Augmented Reality Map and Star Charts
By: skribe
This sort of technology is not only awesome it’s based on Open Source software. Definitely full of WIN.
Popularity: 7% [?]
Archive for the “CheckingOut” Category
Checking Out… Mellanium’s Apartment
By: skribe
Recently I reviewed Nortel’s web.alive beta, Lenovo’s elounge. web.alive, which is a 3d browser based virtual environment using the Unreal 2.5 engine. As a result of my review I was contacted by the guys at Mellanium who are also using the Unreal 2.5 engine. They’ve developed a way to import Autocad models straight into the Unreal environment. So effectively you can use the same computer models inworld as you use on the production line, whether it be for architecture or industry. By the way, this also reduces one of the barriers against delivering real world goods from a virtual world.
Mellanium have also been working with the web.alive guys and the video above shows me wandering around their proof of concept – an apartment block. It was filmed entirely within the web.alive enviroment – yes, that means it was shot using my browser and FRAPs. FRAPs isn’t supposed to be able to do that but it can with web.alive.
I found it a little laggy and I tended to spurt forward every now and again, but in general it was a pleasant experience. The Apartment model is fantastic with great textures. It really heralds a potential new yardstick for modelling in virtual worlds. Especially given that it only took 15minutes to import it in world. Truly amazing stuff.
Enjoy the video. Apologies for the ‘almost subliminal’ title. Both blip and youtube gobbled it during conversion.
Popularity: 24% [?]
A Social Media Strategy for Restaurants
By: skribe
The financial crisis is likely to hit the fine dining industry very hard. Already there have been reports of exclusive London restaurants slashing their prices in order to maintain a steady flow of clientele and therefore subsequent cashflow. Competing on price, however, is never a wise, or usually profitable, strategy, so dining establishments need to look for alternate ways to bring in the customers. One easy way is to develop a social media strategy to connect with your customers and create a community of regular diners.
Popularity: 100% [?]
CheckingOut… Google Latitude
By: skribe
Following in the footsteps of Nokia Friendview, Google has decided to delve into the world of location-based mobile social networking. Google Latitude is a free addon service to Google Maps Mobile that allows users to add friends and share current location and status updates with them. Of course this requires that the user have a GPS enabled mobile phone.
Popularity: 23% [?]
CheckingOut… Lenovo’s eLounge
By: skribe
Over the last few years business has shown a great interest in using virtual worlds for enterprise. Everything from seminars and conferences to virtual trade shows and retail. However, after an initial flurry of activity many soon abandon them. For some the required learning curve is too high to be an effective tool. For others the return on investment is not high enough. Whatever the reasons, no virtual environment seems to have really delivered what enterprise needs for its mass adoption. That may be about to change.
Popularity: 54% [?]
