When I read the entry on O’Reilly Radar (Link) that Google had acquired the rights to the technology used by the Stanford team to win the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge, the first thing that ran through my mind was that they could use swarms of autonomous aerial vehicles (or “swarmanoids” – reLink) that might look something like the police drones now being used in the UK. Sure sounds like my earlier disappointment, that the swarmanoids had no links to virtual worlds, might now be reversed. From the O’Reilly post: Continue reading →

Worthwhile article on C|Net (Link) discussing IBM’s business game, Innov8, which they announced today at IMPACT 2007. From the article:

The game, called Innov8, is meant to address a lack of skills in understanding and improving a company’s internal business processes.

Process improvement is a critical component to service-oriented architectures (SOA), a way of designing software as a series of interlinked, modular business services. The software for modeling and running this modular software is called business process management, or BPM.
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I’m a little surprised I’ve not seen much mention of the new drink vending system announced by WaterWerkz. If you’ve not heard about it, check out the video on their website (Link), which also says the following:

The versatility of the Pouchlink system means that it can be utilised for a number of different packaging applications, offering cost-saving, space savings and environmental benefits.
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Using tried and tested filling technologies, the system increases storage capacity and reduces the amount of labour and space involved in the handling and provision of packaged drinks and water based products.

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I’ve previously mentioned in comments that I’d been explaining both the immersive benefits of virtual worlds and the potential uses for digitally-enabled movie theaters to my senior citizen mother. I’ve also recently mentioned that she’d been attending digital simulcasts broadcast to a local theater from the New York Metropolitan and was raving about how immersive the experience was for both her and other attendees. Well, it seems that the simulcasts are a hit. The New York Times is reporting (Link) that the effort was a brilliant success. From the article: Continue reading →

The MIT Technology Review site has recently been carrying a surprising number of articles discussing Industrial Design and I wanted to pass them on to those of you who may not regularly surf through. The first article, “The Secret of Apple Design” (Link), is a decent piece worth reading if you’re unfamiliar with some of Apple’s history in regards to Industrial Design. Most designers are probably familiar with what’s written, in which case I’d recommend to them a book that’s mentioned in the article, AppleDesign. Aside from the abundance of visual resources, some of the stories are particularly informative… and they make for great ammunition in combative product development meetings (c’mon, we all know it’s not always a love-in).
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