IntraMUDs?
May 17th, 2007 by HenThis morning I noticed an article on IBM/Sun releasing ‘virtual world intranets’. On the one hand, it’s about time. On the other, I don’t get the whole 3D view as an advantage.
Back in 99/00, the company I worked for used a MUD to keep in touch while working off site. It worked superbly, many of us were MUDders and even those who weren’t would get into it. Even the senior developer who was a generation older would poke around and get things to work. One of its main advantages was multi-tasking. We often talked about how it could be an intranet product; but the LP driver had a very non-commercial license and we didn’t feel like starting from scratch.
Cut to the current day. MUDs are less in use now it; but IM/IRC/Jabber seem to be used a lot. These, just as with the MUD back then, work well with multitasking. You can chat on multiple channels while you’re also coding, eating or talking to a colleague ‘in real’. I’ve avoided the MMORPGs as they all seem subscription based and don’t let you go from playing to coding; but I don’t see how you can use two or three or four at the same time. It’s not a multitaskers tool, it’s just another communication medium like the phone - something that makes it harder to multitask. Boring.
May 17th, 2007 at 2:48 pm
With the disclaimer that I haven’t tried it, I don’t see what a virtual world video conference would bring to communication that either a real video conference (which is getting easier and easier to pull off), a shared whiteboarding or editing session, or a conference call wouldn’t.