Croquet 2 Play

While nowhere near as functional as Qwaq this video of Sun’s MPK20 does a decent job conveying a feel for what virtual workplaces are. Sun’s Virtual Workplace site also nicely states the case for using 3D collaboration tools:

On any given day, over 50% of Sun’s workforce is remote. MPK20 is a virtual 3D environment in which employees can accomplish their real work, share documents, and meet with colleagues using natural voice communication. Just like on Sun’s physical Menlo Park campus, known as “MPK,” inhabitants of the virtual MPK20 office building can work together in planned meetings, or can talk informally in unplanned encounters.

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One question we are frequently asked is why use 3D for a collaboration environment? While it might be possible to build a 2D tool with functionality similar to MPK20, the spacial layout of the 3D world coupled with the immersive audio provides strong cognitive cues that enhance collaboration. For example, the juxtapostion of avatars in the world coupled with the volume and location of the voices allows people to intuit who they can talk to at any given time. The 3D space provides a natural way to organize multiple, simultaneous conversations. Likewise, the arrangement of the objects within the space provides conversational context. If other avatars are gathering near the entrance to a virtual conference room, it is a good guess that they are about to attend a meeting in that space. It is then natural to talk to those people about the content or timing of the meeting, just as you would if attending a physical meeting. In terms of data sharing, looking at objects together is a natural activity. With the 3D spacial cues, each person can get an immediate sense of what the other collaborators can and cannot see.

A couple of months ago in A Meshed-up Jungle Is Born, I predicted that “things will happen quickly” when meshes interconnect. Well forget about Web 2.0 or Web x.x for that matter, Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud is about to open the floodgates on a new era of what I’ve been calling the Mesh Jungle.

For newer, “Web 2.0″ companies, providing APIs to allow third parties to “mash up” data from multiple sources is becoming commonplace.Amazon, however, is offering more than just programmatic access to its product catalog. The e-commerce giant boasts one of the most battle-tested computing infrastructures on the Internet, which it is opening up to outsiders.

“A fundamental premise behind what we are trying to do at Amazon Web Services is provide external developers all the benefits of scale that Amazon enjoys as a large Web site and large consumer and producer of Web infrastructure,” said Adam Selipsky, vice president of product management and developer relations at Amazon Web Services.

Rather than contract with a hosting company, buy hardware and hire staff, a customer could tap Amazon for computing power, storage and other general-purpose computing services.

Selipsky argued that outsiders can tap into the performance, reliability and security that the engineers of Amazon.com created over the years, which includes a total technology investment of more than $1.5 billion.

Web giants lure developers | CNET News.com

Read more

Actually I should say real in another way since the atoms that make up the bits of data stored and displayed by a computer are very real.

Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, which oversees such well-known hotel brands as Sheraton, St. Regis and Westin, will launch its newest chain, Aloft, in the online society “Second Life” in September.In the brick-and-mortar realm, the plan is for the first Aloft inn to open sometime in 2008, catering to active, urban 30- to 50-year-olds. But the real-world lodge will be preceded by a 3D cyberversion designed to prompt feedback from virtual guests and help guide the earthbound endeavor.
“We think the SL world is a specific community of early adopters, of tech-savvy people who like to voice their opinions,” said Brian McGuinness, vice president of the Aloft Hotels brand.

Aloft will be the first hotel for “Second Life,” which has already incorporated businesses from Wells Fargo to Major League Baseball. Marc Schiller, CEO and founder of ElectricArtists 2.0, a marketing services company, approached Starwood two months ago with the idea of a virtual debut for Aloft. Starwood then purchased an island in “Second Life,” and construction began on the hotel a month ago.

Second Lifers get first look at new hotel chain | CNET News.com

There are several nice screenshots of Aloft.

Future Boy: Google moves into virtual worlds - May. 12, 2006
Online virtual worlds are a hot topic, as gamers spend more and more time playing online and virtual real estate turns into a real market. Now Google (Research) is getting into the business — and if its plans come to fruition, the virtual world will never be the same. In fact, it may look more like the world we know than futurists ever imagined.

“I would expect to see someone using Google Earth as a virtual social space by the end of the year,” says Jerry Paffendorf, research director of the Acceleration Studies Foundation, a futurist organization.

…Google Earth is the most likely candidate to become a metaverse. Just add avatars, they say, and the possibilities are endless. …
There are, in short, many more opportunities in a virtual version of the real world than in an entirely fantastical world like Second Life — or indeed Stephenson’s original vision of the metaverse.

“We’re really interested in the (’Second Life’) platform,” said Justin Schaffer, senior vice president of new media at Major League Baseball Advanced Media. “When the Electric Sheep guys approached us, we were initially skeptical of the technology. But once we got into it, it seemed like a tremendous tool to build community.”

GridBlog » That’s nice.
Once again there’s word of gigantic corporations trundling into Second Life, using it as a very expensive 3d brochure.

A nice comparison of recent movie and record promotions.