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
Team Building Across the World? No Problem.
I recently had the opportunity to participate in a study by the folks at IBM's Social Computing Group. I first met a member of their team (Jason Ellis) at Lotusphere 2008. There, I heard how the team used Second Life to create team building exercises. That was exciting, but it also felt a bit like, "just another cool use of virtual worlds". Still, I volunteered to help them in any future studies – and I am glad I did.
Today, our chosen team met to familiarize ourselves with the environment and try a simple game. The objective was not to begin "team building", yet, but to get us prepped for these exercises.
Shy of a few brief email exchanges with the coordinator of this event (Katie Bessiere), I had not met any of the team members before (Jason was not in this exercise). However, by the time we were done, I already had people I had never met before, providing me freebies (including a cool IBM T-shirt), suggesting hip places to check out in the world and offering advice on how to improve my SL experience. Within about 20 minutes, people were poking fun of each other (in a kind-hearted manner) and speaking like friends. So, I felt welcomed as a member of the group and registered everyone as friends in SL. Before we ended the event, several members from IBM were sharing knowledge on similar projects in the (admittedly gigantic) organization's research efforts. It was clear there was something to this concept of virtual worlds for team building and knowledge sharing.
Yet, as I mentioned earlier, we were only supposed to be preparing for the team building exercises yet to come. Perhaps that was the best part of all. None of this "felt" like team building or knowledge sharing. Unlike the "real world" (or "first life" as us hip SL'ers say), where you schedule the day for an off-site, dress in grunge clothes and march off to listen to (often) a stranger talk about how to build your team, we were doing something totally different. Our small group had gathered on relatively short notice, with virtually no extra effort (assuming you are already in SL) and were quickly chatting away, sharing stories and knowledge and yes, even team building.
There's definitely something to this. I can't wait to see what happens when we are actually building a team…
Labels: Second Life, Social Networking, Virtual Reality, Web 2.0
