I saw a mention about web.alive a new online 3D webspace that runs inside your browser on the Second Life Educators listserv and decided to take a look. I went to http://apex.projectchainsaw.com/ and  bravely downloaded the exe file. (The download was fast with no signs of N1H1.)

Download security warning for web.alive. Note the publisher is Nortel Networks Ltd.

web.alive license agreement. (I am showing these basic download dialogs to assure you that 'projectchainsaw' is not a virus even if it sounds like one.)

First view of web.alive shows you your avatar staring back at you

I was then shown a very simple direction guide to help me get moving. The Help button provided me with additional easy to follow directions.

I began exploring the area and seemed to be gliding smoothly through the space. It looked like the kind of environment that you find around a large London railway station, an anonymous place designed for hordes of people to rush through. However, on the occasion of my visit there were no other avatars around making it feel more like an early Sunday morning. Everything around me was concrete and glass with small round pods situated here and there reminding me of those little shops that sell croissants and ties to commuters. Screens were set up in these pods and with a simple click these began showing Nortel movie advertisements. There was another screen in each pod that looked as though it could be enabled to show web browsers. (I wonder, does that mean that an avatar could be in a virtual world via a web browser accessing another virtual world via the in-world web browser? In other words we could access layers of virtual environments through web browsers?)

View of pod rooms. (Note the small area map in the bottom right corner of this picture.)

Conference room. The picture in this shot shows the rooftop space I was exploring.

I wandered away to send an email and stopped looking at web.alive in my browser and was surprised on my return to see that someone had been trying to talk to me. I saw an avatar walking away and gave chase. I was helped by a little map at the bottom of the screen that showed an orange dot (the other avatar) while I was indicated by a red kite shape. I finally caught up with the other avatar who told me, via voice, that  he could hear me typing and suggested I try speaking. I was very surprised to find that he could hear me straight away (especially as I normally spend a few minutes getting voice enabled in Second Life). I had done nothing to set up the voice connection, it just worked… good job I was not singing or swearing! I discovered I was chatting to a friendly fellow from Nortel in California who told me there were other environments available to explore (I plan to work out how to access those next.)

View with shallow canal (accompanied in web.alive with watery sound effects).

For now web.alive is in beta so anything I write that sounds judgmental is obviously a little unfair. Having said that I certainly feel that they could be braver with their sound effects and environment. Perhaps they will take these extra steps now that they have created such an amazingly smooth operating technology? Still, I really missed the lighting available in Second Life and this made me realize how important lighting is to conjuring up atmosphere.  This got me thinking that virtual environments have an  ‘Ambient Presence’  as opposed to Social Presence which describes the sense of the human being behind an avatar. ‘Ambient Presence’ describes the almost unconscious hooks which help immerse us in the sense of being within a physical space when in a virtual, computer generated environment. Ambient sounds and atmospheric lighting play important (almost subliminal) roles when it comes to absorbing us into an immersive experience.

View of city scape below (accompanied by traffic sounds that sounded very like a large drowsy fly).

My work involves communicating with over 100 sites all across America. I would love to find a cheap online vehicle that could really compress distance and make it possible for people to communicate easily when the whim takes them. That is, create a virtual space where I can talk to a colleague in another state as easily as I can walk across to someone else’s office in the physical world. Second Life has the ability to create beautiful spaces with ambient presence and avatars with Social Presence but the operating controls and intense hardware requirements keep ruling it out. web.alive has conjured up an excellent program that is astonishingly easy to use and can run in a browser. All it needs now is a little more imagination and it could become a major rival to Second Life for business and educational users. One more thing,  I keep forgetting web.alive’s name! I wonder if they plan to keep it?  I honestly prefer the name projectchainsaw! At least I can remember that!

Some shadows on the roof for some much needed atmosphere...

Note: For more information: A quick check through Google found additional mentions of web.alive. Take a look at Digital Media Consultant’s post titled ‘Checking out lenovo’s eLounge’. Also see the web.alive blog and http://www.projectchainsaw.com/

Updates November 19, 2009 :

• Just discovered that web.alive does not run on Macs
• ThinkBalm have created their own virtual office/meeting area on web.alive. Also see the post about ThinkBalm on Joe Rigby’s blog MellaniuM (Visit these two sites for direct links to ThinkBalm’s web.alive connection site.)

I shot this image when the Nortel-Ericsson deal was going down this summer. I was much happier shooting the signage than shooting the committee meetings that ensued. I spent time lurking around the Nortel Carling campus trying not to get nicked by security, but didn’t make much more than the standard images. I liked this frame because it felt ominous with the sign rising from the ground like a tombstone as the last vestige of Ottawa’s high-tech scene died away. Luckily a schwack of the laid off Nortel employees have been offered new jobs from Ericsson.

Ps,  I got stung by a bee making this picture. That’s the last time I lay in a ditch topless.

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I have also posted a few more images from the summer to my Flickr account.

Pearson is a professor of management at Thunderbird School of Global Management and a business professional with more than 20 years experience and faculty appointments in Europe, Asia and South America. In the course of her responsibilities as a consultant and executive-development adviser, Pearson has assisted companies and organizations including ExxonMobil, PepsiCo, Dow Chemical, Clorox, Transamerica, Kraft Foods, the Los Angeles Police Department, BellSouth (now part of AT&T Inc.), Nortel Networks, and the Red Cross. Her areas of interest include crisis management, workplace incivility, enterprise leadership development, interpersonal dynamics, team building, and dysfunctional behavior in the workplace. She is the author of five books on crisis management, most recently The Cost of Bad Behavior: How Incivility is Damaging Your Business and What to Do About It co-authored with Christine Porath in which they make a compelling business case for workplace civility. The book explores the causes and outcomes of incivility and shares strategies for resolving minor situations before they spiral into something major. Pearson contends that companies pay dearly for minor acts of rudeness that go unchecked in the workplace. She has also been published articles in Harvard Business Review, Academy of Management Review, Academy of Management Executive, Organization Science, Organizational Dynamics, and Human Relations. Pearson earned her Ph.D. in business from the University of Southern California, her M.S. in organizational psychology from California State University, and her B.A. in French and economics from the City University of New York.

Here is an excerpt from my interview of Pearson. The complete interview is also available.

Morris: Opinions are divided about referring to workers as “employees” or as “associates.” What do you think?

Pearson: For me, it’s not the word chosen but the application of what’s implied here. I’ve certainly seen “associates” who are treated terribly, as what sociologists call “non-persons,” (i.e., that they are so discounted and ignored that they don’t even register to the other person as a human being) and I’ve certainly seen “employees” who are fully appreciated. For me, the term isn’t a sticking point.

Morris: Now please shift your attention to The Cost of Bad Behavior that you co-authored with Christine Porath. For those who have not as yet read this book, what are the nature and extent of the verifiable cost of incivility in the workplace?

Pearson: We define incivility as seemingly inconsequential inconsiderate words and deeds that go violate norms of workplace behavior. In essence, it’s mutual respect among co-workers, as played out in words and actions. Some examples of incivility include ignoring colleagues, passing the blame, taking credit for others’ work, not listening, failing to return phone calls, talking down to someone…The most controversial at the moment, I believe, is texting or emailing during meetings. That gets the most push-back when I talk to audiences: about 20% can’t imagine why it would be seen by others as uncivil, another 10% understand why but do it anyway and about 80% (overlapping the 10%, of course) see it as uncivil, disrespectful. The consensus among audiences is that it demonstrates more interest in your texts/emails than in the people at the meeting. I agree.

As to the verifiable costs, let me share just a few of the statistics that we’ve collected from targets of incivility for the past decade. When they have experienced workplace incivility, our respondents across studies tell us that:

48% intentionally decrease their work effort
47% intentionally decrease their time at work
38% intentionally decrease the quality of work they produce
63% lose time trying to avoid the person who has offended them
80% lose work time worrying about the incident
78% lose commitment to their organization
88% do something to get even with their organization in which the incivility occurred
94% do something to get even with their offender

* * *

If you wish to read the complete interview, please contact me at interllect@mindspring.com.

You are invited to check out the resources at these Web sites:

http://knowledgenetwork.thunderbird.edu/podcasts/2009/05/19/incivility/

www.thecostofbadbehavior.com

The problem with government intervention in the marketplace under the concept of “saving jobs” or protecting private institutions of national heritage, is that it becomes the benchmark by which all other corporations are judged. Because of the corporate bailouts of General Motors and Chrysler, Canadians have come to expect, perhaps unreasonably, that other industries and companies should also be “saved”. But interference in the free market comes at a price that isn’t just attached to the monetary contributions of the taxpayer, but it has a lasting residual effect for years to come. The more that government tries to influence an outcome that it believes is favourable, the less we can expect to see naturally occurring corrective market forces that would propel a new, and arguably more deserving, company to the forefront of an industry.

One can use the example of the foreign companies in Canada that were not given the same advantage as GM and Chrysler. Although it’s usually easier to sell the idea of defending Canadian companies by invoking some sort of nationalist significance to their existence. Even though General Motors and Ford have always been symbolic of American corporate power, their presence in Canada has existed for a long enough period of time that many Canadians see the automotive production plants as domestic. These companies are also filled with workers from the powerful Canadian Autoworkers Union, a lobby group that carries a considerable amount of clout in Canada, having originated from their American cousins, the UAW. One such Canadian company that doesn’t have a powerful union protecting it’s interests in Ottawa, is the struggling Nortel Networks, a company on the verge of being sold off to foreign interests.

Jeffrey Simpson argues that Nortel Networks deserved the same chance to keep afloat, but were ignored by the federal Conservatives who “waxed their ears and watched the company slide beneath the waters of insolvency.” But what possible argument could Mr.Simpson use that would provide compelling reasons for the government to bailout Nortel? The single theme I get from the article is that because Nortel spawned a considerable amount of research in Canada, with estimates that it allowed 260 companies to startup because of it’s existence, it should have been saved.

Even those who say that we should have bailed out Nortel, don’t know if it would have worked anyway. “Ottawa didn’t even try”, so how would we know? This kind of argument could be used for anything from Nortel to Korean fruit stands. The concept behind the “free market” is based on not needing to know whether a company will fail or not, because the forces that drive the economy will determine it. If Nortel falls, something else will take it’s place, inevitably changing the structure of jobs and investments. For many people, change is scary. It’s just easier to say “let’s bail them out”, and save Canadian jobs and Canadian companies.

Even worse than the rather ill-conceived argument for government bailouts, is this desire to keep insolvent companies Canadian, as though losing Nortel to Finnish Nokia is an affront to our very sovereignty. It would be better, Mr.Simpson argues, to keep Nortel Canadian by selling it to Jim Balsillie, and Research in Motion. “[H]ere’s a patriot who believes in doing something for his country and company at the same time” raves Mr.Simpson’s column. As though being Canadian is an important indicator of the success of a company, or how it resonates in our identity politics. Please. Do any of the millions of Canadians who grab their double-doubles on the way to work every morning really care whether Tim Hortons was under American ownership for several years? Did the Montreal Canadiens lose their history, their culture by being owned by George N. Gillett Jr?

Although I wouldn’t have a problem if the government let Mr.Balsillie bid on the sale of Nortel, I also don’t have a problem with it going to some Finnish company either. The whole concept of international free trade agreements, globalization, and broadening markets, is to take advantage of the resource of foreign trade and investment. In fact allowing Nortel to be bid on by foreign buyers is a great advertisement for investment in Canada, and if anything, the kind of attitude we should be cultivating is strengthening this image, not imagining how our tax dollars might have propped up some insolvent company for a few more years.

(source : NetEco 07/07/09)

Des collaborateurs de Nortel France (Nortel Networks SA ou NNSA), société placée en liquidation judiciaire, sont entrés en « grève générale » mardi 7 juillet, rapporte une source syndicale. Les employés de NNSA et du centre de R&D GSM Nortel entendent alerter l’opinion, les pouvoirs publics et sauver leurs emplois. L’opération de la dernière chance ?

Equipementier réseau d’origine canadienne, Nortel a été placé en janvier 2009 sous la protection de la loi américaine sur les faillites. Parallèlement, la multinationale a annoncé supprimer 3200 emplois supplémentaires sur un effectif mondial d’environ 26.000 collaborateurs. En France, le 28 mai dernier, la justice a prononcé la liquidation de Nortel Networks SA. En l’absence de repreneur, celle-ci sera effective fin août.

Les salariés français et leurs représentants s’inquiètent dans un communiqué : « le paiement de nos salaires est remis en question chaque mois. On nous parle de 500 licenciements alors qu’aucun repreneur n’est annoncé et que la comptabilité reste opaque après 6 mois d’administration judiciaire. » Ils affirment par ailleurs que « la maison mère nord-américaine dispose de réserves de trésorerie, (mais) refuse de soutenir la filiale Française qui (aurait) toujours été bénéficiaire. » Avant d’exiger « des compensations financières et des mesures de reclassement pour aider les familles touchées à traverser les périodes difficiles qui s’annoncent. »

Rappelons que le mois dernier, Nortel a annoncé vendre son activité la plus lucrative (CDMA et LTE) à son concurrent germano-finlandais Nokia Siemens Networks. Par ailleurs, Nortel a précisé vouloir liquider progressivement l’ensemble de ses activités. Désormais, la priorité consiste à vendre ses actifs au meilleur prix afin de rembourser ses principaux créanciers.

[qi:gigaom_icon_voip] We have long talked about it, and now there are numbers to back it up: The global economic downturn has taken its toll on the telecom business. The entire telecom ecosystem — from broadband providers to equipment sellers — is in a world of a hurt. The fact that many large markets in the western world are reaching a saturation point is only exacerbating the problems for telecoms.

For the first quarter of 2009, the top 20 global service providers posted revenues of $251 billion, down 1 percent from the fourth quarter, reports Telegeography, a telecom research company.

For telecom equipment makers, things were worse: The top 10 equipment makers saw their sequential quarterly revenues decline 15 percent in the first quarter of 2009, to $59 billion. The terrible results of companies such as Alcatel-Lucent (s ALU), Nortel Networks and Nokia-Siemens (s nok) are a testament to the effect of the downturn. Even smaller players such as Ciena (s CIEN) have been hurting. No such problems for Chinese giant Huawei, however, which keeps growing and growing thanks to its low-cost offerings.

Broadband demand has remained steady: New additions during the first quarter of 2009 came in at 14 million, in line with the fourth quarter of 2008, with China accounting for 30 percent of global growth and the United States being the only country that added more than 1 million subscribers in the quarter.

Even the fast-growing wireless business slowed down: 153 million net new wireless subscribers were added during the quarter, about 10 million fewer than in the fourth quarter of 2008. India and China accounted for 49 percent of the growth in quarterly wireless subs. In other words, major western markets have been slumping pretty badly. “Countries like France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Ukraine and the UK were all essentially flat or even in slight decline,” Telegeography says.

In addition to the global slowdown, Telegeography is rightfully concerned about the impact of saturation in many major markets.

Historic growth in this market has been over 6% but TeleGeography forecasts that growth will decline to an average 3.5% over the next five years. Against this backdrop, the 3% year-on-year revenue growth for the Top 20 service providers can be seen as too sharp a fall, happening too soon. It should also be noted that the 3% growth is bolstered from mergers and acquisitions, and is not just organic growth.

In other words, things might actually be much worse than people think. Now we have seen some signs of a rebound in the second quarter of 2009, but it would be interesting to tally the numbers and see how exactly it’s evolving.

Paul Taylor of Reuters America raises many interesting points.

Fourth quarter losses at Nortel Networks , the Canadian telecommunications equipment maker operating under Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, more than doubled to $2.14bn, mainly reflecting writedowns and a 15 per cent decline in revenues that fell to $2.72bn from $3.2bn as customers cut back their spending.

Read the whole article

Here is today’s article from Dallas Morning News on Nortel Networks.

Nortel Networks Corp. will lay off 3,200 employees as part of an effort to slash operating costs, reorganize its business and emerge from bankruptcy protection.

Read the whole article

HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — Nortel Networks plans to cut its work force by 3,200 jobs worldwide.

According to the AP.

Nortel Networks to cut 3,200 more jobs
Wednesday February 25, 11:12 am ET

Nortel Networks to cut 3,200 jobs on top of 1,800 job reductions already announced

XTech Gear is able to provide refurbished Nortel Networks Optera 3×00. Via our in house testing and repair facility, we are able to guarantee that all equipment meets the original operational specification. We are also able to provide testing and repair services for all Nortel Networks Optera 3×00 NTN440KA.

The NTN440KA provides an OC48 short range 1310nm port, capable of speeds up to 2488 Mbit/s. We are able to provide testing and repair services for all manner of Nortel Networks Optera 3×00.

Additionally, we also provide refurbished equipment, as well as testing and repair capabilities, for a wide range of central office and data networking equipment. If you have any questions regarding our product line or our testing and repair inquiries, please feel free to contact us.

XTech Gear is able to provide  refurbished Nortel Networks Optera 3×00. Via our in house testing and repair facility, we are able to guarantee that all equipment meets the original operational specification. We are also able to provide testing and repair services for all Nortel Networks Optera 3×00 NTN440BA.

The NTN440BA provides an OC48 intermediate range 1310nm port, capable of speeds up to 2488 Mbit/s. We are able to provide testing and repair services for all manner of Nortel Networks Optera 3×00.

Additionally, we also provide refurbished equipment, as well as testing and repair capabilities, for a wide range of central office and data networking equipment. If you have any questions regarding our product line or our testing and repair inquiries, please feel free to contact us.

XTech Gear is able to provide  refurbished Nortel Networks Optera 3×00. Via our in house testing and repair facility, we are able to guarantee that all equipment meets the original operational specification. We are also able to provide testing and repair services for all Nortel Networks Optera 3×00 NTN440EA.

The NTN440EA provides an OC48 short range 1310nm port, capable of speeds up to 2488 Mbit/s. We are able to provide testing and repair services for all manner of Nortel Networks Optera 3×00.

Additionally, we also provide refurbished equipment, as well as testing and repair capabilities, for a wide range of central office and data networking equipment. If you have any questions regarding our product line or our testing and repair inquiries, please feel free to contact us.

According to Reuters, CNBC: “Nortel Networks Corp is working on a “detailed plan” to cut its global workforce as it restructures under bankruptcy protection, and it will seek to avoid holding an annual shareholder meeting because it says it would be distracting and expensive.”

“Ernst & Young Inc, the monitor overseeing Nortel’s bankruptcy protection, said in a court report posted on its website. The monitor’s report confirms that despite slashing its workforce to 30,000 today from about 90,000 in 2000, Nortel — North America’s biggest maker of telephone equipment — still isn’t finished with job cuts as it fights to survive.”

“The Toronto-based telecom equipment maker filed for bankruptcy protection in Canada and the United States last month, blaming the economic crisis for derailing a turnaround effort that began in 2005.”

~News submitted by upthecreek

I must admit that I was a bit shocked when I saw this at first.  Now that I have time to think about it I am not wholly surprised.  I wonder if these large long lived tech companies are seeing the beginning of the end for their business model and mode of operation.  Sure the current global financial crisis has something to do with Nortel’s potential demise, but is it possible that the way they have been doing business for the past hundred years is no longer viable.  I look at the RIA and see an old business model that no longer works and an institution that is not willing to change how they do business.  I think every company, owner, employee that lives by the old “that is how we’ve always done it” mantra is doomed to failure.  When I see Apple, I see a company that is large and is not locked into the practices that brought it initial success.  Okay, yes Apple is one of the most locked down and tight assed companies around today but I’m willing to bet that when that no longer is seen as viable to them it will change, like now might be that time since Jobs may be stepping down permanently.  Microsoft is another example of old ways gone stale.  Microsoft is a huge company and they are having some identity issues.  I think they have figured out that the same old way of doing business isn’t going to work for them any more and they are working hard at figuring out what they need to do to stay successful.  I wonder if there was any internal debate at Nortel.  I wonder if Nortel lacked the internal ability to change in this age of dynamic business and if they even saw “the writting on the wall”, so to speak.  I think this may be an interesting year in that the lack of (hollow, feigned, foundationless…) financial prosperity will be the straw that finally breaks the back of “old” media/business.

I woke up this morning to find out that the Canadian networking solutions company, Nortel Networks, and department store chain, Gottschalks Inc., filed for bankruptcy protection today.  Another bankrupt company, what else is new?

After I read the news this morning I got out of bed and grabbed a comb across my head.  I headed over to my school’s student union and drank  a delicious blueberry smoothie for breakfast and grabbed a New York Times.  On page A18, there was a piece about Peter Orszag, who has been chosen by Obama to be the director of the White House Office of Management and Budget.  He is the first mainstream public official that I have heard start sounding an alarm about what could happen if we don’t get our countries fiscal deficit back in the black and balance the budget.

” ‘[the United States] debt is viewed as the safest investment in the world.’  But, he said, if the United States continues to spend beyond its means, ‘that perception could shift,’ and that ‘could not only trigger a fiscal crisis, but also severely limit our ability to respond flexibly to any future economic difficulties.’”  (The New York Times, A18 ) “

He’s alluding to a few key data points:

1) “That Perception Could Shift”:  This perception Mr. Orszag is referring to is the perception of foreigners who service our debt.  If foreigners lose faith in our currency, interest rates will rise and the US Dollar could lose its status as the world’s reserve currency.  The implications for holders of US Dollars is a major depreciation in value compared to other currencies and goods and a decrease in buying power.

2) The financial crisis he is referring to would be a currency crisis.  This would make our current credit crisis look minuscule.

For more information on understand the implications of a currency crisis click the link below:

LINK: Currency Crisis For Dummies

—
Source: Pear, Robert. “Obama Nominee Face Committees on Capitol Hill.” The New York Times 14 Jan. 2009, sec. A18.

The financial crisis continues it’s hold on the financial world spreading like a plague through businesses around the world. Nortel Networks, one of the biggest makers of telephone equipment has filed for bankrupty protection today. The crisis seems to be deepening and shows no signs of letting up. Their shares dropped on the news of the bankruptcy.

For more on this story visit Reuters.com.

Yours in news and information,

Joseph R. Mays