The Cranial Tap blog has moved

This is our old blog, which served us well. Our new blog can be found at this page: New Cranial Tap Blog Thanks for your interest in Cranial Tap.

Second Life® Residents Rally for Haiti

One of the things that keeps me logging in to Second Life® is the many varied and interesting people you can meet from all over the world. Yesterday, in the space of hour, at Avatar Island, I met folks from India, Mozambique and Connecticut. In the almost four years that I've been a Second Life resident, I have made friends with those who live in New Zealand, Ireland, Germany, and Brazil to name a few.

I am always overwhelmed by the generosity of the people in Second Life. For years, many charitable organizations have been successful in their in-world fund-raising efforts, most notably The American Cancer Society who has raised over $650,000 over the past five years. To get learn more about these efforts, click here. With the devastation from the earthquake in Haiti, Second Life residents have again rallied are creating their own efforts to support the people affected by this tragedy. We know there are many ways to get involved: from donating $10 by texting 'HAITI' to 90999 to contacting the American Red Cross directly. We encourage you to help however you can.

You can get more information here on the Second Life efforts to help the people of Haiti.

Happy Holidays from Cranial Tap

Click to enlarge

Wishing you and yours a wonderful holiday season!

Search and Rescue

I am constantly impressed by the many different ways that folks are using virtual worlds. For example, universities use the space to facilitate interactions between students and faculty and businesses use virtual worlds to cut costs while still reaching their employees and customers efficiently. Last week I attended a discussion on how the Texas Engineering Extension Service (TEEX) is using the space to help save lives!


TEEX is using Second Life® to simulate disasters, such as burning buildings or deteriorating bridges. Simulations are crucial for training and the testing of procedures. What responders learn can save costs and more importantly, save lives. On Public Works Island, anyone can take a self directed tour of common bridge maintenance concerns. Click this link to watch the video.

Virtual Worlds as Green Workplaces

The U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of International Information Programs, Office of Innovative Engagement hosted a panel discussion today on the benefits of using Virtual Worlds for increasing efficient workplaces while reducing carbon footprints.


Over the past few years, virtual worlds have gone from a game to a real world, real work, collaborative effort. More companies are using spaces like Second Life for recruitment, training, conferences, sales and trade shows while reducing travel costs, getting marketing feedback and with the added benefit of being "green".


When asked specifically how the Federal Government is using virtual worlds, the obvious answer was that in using discussions such as this well-attended event, they are able to get a larger, more diverse and international dialog going. Cranial Tap shares the views of the panel and will help your company achieve it's goals for green efficiency.

Intel CTO predicts 3D Web is the Platform of the Future

Intel's CTO Justin Rattner spoke at SC09 Supercomputing Conference in Portland, Oregon last week. In his keynote speech he states "High-performance computing doesn't need a killer app as much as it needs a killer application framework," Rattner said. "It needs a platform in which people can leverage the power of high-performance computing to do just about anything they can imagine."

As reported in Network World: That "killer application framework," Rattner said, is the 3D Web, powered on the back end by cloud technologies and the HPC industry. The 3D Web technologies will not only power virtual worlds we know today like Second Life, but create ways for people to interact with each other and new platforms for businesses to test products, he said.

Read more at Network World here

Cognizant global training video

This video was produced by a Cranial Tap client, Cognizant. It demonstrates highly effective use of meetings and training scenarios in Second Life that pulls together staff members from around the world: www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwzhQpzRmY4

Video Shows Virtual World Business Use

Cranial Tap has created a two-minute video overview of NIC's new virtual world environment in Second life. NIC USA, the nation's leading provider of official government portals and online services, hired Cranial Tap, Inc. to design and build this interactive, 3D online headquarters. Narrated by NIC CEO Harry Herington, the video provides a sweeping visual overview of the space and close ups of innovative technologies which include 3-D interactive data panels, unique employee and visitor orientation, and effective collaboration and training areas. The video also references the fact that NIC held its 2009 shareholder meeting there and demonstrates to visitors from around the world how states can disseminate relevant information to their constituents through NIC services.

See the video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M60BXj3iuk. To visit NIC's virtual headquarters, visit http://slurl.com/secondlife/eGov/123/.

Getting Past the Hype

When IBM held a national conference last October, they estimated saving around $350,000 when they held their October conference in the virtual world ("A Second Chance for Second Life," Wall Street Journal, Aug. 19, 09). IBM is one of several businesses reporting the effectiveness of virtual world technology in ThinkBalm's May 09 Immersive Internet Business Value Study (see link below).

ThinkBalm surveyed 66 businesses and held 15 in-depth interviews in order to grasp a larger picture of current immersive internet business solutions. The results show that businesses are finally getting past the hype and into the practical. Immersive Internet technology once seemed a business risk taken on only by the earliest of early adopters, but now the solid numbers are coming in, and they're impressive.

Ninety-five percent of survey respondents "reported some level of success with their 2008 / 1Q 2009 immersive technology deployments," and 30% of those surveyed recouped initial investment within nine months. The main reasons for client satisfaction with Immersive Internet technology: low cost, innovation, and and real world "presence" only 3-D, virtual world meeting places can provide.

From Cranial Tap's perspective, ThinkBalm's report explains our growing client base. And we're staying ahead of the hype with cutting edge technology, round-the-clock service, and a highly anti-Dilbertian business philosophy of over-delivering on product.

ThinkBalm Immersive Internet Business Value Study, May 09: http://www.thinkbalm.com/reports/.

Telework Day - August 3, 2009

Governor Tim Kaine has issued an executive order to encourage Virginia companies to "Go Green" to allow workers to telework on August 3, 2009. Cranial Tap, Inc. is a global company, with corporate offices in Virginia, just outside of Washington, D.C. We have pledged to follow the Governor's lead and will participate with pride in order to save money and energy. We encourage others to take the pledge. If you are a VA state company or individual, sign up here: "http://www.teleworkexchange.com/teleworkday/"

If you are a company based outside of Virginia, contact info@cranialtap.com to see how your business or organization can benefit from working remotely.

More Companies Go Virtual, Save Money

In this economy, more companies are searching for ways to cut spending without scrimping on valuable content. Holding virtual meetings, classes and/or conferences is just one way that many businesses are adapting to the new reality. Follow the story on cnbc here then contact Cranial Tap to see how you can take advantage of our expertise.

As Seen on SecondLife.com

Second Life® has recently redesigned their homepage and we at Cranial Tap are pleased to see one of our builds featured! CyberExtruder, the company that can put your (any) face on your avatar, hired us to bring their presence into Second Life®. Avatar Island, with it's active community, new technology and proven new user orientation has been so successful that we're thrilled to be recognized in this way.

CRANIAL TAP, Inc. Releases WeatherBug® Panel to residents of Second Life®

The line between online visual environments and real life blurred today as Cranial Tap releases the WeatherBug Panel to the Second Life® community. The fully interactive display provides real time weather data provided by the expansive WeatherBug network. Residents can place the displays in their virtual homes, businesses or social spaces.

The interactive panel provides a menu of features that leverage real world data in 3D virtual environments. Timely information provided includes current weather, high and low temperatures and an animated wind speed and direction gauge. The panel supports current or SL time, and temperature in Fahrenheit or Celsius.

The WeatherBug real time display is just one example of Cranial Tap’s growing list of technologies that serve to increase enterprise productivity. While fun and engaging, the panel’s core functionality is crucial in supporting today’s virtual world business applications. Other Cranial Tap technologies include data visualization tools, metrics analysis, environment and media management.

See it on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qDILwBc15U
Try it for yourself: slurl.com/secondlife/Cortex/27/231/56

Obit: Google Lively

Google announced that they will be shuttering their Lively experiment after a few short months of life. This visual chat room offering went up against several existing competitors with established roots. While the 3D chat room market remains nascent, companies like IMVU have found some success here. They've attracted and retained users while managing to raise significant funding.

Lively offered little in the way of enhanced features over other similar products. While room editing was supported, it remained a platform where community building was left to users. This is especially difficult with an endless series of self contained rooms where few can gather. In my opinion, the 3D chat space requires community areas embellished with activities (e.g. gaming, lectures, learning).
















Google has an incredible array of solutions and content to help meet this need. The involvement of creative types from their Business Development team should have been able to marry relationships and help redefine this field. Lively's early demise was no surprise. However, community and content seeding could have delayed it's early passing.

The real opportunity for Google in the virtual world space lies with Google Earth. They are well positioned to lease virtual space to real life business. The opportunity lies in providing the ability to virtually stroll down any business district in the world and go shopping. Tie Google's other services into this type play and you have the makings of a highly compelling experience.

Innovative Strategies for PR Professionals

Dave spoke at the 2008 PRSA International Conference in Detroit. Public relation and communications professionals came for "four days of knowledge-packed workshops, sharing strategies and making new connections." His dynamic presentation on the benefits of public relations in 3D Virtual Worlds was informative and lively. Many thanks to toprankonlinemarketing for the above photo.

Go Green, Go Virtual

Many studies have been done lately on the benefits of teleworking and teleconferencing. The benefits include an increase in productivity, cost savings and positive environmental impact. Organizing a virtual conference can save up to 6-8 hours of travel time per employee. Work virtually and save the costs of hotel, travel and other expenses.

Adopting a teleworking plan can help save the environment. According to Tesla.com "teleworking saves an average of 242 kgs of carbon emissions per employee. That's the same as taking six cars of the road per 50 employees." Additionally, "a reduction in office space required by 75% of the teleworking population and reduces the co2 emissions of 1,200 kgs per teleworking employee."

Other examples include: by using Web Conferencing technology, Arizona's State government has saved 760,773 pounds of co2 and over $1 million dollars. Georgia's Journal of Extension did a study whereby they found that with only four workshop conferences, there was a savings of $6,000 in mileage reimbursement, 200 hours of employee time and 3,400 fewer pounds of carbon emissions.

See how working virtually can benefit your company. Contact Cranial Tap for more information.

The Latest from Cranial Tap

The Cranial Tap team has been hard at work creating innovative technologies and new environments for businesses to increase their productivity. See how we've been working with more companies to leverage the virtual world space for training, collaboration, research, simulation and more at http://cranialtap.blip.tv/#1273753

Happy Virtual Worlds Day!

According to The Times Union in Jacksonville, Florida, Chase's Calendar of Events has accepted an application to declare August 20th "Virtual Worlds Day." There are currently over 300 virtual worlds, and more coming every day. I, for one, think that a celebration of that fact is way overdue!

Philip Rosedale Interview

Fast Company magazine recently published an interview with Philip Rosedale, Linden Lab CEO (Second Life parent), until recently stepping down. We're pleased to hear that 15%-20% of daily use in Second Life is attributable to business and education, according to Philip. We've seen this trend at Cranial Tap and anticipate these numbers growing.

Microsoft® Launches Visual Studio 2008 Pro in SL

I was at the well-attended launch of Microsoft's Visual Studio 2008 and .NET 3.5 in Second Life today. It was an interactive presentation of the new features from the latest version of the popular Integrated Development Environment (IDE). Following two main paths, both framework and Visual Studio, VS 2008 touts more options for .NET users and many improvements over older versions.

If you'd like to see the features for yourself, visit http://slurl.com/secondlife/Microsoft%20Island/188/75/21. But put on your peg leg and eye patch, it's all done in a pirate's theme!

The Cranial Tap WeatherBug® Panel

When WeatherBug® announced their API contest in June we knew it was a good opportunity for us to demonstrate the breadth of our skill set for creating data driven objects within virtual worlds. The fact that the WeatherBug® API is so well thought out and simple to use just made our job that much easier.

Our entry for the contest, aptly titled The Cranial Tap WeatherBug® Panel, relies on design and functionality that is core to all virtual world business applications, including: remote data access, meaningful data visualization, and simple, but effective, user interface design. The panel is not just a static data display - it is fully interactive, engaging, and fun. We think it will be a big hit when we release it to the Second Life® population.

WeatherBug® has a more detailed post about our panel and how it works on their blog, Inside WeatherBug, but if you've got Second Life installed you can see it in action right now by visiting our new virtual headquarters on the island of Cortex: slurl.com/secondlife/Cortex/27/231/56.

Google's Lively World

Google made it's first foray into virtual worlds today with the announcement of Lively. The above screen shot shows my character, CranialDave, hanging out in a coffee shop environment. While it was slow loading over my wireless data card, it finally offered a rich space resembling There.com. Users can create their own rooms using provided templates and fill them with common furnishings.

It's a nifty beginning for the search giant, though Orkut was less than a success. They are also competing with established mini-worlds like Meez and IMVU. Now if they link Google Earth to this, they can support users strolling down virtual streets and visit shops at corresponding actual addresses. We'll be keeping a close eye on this.

New Cranial Tap HQ

Cranial Tap is designing a new virtual headquarters, located on the island of Cortex. It will open in the next couple of weeks. Featured above the forest is a stylized building in the shape of our brain mascot. Visitors can learn about our latest business solutions that support global collaboration, training, presentations and spacial data displays.

Federal Virtual Worlds Expo

Cranial Tap will be displaying at the Federal Virtual Worlds Expo on April 24 and 25, 2008 in Washington, DC. Stop by the booth and introduce yourself if you plan to attend. More info on the show can be found here: www.ndu.edu/IRMC/fedconsortium.html.

We will be announcing new clients and exciting projects soon, stay tuned....

Mitch Kapor discussion in SL

Mitch Kapor, an early Second Life investor and luminary, spoke yesterday at a CMP event. He talked about future technologies that will be responsible for making virtual worlds more appealing to users and business alike.

He talked about photo-to-face services that allow users to look more like themselves inside of virtual worlds. He was obviously not aware of Cranial Tap's Avatar Island build which has offered this service since June of 2007. He also discussed 3D camera's that can be used to drive character gestures using body movements. He may want to be aware of the efforts of LightGlove who offer much more functionality over a camera. Mitch...call me and we'll do prim lattes and talk.














Close up of Mitch's character sporting his real face.

Cranial Tap distributes face service

Cranial Tap has become the distributor of CyberExtruder's photo-to-face service in Second Life. Extending the Avatar Island project, we programmed this service to operate anywhere in the grid under the brand name; AutoFace. Anyone who wishes to apply their own photo to their avatar can now do so within minutes. This service has become popular with business users. The service can be tried here: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Cortex/146/173/40.

Media Grid Meeting

Cranial Tap attended a meeting of the Media Grid organization last week. Aaron Walsh hosted the event where educators learned more about this evolving platform effort. The goal is to provide immersive training in ways not possible in the real world. Open standards and easy access are parts of the over all goals behind this effort. To learn more about Media Grid, visit this link: mediagrid.org.

How to build a company mascot

Building a company mascot can be an involved process. This post addresses the steps that Cranial Tap took to design and build our recognizable brain icon.

A strong design is initially required. This step involves creating an image that properly reflects the message you want to convey. A brain seemed to be an appropriate place to start for us. Because we have many years of experience in developing online consumer media, we wanted to convey this fact visually; we tap into the brains of virtual world users to deliver compelling experiences.

Blueprint Design


















This blueprint shows the final design chosen for our mascot. Now the challenge in building the design...

Top of Mascot - Workbench















A special work bench was constructed to securely hold the top part of brain mascot. Many special materials were fabricated and tested with this particular part of the brain holder.

Brain Cage






















The brain cage construction required scaffolding. A special ceiling mount was erected to hold the cage in place during construction. The high tensile wires held everything in place during the build.

Brain Growth






Perhaps the most difficult part of construction was formulating the brain itself. The cell division process took several months to develop under polygonal microscopes.

Assembly








Assembly of the mascot was a satisfying part of this whole experience. Spending many months on construction all lead up to this moment. User laser guided restraining forms, we gently slid each part together.












Fin
















The final design! The fully assembled and functional mascot now serves to carry the message of the Cranial Tap team. We're here to tap for you!

Happy Holidays!

Melty's Misadventures Contest

Say hello to Melty the Snowman. This quirky but adorable fellow wants to travel with you in Second Life and have his picture taken. Doing so could earn you $5000 Linden dollars and a month's lease in a Costa del Sol beach house.

This event is managed by Cranial Tap's sophisticated contest technology. Users can submit photos to a kiosk in an automated fashion. A voting system allows the community to choose which entry is their favorite. Complete metrics are provided in terms of rules / snowmen taken, entries began and those completed. The system ensures one vote per user and the results are emailed to contest managers.

The contest runs from December 14 through January 4. Stop by Costa del Sol, located in Montserrat sim for more details: slurl.com/secondlife/montserrat/173/159/22