I’d seen reBang’s post on Dassault’s “3D Flicker” gambit
and like Csven I was less than overwhelmed initially. Plus, proprietary-to-the-core software without open specifications always throws up a red flag for me – the internet abhors gatekeepers. HOWEVER 3DVIA provides a compelling business case that will have a powerful and near-term impact. For starters, existing product parts are available at 3D Content Central right now:
3D ContentCentral® provides access to free CAD drawings and 3D models representing millions of supplier-certified part numbers in all leading 2D and 3D CAD model formats, including AutoCAD® models, Autodesk Inventor™ models, Pro/ENGINEER® models, Solid Edge™ models, CATIA® models, SolidWorks® 3D CAD models, Unigraphics® models and other CAD systems. Model downloads are free to registered 3D ContentCentral® users and you can download as many CAD models as you want. In addition to providing access to supplier-certified parts models, 3D ContentCentral® puts you in touch with the efforts of a community of more than 280,000 registered users, who contribute 3D CAD models to the site’s user library.
Engineers and suppliers who have the tools and skills to leverage this can find each other through Supplier Source. When combined with the previously mentioned 3DSwym which puts end-use customers in the loop, the key participants in the ecosystem can collaborate. Not surprisingly, they’ve already got Microsoft into a partnership and Google will have to react – their 3D Warehouse and Sketch-Up offerings simply cannot compete with this. If Dassault opens things up a bit, both Croquet and Second Life can mesh very nicely with their core. Regardless, I’m predicting that before the year’s end, several major brands, movies, TV shows, and/or musical acts will be drawing large numbers of people into the meshverse for business. I expect IBM to be involved in many because they see the business case, understand who’s in charge and are actively engaged internally and externally in virtual worlds.
IBM – long considered a technology king maker. Their investments? Well, they lent their name to this particular conference. And anyone who attended the Rational Conference last week can describe in detail the massive presence Second Life had there – it was everywhere. As part of their efforts on the day, they cranked out a nice video (which, interestingly, featured a track from Jessy Moss – an artist not too many folks have heard stateside), several panelists and presenters, and an excellent demo of some climate science related virtual world technologies.
Make no mistake, however: the technical limitations on both the server and client sides are daunting. As Kapor noted, the ready availability of fast PC’s with fast connections in the Participation Age gives virtual worlds the critical mass they need for the early adopters. Crossing the chasm, however, will take time.
Last Friday didn’t convince me that virtual worlds have done so, but it did make me more optimistic that they may – possibly in the not too distant future.
Redmonk: Virtual worlds … not converted but coming around
3DVIA is going to grow like Second Life did last year – perhaps even more. In order to leverage their newfound momentum, they will find like Second Life, Adobe and others that open source is their friend.
There’s broad recognition that the Google Gears announcement is one of high impact, but I haven’t seen anyone getting close to just how big. Yes, working offline is important, but it’s not new. As Dave Winer points out, the Radio blogging system was doing it in 2001. It actually goes back further than that as I’ll show shortly, but what is new is that Google Gears builds on open standards and has potential to become a very widely adopted standard itself – they’ve already got Adobe as a partner:
Adobe chief software architect Kevin Lynch says his company is happy to be working with Google to create “a standard cross-platform, cross-browser local storage capability.”
The idea that a Google Gears standard could make cookies obsolete is a big deal too, but none of the above even begin to scratch the surface of what it will mean to have a standardized database server running on hundreds of millions of machines – that is key to answering the $64Billion Dollar Question about how the meshverse will grow to support tens of millions of simultaneously collaborating participants. Google Gears will eventually make a dramatic change in the economics of the web – probably in ways Google may not have really anticipated.
Version 1.2 just shipped:
Centralized social networks continue the notion of data silos, locking up end-users into a proprietary walled garden. The PeopleAggregator is a social network web service that will be used to inter-connect the world’s social networks – together.
So instead of a single social network with 10,000,000 people – we see 10M social networks – with 25-150 people in them. This vision of distributed, meshed universe of networks is what PeopleAggregator is all about.
Gotta love it … sounds like this is one way the meshed-up jungle and other mumbo jumbo concepts jes grew!
The ability to have a single id for signing on to any network service has reached critical mass for developers large and small via OpenID. This is HUGE – a big win for everyone eventually. Marc Canter captures a key part of it:
OH MY GOD! What a historic day! Congrats to all – I’m totally jazzed about these developments! …
Its gonna take some serious, adult strength ID management code (from Microsoft, IBM, Novell and other interested entities) combined with our user-centric community to make this all happen. I just don’t see a bunch of small startups pulling this off. So this is one case where large companies participating in open standards evolution – as a good thing.
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What we have right now is that the large companies are listening to us about privacy, governance, entitlement, attribute exchange and interop – we’ve made huge strides. So lets enjoy this moment – now that it’s a proven fact that disparate ID systems can work together in a meta-identity environment.
Here at the Meshverse Journal, people have always been key but OpenId is even bigger than Marc is conveying because of how it will ultimately mesh with the places, things and events people care about(Power To The Peers and other posts from last year on playing and diplomacy). I strongly recommend taking the time to listen to or watch The Future of OpenID presentation by Simon Willison. The slides are available and Suw Charman’s notes are very good, but the video really is the way to get the most out of it. If at some point you feel it’s not for you, that it’s about to get too technical, wait 45 seconds and it you’ll see something worth continuing for. If you think you don’t have time, consider all the time you’ll save trying to remember passwords and creating new accounts! The sooner you learn about it the sooner you’ll start receiving the benefits. Besides, OpenID is for YOU because it puts you in control of YOUr online identity .
I’m rolling out a line of services I’m offering for people interested in learning about and taking advantage of this paradigm shift. There’s only one now but more are on the way. If you have suggestions let me know.
