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Our estimate is it’s in the 15 to 20 percent range right now of overall usage. But it’s very hard to say because the world is this very open environment and it’s difficult for us to survey it. Second Life right now is just a little under a million hours of use per day and a little bit more than 200,000 different people using it. When we talk about those percentages, I guess that means tens of thousands of people using it for business and education.
Which companies are using it?
IBM and Cisco are both heavy users or virtual worlds, and specifically Second Life. IBM in particular has been a real innovation leader, using Second Life aggressively for a couple of years now. On the order of a thousand people came to a multi day virtual event in which Sam Palmisano, their CEO, spoke from a recreation of the Forbidden City in Beijing. Obviously, with the concern about the ecological impact of business travel today, as well as increasing fuel costs, the savings are very substantial for businesses to have meetings in Second Life.
What makes the virtual world attractive to business users?
There are two features we’ve added in the last year that has made Second Life attractive to both business and education. The first one was the ability to use 3D voice. If someone is on your left and someone else is on your right, you hear them on your left and on your right. You can’t do this with a speakerphone, you can’t do it with most videoconferencing systems and you can’t do it with Skype.
The second thing we did is add richer features that enables people to browse the Web. You can sit around the table in Second Life with a bunch of colleagues from remote offices and one of you can show a presentation, a PowerPoint or a Web page, up on the wall in the virtual meeting room.
The virtual world creates a sense of realism that’s way beyond what you can do with two-dimensional whiteboarding or a Web conferencing application. Admittedly, it’s a little harder to get set up, and that’s our challenge.
One of the criticisms of Second Life is that people visit out of curiosity, get bored and go away. Is this a way to draw more users?
We are still very early in the functionality and adoption of virtual environments in general. The majority of people who try out virtual worlds — and Second Life is definitely the leader in that overall category — don’t stay. They try it for a short time and they’re either unable to get started, or they don’t find the kind of experiences they’re interested in and they don’t come back. But that’s the same thing that happened with the Internet during its early years when, for example, search didn’t work as well as it does today. People would give up before they found the content they were looking for.
What we tend to see in Second Life is a very small number of people staying. But when they find something interesting — like for example they’re able to use it for business meetings — they really enjoy what they’re doing and tend to aggressively stay.
What is the percentage that actually stays?
Less than 10 percent of the people who sign up are sticking around and participating in the virtual world. There’s lots we can do about it but it takes time. We have to evolve the market as it evolves. The good news is this is such a global phenomenon and there’s such a large number of people signing up in the aggregate that it still nets out to be a profitable and growing business for us, and also for the people using it. In June, there were 59,000 people who appeared to be cash flow positive, meaning they’re doing something in Second Life that allows them to make money rather than pay money.
Is attracting small and medium businesses (SMBs) one of things you can do to increase retention?
We’re really thinking about how to aggressively present Second Life to SMBs so they can effectively use it at a higher rate of participation. We’re working on that quietly right now and thinking about what kind of things we can do to support that use. The SMB use of Second Life thus far has been organic.
It’s been more user-driven. We’re taking a look at it and saying, “Ok, how can we organize ourselves and how can we change the product to really support that use?” That’s been our strategy.
Imagine we’re business colleagues. How would this interview be different in the virtual world?
We could have had three or four people on the call without having to use a 1-800 number. We’d just show up at a park somewhere in Second Life. Audio quality would be better than the telephone and you would hear the nuances of the voice better. If I wanted to show you a prototype of a new product, I’d just pull it out of my pocket and rez it — meaning it would just show up and float in front of you. If we were working on cellphones, I could show you a big 3D model of our newest cellphone and we could play with it. If you put people in an immersive space that’s also somewhat novel — in Second Life you can actually rent tiki huts on a beach — I guarantee you that you would remember the content of this conversation better than you would driving in your car and talking on the phone. I guarantee you would have laughed once or twice when I put on a funny hat or changed clothes with my avatar.
The applications just make it more fun to do business. We’re in a creative economy now and people have choices about where they work and how they work. Being able to do your work in a virtual workspace that makes it fun and reduces your travel time is a tremendous benefit to a company.
Here at Linden lab, obviously we’re eaters of our own dog food, I’m literally looking around my office right now and I can see several people who are in meetings with other Linden team members in world. We do virtually all our meetings in world — in many cases we do an in world meeting even when we all are located in the same building.
How does the relationship change?
Anecdotally, the virtual meeting space allows people to establish friendships in business context and get closer to one another. You don’t have real eye contact. And meetings are significantly less threatening. The sense of threat we have in real world meetings just isn’t there in the virtual environment.
Earlier this year, you stepped down as CEO. Why?
I am fundamentally a product and design guy and technology is my background. We’re a profitable company, growing quickly and closing in on 300 people. That’s a big business and I didn’t feel I could do it better than anyone in the world. If you looked at my contributions to designing virtual worlds, I think they’re second to none. I’m one of the best guys on the planet to help a company do that. But if you look at the kind of organizational leadership you need going from 300 to 3,000 people, I don’t think I’d be in the top 100. We’re a very unique, well- positioned, interesting and compelling company that deserves to have the best people in the world in every role.
I’ve been leading this company as CEO since it began in 1999. I think I’ve done a good job but I’m ready to change and get myself more focused on product design technology. We have to do a tremendous amount of innovation and product work and technology work to grow beyond where we are now. I think it’s best for the company if I reserve a large amount of my time to contribute there.
What’s your next big idea?
There are a couple of things that need to become radically different about virtual worlds and specifically Second Life. One is usability. No one has figured out an easy way to use a virtual world, to make the software intuitive, and make the experience fast and fun and appealing to everyone. I think it’s doable. There are incremental changes that we can make to the technology to make it as palatable as a Web browser — perhaps even more so.
We’ve got issues around scalability. I think this whole thing is going to grow by about two orders of magnitude, a factor of 100, in the next 10 years. A lot of architecture is going to have to work right to make that happen. Second Life needs an intuitive interface and good search and discovery. When you try to browse the virtual world today, it still takes a bunch of time to find live music, a classroom or a teacher. Google figured out how to organize information on the Web and we need to figure out how to do the same thing in the virtual world. I think that’s a worthy challenge to take on as a technologist. I love it.
Did TiVo Just Become Relevant Again?
The DVR pioneer rolls out a new device that could be a game-changer.
TiVo (NASDAQ:TIVO) is turning heads with a new device. TiVo Bolt is the DVR pioneer's first set-top box that offers 4K Ultra HD resolution, but that's not the feature that finds folks talking about TiVo again.
TiVo Bolt's SkipMode and QuickMode options give TV buffs something far more valuable than a crisper display -- time.
SkipMode allows a viewer to skip commercials with a single push of a button. Many DVRs offer the ability to quickly zip through 30 seconds or more, but SkipMode uses the actual start and stop times of commercial blocks. It's not compatible with all content. It currently only works with about 20 different channels, but that number is expected to grow over time.
QuickMode is perhaps even more intriguing. It speeds up a recorded show by 30% without distorting the audio quality. Some shows and movies may not lend themselves to that kind of replay, but if a viewer can handle the new speed, it increases consumption by nearly a third. Between SkipMode and QuickMode, we're talking about a lot of time a binge-viewing TV junkie can spend elsewhere. Is TiVo Bolt the answer to enhanced productivity, or merely a gateway drug to the consumption of even more programming?
TiVo is in a funk. It has fallen out of favor as investors assume that recording TV shows was merely a transitory technology until we got to the golden age of streaming and on-demand consumption. It doesn't seem to matter that TiVo Bolt -- like most of the company's recent gadgets -- does a pretty good job of combining linear television with on-demand offerings.
Even fellow Fool Anders Bylund -- who had patiently held on to his stake in TiVo through five challenging years -- finally got fed up and sold the stock last month. The straw that broke the camel's back was TiVo filing yet another patent infringement lawsuit. Instead of bracing for the future, TiVo seems to be living in the past as it tries to continue to get more pay-TV providers and hardware makers to respect its intellectual properties.
Then again, could the oddly shaped TiVo Bolt be proof that the DVR pioneer is trying to be a disruptor again?
It's not as if TiVo is broken. Revenue and adjusted earnings moved higher in its latest quarter. Its global subscriber count keeps inching higher. Analysts see growth at both ends of the income statement through the next few quarters and years. This isn't a company going away, even if its stock hit another three-year low just last week.
"Bolt" is what investors have been doing, but it's also the one thing that could turn an out-of-favor company that's growing slowly into a market darling again.
A proposed rule that would ramp up fuel economy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions for medium- and heavy-duty trucks beyond model year 2018 has advanced to the White House Office and Management and Budget.
While the advancement is just one of the steps a regulatory action must take before becoming an actual rule, the movement does inch the proposal closer to becoming reality. For truckers, the emission and fuel economy regulations promise to add thousands to the cost of new equipment.
The proposed rule on the move is known as Fuel Efficiency Standards for Medium- and Heavy-Duty Vehicles and Work Trucks, Phase 2, proposed by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, or NHTSA, and the Environmental Protection Agency, EPA.
It is known as Phase 2 because Phase 1 is already a final rule in effect. Phase 1, which became a final rule in 2011, was the first ever rule governing truck fuel efficiency and greenhouse gas emissions. It requires truck manufacturers to make a 20 percent improvement to both fuel economy and emissions for new trucks during model years 2014-2018.
Phase 2 would go beyond model year 2018 and focus on more than just the tractor. Phase 2 also brings trailers and low-rolling-resistance tires into the mix.
As with the first phase, OOIDA is concerned not just about regulations that increase the cost of new trucking equipment, but also about the reliability of new and unproven components.
OOIDA plans to meet with the Office of Management and Budget in the next couple of months to go over the proposal.
Additional concerns involve spec’ing vehicles for specialized hauls.
OOIDA Director of Legislative Affairs Ryan Bowley says fuel economy is on every trucker’s mind, but a flatbed heavy-haul operator has different needs from a dry van operator who runs a consistent lane.
“We’ve been very consistent with EPA and NHTSA in terms of communicating with them on this rulemaking – that they need to take into consideration not just what the truck looks like, but how it is used,” Bowley said.
Grenerth points out that if they really wanted to look at fuel economy, the agencies should also take the role of the truck driver into account.
“If they wanted to show more cost-benefit, they would be working with the FMCSA on the entry-level driver training initiative. You train the drivers well, and they burn less fuel,” he said.
As Emily V. Gordon drafted her screenplay for The Big Sick with husband Kumail Nanjiani (of HBO’s Silicon Valley), the problems she confronted were manifold. Primarily, it’s impossible to imagine a more personal cinematic endeavor than The Big Sick, which sees Nanjiani acting out the first months of his courtship with Gordon (played by Zoe Kazan), witnessing her sudden, horrifying collapse into illness. It can’t have been easy to rehash these experiences in a screenplay, and beyond that, it’s never easy to write the story of one’s own life, toeing the line between facts and imagination in hopes of making the personal universal.
Speaking with Deadline, Gordon discusses turning her life into art, her future ambitions and the way in which her former life as a therapist has helped her as a writer.
With this film, you’re rehashing what must have been a very difficult time in your life. Did it take a while to coming around to making a film out of your experience?
The writing was definitely a process. Luckily, we wrote for such a long time that I had a while to get comfortable with the idea. A lot of my close friends didn’t know that I had been sick at all, so that was something I was trying to deal with in little increments along the way. I think eventually, I went from being frightened about it to hoping, in some way, that it could be something that could resonate with a lot of people. Thinking about it that way helped me with the naked feeling that you’re referring to, which is absolutely how I felt, many times along the way.
What was your approach to writing a story loosely based on your own experiences? Where did you stick to facts, and where did you give yourself up to imagination?
The heckler scene specifically, that didn’t happen. That was something we created from a lot of different suggestions, wanting to show a couple of different things in one scene—how stressed out the family is, but not wanting to show it; that Emily’s parents are starting to warm up to Kumail. We kept trying to gut check how it makes sense for these people to go to a comedy club when their daughter is in a coma and getting surgery the next day. We made sure we worked in scenes where they’re doing it because they’re feeling so overwhelmed, they just want to escape themselves. We felt okay taking license as long as it felt emotionally resonant.
In romantic comedies, the focus tends to be limited one gender’s perspective. What’s so interesting about this project is that it encapsulates both.
Yeah, it’s interesting. Kumail is a big fan of rom-coms, and I am a little bit less of a fan. I’d grown up watching movies where I would always do a joke with my friends like, “Okay let’s imagine that movie from the woman’s perspective.” The women are often just accessories to a guy’s gross misunderstanding of the world.
When we were working on this, we wanted to make sure that you understood where both people were coming from. They both have full lives and they weren’t waiting for the other person to complete them. They both are better people because they are with each other, but they weren’t completing each other. So, I think his love of rom-coms and my irritation with rom-coms made a really good combination for writing this.
Was there an intention to subvert tropes of the genre?
That was something we worked on a lot with Michael Showalter. He’s actually made movies deconstructing tropes—The Baxter and They Came Together deconstruct rom-coms in a sense. I do think that was a lot of his work: This is what people are expecting—what can we give them that is in the vein of what they’re expecting, but not what they’re expecting?
When Kumail comes to Emily’s Welcome Home party, and has this big bag of “Here’s how devoted I am to you, and here’s all the things I’ve done,” she’s supposed to fall into his arms, and we thought it was very important that she didn’t fall into his arms, that the audience realized she’s going through her own thing and she can’t even think about being in love. All of that was stuff we thought through, and we thought would be really fun, and also more satisfying for us.
You have a pretty unique background. Having worked as a therapist before entering the comedy scene, do you think that experience has helped you in your writing?
I hope so, and I think it’s an advantage. I don’t have a magical power that other writers don’t have. As a therapist, I was taught to empathize with every single person who came in the room, even if they’d done really heinous things, even if they had been arrested. That was my job, to understand where they were coming from and understand that they were doing the best they could at the time.
I also was taught to think of relationships between people as separate things. In couples therapy, you have two people, and then you have this third thing, which is the relationship between them. I always try to think about that with every single character in anything I’m writing. What is their relationship like? How is it different than these two people’s relationship? All that is stuff that’s always running in the background of my brain when I’m writing.
Stand-up is never an easy thing to capture in fiction in a way that feels authentic. How did you find your way through that?
I ran a stand-up show for like six years, so I’ve seen a wide variety of comedy. I feel like often with stand-up in movies, you’re supposed to think it’s the most genius stand-up you’ve ever seen in your life, when in truth, you’re going to see a couple good bits, some stuff that’s fine, and some stuff that’s terrible. It kind of runs the gamut, especially if we’re talking about a Chicago show that happens once a week.
You want to show that there’s a variety of performers. We didn’t want the audience to think, “Oh, am I supposed to think that’s hilarious?” Because no, you’re supposed to think it’s whatever you want it to be. [laughs] We directed the performers, all of which are amazing comedians, to write stuff. We told them, “Well, your character is like the angry truth-teller guy”’—that would be Bo Burnham’s character. Kurt Braunohler, we said, “You’re kind of the lovable dumb guy, who is not amazing at stand-up comedy, but you really have a passion for it.” They all wrote material for themselves based on the characters they had, which was really cool.
I imagine you were always at video village during the shoot. Can you describe your interaction with the actors, particularly Zoe Kazan?
From the beginning, none of us ever wanted Zoe to do an impression of me— because that’s weird, and because nobody knows who I am, so it’s like a waste of an impression. [laughs] She’s an actress, she’s really good at what she does, so I would never go up to her and be like, “You know what, I don’t think I would’ve done it this way. Can you do it again?” It would’ve been antithetical to everything we were working towards.
She would check in with me here and there. But once we were on set, we had a sense of who this Emily character was, and I just trusted her choices. For the most part, we had such talented people that we didn’t really need to direct them. I say that as a writer, and a person who knows the people, not as a director.
Where did the title The Big Sick come from? Is it an allusion to The Big Chill?
I do hear a lot of theories on this: Here’s the truth. I kind of came up with that name while we were writing it because I have a scar on my back from the lung surgery that I had, that we’ve called “Big Red” for the past ten years. When we were trying to come up with a title while we were writing, I was like, “Let’s just call it The Big Sick,” like Big Red, and it just kind of weirdly stuck. I don’t know that it’s the best name, but it’s the name we stuck with, and now it feels like us. It’s not a reference to The Big Chill—that’s not even one I’ve heard, so that’s a very good guess. The Big Sick definitely represents this big thing that changed everyone’s lives, so it works in that way. But originally, it came from a play on what I call my scar.
In the film, Kumail’s relatives naively tell him that he should just go be on Saturday Night Live, as if it’s the easiest thing in the world. And now, of course, he has been. It’s almost as if Kumail manifested his own destiny.
It was mind-blowing. Kumail only had maybe two weeks when he found out before he actually did it, which I think was great because it’s such a mantle, and such a legacy that you don’t want to think about it too much. I visited him on set once or twice throughout the week, and obviously I was there Saturday. It’s like watching your husband ride a unicorn—it’s a thing that means so much to so many of us life-long comedy fans. To watch that was really, really special, and I would not have traded that experience for the world.
I know it was very overwhelming for him—they really work you to death on that show. That’s sort of the magic of it. Everybody has to put in these super long days, but for me it was showing up, being nervous for him and then watching him just kill it.
What has Judd Apatow been like, as a kind of mentor on this project?
He’s truly been amazing. He finds people who are raw talent, and he’s amazing at shepherding them through, sanding off their edges just enough, but keeping them who they are. I don’t know how else this movie could’ve ever been made if not though him.
What are your future ambitions? Are you looking to write with Kumail again, or write outside of comedy?
We’re trying to figure out what thing we’re going to write together next. I think it might, at this time, not be something that’s so personal to us, but I really like writing together, so we’re trying to figure that out. I want to keep writing stuff that’s messy and funny and also serious at times. I think that’s my favorite pocket to be in, and it’s what I really like doing. I’m going to keep going in that vein.
Bernie Busken's departure from Basha a sign of times?
Bernie Busken's resignation as Basha coach left me wondering: Are old-school coaches a thing of the past?
I needed a day to collect my thoughts regarding the news that Bernie Busken has resigned as Chandler Basha's football coach.
Busken and I have a history. I was one of two reporters at the East Valley Tribune that chronicled the events that led up to his controversial departure as Mesa Mountain View's coach. Busken didn't like what I wrote and our relationship was, at best, frosty.
When he was hired at Basha four years ago, however, I wrote that he deserved a second chance. We sat down on a few occasions and while I wouldn't describe us as friends, our relationship had progressed to the point that we were professional and cordial with one another.
I don't know if there's anything more to Busken's resignation other than what he said. He's physically beat up and he wants to spend more time with his family. I'll take the man at his word.
I do wonder, however, whether Busken's brusque - some would say abrasive - coaching style works any more in high school football. Don't get me wrong. I strongly believe there's a need for discipline. Teams that aren't disciplined rarely win. But coaches also have to personally connect with their athletes. Former Mountain View coach Jesse Parker was as tough on his kids as any coach who ever walked the sideline in Arizona. But he also managed to reach them in a way that those kids would later credit him for turning them into men.
The day of the dictatorial coach is over. Whether that's a good thing or not - some would say it's a sign of kids becoming softer - is irrelevant. Thanks to open enrollment and lax transfer rules, high school athletes have choices these days. And if they don't believe in the coach - both professionally and personally - they'll go elsewhere.
That doesn't make Busken a bad coach - or a bad man. He's just from a different era.
Retired Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn — who has issued broad condemnations of Islam and has ties to Russia — will be Trump's right-hand man on national security issues.
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration avoided a long battle with Congress over one of its more controversial appointments Friday as retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn accepted a post as the incoming president-elect's national security adviser, a move that was met with mixed emotions across the national security community.
Flynn, whose inflammatory rhetoric about Islam, apparent reverence for Russia, and questionable ties to foreign governments has drawn ire from his critics, has long been assumed to be the likely candidate for the national security adviser spot. Recent Washington rumors also put him as a top candidate for director of the CIA or secretary of defense, but those — unlike the national security adviser gig — would both require Senate confirmation, and the defense post in particular would require a congressional waiver given Flynn’s recent service in the military. Flynn said he was "deeply humbled and honored" to accept the post in a release Friday.
Flynn’s career, capstoned by his recent foray into politics with the Trump camp, has been riddled with controversy, though he’s credited with overhauling the country’s counterterror strategies in Afghanistan. That success was dotted with Pentagon investigations — including one internal Pentagon probe that substantiated Flynn’s inappropriate sharing of classified intelligence with allies — and his uniformed career ended when he was unceremoniously pushed out of the Defense Intelligence Agency after heated run-ins with the Obama administration over its ISIS strategy.
Some of his more extreme policy positions, many of which he only publicly adopted since joining the Trump camp, have alarmed even his former allies in the Pentagon, and his ties to Russia have raised eyebrows — Flynn frequently appears on Russia Today, and recently attended a dinner with Russian President Vladimir Putin. He's vilified the Islamic religion, blaming it broadly as the cause of violence across the world, and has sat in on top-secret intelligence briefings with Trump while still advising foreign clients.
"I believe that the president-elect would be best served by a national security adviser who brings a steady and thoughtful demeanor to the Oval Office and can help offset the potentially impulsive nature of the next president," said House Intelligence Committee chair Adam Schiff, citing Flynn's closeness to Russia and inflammatory remarks on Islam. "These are not qualities readily apparent in observing General Flynn over the last few years."
But since Trump's stunning victory last week, many in DC’s national security apparatus have realized the national security adviser gig is the only realistic place Flynn could end up in a Trump White House. Even some of the president-elect’s Republican colleagues on the Hill agree that the disgruntled lieutenant general would have a hard time making it through a confirmation process in the Senate.
While he may not have direct control over certain bureaucracies like the CIA or Pentagon, the placement of Flynn directly in the ear of the commander-in-chief may give him a bigger potential for impact than had he been at the controls of the nation’s soldiers and spies, particularly given Trump’s lack of knowledge. Trump praised Flynn on Friday, calling him "one of the country's foremost experts" on matters of national security.
The national security adviser position is “the place where [Flynn] can influence things and have the most impact” said one former Pentagon official who worked with Flynn.
"You want Mike Flynn in a place where he can have maximum impact in a Trump administration," the former official said, who spoke very highly of Flynn's service.
Quietly, many national security hands will still roll their eyes at Flynn's name — but there is grudging acceptance that, especially on the national security adviser front, there's not much to be done except hope for the best.