The Watch – virtual worlds in the news

1. Computerworld (USA) – Avatars rising in the enterprise. “Avatars aren’t just for the movies or for techies with time on their hands. Organizations are using virtual worlds for training, simulation and prototyping, among other things. The U.S. Naval Undersea Warfare Center (NUWC) is making the most of what officials call “immersive learning” in secure, virtual work environments replete with avatars, to augment existing training curricula and to facilitate collaborative engineering. “Immersive learning is all about the true power of a virtual world where gravity is optional and scaling is arbitrary, and objects can be made to be transparent,” says Steve Aguiar, virtual worlds project lead at the Naval Undersea Warfare Center Division Newport, one of the NUWC’s two primary units, in Newport, R.I.”

2. Virtual Worlds News (USA) – IARPA Soliciting Info On Intelligence Training In Virtual Worlds. “Last month the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) posted an RFI looking for quantitative research–and theories and proposals on how to obtain it–on the effectiveness of using virtual worlds for intelligence analyst training. Responses are due April 12 as the agency is aiming to incorporate the information received into a two-day workshop in May. It says the information will help it set an agenda, with some respondents getting an invitation to the workshop itself and an opportunity to set the stage for a multi-year competitive program.”

3. AFP (France) – Augmented reality puts the squeeze into virtual hugs. “Now you really can reach out and touch someone through the Internet, with the help of a wearable robot designed by a husband-and-wife team of scientists based in Japan. Five years in the making, the device aims to inject a little physicality into online chatter, boosting the emotional quotient of virtual exchanges between flesh-and-blood people. Forget emoticons, those annoying little smiley 🙂 or frowning 🙁 faces added to text messages with key strokes. The quickened thump of an angry heart beat, a spine-tingling chill of fear, or that warm-all-over sensation sparked by true love — all can be felt even as your eyes stay glued to a computer screen.”

4. Computerworld (USA) – Intel guru says 3-D Internet will arrive within five years. “A technology guru at Intel Corp. predict that the internet will look significantly different in five to 10 years, when much of it will be three dimensional, or 3D. Sean Koehl, a technology evangelist with Intel Labs, said technology is emerging that will one day change the way we interact with electronic devices and with each other. That could come as soon as five years from now when, he predicted, there will be realistic-looking three-dimensional applications. “I think our lives will be a lot different,” said Koehl. “Look at the trends of the last decade or two. Think about computers becoming widespread, and the Internet and these mobile devices. With the availability of all this computing power, we’re only beginning to exploit it. Now we’re adding more intelligence and more capability. Add that to 3-D worlds and it could be very different than the sort of experiences that we have today.”

5. Kotaku (USA) – How World Of Warcraft Could Change The Workplace. “Stanford University communications professor Byron Reeves talks to The Washington Post about how the collaborative online model of games like World of Warcraft can help change real world workplaces and empower better leaders. Reeves is the co-author of Total Engagement: Using Games and Virtual Worlds to Change the Way People Work and Businesses Compete. With a title that long and involved, you know he has to be an authority of the subject of plumbing virtual worlds for ways to enhance our workplace interactions, so you should listen to what the man says. As a once-rabid MMO player, I’ve often marveled at the difference between the way large video game guilds work and how your average office operates. I would spend hours online with people from all over the world, with one or two leaders flawlessly orchestrating the actions of 25 to 40 different individuals, none of whom had ever met in person.”

6. Smart Money (USA) – Entrepreneurs Doing Business by Avatar. “After seeing “Avatar,” the movie, I wondered whether the record-breaking intake at the box office might spur more entrepreneurial activity in places populated by, er, “real” avatars—like Second Life, the best-known and largest of the 3-D virtual-world platforms. Could Avatar do for avatars what Titanic did for Leonardo DiCaprio? An avatar is a digital, simulated representation of a person. On sites like Second Life, There and ActiveWorlds, you can engage your avatar alter ego in all sorts of escapist fantasies, like designing and dancing in your own underwater disco. When Second Life and its peers came out in 2003, companies rushed in to build outposts and sell products to the hoards of consumers rushing in to play. Attire companies like American Apparel and Giorgio Armani and tech giants like IBM and Dell set up virtual stores, using the build-it-and-they-will-come approach. Problem is, nobody came. The supposed consumers used the site to attend concerts or become unicorns, not to buy a computer. And what did they want to buy? White hair and goth outfits for their avatars. Which is not to say entrepreneurs should dismiss the immersive reality trip. In the past few years, much has changed, and many companies are doing virtual business—just not the kind they originally envisioned.”

7. CIT Magazine (UK) – Technology forecast: Virtual events becoming reality. “New technologies are adding to planners’ armouries, but which are the best and how will they shape future events, asks Leanne Bell. The conditions are perfect for a boom in virtual meetings – there’s pressure to reduce travel costs, allocate tiny budgets to events and, at the same time, the technology is cheaper and more sophisticated than ever before. Undoubtedly, most events in future will include some virtual or online element. But how far will event planners plunge into the virtual world? Will the networking event of the future comprise avatars swigging virtual beer? MPI (Meeting Professionals International) chief executive Bruce MacMillan agrees technology will be among the most powerful influences on events in the next five to ten years. But rather than going totally virtual, MacMillan says the event of the future will be a hybrid – a live event enhanced by virtual components. “Hybrid events are the reality of the future,” he says.”

8. CNET (USA) – Google trying anew for a 3D Web. “Two related projects from Mozilla and Google, each with the similar goal of bringing hardware-accelerated 3D graphics to the Web, appear to be joining forces after a change in Google tactics. The two projects emerged at nearly the same time in 2009: the O3D browser plug-in from Google and the proposed WebGL standard from Mozilla and the Khronos Group, which standardizes the OpenGL graphics interface on which WebGL is based. O3D is a higher-level technology, whereas WebGL is more concerned with the nuts and bolts of 3D graphics. O3D lets browsers show accelerated 3D graphics such as this island scene. It’s tailored for tasks such as first-person shooters or virtual worlds. In recent months, though, O3D has become dormant. But it’s not fading away, exactly: Google is trying to breathe new life into the project by rebuilding it on a WebGL foundation.”

9. CBS News (USA) – Korean Couple Nurtured Virtual Baby While Real Baby Starved to Death, Say Reports. “They may have excelled as online parents, but prosecutors in South Korea say a young couple from Suwon province failed miserably at the real thing. According to prosecutors, the couple would put their daughter to bed at night and then sneak off to a neighborhood internet cafe for 10-hour gaming sessions in a role-playing game called “Prius Online.” Prosecutors say that in the Second Life-style game, the couple raised a virtual baby, while their real daughter was given just one bottle of milk a day, Korean news report said.”

10. iTWire (Australia) – Blizzard mulls Aussie World of Warcraft servers. “World of Warcraft publisher Blizzard Entertainment this week reportedly said it was discussing the possibility of hosting Australian servers for the popular massively multiplayer online game. The lack of servers hosted in Australia for the game — also a common problem with a number of other online offerings — means that local players must connect to international servers and suffer extended latency compared with players in those countries, which can disadvantage them in-game and cause slower online reaction times. “I would say it’s possible and that it’s something we talk about on a regular basis — and I will also say it’s something I have talked about this week,” World of Warcraft production director J. Allen Brack said in an interview with AusGamers publishers this week.”