The above image is a quick screen capture of a portion of Second Life‘s virtual world map. On this map there are green dots which represent individual avatars (you can barely see them, but there’s a bunch). In this way, you can see what areas are heavily populated and what areas are vacant. You can identify people who are your “Friends” among them, but you can’t identify unknown individuals, though that’s obviously possible to do.

Now imagine if that grocery Saver Card (you know the one in your wallet) has a built-in RFID chip in it. And using that card/chip, your whereabouts could be tracked just like on this virtual world map. Sound like science-fiction? From an article on AdAge today (Link, free registration required):

But the privacy group Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering cites two patents and two pending applications by Goliath that envision extending the system to track individual consumers in stores and target ads to them at home by using RFID chips embedded in loyalty cards.

I’ve mentioned this before and may already have referred to the patents in question, but thought that this might be a good time to refresh the subject.

Nice piece over on the AIGA website called “Why Designers Can Think” (Link). I too have noticed that designers are uncommonly able to solve problems (that realization came as a blow to my engineering ego when a fellow non-engineering degree’d student at art school brilliantly solved a problem).

While I don’t agree that going digital necessarily means disconnecting from the brain, as suggested in the article, I did really like the last part of the piece regarding sketching. An excerpt:

When I was talking recently with Milton Glaser about his drawings, he remarked, “Drawing is not about representation but about thinking. Trying to understand what you’re looking at … The brain sends a signal to the hand and the hand sends one back and there is an endless conversation between them.”

The industrial designer Bruce Burdick said something similar in describing the notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci as “a private conversation between him and his hands.” In his book The Hand, neurologist Frank Wilson argues that the qualities needed for thinking are inseparable from the qualities needed for seeing, showing and making. If so, the relationship between hand and mind could illuminate both what makes designers so smart and what makes designers so anxious.

I have to admit ignorance of these previous arguments, but I’m happy to say I’ve been saying the exact same things on the Core77 forum when young designers ask if sketching is necessary (a common question, since many can’t sketch and would rather use the computer). There’s a term I learned in school that makes a kind of implicit sense: “search lines”. These are the faint lines on the paper that capture the brain’s thinking… searching… for a solution. It’s that idea that I try to get across to them. Unfortunately they usually don’t understand. But many accomplished designers love them. Perhaps because rather than just looking at an image, they realize they’re looking at much, much more.

via TP Wire Service

Given my previous posts on Chrysler/Jeep (Link 1 and Link 2), this story on AdAge (story Link, free registration required) isn’t a surprise:

FRANCISCO (AdAge.com) — In an effort to harness mobile phone TV as a major branded entertainment medium, Jeep is launching its own mobile phone channel with MobiTV.

and it continues…

Dave Whetstone, chief marketing officer, MobiTV, said Unilever’s Axe deodorant is in negotiations for a similar advertising arrangement.

I’ve blogged about Axe before too (Link3). I’m seeing a trend here. And I bet so do an increasing number of marketing and advertising types. Let the onslaught begin.

Considering that my current virtual design office will likely *poof* into virtual thin air in the near future, I thought it appropriate to grab a last screenshot of it along with the new “Ripple Water” feature added into Second Life version 1.8 released today (I believe SL has had mesh deformation water before, but bandwidth concerns eliminated that earlier water feature).

Now that I think about it, I might let the place stand until SL reaches the 100,000 user mark (an artificial number, to be sure). That means it’ll be history in a few days time I suppose, but it does give me a deadline of sorts. And a good reminder to get back to some other SL-based projects.

I was recently in an exchange with someone concerning the classic New Yorker cartoon, “On the Internet, Nobody Knows You’re a Dog“. Based on my thoughts regarding Reputation (capital “R”) in the expanding internet/virtual world marketplace, my newfound position is that this theory isn’t quite true. So for those thinking I’m mistaken and they can conduct themselves without regard for real life/real world consequences, go read this article over on C|Net titled “Wikipedia vandal quits job“.

We need a new cartoon, perhaps. I’d suggest this line: “For every anonymous jerk on the net, there’s someone sufficiently ticked off to hunt them down“.