I wrote about the Brain-computer interface for Second Life in SmartMobs yesterday in a post titled: Using Brain Waves to control Avatars in Second Life which I thought was pretty cool - and reminded me of Wild Divine, which used Biofeedback to do, just about, the same thing (but there were differences in the Wild Divine approach, which looked exciting 5 years ago, but never really took off).

"…A research team led by professor Jun’ichi Ushiba of the Keio University Biomedical Engineering Laboratory has developed a BCI system that lets the user walk an avatar through the streets of Second Life while relying solely on the power of thought. To control the avatar on screen, the user simply thinks about moving various body parts — the avatar walks forward when the user thinks about moving his/her own feet, and it turns right and left when the user imagines moving his/her right and left arms. "

That's truly amazing - that you can think about moving your right arm, or you left foot, and it moves and you can see a movie of all of this at http://bme.bio.keio.ac.jp/01news/images/BCI_secondlife.wmv.

According to The Pink Tentacle: "….a brain wave analysis algorithm interprets the user’s imagined movements. A keyboard emulator then converts this data into a signal and relays it to Second Life, causing the on-screen avatar to move. In this way, the user can exercise real-time control over the avatar in the 3D virtual world without moving a muscle."

I take it that each person would probably need to train a program that adapts to their own brainwaves (calibrate the program much as voice recognition software needs to be calibrated to each speaker) and the price of the interface, gadget, whatever it's called, lowered to where someone can buy it (IE: 130 dollars USD) and then, I think, you'd see a large number of people using it.

Wild Divine was able to make a biofeedback device that worked with its own software for about 150 dollars, and for what it did, it was/is very sophisticated - the problem for Wild Divine - they never bought into Second Life or User Generated Content - they kept their "game" so closed in and "occult" that it's appeal  was far too narrow, and too limited to be satisfying in any real way, beyond a couple sessions of playing the game.

But this new Brainwave device, along with Wild Divine, are part of what could, if used with Web Analytics, determine real engagement - because they measure response of a human being where as analytics along, measures just the response of what a person does on page, does on a site - and often, not that well.

Not only do Brainwave analysis and biofeedback devices improve online situations where and interactive response is called for - but they can be decoded and added to web analytics data in an overlay that …measures real visitor engagement - which is the holy grail of most brand marketers …this is the thing they most want to know - and hardly anyone can even figure out how to do it, much less what engagement really is.

In fact, that's part of what my committee at the Web Analytics Association is working on right now …. a set of definations of Social Media and how it would best be measured…and to read more about the Social Media Committee of the Web Analytics Association - here's the link - http://www.webanalyticsassociation.org/en/cmt/?16 .