webstream and Second Life.

One of the fact-parts of the show was the financial and performance speech. We've had a great year and Sogeti Netherlands has grown 18% in 2007, outperforming every other Sogeti and Capgemini SA groupmembers by miles.

Right after closing the show, CEO Jeroen Versteeg took some time to chat with the Young Professionals in Second Life.


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Friday, November 23, 2007

Power to the Community


"Power to the Community" was the title of one of the main sessions prior to Rod Beckstrom's presentation on the Starfish and the Spider at the "From Web 2.0 to Enterprise 2.0" conference in Utrecht last wednesday.



I liked this presentation, not because Patrick Savalle is a Sogeti colleague, but I like his way of thinking. It was what you could call a boardroom wakeup call. The essence of the presentation was moving the crowd from version 1.0 to 2.0.

One of the things to churn on was explaining the Peter Principle which often occurs in centralized organisations (the spiders) which pionts out that a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence.

His second thought focussed on emergent behaviour; In a crowd we all do things we wouldn't do as individuals. We've all been suckered into buying things we don't need by early marketing guru's like Edward Bernays who laid the foundations of mass manipulation and crowd control.

His final thought was called Social (web-) Design. When looking at social networking sites you have to find what makes these things attractive. How do you build communities? It's in little things, it's in poking, it's in listing events, in smilies, profile pictures or tweets: all these little things are a frameset in which the crowd interacts and grows into a collective community. This collective community will eventually return to emergent behaviour so we have to be carefull. Edward Bernays, much like his uncle Sigmund Freud, wasn't all that happy with what he did to humanity. Maybe in 20 years we'll have a generation of social webdesigners looking back at how they manipulated the masses.

In my opinion that's a pretty spooky thought. Walk along that path and we might even end up with Asimov's famous Psychohistory;

The basis of psychohistory is the idea that, while the actions of a particular individual could not be foreseen, the laws of statistics could be applied to large groups of people and used to predict the general flow of future events. Asimov used the analogy of a gas: in a gas, the motion of a single molecule is very difficult to predict, but the mass action of the gas can be predicted to a high level of accuracy - known in physics as the Kinetic Theory. Asimov applied this concept to the population of the fictional Galactic Empire, which numbered in a quintillion. The character responsible for the science's creation, Hari Seldon, established two postulates:

  • That the population whose behaviour was modeled should be sufficiently large
  • They should remain in ignorance of the results of the application of psychohistorical analyses.

So my question to Patrick would be: Shouldn't the title be "Take power from the community" instead of "give power to"?

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Thursday, November 22, 2007

Your expectations of the Metaverse in 2007 (2)

Yesterday I blogged about my expectations for the Metaverse in 2007 in answer to Rick's question. His reply to my answer (part of it) was:

"My problem is that, imho Second Life isn't a business platform at this moment
in which these goals can be achieved."


and

"Then it comes to waiting for the next 'killer app' which really draws the
crowd into the metaverse. However, I'm having difficulties in formulating the
needs in which this 'holy grail' should provide. Is it mass collaboration, the
digital long tail, outsourcing or will the virtual economy grow to such an
extent that retail goes 3D because of efficiency? In other words, what is your
vision of a businessmodel that goes beyond the limitations of Second Life, which
added value can a 3D environment have for entrepeneurs and how will crowds be
involved?"


These are easy questions, much like "Why are we here? How does the universe work?" The answer is similarly hard. If I had a straightforward answer, I'd probably be a millionaire soon.
It's the X-million dollar question.


As a Metaverse Evangelist, or sr. Networked Virtual Environment Consultant I could talk about the potential of metaverses forever. To be honest though. We have to be realistic.



  1. We're at the early stages of the industry. Many companies are still having difficulties in understanding web 2.0; seeing blogs and wiki's rise but don't know how to implement it in their corporate strategy, let alone we can convince companies to adapt to the Metaverse overnight. It's a process.
  2. There's a couple of industries that can make quick wins with metaversal presence (like real estate), but not every product is suitable for a 3D environment (like mortgages)

Desinging the Metaverse Killer App

When it comes to designing the metaversal killer app I'd say it's too early to tell. We still don't have a web 2.0 killer app. Every day new sites, new worlds and new functionality emerges. The killer app will have to be a mashup of the best of both worlds; 3D Facebook, Google virtualisation or whatever. I've got tons of unformulated thoughts on this but what it comes down to is that we have to move from technology driven design to social design; step out of the binary limitations and explore the realms of psychology and communication to understand human needs for interaction and information and only then move on to functionality on demand. 2007 is a year of options. We see variation, we see diferent platforms, technologies and cultures emerge. Now is the time to explore, the time of veni vidi vici. Observe, Asses and Implement (though by by trial and error). To Incorporate, that's 2010 and beyond for the majority of companies.

Time for bed now. A few more points need to be addressed tomorrow...

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Wednesday, November 21, 2007

The Starfish and the Spider

Heliview organised a web 2.0 seminar today at the Jaarbeurs in Utrecht, titled "From Web 2.0 to Enterprise 2.0" It's keynote speaker was Rod Beckstrom, author of the Starfish and the Spider.


Below is the presentation he did at the Next Web Conference, which is pretty much the same story and same slideshow. Sit down and enjoy. It's good stuff.


Part 1: The Starfish and the Spider



Part 2: Geronimoooooooo!



Part 3: From centralized to decentralized business


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Thursday, November 01, 2007

The Collector 2.0 and Tribal Migration on the Web


Tonight I was adding some books to my Visual Bookshelf on Facebook. Right now the number of books on my shelf is 229. I stopped when I added David Baldacci's "The Collectors" and reflected some on my web 2.0 lifeystyle.




The thing is, I remember this isn't the first time I'm doing this. I remember me making a list of my CD's and Books in WordPerfect 5.2 to keep track of my stuff after I'd lend it to friends (some stuff didn't return-and some still doesn't).



Later I entered my CD's into CD-Collector, my DVD's into MovieCollector (both by the Dutch Collectors.com). That was fun. It connected with several online bookshops, like Amazon and it downloaded covers, synopsis and reviews.



The thing is, I don't wanna do this over and over again. I've been talking with a Sogeti colleague of mine on this yesterday. We talked about the future of the web. One of the things is that NOW we have customized content. We choose what we want, what we like. We decide what gets in and what gets out. The next step will be customized functionality. We choose which functionality we want to have at the time we need it. It's basically cloud computing.



Today I discussed Tribal Migration with another (Sogeti) colleague. People move from site to site. Let's join MSN spaces, it let's you do stuff. Then move to Hyves as it lets you do more stuff, now we all migrate to Facebook as it provides even more functionality. We're sitehoppers, application addicts.


We migrate, but our content doesn't. Our account doesn't and in the mean time all our stuff (the personal info we registered and the content we've added) stays put. Our stuff is all over the web. This is soooooooo wrong. I just want one single point of entry for the web. I want to register with one site folks. And I want functionality when I need it.


None of the aforementioned applications; Word Perfect, MovieCollector and Facebook's bookshelf did for me what it has to do eventually: create a single complete database with portable content. I have to go to enormous lengths to get a complete database of my stuff. I've got about 500 CD's, 200 vhs/dvd's and 30 meters of bookshelf filled to the brim (yeah I'm a bookworm). What the killer app has to do for me is make it easy. Be smart, be intelligent. Now I've got an API with Amazon and I have to choose which book I've read. I've got to choose the edition. No, just give me a barcode scanner and let me scan my books, you fill in the details...


The second thing it needs to do for me is give me a standardised output file. Give me an xml file which I can upload to the next application. For instance, I'd like to have my collection of books insured. If it can't be done in a single app, then at least let me upload it. The house burns down, I can tell the insurance company which books I owned and they can cover for the damage.


I must admit I just discovered that Collectors.com added a barcode scanning feature... Now add portability and I'm back as customer ;)


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Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Fleck evolution of notecards

On the same run I ran into Wakoopa (see previous blogentry), I ran into Fleck. Now this might be one to watch. In short, Fleck is the evolution of the notecard.

Where we needed hammers, chisels, enormous walls and tons of paint to let our friends know we saw a bunch of horses in prehistoric times We had to nail our thoughts to the wall - or door, needing lots of paper, nails and a hammer and risk being burned at the stake in medieval times


At last we got rid of nails and push pins as it is no longer appropriate in our western culture that women have a red spot on their forehead, so we invented sticky notes.



Now Fleck is taking it to the next level. We no longer need to put up reminders on the edges of our screen, we can comment directly on the website that drives us to whichever thought we need to hold.


Here's the Techcrunch website sampled with Fleck's annotation bar and comments.




Here's Flecks own vision:



Fleck.com wants to add a new layer of interactivity to the web. Fleck is inspired on a story written in 1945 by Vannevar Bush and an article titled 'We Are The Web' by Kevin Kelly. Vannevar Bush predicted a machine called the Memex that would allow people to surf from one information page to another. Some people say that Hypertext and the World Wide Web are based on or at least inspired by the Memex.
One thing that
the Memex had and the web doesn't is the ability to add new content to every page it contained. After reading the Wired article by Kevin Kelly we decided to try to add a new level to the web by adding new tools that would allow its users to add information rather than just consuming it.


Fleck allows you to interact with pages on the web just as if it were pages in a magazine. You can save your annotated page for yourself, send it to friends or colleagues or use it in your blog.


You can start using Fleck right now. It's free and what's best: you don't have to install anything on your computer. Try the search box at the top of this page or add Fleck to your browser with a Bookmarklet or Extention.



The easy part, and quite usefull is the option to add your notes on top of a webpages and other people will be able to see your remarks. These notes are freely draggable and you can add bullet points. In the bottom of the screen you'll see the Fleck toolbar which gives you the ability to blog, mail or save history.

The technique we're talking about here is annotation and Fleck isn't the first to walk this path. There's TrailFire, Stickis and Diigo that put up competition. Fleck is easier to use though, and you don't need an account. Last but not least, it's last pluspoint is that it's Dutch ;)

TechCrunch blogger Marshall Kirkpatrick has this to say on Fleck:


I can imagine myself quickly adding questions to pages on a site I’m reviewing and emailing those annotated pages back to a company. They could respond immediately on the page, with no need to download anything or start an account
with the annotation service. I like that. I also like that those collaborators would have a list of all the pages we’ve collaborated on created for them automatically.



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Wakoopawhat?

Yesterday I stumbled upon yet another Web 2.0 application, that looks cool, but really doesn't do much: Wakoopa. Okay, it does a few things.



Let's have a look:


"Wakoopa tracks what kind of software or games you use,
and lets you create your own software profile. Ready for you to share with the
world. Why? Because what you use on your desktop is who you are"


Wakoopa is a little program you install from a slick looking website:




Once installed Wakoopa tracks which applications you use. Why? Because what you use is who you are so the site says. Why would I want to track what applications I use? Haven't we furiously tried to ban all sorts of trackers and other malware from our PC's?

Here's the next level: I can see which programs my friends use through the Facebook Widget.


I crossed out the face of the one Facebook friend who also uses this software. He's definately geek.

For what it's worth, here are my most used apps, including my background thingies. Now, this is a business tool. My boss will make this mandatory software and see what I do all day. Can anybody tell me why we would like to use this? Judging from the usage of Internet Explorer and Firefix I'd say probably around 15.000 people.

I must say: The website looks cool and slick, very professionally web 2.0. As far as website technology goes, it's a sound piece of work. The technology behind the app... the tracker is pure evil in my opinion. I'm going to ban this sooner or later.... (like the first time I'd start up strip-poker or some other 'private' application I don't want my wife or boss to know about - but probably sooner)

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Friday, October 26, 2007

Defining the Virtual World Industry - input needed



Last week Nick Wilson started to try and define the virtual worlds. It's a pretty hard job to try and categorise this stuff. Currently I'm writing a few chapters for a (Dutch) book on Web 2.0 and emerging trends and am faced with the same question. Could you help out in making some educated guesses?





Defining the worlds





Here's some of the definitions I'm using:



Web 3D seems the most applicable generic term, but there is no such thing as a universal format for Web 3D and it comes in various guises, some more and some less likely to be used as a business platform.



Terms which are most commonly used are Virtual Worlds, Metaverse and NVE’s (Networked Virtual Environments). Virtual Worlds are not 3D by definition, there are many 2D platforms which are also considered as virtual worlds.




A virtual world is a computer-based simulated environment intended for its users to inhabit and interact via avatars. This habitation usually is represented in the form of two or three-dimensional graphical representations of humanoids (or other graphical or text-based avatars). Some, but not all, virtual worlds allow for multiple users.[1]




The term NVE was first used by Gartner in a quick study on Second Life, but residents of various virtual worlds prefer to call it the Metaverse, as coined by Neil Stephenson in his 1992 cyberpunk classic ‘Snowcrash’



Another section of web 3D consists of the socalled Paraverse, sometimes also dubbed mirror worlds, since this world is most akin to our own reality.



The Paraverse Parallel Universe is a virtual environment that is based on real
world data such as GIS and satelite information that is overlayed with 3
dimensional objects representing the objects in the real space. Examples of a
paraverse include Google Earth, Microsofts Virtual Earth, Nasa's World Wind and
TerrainView.[2]






A large and booming business in the web 3D environment are the online gaming worlds, the socalled MMORPG’s (massively multiplayer online role plaing games) such as World of Warcraft, Runescape etcetera.



Finally, there are all sorts of variations and hybrids such as:







  • Interverse A term used to describe a globally integrated NVE, accessible through a single common client and integrated by a common back plane.



  • Intraverse A term to describe the 3D equivalent of the intranet, a private or corporate NVE residing on an internal network and accessible to users within that network environment only.



  • Extraverse A term used for the 3D equivalent of the extranet which is privately or corporately owned and resides on a private network but accessible by one ore more organisation, but not by the general public.



    [1] Virtual Worlds definition by Wikipedia

    [2] Paraverse definition by Wikipedia





Sizing the worlds




Now it's time to get into numbers. A first excellent start by doing a raw headcount of registered users was done by Christian Renaud at the Virtual World Conference. Now let's see if we can split up some other things:







  1. Networked Virtual Environments can be split up 2 ways: Online Gaming and Social network worlds. How are they divided? 50-50%?



  2. They can also be divided by 2D and 3D, what's this pick 40-60%?



  3. How much of Online gaming worlds are 2D, is that 40%?



  4. How much of Social Network Sites are 2D, is that 50%?



  5. What is the division between Metaverse / Interverse, Intraverse, Extraverse and Paraverse?

    I'm using Extraverse as term for corporate sites, like themed sites, Laguna Beach etc.



  6. I'm also looking at our usage of the web. Like web 2.0 stuff we use it at three levels:





    1. Personal (like gaming)


    2. Social (like Second Life)


    3. Business (like Qwaq or dedicated training platforms)

      What's the spread for these in Virtual Worlds?





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Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Does Robbie Rock?

There's a platform out there that has some attraction to corporations, but hardly known in the regular Virtual World Business, named Why Robbie Rocks.





Now it's pretty hard to define what exactly is a virtual world (see this discussion at Metaversed), but I think Why Robbie Rocks should be considered one, except... it doesn't really show. There's quite a bit of preformatted avatar pimping, but that's about it.



A feature on the website is the Elle Girl shop / site which uses WRR. As for serious business, also Dutch banker Rabobank (one of the few triple A rated banks in Europe) runs WRR and the latest is the Dutch One Campaign version.




The fun parts though is that there's web 2.0 integration. You can put your avatar on the (Google) map, push it to MSN spaces, MSN Messenger or embed it on your website or as a gadget on the ruling Dutch social network site hyves.

I haven't been able to see the full potential of Why Robbie Rocks, so tell us, why should we sign up?

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Friday, September 07, 2007

True Web2.0 still to come


All around the world we’re talking about Web 2.0. Almost everything is 2.0 these days. In the blogosphere we all get excited about every new web 2.0 app. But really, what’s web 2.0?


2.0 means there was a 1.0, and old web. However, the web hasn’t been closed a single day to migrate it’s content to a new release. So technically we don’t have a new web. It’s usage has changed. The way we use the web and the content we use and put on it has changed. The web hasn’t. But it will. It has to. True web 2.0 still needs to come in my opinion. The contemporary social networks and usergenerated content change our way of working with the net and is raising new questions, asking for new standards.


A little while ago I wrote that web 2.0 is chaos. It’s going from site to site, registering hether and tether, inviting old friends over and over again to join and meeting new friends. It’s getting too complicated. Too much going on to keep track. In the process we get sloppy with our identity. Do some good searches on the net, add profile data from one site with info from the other site. Throw in a good whois lookup and it’s easy enough to put together a complete profile and history on someone. Perhaps even enough to start making educated guesses about passwords.


The web itself, it’s core isn’t ready for web 2.0. Web 2.0 needs to be more closed than the current web when it comes to privacy.


This is a first blog on why web 2.0 still has to come. More will follow soon

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Web 2.0 in 333 seconds

Thursday, August 30, 2007

Holland SL

It's been a while since I blogged a new arrival from the Netherlands, but here it is. The latest addition is the New Holland island, so not to be mistaken with Our Virtual Holland.



The sim is brought to us by the official Tourism Board, and credits go to Aleister Kronos, who picked it up, shortly after he blogged the World of Tui in Second Life at the 3PointD blog.



The Second Life location is part of a new promotion campaign that was launched yesterday;



"NEW YORK, Aug. 29, 2007 (PRIME NEWSWIRE) -- The Netherlands Board Of Tourism & Conventions announces the launch of http://us.holland.com, a fully Web2.0 based site, as well as the official launch of the world's first National Tourism Board in Second Life, www.hollandsecondlife.com."



I'm a Dutchman, so I'd be proud we're finally first in something...

But wait. Wasn't Mexico's National Tourist Board first with the Chichén Itzá?



Anyway, the US.Holland website looks slick and here's the screener from the teleport spot.



The New Holland sim is shaped like a tulip and the flower holds a small canalstreet with typically 17th centurty Dutch warehouses. Main focus in this build is on the Dutch Masters, the

classic Dutch Artists.



First two images are of the van Gogh club, and the last two of the Dutch Masters' House with paintings of other painters.




The build is neatly done by Unreal Designs Emporium, but contracted by Brink Media. It's nothing too special though, this unfortunately is still just a sideshow... The real fireworks has to come from the website, which is pretty cool.





SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/New%20Holland%20/92/164/29/


More images can be found here

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Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Put yer Trust in Second Life

There's tons of new goodies coming to Second Life. Windlight, Voice, Gambling Ban an now Age Verification. Okay, now I'm making friends....

Gambling Ban a good thing? Yes it is actually. Without it, there wouldn't be any Second Life left I think. In past issues of the Avastar and on many blogs there has been a row over Linden suddenly imposing a ban on gambling.

This ban saw an enormous dip in the SL economy, especially when it coincided with several banking scandals. It was unavoidable though as US law has very strict lines on gambling.


Anyway, these past hectic months may have been leading up to Linden Lab moving for Age Verification in Second Life in an attempt to steer the community into calmer waters.


"Trust is the foundation of any community. And one cornerstone of trust is identity. You’ve got to know something about the person you are dealing with before you can trust them. Knowing who to trust in an online environment presents unique challenges. Traditionally Second Life users have based their trust on relationships built over time, and often on some basic verification such as ‘Payment Info on File’," says Robin Linden.


Basically there are supposed to be two advantages:


"The IDV system aims to deliver two things. First, for Residents, it gives them the chance to independently verify certain aspects of their identity (their name, age, location and sex for instance) if they choose to. This will help establish trust by removing a layer of anonymity for those they interact with. It’s much easier to trust someone who puts their name behind their words and actions.


The second benefit of the IDV system is to help land owners and content publishers be sure that minors do not get access to inappropriate material. Again this is voluntary, but we wanted to provide the tools for estate owners to restrict access to content of a sexual or violent nature to those they are sure are over 18. They’ll do this by flagging the content as ‘Restricted’ which will only allow avatars verified as over 18 to access the land. Visitors to Restricted areas can also be reassured that all other visitors are over 18 as well."


I wholeheartedly agree to the second benefit, but the first one has me wondering. Where's the benefit in that? Here's the whole Identity Management discussion again. Where's privacy going in Web 2.0?

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Monday, July 30, 2007

Capozzi branding hyperjump

Everything new gets dubbed 2.0 these days, upto and including the Financial Times writing on gospel 2.0 or the blogoshpere getting excited about Philantropy 2.0 or Fundraising 2.0. To state that this blogpost is about wine 2.0 or distilling 2.0 would not give credit enough to the sim I visited today...



This is a tale beyond a succesful immersion - even when the island hasn't seen it's final version and opening yet. This is a tale of creating a brand 21st century style in a 19th century business.



The business I'm referring to is that of making wine, a traditional profession that -at least in Europe- brings images of old, weathered farmers and old French chateau's. It's classic and romantic and absolutely non-tech-savvy. During the 20th century we have seen the rise of new wineproduction areas, like California, South Africa and New Zealand gaining popularity over the traditional French and Spanish wines. The popularity of these new wines are partly because these wineries use modern technology to create well balanced wines and of a more constant quality than the traditional French ones.



Here's a look at the Capozzi sim





To start off by calling this a hyperjump and getting all excited about it does raise some expectations. Why?



If you look at the sim -without its context- it's nothing special. It is a quality build, as expected when built by Chip Poutine of the Prion Design Group and the guys (and girls) over at Metaversatility. Lush green rolling hills house the winery and a path that leads through the various stages of the production process. Though totally different in design than the Ben & Jerry's factory in Second Life, it's the same concept. So why the buzz?






The buzz is that this is not a brand creating a virtual presence like "we've got to be there" but it is a grand design in creating the brand itself. The Capozzi winery was established in 2005 by Josh Hermsmeyer and really is a tale of crowdsourcing as it started off on the pinotblogger blog:



"On November 18, ‘05 pinotblogger was born. Its stated purpose is to “outline the long and painful processes involved in starting and building a family winery in the Russian River Valley. While we haven’t been at it very long nor has it been particularly painful yet, I’m 99.9% certain that at least one of these adjectives will correctly describe the project in the very near future (hopefully NOT painful and short though, as that would be sad)."



Meanwhile the Pinotblogger website has been been among the top 5 wineblogs in the world and gives a great insight in the business and starting up the new winery. The virtual presence complements this strategy. It's an all in, a 21st century marketing campaign from a traditional craft, that's a hyperjump.




Read more on the build of the sim at the http://www.simvineyard.com/ website, or visit it inworld: SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Capozzi%20Winery/121/235/37

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Monday, July 23, 2007

SLBoutique ReRezzed

For quite some time the SLBoutique has been a topshopping site for Second Lifers next to the SL-Exchange. As the Second Life economy grows, these shopsites grow accordingly. Most started over a private initiative and SL-Exchange evolved into what I'd call a typical Open-Source community design.
The SLBoutique was taken over by the Electric Sheep Company several months ago and was pretty mothballed due to ESC's neglect, and in its latest design it's just pushing the ESC logo and brandname.
Today, July 23rd, the curtain falls for the SLBoutique as it will be taken offline to return in the shape of Shop OnRez come thursday. In the meantime its content will be migrated.
The Shop OnRez previews I've seen look very promising, giving it an overall slick Web 2.0 look and feel. I've never been much of an outworld shopper -primarily due to crappy navigation on these shopping sites - This one I might check out.


Last friday, ESC's Giff Constable promoted the new OnRez shop at the weekly Geek Meet. In the wrap up I've published just a part of Giff's comments on OnRez, here's some more:
"To give you a quick intro, The Electric Sheep company has long been known as a consulting company for virtual worlds, but our business goals always included building a consumer software business. Our goal is to create technologies to make virtual worlds easier to use and make information flow more efficiently.
We are launching a new brand around these consumer technologies called OnRez, with the first step launching next Tuesday. Shopping has always been important to us, which is why we bought SLBoutique in early 2006, but while we focused on our consulting business SLBoutique was neglected.
That changed early this year when we looked closely at the technology and decided we needed to overhaul the entire SLBoutique system. On tuesday we're launching Shop OnRez. Our goal overall is to make shopping easier wherever you are, and to make life a lot easier for the small businesses of SL.
We've made a lot of changes to make the whole thing more robust, to make deliveries more stable, and the whole thing better functioning. SL has some tricky things around object deliveries that took some finagling.
What really interests me though is how we're trying to bridge the Web and SL (as some others are as well). We provide a single place for a seller to load their goods, we now provide scripted vendors so they can sell those goods on the Web or in their stores. We provide search capabilities so that you can walk into a store and search right for the item you want.
The in world shopping can take the form of a scripted vendor specific to a seller, or a general OnRez shopping HUD, or a shopping kiosk you can put up. Frankly I view HUDs as rather crude, so we're also working on the open source SL client to see how we can improve shopping by embedding functionality right in the experience, but HUDs are the best we have right now!
A HUD is built on prims and LSL and it's text display and input capabilities are rough, to be extremely kind, I'd like to see more widget type functionality but that's not a tomorrow thing. we're months away from that but my view of all of this is that we need Linden Lab to improve the SL performance and scalability -- make what we have now better, but we also need to see innovation on top of this platform.

In a few weeks we'll also be relaunching the second life search engine. Linden Lab is also working on one, and I look forward to what they come up with, but we are going to go ahead and try to put out some better Web search capabilities than currently exists right now."

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Thursday, July 19, 2007

Second Life Introduction at Sogeti

During April and May Sogeti Netherlands has organised a series of seven workshops on Second Life for its employees and customers. Damanios Thetan from Damanicorp, an experienced and well known content creator explained how building and scripting worked in several workshops on advanced building.



Last tuesday a new episode was written as Damanios and yours truly VeeJay Burns gave an introduction to Second Life for a group of 120 Sogeti employees (including C-Level) and clients.




VeeJay gave a historic overview passing web 1.0 to web 2.0 and the current evolution in web 3D whereas Damanios provided the technical details on building.

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Monday, July 16, 2007

Fundraising 2.0

In the past few months I've seen quite a few NGO's enter Second Life, such as the Red Cross, Disabled Sports, Flying Doctors, the MacArthur Foundation , Dance 4 Life and a few others. This sudden onrush kept nagging me.




The Current Blogoshpere


When it comes to the Blogosphere there's two blogs that stick out when it comes to keeping track of these things: First of all there's Beth's Blog that has a keen eye on everything Non Profit and secondly the fabulous Ugotrade blog where Tara5 Oh (left) regularly posts real works of love and labour on Mixed Reality and with a good heart to the poor and needy of this world.



This post will probably be a work of labour and very Ugotradish in size and subject as well...



This past week I got spammed by the ElfenCircle for a Relay For Life building entry and that nagged me again. After rereading some of the entries on both the aforementioned blogs I started thinking on this post. When Al 'superscooper' Kronos blogged Virtuool and The Fight Against Cancer I knew this was a post I had to make.


Traditional Fundraising & The 21st Century Philantropist

It's actually a while since I've been giving NGO's much of a thought. We, the Dutch, have always been generous givers when it comes to relief aid and mission workers in Africa and Asia. In the past years this culture is slowly changing. It's not that people are getting greedy, but the way they want to spend their money has changed.



In the 20th century it was a natural thing to pick 2 or 3 (or more) non profit organisations and sponsor them annually. Many organisations organised themselves accordingly: You knew how much sponsors you'd have, so you know what next years'budget will look like.



The 21st century do-gooder has a different mindset though. No longer long-term commitments, long term sponsorship, but occasional, dedicated sponsorship, sort of hit-and-run style philantrophy.



This is causing traditional NGO's a severe headache since they see shaky budgets and worry about keeping all their relief aid workers at work. This isn't about 'huge disasters' those are incendent based by definition and a TV rally for Live Aid (1985) is no different than the Tsunami Fundraising a few years back; on both occasions dedicated sponsorship without long term commitment.



In short, generally speaking, NGO's need to find new ways of attracting long term sponsors: the 21st century calls for Fundraising 2.0. The question is: Is Second Life a good platform to expirment with.


Philantrophic Worlds

When it comes to actual fundraising, Second Life is surely a no-no. Tip jars containing L$ 1.600 dollars barely make up for a weeks rent. Virtual World Campaigns are not about raising enough money to fund a relief aid mission to Timbuktu.



As I mentioned in my blogpost on the Red Cross entry at Second Life, depicting a disaster zone, one way is to create awareness, convey a mood or show people the challenges in such areas. This awareness is much more valuable than the lousy linden bucks it brings in tips.



There is a thin line though; It is great to raise awareness but the cost is a consideration. The presence should be sponsored, not funded with sponsorship money.



A Bridge too far?

In search of awareness and commitment I think NGO's overstepped themselves a little. Virtual Worlds such as Second Life are to small to make a difference - yet. It's still a niche thing.



In my opinion the focuspoint of NGO's and Philantrophy should be at the heart of Web 2.0. Relief Aid in most cases is all about commitment. Commitment in small circles of sponsors that want to be informed. Web 2.0's social bookmarking and tagging is offering the ideal tools to create close range awareness. Think of Fair Trade and Relief Aid widgets for Facebook. Mission based YouTube or Flickr streams...

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Wednesday, July 11, 2007

MiniVille

For those of you that find Second Life or any other Metaverse a bit overwhelming, here's Miniville. It's French though, so I had a hard time figuring out what you can and cannot do on this site.
It lets you create a nice little village by the sea.

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Tuesday, July 10, 2007

Genealogy meet Web 2.0

Welcome to the 21st Century! This is the age of fast, slick webapplications. The first half of this decennium we've had the Web 2.0 boost and now we're getting ready to rock on Web 3D.

Aside from playing with new cool apps I've got about three hobbies which are so 20th century:
  1. Model trains
  2. Stamp Collecting
  3. Genealogy
Especially when looking at Genealogy many people are under the impression that it is soooooo boring, dusty archive work. That's gonna change though: Genealogy meets Web 2.0 in the new Geni app (currently in Beta)
Geni is a cool app that has a very neat interface and lets you add people directly, elevating Genealogy to a social bookmarking and networking gig.
In this first shot you see your startingpoint, the person of the year 2006: YOU
Easily add relatives, preferably by email to get the social networking on a roll.
There's lots of Profiling to do on this second screenshot. To really get it kicking it would need widgets and it'll be up for Facebook and Myspace competition.
The third screener is about localising your friends and family

As for social bookmarking, it's got potential, but for genealogy freaks it's a start. The real genfreaks are desperately waiting for a GEDCOM interface.

GEDCOM is the standard format for importing and exporting family trees and works with known programs such as Aldfaer, phpGedview and TNG and every other thinkable Genealogy software. Imagine I've got to retype all 5,000 family members (back to 1500) into this app when I've already have them databased!

As far as the forums are a good thing to go by, Geni is offering a GEDCOM export (in alpha stage), but GEDCOM (v. 5.5) import isn't sorted out yet. It was planned for this release, but is delayed.

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Thursday, July 05, 2007

Kaneva Expedition

Who thought Second Life was just a hype at the start of 2007 has to rethink. Yes, perhaps Second Life is a little hyped with an absurd amount of media attention, but 2007 looks to be the year that Virtual Worlds are going mainstream in the Western World (emphasizing Western, since Cyworld already seems to be a bare necessity in Korea)

Among the many Metaverses there's Kaneva, which I visited today.

Registration was quite easy and since there are no family names, like in Second Life, I was able to register myself as VeeJayBurns.

After the registration it's time to download. The first download, the install wizard is just 2Mb, but then the full engine is downloaded, 250 Mb, after installation about 500Mb.
One of the great features of Kaneva is the personal homepage that you get as a resident - a good start to integrate Web 2.0 and Web 3D into one environment. Think of the power of integrating Second Life with Flickr, Blogger, YouTube, Twitter/pownce and Facebook all in one!
Character creation is very limited, compared to Second Life, same pretty much goes for content creation.
Uploading textures, or patters works from webpages, which is actually a better interface than the inworld upload that Second Life offers.
Another great thing about Kaneva is, besides you getting your own 'homepage', you also get your own 'home'. That does bring back memories of First Land in Second Life (which I missed out on :-( )
A thing that surprised - in a good way - was the speed of Kaneva. Movement was quite fast. On the downside, as in SpaceStage I did not meet any people or found an easy way to wander around the world.

Kaneva does have some benefits to offer, some addons that may help to create a Metaversal identity, but is lacking in other parts compared to Second Life. For instance, Second Life really has the upper hand when it comes to content creation and the openness of the world. Also the 'mandatory' orientation island exerecises may seem to be a bit overdone, but when entering a world for the first time - without any practise, does leave you at a loss sometimes.

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Sunday, July 01, 2007

Pownce, Facebook and iPhone

Okay, here's a non SL post again. I've finally gotten into POWNCE!
Thanks to Vincent Shore of Squawknest.

Pownce is still in Alpha, but looks like it's gonna be the next big thing.

Pownce is a way to send stuff to your friends. What kind of stuff? You can send just about anything: music, photos, messages, links, events, and more. You can do it all through the web site, or install the desktop software that lets you get out of the browserbox.


The past weeks there's been a lively discussion at twitter on Pownce, which is seen by many as an enormous improvement to twitter (or as someone said: "if Twitter upgraded the things that users wanted, you'd kinda have pownce ")

(sorry couldn't grabcapture the client, but trust me, it looks slick)

The other thing that's taking up some of my time is Facebook. It's originally a Harvard Who's Who but is rapidly expanding and replacing myspace in some ways.

"Facebook isn't about college stuff anymore. I have no college network and enjoy the software as an organizational tool. "

If you'd like to know more, Danah Boyd wrote an excellent article on Facebook.

Finally, it seems like every US based friend I have on twitter has been suckered into the iPhone craze. Again, I'd have to admit it looks slick but I wouldn't buy one immediately --luckily it isn't available in Europe yet, so I'll have time to see how it develops.
It seems heavily overhyped at the moment in my opinion, though Steve did a good Job on fuelling it by stating that there might not be enough iPhone's available.
Here's a little reader question:
If you're reading this blog, could you tell me if you've bought one?

Finally, if you'd like to know more on iPhone or Pownce I'd recommend you'd visit Scobleizer's page at FastCompany magazine. Todays bloglinks give you an excellent overview on these apps / sites.
His current column is titled The New Web War.
"Perhaps the hottest debate in my circle today centers around the technologies we'll use inside, or outside, the browser to build a new kind of rich Internet application. We're talking mostly about video, because that's where the action is."
Part of his column is on Adobe's Apollo platform which is used for Pownce as well.
Robert Scoble is one of the leading ubergeek bloggers. Scoble is best known for his popular blog, Scobleizer, which came to prominence during his tenure as a technical evangelist at Microsoft.
So, again Web 2.0 which should be about integration is getting diversificated again.

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Wednesday, June 20, 2007

Metaversed uncloackes

This week we saw a sudden change at Metaversed as its spiritual father 57 Miles and cowriter Onder Skall, from Second Life Games came out of the closet and revealed their true identities.

"Caleb and I have been talking about moving to our real names on the site for some time. It seems short sighted to use Second Life avatar names on a virtual worlds news site. Though there is a downside to diluting two fairly strong brands, I think it feels right. And that's good enough reason to do it.

You can see Caleb's profile here and my updated profile here if you're interested in our backgrounds, and find out more about Metaversed authors, including how to become one," according to Nick Wilson, f.k.a. 57 Miles.

Now how does this work out? 57 Miles is indeed a strong, known brand in Second Life after months of labor, spending too much time in Second Life and blogging like crazy.

For my part, I already knew 57's true identity, as it wasn't hard to get hold on. So nothing new to me personally. And I do like the real Nick. On the other hand it leaves you wonder on privacy on the web. I've mentioned Web 2.0 is getting hard to handle. This not only counts for keeping up with many sites, blogs, email accounts and IM's, but it sure is having an impact on managing your identity. Privacy in Web 2.0 or Web 3D is hard.

Managing your identity is hard, but keeping up appearances even harder. Just Google for VeeJay Burns and you're bound to stumble on my true identity sooner or later as well. I've wondered why Ian Hughes, IBM's metaverse guru was so open about his identities at the eightbar blog. The answer is obvious: If you know and use Google, it isn't hard to find out the truth anyway.

In short, if you're trying to protect your privacy, don't get into web 2.0 or web 3D at all ;)

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Sunday, June 17, 2007

VeeJay juggles Web 2.0 Chaos

Being under pressure to come to twitter I finally signed up. Web 2.0 is getting a little confusing right now.
What I'm facing right now is juggling email accounts to and fro:
  • My snowcrash@usa.com account at http://www.mail.com/ for old times sake
  • A yahoo mail account for del.ici.us
  • A google mail account for blogger
  • A hotmail account for MSN
  • A private hosting account for private emails
  • An email account at my ISP
  • And 5 email accounts for various sideshows and clubs I'm involved in.
Then there's IM-ing or communication thingies going down at
  • Twitter
  • ICQ
  • Skype
  • MSN
Then there's stats to watch and pimp at http://www.technorati.com/ and AWstats for my hosting account. Finally there's some 100 RSS feeds to monitor, my pages at http://www.linkedin.com/, xing and ning and my page at http://www.hyves.nl/ to maintain, not to mention the old 90's crowd at http://www.ancientsites.com/ who know me as Johannes Nestor.
The one thing that keeps me standing up in this total chaos is for the most part http://www.netvibes.com/ which I prefer over iGoogle. It offers me widgets for webmail, weather, rss feeds, twitter, del.ici.us, flickr, digg it etcetera, so I've only got about 3 tabs to scan every morning. Still, some of the aforementioned socalled essentials to Web 2.0 are don't integrate as well.
Web 2.0 is about social networking, but in my case that network is almost too widespread to maintain and too many accounts are needed to keep a grip. This world needs more unified communications. (My collegues at Sogeti would agree, and I guess the almighty Epradator agrees as well as he said much of the same on his view on Virtual Worlds).
Tech Rocks, but for tech-savvy folks it's getting a full-time job to read the various sources that tell you what your job should be. Information overload, or load balancing is the question.

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Tuesday, May 22, 2007

MAS : Multi Agent System

One of the great things in the information age is...well, information. But it's getting too much too handle. It's only now that I've read up on the Automatiserings Gids, a leading Dutch IT mag which published an interesting story in it's February 2006 issue which features a story on the synergy between new grid technology and semantic web interfaces enabling core processes to be hanbled more efficiently, according to Dr. Chris van Aart.


Dr. van Aart is a specialist in Artificial Intelligence, doing both research and teaching at the University of Amsterdam (UvA).


"One of the challenges of Artificial Intelligence and in particularly Intelligent Agents is to construct collection of computational problems solver that work together to achieve a set of goals. Issues related to this activity are co-ordination, cooperation and interaction.My research investigates theories from the field of organizational science in order to apply these on organizations of computational problem solvers. Considered theories are Scientific Management (Taylor, 1911), Classical management theory (Fayol, 1949) and Organizational Design (Mintzberg, 1979)."


The great thing is that he's now a fine colleague at Sogeti and on board of the Second Life core team ready to put some intelligence into our plans. Switching back and forth between his two jobs he is dragging us into the mire of Multi Agent Systems in combination with Second Life.

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Saturday, May 05, 2007

NETVIBES: Mission critical tooling for bloggers

Netvibes is pioneering the personal homape market, offering an alternative to traditional web portals. Although it's still running in Beta mode, it already has millions of users from 150 different countries.

Netvibes lets individuals assemble all in one place their favorite websites, blogs, email accounts, social networks, search engines, instant messengers, photos, videos, podcasts, widgets, and everything else they enjoy on the Web.
It's rapidly becoming a mission critical tooling for bloggers as it easily lets you add feeds, feeds and more feeds in different tabs. Right now I'm running a general tab with all the usual business news, weather, calender and email, a specialised Second Life tab with all the great blogs linked on this page and a Web 2.0 tab that keeps me informed of the latest web hypecycles.

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Sunday, April 29, 2007

The road to Web 3D

Earlier this week I made a blogpost of the Business Week SL special. Here's another article (read the full version here) that discusses the future of the internet and NVE's (Networked Virtual Environments a.k.a. virtual / immersive worlds) in general.

"All these developments have one thing in common: They suggest that before long, the Internet of the future, and the vast wealth of information and services on it, will look different: slicker, more realistic, more interactive and social than anything we experience today through the Web browser. "Three-dimensional virtual worlds will, in the near future, be pervasive interfaces for the Internet," says Bob Moore, a sociologist who studies virtual worlds at Palo Alto Research Center, or PARC, the legendary Xerox (XRX) lab in Silicon Valley."

It's an excellent article that really gets you going, written by Robert Hof.

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Thursday, April 19, 2007

SL mourns Virginia Tech

The world was shocked upon hearing news of another shootout at a US school. This time Virginia Tech in Blacksburg was the stage of horror. The horror and grief is real, there's nothing virtual about it. In Second Life however people teamed up to mourn together and memorials were set up.

Some examples (from SLNN)


  • Forcythia Wishbringer, head of Elf Circle, with more than 600 members, turned the lights off in her sims starting at 7:22 p.m. for 24 hours in respect for those who died.

  • At Info Island, a memorial was erected, where people could take a candle and leave flowers. A sculpture of a man on his knees, and arms raised in the air as if he were asking "why?" was created by Darrien Lightworker.

  • A memorial site was set up at Commons in the sim Kula. A long wooden table holds 33 lit candles, one for each of the people who died in the tragedy. Residents gathered for a candlelight vigil at about 8 p.m. SL time.
When we're writing on Web 2.0 and all shout that it's about You and about creating communities it can sound very technical. These memorials are a fine example of how emotionally involved people are and their need to share grief. Second Life isn't a fun-site, it's a life-site where ups and downs are shared and can act als a katalyst.

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Sunday, April 15, 2007

Heartbeat Digital

Heartbeat Digital creates custom Websites and high-value Web software for Fortune 500 companies and other industry-leading organizations. And they've gone virtual. Their sim in Second Life is rather empty, they're aiming for the sky.

A massive aluminium zeppelin hovers above the island. Do we need to watch and see if they are bringing their clients to SL? I think that may take a while. The zeppelin design is pretty ok, but the sim lacks experience. A quick scan tells us that they've claimed their sim in 2004 ! so you might expect they'd learned the inside out of the metaverse by now. Heartbeat Digital seems to have missed a beat here and remained in the Presence stage.

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Tuesday, February 20, 2007

The Tao of Linden

After Linden Labs announced it descision to stop with the First Land program a friend of mine mentioned the Tao of Linden, the LL philosophy on life (http://blog.secondlife.com/2006/07/25/the-tao-of-linden/)

Linden Lab has a different and better way of doing work. It relies on the idea that if the level of transparency (everyone can see what everyone else is doing) can be made high enough, you can stop managing people by explicit authority or delegation. Instead of being told what to do, you choose your own work by listening to your peers, making good strategic judgements, taking risks, and surfing a huge amount of information.

As one of a very few pioneers in doing things this way, there is still a lot to learn. We make mistakes. But the things we have gotten right are impressive: Linden Lab has, in 6 years, had almost zero employee turnover, and our productivity, in comparison to other similar sized teams, is off the charts.

In short this could well be another way of saying: We'll develop features, or fix bugs when we feel like it, regardless of the contractual promises we made to paying members.

And what will happen to work that nobody wants to do? Some thing just have to be done in order to keep the engine running.

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First Land program to end

Tuesday, February 20th, 2007 at 1:12 PM PST by: Jack Linden

Effective immediately, the supply of cheap First Land parcels by Linden Lab will cease. Premium accounts will still be able to own up to 512m of land as part of their Premium membership package as they do now, the only change is that we will not be supplying the discounted parcels as we have done in the past. The website and knowledgebase will be amended to reflect this change shortly.

The First Land program was put in place to encourage land ownership for those moving up to Premium membership. Increasingly we have found that these cheap L$1 per meter parcels were not benefitting those people as intended. Because of the low price, they were being immediately sold, or bought via alts, purely for profit.

We have discussed many methods to ensure that First Land is used as intended but have decided that there is no way to do this without significantly impacting on resident freedoms. Therefore the First Land Program will no longer be provided. It may still be possible to find cheap land for sale, for example small parcels that have been abandoned and recycled by us, but it will not be sold specifically as First Land. Our hope is that through much higher levels of mainland expansion, market forces will act to bring resale prices down over time, for example the new continent being brought up to the east.

You may ask what, without First Land, is the value of a Premium account? Well consider that the L$1200 stipend per month (around USD$4.50) plus 512m free tier per month (around USD$5.00) means that the monthly premium account essentially pays for itself. We are actively looking for additional ways to increase premium value, and we would love to hear any ideas the community has on this.

[Quote from Second Life's official blog: http://blog.secondlife.com/2007/02/20/first-land-program-to-end/]

As representative of the First Land Searchers group I truely feel sorry this descision has been made. The reasoning behind this ruling is also questionable, and probably arguable from a contract point of view.

1. Current Land Searchers, for the larger part, have seriously been looking for a parcel to own themselves.
2. The unavailability of First Land has not been the result of huge speculation, but of the incapacity of Linden to address the problem of land-bots.
3. Premium account members have INVESTED in the expanse of Second Life based upon the contractual promise to right of ownership of a parcel of First Land.

Taking into account that there are thousands of premium membership owners who have signed up to pay $ 5,- a month for the right to hold First Land, it brings thousands of dollars of venue for Linden Labs this is easy money.

Cutting on the First Land allocation in this fashion will not achieve the goals intented. On the contrarry, it will work counter productive. It leaves thousands of frustrated users who will no longer support the ideals and growth of SL, it will fend off new upgrades to Premium accounts and will only end in a new surge in landprices.

The promise of finding alternative ways to make premium interesting again is not a substantial offer. Over 90% of the users have upgraded to premium solely for the purpose of owning First Land, and the only way to compensate this would be to increase the monthly stipend enough to enable us to buy a regulare parcel.

Additional Efforts that could be taken:
1. During transition phase premium account members receive enough L$ to purchase a normal lot.
2. Linden delivers enough first land for current premium account holders to fullfil the contractual First Land promise.

Rulings that could ensure First Land usage as intended:
1. First Land buyers take a contractual obligation to hold the First Land parcel for at least 1 year.
2. During a planned transition phase only existing parcels can be traded and auctioned. New parcels can only be sold if they originate from new regions.
Let us negotiate a transition phase

I truly hope there are some laywers out there with a copy of the original terms of use and premium membership rights that will make an effort of this issue in a RL court of law.


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Tuesday, February 13, 2007

Second Life, Creationism or Evolution?

Today I read an interesting article about Second Life.

As you'll probably know, Second Life offers its virtual residents to create 3D thing. A whole new virtual world is opening up. In designated areas, socalled Sandboxes, people can practise their building skills and the most bizarre creations appear every day, ranging from "planes, trains and automobiles" to luxurious condo's and bodyparts. Some people say the power to create makes you feel like a god.

The article deals with the theological question: Is Second Life the result of Creationism or of Evolution?
"Somewhere around my third glass of pinot noir, I realized that Rosedale was describing something more interesting: a world where imaginations touch, interact, and create. Pardon me for being dense about this, but I had to see this through my own bio-lenses, and I now realize that Second Life is actually an organism--one that is in the early stages of pure Darwinian evolution.

Full article:

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What is BI2.0 and does this really compare to Web2.0?

Another Question from Linked-in
I have been seeing more and more references to “BI2.0”, “Next Generation Business Intelligence” and “Business Analytics” on the web and blogs.
My company is currently sponsoring a series of independent webcasts and whitepapers by a group of business intelligence experts to discuss the successes and shortfalls of traditional BI and identify the new technologies and user experiences. The featured experts include Neil Raden, Stephen Few, Dr. Wolfgang Martin, Dr. Claudia Imhoff, Dan Everett and Dr. Ben Schneiderman.
(Here’s a link if you’re interested: www.spotfire.com/nextgen/bi.cfm)

My Marketing Team tells me BI2.0 is the next big wave, especially now that Microsoft is building out their BI portfolio.
I would like to get a more independent and real world point of view though…
What do you envision as being the next generation of Business Intelligence, and does this really compare to Web2.0?

The next wave will be when we let go of our current views of static html, predefined applications etcetera.

The future in BI lies in the I, integration. We need to go beyond Microsoft's predefined conception of Office when it comes to office applications. It is beyond Word and Excel right now, it's also HRM, CRM, DMS and last, but certainly not least Communications.

When we talk of integration, SOA is just a mere step, Cordys (www.cordys.com) is doing a good job, but it's not the future. People are used to conventional screens (say 1024*768 ratio), but now we have widescreen. The usual application doesn't utilise this beyond a wider screen and resizing the spreadsheet you're working in, but that doesn't change the way we work. Extra Widescreen capacity could be used for communication centers, linked applications etcetera. Also, we've been working the same old keyboard for ages now, why not make the numpad detachable and replace it with changeable business specific short-key pads.

So in short, the future of BI starts when we let go of the fram,ework (keyboard, monitor lay-out) we designed in the previous century

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Buzz Word "Local"

It seems "local" is one of the big buzz words going around.

Was the title of an interesting question I spotted on Linked-In

"local" search marketing
"local(location based)" mobile marketing
These are two of the things I have heard associated with local marketing. I believe some have referenced the long tail saying that small local establishments advertising could add up to more than the big Brand advertisers.

what is your take on this? Do you think it is truly a scalable solution? Which do you think "local" targeting provides the greatest area of growth mobile or online?

Do you think if the same "targeting" ability was available in radio maybe to target someone in a specific zip code would the demand be there?

The winner is
With the huge amount of spamming and direct mail and unpersonalised printed marketing material you would indeed think it would be a winner if you could get into the local-targeting mode.

It's not a winner though, it's a slight improvement. With todays technology of online banking, online ordering etcetera the winner is: income and spendinghistory specific marketing.

In other words, we're talking about intelligent documents (I need to set up a file for this item ;)



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First Land killer for SL

Taken by the endless opportunities for Second Life I upgraded my account to premium about a month ago. One of the benefits is that you can trade.... and are entitled to a speck of dust in the virtual landscape, 512 sq. meter to be precise.

This 1st land comes cheap, at L$ 512,- (Linden Dollar) , so $1 for 1 mtr. whereas normal land now trades at beyond L$20 per meter, and I even saw USD$ 42 /month being asked for a tiny speck of land. So, in order to have yourself a nice little home to start out with, 1st land is a must have.

First Land Catch
However, the catch is: You're entitled to it, but 1st land is not always available. After 1 month of searching I encountered 1 piece of 1st land sofar. And it was sold before I got there. I stuck around though, and within the hour over 200 residents came looking at the speck of land, hoping for their chance to finally own a virtual yard. Each and everyone frustrated that 1st land was hard to come by, and all that sort of stuff.

Last week I spoke to this Linden guy -the one in charge of land sales- and he said that on friday 50 bits of land were made available for 1st land. The time and amount of available land varies daily. All cute and true, but on Friday I was ill and had spend about 8 hours online from bed, regularly hit the search button, but never did it return results for 1st land. In fact, I'm pretty darn sure that from friday till tuesday not a single piece of land has gone up for 1st land.

Virtual Moneymaking Machine
In short, First land is the promise of virtual land accompanied with the disclaimer that it might not be available. Thousands of members have paid for it -paid for Linden to plug in extra hardware, but they don't have to deliver. Wow, this is good marketing! People are paying for something they might never receive. Linden must make millions from idiots like me.

The Dying Grounds
Numerous frustrated paying members have now organised themselves in groups like "First Land Searchers", and are trying to get Linden to deliver. If this group gets organised and more media attention, this will surely have a downcast on Second Life. Will Linden commit suicide on First Land, or not?



Additional Resources:

From Wikipedia:

Land Ownership: Premium members also have the ability to own land (up to 512m2 without additional fees). Owning larger areas of land attracts an increasing additional fee (what Linden Lab calls "tier") ranging from US$5 a month up to US$195 a month for an entire 65,536m2 of land or individual island.[3] [4]

Land sales system: Linden Lab usually sells land in small 512m2 blocks (16 by 32 meters) through its First Land program, or as entire 16 acre (65,536m2) regions. Residents also buy and sell land to other Residents, generally intending to make a profit by selling the plots of land at a price higher than the original purchase cost.

The First Land program is used to reserve small blocks of land for first time land buyers, intending Residents to purchase their first parcel of land below the current market value.[5] This program also serves as an incentive for new Residents with free accounts to upgrade to premium accounts. A Resident pays a fixed fee of L$1 per 1m2 for a 512m2 plot.[5]

These First Land plots are frequently consolidated into larger plots when the original owners sell them to other residents.

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