There’s a nice but too short article over on Wired titled “Cashing In on Virtual Humans” (Link). There’s not much in the way of “cash” discussed actually. A more accurate title might have been “The Trials and Tribulations of Virtual Humans” since the article is mostly about using digital humans for testing and evaluation purposes.

The example they cite for instructing a digital “Santos” (the offspring of the Virtual Soldier Research Program) to change out a truck’s oil filter in order to evaluate that maintenance activity is interesting; how easy or hard it is to perform the task, what problems are encountered on the “human” side and what difficulties are the result of poor design. Great information for the designers among us. I suspect this sort of thing isn’t yet incorporated into commercially-available PLM software, but I’d venture within the next five years or so factory managers will be using similar avatars to evaluate non-robotic assembly lines at this level of detail.

Now just wait til Santos decides to put his own blueprint in the manufacturing system. Personally, I’m thinking the first “birth” will be a cross between Gibson’s idea and the last fused version of Cronenberg’s “The Fly“.

I’ve not read Philip K. Dick’s novel “A Scanner Darkly”, so I don’t know how it will translate to film, but the trailer does look intriguing. It’s the first clip I’ve seen from the film; up until now I’ve only seen screenshots. First thing that comes to my mind is Timothy Leary’s comment that virtual reality will be the ultimate drug (or something like that). Interesting how the film almost appears to be rendered with a cartoon shader. It almost fits inside Second Life (although machinima flicks look much better).

Anyway, go watch for yourself (Link). If you’re reading this blog, you’re probably a Philip K. Dick fan anyway.

Excellent post over on Clickable Culture detailing the issues in one new media PR/marketing firm’s outline for marketing/branding opportunities in virtual worlds. A must read for anyone considering taking their brand into an online environment (you might also want to see some of my posts on the dangers of moving a brand into a virtual world). From the entry (Link):

Shanth Interactive has posted a rather misguided report on branding in virtual worlds, obviously written by one or more authors with little or no first-hand experience with the locales discussed.

Hard for me to believe that co-founder Shital Mehta was invited to speak on the subject at the WITI – 2006 Conference: “Taking The Lead In The Digital Age: San Diego”. From what I’ve read so far I can’t help but picture the virtually blind leading a bunch of lemmings.

This can’t be good for Shanth’s reputation.

This is going to come as a bit of a shock to the crowd preaching that design and innovation are finally getting the respect they deserve. From a news article over on BusinessWeek comes word that while there’s plenty of hype and lip-service, the people doing the hiring in the U.S. and Canada – Human Resource Managers – rank “Creativity” relatively low. From the article (Link):

The percentage of North American leaders who checked “creativity or innovation” as the most respected quality — just 4% — tied with “technical expertise” for second-to-last place.
…
Perhaps even more startling was the response of HR managers, who could select more than 1 of the 10 choices. Just 39% of the North American HR respondents counted creativity and innovation as highly respected in their organizations, while every other quality besides the aforementioned cross-cultural strength got top marks from more than 50% of HR managers. Since HR managers often design performance-management and compensation systems, those numbers give cause for concern.

I’d suggest reading the whole article since I’m not including the results from polls taken in China. BusinessWeek spins it in a way that I would question. After all, “creativity” means different things to different people. I’m also not commenting on the short interview that follows the news entry (even though I’m tempted to quote the “risk aversion” portion and link back to my earlier post on the advertising world’s inexplicable hesitancy to get into videogames).

I consider this one exhibit in a long list of things I’ve been putting forth (on this blog – sample Link – and on both the Nussbaum blog and in the Core77 design forum). There’s plenty of hype, but in the end it’s all about measurable results.

Sorry fellow IDers, the glass ceiling is Lexan.

Terra Nova has an entry I intend to keep an eye on concerning the rapidly growing public awareness of virtual spaces. I suspect the comments might accumulate. Ren Reynolds starts off the entry (Link) with a definition:

WoW wave (noun): The phenomena of online gaming creeping in to the public consciousness evidenced by a deluge of exploratory contacts from journalists, marketing organisations, VCs, TV types, blue chip companies and random others asking what all this online stuff is all about, what it means, what they can do with it, and where the money is.

I suggest others stop in over the next couple of days to read comments. This could get interesting.

As an aside, my mother (the gaming grannie about whom I’ve spoken before) is bumming that her PC can’t run Second Life. We spoke yesterday and she informed me she had actually visited the Second Life website and used the interactive map hoping to (somehow) find my virtual residence. I installed XP over the holidays but I guess a new motherboard will soon be in order. I’d say she’s a noserider… unlike a whole lot of other, younger people I know.