[From MedCity News (“Innovation, influence and business in America’s medical cities”)]

5.21.10 | Thomas Lee | Rochester, Minnesota

Mayo Clinic explores the virtual world of Second Life

Mayo Clinic is a world famous hospital and research institution. But owning a tropical island seems a bit excessive, especially for a non-profit organization.

Alas, “Mayo Clinic Island” isn’t real, at least not in the traditional sense of the word. The island only exists in the virtual 3D world of Second Life, where avatars, online personas of real people around the world, freely mingle and attend lectures on cancer and heart disease.

Once confined to tech geeks and online gaming enthusiasts, Second Life and other similar sites have become the ultimate training and modeling tools for health care organizations. Hospitals and medical schools use Second Life to conduct courses, simulate doctor/patient visits, and test innovative designs for emergency rooms and medical clinics.… read more. “Mayo Clinic explores the virtual world of Second Life”

[From Mashable (“The Social Media Guide“)]

Augmented Reality Billboard Puts Passersby in a Street Fight

Barb Dybwad
May 1, 2010

We’ve seen a number of creative uses for augmented reality recently, from Iron Man to virtual pets and even tattoos. An interactive billboard in the Netherlands brings a powerful new example to the category by putting passersby in the middle of a virtual street fight.

The Dutch government created the billboard to address a pressing problem for public employees, who are often the targets of aggression and outright violence when performing their daily service duties. The problem is compounded by Dutch citizens’ reluctance to interfere in others’ fights.

The goal of the PSA is to encourage citizens to stand up for public workers in violent confrontations. The augmented reality billboard, placed above a busy intersection in Amsterdam, shows a real-time view of the street below but superimposes a green screen-filmed street fight into the otherwise empty curb space.… read more. “Augmented Reality billboard puts passersby in a street fight”

[From The Wall Street Journal via Yahoo! Finance]

UPS Thinks Out of the Box on Driver Training

by Jennifer Levitz
Wednesday, April 7, 2010 

Vexed that some 30% of driver candidates flunk its traditional training, United Parcel Service Inc. (UPS) is moving beyond the classroom to ready its rookies for the road.

In the place of books and lectures are videogames, a contraption that simulates walking on ice and an obstacle course around an artificial village.… read more. “UPS thinks out of the box on driver training”

[From Wired magazine’s Danger Room blog (“What’s Next in National Security”)]

Pentagon: Boost Training With Computer-Troop Mind Meld

By Katie Drummond
April 27, 2010

The Pentagon is looking to better train its troops — by scanning their minds as they play video games.

Adaptive, mind-reading computer systems have been a work-in-progress among military agencies for at least a decade. In 2000, far-out research agency Darpa launched “Augmented Cognition,” a program that sought to develop computers that used EEG scans to adjust how they displayed information — visually, orally, or otherwise — to avoid overtaxing one realm of a troop’s cognition.

The Air Force also took up the idea, by trying to use EEGs to “assess the operator’s actual cognitive state”  and “avoid cognitive bottlenecks before they occur.”

Zeroing in on brainpower is a strategy that reflects the changing tactics of fighting wars: today’s troop needs to be as cognitively ready as they are physically — if not more.… read more. “Pentagon: Boost Training With Computer-Troop Mind Meld”

[From the Massively blog (“Daily News about MMOs”)]

The Virtual Whirl: Immersion, virtual environments, Facebook, and the conceptual hump

by Tateru Nino
May 15th 2010

Second Life is an immersive virtual environment. That is, it fosters attention and a quality of focus. You might subscribe to alternative definitions of the word “immersion”, but focus and attention are the sense being used when developer/operators talk about an “immersive environment”. They might intend one of the other meanings at other times – the word is a pretty slippery one.

The problem is that for most general-purpose virtual environments (eg: Second Life), that immersivity – that quality of attention and focus – kicks in pretty late. Only after you understand the basics of the context in which your actions, activities and experiences are taking place, do you have the satisfying sort of immersion that comes so easily to flat spaces like the Web and Facebook.… read more. “Immersion, virtual environments, Facebook, and the conceptual hump”

[From MIT’s Technology Review Editors blog]

Monday, May 10, 2010

Iron Man 2 Envisions the Future of Computing Interfaces

Think the science in the movie is bad? The real science is in the interaction.

By Erica Naone

Science purists might find much to complain about in the newest installment of the Iron Man franchise, starring Robert Downey Jr. Admittedly, Tony Stark “creates an element,” and heroes and villains alike seem able to break into high-level computer systems with little more than the wave of an iPhone look-a-like. But I expect computer scientists and designers will be impressed by the movie’s natural user interfaces.… read more. “Iron Man 2 envisions the future of computing interfaces”