Virtual Environments Networked Virtual Environments and Virtual Worlds

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 09:03AM PST

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rarely consider in envisioning the future of collaboration is the opportunity to finally unshackle ourselves from outdated user interface devices such as keyboards and mice.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.

Read More.

Posted by Christian Renaud at 08:32AM PST

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!

Read More.

Posted by Christian Renaud at 09:31AM PST

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 11:19AM PST

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 02:15PM PST