Liveblogging Enterprise 2.0: From the Labs

Moderator – David Coleman, Managing Director, Collaborative Strategies
Speaker – Chad Ata, Software Developer, Brightcom
Speaker – Denis Browne, Vice President, Emerging Solutions Imagineering, SAP Labs
Speaker – Irene Greif, IBM Fellow and Director, Collaborative User Experience, IBM Research
Speaker – Robert McCandless, CEO & Chief Technology Visionary, BrightCom

BrightCom

One of the things were working on is gaze correction (so that you know when I’m looking at you – in a room of people), telepresence.

Perspective corrected viewing – trying to measure the viewing angle in software – to make it clear that one is looking at one person not another. Rendered work environments – so you don’t have to paint all the rooms the same way – a rendered environment that looks to me like I’m looking into my office – but the other person thinks I’m in their office.

Imagine a photorealistic, high definition, second-life type example. (ob matrix example)

Video in second life – on the BrightCom private island in second life – projecting people’s video presence into second life at avatar size. Make it look like he is actualy in second life but is in video.

The other way is to take someone’s photorealistic avatar environment – goal is to eventually be indistinguishable from reality.

One of the things that is increasingly happening is the post-rendering of hollywood stars – to make them look more perfect than they are. Photorealistic avatars alng with supplemental information.

Cool second life demo. Also ability to project a second life avatar into real life.

—-

Irene from IBM, talking about Many Eyes.

Inspired in part by the NameVoyager – java applet which shows popularity – as you type in a name it tells you about popularity.

Was created by one of the folks behind the SmartMoney map of the market.

Why did it work? Simple API, simple to tell people how to use it. Unexpected patterns emerge, different perspectives – this is what inspired us.

Visualizations on many eyes, with bookmarking capability.

Data sets are bookmarkable, so you can share visualizations you’ve created, and notes on them.

—-

Denis Browne from SAP – talking about Widgets.

Web 2.0 is penetrating the enterprise. [I saw this same slide just yesterday. I know we’re all trying to be on message, but do I need to see exactly the same slide as was used in the keynote? Instead, it just makes me wonder about using “penetrate” to describe web 2.0’s entry into the marketplace, as though the enterprise is some non-permeable membrane or first line of defense.]

Three ways to Enterprise-Class Web 2.0. [More of the same slides from yesterday – extend applications, build new ones, or build mashups. Let’s get to the demo . . . ]

[Makes me wish the Judges from the “Launch Pad” got to comment on the From the Labs stuff too – but I guess that would make it hard for people to participate.]

Widgets – dashboard like stuff, pulled out of SAP and presented like Mac OS X or Vista desktop widgets – with login, with security, etc. Sales example: commit numbers in the forecast, open opportunities for a sales person, on the desktop.

[Editorial note: Widgets are pretty, but this is hardly experimental, cutting edge stuff, eh?]

Questions: Discussion about audio in second life, and some work BrightCom is doing on that possibility.

2 Comments

  1. [Editorial note: Widgets are pretty, but this is hardly experimental, cutting edge stuff, eh?]

    Well, all of the widgets I’ve seen are pretty low value “pieces of web pages.” SAP’s widgets are applications that may become the primary way many people interact with their enterprise systems. Since you don’t get any from Oracle, Microsoft, or any other apps vendor, I guess that qualifies them for “cutting edge stuff.”

    Great book — “Why Not?” by Nalebuff. Talks about the many ways to innovate, and one of the best is “translation” — take a solution from one domain to another (where you might even create more value). A cornerstone of Enterprise 2.0 is that it takes ideas, technologies, and methodologies from the Web 2.0 (consumer) world and combines them with the ideas, technologies, and methodologies of the enterprise to create something much better than what the enterprise had before. That is what SAP did with widgets.

    Just my €0.02 …

  2. Thanks for the comment Dennis.

    I do think widgets have potential long-term value, though they’re a bit high in the hype cycle at the moment.

    (Dennis’ keynote presentation from Tuesday is available online: to see the video and synchronized slides you have to go to this portal and choose from the list of presentations, or get just the slides in PDF form.)

Comments are closed.