a-res.info

Hello and welcome to my blog, post number one - obligatory objectives post complete with a vague overview of who I am and what I'm doing.

So I'm Aaron, and I'm a UK research student studying for a PhD in the UK. My project has one main, and extremely broad, objective - how can people who aren't in the same place, effectively work together, in real-time. My focus has been on two technologies that achieve this extremely well, despite the fact that other, similar technologies aren't so well received. These two technologies, Second Life and video telepresence, have shown time and time again to be extremely effective modes of collaboration - which individuals use both willingly and effectively. Why is it that people love using telepresence but hate using older video conferencing equipment? Why does Second Life create a world that is so much more sociable then say, an internet chat room? These are the questions I'm hoping to answer.

a-res.info has two primary roles - one is that of general research blog - where I'll be writing posts about my opinions, various anecdotes, etc - and the other is to promote my research and hopefully sign up some participants. Certainly the latter role will be constantly be kept up-to-date, the former may turn in to an occasional thing though - but if I can write one post a week I'll be happy. I have ideas about what direction I'd like to move the blog in the future should traffic ever ramp up, but for now - blog and sign-ups are what I'm sticking with.

Anyway please take a look around, and feel free to contact me about whatever you like using the contact form on the top of the page. You can also IM me in-world - Az Afterthought - and yup he's a noob, but I'm not But for now, I'm retiring my old av in favour of this one.

(Hopefully) Related posts:

1. Virtual World Research Up until now, most of my blog posts have been fairly opin­ion­ated errr… reflec­tions on vari­ous things, events, etc. Don’t get me wrong, I...
2. My Lab — The Toeda Research Centre One of the most import­ant things when it comes to doing Second Life research is hav­ing some­where to do it (d’uh XD). I guess...