I’m not going to bother doing anything more than just pointing to a couple of stories over on Ad Age (free registration) and just asking this: Is that industry as clueless as it sounds?

A Socratic Debate About Branded Entertainment – Hollywood and Madison Ave. Execs Wrestle With Potential and Pitfalls (Link)

Steve Heyer: Why Branded Entertainment Fails – An Industry Pioneer Critiques Marketers’ Efforts (Link)

(*I now want to get a job lecturing to automobile manufacturers that the wheels on their cars have to spin*)

In some ways, this almost couldn’t be further from my earlier post wondering about brand/trademark conflict inside the Second Life virtual simulation (Link) and still be in the same virtual space: Terra Nova has posted an entry concerning the use of the Red Cross logo in videogames. From the post (Link):

The Canadian Red Cross wants game developers to stop using the Red Cross logo in games, claiming trademark infringement, trademark dilution, and playing the “support the troops” card by suggesting that use of a red cross in games removes the “protective value” of the mark in real war zones.

Typically, a response to something like this is “Screw the Man”; a little more difficult to do in this instance. However, that’s a good thing since we should hear a different debate. The discussion both on Terra Nova and elsewhere will hopefully prove interesting, so if you’re interested in virtual world business and legal issues, I’d suggest keeping an eye on Terra Nova’s comment section.

And the winner is… Design Innovations. This kind of thing is always of interest to Industrial Designers; there are few topics as hot as Who Owns The Rights. You can read the full press release from the winner’s attorneys (Link) but here are excerpts:

… a jury has found that toy company Fisher-Price misappropriated a concept developed by Design Innovation for use in the Fisher-Price Rescue Heroes line of products. … The jury awarded Design Innovation damages of $1.7 million and also found Fisher-Price guilty of unfair competition, having acted in bad faith in its misappropriation of the toy concept. … Design Innovation and Reiling conceived of an idea for incorporating a still or moving image into each of the Rescue Heroes’ backpacks. This would allow a child to view the respective characters on rescue missions, thus increasing the play value of the toys. … Design Innovation and Reiling had presented their concept to Fisher-Price in 1998, who informed them that they were genuinely excited by the concept and then paid the inventors two option fees to secure the concept and prevent it from being taken elsewhere. … In 2001, Fisher-Price introduced a line of action figures and related accessories that incorporated images in their backpacks — similar to the concept presented to them by Design Innovation and Reiling … Fisher-Price argued that they had independently created these products after having seen and optioned the Design Innovation and Reiling concepts. The jury rejected this argument.

I suspect I’ll hear more since Design Innovations is in my neighborhood. If anything interesting comes up, I’ll update this entry.

via Core77

Here are a few excerpts from a short Reuters news article carried by Yahoo! (Link):

Virtual reality visual feedback cues can help people with multiple sclerosis (MS) to walk more quickly and lengthen their stride, Israeli researchers report.
…
A virtual reality system that incorporates the user’s movements into a visual display that provides feedback has been shown to improve gait in patients with Parkinson’s.
…
The findings support the use of virtual reality-based approaches to rehabilitation in patients with MS, as well as other types of neurological disorders, they conclude.

I wish there were more articles like this one; and more discussion and interest as well.

If you’re familiar with Second Life then you’re probably aware of the ongoing attempt to integrate the Mozilla source code into the SL client to provide “HTML on a prim” (translation: a Firefox-like internet browser mapped as a texture onto a piece of in-world 3D geometry). The potential benefits for this feature – especially when it becomes interactive and not just a static rendered texture – have quite a few “virtual” businesses excited.

There have, however, been some problems. From the Second Life forum announcement:

Callum has just sent this information to interested parties:
“uBrowser is an simple Web Browser that illustrates one way of embedding the Mozilla® Gecko rendering engine into a standalone application using the LibXUL framework. The contents of the page is grabbed as it’s being rendered and displayed as a texture on geometry using OpenGL. You are able to interact with the page (mostly) normally and visit (almost) any site that works correctly with Firefox® 1.5. It’s the by-product of some work I’m doing here at Linden Lab (http;//lindenlab.com) to enable an embedded browser in our Second Life (http;//secondlife.com) software. There are only a few remaining show stoppers, such as control inputs through plugins, that remain to be fixed. We hope that with the help of the open source community and Second Life’s residents, we’ll be able to rapidly resolve these bugs. Source code, executable and build instructions are available at http;//ubrowser.com “

And now, in an attempt to facilitate their overcoming these roadblocks, from Cory Linden’s blog we have this additional announcement (Link):

So, think you can fix it? If you do, I’ll give you a private island in Second Life, including both the up-front cost and the monthly dues for one year. Note that the solution must work on Windows, Mac, and Linux — or, if we’ve fixed it on one or more platforms, on the platforms that are still unsolved.

Good old capitalist incentive. This should get things moving. Excellent.

{Image source: uBrowser}