I am starting to be almost obsessed with SecondLife, wishing I could already upload my brain somewhere and create multiple instantiations of myself to go after all that I have in my visor. But of course, for the time being I can not.

So instead of actively participating in SecondLife I am rather pursuing projects such as the further development of transLucid, our publishing-system geared towards users of knowledge-management applications that can be also used as a lightweight CMS.

SecondLife really offers us a glimpse of what the future for (hopefully) everyone on the planet might look like. Wired has great articles to dive into this new reality. I can only recommend to anyone faintly interested in SL the Wired Travel Guide to SecondLife. And yes, you may also have virtual sex in there, thanks for bringing that up.

Think that the Babylon tower of languages has to be overcome? With the Translator HUD, you can. It offers a real-time translation system. While you chat with people in languages other than... well, English... it translates to you their typings as fast and as best as it can.

Don't think you ought to consider reserving your spot in SecondLife yet? Think again, when organisations such as the BBC or Nature have already done so.

Nature recently opened up an island what they call Second Nature.

I have absolutely no doubt that SecondLife is here to stay. They might even open-source their underlying protocol which would open up a whole new world, literally. There are other good reasons why Google Earth will survive. It takes a different angle at creating and living in virtual environments in that it uses our actual, physical earth as the template. My hunch is that both virtual empires will have their role and say in defining the future of our lives.

"Unifies Modern Scripting Across Firefox and Flash and Advances Innovation on the Web

Adobe Systems Incorporated and the Mozilla Foundation, announced that Adobe has contributed source code for the ActionScript™ Virtual Machine, the powerful standards-based scripting language engine in Adobe® Flash® Player, to the Mozilla Foundation. Mozilla will host a new open source project, called Tamarin, to accelerate the development of this standards-based approach for creating rich and engaging Web applications.
The Tamarin project will implement the final version of the ECMAScript Edition 4 standard language, which Mozilla will use within the next generation of SpiderMonkey, the core JavaScript engine embedded in Firefox®, Mozilla’s free Web browser. As of today, developers working on SpiderMonkey will have access to the Tamarin code in the Mozilla CVS repository via the project page located at www.mozilla.org/projects/tamarin/ . Contributions to the code will be managed by a governing body of developers from both Adobe and Mozilla. "

Such a great news:

• a major contribution of a commercial corporation to the open-source community
• a step towards unity and standard compliance for the dynamic/behavior layer of the web : javascript .

I remember a competitive analysis done in 2004 by Macromedia to assess the Backbase framework in regards to Macromedia Flex. In the intro of the document the following was stated:
"There are a number of downsides. First and foremost, since the code relies on the web browser, developers extending the Backbase framework are at risk of “death by a thousand cuts” development needing to work around various browser incompatibility issues. As browsers move towards standards compliance, this becomes less of an issue, but it will always remain.
Another drawback of this solution is that it’s limited by the capabilities of the browser. Applications based on Backbase can do what a browser can do, but cannot go beyond that (like runtime drawing of cornered interfaces). If customer feedback indicates that specific functionality should be added to the runtime because there is a real need for it, there is no way for Backbase to do so, since they rely on joint initiatives taken by the browser industry. At this time, there are no joint initiatives, which leaves the roadmap of next generation Backbase applications unclear."

Well things evolved. Backbase is still there, an important player in the AJAX community. They learned to grow a developper community and open up their codebase. And their initial strategy (reliance on open standards) appears quite right on spot, especially after today's announcement (sic!).
No doubt that good old competition continues although taking a new dimension, more in the open :-)
Let's stay tuned !

I was recently send a link by someone pointing me to YouOS, a site that showcases the power of AJAX and web services available today. What YouOS reminded me of is that the concept of decentralized data storage still hasn't taken off for some reason. Or is it only my perception?

The only companies I know of that I would consider as using real P2P technology to allow their customers to store and retrieve data in a decentralized fashion are Allmydata and Peerio.

Whereas it is only Peerio who seems to understands that there is a major corporate market out there for such solutions. The storage virtualization market is ripe for a new entrant to challenge the likes of IBM who hold a virtual monopoly on it with their SAN solutions.

I couldn't imagine GeneralMotors, Intel or simply SME's to outsource their data storage services to the likes of Google and Microsoft. I mean c'mon you wouldn't want to trust "someone else" to securely store your companies sensitive data, right?

But then again, you wouldn't want to invest the sums that these giants are putting on the table to build their global server infrastructure. So what about secure P2P storage where you could decide with whom you would partner to store you data on? Or if you want to use only your company internal computers, there's plenty of space available with a 30-40% utilization of storage space in your company.

Have to think a bit more about this but since starting to track these trends in storage technology it's becoming more and more apparent that there is room for improvement in the industry. After all, what is Google really about other than offering storage that makes up a lot of information? And... would it be such a good idea that one company would have access to all your data?

I am constantly amazed by the wealth of content and parallel universes that people create in Second Life. The blog "New World Notes" seems like a good entry into that part of the online world. What I found lacking in Second Life were ways to collaborate with each other for business purposes. Why can I can not share my PPT with others or desktop. There are others who believe that Second Life is not the perfect answer.

A software that I have been tracking for a while and has now finally been made available for developers, is Croquet. They are focused on enabling collaboration whilst ensuring that your creativity can still reign freely like in Second Life where you can create your own, personal worlds. I look forward to work and develop for Croquet in the coming months.

These are the 3 companies that I'll have a closer look at personally (see below).

Thnx go out to Peter Lindner from lindnerconsult.de for sending me the link to the article mentioned in the previous post.

Company: Trulia (San Francisco)
What it is: Real estate mashup
Next Net bona fides: Combining home listings from agents' websites with Google Maps, the site is becoming a hit in California and is expanding into other regions.

Company: Iotum (Ottawa, Ontario)
What it is: Presence management software
Next Net bona fides: With its app, users will be able to control where and when they receive voice or text data, routing calls to their phones, e-mail, or RSS feed-and blocking calls from, say, creditors.

Company: Writely (Portola Valley, CA)
What it is: Online word processing
Next Net bona fides: It enables online creation of documents, opens them to collaboration by anyone anywhere, and simplifies publishing the end result on a website as a blog entry.

Ok, i admit it. The title might be an exageration of what we are seeing. However, i do see the pendelum swinging back in a big way to the way the landscape was before the 1st Internet bubble burst. Expectations are once again going through the roof, money is being poured into companies that don't yet own offices nor have any customers and revenues, ... However, i do have to agree with the fact that there is something large abound. The Internet in my opinion is the caterpillar that blossoms and will morph into its next stage. Call it Internet2, the Next Net, whatever... and doesn't matter. What matters is the fact that the people that try to get a ride on this big wave do have the chance to cash in. I would personally like to switch that around and 1) have a positive influence on peoples ability to communicate with each other and 2) cash in as a result of that.

Read the article yourself and then check back in for the 3 companies that I hadn't heard of before that look promising to me:
The Next Net 25: 25 startups that are reinventing the web - Mar. 3, 2006