I remember that you were talking about using visualization software a lot and I was wondering if you had heard about IBM’s project called “Many Eyes”. I think it would be great for professors that want to upload research data sets and instantly have a bunch of ways to visualize that data to analyze it. It is cool too because then you can take those visualizations and drag and drop them into blogs, powerpoint slides, etc. The downside is that the information is public. Check it out if you haven’t already http://services.alphaworks.ibm.com/manyeyes/home.

The second one that I like a lot and that may be useful if people need to broadcast something quickly is called Stickam and it is basically a free, online based streaming solution that has bailed us out of quite a few jams when our streaming server went down or was not working correctly. http://www.stickam.com/

I could definitely see students using ManyEyes for presentations. I am specifically thinking about the Research Symposium. Jury is still out on Stickam, but I am open to ideas on how it can be used.

The Sound of Colors

The website is Carbon Goggles, check it out for more visualizations.

Here is a snippet from an article, link to full article at the bottom.

Derived from Inspired by Second Life’s open-sourced viewer code, the BSD-licensed OpenSimulator Project was presented by key developer Adam Frisby, a young Australian with a distracting resemblance to Charlie from “Lost.” With an aim of becoming the “Apache of virtual worlds,” OpenSim is built with a set of modules that can be tweaked and added to without disturbing the underlying code. Frisby announced that his team is working with Linden Lab to connect OpenSim-driven servers to Second Life six to 12 months down the road.

Among OpenSim’s developers are two full-time employees of IBM. “What we did is hook that up with IBM’s Open Source team to see how we can contribute,” Michael Rowe, the company’s “3D Internet Manager,” told me at their VW2008 booth. IBM is using Open Sim to experiment with practical 3D applications, including a “3D-Data Center” (pictured) that’ll enable developers to plan, build, and monitor server farms. At the same time, it’s also part of the company’s dedication to leading the way to an open 3D Internet. IBM’s Craig Becker foresees a coming “[S]tabilization of two [to] three virtual world platforms, and it’s important they interoperate.”

For the full article… http://gigaom.com/2008/04/08/here-comes-the-open-source-metaverse/