As someone who is becoming increasingly virtualized, where I work – my office – is similarly evolving. I often generate concepts using a Wacom tablet, create virtual models in CAD software which get sent overseas for manufacturing, and process my paperwork in MS Office/OpenOffice. I’ve had a 3D virtual office – of a sort – inside Second Life since last year, but security issues keep me from exploiting the potential of that space for now. So basically I’m caught in two worlds, and because of that I find all of this to be a bit of a mess. Actually, a big mess. Change usually is and this is all a pretty big change from what I did only a few years ago.

So it’s with obvious interest that I caught a slideshow on C|Net for “Microsoft’s workplace of the future (Link). On first look, I’m underwhelmed. Perhaps because it looks like what I could do today and doesn’t get into some of the other things that are of greater concern. I’ll need to review it again though; perhaps after I give some additional thought to a new entry on Terra Nova, “The Virtual Office” (Link). If you’re in the same boat as me, you might want to give it a look and follow the comments – they’re usually well-informed and insightful. But right now I need to get some food. My avatar is hungry.

When word of the Second Life auction exploit/scam first surfaced at the end of April (most recently reported over on Clickable Culture), the first thing I did was log into “The Land Store” portion of the Linden Lab website. I’d not visited since it was first announced and what struck me most wasn’t the exploit, it was what I saw on the sim reservation map (image above). I didn’t have to check who was perhaps building their own continent near the large “all your sim are belong to me” red area below the “main grid” (the large red area in the center) – I was relatively certain it was well-known virtual world land baron Anshe Chung.

A couple of days ago I went to see if the sub-continent might be part of Anshe’s growing virtual empire. Sure enough, the familiar land sale primboards littered the virtual landscape. I even used a teleporter on the land which took me to a central real estate office with a well-organized, theme-sim teleport system. Not to say the new block will necessarily tie into the new continent, but the placement seems strategic.
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MIT’s Technology Review has an unusual article titled “Microsoft’s Plan to Map the World in Real Time” (Link). Some interesting bits in the piece but I’m not entirely sure what’s new here. From the article:

What makes Microsoft’s experimental project different from others that track information, Nath says, is that it would allow people to search for different types of real-time data within a user-specified area on a map, and progressively narrow that search.

I always assumed this was the endgame; what Google was chasing as well as part of their mesh network location-targeted advertising. The first and best thing to sense are users, and Google’s system would do that through wireless devices like cell phones. This data could be overlaid on what should already be known: locations and supplemental information coming from real world merchants (this doesn’t require wireless; just more information updated automatically – like linking a restaurant’s reservation system into the network). What’s discussed in the article, “SenseWeb”, is more comprehensive than what it appears Google is doing at the moment, but sounds more innovative than I think it is, and sounds to me like Microsoft is really just giving ubicomp a name they can trademark. That makes sense. An article like this on the Technology Review doesn’t.

For now, though, SenseWeb and Live Local are separate projects, according to Nath. The Live Local team “really loves this technology,” he says, but right now “what’s missing is the actual data.”

Yeah. I guess that would help.

I saw this shortly after it was uploaded but figured it would be removed and so didn’t bother posting an entry. It hasn’t been removed, and since E3 is almost upon us, I figure I may as well post it now for people to enjoy. While it lasts. I guess.

I’ve posted entries either directly or indirectly discussing Will Wright’s creation for over a year now, so I’ve made plenty of references to it. But if you’re unfamiliar with why I’m interested, one entry in particular, “Killer Spore” (Link), might be of interest. Be sure to read the article I mention in that entry. Why someone primarily interested in rapid manufacturing, manufacturable-quality 3D models, and Product Lifecycle Management software (PLM) is interested in this particular videogame will be more clear if you do.

I wanted to point to a few posts elsewhere discussing the kirkyan concept. One of the people most interested in the idea is Woody Evans over on the ISHUSH blog. I’ve linked to him previously. He’s been moving the idea closer to where I think it needs to be: the point where information meets physicality (I’ll come back to that in a second).

About a week ago I posted a rather long comment on his blog which he then posted as a separate entry (Link). Soon after I answered some questions he had in a kind of interview. You can read my rambling responses (Link) as well as the important comment I added, but please ignore the “visionary” tag and also know I’m doing my best to remove the phrase “to be honest” from my vocabulary (I have a new respect for developers who answer email interview questions without coming off as complete boobs).

I also wanted to call attention to a post over on the Simulation blog (Link) that got me thinking more in the direction Woody is going. There’s a basic functionality missing in what’s presented in the post, but it led me to an idea of what the first kirkyan could be. To my knowledge it doesn’t exist yet, but it could. Rather than blurt something out the way I did on the SL Future Salon site when I first started talking about this concept, I’m going to try to do some visuals (I really liked how the Applied Dreams “reputation system” presentation was handled). Hopefully that will convey enough of the idea to avoid any confusion.