I’ve just been looking at the Sun UltraSPARC T2 launch announcement, including a video that used Second Life (sl) to model the chip and show it off.
Whilst this was very crude and could have been done with a power point slide it did get me thinking as to what is possible.
Creating models of products (from nuclear power plants to accounting packages) for demonstration and training purposes
Using sl as a forum to discuss models for business purposes
Illustrating technical information (e.g. financial results, software product architecture, business process) in a more intuitive and interesting way
In case it’s not obvious, the advantage of using second life is that the models are not constrained by real physics and can have intelligent behaviour. This allows for very imaginative and flexible presentation of information
However creating such sl life models can be time consuming and requires programming skill so there is an opportunity for sl builders to sell their skills to organisations who want to build such things. You can even get directly paid in real money, not Linden dollars .
If you already know of such services let me know.
Update 14/Aug:
After a conversation with a colleague an even more awesome scenario suggest when showing off software that reacts with real world events (e.g. security software). Have the event occur in second life and then trigger the relevant software via via a Linden http trigger.
A Google Video by the creators of SL that does a nice job of introducing the purpose of the environment, including what people do with it. i.e. It’s all about players creating content and making (real) money
Jonathon Oxter has a video on Google showing how to connect the real world (electric lights, RFID chips embedded in the body etc.) to things in the Second Life game
It’s an hour long and very, very, geeky — but it’s Oh So Cool.
The article explains it well and I have to say that it would make a very effective first test for team and process maturity. Try and see how well your team does…
Now that I have discovered how to embed video here an amusing piece of geek humour on how not to run a scrum meeting. Funny and educational, and it’s generally good advice for running any meeting as well.
Google Video presentation from Ken Schwaber, one of the founders of Scrum, about the basics of Scrum. Well worth looking at, especially if you come from a XP background.
Great Quote “Exercise profession competently”
Core messages:
Say no to cutting quality — make product management drop features instead
It’s easy to end up with a design dead product, it takes about 5 years of cutting corners
Intresting tit-bit
Drive Architecture and Infrastructure from non-functional requirements
Scrum was not successful until the advent of high quality IDE’s
With a proper tool, your programming experience becomes fluid in the sense that it flows almost directly from your brain to your application: your intention gets reified in a matter of a click or (better) a keyboard shortcut.
An old (Aug 2006) discussion about IDE support for refactoring reminded me that I don’t spend enough time cutting code and using the tools. My fingers have long forgotten all the automatic tricks needed to stay nimble and productive.
I know I’ve waffled on about this before, but with 98% of the world running Windows it’s becoming a pain in the posterior to be running a technically superior operating system, especially with coLinux being such a great solution for those times when you need a proper platform (plus someone seems to have fixed the link to the Windows port of svk). As well as the issues relating to mobile device synchronisation etc. I often run into problems because evaluation software is only supplied for Windows.
I think by the end of the week I shall be in Windows land, with coLinux used for GnuCash and Linux development. I’ll use MS Outlook (supplied with my Smartphone) as a PIM and Windows OpenOffice. Of course I’ll need to add a stack of goodies to get something almost as good, things like a shell, a decent editor, a PDF driver, some development tools etc., etc.
Update — well it appears that Optus/Samsung does not supply MS Outlook with their phone, so I might as well stay with Linux and Evolution with Windows under VMware
.
,