3pointD.com

UgoTrade has a lengthy write-up of some of the work IBM has been doing in the virtual world of Second Life lately. [Via IBM’s Rob Smart.] The blog entry is all about creating links between the real world and the virtual world, so that sensor data and other information can be visualized in Second Life on a real-time basis. In the screenshot above, “The blue balls with white designs represent active Bluetooth devices. The pyramids scattered about the floor represent other people working, with the color designating things like physical presence or telepresence,” according to UgoTrade. This is just one kind of application that could start to make Second Life a much more useful place. I’d love to see entities and conditions being tracked around SL in real time. Why? Because there’s a ton of information to be extracted from a digital environment, which can then be applied to real-world problems from logistics to marketing to sociology, you name it. That said, this won’t start to get really interesting until we have a nearly plug-n-play solution. Which is probably one of the things IBM is working on. Keep your sensors tuned.