Demo of VNC in Open Cobalt

Another fine demo of emerging Open Cobalt functionality from our friends at GreenbushTV!

Quantitative Searching

Last March, Stephen Wolfram (of Mathematica fame) announced the eponymous Wolfram|Alpha, a computational data engine based on natural language processing, a large library of algorithms and what he coined as a new kind of science approach to answering queries. According to Wolfram, Wolfram|Alpha is "a first step in an ambitious, long-term project to make all systematic knowledge immediately computable by anyone." I happen to be quite fond of first steps in ambitious long-term projects.

You can get an idea of how Wolfram|Alpha works by exploring a set of provided examples. You can also track the project's progress through a blog. The project's goal is to make it possible for people to access essentially any kind of systematic factual knowledge. You can watch an informative screen cast of Wolfram|Alpha here.

The Wolfram|Alpha engine differs from traditional web search engines in that it doesn't just return a list of results based on a query, but instead it attempts to compute a set of quantitative answers by accessing its own internal knowledge base. This is pretty interesting stuff. However, I think it would be even more interesting, and incredibly more powerful, if Wolfram|Alpha could return informed answers based on a combination of its library of algorithms operating on the distributed resources of the web rather than only on an internal knowledge base. I guess we'll have to wait a bit longer for that.

Open Cobalt on SMARTboard

This is a video of teachers and students easily creating and accessing original virtual world content using the rich capabilities of Open Cobalt technology on a SMARTboard. This work is being led by Rich White at the Southeast Kansas Educational Resources Center. Virtual worlds are only now starting to become a creative medium!

Open Source Virtual Worlds

An interesting article about the SDForum's Open Source Virtual Worlds SIG event last thursday in Palo Alto where I was invited to speak about about Open Cobalt. Other invited speakers included the project leads of Sirikata and OpenSim.

The SDForum is a leading Silicon Valley not-for-profit organization providing unbiased information and insight to the technology community. For the past 23 years, the SDForum has provided a venue for engineers, executives, researchers, technology leaders, and venture capitalists to exchange information on emerging technologies and best practices.

Open Cobalt KMZ Importer

The Open Cobalt KMZ importer in action in a video by Phua Khai Fong. This new feature is significant because it allows Open Cobalt to import .kmz files created in Google SketchUp. It even allows you to bring in content from Google's 3D Warehouse.

Progress for Pilgrims

Last fall, this Open Cobalt environment was used as part of an experimental Thanksgiving lesson designed to engage first graders on the topics of Plymouth Rock & the Mayflower.

Collaborative CAD in Cobalt!

Thanks again to the work of Aik-Siong Koh and his team, Cobalt now makes it possible for users to work in a deeply collaborative CAD environment. This video shows how two Cobalt users on separate computers can work with relatively sophisticated CAD capabilities over a LAN. This newly-implemented collaborative CAD capability in Cobalt opens up a wide range of possibilities for engineers and others at a distance to develop sophisticated simulations and architectures in Cobalt worlds. The ability to develop animated content within a full-featured virtual world CAD environment sets Cobalt apart from other virtual world technologies in a very significant way.