Andy-SC just twittered the link to this great article from Computer Business Review on Hursley’s 50th celebrations. It is particularly good as it documents the complete set of things that Hursley have done and are still doing including virtual worlds. Fellow eightbar author Rob (is there anything he cant do) Smart was interviewed by CBR and is quoted throughout. Its well worth a quick read for anyone who has not quite grokked Hursley yet.
As we started eightbar to try and explain some of the ethos here, it is good to see it professionally written up.
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It’s my last day in the office today before I leave IBM, so it’s time to have a final cup of tea (and pint of something stronger) with my many friends at Hursley. To mark the occasion, I spent last night building Lego representations of the Emerging Technology Services team, with whom I’ve had such a great three years. Several of them are contributors to Eightbar, and as well as everyone’s individual blogs (Twitter, Flickr, etc) of course I will be following Eightbar closely after I’ve gone to stay in touch with what’s interesting at IBM.
Thanks for everything.
Vote for Eightbar on the computer weekly blog awards?
Not only has Roo been nominated in his own right in the same category we have eightbar for the computer weekly awards. Web2.0 and Business. So if you would like to vote its a few click away by july 31st.
Had our face(book) smashed in
You may have noticed that Wimbledon this year was doing lots of interesting social media related things. Letting people join in with the Wimbledon experience wherever they are. One of the things that was going rather well was the facebook page. I mentioned it way back a week or so ago in this post. Well a few days ago the Facebook page dissapeared. We initially thought it was an admin error from one of the writers, but now it turns out that Facebook decided to remove the page as it breached some elements of the terms of service. This was a pity as in the few weeks of the championship it had grown to over 9,000 fans. Maybe it was that volume of interest that attracted some attention.
Anyway with my social media strategist hat on, i have to say I am more than a little annoyed at this. All the groups and pages that exists on Facebook in a grey area of companies and political parties and pressure groups. A globally loved tennis event with lots of interest was kicked off Facebook for the smallest bit of administrivia around whose ID created.
I am not going to get into details as thisis really between Facebook and the AELTC, but as our I and my collegues are very passionate about Wimbledon we feel part owners, as I am sure do those 9,000+ people who know have to be told that Facebook doesnt want them to use the platform for gathering together around and event like this.
Web 2.0 is as much as anythng about letting go of brands, putting things in the hands of the people that consume them. Attempting to “own” customers and make strange laws will lead to the end of a platform. People will cotton on and drift away. Just sayin’
A slight change from Wimbledon SW19 – Learning Grid
Last night as Andy Murray made his triumphant comeback in a massive 5 setter I was driving away from Wimbledon and on to Corby. I am presenting at the Learning Grid for the next 2 days and Helen from Hursley is coming up to do the other half of the gig here.
We are presenting to visiting schools from around the area at the Rockingham Motor Speedway as an event called the learning grid.
As part of an hour long presentation in the auditorium here we get about 7 minutes to help show why what we do is so interesting and fun aswell as important. The aim of the event is to inspire kids into engineering. So far what I have seen this has got some fantastic exhibits.
My office for the day (when not presenting is a tad different from the Wimbledon basement)
The cars in the car park are a bit different too.
Still the message is the same. we have 2 minutes of video of our VP of the Virtual Worlds/Digital Convergence business talking, then the rest is Helen or I, Hursley. Wimbledon, Second Life, Say it Sign It, Battlefield2 and all the chips in the games consoles to finish.
There are 2 MC’s here, about to go and meet them Michael Rod (from tomorrows world and screen test) and Michaela Hyde from kids tv.
The videos all seem to work, running in a decent resolution.
Wish me luck and go Murray !
Wimbledon the final week get your widgets here.
This year more than ever before the Wimbledon web experience is much more what us Web 2.0 geekanisters would like to see. Letting people experience Wimbledon wherever they happen to be. I am not just talking about the Second Life presence
This widget is another prime example, able to be embedded and posted all over the place, facebook, blogs etc. It is also personalized to the user, the players they choose to follow. Its been a quiet revolution for a website that got 266,311,332 page views last year over the event, but one that I am very happy to see.
So props to Stephen Hammer and the Atlanta sports event crew for putting this widget together. You have the next 7 days to enjoy its live features.
Interesting movements related to the Virtual World industry
It is fair to call this an industry or a business now I think. Still a fledgling one but definitely shaping into an industry. One of the ways you I think you can tell is that stories are not just about what has been done with a technology, but start to get stories and general interest in the people doing things with them. Much of Web 2.0 is dotted with Rock ‘n’ Roll personalities. Virtual worlds have created another set of names to know and personalities to track around various companies.
With the various moves around Linden Lab, Philip Rosedale stepping aside and Mark Kingdon joining as the CEO it was interesting to see that this was news that appeared in all sorts of business journals and publications.
The most recent, and significant story this week has been Cory Ondrejka, former Linden Lab CTO is now Senior Vice President of digital strategy as EMI. There can be lots of discussion about the media industry and the benefits that EMI will have hiring a known name in the Virtual World and game industry. As Richard Bartle pointed out on Cory’s blog announcement this has made it to the UK Guardian business news
So we have articles not about whether virtual worlds make sense, whether working in or on them has value, but instead about how a media business is going to find new ways to reach audiences and customers. That’s business taking this all very seriously.
p.s. Good luck Cory from eightbar
Jump Around, Jump Around get up get up and get down – Interoperability
As has been blogged and reported and twittered there was a little experiment that had some success yesterday involving common login’s from Second Life and OpenSim. A form of avatar interoperability, albeit across very similar platforms.
One of the best places to read this is here at Zha Ewry’s blog as he’s running the IBM side of the experiments.
BBC Radio 1 augmenting reality with a ‘band in your hand’
Remember two years ago, when BBC Radio 1 came to Second Life for One Big Weekend? This year they explored augmented reality with a Band In Your Hand. Here’s Scott Mills showing Chappers how it works.
Unfortunately the (Windows-only) download has already been taken down. Why? Because…
Due to music rights restrictions this download was only available from 30.04.08 to 07.05.08
Hugh Garry, Radio 1 interactive producer, describes it in more detail here.
‘Evolution of Games and Social Networks’ panel at VW08 – call for questions
I’ll be moderating a panel at Virtual Worlds 2008 on Friday, entitled ‘The Evolution of Games and Social Networks’. To give you an idea of what we’ll be talking about, the abstract for the panel describes it thus:
“With the planned introduction of Sony’s Home for the PlayStation3 and multiple virtual worlds providers now creating widgets for Facebook, Bebo, and other social
networks, we’re seeing virtual worlds reach out to every part of the Web and consumer life. This session offers a detailed understanding of how virtual worlds are taking advantage of these emerging distribution formats and how you can leverage Virtual Worlds Everywhere.”
I’ll be joined on the panel by some very smart and interesting people, including
- Christian Lassonde, President & Co Founder, Millions of Us
- Susan Panico, Senior Director, PLAYSTATION Network, Sony Computer Entertainment America
- Sean Ryan, CEO, Meez
(Mark Limber from Google was supposed to be joining us, but I understand that he won’t be able to make it.)
What would you like me to ask them?
The intersection between virtual worlds and social networking is a pretty big and (hopefully) interesting topic, and should be a well attended session. I’ve been preparing some discussion points and questions for the other panelists, and I’d love your input. If you won’t be there in person, here’s a chance to let me know where you’d like to see the discussion go. Specific questions for specific panelists or general topics for discussion are both welcomed. Leave a comment on this post. I’ll be posting the results after the event (audio? text? video? at least one of those anyway), so think of it as a way of participating remotely and asynchronously. Alternatively, think of it as a blatant lazyweb request to make my own life easier. 🙂