Virtual Reality Creeps in with Wii Hacks
I should preface this one by stating it's interesting what one's mind thinks about when you are up for a 4 AM feeding with your newborn. However, I was sitting here staring at our Wii Balance Board during this particular feeding and remembered seeing some pretty fascinating hacks online.The Wii system itself is pretty interesting. The use of relatively simple technology that is only moderately evolved from the days of the original Nintendo's Duck Hunt emphasizes the ability of innovation in user interface to produce results as great as, or better than evolutions in graphics. But take that one step further and make these relatively simple technologies an open source platform for others to tweak and you have a plethora of opportunities for new Virtual Reality applications of inexpensive technologies.
Johnny Lee has shown how a nominal additional investment in hardware can produce a digital white board and highlights the benefits for educational institutions. He also shows how reversing the sensor bar and controller can produce a head tracking, VR helmet-like imitation. More recently, the Wii Balance Board has been hacked by guys in a German Artificial Intelligence lab and can be used to navigate Google Earth and virtual environments like World of Warcraft and Second Life. Who wouldn't love to surf, both physically and figuratively, over their city anyway?
It is fascinating how, like so many successful evolutions of technology, Virtual Reality is not hitting us overnight with some single leap in evolution like so many predicted. Instead, it is creeping in among us through the continuous evolution of innovative interface implementations.
For more material on this topic, check out YouTube Wii Hacks and / or the clips below. As a bonus, in Johnny's Lee's famous hack video below, he mentions how YouTube has really expedited the evolution of innovations like these. Roughly quoting Johnny, "In 5 months an idea has gone from experimentation on my desktop to a commercially available product."
Johnny Lee's Hack Video, including VR head sensor:
The Wii Balance Board Hacks from Germany:
Labels: Innovation, Open Source, Social Networking, Virtual Reality, Wii
Just Released: Christian Marshall Lichtenwalner!
Joint Venture, Trina Weymon and Benjamin Sean Lichtenwalner are proud to announce the much anticipated release of Christian Marshall LichtenwalnerTM. Christian is the production version of the project formerly codenamed “Ichabod Hortimer”. This first release of the joint venture is the product of 9 months intensive development and quality assurance testing. Christian was fully deployed by 2:33 AM June 10th, 2008 after a release effort of 14 hours led by Trina Weymon Lichtenwalner. Mrs. Lichtenwalner is now resting comfortably at the organization’s headquarters in Ossining, New York. Lichtenwalner, Inc. is proud to announce that Christian Marshall exceeds all analyst’s expectations. For a product sample, please see below.On a more serious note, Trina and I would like to thank you all for your thoughts and prayers. Mother, baby (and father) are all doing well.
Labels: Personal
Web 2.0: Where Do You Stand?
Business Week (BW) recently updated one of their hottest pieces from 2005. The article was on the impact of Blogs in the workplace. As a result, the June 2nd edition of BW highlighted the positive and negative impact of this evolution in communication on the workplace.The metrics painted an interesting picture:
- 25% of U.S. adults online read a blog once a month (Forrester cited)
- IBM's internal social network, "Beehive", has 30,000 employees on it
- Twitter estimates 1 Million users now
- Dell's service on Twitter has brought in $500k+, in new orders, in the last year
- Splogs (Spam Blogs) now account for 90% of all blog postings (though filters catch most)
- Technoratti now indexes 74 Million blogs (but only 5.2 Million are estimated as active)
- Best Buy's social staff site, "Blue Shirt Nation" has 20,000 participants, most exited staff remain users
- "Millions of us are now hanging out on the Internet with customers, befriending rivals, clicking through pictures of our boss at a barbecue or seeing what she is reading at the beach. It's as if the walls around our companies are vanishing and old org charts are lying on their sides"
- "This can be disturbing for top management who are losing control, at least in the traditional sense."
- "...companies that don't adapt are sure to get lots of (the downside)"
- "...we have developed top-down reflexes that are nearly Pavlovian. We have to reprogram ourselves."
- "(employees) may see what technologies their competitors are putting into alpha tests and get the buzz on new rounds of financing."
- "Work and leisure, colleague and rival; they all blend on these networks."
- "...wikis raze traditional hierarchies: An intern can amend the work of a senior engineer."
- "Managers have to make sure that quieter employees don't lose out."
Whatever happened to those companies that didn't put up a website anyway? Happy twittering.
Labels: Blog, IBM, Management, Social Networking, Strategy, Web 2.0
Achieving Your Dreams and Lessons for Life
Can you ask for more in a presentation? 1 hour and 16 minutes of life lessons, wisdom on achieving your dreams and much, much more. Carnegie Mellon Professor Randy Pausch, who is dying from pancreatic cancer, gave his last lecture at the university Sept. 18, 2007. Included within is a great deal of humor, optimism and lessons for everyone. There is also a real servant-leadership undertone. By the time he finishes, you feel as though you've gained a mentor. As a bonus, Randy is a professor in virtual reality - so most of us "techies" will find a lot of the references particularly familiar:Labels: Inspiration, Servant-Leadership, Wisdom
