IBM, Circuit City go prospecting in virtual world
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Big Blue is investing big to see how it can make 3D virtual environments pay off for the company and its customers.Images: Big Blue in 'Second Life'
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(InfoWorld) - Although virtual environments are still at an early stage in development and adoption, many companies are already dabbling in one or more virtual worlds or closely observing them prior to getting their feet wet. Businesses that may have been slow to embrace the Internet are keen this time around to actively engage with the technology before it becomes mainstream. "'I don't get it, but I know I should get it,'" is what businesses tend to tell Sandra Kearney, global director, emerging 3D Internet at IBM, when she asks them about virtual worlds. "They say, 'I missed the Internet; I don't want to miss this too,' " she said during a panel discussion to debate virtual worlds and their business value at a joint IBM and MIT Media Labs conference held Friday. Auto maker Toyota is already using virtual worlds as a way to get preteens and teenagers interested in its Scion entry-level car brand, which is targeted at younger buyers. "We've made a fairly significant six-figure investment in virtual communities across different worlds," said Adrian Si, interactive marketing manager for Scion at Toyota. For instance, Toyota is the exclusive supplier of virtual Scion cars in Numedeon's Whyville educational virtual world for children aged 8 to 15 and provides them with information about car financing. Tweens are already thinking about what car they might buy, and Toyota hopes that giving them a positive experience with its cars in virtual worlds might translate into them or their parents buying vehicles from the vendor down the road. Good buzz about a product can go a long way, Si believes. Only a few years old, Toyota's Scion brand is one with which the company can afford to take risks that the auto maker couldn't with its other much more established brands, Si said. Toyota got interested in virtual worlds at the same time that the companies behind such communities were coming to the auto maker to see if it was interested in funding them. As well as Whyville, Toyota is promoting its Scion brand in Linden Research's Second Life and is about to do the same in Gaia Interactive's Gaia Online teen virtual world. PepsiCoÂ has yet to experiment with virtual worlds, but is keeping an eye on the space. "We're intrigued by it and are actively monitoring it," said Julius Akinyemi, director of emerging technologies at the beverage and snack vendor. Like Toyota, PepsiCo is particularly attracted by how much input users have in creating their virtual environments and the ability to directly interface with and influence those individuals. One area where PepsiCo thinks it might look to engage with the residents of virtual worlds is in soliciting their input on new products, according to Akinyemi. The vendor would hope to do more codevelopment of new beverages and snacks as well as create quick marketing buzz on new offerings, he said. There need to be more tools available in virtual worlds to make such development and marketing efforts easier, Akinyemi noted, along with a general move to simplify the process for anyone to enter any virtual environment. Building bridges between the real world and virtual environments will become increasingly important in guaranteeing a successful virtual presence for a company, IBM's Kearney said. She pointed to what the Ganz gift company has done with its popular Webkinz plush toys. Children who own one of the toys receive a code to enter the Webkinz virtual world where they can play with a virtual version of the real-world toy.
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Modern marvels like game consoles and T-shirts that make air guitarists' phantom riffs audible further blur the line between the real and virtual worlds. Commentary by Momus.
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Gamers have been able to get a taste of the technology behind the widely anticipated Half-Life 2.
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Investor's Business Daily - Collin Perris lives largely in a fantasy world. Or, rather, a virtual world. His job with IBM demands it.
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Virtually a new way of doing business It would not be the first time the suggestion has been made that games programmers hold at least one key to the future for business systems development. But IBM's latest research project - a "secret island" within the confines of Linden Labs' Second Life massively multi-player games environment - brings that possibility a whole lot closer.â¦
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London's Science Museum shows off technologies that may one day make computer games more fun to play.
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Hobbyist hackers use Nintendo's motion-sensing controller to play Half-Life 2 and bang virtual drums. What's next? By Chris Kohler.
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RatePoint is extending its rating system to residents of the Second Life online city, who can now determine which virtual neighbors to play and work with.
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Here's a productive twist on the animated characters known as avatars that carry out fantasies in virtual computer worlds. IBM Corp. researchers have developed an avatar that can translate spoken words into sign language.
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Sprawling virtual worlds in which  electronic avatars do battle with mythical beasts may offer  game publishers a unique chance to combat piracy, especially in  Asia, where the format is wildly popular.
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Retailers must take advantage of virtual worlds and mobile technology to stay competitive.
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Media Groove launches Chipuya Town, a virtual world accessible on any Flash-enabled keitai. Users create a custom avatar, then step into a cute-ified version of Tokyo's Shibuya shopping district that's accurate right down to the advertising overload.
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EveryScape's 3-D maps go one step further than Google: They let you explore the insides of buildings, too. The service, launching next week, will give virtual explorers views of restaurants, hotels and landmarks in San Francisco, Boston, New York and Seattle.
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What the business press didn't tell you Analysis Two weeks ago, business leaders at Davos gave their blessing to Linden Lab's Second Life. They hailed the spectacular growth of its virtual economy while politicians spoke of democracy itself moving into its online world.â¦
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(InfoWorld) - The City of Chicago is developing a futuristic video surveillance system designed to scan city streets looking for everything from bombs to traffic jams. For the past few years Chicago has been rolling out thousands of video surveillance cameras linked by fiber-optic cables. This Operation Virtual Shield system is intended to give the city's emergency response coordination agency the ability to remotely keep track of emergencies in real time. Now, with the help of IBM, Chicago's Office of Emergency Management and Communications (OEMC) is looking to expand the system's capabilities so thatÂ IBM's software can analyze the thousands of hours of videoÂ being recorded by Operation Virtual Shield. "That's really going to just throw our camera network into hyperdrive," said Kevin Smith, a spokesman with the OEMC. "Ultimately I think what this software might be able to do is simply recognize suspicious behavior and alert our operations people and, at times, our crime detections specialists as to what it sees." The software could recognize a package that had been left in a public park or a car parked where no car is supposed to be, Smith said. IBM has been pushing a similar technology called Smart Surveillance System within the retail industry as a tool to fight shoplifting. The Smart Surveillance System was spun out of IBM's T.J. Watson Research Center earlier this year. Now IBM is talking to a number of cities about rolling out similar projects, according to Sam Docknevich, a Digital Video Surveillance National Practice Leader with IBM. However none is as advanced as the Operation Virtual Shield effort. "Chicago is definitely the leading example of the value of integrating video from multiple organizations and using it to enhance public safety," he said. OEMC's Smith would not say how much the city is spending on the project or when it expects IBM's video analytics capabilities to go live. The trick will be to make the analytics software work in a useful way. "The challenge is going to be teaching computers to recognize the suspicious behavior," said Smith. "Once this is done this will be a very impressive city in terms of public safety." Â
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Two firms are racing to map the world as the Internet goes increasingly mobile with ever more sophisticated gadgets for people on the move.