Fingers in Pies

Only posting on twitter...

2011-09-16T10:12:00.003Z

Good news, first blog post in 3 years.
Bad news, the last one for now...

Don't have time these days for lengthly posts, but you can follow me on twitter as @ibmMatt (http://twitter.com/#!/IBMMatt)

New ventures, back to CICS...

2008-11-27T13:35:00.004Z

Well in a traditional complete change to my IBM career I have moved once again. This time out of the recruitment / talent / innovation space, into the world of product management for CICS.

For those of you that don't know about CICS, this is a family of software products supporting transaction processing, mainly on mainframes. I have taken on product management responsibility for CICS Transaction Gateway (connector between CICS and J2EE Application Servers, such as WebSphere) and TX Series (transaction processing for distributed platforms).

So a lot to learn, but very exciting as I'm working with a great team. So expect blog posts to have a very different flavour for a while, if indeed my writing motivation picks back up.

Management Institute, Business Voice, Extreme Blue

2008-07-02T17:00:00.002Z

No blogging for a while now, so just wanted to do a very quick update which I'll expand on more over the next few days

1) Just back from Management Institute. Verdict - Some good education, and most importantly a great opportunity to network with other IBM managers and find out more about the challenges fancing them, along with solutions.

2) Last week I had the pleasure of attending the Editors' Dinner for Business Voice Magazine, to debate the subject "Social networking or flexible working: what’s changing organisations more?" Was certainly an interesting discussion, although the debate topic seemed to be a little contrived for the sake of being confrontational! But some really interesting discussion. More on that when the article comes out

and finally...

3) Extreme Blue 2008 is underway! Much more to come on that when I get the time.

OnRec Tour Signup

2008-06-02T21:11:00.006Z

Following on from my talk at OnRec, I'd be very happy to meet people in world to to discuss Virtual Worlds as a recruitment platform and give a guided tour of some of IBM's projects. If you are interested in participating, simply add a comment to this post and we can schedule a time to meet.

Virtual Interviews

2008-05-09T10:46:00.005Z

A quick blog post to highlight some of the excellent work done by our colleagues in France for using virtual worlds as a platform for conducting interviews.

The event was for Global E-Business Masters students, and involved running a string of successive interviews on the IBM University Relations island in Second Life. In this instance speech was supported through skype, rather than using in world chat but the event was very successful in improving the interview process from simply conducting telephone interviews.

This was the first event of its kind on the Uni Relations island, and certainly gave lots of food for thought about how to run future events.

Many thanks to Olivier Sirven for organising and running this excellent event.

Ghostbusters for hire...

2008-05-07T13:42:00.003Z

Sorry for the lack of blogging activity recently, as the previous post suggests a lot of my time has been spent doing "housy-type things". However this weekend saw the culmination of numerous weeks of effort leading to completion of the famed Ghosbusters car for my friend Allan's stag do.

Highlights of the car include:

Working LED Message Board on rear.

Flashing lights, powered by re-directed sun-roof.

External speakers (meant for boat), capable of playing siren and theme tune.

Giant satelite dish / fly swat.

Unfortunately they would not let us drive round the Nurburgring, but all in all a cracking weekend.

Moving house...

2008-04-15T13:08:00.004Z

Apologies for the lack of blogging lately, but as some of you know I've been moving house lately which is know mean feat! Did give me a little bit of time to reflect how the quality of service could have been improved from the vendor, estate agent, solicitor and especially the mortgage company(!) using a few web 2.0 methodologies.

The amount of time I had to contact people to say "What's the latest..." was ridiculous, and could have been made so much easier if I simply had access to all the relevant data.

Of course if that was possible, there probably would be little need for an estate agent. Hmmm, a plan with no draw backs?

(picture courtesy of http://www.rics.org/)

Blog a big hit in Alaska!

2008-03-27T16:27:00.004Z

Ok, so that is not entirely true as Alaska just shows up as part of the US for people viewing my blog but it did make me smile for a minute.

I was however very impressed by the volume of data that Google Analytics has to offer, and whilst I'm not exactly setting the blogging community on fire with the number of hits I get, it is at least pleasing to see that every now and again someone reads what I have to say.

NCWE Awards: Extreme Blue wins 'Over 250 Employees - Short term placement Award'

2008-03-13T15:51:00.014Z

..."and by some distance".

What an eventful day yesterday turned out to be.

Helen Bowyer, myself and David Frost, Director General, British Chamber of Commerce.

After some troubles with a tree on the line at Ashurst, myself and Helen Bowyer finally made it up to the NCWE Awards at Cafe Royal in Piccadilly. To start with there were a couple of major plus points for this ceremony, that being it was free to enter and free to attend for nominees (which makes a nice change). Also the list of categories was very encouraging too, singling out charities and smaller companies for awards and not putting them in with the giant corporations such as ourselves.

Top marks for the champagne reception, however I must confess that drinking champagne at 11:50am was a bit decadent even for my liking. The lunch was also excellent, not that I could eat that much as nerves (and perhaps the champagne) seemed to be getting the better of me! So much so in fact that I didn't have a sip of the wine, which for those of you who know me was quite a revelation.

After lunch, the serious bit kicked off starting with David Frost - Director General, British Chambers of Commerce, giving a short talk about the value of work experience. This was particularly good, especially considering the candid nature of David's insights of the newly graduating workforce, and also for the fact that he managed to fit this in on the same day the budget was announced.

So, on the to awards! What can I say, other than I was delighted that Extreme Blue was nominated, but the fact that we won the award was something else entirely. Before each of the winners were named, a small amount was read about what the company did to deserve the award and this one mentioned "A University Relations Island in Second Life", and "Students being able to patent their IP". Even in at my most cautious, I thought it was highly unlikely that anyone else had done those things too so thankfully it gave Helen and I a few moments to compose ourselves before collecting the award.

All in all, I was totally stunned (as the photo suggests) and delighted in equal measure. The success really has been down to the efforts that the students, mentors and project stakeholders have put in to make the scheme such a success and it was great to pick up the trophy on their behalf. Now I have the pleasure of telling the students :-)

Extreme Blue wins NCWE Award!

2008-03-12T18:42:00.002Z

Full report tomorrow....

Ministers, Mainframes & Manchester

2008-03-05T09:58:00.010Z

A couple of things to talk about today...

Yesterday I had the pleasure of being involved in an event with the Naace*and MP Jim Knight, Minister of State for Schools and Learners. My role was to give, at distance, a tour of the IBM University Relations island to the audience at Torquay, with me based at Winchester, and Jim based in London! (if that makes sense). Whilst my portion of the event went quite smoothly I'm pleased to say, the event had its fair share of hiccups. Including, speakers not being present, people dialling in and out of the conference call mid speech (yes that's right, the audio was conference call while we were presenting in world!?) and some fairly run of the mill Second Life issues. On the whole, it felt perhaps like a bit of an opportunity missed and in my opinion, most of the problematic factors could have been solved by those leading the event logistics. However, it was a good opportunity to showcase what IBM is doing between industry and academia.

The main focus for me was to talk about IBM's event with Manchester University to talk about mainframe computing, which happened today. Whilst the attendance was not as good as hoped (I think we peaked at about 15 people), the level of interaction was excellent and in fact we over ran the talk by about 45 minutes answering questions. Give me 15 engaged people rather than 50 zombies any day! Some good questions about IBM careers afterwards too, almost certainly more of these events to follow. Also, many thanks to Chris Hodgins for hosting the talk today.

* Note - You can now also see the writeup by Chris.. here

* Naace is the professional association for those concerned with advancing education through the appropriate use of information and communications technology (ICT). The Association was established in 1984 and has become the key influential professional association for those working in ICT in education.

Extrme Blue back in the news: The Office Maverick

2008-03-03T11:22:00.002Z

Good to see Extreme Blue back in the news!

A story just recently posted in the online version of The Guardian details Jane Harper (founder of EB) and her being featured in "Mavericks at Work". I'll let you read through the article for yourself, however the highlight has to be the author making the comment..

"...Extreme Blue, the most ingenious internship programme I've ever seen..."

high praise indeed, and from unbiased source this time ;-)

SAS Design Meeting: Facebook good! Second Life bad! (apparently)

2008-02-26T18:35:00.005Z

I went to an event this morning run by SAS Design at a (very swanky) hotel in London under the theme of "The web and social media: myths, legends and adventures". This was very much a crash course into social media for recruitment companies.

So I've trivialised the messages coming out of it, but in a nut shell...

Facebook good!

Second Life bad!

It looks like the public pullback from Second Life is well and truelly happening in the recruitment space. Its worth pointing out that they've not quite cottoned on to the whole "Second Life is just a platform and an example of a Virtual World" message, and on the bright side if this means that recruiters will stop engaging with virtual worlds purely on a brand association level and start thiking about how virtual worlds are actually used, that's got to be a good thing. However, the tendancy for these design agencies to jump on (and off) the band wagon without any long term vision is a bit frustrating.

A highlight though was hearing Dr. Adam Joinson from the University of Bath speaking about online behaviour, and the opportunity to follow-up with him afterwards about some joint efforts. Its a shame that he was not afforded more than a 20 minute slot.

However what amused me most in this event was that the overwhelming (and correct) message being portrayed regarding the important of authenticity and credibility in social media and not going about delivery in a very contrived and planned way. Makes you wonder how a design agency seems them self fitting in with that ethic really doesnt it?

ITMB eSkills Update...

2008-02-22T13:50:00.003Z

Just found the video of the eSkills event, so if you want to see how the event actually worked you can!

*UPDATE: My dodgy embedding has not worked quite according to plan, so you can always go here

Run Matt, Run!

2008-02-19T19:33:00.006Z

Am loving this site (thanks Andy for the pointer).

Like many a hopeful, I've started jogging to remove the Christmas spread and I'm finding a good way of motivating myself is to introduce new gimmicks each week to tempt me out into the cold. First it was new clothes, then a new mp3 player, now its maprunner. This site allows you to look at jogging routes that others have made, and add your own. Unfortunately at the moment there are no Southampton routes near me, however the google maps mashup that tells me how far I'm running is a real bonus, so I'll be trying to log all my routes on here from now on.

(Note: I'm saving the new trainers gimmick for when my motivation is really low)

Virtualising your Intranet...

2008-02-19T09:24:00.003Z

Just a quick post to draw attention to a new blog...

This blog has been set up to track the progress of a join project by Warwick Business School and IBM to evaluate the potential of "intraverses" or virtual worlds attatched to a company intranet. The team is still in fact finding mode at the moment but the blog should serve as a good source to track information relevant to this subject, and will feature more directed updates as we mvoe towards the summer

Thankfully there are a few of us contributing on this blog, rather than just me hammering away quite infrquently!

Ebbsfleet United is MyFootballClub

2008-02-05T18:21:00.000Z

I meant to post about this ages ago....but then that could be true of a lot of things.

A couple of months ago I subscribed to the website myfootballclub.co.uk. The premise quite simple, become an "owner" of a football club...well along with another 50,000 odd people. Being a fan of championship manager this is of course was the next logical step!

The interesting aspect is of course how this is actually going to work in reality, but now that the acquisition of Ebbsfleet United is complete some important decisions need to be made. The most interesting one so far being the decision whether to take Nike's deal for kit outsourcing. I must admit, its taken something like this to really spark my interest, but until the system is geared to look more directly at team matters I'm worried that my 30 odd quid might be going down the drain.

More updates to follow! (if I can get the blogging back on track)

eSkills Event

2008-02-04T19:09:00.000Z

Information about the eSkills event we ran on IBM's University Relations Island in Second Life late last year. This was a joint event in association with eSkills, IBM and P&G, looking to raise awareness about the use of virtual worlds and 3d internet by using the medium itself.

This was a very successful event with many people attending, mainly from Manchester University. More events to follow!

To find out more about this event you can read the following article on computing.com:

http://www.computing.co.uk/computing/analysis/2208333/virtual-skills-real-world-3775332

Return of the blog...

2007-10-01T22:04:00.000Z

Well, the fairy tale had to end somewhere, and after a (reasonably) successful spell in blogging, it looks like I dropped off the face of the earth for a few months.

I support the most ironic thing is that wuth the summer being my busiest time, I probably had the most things of interest to blog about...and of course no time to do so.

So over the next couple of weeks, I'll try and catch up on events of the summer (in no particular order), and try and recap on exactly what has been going on.

Free laptops with broadband subscription. Where have I seen that business model before?

2007-07-26T21:34:00.000Z

Sitting at home watching some trashy TV one of the last things I expected was a PC World advert being the most memorable part of the evening. To be fair, PC World was simply the messenger with Orange being the real heroes with their "inventive", subscribe to our broadband service and get a free laptop offer!

Hmmm, something sounds very familiar.

So its no secret that mobile phones have increasingly becoming more like mini computers, now it seems that laptops are being sold like mobile phones.

The deal is, subscribe to Orange broadband for 24 months and you can have a shiny new laptop! So a bit of digging around, and it seems they are not the only ones as AOL have just announced something very similar. So first question, can you upgrade to a better model? Well of course you can. You'd probably want to for that matter as the basic model seems a bit dodgy, but the business model certainly sounds like a winner. Question 2, how comes its taken this long to happen? Well certainly one of the main reasons is that its taken this long for laptops to come down in price to make it a viable option, and the other being that its taken this long for broadband to become pervasive enough so that this deal would appeal to the entry level consumer. All in all, sounds like the broadband battleground is going to considerably heat up.

As for who will win? My bet is to look to the telcos. They've been offering these kind of packages for years and are sure to be able to leverage their expertise of using this business model. Not only that, but with companies like Virgin already offering combined packages it seems like a no brainer to roll in all the kit you'll ever need with it...Although of course, in a few years time for the average user maybe that will only be one device anyway, but it sure is easier to set yourself up as an ISP than it is to launch as mobile provider.

Better late then never...

2007-07-11T12:00:00.000Z

...and I mean that on 2 counts.

1) I am very aware that I've not blogged for a month now, and even before that my posts were getting increasingly infrequent. But then there was always the risk of this happening, as my very first blog will tell you.

2) One of my Extreme Blue teams have just pointed me at the U2 in SL gig, which I was shocked to find out it about a year old! Being a U2 fan, and a virtual worlds fan not sure how I managed to let this one slip me by. My social network seems to have a bit of a lag in it.

Enter in the dance, plug it in an we begin...

2007-06-11T20:12:00.000Z

Just came back from the Isle of Wight Festival...

Was an outstanding experience, with amongst the best performers probably being Groove Armada, Kasabian, Muse and of course the Rolling Stones.

Could easily go on a big rant now about how amazing the live shows were, especially in comparison to 70s, but it's a lot easier to get the BBC to do that for me...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/6738795.stm

Oh, and special mention to Wolfmother, probably the only act that seemed like they were actually from the 70s, and I mean that in an entirely positive way!

Innovation in Action

2007-05-23T15:39:00.001Z

This week I had the pleasure of attending the 2007 Biztech Showcase event. I was to attend this partly through my involvement in Extreme Blue but mainly my involvement in ThinkPlace.

So that was a lot of buzzwords, so I'll try and break it down quickly:

Extreme Blue - Internship scheme where we offer final year university undergrads the opportunity to work on cool technology projects over the summer to deliver real value to IBM and give them the opportunity to be see future recruitment.

Biztech - BizTech offers employees the opportunity to participate in innovative cross-unit projects sponsored by executives and led by recognized technical leaders. This is typically achieved through employees contributing 20% of their time a week for a period of 9-12 months (with management approval of course!).

ThinkPlace - IBM's WorldWide suggestion scheme where any employee can submit ideas, collaborate with each other and work with business leaders to get their ideas implements.

got all that? good.

All in all its been a fantastic couple of days and there are going to be some exciting improvements to our innovation programmes in the future. It's still too early to disclose the exact details, but at the very least we should see Biztech pushed much more in the UK and Thinkplace trying some very novel things to take our best grass roots innovators and pair them with the people in power.

A great night for IBM recruitment

2007-05-03T20:48:00.001Z

Last night I had the privellage of attending the 2007 Target Awards for Graduate Recruitment. We were up for 5 awards in total, and while I was disappointed that we did not win the best internship for Extreme Blue, IBM managed to walk away with a total of 3 awards. These were for most popular graduate recruiter - IT & Communications, Outstanding Contribution to Diversity and the coveted Graduate Employer of the Year.

All in all, a fantastic evening and despite my personal interest in wanting Extreme Blue to receive an award, I think if I could have picked 3 it would have been the awards that we won.

...and we'll get a win for Extreme Blue next year ;-)

Back Row: Vanessa Gough, Will Waddell, Joe Munns, Matt Whitbourne (me)

Front Row: Jonathan Ferrar, Annalise Hayward, Jenny Taylor, Liz Williams, Stephanie Bishop, Jo Bedford, Tara Gill

The rise and fall of the part-time techie...

2007-04-23T19:32:00.000Z

Once upon a time (probably in the region of about 12 years ago), getting computer game running was a pain in the backside. Now while there were always options available for choosing a console game, the possibilities of "glorious" VGA colour and "lifelike" sound were such an allure that many were enticed towards the PC. The tax however for doing so was that you had to understand a little bit about how the PC worked. For those familiar with these times, the choice of how you used conventional memory (Extended or indeed expanded!), which drivers you could afford to bump off your autoexec.bat or as was most common, trying to find that one and only bootdisk that actually made Wing Commander work, were very common problems. The result of which, a community a love for games, but a hobbyist interest in personal computing.

So for all of the efforts to improve the consumability of software, has something been lost along the way?

Now while not for an instant am I suggesting that we return to the dark ages of spending days trying to get software to work, this forced education and basic empartment of pc knowledge managed to stimulate a community much wider than today's bedroom techies. It spawned curiosity, gave problem solving experience and exposed people to a new work of innovation and technology. Why should we care about this? Because the job market needs them.

IT recruitment is becoming an increasingly polarised marketplace. It's well documented that the number of people pursuing science, engineering and technology degrees has been dropping for some time, but as a recruiter myself there also now seems to be quite a split in quality between applicants, but not an even one. It seems that there are a lot of people now who are purely 'in it for the money'. The technology hobbyists are now very much in the minority, and in a sea of application forms that read like a history lesson in computing rather than a declaration of interest, those who passionately talk about linux, open standards and pervasive computing stand out head and shoulders above the rest.

So what can be done to engage the technologists of tomorrow? I'm certainly not advocating a return to non-startable computer games, but maybe the next generation of hobbyists can be inspired once again through the push to user generated content. There was a flurry of quality applicants in the midst of the 1st dot com boom, maybe the next evolution of the web could present the same kind of calibre of new recruits. Whether this is through the emergence of something like 3d Internet or peerhaps technologies that are not even around yet I don't know. But in the mean time, good techies are hard to find....and if you think that part is difficult, then you should try retaining them.

***

and in the mean time, if you thought it was hard getting the games running then, its even worse now! Check out this cool site for info on how to coax your old dos games back to life.

Hot off the press...

2007-04-16T22:28:00.000Z

Well it looks like my timing for writing an article about the generation y obsession with Big Brother could not have been better timed. Today Endemol announced that they are to launch a "virtual big brother" in partnership with Electronic Arts. Virtual Me they are calling it, and it will allow people to spend their time immersed in a version of their favourite TV shows such as Big Brother, Deal or no Deal etc. This story is featured on a few sites at the moment, with bbc and gwn giving particularly good reports. So now it's going to be even easier for the public to get closer to feeling like a D List celebrity.

Reminds me a little bit of artist Banksy's revisiting of the Andy Warhol saying...

(definitely one of the most interesting artists around at the moment, more of his work can be found at http://www.banksy.co.uk/)

Declarative Living or Big Brother State

2007-04-11T16:58:00.000Z

Privacy is a very strange thing, and while one generation is increasingly concerned about it being taken away, another seems to be doing it's best to make the big brother state a reality. Many of us should have seen this coming a mile off. All you need do is look at the fixation today with celebrity culture and knowing absolutely everything about their lives and the idea of joe public wanting the same seems like a natural evolution. Suddenly the idea of having someone write about the ins and outs of your life has become a kind of status symbol, but what if nobody wants to write about you? Then write it yourself.

The phrase of choice at the moment is 'declarative living', and it is taking place on the web in many forms. Blogging is of course one, but through sites such as facebook and twitter it is possible to find out what any of your friends are up to at any given time. So what has happened to privacy? At the moment the major distinction is that you only post what you want people to see, but there are already extreme examples to be found. Take a look for example at 'The Nerdman Show'. While this might seem a little bizarre to most people (me included), here is someone literally broadcasting their life online. So where is the next evolution of this?

The ability to give status updates about your life is becoming more and more pervasive. From being able to blog from your mobile, to your online status in MSN, technology is making declarative living a reality. The next step of course would be for this to be automatic. But change who is viewing your life from something as inoffensive as 'friend', to something like 'government' and suddenly the altitudes change. While we worry about what records the government might be keeping about our lives we suddenly find out that it is us who are making it easy for them to maintain them. But again, maybe this is a generation thing. Maybe the rights to privacy are not as important an issue for Generation Y, and soon the idea of the state knowing these details and acting upon them will become the norm. But for those of us who have taken to this new trend (myself included), don't be surprised if that information gets used for something you hadn't intended it too. Because you only have the source of the information to blame. And that's you.

Enabling creativity or devaluing it?

2007-04-02T13:48:00.000Z

An interesting link was sent to me today, concerning the union of EA, MTV and Harmonix to produce 'Rock Band', a collaborative online music game allowing people to play guitar, bass, drums and vocals together either in the same room or over the net. As far as playing music together in the same room idea goes, sounds a little bit like what bands have been doing for the last...well....2000+ years. The difference of course is that you are not really playing an instrument...but does that matter?

Some would argue the music industry has been going this way for years, with miming, sampling and endless covers proving that the ability to perform a song is a very different aspect to the song itself. But then perform is a loose term too. I mean you could say pop bands give a good performance through their dance routines, and its not often you actually get a DJ with keyboards and a drum machine at a night club. However, while their is an acceptance over the use of live music in pop, hip hop and dance music, rock has maintained a very traditionalist viewpoint. Which is why a band like Keane can cause a few feathers to be ruffled.

Typically speaking most bands are accustomed to having their sound augmented by samples these days, whether its because its impractical to tour with the London Symphony Orchestra or the sound itself is the product of digital jiggery pokery, this is something we the public have come to accept. But when can you take this too far? Keane are a band consisting singer, keyboard player and drummer. Listen to their songs and you'll be thinking, but can't I hear a bass line, guitar etc? and indeed you would be right. But while other bands might typically get session musicians for their live performances they have opted for the sampled approach. So should we be happy, as after all the live performance will have components every bit as sonically pleasing as the record, or are we paying £20 a time to witness a glorified karaoke version?

On the other end of the spectrum I also went to see a Led Zeppelin cover band last week, Whole Lotta Led. As an admirer of the music this was a great opportunity to see it performed, and I was totally blown away by their ability to re-create the Led Zep found, and my thoughts turned to the fact that maybe the band were 'wasted' as a tribute act. Any guitarist who has the ability to digest Jimmy Page solos and reproduce them near perfectly is certainly incredibly talented. But of course, the ability to play an instrument does not mean you have the capability to create it.

And it was with this in mind that I entered the world of Guitar Hero. As someone who plays the bass (all be it rather badly), I was initially very hesitant in trying it. Surely this devalues the process of making music? But then, I'm not using this as a creative tool, merely one for performance, and yes ultimately you can play things more easily than with a 'real' instrument, but guess what...it was fun.

So instead of these innovations devaluing the creative process, maybe they are just making it more accessible? Maybe the capabilities of the mind to produce something new and creative, will no longer be hampered by a lack of co-ordination. But instead, creation of music and its live reproduction will become as polarised now as indeed the different music genres are, and just because an instruments sound is analog (for now), does not mean its exempt from this debate.

As for the true greats? These will always be the people who have the ability to combine both talents, but maybe through this progression the de-coupling of the two abilities will now make music more accessible for all.

The old debate, but with a new twist...

2007-03-29T13:53:00.000Z

The argument for technology in sport, and in particular in football is one that has been raging for quite some time now.

Whether technology will improve the sport, lose the personal angle, make football closer to its American counter-part, (Note: When I say football I mean the version you play with your feet), is still very much part of the debate.

So last night when watching the England game it was quite refreshing to see the same debate alive once more, but this time 2 strikers debating who it was that scored. This was of course England's match against Andora, and while I won't dwell on the (awful) performance, the question mark over whether to award a goal to Nugent or to Defoe was quite a nice encapsulation of the debate for technology in society.

Now while after looking at the incident from a number of different angles it was reasonably clear that all of the ball had not crossed the line from Defoe's shot, the interesting point was that the "pub consensus" was that Nugent should get the goal regardless, and this was before seeing a conclusive replay. Why? It was his debut, and so would be a great boost for his confidence. But what if technology proved that it hadn't cleared the line?

You are now looking at a situation where 95% of the country would have wanted to do one thing, but the facts would mandate a different course of action. Now obviously in this case technology is simply a tool to establish a fact, but this gives a good example where maybe the insight that technology can give us is not something that we the public want.

A strong element is probably fear. Maybe we are going to get told some home truths based on data, and draw conclusions that before were not possible. For example, the current feedback rating system is very subjective. What if we instead were given facts on how quick people respond to email, how long it takes to dispatch their goods, etc. Wouldn't that be more useful? Probably. Would people want that kind of data logged about them? probably not.

One thing for sure though is that perceptions change, and with technology increasingly becoming pervasive in peoples lives so will the acceptance of it. As for the football debate? I'm all for goal line technology, as most cases decide matches rather than simply goal scorers. Of course, had this debate been going on 40 years ago, I can guarantee I would have said no, as England's world cup glory did hang in the balance of a linesman's decision. That's one fact I certainly don't want to know the truth about...even to this day.

There's no place like Home?

2007-03-26T09:37:00.000Z

Sony's 'Home' is beginning to look very impressive.

Having initially saw a 10 second clip on the bbc news I was initially very dissmissive, however having watched a proper walkthrough demo from the GDC (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7pk0QMfN6s), I couldn't help but to be a little impressed.

So for starters, graphically this looks much more how you would expect a Virtual World to look. The motion is smooth, the colours are vivid and generally it's a much more appealing environment. Worth bearing in mind that this is obviously aided by having a standardised platform to run on (the PS3), and that the video is from a conference demo so the paths through the world may have been carefuly crafted, so no dodgy user created content that you may experience in SL. But, on the whole the experience seems very engaging.

But, the one thing I've not seen a decent demo of yet is how easy it is to create content. The GDC video shows some basic customizations of avatar and prefab buildings, but no demo (that I've found), yet for some serious content generation. The promise of SDKs and Maya tie-in certainly sounds very promising, but whether this will be as accessible to the average user as Second Life is at the moment remains to be seen Features such as sharing your media files easily between friends is a very cool idea, as is the ability to extend the game experience by having your personal hall of fame available. So maybe the ability to take a simply build and customize it yourself is the right model to reach the myspace / facebook generation, it seems like a good fit. But for business to start adopting we're going to need a whole lot more capability for bulding and customization. Beta starts next month, so lets see what happens.

The marketeers strike back!

2007-03-24T10:57:00.001Z

I saw this yesterday, thanks to my wonderful girlfriend who works in marketing. It looks like the second life message is getting more and more into the minds and indeed homes of those outside of the technology industry. So the brand is getting out there, but is the message?

The inevitable backlash to metaverse has begun. Beechwood do make some valid points regarding the fidelity of the experiene, I.e. Slow, clunky etc, but like many skeptics focus on where technology is today, rather than thinking about enabling the business of the future. Like with those who benefited from the .com boom, the ones who will benefit are those who can extend their core business into this new arena to offer an enhanced experience, not simply having a presence for the sake of it. So maybe the skeptisism is justified for now, certainly businesses should work out what they hope to achieve before jumping in, but lets not dismiss second life purely as hype. Yes its slow, yes its difficult to find what you want, yes the sex industry is the quickest and biggest adopter, but then 12 years ago you could say the same thing about the web...and that has turned out to be quite useful.

2 days, 2 posts

2007-03-23T11:58:00.000Z

So far so good then.

After much playing around I've manged to get my phone talking to my blog now, so my excused for not blogging are getting less and less. As its a pda/phone hybrid it also means that I should have the facility to be able to upload images on the move and with its GPS capability, maybe even store where I was at the time of transmission. Now why anyone (including me) would care about that at this stage I'm not entirely sure, but maybe it'll come in handy in the future...perhaps for travel blogs?

hmmm

Thats a thought. Would be useful to store my photos with gps co-ordinates so when someone else visits that location they could know how to get there. I'll stick that as anohter one on my list of things to do.

A new day, a new blog

2007-03-22T15:03:00.000Z

So in an attempt to try and join the blogging generation (once again), I've now been enticed to blogger.com thanks to the automatic email update capability. If it works, and I'm hoping this will, maybe I'll actually start blogging a bit more.

Well, I'm an optimist, so lets see if this works!