Technology Intelligence Group

Announcing the T.I.G. Virtual Worlds Industry Outlook 2008-2009

Shortly after leaving Cisco in June, I began speaking at length with customers, startups, large technology firms, goverment and academics about the state of the virtual worlds industry.  Based on those discussions, and key insights from fellow TIGger Sean Kane, I am pleased to announce the release of the Technology Intelligence Group's Virtual World Industry Outlook 2008-2009.

The document will be relocated shortly to it's permanent home on the Technology Intelligence Group's formal website, which is coming soon.  I encourage you to check back regularly for the formal launch of the TIG website and the key insights available from industry experts.

Comments and criticisms welcome.

Evolution of the 3D Internet Creates Complex Legal Issues for Companies at All Levels

I'm really excited to be joining the Technology Intelligence Group team.  As the internet evolves into a 3D space, businesses as diverse as virtual world providers, consulting firms, content creators, virtual land speculators, financial institutions, and dozens of others will all be forced to confront potentially company-changing legal issues.  How do you structure a virtual currency?  How much liability do you take on when you control user content?  Can you employ anonymous avatars for less than minimum wage?  What nations' laws govern your part of the 3D internet?  Who really owns your "virtual property?"  These questions represent just a few of the many that will shape the 3D internet over the next decade -- and that will also shape every company that participates in this space.

These questions are critical to virtual world startups, content creators, consultants, and others working in this space, but they are general enough that many companies will find value from the same answer.   TIG provides a forum for contributors to answer these questions with a deeper level of detail than we can reach in mainstream articles and presentations.  In regard to legal issues, however, do note that if you have specific questions about your company's situation, you need to consult an attorney directly and not rely on general advice -- no matter how targeted that advice may appear.  With that small caveat, I can say that I very much look forward to both producing and consuming the sort of "deep dive" analysis that I suspect will be the hallmark of TIG's offerings.

Watch for upcoming articles from me over the next few weeks on trademark issues in unrestricted-content virtual worlds, trademark issues in restricted-content virtual worlds, the balancing of control and liability for virtual world providers, and the impact of industry leaders' decisions reagarding their EULA and TOS agreements with users.

Welcoming contributor Benjamin Duranske

The Technology Intelligence Group is pleased to introduce our newest contributor, Benjamin Duranske.  Mr. Duranske is an intellectual property attorney and a frequent speaker and writer on the subject of virtual world technologies and the law.  He is the author of the book Virtual Law: Navigating the Legal Landscape of Virtual Worlds, and co-chairs the American Bar Association's Committee on Virtual Worlds and Multiuser Online Games of the Section of Science & Technology Law.  He founded the SL Bar association in the virtual world of Second Life, and writes on legal issues associated with virtual worlds at the blog Virtually Blind.

Please join us in welcoming Benjamin, and look forward to his insights in this emerging field.

Welcoming contributor Dr. Wm LeRoy Heinrichs

It is my distinct pleasure to welcome the newest contributor to the Technology Intelligence Group, Dr. Wm LeRoy Heinrichs.  Many of you may recognize Dr. Heinrichs from his long tenure with Stanford SUMMIT, and the phenomenal work they have done there in surgical simulation over the last 20+ years.

For those of you who are not familiar with his work, Dr. Heinrichs is Professor (Emeritus) at Stanford University's School of Medicine and Director of Simulation at SUMMIT (Stanford University Medical Media and Information Technologies).  Dr. Heinrichs serves on the Executive Committee of the Center for Immersive and Simulation-based Learning, and writes and lectures widely about Surgical Simulation and Serious Virtual Worlds.  Dr. Heinrichs serves as Chief Medical Director at Innovation in Learning, Inc.

I have personally had the opportunity to view SUMMITs impressive projects in this space and have spoken extensively in industry how they are a benchmark for simulation leveraging virtual environments.  I am personally looking forward to Dr. Heinrichs contributions and analysis in how the field of surgical simulation and related fields can benefit from emerging technologies such as virtual simulation spaces.

Please welcome Dr. Heinrichs.

Nortel: Part II- 'All your positional voice belong to us'

Nortel dropped the other shoe this morning, in addition to their formal announcement of Project Chainsaw, by announcing their acquisiton of Diamondware (Mesa, AZ) for $10M.  Diamondware is a company that provides 3D positional audio for virtual worlds and games.

This is a case of $10M providing considerable leverage.  When I was at Cisco, we used to search long and hard for key technology players that had disruptive potential for the industry if acquired.  A protocol stack here, a key-technology player there, and pretty soon you have a corner on the key resources needed to make a market work.

Diamondware is a key technology provider to MANY companies in the virtual world and gaming markets.  For example, one of their licensees is Vivox, the people who get all the credit for providing spatial audio for SecondLife.

On a related note, Nortel announced intent to acquire PingTel about a week ago as well.  PingTel makes a slick opensource, SIP-based, IP PBX for Linux.  If the Nortel voice team were to combine some cool SIP-based IP Telephony kit with spatial/positional audio.........

Now that Nortel has announced intent to acquire Diamondware, expect a number of shakeups around industry as (generally) virtual world startups will be averse to using spatial-audio technology owned by a company who sells virtual world technology.  If you are the CEO of some other spatial-audio vendor today, I'd go get a haircut and whiten my teeth if I were you, because you're about to get a bunch of invitations to the dance.

Virtual Worlds Innovation Awards- Call for Nominations

Concurrent with the Virtual Worlds Expo in Los Angeles, they will be announcing the first annual Virtual Worlds Innovation Awards.  These awards are to recognize key contributions to the development of the industry, and are broken down into the categories of:

Overall Innovator Award
Best Innovation in a Consumer Market
Best Innovation in the Enterprise Market
Best Innovation in the Youth Market

There may be multiple awards depending on the space and players, we're (thankfully) staying flexible.

Joey Seiler at Virtual Worlds News, Steve Prentice at Gartner, Nic Mitham at KZero, Erica Driver at ThinkBalm, Robert Bloomfield at Cornell, and I are the judges for this year's awards.  I have already received a number of suggestions from the community, and now it's time to open up the nominations.  Who would you like to see get an award?  Speak up now as we are nearing the decision point. Rationales and reasons welcome. 

Intel Larrabee: Potential Disruptive Technology

One of the major announcements at last week's SIGGRAPH conference was the Intel paper presenting their new graphics architecture.  I say graphics, however it doesn't take much imagination to realize that a powerful many-core architecture like Larrabee has general-purpose and special-purpose computational potential beyond graphics specifically.

I am not a graphics processing expert, I will be the first to assert.  For a technical write-up on what Larrabee is and is not, I would refer you to the excellent Ars Technica article on the subject.  What I do know is how to spot disruptors when they surface, and this announcement has the potential to become very disruptive.

Breaking: Nortel entering Enterprise Virtual World market

Nortel has been stealthy about their virtual collaboration efforts to date, sharing a little bit at the recent vPolicy event in London, however it appears that they have been developing a virtual space as a collaboration tool for onboarding, events, and training.  The project, known both as web.alive and "Project Chainsaw" (I prefer the second name, much more evocative) is starting to trickle out of Nortel as of tonight.  The screenshots I saw in London were very high quality graphics with hundreds of concurrent participants, which bodes well for the burgeoning 'enterprise events' application (think 'employee all-hands meetings')

Before any of the gaming people say 'Nortel WHO?', remember the fact that these guys have an enormous enterprise voice and video footprint that they can incrementally upgrade to include this function.  This is going to be a game-changer in the enterprise collaboration market for Virtual Worlds.

Video on YouTube of the Project Lead talking about Chainsaw with some screenshots.

Take a look at the breaking news on their website for more details.  I am hoping to get some time with their CTO of this effort over the next two days for inclusion into the TIG Industry Outlook for the VW space, so stay tuned.

The Market for Information Aggregators

Joining TIG presents an opportunity to reflect on the changing relationship between producers and consumers of intellectual property. There will always be a need for aggregators and editors, people who sift through the crud in their interest area and report out a summary of what’s best. Indeed as the flow of produced information rises exponentially, the need for sifters rises along with it. But the core economics of the sifter market are changing dramatically.

Welcoming contributor Prof. Edward Castronova

It is with great pleasure that the Technology Intelligence Group welcomes Edward Castronova.  Professor Castronova is a noted expert in the field of virtual economies and gameplay within massively multiplayer games and virtual worlds, directs the Synthetic Worlds Initiative at Indiana University, is the author of two key books on the subject Synthetic Worlds: The Business and Culture of Online Games and Exodus to the Virtual World: How Online Fun is Changing Reality.  His research paper, Virtual Worlds: A First-Hand Account of Market and Society on the Cyberian Frontier exploded on to the scene in 2001 with it's breakthrough conclusions on the implications of virtual currencies and real-money-trade.

Dr. Castronova's penetrating insights in the areas of gameplay, game design, virtual economies, are a welcome addition to the emerging-technology analysis of the Technology Intelligence Group.  His postings to the blog Terra Nova, and the ongoing development work of his Indiana University game development effort Arden, are a wealth of information for this emerging field of study.