Dwell On It » Business

Autodesk acquires Evolver/Avatara/Evolver Pro

Tateru Nino — Sat, 20 Aug 2011 04:40:53 +0000

Confused about what and who Evolver is? I’ve written about them before.

Recently, the Evolver technology, which offers you products like: Avatara, Evolver, and Evolver Pro, has become a part of Autodesk.

Autodesk serves entertainment and design professionals that are looking for ways to make their 3D projects more realistic by adding a human element in the form of crowd simulation. Evolver technology complements the research we are currently doing in the areas of realistic real-time human crowd simulation.

Current Avatara, Evolver, and Evolver Pro customers will be able to access many of the same services previously available. Additionally, we anticipate that many Pro export services will, for a limited time, be made available for free. Longer-term plans will be communicated as soon as they are available.

Google pulling the plug on Labs

Tateru Nino — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 14:30:39 +0000

Remember Google’s Labs initiative? It’s all those odd little products and projects and prototypes that Google allows people time to work on for the sake of innovation. If it weren’t for Google Labs you wouldn’t have Google Reader, or Google Maps, or Google Groups, Google Desktop or Gmail.

Those were all products that just didn’t fit with Google’s product line-up at the time. Gmail? Maps? Who would want them provided by Google, right?

Well, now you probably can’t imagine things without them. Google, however, is pulling the plug on this innovative incubator, that has yielded some of its top products in an effort to “streamline” the product portfolio and its development efforts.


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Why you shouldn’t listen to your customers

Tateru Nino — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 03:31:36 +0000

Or rather, why most successful companies don’t listen to customers directly or without a carefully constructed process.

Blue Mars cancels PC development, cuts back staff and CEO

Tateru Nino — Sat, 15 Jan 2011 06:50:18 +0000

Avatar Reality, the company behind Blue Mars, is cutting development of its Windows-based client software, and is instead focusing on an iOS (iPhone/iPad) application.


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Captaining the ship

Tateru Nino — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 16:32:13 +0000

I was asked, “Why [should Rod Humble] change from a proper job at EA on an ejection seat at Linden Lab?” – and my response started to run on a bit, so I decided to waffle on about it in its own post.

As for why someone might choose to captain a ship, whether it is a sinking one or not – well, in certain industries and at certain levels of business there ain’t no such thing as a pay-raise. If you want a pay-raise your only option is to go work for someone else.


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What’s up over at the Love Machine?

Tateru Nino — Sun, 19 Dec 2010 08:21:57 +0000

For those of you wanting to keep track of the latest exploits of Philip Rosedale’s Love Machine business, now that he’s exited the Lab, there’s a couple small news updates.


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Derived works and franchises

Tateru Nino — Sat, 27 Nov 2010 06:51:08 +0000

Ever wonder why publishers – when they are talking about games, television programmes, movies and such – refer to them as “franchises”?

What it boils down to is copyright and derived works.


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No Black Friday for virtual goods

Tateru Nino — Fri, 26 Nov 2010 14:37:47 +0000

“Black Friday” is the name given in America to the day after Thanksgiving, and the traditional commencement of the Christmas shopping period. The term came into use in Philadelphia in the 1960s to signify it as a dark day. A day of chaos and disruption, traffic jams and injuries; a day to be feared and shunned, echoing the original Black Friday of September 24, 1869 (the Fisk/Gould scandal that caused a catastrophe in the stock markets). [* According to newspapers and publications of the day, this was the primary usage in 1966]

In more recent years, as the term spread through North America, it has been rebranded as the day retailers start to turn a profit for the year – to go “into the black” – though this explanation is merely a superficial fiction in most cases [* According to the Philadelphia Enquirer, 1981]. Any retailer who remains in the red for nearly a full eleven months of the year, is likely already on the verge of collapse.

Nomenclature aside, Black Friday has co-evolved with the shopping habits of North Americans, and Black Friday as we see it today is indelibly stamped with the logistics of purely physical goods.

Knowing when to quit

Tateru Nino — Sat, 23 Oct 2010 18:26:22 +0000

As a species, we place an especial emphasis on plans and strategies. Moreover, we feel that it is vitally important to choose the right ones.

That could be because, as a species, we seem to be a bit rubbish at that. Knowing when to quit, however, is actually a good deal harder.

Philip Rosedale out of the big chair. Leave it to Komin?

Tateru Nino — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 15:55:38 +0000

There’s talk that Linden Lab interim CEO Philip Rosedale – who recently said he would be the big chair until everything was settled and the Lab had gotten itself to where it wanted to be – is no longer showing up for work, and back loving the Love Machine.

That, of course, would be an indication that the Lab had been being somewhat dishonest with its communications, so it’s pretty easy to discount, especially as it involved no uptick in corroborative chatter among the folks that Linden Lab staff usually leak information to, and for about an hour, I ignored it.

However, as it turns out, it looks like it is the real deal.


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DLAB and Avatar Reality announce upcoming launch of online business district, OnLand

Tateru Nino — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 03:12:10 +0000

Online 3D Space Provides Innovative and Cost-Efficient Way for Businesses to Meet, Collaborate, and Showcase Their Products

DLAB, a multi-disciplinary team of designers, researchers and digital specialists based within the Institute of Digital Innovation at Teesside University, announced today the upcoming launch of OnLand, an online business district designed to provide an innovative and cost-efficient way for firms to collaborate. OnLand is powered by Blue Mars, an online high definition 3D virtual world platform created by Avatar Reality, Inc., and allows users to conduct business in interactive showrooms, boardrooms and meeting spaces.


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Optimising profit

Tateru Nino — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 03:38:10 +0000

I’m going to talk a little about profit optimisation here. Principally, this is because I’m going to refer back to it later.

If your market is above a certain (variable) minimum size, profit optimisation involves setting a price that maximises the amount of profit you would receive from sales of goods and/or services. Read more ...


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Death by app

Tateru Nino — Sun, 10 Oct 2010 09:28:18 +0000

The “killer app” is the thing you fear in the hands of your competitors, because it kills your business – or so it is believed, hence the name.

Well, that ain’t exactly so. Businesses don’t get killed by “killer apps”. They get killed by consistent failure to adapt.


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A new age for Second Life

Tateru Nino — Sat, 09 Oct 2010 17:35:51 +0000

There seems to be some confusion over the fact that Linden Lab still has projects in the works when they’re following all the steps you’d expect from a company that is getting ready for sale. Well, you have to have ongoing development and projects. Otherwise where you end up is not a sale, it’s liquidation.

Unless you’re selling for scrap, what you’re selling is a business. A going concern. If it’s an inert corpse, the best you can hope for is scrap prices – and what you’ll probably get is a mediocre bid at auction. A key part of trimming for a sale is ramping up, because a buyer isn’t buying into what you have now – they’re buying into what you will be in a year.

All of that said let’s look at things from a slightly different angle.


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Linden Lab seeks to retain non-profits/education customers with short-term lock-in

Tateru Nino — Sat, 09 Oct 2010 05:41:09 +0000

In the wake of the announced price-doubling for educators and non-profits, the reaction has been … well, just about as strong as I expected. A very significant chunk of those markets have been reconsidering Second Life as an option since Linden Lab gave them a wake-up call one year ago, and eyeing alternatives.

According to reports Linden Lab’s now sent around an email which smacks more of salesmanship than factual correctness, offering education and non-profit concerns short-term discount if they’ll take a fixed-term contract for their Second Life holdings before 31 December.


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Bikini season

Tateru Nino — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 16:27:54 +0000

I’ve now talked with a lot of people who’ve been watching Linden Lab’s manoeuvres this year, and who come from a wide variety of business backgrounds. The overall general consensus seems to be that it’s bikini season for Linden Lab.


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Linden Lab explains slashing education/non-profit discounts

Tateru Nino — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 05:25:29 +0000

When I looked at the announcement of the elimination of the discount for educators and non-profit organisations yesterday, the only explanation that seemed to make sense was some kind of profit crisis at Linden Lab. A need to pull an ill-informed short-term increase in cash from groups that are poorly-positioned to be able to pay more.

I invited the Lab to offer a better explanation than mine, and I have received a response from a Lab spokesperson.


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The messengers

Tateru Nino — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 10:59:13 +0000

The normal case in business is that the employees of a company with whom you interact are not the people who actually are making the decisions.


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Linden Lab to double pricing for education, non-profits

Tateru Nino — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 04:40:51 +0000

Last I looked, there were in excess of two thousand educational and non-profit organisations with estates in Second Life. Today, with a shade less than 3 months notice, Linden Lab announced that the discounts traditionally applied to those estates would be slashed from the start of the year, effectively doubling the cost of those installations.


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Dwell On It » Business

Autodesk acquires Evolver/Avatara/Evolver Pro

Google pulling the plug on Labs

Why you shouldn’t listen to your customers

Blue Mars cancels PC development, cuts back staff and CEO

Captaining the ship

What’s up over at the Love Machine?

Derived works and franchises

No Black Friday for virtual goods

Knowing when to quit

Philip Rosedale out of the big chair. Leave it to Komin?

DLAB and Avatar Reality announce upcoming launch of online business district, OnLand

Optimising profit

Recommended reading: keeping and gaining users in the long haul

Death by app

A new age for Second Life

Linden Lab seeks to retain non-profits/education customers with short-term lock-in

Bikini season

Linden Lab explains slashing education/non-profit discounts

The messengers

Linden Lab to double pricing for education, non-profits