Wired for Health

This post was due up last week, then the news about Samantha Backler came through. She deserved her time in the spotlight. On March 17th, an extraordinary event took place at the Lighthouse in Brighton’s North Laines. The R&D department at Sussex Partnership has been developing ideas for projects – research and clinical practice – [...]

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Imperial College London | Treet TV

Imperial College London | Treet TV. Imagine making a live TV show with a bunch of potentially maverick scientists and a studio audience. Nervous? Good. Now imagine that you’re going to do this in a virtual world with all your presenters and guests represented as avatars and communicating using text, in-world voice, and VOIP. Not [...]

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Virtual Worlds Research: interview on Australian radio

‘Future Tense‘ is a networked programme coming from ABC, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, and fronted by the superb Antony Funnell. It focuses on developments in technology and, if its presenter’s level of knowledge, interest and awareness is anything to go by, it has a discerning and informed audience. This episode includes an update on our [...]

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When people fall out of the sky and you’re sitting next to a crow

There can’t be many conferences where delegates spontaneously generate, sit on your head, arrive stark naked, or drop out of the sky into their seats but, at yesterday’s Virtual Worlds twenty-four hour global event, that was pretty much the norm. Hosted in the UK by the Open University, renowned specialists in technology, health care, and [...]

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Goodbye friends and family!

∑ Until mid June at any rate! For some reason, all the calls for new research funding bids are open now and have to be submitted in the next few weeks, come Hull, Hell or Halifax! Along with that is the mandatory report on our virtual world study, delayed by Christmas, snow, and participants who [...]

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What Havok and Smurfs can do for you

Remember my post about Havok7 and things tumbling about in virtual worlds? Well this week, events in my real world have been tumbling about too! First up, I played football in Second Life with Dave Taylor (Our Man at Imperial College ) using an on-the-spot created ball by way of a demonstration of what the [...]

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Electro-wetting: no, not an embarrassing disorder!

Most of us have heard of Amazon’s Kindle e-reader, Sony’s alternative product, and the various other challengers for the electronic library market. If you set aside the disadvantages of being largely monochromatic, generally wedded to particular publishing outlets, and not much cop in the bath, this tech seems to be on the verge of mass [...]

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Havok7 in Second Life

IndigoMertal, a builder in Second Life, sent me this link to a wonderful video of what seems to be the next generation of Second Life viewers. In this iteration, the underlying physics engine allows for tumbling, bumping, and colliding in ways not possible at the moment. Take a look here, magic! Of course, that isn’t [...]

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Space Destiny in Second Life

It’s not often you get a personal tour around a space science research centre, especially one that has a dance floor, free drinks, and a sofa on the ceiling! Yesterday, at Space Destiny SylvianaJ took three of us in a big blue bus to see what’s being developed there. Space Destiny is a research facility [...]

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Research presentation

Spent today working on a presentation for the Trust’s R&D conference in June. Professor Louis Appleby is our keynote speaker and there will be a range of research heavy weights delivering quality material. I’m there to talk about my emergence from almost nowhere (one of those 25 year overnight successes!) as an NIHR fund-holder and [...]

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