Nortel R&D displayed new software today dubbed webalive, which lets people put themselves up as 3D avatars in a virtual world and network in the wondrous way of Web 2.0.
Webalive is being marketed as a software platform for businesses, which can have their employees hold virtual meetings in virtual worlds and chat in real-time. Apparently, it's also designed to be useful for ecommerce as it would allow punters to talk about products and services over the web with other shoppers, just like in real life.
Nortel perhaps missed the fact that men like buying stuff from such sites as Amazon.com or Ringside.com so they don't have to put up with their wives or girlfriends talking the whole time. Webalive has been in development for some time now under the name Project Chainsaw, a name more fitting for a new zombie shoot 'em up on the Playstation 3 than a business tool.
Nortel also announced it had bought Diamondware, a company specialising in positional voice technology. Diamondware's technology allows users to centre in on someone who is speaking and shut-out other people and background noise. Being able to decide who one wants to listen to in high-definition audio will be an integral part of webalive. Webalive will also place a focus on identity and corporate security, so users can be sure they're indeed talking with Mumbal Jumble from an office 5000 kilometres away, and not a script-kiddy from the neighbourhood.
The R&D people responsible for the project seem to believe that 3D worlds, or plain old virtual reality, is 'the future of online collaboration. If you're participating in a conference call today it is difficult to have sidebar conversations, to know who else is in the meeting, who is speaking and the relationship or business history of all the participants. web.alive will address those issues by pulling together the IT and telecom worlds to give each avatar access to a wealth of information in ways we have never seen before,' explained Nortel's chief technology officer John Roese.
Arn Hyndman, who's heading the project, can be seen demonstrating and explaining the Second Life-for-businesses rip-off right here. X |