Boulanger3D

I was first alerted to this sim by an article in that veritable treasure trove of virtual tittle-tattle, Virtual Worlds News. There have been precious few atomic world companies coming into Second Life recently, so I was intrigued to read: "The French retail company Boulanger announced today [October 7th] the opening of a store in Second Life with development and planning help from IBM Research and Global Business Services. The goal is to complement Boulanger's physical stores and website with an additional distribution channel and additional services. Initially the build allows users to view and interact with Boulanger objects in a familiar context, click to be taken to the purchase page on a website, watch service and repair videos, or talk directly to a maintenance aide." Wow...! An IBM build! Given IBM's continuing large presence in Second Life, and its cutting edge use of this and other virtual worlds, the prospect was mouth-watering.

But first - a little about Boulanger. Actually, for once Wikipedia has let me down, but I will plough on. Boulanger is a general electrical retailer in France, selling anything from kitchen white goods to mp3 players and consumer electronics. The British equivalent would be someone like Currys. Joining the dots, this would suggest that their outlets are largely out-of-town, in large retail parks. What is clear is that the Second Life build has a particular purpose - to promote their recently opened store at Englos, an arrondisment of Lille, in the North of France. It ties in with - and indeed provides links to - a dedicated website.

I was not able to leg it down to the Boulanger3D sim immediately, and I chose to avoid the details of the Mindblizzard post, so I could arrive fresh and without preconceptions (albeit, with some expectations). I finally pottered along to the sim today and... well... where do I start?

IBM described their aims for this build as: "[to] develop a community aspect through the 3D universe and propose new services (configuration of kitchen, cooking lessons, guides, etc.) -- while integrating the three complementary distribution channels." On arrival, there is a large guest book, where you can post comments - so that suggests some interaction between the island and the visitor. Oddly, the guest book is at the arrival point, when you are least likely to have anything to say - but let's skip over that.

The sim itself is, quite frankly, a confused mess. One strand or theme is to model the island a little like the real Englos site - with its approach road, car park and, of course, the store itself. However, only yards from this is a gigantic luxury yacht, replete with helipad and helicopter - not something normally encountered in the suburbs of Lille. I don't know why it is there, and seems grossly at odds with the "augmented reality" being attempted in the virtualisation of the Englos store.

Another strand or theme is in response to the requirement to give people something to do that is "fun." In the car park you will find numerous vehicles that you are supposed to be able to drive. The sup'ed-up Beetle with the "Try Me" sign signally failed to allow me to drive it! Though I did get a decent razz on one of the motorbikes. Along the coast from the yacht are some windsurf boards that I assume are also available for your use. More fun, perhaps, is the helicopter - which you are free to fly. It is nicely done, but I did not check its provenance. Was it made specially? Or a rebranding of an existing Second Life vehicle?

But returning to the "augmented reality" view for a moment - I expected the virtual store to bear some internal resemblance to the real thing. After all, there's a decent 2D representation on the website. But no... the virtual store seemed somewhat perfunctory inside, with little detail, and little to attract the eye or retain the attention. It seemed unfinished to me.

The "kitchen design" was a disappointment too. A nice looking kitchen/diner, to be sure - but the only thing you could do was change the colour of the units. Even my LSL skills could probably stretch to that - and it fell somewhat short of the "configuration of kitchen" that most punters would expect.

There is a presentation auditorium. Now this is something that is normally done well in Second Life - there are endless examples. Yet somehow this one manages to fail. The seating for attendees is fine - it is the area for the presenters that feels wrong, somehow managing to be cramped, awkward and claustrophobic in what is otherwise an open space! Now that takes some doing.

There are a number of other buildings, but nothing of any note - and I include the "cooking demonstration area" in that observation. Instructions inviting me to click on images of computer games to get more information failed to link to any information in any form - not even notecards or URLs. I could go on, but that is more than enough.

So... there you have it. After the bordering-on-genius of the 7Days Magic Bakery, I found this sim profoundly disappointing - and largely failing to come close to its hype. It seems to me to have been launched before it was good and ready, and before anyone had really given it a thorough critique internally. I have some photos - but don't trust me - you should go along and form your own opinion:

Second Life and 3D Intranet

One of my predictions for 2008 was that we would see IBM, Sun and others launching "virtual world behind the firewall" products. I thought then, and think now, that this is inevitable - and I daresay you may feel the same way. While such worlds might do little or nothing to tickle the fancy of out-and-out Immersionists, they offer powerful tools for corporate use. So it was with more than a little interest that I learned, last week, that IBM would be partnering with Linden Lab to bring a chunk of the Second Life grid within the IBM firewalls - a 3D intranet.

Why would I want a 3D intranet?
At its most basic, the cost savings coming from the reduction in travel, made possible by 3D intranets, offer a simple, direct return on investment. The calculations are elementary, and rely on very few assumptions (all of which are easily verified). Incidentally, this is in contrast to the complexity of proving a ROI based on revenue generation in virtual environments, but that is not germane to the 3D intranet business case.

Although this can be achieved with an externally hosted service, such as Second Life, there are concerns over security and manageability. The fact that systems administration is outside one's control, and that chat logs and other commercial content are being hosted externally is not acceptable when you want a totally secure, wholly owned environment. Hence the 3D intranet.

But there are further benefits. As I learned from the IBMers a long time ago, 3D spaces provide places for informal groupings to develop - where new relationships form, extending one's own personal network. The external view of a large company is that it operates as a single unit, that it probably has all manner of clever systems to keep people in touch, and that it makes sure that it knows the skills and capabilities of its employees. In fact, this is (almost universally) far from the truth; rather than a single enterprise, most large companies comprise a number of fiefdoms, and each of these is subdivided into further, smaller fiefdoms. Knowledge is precious, and poorly maintained across this motley array of business units, skill centres, CoEs, "tiger teams" and so on. The 3D spaces don't drive knowledge or business cohesion - but they can help, by providing a social network that operates outside of the fiefdoms, allowing people from across the corporation to meet, socialise and share knowledge.

Finally, there is the formal collaborative working environment. The 3D intranet allows people from diverse locations around the country and, indeed, the world to work together in a common shared (virtual) location, reducing costs and improving team cohesion.

That's causes enough for a 3D intranet.

So what about this news?
In my view, Linden Lab have a habit of letting good news get away from them and generally fumbling their marketing. However, for once, I think this is a masterstroke - a real gem of a move that could end up, not only saving their asses, but propelling them into the heart of web 3D - which is where they want to be. Why do I say this?

Well, for one thing - IBM, while clearly the biggest corporate presence in Second Life, are known to have their fingers in many virtual pies. Indeed, Roo Reynolds (well-known luminary in the Eightbar crowd [and all-round good egg, so I'm told]) gave a neat synoposis of IBM's virtual state of play on Eightbar only last month. If IBM were to ditch Second Life - and that was by no means impossible - then the impact on Linden Lab could be catastrophic. On the other hand, to have their product at the heart of IBM's 3D intranet should allow Linden Lab to see off the opposition, such as multiverse or OpenSim.

It comes as no surprise, then, that no money is changing hands; both sides should win through this synergy. IBM get a relatively mature, content-flexible platform on which to build their 3D intranet. Linden get to develop a product that (with IBM?) they can sell to businesses and universities, while also putting some clear space between themselves and their competitors. Finally, the ability for an avatar to move between internal and external grids brings the prospect of web 3D much closer. This is, I am told, still a technically complex task - what system resources are located where? and how do they tie together? - but one that is now being tackled.

Yamato - But Not That Yamato

Back in November I posted an entry about a Japanese sim that featured a brilliant reproduction of the battleship, Yamato. However, I have been aware for some time that this was not the only Yamato sim in Second Life, and tonight I made a second foray to one I first visited a few months ago, but decided not to write about: Yamato Isle.

Why didn't I write about it then? Well, to be honest, I thought it didn't warrant it. It was a confused melee and didn't strike me as terribly interesting.

So why have I opted to write about it now? Two reasons really: first, it is one of the lesser known IBM sims, so that gives it some kind of cachet; and second, it was open and I was bored of looking for something more interesting. The island, as the name implies, belongs to IBM Japan - and seems to be their "innovations and creations" lab. Around half the island is open to visitors, while you can also get a reasonable view of the half that is closed.

Given that its role is to offer a haven for developing 3D ideas, it is surprising that it is open to the public. In truth, there is not that much to see here, as it is all rather fractured, though it seems to have more coherence now than when I first visited, towards the tail end of last year. It has a few usable spaces, such as an auditorium - but I don't know if this is in use. The island seems to be managed for IBM by Bananamanh777 Swot (aka Bananamanh777 Spook).

I'm not sure that it's worth making a special trip to see, unless you are some kind of nerdy IBM sim completist - in which case, it is essential to tick this off your list. But then again... you've probably been here already. Anyway, here's a few snaps for you to peruse:




See what I mean? All sorts of bits in development. Of course, if you want the proper, public sim you can always toddle along to IBM Japan. I went there a while back, too - and for this post made a return visit. It still looks very unfinished to me - but you can take a ride-a-cow (or Mooving Cow) tour of the sim!

Virtual Healthcare and Hospitals

I dunno... you wait months for a virtual health service, then 2 come along at once. In the space of only a couple of days we witnessed press announcements from both IBM and Cisco/Millions of Us, launching healthcare-related sims in Second Life.

I will deal with the IBM one first - since I am clearly not ill enough to gain access to the site in question: IBM Healthcare Island. The island, which debuted at HIMMS'08 healthcare conference, is described in the press release as "a unique, three-dimensional representation of the challenges facing today’s healthcare industry and the role information technology will play in transforming global healthcare-delivery to meet patient needs." It is split into a number of locations, ranging from the patient's home, to clinics, laboratories, hospital and the ER. The main aim is to show the use of Personal Health Records (PHRs), the interactions with Electronic Medical Record (EMR) systems and the development of an Electronic Health Record (EHR). I am slashing the description to the bone here - read the extensive press release for more.

Perhaps ironically, given the currently closed status of the island, Dan Pelino, General Manager, IBM Global Healthcare & Life Sciences Industry says: "The island allows each healthcare stakeholder to envision how the total system can be affected by intercession at each juncture of the healthcare delivery process.” As a 'patient' I'd like to think I count as a 'healthcare stakeholder'. Oh well, in the meantime I will continue to take aspirin and plenty of liquids, while giving some consideration to...

PalomarWest Hospital. Where IBM appear to be using the 3D world to walk us through medical processes and information flows, MOU are using it as a visualisation tool, modelling a hospital that is not due to open in the atomic world until 2011. They have developed the visualisation on behalf of Palomar Pomerado Health and Cisco Systems who, between them, are developing a "hospital of the future" in which state-of-the-art ICT networks and systems will help deliver premium levels of patient care. You can read the press release to glean the features they seek to demonstrate in the virtual world, including "telepresence", robotics and 3D imaging.

The sim itself looks very impressive - though I could not quite get a handle on the scale. Nor could I get a reliable fix on the level of detail. Arriving in the car park, you are presented with the medical centre in all its proposed finery. As this is about visualisation, it should not have surprised me to find that so much of the centre was effectively shut. In large areas I could admire the outside, but not wander around the inside. In fact, I found my route heavily constrained. I could get into the ground floor lobby, and after picking up a RFID tag I should have been able to access treatment facilities. However, it told me these were in use (though I seemed to be the only person on the sim) so I can't comment on these. I may try another time. Incidentally, I was a bit surprised to be told that I needed to have my gall bladder removed - I certainly did not have that in mind when I came to the sim!

There's a couple of movies that talk you through some of the concepts of the hospital, while also promoting the joys of Cisco wifi access. Maybe it was my inability to actually obtain treatment, but I saw none of the features listed in the press release. Perhaps they are still being worked on, since I did notice a basic cube prim on the stairs leading up from the lobby. Oh... it would be nice if the wheelchairs worked too. Overall I liked the sim, and can see that it is a big step ahead of 2D presentations when trying to imagine how the place will look and operate. However, I'm not sure that the press release bears much resemblance. I suppose I'd better go back and get that gall bladder whipped out.

Here's some views of the outside:


The lobby and the basic, cube prim:


A Cisco wifi access point - and and infomercial:


You can find out more about the proposed Palomar Medical Center West here.
You can download a .WMV format video for the virtual hospital here.

Oh...and finally - I couldn't help but notice, in checking through press releases, that Cisco has just established the rather wonderfully entitled Academy of Digital Signage. I dunno... it tickled me, anyway.

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UPDATE: I am given to understand that the IBM Healthcare island should be opening to the general public in a few weeks. So just wrap up warm and avoid chills until then.

IBM's Power Up - The Game

Thanks to Virtual World News for this one...

Apparently IBM have opened a new virtual world, Power Up - an educational world aimed at teenagers, in which they will learn about environmental and energy issues affecting our own planet by exploring and working on the virtual plant of Helios in a bid to save it from ecological disaster.

I got the following blurb from a user forum:

"The game is part of IBM’s TryScience initiative and will be launched at Engineer’s Week 2008 opening on February 16 in Washington, D.C. The game, which can be played alone or together, features a planet in near ecological ruin where three exciting missions for solar, wind and water power must be solved before sandstorms, floods or SmogGobs thwart the rescue...

IBM devised the 3D virtual game to engage kids and educators in engineering, energy, and diversity awareness. Online video gaming is on the rise, with kids spending greater amounts of time online in fantasy play. PowerUp aims to use kids’ interest in fantasy virtual worlds to encourage them to learn about engineering principles by riding over rugged mountains in buggies to build solar towers or searching through grim junk yards to repair wind turbines. They will also learn about energy conservation by the choices they make in completing their missions. The game also features non-player characters that represent a diverse cross section of the population, to be role models to encourage every young person to consider a career in engineering and they act as guides for the game."

However, before you get too over-enthused, I thought I'd better include the reviews from the same forum:

"Just played it. It's god awful."

"So what, no group of five teenagers with 'special' element rings, that when they combine them some pansy with their undies on the outside apperar and make alot of dense accusations about pollution? Maybe ibm should stick to something they know how to do, i very much doubt any games they make will be immersive and of reasonable quality."

Perhaps a little harsh... and in the latter case, barely comprehensible.

The same source informs me that it is built using the Torque engine, which seems to popular with the Big Bluers.

I tried to open the Power Up webpage without success, and assuming you have the same experience as me, I thought I should post IBM's video about the project:

PowerMatch

A fairly brief one this. Being of a certain age, I still extract untold merriment from the title of that old, not-so-classic movie: Danish Dentist on the Job. You can follow the link to unearth the full story of this complex tale of human emotions - but frankly I wouldn't bother. But sad to say, the title always pops into my head when the subjects of "Denmark" and "employment" crop up in the same context. Mercifully, this is a rare event - but it did happen yesterday, when I found the PowerMatch sim.

It was not a familiar name - and indeed even Google struggled to land the right links. But a bit of persistence brought me to the Power Match website. Even so, the information is a tad sparse, other than (I think) confirming what I already knew, namely: Power Match is a Danish virtual recruitment consultancy. It is owned/run by Heidi Ballinger, who describes herself in the Second Life wiki as working "fulltime with Second Life. The half of the time I work for a Danish University who do scientific work in Virtual Worlds, and the other half I use on my company 'Power-Match'." I missed their most recent jobs fair by a week or so, though my prospects as a non-Danish speaker probably weren't that great.

The sim has a smallish arrival area, near sea level. However, the main action takes place in a large sphere, high above you (well over 600metres). A teleport will whisk you there in a painless fashion. There you will find a number of recruitment booths, for companies as diverse as Saxo Bank, IBM and FLSmidth Cement. There's also a "VIP lounge" and, more usefully, a pod listing a large number of Danish sims in SL. Oh, and an auditorium.

I don't know how well the job fairs have fared, but the sim is still here, there are some prestigious companies involved, and they've been holding events for a number of months. So I'm guessing business could be a lot worse. Anyway, I only have a few photos - so to save the overhead of retrieving from Flickr, here they are:

IBM, your point is?

Don't you just love those IBM ads? There's been some pretty good ones over the years, always with that nice "big blue" branding and a clear case to make.

So what are we to make of this one? I know it's been knocking around for a while, riling the virtual world community each time someone mentions it, but anyway....

Tateru Nino, at Massively, suggests that the ad may have intended to say: "you need IBM's expertise to take advantage of virtual worlds." After all, that tends to be the general thrust of most IBM's ads: "You need IBM's expertise to take advantage of [insert topic here]." However, Tateru's unscientific and informal poll suggests that most viewers interpreted the meaning as: "Virtual worlds are for losers and failures." That is my reaction, too.

However, I don't think they are saying either of these thing here. As a virtual worlder, it is easy to be over-sensitive. To me, the ad is just one way of saying "because something is fun and cool, that alone does not make it a good business proposition." In that regard, it is using virtual worlds (let's face it, folks, an easy target) as a visually humorous vehicle for conveying the message.

It is worthwhile looking at other ads in the IBM "Stop Talking, Start Doing" campaign. It gives the virtual world ad some context, plus they are quite amusing. Some others in the series include:





In fact, the campaign is putting out a very traditional message about a potentially exciting bundle of products and services. It is "don't listen to people who just bang on about innovation, get with the people who can deliver it."

If I have a quibble it is with the line: "the point of innovation is to make actual money." I would disagree - the point of innovation is to create the intellectual knowledge and understanding, the tools, frameworks and techniques, which others can then take forward to make actual money.

Another Giant Leap Towards web3.D

They'll be dancing in the streets of Second Life tonight. Nothing new in that perhaps - but maybe there will be a few extra revellers celebrating what many in the web3.D (3pointD) community see as a major milestone in the progress toward the 3D internet. Personally, I have been hoping and half-expecting the following announcement for over 6 months:

IBM and Linden Lab Launch Collaboration to Further Advance the 3D Internet.

Here is a link to today's press release - though Linden need to get their act together, since it doesn't seem to appear on their website as yet. To quote from the press release:

IBM and Linden Lab plan to collaborate on:

• "Universal" Avatars: Exploring technology and standards for users of the 3D Internet to seamlessly travel between different virtual worlds. Users could maintain the same “avatar” name, appearance and other important attributes (digital assets, identity certificates, and more) for multiple worlds. The adoption of a universal “avatar” and associated services are a possible first step toward the creation of a truly interoperable 3D Internet.
• Security-rich Transactions: Collaborating on the requirements for standards-based software designed to enable the security-rich exchange of assets in and across virtual worlds. This could allow users to perform purchases or sales with other people in virtual worlds for digital assets including 3D models, music, and media, in an environment with robust security and reliability features.
• Platform stability: Making interfaces easier to use in order to accelerate user adoption, deliver faster response times for real-world interactions and provide for high-volume business use.
• Integration with existing Web and business processes: Allowing current business applications and data repositories – regardless of their source – to function in virtual worlds is anticipated to help enable widespread adoption and rapid dissemination of business capabilities for the 3D Internet.
• Open standards for interoperability with the current Web: Open source development of interoperable formats and protocols. Open standards in this area are expected to allow virtual worlds to connect together so that users can cross from one world to another, just like they can go from one web page to another on the Internet today.
  

These are viewed as the key levers needed to deliver the next generation of the internet. Also, as reported at Virtual Worlds News, "last night IBM hosted a meeting of companies and researchers in San Jose (site of the Virtual Worlds '07 Conference) to discuss open standards for transporting avatars across virtual worlds. With representatives from Cisco, Google, Linden Lab, Sony, Intel, Multiverse, Microsoft, Motorola, and Philips, among others, they discussed plans to establish an organization to promote a truly interoperable 3D Internet."

Don't lose sleep over this in your excitement, boys and girls. It will take a little while to arrive. The point is that this is now out in the open, following months of speculation - and the parties involved go beyond just IBM and Linden Lab. I understand that at least 20 companies were represented at last night's meeting. Furthermore, I, for one, am curious to know how this fits with the statements about interoperability and standards between virtual worlds that have been coming out of China recently, particularly with respect to HiPiHi.

...

Or maybe it's all just a game, played by lonely saddoes - and I've just dreamt all of this.

IBM, Virtual Transactions and Spatial User Interface

Virtual World News have just run the following story: "IBM Looks at New Virtual Transactions Methods"

It's not exactly a huge article, so I have taken the liberty of re-printing it whole:
"IBM aims to invest the majority of its research and development dollar into building software that can link traditional transaction systems to modern interfaces, for example, releasing automatic teller machines that link to banks in virtual worlds such as Second Life," said SVP Steve Mills. Of course, IBM also has its eyes on its own platform, Multiverse, so Second Life is likely only one application. The Smart Bank Application simulates high-volume banking environments and links virtual ATMs to real-time authorization from a core banking system over the Web. The ComputerWeekly article highlights three purchases that build into IBM's transaction strategy. The company announced plans to purchase Princeton Softech to give users cheaper storage and greater access to historical data; in July it bought Data Mirror, a package that allows real-time transfer and identification of data; and in June it bought Telelogic to help users develop industry-specific software.

This seems to be something of an emerging trend with Second Life - and doubtless other Virtual Worlds. In effect - and to simplify over-much, I admit - this would see the use of 3D environments as a sophisticated development of the User Interface (UI). Let's step back in time...

WARNING! What follows will fall somewhere between "ludicrously technical" and "childishly simplistic", depending on your knowledge of IT. Sorry.

In the beginning, the UI was a set of manual switches and some flashing lights. Time passed, and in due course along came the punch card and the printer, followed by the teletype. Up until this point, computers were only to be used by people with bad haircuts, beards and pipes - and I'm not being gender-specific. The first great democratisation of the UI came with "green screens" - suddenly ordinary people could use computers, new applications allowed trained people to wallow in the richness of a 24 line x 80 character display, awash with information. The advent of personal computing saw the introduction of the GUI - the Graphical User Interface (thank you, you foresighted folk at Xerox Palo Alto). Graphics helped deliver (supposedly) vastly more intuitive and powerful representations of information through the "windows metaphor" - we entered a world in which each pixel could convey meaning, and computing was open to just about everybody.

Client-server architectures were a logical step forward, linking the friendly user interface of the GUI with the grunt power of enterprise applications - the ones that had previously been accessed through "green screens". The web user interface and multi-tier client-server architectures have been a further refinement. Here, just a tiny slice - the visual display element - is run on the client's own machine, while virtually everything else, the logic and information (the "big chunks") of the application, is stored and run on big, grunty machines elsewhere.

Now we have reached the next logical progression - the Spatial User Interface. In 3D, we are granted spatial depth, freeing us from the limitations of a flat graphical display* and allowing us to build ever more creative metaphors and models with which to take input and deliver information. Visualisations can be more interactive and more compelling than ever before - and it is this that IBM are tapping into. In effect, the virtual world is acting as a spatial user interface to large commercial back-end systems, using multi-tier client-server architectures. I said this is something of an emerging trend, since the Eolus One Project, previously covered in this blog, is also working with the same metaphor (and also includes IBM as one of its core participants). I think we can expect many more such initiatives in the coming months and years.

Interesting times...

* I know we still see Second Life on a 2D surface, but the interaction is spatial. I am also aware of ignoring the brave souls in the world of CAD-CAM. Such is life.

Back Again - What We Did on Our Hols

Well Mrs K and I are back from our Grand Tour and before plunging back into my virtual travels I thought I'd share a few piccies with you.

Our first stop was at Arras, in Northern France:


We then moved on to Colmar, in Alsace:

The building in the middle, Le Maison Des Tetes, was our hotel for the night. Cool, huh?

We then drove across Germany and into the Czech Republic, and Cesky Krumlov, a little jewel of a place:




On the return leg we stayed overnight in a charming hotel, the oddly named Palmspring, in the back of beyond in the Black Forest - where it rained:


Our final overnight stop was Bruges (or Brugge, depending on your point of view):




A hectic week: 2250 miles; 43hrs actually spent on the road... but it was great fun, and we saw some amazing places.

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And in other news... I picked up a snippet on the IBM Second Life guidelines:
...restrictions could come in the form of such guidelines as the one IBM has put in place for its employees utilizing Second Life. The Associated Press story said that employees do not have an online dress code, but must be “especially sensitive to the appropriateness of your avatar or persona’s appearance when you are meeting with IBM clients or conducting IBM business.”

According to the story, IBM also states that “dramatically altering, splitting, or abandoning your digital persona may be a violation of…trust… In the case of a digital persona used for IBM business purposes, it may violate your obligations to IBM.”

And am left to consider: "What does this mean for my chum, Epredator Potato?"

UPDATE: Epredator has provided some interesting comments to this post. For information, here is the link to the IBM guidelines webpage.