Second Life Downsizes

Second Life, the well known virtual world that attracted large investments in time and money from companies like IBM, Kraft and Circuit City, announced a 30% downsizing. In addition they plan to make major changes in their interface that will make it browser based. Our enterprise built a life-like central office there for experimental purposes. I saw dozens of IBM employees building research, laboratory and meeting spaces. Witnessed the opening of a virtual supermarket being built and experienced its aisles. I interviewed a number of researchers working there.

I was particularly intrigued with some experiments underway that would allow people to experience complex data in novel 3D ways. Yet there seemed to be few useful business experiences happening and graphically impressive but empty mock ups of real spaces. The well known Second Life economy did not lend itself to consumer goods experiments. It is certainly not dead yet, but its demise may be close by.

The avatar centric 3D world has evolved remarkably since I examined it five years ago. Something like it may eventually be a new way that we interact remotely with people and machines. Its not ready for business prime time yet. Many did and do enjoy it as life-mimicking game environment. It still claims to be profitable.

There are alternatives than can be used for complex remote business interactions by people, such as Teleplace (formerly called Qwaq) that is worth examining, providing ' virtual spaces for real work ... ' ... I have posted some of my early thoughts on it here.
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Qwaq Becomes Teleplace

I recently brought up Qwaq, which we looked at for remote visual, avatar-enabled collaboration. They announced today that they have become Teleplace. Good name change, can only help to make them better known. Incongruous company names can work (Amazon, Google) but I would not bet the company on it. Check out Teleplace. SL just does not work well with typical business interactions, we tried. Even Microsoft is abandoning it. Previously about Qwaq now Teleplace.

' ... Chris Koehn, General Partner of Abacus Solutions Group, said “As the Abacus Program Manager for the Air Force MyBase program, we're excited to leverage the specialized Training Center and server scalability of Teleplace 3.0 to build on the training successes we've already accomplished together. In addition, the new Session Broadcast capability has the strong potential to enhance the Air Force's training mission." ... '

New at Qwaq

Received a note about updates at Qwaq: Virtual Spaces for Real Work. Much surprised they have not received more traction. We took a look a few years ago and I have posted on it here before. Similar in a general sense to virtual worlds like Second Life, it is far more business oriented and friendly. If you are thinking about remote enabled virtual collaboration, especially cases that require also connecting to data and visuals, this is worth a look. Used at Intel, Media X at Stanford and Fuji Xerox.

Working Habitats : Office Evolution

Herman Miller, the creator of the widely praised, iconic Aeron chair, was one of the collaborators with our early innovation center projects. We tested office novel office space designs with them. Now they are talking about ...

" ... an approach that allows for physical buildings to dynamically evolve and support change. ... The initiative, Programmable Environment, is a spatial system designed to evolve over time, interact with the users who inhabit it, and enable a more sustainable building infrastructure. The company created a subsidiary, Convia, to specifically focus on this vision ... ".

The problem with offices in the enterprise is that as people become more powerfully mobile they don't need to be in offices. If this kind of interface takes off the trend may accelerate. So the number of offices and thus furniture requirements have been dropping. Remote interaction options are also increasing and evolving. Here is an advanced example: Qwaq. If an office could be set up to greatly increase efficiency, there would be additional value. But if I have to be in an office, the Aeron chair I am sitting on now sure is comfortable.

Qwaq Virtual Operations Centers

I have always been a big proponent of doing business virtually. Just never thought that popular Second Life did a very good job of supporting business collaboration. It has the social frills, but not what it takes to get a real job done. It is designed from the wrong point of view. Qwaq, which I have covered here before, does do a good job of supporting collaborative interactions, with people and with real spaces. They have recently been describing what they call a virtual operations center, which serves to connect complex interactions in real spaces. Can reduce travel, enhances the sharing of key expertise, integration of sensor data and collaborative decision making. There are lots of problems like this in the enterprise today. See also their collaborative work with Intel. Worth a look.

Google's Lively

Much in the news about Google's challenge to Second Life. Called Lively, one thing to observe is that there is no money or ads in it's world, unlike Google's real-life world. Examining and will follow with a review. Some vendors of virtual world concepts, like Millions of Us are already delivering experiences there. The BBC has a good overview. Could these worlds ultimately be innovation centers? Thought of that with Second Life, but it lacked what was needed. Qwaq is another option to explore.
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Virtual Business Platforms

Sometime ago I wrote about Qwaq, a virtual design space which akin to Second Life is a means to produce a virtual environment. In a recent WSJ article some of the work that's being done to produce more collaborative and private virtual worlds is outlined. These are kinds of simulations, with people in the form of avatars acting as a means to manipulate the worlds. Also within these worlds are simulations that portray real world interactions such as interpersonal interaction, expressions of design, inspection and analysis. Will these kinds of systems ultimately replace forms of remote collaboration? The big possibility is that they have the ability to include model design as well as models of a collaborative interaction in one virtual place. More than sharing a screen, with the third dimension included in an appropriate real world context. It remains to be seen if this is a better way to get work done.

Qwaq for Multi-Dimensional Model Collaboration

Qwaq is an interlinked set of multidimensional croquet spaces. Advised by such people as Alan Kay, the company aims to aid in the collaboration of geographically distributed groups. I saw a short demo, and the graphics are a bit primitive, but are much more stable than virtual worlds. It links together applications with knowledge assets in 3D space. More on the open source Croquet platform, which Qwaq is based on. At the right, a Croquet implemented 3D spreadsheet. First I had seen this idea, worth a look. I would be curious to see if this could be linked into virtual worlds in some way. Examining.