There’s a new report from technology and market research company Forrester Research that might finally get the attention of those corporations who haven’t made it into the 21st Century. From the report:

Individuals increasingly take cues from one another rather than from institutional sources like corporations, media outlets, religions, and political bodies. To thrive in an era of Social Computing, companies must abandon top-down management and communication tactics, weave communities into their products and services, use employees and partners as marketers, and become part of a living fabric of brand loyalists.

Pretty bold advice. I’m not sure how many corporate officers are prepared to relinquish direct control as suggested by the above quote, but this report will undoubtedly get a conversation going. If you want to follow the buzz, the best place to start is the Micro Persuasion blog (Link) where I found the above quote. If you’re also interested in niche products then you might want to get hopping … it already has four trackbacks.

via Futurelab

Hopefully, if you read this blog regularly, the idea behind “blogjects” isn’t new. A blogject is really just a version of something Bruce Sterling earlier coined as being a “spime“. Which, btw, isn’t a new idea either … just a new term he coined. After all, the RadTag I did in mid-2004 was specifically designed to be an anti-terrorist blogject/spime (you can see/read a bit more about that over on the Core forum – Link).

Anyway, for anyone who hasn’t noticed the plethora of articles discussing blogjects, here’s an interesting related item I culled from the New Scientist (Link):

The idea is to give guns a Bluetooth transmitter chip controlled by a sensor which detects when the firing pin is triggered. So every time the gun fires a shot it automatically sends out a low power radio signal to a belt-mounted GPS radio which determines its wearer’s precise position.

So, BANG, and the belt radio transmits a pre-recorded message saying “gun fired, send backup” accompanied by the GPS position.

This leads one to the obvious: why not have every gun do this? After all, once police-issued firearms have this self-reporting capability, criminals aren’t likely to covet owning one should the opportunity present itself. Want to prevent brazen thefts like the recent theft of military weaponry in Brazil? Turn them into blogjects. Pretty obvious.

Does anyone think that in the future guns in general will have this feature? I doubt it. In the U.S. at least, we can’t even enforce registration laws. Something tells me the same people who are OK with domestic spying will go ballistic if the government says they’re passing laws that require guns be turned into blogjects. Of course then discussions will pop up about when it’s okay and when it’s not okay.

Anyone remember the rental car agencies that got into hot water for tracking how fast their customers were driving and imposing their own fees for breaking the legal speed limit? That got people pretty angry. And they were breaking the law!

The amusement never ends.

{Update: I posted a comment over on the SL Future Salon blog that I figure might be of interest here since this post seems to be generating some traffic. Here’s my comment in it’s entirety but without the blockquote tags to keep it readable:

I recall the Koster post.

Here’s how I more or less view this:

a) program an object to be “aware”
b) create a representation of the virtual object
c) fab the object
d) expand awareness to the real object by d/l’ing the programming/AI
e) the virtual object becomes representational of the real*
f) the real goes through it’s material lifecycle to the point where it prepares for a final power down
g) last data transmission to the virtual object at it’s “death”
h) the virtual object continues on as part of the history, but also as part of the evolution; it’s like DNA
i) new virtual object created from the previous data – 3D/programming/collected information/etc
j) continue cycle

If you recall the Make presentation [within the Second Life simulation], I brought up that someone needs to code an AI in SL and d/l that to one of those robot mice. That was part of this idea of connecting the two.

*Here’s the interesting part: what if the virtual and real aren’t doppelgangers in so much as they’re more like twins separated by types of reality? One exists in the virtual and has a virtual lifecycle and one exists in the real with it’s associated lifecycle. During this existence there is a continuous exchange of data. Extend “spime” to “dspime” – the ability to exist independently in both realities but evolve using information from each.}

I’m not sure what that means exactly, but it’s in Gamecloud’s interview with Justin Townsend, CEO of in-game advertising company, IGA Worldwide. Here’s the relevant part of the comment from the Gamecloud article (Link):

We are already working on some major technological innovations, such as in snowboarding game Stoked Rider where we are dynamically interchanging geometric branded objects, …

This sounds quite a bit like something I suggested (reLink).

By the way, if I combine that earlier thought which uses “generic” models, associated UV maps and streaming, upgradeable skins to update content, with something I mentioned recently regarding intellectual property issues (specifically trademarking “appearance of shape” – reLink), we get something I’ve not heard about.

Imagine this: high-quality but generic models with associated UV maps that not only change their skin via streaming updates, but change their shape as well using any one of the new techniques being included in the new and next generation of videogames; from normalmaps to displacement maps.

I like that idea. Gee, wonder if that’s patentable?

via Brands In Games

Clickable Culture has a post (Link) outlining the recent SXSW conference event “How to Be a Virtual World Entrepreneur”. Speakers were Peter Ludlow, Glenn Thomas, andReuben Steiger of Second Life developer Linden Lab.

As it turns out, it appears that most if not all of the discussion centered on Second Life. That’s kind of a shame, but there are some interesting bullets that might be of interest to some of you. I thought Thomas’s comment, “SL feels like Flash before Flash became huge”, was interesting. I tend to agree but have my doubts SL will survive to be as successful as Flash.

Sometimes I just need some visual stimulation. This custom toy fits the bill; part of Ultraman’s “Tin Robot” showing at the recent Trexi show in New York. I found this over on Vinyl Pulse (Link). Great site.

And for the branding people that stop in here from time to time, be sure to take a look at the “Case Study” examples over on the Trexi site.

{Image source: Vinyl Pulse}