Category Archives: Internet

CEOs zeroing-in on Facebookers

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A powerful organization headed by the CEOs of the world’s largest corporations are looking to Facebook and other social networks as a means to get further inside consumers’ heads.

The Conference Board, which includes top executives from Merck, Alcoa, Deutsche Bank and Yale University, said this week that the social networks’ “cheery atmosphere(s)” make them an ideal place to make brand impressions.

“Obtaining information about others” is one of a consumer’s most positive online experiences, according to the Conference Board, which also produces the the oft cited Consumer Confidence Index.

Marketers, schooled in the positive psychology movement popularized by Marty Seligman, are typically obsessed with consumers’ feelings. They seek to be associated with strong emotional triggers, preferably positive ones.

Advertisers, for example, pressured news organizations to kill the bad news reports coming out of Afghanistan after 9/11, and to replace them with positive stories.

Consumer Internet Barometer – The Conference Board
Says Lynn Franco, Director of The Conference Board Consumer Research Center: “Online social networking is an integral part of many people’s lives and a natural extension of our means of communication which the Internet has created. The next growth wave will be expanding and incorporating these networks into our business lives.”

"Big Blue" rebuttal: No transhumanists here

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IBM researcher defends Second Life, World of Warcraft, against Parallelnormal blog posts.

from Mark:

High-profile virtual worlders are trying to correct what they see as misrepresentations by Parallelnormal of their recent meetings and events.

One of them, Second Lifer “Dale Innis,” writes a comment blasting my comparison of real and virtual versions of New England, and my description of a conference about the convergence of reality with virtual reality.

“(You) drastically misread your sources about the WoW conference and the Extropia sims, and you seem to do the same thing in many places where Second Life is involved,” Innis writes.

Innis in real life (RL) is IBM researcher David M. Chess.

IBM has built inworld stores for big box retailers.

Chess is working to develop autonomic technologies, which are self-aware and can fix themselves.

Chess, speaking for himself, and not IBM, denies that Extropia and the World of Warcraft conference “are in fact about transhumanism.”

Yet the WoW conference was organized by a transhumanist, and one who views the world’s major religions as an obstacle to the advancement of his own beliefs.

And extropians, by their own definition, are transhumanists, real or imagined.

Why just help a neighbor…

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…when you can take his money, too?

Zilok.com, a new service launched today, is not only a stupid idea for anyone who owns a home (granted, it might help apartment dwellers in a pinch), it is a depressing sign of hard economic times.

The service suggests that — instead of sharing your lightly-used weed whacker with a neighbor, for example — you can charge him for it.

The car safety seat pictured here, for example, is available for rent in the San Francisco State University area for eight bucks per day, which makes no economic sense whatsoever.

Zilok also says (natch) that you will be doing right by the environment, because your customers will be buying less stuff. (One reason: By renting everything, and never owning anything, they will stay poor.)

No Boston-area items were available for rent as of noon today. — mb

Zilok Official USA Launch!
Keep it local and be a green hero
By simply renting things you aren’t using to people in your area, you cut down on conspicuous consumption and encourage the reuse of everyday household items and electronics. With Zilok you help save on the natural resources needed to produce more stuff.

“Inspired by conservation and green movements in Europe, Zilok is the fun way to tackle over-consumption while expanding everyone’s access to the things they want and need—whether that is a scooter or Wii, a ratchet set or a tuxedo” offered Gary Cige, Cofounder and CEO of Zilok.

Health: Google's first flop?

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Google’s new health records service aggregates your electronic medical records — your prescriptions, diagnosis, test results, you name it. The benefit to advertisers (i.e., targeted marketing) is clear.

The government can also call dibs on your personal data at any time. (See the excerpt from Google Health’s privacy policy, below.) The fed’s interests in your data, of course, are potentially limitless: Did you get your vaccinations? Are you on psychiatric meds? The CDC, DHS, NIH, the Attorney General’s Office… they all want to know.

Boston-based Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center is participating in the service. So, I tried pairing my BIDMC records with a Google Health account. But my data did not seem to transfer over.

I deleted my Google Health account after this failed experiment. I will eat my hat if the data have truly been deleted from Google’s databases.

Any possible benefits to consumers from Google Health clearly outweigh the privacy risks at this point.

And I am left wondering whether this might prove Google’s “first flop.” — mb

Google Privacy Center – Privacy Policy
e have a good faith belief that access, use, preservation or disclosure of such information is reasonably necessary to (a) satisfy any applicable law, regulation, legal process or enforceable governmental request, (b) enforce applicable Terms of Service, including investigation of potential violations thereof, (c) detect, prevent, or otherwise address fraud, security or technical issues, or (d) protect against imminent harm to the rights, property or safety of Google, its users or the public as required or permitted by law.

OECD to plot internet's future

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Forty government ministers will meet with private business managers in Seoul next month to plan an all-reaching, all-seeing, all-knowing internet, which derives data from RFID tags and other ubiquitous sensors.

Father of the internet and Google chief internet evangelist Vint Cerf (pictured here) will be participating in the OECD meeting.

The ministers says they want to “provide guidance” to consumers as they adjust to the convergence of all media and commerce, and sensor-derived data, into a single stream.

From the program for the upcoming meeting:

The Future of the Internet Economy OECD Ministerial Meeting
The Internet is a key infrastructure for global economic growth and social development. Three major trends – Convergence, Creativity and Confidence – are influencing the policy environment for the Internet Economy. Each of these trends reflects significant shifts in the use and functionality of the Internet. Collectively, they represent a major transition in the evolution of the Internet and the economic system that has developed around it. Therefore, it has become increasingly necessary that policies supporting the Internet Economy be carefully crafted and co-ordinated across policy domains, borders and multiple stakeholder communities.

The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development is an intergovernmental trade organization set-up to rebuild postwar Europe. It has since broadened its reach into virtually every aspect of human affairs, planet-wide.

(Images: Vint Cerf, from the ICANN website.)

OHSU psychiatrist to highlight warning signs for school shootings

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Some teens are having troubling distinguishing between real and virtual realities, making them more likely to turn on the public with real guns blazing.

That’s what Oregon Health and Sciences University psychiatrist Jerald Block was scheduled to tell a conference in Washington earlier today. He cites the Columbine shooting case as an example of what is yet to come.

The Columbine shooters, Harris and Klebold, Block say, were addicted to first person shooters (video games). The two took their aggressions into RL (real life) after having the plug pulled on their digital worlds.

OHSU psychiatrist to highlight warning signs for school shootings
“Virtual realities, like the ones that Harris and Klebold experienced, are a double-edged sword,” explained Block, a clinical faculty member in the OHSU Department of Psychiatry. “On one hand, virtual worlds allow people to feel connected and empowered. They also allow participants to escape stress and have an outlet for aggression. On the other hand, when a heavy user must eliminate or cut back on the virtual, as was the case with these two killers at times, the user can feel lonely, anxious, or angry.

SL + 3D – hardware = total inworld immersion (TIA)

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Linden Lab chairman Mitch Kapor and developer Philippe Bossut today demonstrated a camera-based motion recog system that controls your avatar’s movements in Second Life. Looks good on the video, below…

With a 3D viewing headset (such as the augmented reality headset imagined here), you would have your own at-home 3DVR “cave” for exploring the metaverse.

Incredibly, we are just years, perhaps only months, away from very discreet (i.e., they won’t take over your livingroom), immersive experiences, at home.

And it will cost a fraction of what 3DVR caves, such as the one at Brown University (an elaborate mix of multiple projectors, hand and head tracking devices, and a stack of Linux servers).

Of course, the more seamless metaversal interfaces become, the more likely people will start forgetting where they really are.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2t52gkAwJq8&eurl=http://secondlife.reuters.com/stories/2008/04/11/mitch-kapor-unveils-sl-navigation-via-3d-camera/]

[digg=http://digg.com/hardware/SL_3D_hardware_near_complete_immersion]

Second Life bubble bursts

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Virtual land values plummet more than 40 percent, to $1,000 even.

(Would you buy land from this leprechaun? Image: Markbaard Meredith)

In Second Life, there’s a sucker born every minute (give or take). Some virtual land barons, for example, are finding out that what they’ve got ain’t worth much–since the supply of their product took another step toward “unlimited.”

To-date, some landowners have gotten rich selling parcels at similarly inflated prices.

But hoping to reboot waning interest in its virtual world, Linden Lab this month will make more islands available, at a fraction of what users have been paying lately for the make believe property.

Of course, land is limitless when it exists only on a server somewhere. And there are going to be more than one virtual world to visit and park it in the near future. But you knew that already.

Reuters/Second Life » Linden to increase land supply, drop prices
Linden Lab announced on its blog yesterday it would be increasing the land supply in Second Life for the second quarter of 2008.

Linden has seen average prices for land drift from about L$6.3 per meter in Q1 to around L$11.5 per meter currently. Strong demand for virtual land — essentially dedicated CPU time on Linden Lab’s servers — is a bright spot for Second Life’s in-world economy amidst flagging overall growth.

Hard finding a home in Second Life

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At least, it is hard finding a home where you feel free.

I thought Second Life New England (SLNE) might offer more freedoms for individuals than the real-world original.

I was wrong.

Yard signs are pulled-up, guns are banned. The uses of waterways are restricted. The oceans in this simulated world are off-limits.

In SLNE, my landlady’s husband is a cop. I hope he didn’t see the machine gun behind the living room couch.

Reams of bylaws, a high cost of land ownership, and taxes that never end (called “tiers” in SL).

Still, they come.

Docs to fight stress in Second Life

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I learned this while researching this Boston Globe piece (link, excerpt, below): Dr. Joe Kvedar, director of the Center for Connected Health in Boston, says cognitive-behavioral therapy is “the next logical step” for clinical testing in-world. (In-world is where Second Lifers say they are, when they are logged-in.) Kvedar, below, addresses a conference, in-world.panel-shot-3.jpg
MD to fight stress in Second Life – The Boston Globe
In another sign that Second Life is beginning to resemble the first, doctors are stepping into the virtual world to reach patients they might otherwise miss.

A Massachusetts General Hospital neurologist, Dr. Daniel Hoch, wants to learn whether therapy administered in Second Life, the virtual world created by Linden Lab, can have benefits in the world that we share with our spouses, kids, death, and taxes.

In coming months, an instructor from Mass. General will lead 20 to 40 Second Life recruits through guided meditations designed to reduce their stress levels.

Note: They are teaching their subjects the Relaxation Response, which I believe is based on Transcendental Meditation. — mb