I met Vissi Kurri, the inventor/owner of i3DNow at ITE 2007 in Second Life, which is a communications and presentation suite of software that helps people manage virtual meetings and presentations in the SL. Their product is called the collaboration suite and it's simple, but potentially very powerful. It comprises of:
- A whiteboard that interacts with SL objects and can be used by multiple Avatars as a kind of scratchpad.
- A slideshow viewer that handles Powerpoint sides seamlessly with no need to port them into SL itself.
- A blackboard, apparently just simple board display unit
- the HUD meeting manager. And it's this one that I really like...
The HUD meeting manager essentially acts as a control panel for the entire meeting. It manages who can attend, who can see what , cues up media and manages conversation flow. This part of the suite alone makes i3DNow's collaboration suite interesting to companies looking ot conduct meetings and presentations in the virtual realm of Second Life.
I've been promised a full demo, and a look at the technical side of all of this next week so look out for a full review in a few days...
