Okay, this is just plain cool. From New Scientist (Link):

A simulated world that can be explored simply by thinking about putting one foot in front of the other might offer new rehabilitation possibilities for disabled patients.
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This is the vision behind a project that connects a brain-computer interface (BCI) to an immersive virtual world.
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Yesterday Linden Lab announced the migration to a new client-server messaging system (Link):

In the next release, 1.18, we’ll be shipping a project called “Message Liberation”. This project lets us make almost all viewer updates be optional, so you can download them if and when you want.
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Second Life has a “message system”, which is the code that moves information between the viewer and the simulators (servers). The message system has a file, called the template, that describes the format and encoding of the information. In the past, when that template changed, even a tiny bit, all the programs in the system had to be updated to use it and restarted. This meant that if someone added a feature or fixed a bug, you needed to download a new viewer, even if it didn’t affect you.
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In the mid-90’s, I was doing on-site freelance design work for a now-defunct firm. The emphasis was on Interior Design for major restaurant chains and the like, but there were four of us designing products at a furious (and often stupid) pace. We had a few relatively big customers, but like most small design firms, we got more than our share of really small clients.
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Thank you, Centric, for posting one of the better rebuttals to Forbes’ article (Link). I especially appreciated this part:

Actually, rushing headlong into Second Life isn’t the right idea for any company.

Before stepping in, every organization should take a deep breath, sit back, and ask some tough questions: What are your goals? Continue reading →

Just wanted to call attention to a post over on Brand Noise (Link) regarding Nokia and some recent comments by one of their researchers. The observations aren’t especially amazing, in my opinion, but I always like hearing news that corporations are thinking beyond the accounting ledger. Because product development isn’t just running some numbers based on marketing projections, engineering a device to meet numerical constraints, and creating an ad campaign to “capture eyeballs”. Every project needs to truly consider the whole package, including “the sum of human experiences”.

Now that more and more business people seem to be understanding the value of Design, I wonder if designers are also increasingly understanding the value of what others bring to the table.

I don’t know.