Stephen Nold

Mapping the Physical to the Virtual

 There is a curious trend happening whereby new tools are being created that map the physical world to the virtual world.  Products from new companies like Snipp and Mingle360 allow users to ‘bookmark’ items of interest in a virtual environment that they have come upon in the physical world.

 For example, when someone comes across an item that has a Snipp code, whether on a billboard or print magazine, that person just has to text that code to 76477 (S-N-I-P-P) to receive more information about that product, either by text or e-mail. Mingle360’s MingleStick allows people at a tradeshow to wirelessly exchange contact information with the push of a button on a keychain-sized device. These are just two of the many devices that perform this physical-to-virtual mapping, one of the more popular being GoogleEarth.

 This trend is in contrast to an earlier one of creating virtual worlds, as exemplified with virtual conferences and the popular site ‘Second Life’. A few years ago, virtual conferences were a hot topic, with some people fearing that they were going to overtake real, physical conferences as the main means of conveying industry information and connecting sellers with buyers. While it is still a slim possibility that virtual events might someday become the dominant form of industry connectivity, it is still not anywhere in our near future. Instead of a virtual world overtaking the physical world, it seems like the virtual world is being overtaken by the physical world.

Posted by Stephen Nold on September 22, 2008 | Comments (0)