Don’t Play Games With Me! Promises and Pitfalls of Gameful Design
Predictions: The state of the internet – 2020
A colleague challenged me to do some predictions on the state of the Internet in 2020. So, here they are.
1. Invisible Internet and cloud computing.
Users will no longer experience ‘being on the internet’ as a separate activity as most applications will be online anyway. Google’s Chrome OS is a vision of operating systems of the future. Handling digital tasks will be stored online by default. Restoring backups become a thing of the past as virtual servers create live redundancy. Mobile devices connect to the Internet with ease as 1Gbit data speeds are attained at low cost.
2. Social networking and user identity.
Online communities will become to be seen what they really are; tools for people to connect. the hype will subside and a competion will arise between large parties over stewardship of active user accounts, as these accounts are becoming more and more accepted virtual representations of their owners.
3. Households get private networks sorted out.
The current PC in every household will loose its function as an Internet terminal and be turned into the households central server to which other devices around the household connect. Users round the home and workplace will use smart phones and tablet PC’s to access and create their data-rich content and manipulate the environment around them.
4. Mixed reality, metaverse emerges.
Mixed reality (MR) (encompassing both augmented reality and augmented virtuality) refers to the merging of real and virtual worlds to produce new environments and visualisations where physical and digital objects co-exist and interact in real time. A mix of reality, augmented reality, augmented virtuality and virtual reality. (wikipedia)
The attention attracted by the re-emergence of 3D cinema and promise of 3D home television lowers the barrier for acceptance of virtual rich environments. close-eye projection of data on to glasses allows for a non-intrusive augmented reality experience. The immersive qualities of virtual environments will be explored for educational and other training purposes.
5. Microtransactions, trust and value.
People spend more money on the Internet as they learn to trust it as safe for certain product groups. People will start to value certain online service and possessions like their Gmail or Face book account and are willing to pay for them. Virtual goods markets in games are large already. This may extend to other types of virtual goods like a virtual bouquet of flowers as a birthday gift.
Nokia shows off day-to-day augmented reality products
The glasses shown here will be my new PDA.
Social networks and gaming rewire your brain
A thousand Facebook friends is an indication of an individual’s isolation rather than evidence they are comfortable in a school or social community. And exercise is far better for everybody than obsessively slaying monsters or indulging adolescent interests in online pornography. As a source of information, entertainment and economic development, the internet has changed the world enormously and for the better in the past 15 years. But every revolution brings unanticipated social side-effects. Mr Obama and Baroness Greenfield remind us that the world online is a simulacrum of society, and that Second Life is called that because compared with the real thing, it is.
Avatar and 3D spaces go seperate ways with Evolver
Evolver.com has come out of beta today. The service lets you define a stand alone avatar on their site, inside your account. You then export the avatar to a range of platforms, from Facebook to immersive 3D worlds. Evolver also lets you create scenes with the avatars you have created, one example being the Hallmark moment below.
The sweetest effect of this, is that I now have a single point to manage my avatar from for my online personality. I prefer to have the same looking avatar when i move through different 3D communities. This service facilitates me in presenting myself the same way any where.
Animators need to check out the program evolver have set up, allowing content creators to set up paid services in which they use the avatars in your Evolver account.
Virtual partners seek to make relation off line
Cambridge researches shines a more positive light on relations that spring from virtual encouters, positioning the 3D online space as just a medium to pursue their relations.
Us Now
Us Now from Banyak Films on Vimeo.
The machine is us – Web 2.0 explained with Web 2.0
Totally cool movie, explaining in under 5 minutes in a gripping way what exactly the current state of the web is.
Motives for being in virtual worlds
Researchers find new way of measuring ‘reality’ of virtual worlds
A research team, led by North Carolina State University’s Dr. Mitzi M. Montoya, has developed a new way of measuring how “real” online virtual worlds are – an important advance for the emerging technology that can be used to foster development of new training and collaboration applications by companies around the world.
A global economy, the rising cost of travel, and increasingly tight budgets have left companies exploring the possible use of virtual worlds to train employees and foster collaboration in areas such as research and development, but until now no one has had a way to measure just how “real” those worlds are. The researchers focused on developing a measurement tool specifically for business applications in the virtual world, noting that the productivity and effectiveness of workers interacting via these online environments is closely linked to how well the workers are able to feel as if they are in the virtual realm.
“This is an important issue,” Montoya says, “because we believe that if users feel they are ‘present’ in the virtual world, they will collaborate better with other members of their team – and the more effective the virtual world will be as a setting for research and development or other collaborative enterprises.” In addition, Montoya explains “an increased sense of presence in the virtual world leads to better comprehension and retention of information if the technology is being used for training purposes, and trainees are happier with the process.” Montoya is the Zelnak Professor of Marketing and Innovation at NC State.
The measurement scale developed by the researchers for the virtual world is called Perceived Virtual Presence (PVP), and factors in how users interact with the virtual environment, with their work in that environment, and with other users. “Now that we have developed the PVP scale,” Montoya says, “it can be used to determine what PVP levels are most conducive to training, collaboration or other applications.” Effectively, the PVP scale can be used to design a virtual environment that has the degree of reality that will best cater to a company’s specific needs.
