Google Lively
Google's Lively application has apparently not had the expected impact on the marketplace according to an article in the Economist in August.
BUa Consulting has set up a virtual seminar room using Lively and will begin offering seminars to clients shortly.
While the technology is not perfect with future improvements and the addition of voice (hopefully) at some stage in the future this technology could prove extremely useful

Gartner have released their 2008 Hype Cycle
According to Gartner emerging out of the trough of disillusionment are wikis and corporate blogging while SOA and Location Aware Apps and basic web services are on the slope of productivity and nearing the plateau of productivity.

I thought this video provides a good overview of Web 2.0

McKinsey have released their 2008 Web 2.0 report which will be of interest to businesses wishing to embrace and get benefits from web 2.0 workplace technologies.

McKinsey Report (623 KB)

 

 

At the Mindshop conference in May 2008 I mentioned in my seminar that the world of virtual online lives as represented by Second Life may be beginning to climb the slope of enlightenment as per the Gartner Emerging technology model. See http://www.buaconsulting.com/emerging-tech

I believe this is being borne out with the emergence of browser based virtual reality solutions. This allows people to build virtual environments on their own websites and I believe this could lead to these solutions becoming more mainstream. Solutions are currently available through among others, www.vivaty.com and Google has an offering called Lively.

Bua Consulting has a virtual seminar room which we are currently testing - it is built on the Google Lively product which is currently in Beta testing - depending on ongong reliability we are looking at running some virtual seminars and networking evenings  in the coming months. If you are interested in attending please let us know - we are currently compiling a list of prospective attendees

Blog on the conference.

Just back from the Mindshop conference in Sydney and a presentation on emerging technologies. As such I thought I'd talk about emerging technology using an emerging (well emerged at this stage) technology.

Key point for business is that some of these emerging technologies are very easy to use - however dedication is needed in matching them to your business goals and perservering with them until a Network effect is developed.

More at www.buaconsulting.com/emerging-tech