Look out for Google Health

More from Web 2.0 Summit: Google's Melissa Mayer described Google's ambition to focus on health services. "Google is not a doctor, but people come in millions to type in there diagnosis and search for it. Health is a huge user information need". Health has been rumored for a long time as an obvious Google vertical.



The health industry is paper-based and many health records aren’t electronic. Understandably there are also privacy concerns and lack of coordination between entities. Google's ambition is to make patient records digital and portal (so you can bring your journal to your doctor on a USB). "It is obviously a really big vision. It will take a lot of breakthroughs in digitization", Mayer said.

Another feature Google will add is to add doctors and information about them to Google Maps.

Melissa Mayer started by explaining the top ten things you might expect from Google Health ;-)

Jag bloggar från "Virtual Worlds"-konferensen

Läs min blogg från San José på InternetWorld.

CSI characters will chase killer in Second Life

One of the best speakers at VW Fall 2007 was Anthony Zuiker. He is the creator of the CSI franchise, and is now bringing CSI: NY to Second Life. The theme os his speech was on the future of TV and media. “What’s the future of television?” he asked. “It is as follows: TV, online, mobile, and gaming.” There has to be original, great content that can be distributed online, through mobile updates and interacted with in gaming and virtual world environments. Why? Because media companies need to attract a younger generation of viewers interested in interacting with television rather than just watching it. This is also a way of re-invented traditional advertising into a form "you just don't Tivo over".


Monty Brinton/CBS

On Oct 24 Gary Sinise’s character and other CSI:NY characters will chase a killer in the real world and follow his avatar as it disapperas into Second Life. CBS will provide two 30-second spots advertising the virtual world to call people to action online, all leading up to a months-long answer to the episode’s cliffhanger.



For the users it will be easy to participate. The down loading procedure is simplified to a nine-minute downloading time. There will be clues and action for the beginner, the intermediate, and the advanced users. Anthony's avatar will walk you through the scenes.

“That’s the future of television,” said Zuiker. “There’s been some negative press about Second Life. I think why is that a lot of companies are cutting big checks with no real application for promotability. We’re putting Cisco on the air twice to show their teleconferencing capability. And then we’re putting it into the world to solve the mystery. If you’re a beverage company, I’ll drop the drinks into the show and then into the world and people will need to drink them to solve the crime.”

More on this story in New York Times.

Check out Anthony as he gives out chocolates to the audience. The woman in the red jacket taking pictures is me....

IBM sees emergence of 3D web

From the session "The BEST platforms for enterprise value" (VW Fall 2007)

“It feels very like the early Internet days, and we’re trying to learn from that and not repeat the mistakes,” said Sandy Kearney, IBM Global Director, IBM 3D Internet and Virtual Business. “I want to take us down this journey from a business value perspective and an enterprise perspective. It’s starting to become pretty gray area, because a lot of us believe we can be entertained in the enterprise space.”

With IBM's announcements this week of a group dedicated to providing open standards and mainstreaming the 3D Internet, Kearney's take on the metaverse is at the forefront of things.

Broadcasing + virtual content

From the panel "Entertainment in Virtual Worlds- It's not games. It's not TV. It's..." (VW Fall 2007)

“The living room itself is changing,” said Blake Lewin, Vice President Product Development, Turner Broadcasting Inc. “Media is becoming totally device dependent. Devices are becoming content independent. On my big screen, I’ve got video games, DVR, DVD cable. And users are becoming time independent. People can watch any show any time. There’s a breakdown in the network model and also in the consumption of media. That means Turner has to look at different means of providing programming. One of the ways is virtual worlds.”

Turner has now entered into a year-long partnership with Kaneva to test virtual worlds expansion.

Stardoll impressed the audience

Mattias Miksche, CEO, Stardoll and Stefanie Schwartz, VP Marketing, NeoPets

The kids virtual worlds market, is really the first that’s become mass market and successful from a business point of view. We’ve seen millions of users spending their money, or at least their parents’ money, on virtual worlds.

The audience were greatly impressed by the numbers that the members of the panel: "Kids and Teen Worlds" (VW Fall 2007) were presenting. Mattias Miksche of Stardoll even pulled down a round of applauds from the audience after his "girls-only"-presentation. NeoPets has a steady 10 million unique users spending a lot of money on games, gifts and stuff for their animals . Habbo has also found a recipe for keeping their users at the hotel for hours each month.

One thing that everyone in the panel could agree on, was that pre-paid cards at Target were a great success.

Report from "Virtual Worlds" in San Jose

Beata with Ralph Koster, CEO Areae and creator of Ultima Online.

Over 1,000 participants and 100 speakers have gathered at the Virtual Worlds event in San Jose Oct 10-11. The big discssion has been on how to blend the stickiness and ease of use of social networks, such as Facebook, with the rich user experience of a virtual world. Many of the participants are here to further explore how to extend their product or service with a virtual environment. Lego for example announced that they are creating the Lego Universe, a proprietary world to be realeased Aug 2008.

The web is going 3D faster than anyone could have imagined. It is a bit of a cultural shock to see a speaker like Sandy Kearny, Global Director, 3D Internet, IBM (!) talk about the challenges of the conceptual age and referring to Dan Pink's "A Whole New Mind" as her new bible of creative thinking. She also admitted that "it took IBM 8 years to understand e-business, but only 8 months to get 3D Internet".

Now I am off to listen to the panel on "Kids and Teen worlds" where Mattias Miksche, CEO of the paperdoll heaven Stardoll, and Sampo Karjalainen, founder of Habbo Hotel is participating. Second Life may be at the center of attention at an event like this, but Stardoll is still three times larger! Way to go, girls!