Gartner on Business in Virtual Worlds

Gartner reports that most business-launched virtual worlds fail. They suggest a 90% failure rate. Not so dissimilar from new cpg product failure rates. The reason they cite is that most try virtual worlds for the cool tech factor, rather than the people dimension. Not surprising.

Nature of Mathematics

Is mathematics discovered or invented? And how does this influence patents? A slashdot piece pointed me to a Science News article:

" ... Think too hard about it, and mathematics starts to seem like a mighty queer business. For example, are new mathematical truths discovered or invented? Seems like a simple enough question, but for millennia, it has provided fodder for arguments among mathematicians and philosophers.

Those who espouse discovery note that mathematical statements are true or false regardless of personal beliefs, suggesting that they have some external reality. But this leads to some odd notions. Where, exactly, do these mathematical truths exist? Can a mathematical truth really exist before anyone has ever imagined it? ... "

Open Wetware

Open WetWare, a example of a wiki sponsored by MIT being used for Biology and Bioengineering. " ... OpenWetWare is an effort to promote the sharing of information, know-how, and wisdom among researchers and groups who are working in biology & biological engineering..." Includes courseware and blogs and contributions from global labs. About sharing science, one does wonder about the IP implications.

DARPA at 50

It's DARPA's 50th anniversary. One of their most amazing developments was the ARPAnet, which I used at the Pentagon in the 70s. No one knew then that it was anything special, just a somewhat useful networking capability with vendors. Then it became the Internet.

Carr on Gwap

I see that Nicholas Carr has commented on Von Ahn's GWAP site, which I reported on earlier this week. I was a bit surprised by his almost positive take. Or perhaps it should have been seen as self-evident that his sometimes cynical view was that machines are taking over our knowledge through the 'fun' in games. The Las Vegas of computation.

Wikinomics II

Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams have a new expanded edition of Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything out. The book uses P&G heavily as an example of collaborative innovation, though they did not cover internal uses of Web 2.0, likely because of corporate unwillingness to talk about it. I have posted about some of the Wikinomics related work here, but somehow my internal review did not make it to this blog, will fix that when I look at the new book. I see that this book has a 'search inside' on Amazon, so you can preview it there. See also their web site.

Copyright and Speech

Does copyright burden speech?

P&G Ponders Spending

P&G considers the relationship of promotion spending and consumer spending. This links to only part of the article.

Science in Second Life

Some interesting examples of science being done in Second Life. It's fine to use a virtual world as a social environment, but how can we construct virtual 3D labs to use for collaborative science? The only examples I have seen live is IBM's virtualization of proteins, and a visualization of starts in 3D. mainly useful for instruction, rather than experimentation. I think there is still some possibilities for exploring other kinds of 3D visualization. If the manipulation of point-of-view could be made more natural. At the right, an avatar explores a virtual 3D portion of the stellar neighborhood. Below, IBM's protein display at Almaden labs.



Update (from the comments): Chemistry in Second Life.

Games With a Purpose

I have been looking at a number of online 'games with a purpose' aka 'serious games' , especially how they can be related to more elaborate simulations ... Here is something new and related:

" ... Luis von Ahn and his team at Carnegie Mellon University have launched GWAP, a new web site for 'Games With A Purpose.' By playing these online games, humans help provide data for problems that are hard for computers to solve, such as computer vision and sound classification. Slashdot has previously covered other human computation projects by Dr. von Ahn, including the ESP Game and reCAPTCHA. The new web site contains a re-vamping of the ESP Game as well as four completely new games." ...

Mentioned in the BBC. Note this is about getting data from people, somewhat different from playing complex games to achieve process solutions, but there is a useful connection.

Unilever and Interactive TV

In the WSJ (subscription required) ... Unilever is pairing with Comcast and DirecTV to start interactive-TV ads for some of its brands, including Degree deodorant and Bertolli. A Unilever director and an interactive-TV ad expert discuss the medium.

Brand Tags

A collective experiment in brand perception. A good, simple idea. You are shown a brand or logo. You answer with a word or phrase you associate with that brand. The system aggregates the perceptions and shows them in a 'tag cloud' format. Thought I had seen something like this before, but online it is genius. More on the concept.

Google Reader for the Iphone

A simplified Google news reader for the Iphone and other phones with advanced browsers. Nicely done.

VisualRank

A short time ago I posted about work that Google was doing on image analysis and ranking. The official Google Research blog has more details about the status and practicality of it's use. Bottom line is that the results are not live. See also related work such as ALIPR at Penn State and work at Google on Youtube datamining. Lots of useful pieces being provided for later assembly.

Are Games Changing Our Brains?

From a colleague, quite a strong hypothesis. At a gut level I do feel there are changes going on, but I would like to see more evidence:

" ... Electronic devices and pharmaceutical drugs all have an impact on the micro- cellular structure and complex biochemistry of our brains. And that, in turn, affects our personality, our behaviour and our characteristics. In short, the modern world could well be altering our human identity ... "

Safeway Builds Private Label

Retailers make much more profit on private label goods, but they have historically relied on big CPG to do their marketing and to leverage the knowledge for a category. Now, word of Safeway bringing out an 80-item line of baby goods, and backing it with merchandising knowledge. This has been done in small scale before, but this case is bold and revolutionary. More to come? Nothing on their site as yet.

Games Honing Tomorrow's Leaders

Byron Reeves, who we have worked with on scoping the influence of games in business, has an article in this month's Harvard Business Review on the influence of games on leadership. You can read the HBR article online. A Computerworld article prints an interview with Reeves that overview's his study. He says that smart companies should be playing. I am convinced that if we saw these games as kinds of corporate simulation, they would be more widely used.Previously about Reeves. His company Seriosity.

Self-Checkout Psych

Evan Schuman saw, as I did, the increasing emphasis on self-checkout in retail tech at the recent FMI conference. For example, Fujitsu included a bluetooth device that allows the consumer to scan a large or heavy item without removing it from their cart. I have seen the use of self-checkout increase dramatically at our local Kroger. I have seen lines even when the store is not overly crowded. Which leads to his essay about if the consumer and retailer will continue to be honest about the process. He also relates an incident about the danger of using a self-checkout for getting consumer feedback.

New Directions in Bayesian AI

A colleague points me a May 3 NYT article: Pursuing the Next Level of Artificial Intelligence, which describes some of the work of Daphne Koller at Stanford. Specifically Bayesian techniques that introduce more quantification and uncertainty in artificial intelligence models. The only thing I disagree with in the article is it's saying that in the original AI methods used in the 80s practitioners avoided quantification. This is not true, methods we used did address both quantification and uncertainty. They were often hung on a base of logical constructs. Now the reverse seems to be more popular. I like to see that the article says there is a revival occurring in AI, though I have not seen much of it in industry. The work being done by Koller and others should improve the tool set available to solve problems. Here is more on her research.

Carousel Widgets

Allan Cox demonstrates the new Amazon Carousel widget on his Inner CEO blog. A way to display multiple book picks. Too commercial? Write him with you opinion.