[From Businessweek]   Ford assembly line optimized by gaming technology May 24, 2010 By Nick Barber When Glenn Harrington donned a motion capture suit complete with more than 40 reflective spheres he wasn’t being turned into the latest video game character, but helping to design car manufacturing jobs that are less physically stressful on workers. At the Ford Motor Company Assembly Ergonomics Lab in Dearborn, Michigan, the company uses technology typically found in the gaming industry to reduce on-the-job and repetitive stress injuries on its assembly lines. For a video report on the technology, click here. “The cameras pick up…

[From LiveScience]   Image: The third-person shooter game “Alan Wake” stars a suspense-thriller author in a surreal, horror novel setting. Video Gamers Can Control Dreams, Study Suggests By Jeremy Hsu, LiveScience Senior Writer posted: 25 May 2010 09:53 am ET Playing video games before bedtime may give people an unusual level of awareness and control in their dreams, LiveScience has learned. That ability to shape the alternate reality of dream worlds might not match mind-bending Hollywood films such as “The Matrix,” but it could provide an edge when fighting nightmares or even mental trauma. Dreams and video games both represent…

[From Fierce ContentManagement (“a weekly content management news update, which focuses on best practices for creating, storing and managing documents and information”); a scene from the film is here]  What if content management were 3D? February 22, 2010 — 4:17pm ET | By Ron Miller I recently saw the Michael Douglas/Demi Moore 1994 movie called “Disclosure.” In the movie (which explores sexual harassment in the workplace), Michael Douglas was working for a computer company that created a 3D virtual reality database. The user would put on special glasses and he was literally inside the database with the data. He could…

[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…

[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…

[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.