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February 29, 2008

Cisco's Quantum Shift- Don't Miss It!

If you haven't already heard, "on March 4th, life on the network gets better." http://www.cisco.com/web/solutions/uberusers/index.html.
Cisco is dubbing this as a "quantum shift in networking."

Cisco will be hosting a live event in Second Life at a special new build: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Cisco%20Systems%204/47/33/21/ on March 4th starting at 10:00 am Pacific, with Doug Webster, Director of Service Provider Marketing. It's an interactive event you surely don't want to miss, as Cisco for the first time, will be demonstrating some new virtual experiences and discussing a Quantum Shift in networking. If you can't wait that long, come check out the new build now, or view this Machinima http://randyciscossystems.blip.tv/file/706774/. This build content is being updated until our Quantum Shift event on the 4th, so keep coming back!

Cisco will also be hosting the Quantum Shift Music Day on Saturday, March 1st between 1:00-8:00 p.m. PST at Bandwidth Stage on the Cisco SL campus: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Cisco%20Systems%204/65/35/22/.

Featured for our Live Music event are:

Orangelife Holmer,
Rich Desoto,
Cylindrian Rutabaga,
Groucho March,
Edward Lowell,
Jeff Tully,
Capos Calderwood

DON'T MISS THESE BIG EVENTS!

Posted by Randy Sisk at 07:03 AM Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Industrial Age Metaphors

One thing that people rarely consider in envisioning the future of collaboration is the opportunity to finally unshackle ourselves from outdated user interface devices such as keyboards and mice. There have been a number of companies that have successfully implemented ambient sensors and displays that are much more intuitive and immediate than the mouse+monitor combination, and there is now an extensive body of research and second-generation 3D user-interface devices that challenge the incumbency of the 2D mouse and Qwerty keyboard.

An area that is ripe for development is the combination of surface computing and 3D spaces. There has been excellent work done in education on surface interaction and training using collaborative whiteboarding, and there have been a number of videos posted around the net of the next generation of intelligent work surfaces and displays.

Roger Farnsworth, who runs our Executive Thought Leadership team at Cisco, is busy attending the always-entertaining TED conference in Monterey California. He blogged last night about the newest work being done on combining surfaces and displays, and even speculated about their use in 3D spaces.

Being a user of 2nd-generation VGA goggles, a projector, and a Wiimote to navigate around Second Life, I can personally attest that the current user interaction model is still clunky and unintuitive. There has been some recent work done on gestural interfaces that was discussed at the MetaverseU conference that may go a long way towards helping facilitate the true immersive effects of these environments. This would allow you to take your visual-metaphor of an office (and your networked colleagues) with you anywhere......be it at 35000 feet on a networked aircraft, or just in the Red Carpet Lounge between flights.

Posted by Christian Renaud at 06:32 AM Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (1)

February 25, 2008

Happening NOW- Hospital of the Future!

For those of you who missed the preliminary announcement from our developer partner Millions of Us on Friday, we are excited to announce the launch of the 'Hospital of the Future' in Second Life. Working with Palomar West Hospital, the largest health system provider in Southern California, we have created a healthcare campus to showcase the foresight of PalomarWest and the Cisco Connected Health vision.

The official ribbon cutting ceremony is at 0800 PST today at the PalomarWest Hospital Island! In the event you haven't already registered for Second Life, we've streamlined the process for you by following this link

The formal press release follows the page break. Be sure to come by and check out the future of healthcare!

Cisco Helps Palomar Pomerado Health Open ‘Hospital of the Future’ Three Years Ahead of Schedule ... in Second Life

PPH and Cisco Offer First Glimpse of Advanced Building Design and Connected Hospital Technologies in Online Virtual World

ORLANDO, Fla. – HIMSS CONFERENCE - Feb. 25, 2008 – Cisco® and Palomar Pomerado Health (PPH) today cut the ribbon on a new hospital in the online virtual world Second Life. The virtual hospital, a simulation of a real-world hospital campus due to open in 2011, gives visitors the opportunity to tour the hospital years before its doors actually open

The virtual hospital showcases the rich assortment of design and technology innovations planned for the real-world Palomar West Medical Campus in San Diego, Calif., and to gather feedback that will be used to enhance the way that care is delivered. The immersive quality of Second Life allows visitors to experience the progressive nature-embracing design of the hospital firsthand. Visitors will also be able to experience Connected Hospital technologies that will be delivered in the real hospital by Cisco.

Highlights of the virtual Palomar West include:

• Cisco TelePresence. Visitors are welcomed to Palomar West in “Second Life” by a virtual receptionist appearing via Cisco TelePresence, a new technology that uses high-definition video and spatial audio to create unique ”in person” experiences via the network.
• Advanced Robotics. The simulation shows Palomar West’s operating rooms, which include advanced robotics and functional imaging systems capable of supporting medical procedures spanning interventional radiology, cardiovascular surgery, urology and gastroenterology. An advanced surgical cockpit, from where a surgeon can manipulate robotic systems remotely while viewing vital signs and functional imaging information in real time, is also featured.

• Communication and Collaboration. The simulation shows how the Cisco Unified Communications system facilitates smooth patient and clinician communication. For example, a radiologist can locate specialists, contact them on their phones, laptops or PDAs, and initiate a desktop collaboration session to review and consult on patient scan images thanks to the network that links picture archiving systems with communications tools.
• 3D Holographic Medical Imaging. Palomar West will feature mobile, remote-controlled, 3D holographic whole-body multimodality medical imaging systems that can be directed into any patient room.
• Connected Real Estate. In the real Palomar West, all building, communication, IT, and clinical systems will be converged onto a single Cisco Medical-Grade Network. The simulation shows how nearly all aspects of a patient’s stay (including ventilation, air conditioning, lighting, security, fire and life safety, digital devices, and signage) will be monitored and managed via applications running on a single network, freeing up clinicians to focus on providing the very best care.
• Visibility and Tracking Solutions. Visitors are guided through Palomar West by radio frequency-enabled sensors that enhance security and safety through patient tracking, and that protect hospital property by tracking equipment in real time.
Construction of the real-world $811 million Palomar Medical Center West campus is due to be completed in 2011. The new facility is designed to positively transform the traditional healthcare experience that is normally associated with staying or working in a hospital.

The campus will epitomize Cisco and PPH’s shared vision of a “Connected Hospital,” where technology and the physical environment seamlessly integrate to enhance patient care through the sharing of timely, accurate information among the right people at the right time, between hospitals and the extended ecosystem of care.

In addition to embracing the latest connected health technologies, Palomar West has been physically designed to provide a high-performance healing environment through a constant connection with nature. Outdoor features of the campus showcased in the “Second Life” simulation include garden spaces, areas for dining, meeting or relaxing; a pedestrian path and garden connecting all buildings; a green roof bringing gardens up onto the building, with views from patient rooms; and garden terraces on the nursing floor.

Palomar West in “Second Life” also provides visitors with a view of the design of individual patient rooms on the new Palomar West campus. Features of these rooms will include:

• Same-handed, acuity-adaptable rooms and cross-discipline interventional procedure/operating rooms. Acuity-adaptable rooms can be transformed, even if a patient’s condition changes, without having to move patients from unit to unit. Any necessary equipment can be brought into the room on an as-needed basis, further reducing the need for patient transport.
• Each patient room is designed with a nursing station immediately outside the room, so the intensity of service can be adjusted as needed.
• Every room in Palomar West is single occupancy and identical in layout and design. This maximizes efficiency and minimizes medical errors.

About Palomar Pomerado Health
Palomar Pomerado Health, California’s largest public health district, is North County’s most comprehensive health care delivery system, recognized for clinical excellence in cardiac care, women’s services, bariatric surgery, cancer, orthopedics, trauma, rehabilitation and behavioral health services. Facilities include Palomar Medical Center, Pomerado Hospital, Villa Pomerado, Palomar Continuing Care Center, Escondido Surgery Center, Palomar Pomerado Behavioral Health Services and Palomar Pomerado Home Care.

About Cisco
Cisco, (NASDAQ: CSCO), is the worldwide leader in networking that transforms how people connect, communicate and collaborate. Information about Cisco can be found at http://www.cisco.com. For ongoing news, go to http://newsroom.cisco.com. For information about Cisco Connected Health technologies, visit www.cisco.com/go/healthcare

Contacts

Palomar Pomerado Health – Andy Hoang, (858) 675-5018 or andy.hoang@pph.org
Cisco – David McCulloch (408) 221-6015 or damccull@cisco.com

Posted by Christian Renaud at 07:31 AM Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

February 17, 2008

Metaverse Roadmap and MetaverseU

From February 15th through February 17th, people from industry and academia gathered at Stanford University to participate in two events.

The first was a continuation of the excellent Metaverse Roadmap work that had started two years ago, which is an attempt to capture and forecast the coming changes in the user interaction model with the Internet. If you haven't read the original MVR, you can find it here.

The second event was (or rather 'is', as it is still underway) the MetaverseU, which is a combination of presentations and open discussion covering various facets of the virtual worlds, augmented reality, and lifelogging, with a particular focus on the human factors and societal impact of an idealized Metaverse.

The event is being streamed live (and freely) into Second Life here, and Henrik Bennetsen has taken a further step of creating a time capsule of where we are in this technology cycle by interviewing all of the participants and attendees with four questions regarding the best and worst things of current technology, and the opportunities and unforseen downsides of the future adoption of same. His interviews will be published on YouTube under the group 'MetaverseU', as well as tags on Flickr and elsewhere tagged 'MetaverseU'

Henrik has also blogged about what he is doing on the MetaverseU blog here. It think this is a good example of forward thinking in being able to tag content distributed around the Internet as a distributed transcript and record of the event. Consider it 'Distributed Lifelogging'. Now, if we could incorporate Twitter and Second Life chat transcripts.....in one portal.........

Posted by Christian Renaud at 09:18 AM Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

February 05, 2008

Degrees of Immersion- Cisco Telepresence

There are many different tools today for connecting on a personal level with others. They range from networked virtual environments where people can connect through digital representations of themselves, such as avatars in Instant Messaging, or Virtual Worlds and MMOG's. These different tools provide different levels of experience and different levels of interaction and immersion between the participants. Cisco Telepresence provides a unique experience for the participants- one that connects them on a personal level in a way that many other tools cannot. Come hear Randy Harrell, Director of Product Marketing for the Cisco TelePresence System Business Unit at Thursday's Second Life Tech Chat, discuss the Cisco Telepresence System and how it is changing the way businesses communicate internally as well as with other businesses and customers. Join Randy Harrell and the Cisco Second Life team, as he discusses these business transformations made possible through immersive visual communications on Cisco's TelePresence systems. He will also discuss why Cisco TelePresence is different than videoconferencing. We look forward to an engaging and interactive discussion after Randy's presentation. See you there, virtually!
When: Thursday, February 7th. 12-1 Pacific Time.
Where: Cisco’s Virtual Second Life Campus, Bandwidth Stage.
http://slurl.com/secondlife/cisco%20systems%204/53/1/22/

Posted by Randy Sisk at 12:15 PM Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)