In 3D virtual spaces, interactive objects, game elements, and game-based interactivity can make this type of immersive learning a reality.   I’ve been re-reading Janet Murray – especially the chapters in Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace (MIT, 1997) that deal with interaction, immersion, and agency.  Murray, and other scholars who stalk my bookshelf including Ian Bogost (Persuasive Games [MIT, 2007]), and Edward Castronova (Synthetic Worlds [Chicago Press, 2005], Exodus to the Virtual World [Palgrave/MacMillan, 2007]), Chris Crawford (On Interactive Storytelling [New Riders, 2005]), see immersion happening in familiar places, like the epistolary novels of the 18th century – as well as in virtual spaces that tell stories for historical and educational purposes. Then they take these links one step further, emphasizing that the computer making our connection to these spaces gives us agency (the ability to direct events), and that interactive objects within these spaces both enhance agency and deepen immersion.

*

Steamfish is a steampunk-themed game designed for high school students in order to teach principles of controlled clinical trials.    The game element here is a series of adventure-quests tied to building the tools and skills necessary to signal for rescue from a terrible crash; meantime, the students are afflicted by the same game engine with scurvy – and go through the clinical trial pioneered by Dr. James Lind in 1748.  Steamfish is filled with interactive objects that provide period-relevant information on morse code and medical theory, as well as clues to solving the quests.  These clues only become available once the player has reached a certain level in their quests, so achievement and perseverance is rewarded.

Fran Wilde develops interactive and immersive environments for Rezzable, Inc., and was recently Visiting Fellow in Virtual Worlds with The University of the Arts, Philadelphia. She holds a Master of Fine Arts in writing and a Master’s Degree in publications and interaction design, and has fifteen years of teaching experience, from high school to graduate-level studies.

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Online market continues to expand and will leap into 2013 with mobile, social net and MMO driving innovation online. Search will continue to eat up traditional ad spends.

Key Notes on 2013 Forecasts:

* Mobile web is finally here? maybe! 2013 Gartner guess there will be more mobiles than pc’s by 2013. Screens will still of course be small, but fast access to net and better processors will allow new user experiences and constant contact with online services/content.  Looks like a battle for iTunes massive/dominant marketshare from Nokia, Motorola is on the way also?

* Advertising is diverting more and more from traditional to online–50% seems to be search related. Online advertisers like the transparency to link spend to customer transactions.  But– costs for search are growing rapidly (great for Google of course). Display in rich media/video also is hot for advertisers to get above the noise and have mindshare for early adopters.

* Premium content — via iTunes and paywall are growing rapidly. And high margin (Activision sets 30% margin targets).

* 600 million PCs will be able to play MMOs by 2013 — making PC the dominant access point (source PCGA) despite Mobile growth? Clearly these will need to co-exist and deliver a unified experience across brand.

Growth in advertising/interactive spend online

*$36.7 Billion 2013 up from $15.2 Billion 2009 (BIA/Kelsey via techcrunchies) meanwhile traditional advertising will decrease from $115 Billion 2009 to $108 Billion 2013.

* 2013 $14.3 Billion (from 7.8 2009) in US Display ads = rich media and video pre/post > source Forrester.

* 2013 $2.2 Billion social media (from $0.75 billion in 2009) > source Forrester.

iTunes/other app and premium content sales

from Gartner 18Jan2010:

* $29.5 Billion in 2013 up from $6.2 Billion in 2009.

* 87% of downloads in 2013 still will be free suggesting the “freemium” model is still best way to generate premium content sales as well as generate mobile ad revenues

Mobile Ads

* More mobiles than PCs by 2013 (1.82 vs 1.78 billion) Gartner.

* $3.1 Billion in 2013 (Kelsey via Clickz) of which $2.3 Billion will be search.

Sales for Digital Goods

* $6 Billion by 2013 (source Piper Jaffray via emarketer).  Report also notes that revenues in virtual worlds are dropping, while increasing in online social games

General Trends

* Highlights from Comscore Report via Marketingcharts: on reach/clickthrough: “Even as new capabilities emerge that leverage the “social” value of the medium, this channel already delivers substantial reach for ad campaigns and despite low click-through rates, there is measurable view-through value from these ads.”

* Olympics Viewers Multi-task(Nielsen via marketingcharts)= twitter and facebook while watching events.

* Top Ten Freemium conversions to Paid (source techcrunchies) = 1. Contact members, 2. Access to experts, 3. Storage, 4. Ad-free browsing, 5. Custom domain, 6. Enhanced gameplay, 7. Enhanced support, 8. Member visibility, 9. Networking, 10. Private groups

* Activision Blizzard CEO remarking on $4.28 Billion in  2009 sales from titles like World of Warcraft, Guitar Hero: “Despite these challenging times, in 2010 we remain focused on expanding operating margins by growing our high-margin digital/online revenues…we expect to deliver a year of record net earnings and operating margins and are taking another step towards our long-term objective of operating margins of 30 per cent or more.”

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Check links below or just go to our virtual, online, 3D immersive areas and make your own great discoveries now on our opensource-based, opensim grid!

Recent coverage on Heritage Key and our King Tut Virtual area on CNN iDesk –> click to watch it here . It is a nice explanation of the main idea and enthusiasm from presenters is excellent!

(there is an sorta annoying pre-roll add that you can’t skip and opens a new window if you touch it–future of monetization? Force feeding ads?)

Other recent press/blog coverage :

* BBC News: As an interactive community, Heritage Key also allows visitors to join lectures and meet with people from around the world to share and discuss their experiences.

* Easier.com: This immersive adventure is complimented with a media-rich website. So, whether you want to step back in time and see Stonehenge, watch YouTube videos on your iPhone

* Tech Radar: a mainstream application of a once niche feature that reminds us why we all thought it was such a good idea.

* Iggys Blog: Improved Avatars and Navigation

* Virtual Learning Blog: I’ll definitely be back to King Tut Virtual! I have a classroom of 2nd graders who study ancient Egypt every year. This…will be a lasting resource for the future!

* Vorticism blog: I was therefore thrilled yesterday to discover Heritage Key

* PocketLint — Sorry no Spinal Tap at Virtual Stonehenge (but that is a good idea!)

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The Extinction of an Old Friend

From one perspective, new technologies should have already changed the ways in which online users deal with the web. The market is loaded with cheap, powerful hardware and low cost bandwidth. There are thousands of software applications and services and tens of thousands of sites for almost every interest area.

Looking out across the horizon--not a mouse in sight.

From another perspective, changing user behavior is always a slower and more difficult process than most people expect it to be  (or early adopters have the patience to wait around for). When the change comes, though, it is a moment of opportunity as we learn to let go of old habits and tools that no longer help us as they once did.

With that view, I think the mouse is on the edge of extinction. My guess is that within two years, you won’t even be able to buy one that easily. What will that mean to the future of online experiences?  Plenty.  But let’s first consider the mouse’s desktop companion, the keyboard.

As most know, the keyboard was designed for the mechanical typewriter. The keys were designed to both optimize finger movement and to minimize the chance of the typewriter arms of getting all tangled up, though I seem to remember “a” and “e” getting caught together quite a bit. Remember the details we needed to use that technology properly? It was important to use the striking force setting to get through carbon copies.  The memory of those carbon copies is still vestigal on today’s emails as “CC:”.  And what about white-out/typex (that made Mike Nesmith’s from the Monkees mom a millionaire btw)- the only way to delete and revise without retyping?  How quaint that seems now. But even with all the advances we’ve made, we still use this same keyboard layout, even though a pc keyboard is digital. In the future, new generations of users could be sent off to more speedy layouts such as the Dvorak keyboard patented in 1936 (with an eclectic following of some 100,000’s of users today and used apparently by Steve Wozniak).

What is less well known about the QWERTY keyboard is that it was also designed to make it easy for typewriter salesmen to demo their fancy new machine to potential buyers. Imagine someone being confronted by a traveling salesman with a fancy, shiny new typewriter as asking why it works any better than paper and pencil. There should have been discussions about how typing would make people lazy and not learn how to write properly (which has probably happened). Of course people would need to learn a new skill to install a ribbon and be strong enough to pound out some words. The advantage would be consistently professional looking documents that would be much easier to read. Then the salesman would crank in a fresh piece of paper and with one finger peck out the word “typewriter” using just the top row of keys. Probably like most tech salespeople they didn’t really know how to use their own technology beyond the demo.

Decades later we are still are bound by the legacy of mechanics and simple demos.

But as the Web becomes more complex, offering more varied types of media, more people are spending more time online.  In this new era, use of the mouse and keyboard are  becoming major obstacles to offering new kinds of user experiences. The browser is also a limiting factor as it is forces us to scroll a “page” at a time – scrolling that we have to do with, you guessed it, the mouse.

Breaking the Constraints and Releasing the New Online Experience

People increasingly want information on demand in the form they want. This is much more of an active process than zapping on tv. Further people want more threads running at once. It can hit overload at times, but compare multi-tasking to channel surfing and you will see the difference in pace and content consumption.

So, let’s fast forward a few years: what does the online world look like without the mouse? We’ll be using touchscreens and movement sensors to control our access to information, much in the way smartphones do today. The iPhone has really made a big impact by allowing people to be away from their desktop computers, but still have the ability to interact online.

People will still want something personal–in the way that their pc is theirs (sorta even now as hardware is shared quite a bit). Yet it won’t be the computing power or the screen that is theirs–it will be their online presence and data assets and the physical device that enables navigation. Gartner guesses that by 2013 there will be more smartphones in use than PCs for the first time. More than 1 Billion people will access the internet from a mobile device as well (much more good stat porn here at TechCrunchies thanks Anand!).

I can see where “wearable” devices will be more useful to link us to the net and authenticate us.  Finally the Dick Tracy watch? The content online will also be more visually oriented to convey more information faster, and better. Now could well be the moment for the avatar to start to be more significant, as online content becomes a richer environment to explore and consume. Instead of page views, we will become focused on immersion. In effect it will be the collision of the 2D, browser web with multi-player online games controlled by an iPhone. I guess you can call it the 3D wii web?

The direction of something like Natal is amazing may show us the way to a more natural human-machine interface. It would be even cooler to have goal-oriented behaviours integrated. For example, wouldn’t you like to buy the cheapest copy of a book from a trusted supplier without having to search and compare so much? Or, to ask for the best value at a local restaurant for something that agrees with your diet (without already having dined on similar fare?). The challenge then is to enable lighter touch, but more powerful interactions that get people much better results than they can otherwise. Science fiction novels long ago laid out the solution to this type of interaction with information.

Then you must add in the social dimension to truly see the future.  Distributed social networks have grown and evolved since the days of the CB radio – and they will be very much a part of how new content and online experiences will be distributed and how they should be designed. The combined dynamics of collaboration, competition, and status are really what seem to engage and drive exciting new online usage. The one thing CB radios have over current online communities is that they delivered real-time communications, while most of today’s online social networking is delayed (asynchronous) to a greater or lesser extent.  But not always – online virtual communities found in games and in virtual experience do allow for both real-time (synchronous) and asynchronous communication – and this is important for the future.

The future of the web should be better results for “social transactions”.  Social transactions are things you do with other people, rather than solo, or things that vest you into a community that then enables you to do more.

The future then – the Net net means online information that is more cinematic in detail, deep in quality, smart ,and ubiquitous across access points will open a massive appetite for mainstream consumption of immersive, rich, and social content. And you won’t need to use your mouse or be tied to leftovers from the mechanical revolution.

Avoid the Noise – Find Real-Time Communities

While activities like shopping, buying books or making travel plans are normal for many online users, in 2010 we are hitting the puking point with spam and linkbait—at least the hard-core online users are. The casual users and noobs are still good targets for scams and will click on even the most annoying pop-up ad.  Online content is growing—but low quality content is growing most quickly.

Within all this noise and potential for risk/wasted effort, people are starting to look for relevant communities that can be trusted—trusted to de-clutter information and protect their time from useless crap. People are also taking some time to choose sites that can be trusted to hold personal information and data including images, video, and blogs.  Flickr is an excellent example here (not a surprise it was started then by gamers who now have a new 2D MMO coming out called Glitch).  People come to the web to do something specific—ie buy something or research something. The ways in which they do things need to be more relevant and value-adding—as well as more entertaining and potentially a place to  meet people (not bots or scammers).

Creating new online communities that are focused, media-rich and vibrant is not easy today. I like two sites that have something going on these days the Daily Beast and Livestrong. They have the mix of commissioned and UGC. You can feel the energy of the contributors and the interaction of the visitors.  Yet, these are still “publisher” sites though even with the UGC load. They are missing the real-time components that will/should define online communities.

Within our work on Heritage Key we are starting down the road to address some of the initial opportunities that may be unique and compelling enough.  Our ambition is to make Heritage Key a community enabler/manager as opposed to being another online publisher. The site is media-rich featuring original video, maps, images, directories and thousands of pieces of content. Yet, what will make HK most unique is the  real-time social interactions in the 3D, virtual online areas.

At Heritage Key, you can visit the ancient world –either as it exists today in the real world, online, or virtually at various periods in time. You can plan your trip to Stonehenge on the website—or explore Stonehenge across time with other people through the virtual environments. You can study images and watch videos about King Tut—and you can go discover the tomb and see artefacts in photo-realistic 3D immersive spaces.  While there is an element of casual gaming at play, there are also the real facts and accurate historical information. (check out the coverage on CNN iDesk)

The act of exploring is both active and interactive.  Exploring, both with and without other people, makes the content more stimulating because one is primed for discovery. In the future at Heritage Key, explorers stand to enhance their online identities and gain status as they achieve goals within the environment, thus making their efforts pay off for them online.

The end result should be more engaging, more accessible and more social experiences that ultimately yield faster learning and deeper understanding. If we get it right, then visiting a museum  or an archaeological site should be more interesting and relevant. And then when it is, people should want/need to share back their experiences with the appreciative community.

Yet isolated online communities won’t be enough either. We will want to move freely between thenm as we do across web sites today. Yet there is a more involved process of avatar activity and managing digital assets. We will need a sort of community of communities to make this work perhaps (more on this topic in future posts).

While the web may really start to look more and more like the “Matrix” in the next few years, the answer to why future online content engages users will be less about flashy graphics and more about what users gain by visiting and interacting.  Users keep wanting more and more and only solid communities will be able to deliver satisfying experiences.

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Rezzable created an on-line virtual questing environment to support Ytouring ’s Starfish production where students learn through questing in a 3D environment about Scurvy and Clinical Trials. Steamfish website was created to hold all the information for the students to learn more about scurvy and clinical trials also see their scores, watch videos and link to other relevant sites.  After seeing Starfish audiences are invited to enter Steamfish a specially created world. First they create their own character (avatar) on the Steamfish Website . In character they arrive on board the recently ’shipwrecked’ Stella Maris. This is where they start their quest to learn more about scurvy and clinical trials.  If you want to start your quest please click here to learn more at Rezzable.

The Steamfish game was developed by Rezzable as a virtual experience using Opensim technology.  The Opensim platform allows for more free-form immersion in a 3D narrative environment, the ability to surround players with objects small and large to investigate for enhanced learning, and the layering of a game engine to coordinate progress and scoring. In the game, players learn about the origins and basis for clinical trials by becoming part of an alternate-history version of the Lind scurvy trial of 1748, so a number of challenges were weighted heavily to that part of the story: including visits to the doctor for diagnosis, symptom reporting, and treatment. Woven in with those elements were the kinds of quests that help restore order to the ship, and locate enough equipment and knowledge to call for rescue.

How to Get Started:

Quick Tips to Get you started on your Steamfish Quest:

• Create your avatar at Rezzable
• Download of the viewer to be able to access the 3D environment
• Click on this link to access directly to SteamFish
• Click on the panel on the left side of the door in Steamfish arrival area
• Accept the hud ( Left hand side blue panel will come down)
• Open inventory on the bottom panel and find Steamfish Hud right click to wear it
• Now You are ready to start your quest go through the doors ! Good Luck!

Designing a questing system in a 3D world  to achieve a successful learning environment for 11- 15 years old Secondary school kids have been a great challenge.

Asked Fran Wilde, who is the lead builder in the project,  about the challenges of designing the quest in a 3D Environment :

‘There were a couple of primary challenges in designing Steamfish.  We needed to craft a storyline and a visual space that supported the quest elements and the educational goals of the project.   We had to make sure the quests had a good balance of different types of actions and expectations, as well as enough imagination to make them interesting, relevant,  substantive, and immersive.

A major challenge was keeping the material accurate, while keeping the experience from being dry or boring. That meant we needed to rely on all sorts of devices, from various objects that offered clothing and hints towards completing other tasks, to developing machines, tools, and dialogue that would capture the eye and the imagination.  Lastly, teaching the players how the game worked, and helping them feel comfortable playing and knowledgeable about what was expected of them at every stage was important, especially because this was a new platform to many.  User testing helped us define key points where additional hints were needed, quests could be refined, and signage and visual clues could help support the game play.  The game HUD (Heads Up Display) that Ordinal Malaprop scripted and we designed to show health, achievements, and quest instructions – as well as other collected items; and the feedback to players developed as a narrative from elements within the game were key elements in achieving that goal.’

How do you see the virtual worlds working together with education/schools?

I think that this is one major reason why I am involved with designing interactive elements in Virtual Worlds – because the opportunity for rich, immersive, adaptive experiences and activities — no matter where a student or school is located — is so vast on this platforms.  In the future, I see some virtual worlds being places that individuals and groups of learners can take private field trips to any virtual place, *at any period of time*, and  engage in a set of activities that is potentially tailored to their curriculum, before going ‘home’ again to reflect on their experiences and possibly build on them in their own virtual regions.  Rezzable’s ability to create a private, active region on demand for a group makes the first part of this possible now. I’m hoping that interaction becomes part of education in new ways – with both programmed aspects and live players who can move a lesson forward through a virtual experience.  I think with tools like these, education groups can use virtual worlds to teach, to immerse, and to connect with their own students as well as with students and educators interested in the same topics anywhere on the planet.

Steam fish project has successfully been integrated with web and 3D environment where we created both platforms to enrich the students with learning tools and material about the given subject and at the same time encouraging them to participate in a competitive environment where they are challenged. At the end of the quest each school can check the result on the leader board to see who is leading the quest. The website opens up to endless amounts of information about the subject if the kids were to learn more in this case about Scurvy or Clinical trials. In our experience, as the young minds feel involved in the process of learning they feel more concerned about the given subject. 

If you would like to learn more about the quest please sign up at Rezzable and start your quest now. If you would like to know more about what we are building in Heritage Key you can also follow us on Heritage Key Virtual

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Our web-oriented event and content series -- the Ancient World in London -- will run for 3 months. It is an example of how online communities to use a broad mix of media and tools to create new, popular content.

The Community Challenge

I don’t expect that just because we will make more web content and tools that those efforts alone will generate meaningful community effect. We will need to meet people live and mix events and contests into the action the online content. Part of our mission with Heritage Key is to make history/archeology more accessible and allow people to participate (somehow).

Visitors will be invited to join:

• Contest and Quests in London and in new 3d online virtual areas — and of course win cool prizes
• Contribute articles, images, video clips (and get paid a little)
• Attend lectures, discussions
• Help us complete a massive listing of places, artefacts, key people, timeline events and publications
• Share their ideas on good tours of London

Getting the balance between local London and sharing that online = globally will require attention. We are also excited about the Grand Finale event which will be live in London and webcasted/virtual simulcasted. It will be an ancient world costume party.

The content will be hosted using our Rezzable Real-time Community Platform which is comprised mainly of Drupal and Opensim plus a bunch of code of our own. More about our tech here.

Event Partners Still Needed

We have the main sponsor in place, but still are looking for Event Partners to support events and offer relevant prizes or services to the events/content series. If you might be interested please drop us an email at info@rezzable.com. It should be a great opportunity for a range of companies that might be interested in understanding more about the social web, online video and virtual 3D online.

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London Eye-Pods. The wheel goes round and round on the web also as AOL makes latest flight to the web future as "Aol." . Will it be retro-chic to have an @aol.com email? Yikes.

“Bricks” and “Bricks and Clicks” just were at the mercy of the “pure play” internet machines, creating epic enterprise value and trading easy money and easier stock for established (perhaps troubled) businesses.  Well of course, we know how that all played out now. I must have missed somewhere that eBay unloaded Butterfields to Bonhams for a lot less than $260mm.  CMGI went down the drain in a huge sucking sound. Now we have the final coup de grace on AOL/TimeWarner. Yes, Ted Turner was right all along–it takes a lot of skill, experience and brainpower to run a big global enterprise. Internet companies mainly don’t have a clue on this and shouldn’t be allowed to mess around with live ammo–unless they are Google (or maybe Amazon).

Decoding Aol.’s Vision of the Future

So, what about all of this? Well, think about the future. Here’s what the ex-Googler now boss at AOL says about their path to redemption:

“Our new identity is uniquely dynamic. Our business is focused on creating world-class experiences for consumers and AOL is centered on creative and talented people – employees, partners, and advertisers. We have a clear strategy that we are passionate about and we plan on standing behind the AOL brand as we take the company into the next decade,” said Tim Armstrong, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of AOL.

You need to take a look at the new AOL logo to understand some of this corporate spew. The brand is “Aol.” and has a slew of rotating images–that immediately reminds of the ill-fated BA tailfin ethnic art  designs boondogle championed by Sir Rod Eddington. When a brand is lost in the woods, they can reach out to people that don’t know them–or at least pay some very expensive branding firm to justifying their “clear strategy.”

Is there any hope the “Aol.” will be cool? Can you exist online without a cool/techie brand? AOL was never cool and always seemed to appeal to the web-newbie-scaredy-cats hiding in their walled garden. Does anyone actually use a @aol.com email address? Seems a symbol of cluelessness online? Hey, maybe it will become retro-chic to have an @aol..com email? Nah.

Yet, even in AOL’s morass–they have some revenues, some customers and a new management team. Looks like they will try to shed some business units (ICQ, Bebo on the block and MapQuest likely) and get focused and more cash to work with. So where do they see some hope? Looks like next generation “user experiences” online.

Again according to AOL boss:

“the next wave of the Internet will really be about content.”

Which PCWorld reports in response:

“I don’t agree with that,” Sterling said. “Content is very important and Aol has some good sites, but there’s a lot of content that’s commoditized, especially around news. It’s a more nuanced issue, more complex.”

Still, Aol is jumping feet-first into original content creation. The company now has 3,500 full-time and freelance “content creators,” like writers, photographers, videographers and journalists, and 80 percent of content on Aol sites is original.

I suppose it is a good sign that the analyst disagree–wtf do they really know. It is of course ironic that Aol. alone is trying to do what it was unable to achieve as part of TimeWarner. But if Aol. can become cool enough, well maybe they can create interesting content for the new online post-convergent metaverse?  But, I generally think that big companies don’t really innovate or at least are never disruptive enough to do something amazing–so if Aol. is going to do something, perhaps they are right to get a lot smaller and a lot more aggressive.

Why is cool important btw? Cool companies are either profitable and can do what they want, how they want or are so cool that people love them faster (=low cost for marketing) or love to work for them (=work at lower costs points). So if Aol. is neither cool nor profitable–well they are not gonna make it too far.

No Guts, No Glory (No Chance for Aol.?)

Will Aol. have the guts to dramatically cut and run from old world business (like anything that worked more than 3 years ago)– like portals and selling banner ads in a fierce and visionary manner like the Intel/Andy Grove’s boldest ever DRAM move in 1984?  No guts, no glory?

I think on of Aol.’s biggest challenge is getting back to some level of trust/respect with users. Content is not in fact a commodity–or perhaps quality content isn’t. And this is more than about news content–which Aol. never did anything too useful about anyway. And is it even imaginable the Aol. would try to compete with CNN now? Could they even take a shot at Current Tv?  So what kind of content will the smart new management team at Aol. start to develop? = community content and engaging online experiences. And can they make this content at the right costs? Web content needs to be lower cost than broadcast by a long way.

I would assume the Aol. has already done a good enough customer segmentation to understand where they have some profitable ISP support. Now they should be looking at how to build communities around these dedicated users. Probably it will look like a bunch of retirement online type communities (ok, that’s a random guess because I think only older pe0ple use AOL). But enabling a community is a very different role than being a media powerhouse crushing the competition and cranking out scalable content 24/7/52/100

Assuming Aol. can organize it’s resources it should be able to attack the kind of $5mm deal CNBC and WTTC announced for content co-creation and community. Here why I think brands will look seriously at content co-creation deals and dump banners as they reallocate their 2010 spends.

And brands do need to advertise heavily in 2010 — ask Google who is spending big time right now here in UK to promote Chrome. Yup, not even Google can make a big enough impact with their own pr machine.  Community is a great way to mix the online with the real world.

Net Net on Aol. = Help for Heritage Key! (thanks guys)

Aol. has an incredible challenge to be something exceptional. They have a shot (more than a start-up by far) to do something bold and game-changing. Will they take that shot–my guess is yes. They have an ex-googler who has the taste for online blood and (unless he gets neutered in some corporate nonsense) should only want to deliver big and make is his own name in the hall of internet fame.

We’re excited about what the new, emboldened Aol. means for us–anyway! If they go down the content+community path then they are framing the marketspace for our projects like our Heritage Key–which is already there in some sense and trying to establish itself there.  Deals like the $5mm CNBC/WTTC content co-creation packages are the monetization foundations to support this direction. And we will be a offering those deals at much lower price points while delivering equal results in 2010.

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Visit King Tut's Tomb online now and make your own discovery of the most amazing artefacts ever discovered.

Tech Radar did a nice little piece on Heritage Key recently saying:

It’s a mainstream application of a once niche feature that reminds us why we all thought it was such a good idea. While Heritage Key is predominantly an educational website aimed at amateur historians and fans of archaeology, its heart is the 3D virtual exhibit.

They hit the key point really here, about what will bring virtual online to mainstream users.  At the core of any community-site there must be something to do and for Heritage Key that is about exploring and understanding more about ancient world places.  The virtual online experience will give people a great insight into places, artefacts and the overall history.  Virtual Tourism is becoming an interesting area also. It allows for a better visit or give a sense of place you may never have the chance to really go to. When people GoVirtual they will also meet other explorers and then the real-time social interaction kicks in.

Dinah Greek commented about Heritage Key for Computing.co.uk:

An interactive website devoted to historical studies offers visitors more than the chance to explore ancient civilisations using historical recreations.Wonderful those these 3D reconstructions are, the Heritage Keysite also offers people the chance to join live online lectures, ask questions and join forums where they can meet like-minded people.

Dave Bailey in his write-up about us asked a question more about how virtual online can be used by CIOs in future:

So the question for businesses is how big is the opportunity to monetise commercial web sites by introducing a virtual world of online activity?

UK firm Rezzable is one company pushing the boundaries of virtual world technology, both technically and in identifying how such a business model could work.

virtual online environments can deliver high photo-realistic objects and immersive activities now.

What are some of the issues blocking mainstream adoption for online virtual experiences?

So why isn’t everyone with a computer and good broadband trying out a virtual online experience? Well, they are doing other stuff online that sucks-up a lot (maybe too much even) of their time. More specifically there are some issues in the way:

• Lack of quality 3D content – 2.5D just isn’t good enough for non-kids. We think there are some interesting changes in flow now that will make it easier/faster to create photo-realistic content that can be streamed online. Watch Unity. Watch for the SL mesh viewer. Watch Web Alive.
• Variety — one thing that SL sorta has right is the way in which you can zap between different experiences. People don’t want to have to log-in/out and remake their accounts just to look at something for a quick blast. We are looking at this issue now and expect to have a good enough solution to move between our grids = Rezzable and Heritage Key with one identity and consistent avatar. Once this is in place we can extend to other grids.
• Something fun enough to do – We have released King Tut Virtual on our OpenSim-based grid and in general someone can wander around for 1-2 hours checking out some of the most amazing objects ever discovered. They can be seen in incredible detail. But we also think mainstream users and gamers need more goal oriented activities, like quests or contests.  Our new work on Stonehenge Virtual is starting to address this, but I think there is still a long way to get the mix of realistic content and activities right.
• The Avatars are not good enough — sure they move around in a jerky way that actually you can get used to. But the avatars are not the online proxy for real people ye. Mainly they are not expressive enough or smart enough to do stuff.
• Tech Stack is still unstable — it has gotten dramatically better, but we still suffer from random crashes and lag and generally high enough levels to exhaust enthusiasts. It seems clear though how to make the tech work better. It will just need focused work to improve key things like physics, viewer, scripting. See my OpenSim issues list here.

Visit King Tut online here.

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More brains the better? Sorry this is sorta disgusting. But the point is about getting more people involved via online communities. (French brains, not human btw).

It is of course ideal to have community members enrich content–but is UGC to hard to deal with online? Is it too random and too much spam? How to get to the next level = Community-Inspired-Content (CIC).

What is Online Community Content Co-Creation?

There are 3 main participant groups need for a co-creation program: 1) Brand 2) Community Manager 3) Community Members.  The Community Manager (which is how we see our role at Heritage Key) needs to create the focus and deliver the program.

The Brand and the Community Manager should frame the focus of the content and outline the mix (video, articles, interviews, virtual, real world events). The real new area is to get the right balance between commissioned work and user generate content (UGC).  UGC needs to be on-point with the focus, but more importantly needs to allow the Community Members their own space to participate.  I think the real world events are an important part of this.

The Co-Creation program should run over a period of time like 3-6 months. We think of it as a sort of series. People can then catch if from start or  catch-up through referrals or web buzz around the activity.  You can also have an endpoint where you can convert content into a final package.

Benefits to Brands

• New Relevant Web Content – Content is unique and will fit major interests of the community members. It should also be branded and embeddable off the main microsite (via widgets or YouTube players).
• No Other Brand Interference — it would be exclusive to the sponsoring Brand. No noise, no unexpected placement. And the microsite area would be much more engaging than an Brand controlled site.
• Community Interaction — program should offer people chance to contribute (for free or payment), share opinions, contests, join real w0rld events.  Ideally there should be some time-based momentum designed into the program.
• Leverage Existing Brand Assets – Brands can repurpose or simple use existing assets and place them in proper context/linking to new content.
• Fresh Ammo for PR — Program should give PR/Marketing teams new materials to work for customer and media outreach.
• Destination to Drive Promotions — Brands can use their existing email lists to drive customers/prospects to microsite for targeted promotions. Surveys can also be very useful to learn more about customer needs.
• Speed to Market – Community Manager should be able to deliver program rapidly and across 3-6 months time period to build momentum.
• Innovation – Brands should seek Community Managers that offer web site, websphere, and interactive applications that when combined with new content will be very exciting.
• Lower total costs — Co-Creation should not be massively expensive. It will have potentially high CPM metrics, but you would expect reasonable total costs and good CPA downstream.  It is key to understand that co-creation right now is a way to access the early adopters and thought leaders within the communities, so it should also be considered as a strategic play.

We are working on Content Co-Creation programs for Heritage Key that will be focused on visting/experience history of ancient world sites. These programs  will mix video, virtual and article content.  More info will be shared soon!  Get RSS or follow us on twitter @xlent1 or @heritagekey or for virtual content @rezzable .

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Go Check it out,  OpenSim works.

OpenSim works, is getting better and will be the future of the 3D Web.

First thing to point out is that we are using OpenSim in combination with Drupal as the core user and even grid admin system.  So your own usage may not be the same if you are just working with OpenSim all by itself. We also have about 10 servers cranked-up to support all of this on a cluster sharing 50mb bandwidth.  Info on the tech layout here.

In general OpenSim has come quite a long way in the last year. There is still quite some road in front to get it to be a sort of 3D Web Server like Apache. It is very complex–maybe too much so, but nonetheless it works. And it works a lot better than it did a year ago.

The greatest strength of OpenSim is that it is opensource and has a smart enough set of committed developers beating on it.  We have been luck enough to work with a few of them and meet even a few more.  Because it is opensource we have been able to create our own integrations and services around the core.

The core dvelopers have cleared-up a lot of real problematic stuff like cross-region boarders, assets vanishing, general caching/grey-goo. You can give folders now! The regions are snappy. The build issues are still there on some level, but the workarounds are also better understood. The most painful build issues lately have been with scripting (and not overloading scripting).

The use cases that Rezzable is focused on, try to aim for the what OpenSim does right now and not steer directly into known gaps. So, again you own use cases might trigger different issues.

Below is my list of Top 10 Issues we see with OpenSim —

OpenSim Issue 1: Physics is still weak

Physics engine options are not that good right now. This causes a lot of problems and work-arounds.  Shooting, dropping, collisions and driving are basically to be avoided.  The physics engine also seems to create a lot of issues with the bounding boxes and sometimes you can’t walk through doors easily or phantom prims get solid-ish.

The obvious solution here is to find a way to plug-in better physics engines. It would seem that OpenSim will support this, but so far I have not heard of anything implemented in the last year that changes the performance.

OpenSim Issue 2: SL Hangovers

OpenSim seems (and we really try to avoid most of this stuff) to have a lot of SL-oriented functions especially around land, parcels that are more interesting to SL-copycat virtual worlds than our interest in 3D online experiences.  Net Net is the core code isn’t as performance-oriented as we would like to see it.

The biggest gap vs SL is that OpenSim does not have a commerce feature and of course no $L which is still a trusted micro-currency.

OpenSim Issue 3: Perms are Not There

We did quite a bit of work to implement a fairly basic permissions concept, mainly using Drupal roles. This works fine for Heritage Key, and we also have a separate “sub-grid” for build work. On the Rezzable grid it will require a lot more manual switch-flipping to have quasi-group/collaborative control on access and prim-perms. We have not implemented any commerce concepts (and may not either). I think the whole issue of perms/DRM needs a more complete architecture to avoid the issues beleaguering/demoralizing SL content creators.

OpenSim Issue 4: Lack of Docs

I suppose if you like to read code, you should have all you want with opensource OpenSim–but for those of you, like me, that like something with pictures and some summary, we are out of luck. It is more of a Ouija-board process with the developers to understand what it is, does, might be. And of course things are also changing as new releases flow through–but getting a roadmap certainly would require a crystal ball and some incense.

OpenSim Issue 5: Admin Tools

We have made quite a few tools to track users, manage resources. I think we should even be able to share these (once we write-up what they do somehow).  I have seen that there are some basic tools also floating around to make some reports/alerts, but these are quite simple.  I would hope to see more user info and logging–especially relating to inventory and server memory.

OpenSim Issue 6: Voice

Vivox apparently has a OpenSim implementation. I have not seen it, but the gang at IBM seems to be messing with it. It would seem to make sense that it works. It is not free, so there is more of a cost consideration than a functional one.  We have been more focused on lectures and talk-show use cases and are using skype-to-stream solutions which works fine and also has the advantage of being broadcast to the web.

OpenSim Issue 7: Mesh Support / SL Viewer

Being able to deploy mesh assets is also a gap on the SL grid (although not on Blue Mars). Main points about this are 1) more cost-effective production for sculptural content 2) more realism for objects. I think Mesh will also need careful design and usage so as not to kill performance, not of asset serving, but of the user experience with viewing/streaming. Blue Mars looks great, but has apparently great than 1 gig client with all the meshes inside it.  The Mesh topic also hits on the Issue of OpenSim not having a native viewer. All the viewers are basically SL viewers in the first instance.  So there is a lot of overhead, random issues and workarounds to get the SL viewer to work — but our guys at Imprudence have done it for us! They rock! And even the new Imprudence code we are using on HK/Rezzable viewers works much better in the last 3-4 months.

OpenSim Issue 8: Concurrency

Concurrency on light interaction areas we think will scale out at 20-25 concurrent on a region. Now, this is a lot different than on SL for a couple of key reasons. First if you are running your own server, a region is less of a cost issue than it is on SL. So you can have more regions each with less content. I think the main focus is on server-loading then. We are running as much RAM as we can get on a machine and hope to see server concurrency at 400-500. The best news about OpenSim vs SL here is that you can have cross-region tps scripted. If you visit our King Tut Virtual you will basically visit 6 different regions on OpenSim that was just 1 in SL. So on a cost-basis OpenSim has better cost per concurrent user than SL by far (SL $300/month for 50 concurrent and OpenSim $350/month for 400+ concurrent).

OpenSim Issue 9: Scripting

We just had to unravel some scripting to get a new project to run with even a target of 10 concurrent. The good news is that the OpenSim modules allow for server-side coding instead of scripting. The bad news is that coding is more complex and of course see Issue 4 about about lack of docs. Scripting will still be very important, but I am hoping we can get a lot done in the code and create modules/integrations that way. We are making more Bots now that so far seem to work nicely. These Bots will access our CMS and have AI features for NPC interaction (= they will do smart stuff with our existing .com content).  Again, benefit here is that Bots will be also accessible from the web pages, iPhone etc.

OpenSim Issue 10: Cross-Grid Movements

Maintaining identity, roles and assets is still the biggest isssue holding back larger adoption of the OpenSim platform.  We are aware of other work and have our own initiatives in the area. I would think that within 6 months it will be a few clicks to move an avatar with inventor between grids effectively. I can see where a facebook connect will work well and I also am hopeful that DRM issues can be addressed as well.  Right now we are testing mechanisms to move avatar between our own grids (ok, that isn’t too sexy, but it proves a point).

So there it is. Stay tuned we are working on these issues as are many other OpenSim project, developers and enthusiasts. I think a year from now it will be even a bigger step forward than over the last 12 months.

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