We recently had Dean Sadamune and Jim Sink from Avatar-Reality on Bytemarks Cafe. Unfortunately the radio show does not lend itself well to images. The images, as you can see amplify the story about Blue Mars, the virtual reality platform being build by Avatar-Reality. I got a chance to spend some time in the AR offices getting the nickel tour from Dean. He showed me landscapes, underwater worlds, waterfalls, beautiful model avatars and game environments. it was quite impressive. My initial thought was to compare Blue Mars with Second Life but as soon as you see the detail in the rendered worlds the differences became obvious. The environments were rich, complex and easily captivating. This next generation virtual world runs on the CryEngine 2 game engine created by Crytek from Frankfurt, Germany. It’s also the same game engine that runs Far Cry on the XBox.

Based on what the guys were telling me, this is a platform for others to create on. Avatar-Reality will create some worlds but they are looking for others to create their own alternative realities. Another big difference from Second Life is rather then develop your 3D world with SL tools, Blue Mars is an environment that allows your to bring in models developed with your own favorite 3D modeling tools, like 3D Studio Max, Maya and Softimage. Besides the obvious entertainment value, there are countless applications in education, healthcare and commercial spaces. It struck me that if successful, Blue Mars could help boost the computer modeling and animation industry in Hawaii. Granted you could be anywhere to develop 3D models, but the Hawaii community would be right next door to the folks at AR. Question is will Blue Mars attract a sizable audience. The Second Life community has plateaued, but one could argue that is because the environment in SL hasn’t changed. Will they shift over to Blue Mars? I’m excited because Blue Mars will have linkages into my favorite social media tools. I’m disappointed though because Blue Mars will only run on Windows machines and not the Mac with the planned release this summer. The guys tell me Macs will be supported by the end of the year. On the other hand they also tell me that Blue Mars can be experienced on a $500 Windows machine. I’ve got some ideas. I just need to convince my friends in education and healthcare to start building their Blue Mars worlds so I can explore on my work machine!

In 2005 HT was talking quad play: voice, video, Internet and wireless. By the end of 2007 it was a dual play with only voice and Internet, both very low margin businesses. The writing was on the wall. You might think HT faced the perfect storm: competition from national wireless companies and the cable company, no new service offerings, low margin Internet access, but no one predicted the financial market meltdown.

Hopefully Hawaiian Telcom will emerge like Hawaiian Airlines did, a stronger company but to do that there needs to be some radical changes. Worst case scenario, the State of Hawaii takes over and HT becomes a ward of the PUC. For what it is worth, I still have my landline because cell phone voice quality sucks, although that is made up for with mobility.  I have both a DSL and cable modem for Internet because I can never do without my Internet connection.

Now the second most frequent question I get is: Did HMSA raise the rates just to hire you? Ha, yea, right! The right answer is here. I’ll leave this it to the regulators and accountants. I’ll stick to technology, it’s simpler.

Starting tomorrow I will add one more thing to that list: a new job. I will leave it a mystery for now since I haven’t walked in the door yet and I still have my acceptance papers. I’ll give you a hint, it is a lot more stable than telecom! I do plan to take a picture of the entrance and post it to Flickr. That’ll make for a nice transition, walking out of one door and into another. Life never ceases to amaze me. Stay tuned…