Giving her annual overview of Internet trends at the Web 2.0 Summit, Mary Meeker highlighted the mobile device explosion.

Mobile devices will evolve as remote controls for ever expanding types of real-time cloud-based services, including emerging category of location-based services, creating opportunities + dislocations, empowering consumers in unprecedented + transformative ways.

You can even see the explosion in the chart – tablet, wireless home appliances, home entertainment, mobile video, etc.

What all that looks like to me is a prime market for new forms of entertainment. As Hollywood is struggling the potential for new models are taking off. The most interesting of which to me is entertainment at your fingertips. The anticipated Apple Tablet will most likely go  in your lap, well within reach of your fingers – begging you to interact with it. It’s the prefect place for interactive story. Granted, mobile game devices have always been at your fingertips but they’ve always appealed to a gamer audience. For interactive story to really take off it’ll need to expand into the mass market and tablets or e-readers seem a great place to start. Plus, interactive story isn’t as processor intensive as most video games. It’s almost a match made in heaven.

Interactive story will ride to mass market on the back of the mobile explosion.

An example of Google's O3D

I’m excited to see 3D in the browser though I may be in the minority. Google’s O3D and WebGLfrom Mozilla and the Khronos Group are exciting technologies but mention that to anyone in the game industry and they’ll laugh. Visual Purple is in the serious game business so you could say we’re in the game industry and if there was ever and industry built on escalating graphics it’s games. Just flip through the industry magazines and all you see are ads for game engines. But I think the tides are a changing, even if most can’t believe or see it yet.

Open Standards

All you need to do is look at the Internet to make a case for open standards. It isn’t a cure-all but open standards certainly have their strong suits. We’re constantly investigating virtual world and MMO platforms as well as graphic engines and would love if there was some sort of standard. I know most people in the game industry are more excited about new technology that pushes the graphics or game play further, but as the Wii has demonstrated – you can do a lot with an old processor if you get creative. In fact that seems to be where the industry is going.

Device independent

It was once a big deal to have the same browser work on Mac, Windows, and Linux. Now it’s what device they work on – mobile phone, set-top box, tablet, etc?

Easy integration with the rest of the Internet (social gaming)

Most video games are worlds on to themselves, even if they’re available online. You can play your friend from a distant city but you’re doing little other than talking trash while you play. We have yet to see games take advantage of what’s out there the way mashups have. Social gaming is getting us closer but we still have a long way to go. Being in the browser and using the same or similar protocols will likely change that. Plus, when you don’t have to worry about improving the graphics or creating some new game play you’re forced to be a bit more creative.

What will 3D in a browser do for games and virtual worlds?

Look at what putting a real browser on the iPhone did for mobile devices. Think of what 3D in the browser will do for games and virtual worlds. And I see a lot of potential for interactive story.

Apparently Apple is asking Australian media companies if they want to put their content on its upcoming tablet computer. The Sydney Morning Herald goes as far as to say:

It will have a touch screen and be targeted at users who mainly want to surf the web, read books and newspapers or watch movies.

Seeing what the iPhone did for the mobile web and applications I can’t wait to see what it does for books. But more than that I’d like to see it be a catalyst for new forms of media; like webcomics or dare I say interactive story.

The Apple tablet will truly put the viewing experience in your lap and well within reach of your fingers. Think of doing more than hitting pause and play? It seems the perfect place to experiment with interactive story. Now if only Genkii would launch their One Coin comics platform.

And who knows, maybe it’ll stir up some excitement in virtual worlds again.

Walt Disney’s CEO Bob Iger thinks the Hollywood model is broken and in need of quick change.

“The business model that underpins the movie business is changing,” Mr Iger told the Financial Times “If we don’t adapt to the change there won’t be a business – that’s my exhortation to my team.”

So if the movie business is dieing as we know it, why doesn’t Iger task Pixar with innovating their way out of it. The group at Pixar, along with Steve Jobs, have already shown a peculiar knack for innovation. They made the first feature-length computer-animated film, now task them with creating the first mainstream real-time story that isn’t entirely game based. Tieing play to the server is the only way to combat pirates, it’s the WoW model and it’s the model Hollywood desperately needs. The game industry gets it, now Hollywood needs to move to the same model. It’s moving from overlaying real-time story on top of a game to using real-t time story to create drama, and who better to do that than Pixar?

As the article on CNet explained, Hollywood’s world is dieing. It almost brings a tear to my eye as an aspiring screenwriter. I was hoping to slip into the industry before the collapse. Looks like I may be a little too late.

The past weekend, at a conference on the USC campus, Disney CEO Bob Iger said the “business model that formed the motion picture business…is changing profoundly before our eyes.”

Iger warned that studios must make profound changes, “or you will no longer have a business.”

It’s the same for all old media, their lock on distribution and production is fading and with it their massive profits. Hollywood needs to find a new way, but as anyone knows – change is hard. There are some who are trying to lead the way as I saw at the 2009 Screenwriting Expo where Anthony Zuiker was pitching is digi-novel Level 26. I was lucky enough to also catch Zuiker at the Virtual Worlds Conference in 2007 where he introduced the famous CSI Second Life episode and tie-in. I’ll give Zuiker credit, at least he is trying as he says, to merge Hollywood and Silicon Valley.

Returning to work after the screenwriting expo Monday I got to hear about the deep scars previous attempts to merge Hollywood and Silicon Valley had left behind. Visual Purple’s roots are actually in interactive story or better known in the 90’s as interactive movies, producing such hits as Silent Steel and Blue Force. They’ve also worked on countless projects with Hollywood that went no where. Hollywood and Silicon Valley are of two different cultures – one doesn’t get story, the other can’t admit failure. But as they say, necessity is the mother of all invention and Hollywood needs something new.

What we can expect from Hollywood in the next few years:

1. A rush to ancillary sales – Disney has maximized this model with their theme parks
2. Smaller budgets – this isn’t any surprise as they try and ratchet back expenses
3. Experimentation with SaaS (Software as a Service) type model – maybe we can call it MaaS (Movies as a Service) but it’s pretty much the same thing as games moving to subscriptions with the likes of WoW

The last one, the SassS model, might be new for some people but it’s one of the only surefire ways to make money on the Internet. The only problem is how do you cram movies into such a model, something where the movie itself is in real-time and can only be experienced if you’re connected. You have to tie the entertainment value to the server, not just try to encrypt or lock down a video file. But how would that look? What would it be like if movies were real-time?

I call it real-time story and it’s something I’ve been experimenting with for years. And for the last few months I’ve actually been building it at Visual Purple. Every day I work with Virtual Worlds, NPCs, and a story engine to create real-time story. There are others creating real-time story as well. MMO developers are creating story worlds, which are a type of real-time story. Narrative in video games are another form. However all of them are still not that similar to the movies Hollywood was built upon. At Visual Purple we’re building training simulations – they have story but when was the last time you paid $10 to watch a training movie? But the technology is there and evolving. When movies were new they were almost nothing like what we see today in theaters. Many just captured vaudeville acts. But they evolved and the same will be true with real-time story. The situation today is similar to what the early film pioneers dealt with at the turn of the century. The technology and production quality will improve as it did for video games and artists will learn how to create drama using the tools. It’s an exciting time and it might just be the next big thing in Hollywood.

Over the weekend I had the opportunity to attend the 2009 Screenwritng Expo. This was the smallest I’ve ever seen it. Maybe only 1,500 to 2,000 people and most of them were just there to pitch. It was still a good conference, but this was also the 5th time I’ve attended the conference and you begin to notice the same people and if not that, the same categories of people – actors, film students, mom and pops, recently retired, not so recently retired. It reminded me of other conferences, namely the startup and tech ones in Silicon Valley. Now I know must in tech would never consider themselves to be similar to those dreamers down South but I started to see some similarities:

• Most work very hard for long hours
• They believe they just need that one connection to make it big
• They’re all dreaming despite knowing that 99% of them will fail

We in Silicon Valley like to think what we do is serious work but as Eric Ries points out in his recent post, many of us in Silicon Valley are chasing a myth. A similar myth that anyone can write the next Million-Dollar Spec Script.

Ever since computers started falling into the hands of average people there has been a desire to use these new tools to express story. To change how they’re delivered, consumed, or written. When the Internet hit people started experimenting with hypertext fiction. Now it’s Twitter’s turn.

Neil Gaiman, famed author and creator ofThe Sandman comic series, and BBC Audiobooks America have gotten together to produce an interesting creative fiction experiment utilizing the microblogging service. Neil tweeted the first line of the interactive story at noon EST Tuesday, with other Twitter users joining in to continue the tale using the hashtag #bbcawdio.

But unlike what Barb Dybwad’s post on Mashable attests to, Neil Gaiman’s experiment isn’t really like the Choose Your Own Adventure books she loved growing up. Those were more along the lines of interactive story, this is more an experiment in collaborative writing. There’s actually a lot such experiments as you’ll see in the comments on the Mashable article. The problem is they rarely go beyond experiments. It’s difficult to write with one partner and no technology is going to change that, no matter how hip it is. Just take a look at what Neil Gaiman’s experiment has churned out so far and you’ll see the challenge.

Seeing this I’m reminded of the great presentation Dan Hon did on augmented reality games – Everything you know about ARGs is WRONG. He nicely cut through all the hype surrounding ARGs, something that would be nice here as well.

It looks like Nokia, or at least their investment arm is looking at virtual worlds.

The Wall Street Journal today is reporting that Nokia Growth Partners, with $350 million under management, is actively looking to invest in virtual worlds. Reporting from the VentureWire Technology Showcase in Redwood City, Calif., today, the news service writes that Mary McDowell, executive vice president and chief development officer at Nokia, said the fund is “particularly interested in investing in start-ups innovating in payments and transactions, analytics and advertising, and gaming and virtual worlds.”

Virtual worlds might seem an odd investment for the Nokia at first glance, but they might be thinking:

1. Social networks will naturally evolve to 3D
2. Virtual worlds are all about entertainment and outside of games and streaming videos there isn’t much of that on the Web
3. There is great potential for augmented reality in virtual worlds
4. Kids get virtual worlds
5. Outside of games and social networks, virtual worlds are ripe for virtual goods

Nokia could be looking at any of these or more, but if they have reason to invest in virtual worlds the same could be true for Apple with its iPhone. Especially if they’re coming out with a tablet / e-reader as everyone suspects. Soon they’ll offer a whole suite of mobile devices and what would be better than being able to connect them all with a social network like Facebook? The only problem is they don’t own Facebook and building their own social network would just be foolish. So what better way to come at the market than with something new, from a new angle, something like a virtual world? Plus kids get virtual worlds, maybe all Apple has to do is expand that appeal to older kids and young adults. Hey, it isn’t like they haven’t done it before; they push a consumer based iPhone at the enterprise market and are starting to win converts.

It would be great to see what Apple can do with virtual worlds. I sure hope my suspicion proves correct.

Blue Mars, the latest graphic rich virtual world is in open beta. I and a few friends checked it out but were quickly bored. Granted it’s only a beta, one of us commented that is was more like an alpha, but once you get beyond the graphics you wonder what there really is to do? It’s a problem not uncommon to virtual worlds. Trying to solve that problem highlights the tough spot developers of consumer virtual worlds find themselves in.

Only finding a few others running around Blue Mars we all gravitated toward the golf. I suspect most beta testers did the same. After you spend some time walking around the pretty scenery and sitting in chairs, golf is the only thing left. We of course never got beyond the first hole. The interface is built for virtual worlds, not specialized for driving a golf ball down the fairway. There are no tips on what club to select. It also isn’t clear how far away the hole is and you aren’t able to freely walk around to judge it yourself. I’d rather play Wii Golf or any other golf game for that matter – and here lies the trouble virtual worlds face. Virtual world developers know that there isn’t much to do, so they try and add games to keep people around. But that puts them in direct competition with game developers – between a rock and a hard spot.

Virtual world developers can emphasize collaboration and the social aspects of virtual worlds all they want, but when was the last time you went to Disneyland to meet new people or collaborate? Disneyland is the physical embodiment of a virtual world and you don’t go there to play golf together, you go to enter a fantasy land someone with more imagination than yourself cooked up. You go there with your family and friends, you don’t go to make new ones.

Virtual worlds can be about community, but it’s more likely that they start as a community first and then add the virtual world on top. Like most virtual world developers before them, Blue Mars is starting with the technology and hoping people will come. The graphics are impressive but such a strategy has failed many times before. But it’s still a beta – we’ll see what else they can dream up.

Seems like everyone is getting into social media these days. And why not, it’s replacing ad buys in old media. However it’s almost comical how most seem to forget that social media is about joining the conversation and conversation denotes two way exchange. It’s odd to see companies like CBSNews and Chevron_JustinH on Twitter. Other than a one sided conversation I don’t know what anyone would hope to gain following companies like this or more importantly what a company would hope to gain? Companies like this already speak through press releases and I seriously doubt they’re ready to divulge anything more. If you’re a faceless company, that’s what we expect you to be.

However now it seems like every company is hiring a social media expert to come in and ready the company for the future, but how can they if the company isn’t ready to get into a conversation? Almost anyone can start a Facebook page for the company or a Twitter account but they can’t make the company ready to talk.

But if the company is ready to talk social media can expand the conversation. Just check out  ChromeBagsSF or SouthwestAir.