FT.com / Technology / Digital Business - Personal view: 3D brings challenges for the world wild web
Personal view: 3D brings challenges for the world wild web
By David Wortley
Published: April 30 2008 04:12 | Last updated: April 30 2008 04:12
The future for IT is 3D. The onscreen desktop will be replaced by a doorway to walk through, the typical corporate website by worlds to explore.
There is nothing imaginative or futuristic about that. As the limits of technology fall away, IT portals can be more instinctive, and resemble more closely the physical world we are used to dealing with.
Serious virtual worlds have the potential to make conventional websites seem about as effective a business tool as a leaflet.
Of course, there are the added depth of functionality and potential uses of the virtual world – but it goes further.
Virtual worlds have the ability to get to the crux of the issue of customer contact, offering a halfway house between the flat efficiencies of the website or call centre and the high costs of face-to-face interaction and the physical and branded location of an office or retail outlet.
The virtual world offers a sense of place and genuine interaction for large audiences at an affordable price.
How many people click out of a website because they cannot find what they want or immediately see what is relevant to them? To overcome this, the office of PA Consulting in the Second Life virtual world is staffed constantly by a team of Second Life PA avatars in locations around the world.
It means the organisation has trained “greeters” who can find out more about visitors, what kinds of services they are looking for and offer them what they need.
A little human charm changes the nature of the relationship between the user and the software, encourages greater interest, more thought. In a virtual world, relationships with customers can be developed through meetings across a desk with an avatar, using an audio or video conversation.
BP is trialling the idea of using Second Life as a place for employees to meet a counsellor or manager to talk about issues they might feel are too sensitive to discuss face-to-face.
In general, virtual worlds are ideal for hosting events that can bring together customers, experts and star “draws” internationally, involving speakers who can take part from home with a PC and a microphone. This leads to what Cisco’s Christian Renaud has been calling “serendipitous meetings”, the kind of unlikely meetings between people to exchange ideas and talk about partnerships that would not otherwise happen.
There is the opportunity for promotion, building customer loyalty and viral marketing through offering virtual objects. The average Second Life user is acquisitive, keen to have a distinctive appearance, and – in a world where every detail has to be created from nothing – keen on any kind of “stuff” that can be shared with others.
The experience of virtual worlds is “real” enough to ensure people maintain a strong sense of self-awareness. Recently, we created avatars for a couple of MPs visiting us at the Serious Games Institute, giving them the chance to speak and interact with an audience in a virtual world. The standard uniform for avatars being jeans and T-shirts, I had to do some shopping to find the appropriate suits and ties they could wear.
But big business needs to be cautious about the growing market for virtual objects. When Nissan wanted to launch its latest sports car, it had the idea of a huge vending machine in Second Life which would give away models of the car for people to drive around in.
Rather than being regarded as a treat, this giveaway upset the spirit of Second Life. A number of the population had managed to build little businesses from creating and selling virtual vehicles to other users. A business giant coming in and giving away sports cars for nothing became the subject of gossip and led to a boycott of the Nissan island.
The processing power required to facilitate the shift to 3D IT is an issue for the moment, but it’s only a temporary one. The biggest challenges concern interoperability and security.
Just as the standard HTML language was the making of the web, so will the ability to have a universal avatar capable of slipping effortlessly between one virtual world and another.
A consortium of organisations in the US is pushing for a recognised standard that will allow this to happen. As previous attempts to create standards have shown, however, it is not going to happen without friction between the commercial organisations building their proprietary environments and virtual customer bases.
For commercial operations to settle with confidence into virtual worlds, far more work is going to be needed on security. It is virtually impossible to find out the real identity of people behind the avatars – meaning they have no responsibility for what they do.
Web visitors to company sites are similarly anonymous, but they do not have the same opportunity to abuse staff, band together to organise protest raids, or generally upset other visitors.
Some form of digital signature will be needed to ensure avatars are held to account for their actions, just as they would be in the real world.
In many ways, the growth of virtual worlds is like the frontier towns of the Wild West, where new social forms were worked out messily and in public. In the same way, new codes of behaviour will eventually be adopted.
David Wortley is director of the Serious Games Institute, Coventry University.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008
Showing posts with label internet. Show all posts
Showing posts with label internet. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Monday, March 17, 2008
FT.com / Technology - A bright future in the cloud
FT.com / Technology - A bright future in the cloud
A bright future in the cloud
By Shane Robison
Published: March 4 2008 17:36 | Last updated: March 4 2008 17:36
Nicholas Carr is right – the future of computing lies in the internet cloud. The technology industry is shifting to a new model in which people and businesses no longer install packaged software applications on their computers. Instead, they use their web browsers to access a wide range of “cloud services”, available on demand over the internet.
Without question, this marks an exciting new era in computing.
But there is a risk of over-simplifying this picture. The “cloud” itself – a vast data-processing infrastructure – represents a critical foundational piece. But on its own, it cannot deliver the rich experience that people and companies want as they look for a better way to access information, enjoy content, and communicate.
To realise the full potential of this new model, the IT industry needs to think about the cloud as a platform for creating new services and experiences that we have yet to imagine.
For example, cloud services could eveolve that are intelligent enough to anticipate people’s needs. In this next phase, searching will be done for users, not by them. This would be accompanied by a seamless, consistent experience across all of the different devices users own, and all the on-demand services they care about.
This leaves the IT industry with a lot of hard work to do. It requires a new set of core building blocks to deliver this new category of services; it needs smarter devices and more intelligent networks; and software will be the “secret sauce” that powers these new services and shapes the quality of the user experience.
The power of the cloud happens when there is continuous interaction between a device – smartphone, laptop, TV – and the network. A simple example: it is 2pm and your calendar shows you are booked on a flight to Toronto at 6pm. Your device should anticipate this trip and gather relevant information – weather forecast for the Toronto area, status update on the flight, recommended route to the airport based on latest traffic conditions, and so on. In this scenario, the step forward is the pervasive, proactive and personalised nature of cloud services.
Some may say they heard this during the 1990s internet bubble but at that time it was not possible to use the internet as a platform for anything more than static pages. Broadband changes all that but brings us to the need for a higher level of intelligence built into devices and networks, and the software that ties everything together.
Nicholas Carr correctly points out that the shift to cloud computing will dramatically reduce the cost of IT. But this shift goes far beyond cost savings; it marks a quantum-leap in the user experience.
Much attention so far has focused on software as a service, a proven model for making software applications available on demand over the internet – it frees customers from the expense and hassle of having to install and maintain applications locally.
But Saas is the tip of the iceberg. In the future, everything will be delivered as a service, from work life to entertainment to communities. In an “Everything as a service” world individuals and businesses will customise their computing environments and shape their experiences – from individual consumers to the largest global enterprises, which will increasingly turn to dynamic cloud-based offerings to meet their most demanding computing requirements.
As we approach the tipping point where computing moves into the cloud, there are five trends I believe worthy of close attention:
1. The digital world will converge with the physical world: Starting in about 1995, the mantra was, “Everything is virtual. Geography is irrelevant”. But from 2008, factors such as your physical location will mean a lot. Cloud services will be increasingly aware of context, down to details such as time, weather, where a user is headed, and which friends or business colleagues are nearby.
2. The era of device-centric computing is over. Connectivity-centric computing will take centre stage. The question “When am I going to get that one device that does everything I can imagine?” will be flipped on its head as any number of devices will provide easy access to all services and content. Devices become interchangeable, with cloud services becoming the focal point.
3. Publishing will be democratised. A global internet population of 1.2bn people now has the tools to produce everything from books and magazines to music and videos. This represents a massive disruption of old publishing models. People will soon be able to print on demand any book ever published; warehouses of physical inventory in the publishing world will no longer be necessary.
4. Crowd-sourcing is going mainstream. Fortune 50 companies will access top talent on a global basis via the internet, saving millions of dollars in professional areas as diverse as accountants, advertising professionals, attorneys, engineers, etc. Reputation systems will lower the risks involved by exposing poor performers.
5. Enterprises will use radically different tools to make key business decisions, including systems to predict the future. A merger is taking place between the structured data that fuels business intelligence and the unstructured data of the web. This combination will advance business intelligence. At the same time, market-based systems enabling accurate predictions of the future will become common practice in the enterprise.
By moving from the desktop to the cloud, we have an opportunity to reshape the computing industry and, more importantly, create more dynamic services that enrich lives and improve how we do business.
To realise this potential, we must innovate by building a higher level of intelligence into the next generation of devices, networks and software. When we are successful in providing a dramatically better user experience, we will be poised for the next wave of growth.
Shane Robison is executive vice president, chief strategy and technology officer, HP
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008
A bright future in the cloud
By Shane Robison
Published: March 4 2008 17:36 | Last updated: March 4 2008 17:36
Nicholas Carr is right – the future of computing lies in the internet cloud. The technology industry is shifting to a new model in which people and businesses no longer install packaged software applications on their computers. Instead, they use their web browsers to access a wide range of “cloud services”, available on demand over the internet.
Without question, this marks an exciting new era in computing.
But there is a risk of over-simplifying this picture. The “cloud” itself – a vast data-processing infrastructure – represents a critical foundational piece. But on its own, it cannot deliver the rich experience that people and companies want as they look for a better way to access information, enjoy content, and communicate.
To realise the full potential of this new model, the IT industry needs to think about the cloud as a platform for creating new services and experiences that we have yet to imagine.
For example, cloud services could eveolve that are intelligent enough to anticipate people’s needs. In this next phase, searching will be done for users, not by them. This would be accompanied by a seamless, consistent experience across all of the different devices users own, and all the on-demand services they care about.
This leaves the IT industry with a lot of hard work to do. It requires a new set of core building blocks to deliver this new category of services; it needs smarter devices and more intelligent networks; and software will be the “secret sauce” that powers these new services and shapes the quality of the user experience.
The power of the cloud happens when there is continuous interaction between a device – smartphone, laptop, TV – and the network. A simple example: it is 2pm and your calendar shows you are booked on a flight to Toronto at 6pm. Your device should anticipate this trip and gather relevant information – weather forecast for the Toronto area, status update on the flight, recommended route to the airport based on latest traffic conditions, and so on. In this scenario, the step forward is the pervasive, proactive and personalised nature of cloud services.
Some may say they heard this during the 1990s internet bubble but at that time it was not possible to use the internet as a platform for anything more than static pages. Broadband changes all that but brings us to the need for a higher level of intelligence built into devices and networks, and the software that ties everything together.
Nicholas Carr correctly points out that the shift to cloud computing will dramatically reduce the cost of IT. But this shift goes far beyond cost savings; it marks a quantum-leap in the user experience.
Much attention so far has focused on software as a service, a proven model for making software applications available on demand over the internet – it frees customers from the expense and hassle of having to install and maintain applications locally.
But Saas is the tip of the iceberg. In the future, everything will be delivered as a service, from work life to entertainment to communities. In an “Everything as a service” world individuals and businesses will customise their computing environments and shape their experiences – from individual consumers to the largest global enterprises, which will increasingly turn to dynamic cloud-based offerings to meet their most demanding computing requirements.
As we approach the tipping point where computing moves into the cloud, there are five trends I believe worthy of close attention:
1. The digital world will converge with the physical world: Starting in about 1995, the mantra was, “Everything is virtual. Geography is irrelevant”. But from 2008, factors such as your physical location will mean a lot. Cloud services will be increasingly aware of context, down to details such as time, weather, where a user is headed, and which friends or business colleagues are nearby.
2. The era of device-centric computing is over. Connectivity-centric computing will take centre stage. The question “When am I going to get that one device that does everything I can imagine?” will be flipped on its head as any number of devices will provide easy access to all services and content. Devices become interchangeable, with cloud services becoming the focal point.
3. Publishing will be democratised. A global internet population of 1.2bn people now has the tools to produce everything from books and magazines to music and videos. This represents a massive disruption of old publishing models. People will soon be able to print on demand any book ever published; warehouses of physical inventory in the publishing world will no longer be necessary.
4. Crowd-sourcing is going mainstream. Fortune 50 companies will access top talent on a global basis via the internet, saving millions of dollars in professional areas as diverse as accountants, advertising professionals, attorneys, engineers, etc. Reputation systems will lower the risks involved by exposing poor performers.
5. Enterprises will use radically different tools to make key business decisions, including systems to predict the future. A merger is taking place between the structured data that fuels business intelligence and the unstructured data of the web. This combination will advance business intelligence. At the same time, market-based systems enabling accurate predictions of the future will become common practice in the enterprise.
By moving from the desktop to the cloud, we have an opportunity to reshape the computing industry and, more importantly, create more dynamic services that enrich lives and improve how we do business.
To realise this potential, we must innovate by building a higher level of intelligence into the next generation of devices, networks and software. When we are successful in providing a dramatically better user experience, we will be poised for the next wave of growth.
Shane Robison is executive vice president, chief strategy and technology officer, HP
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008
Monday, October 29, 2007
sueddeutsche.de Zeitung und Internet Wir brauchen eine Debatte - Kultur
sueddeutsche.de Zeitung und Internet Wir brauchen eine Debatte - Kultur
Nicht das Internet ist der Feind des Journalismus, sondern das Kalkül. Vom Pulsschlag des Textes: Ein Plädoyer für ein Jahrzehnt des Qualitätsjournalismus.
Nicht das Internet ist der Feind des Journalismus, sondern das Kalkül. Vom Pulsschlag des Textes: Ein Plädoyer für ein Jahrzehnt des Qualitätsjournalismus.
Friday, May 04, 2007
FT.com / Comment & analysis / Editorial comment - The case for an independent media
FT.com / Comment & analysis / Editorial comment - The case for an independent media
The case for an independent media
Published: May 4 2007 22:46 | Last updated: May 4 2007 22:46
“You are in the field to defend the public interest, the financial truth for investors and the funds that should support the widow and the orphan,” said Clarence Barron, proprietor of The Wall Street Journal from 1902 until 1928. The founders of many media companies left trusts and special voting powers to protect such journalism, but with profits hurt by a shift to digital media, those structures are under siege.
Reuters, a financial information provider and the world’s largest news agency, has received an approach. Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation has bid for Dow Jones, owner of the Journal. Rebel investors, meanwhile, are demanding change at the New York Times Company.
The case for an independent media
Published: May 4 2007 22:46 | Last updated: May 4 2007 22:46
“You are in the field to defend the public interest, the financial truth for investors and the funds that should support the widow and the orphan,” said Clarence Barron, proprietor of The Wall Street Journal from 1902 until 1928. The founders of many media companies left trusts and special voting powers to protect such journalism, but with profits hurt by a shift to digital media, those structures are under siege.
Reuters, a financial information provider and the world’s largest news agency, has received an approach. Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation has bid for Dow Jones, owner of the Journal. Rebel investors, meanwhile, are demanding change at the New York Times Company.
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