PMOG fun
May 26, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Last week I was directed to PMOG (passively multiplayer online game) by Charlie, an application that lets you play against others simply through browsing the web. “With a game head-up display in Firefox, players can bomb each other, wage war over web sites, and lead other users on web missions. Ordinary web sites become caches for items and currency. PMOG fuses an MMO into our WWW.” I have only recently started playing but have successfully blown up a couple of people and can see myself becoming addicted very easily.
Stars launching their own social networks
March 31, 2008 | Leave a Comment
First Kylie and then Fiddy (50 Cent to you and I). Stars are now starting to launch their own social networks sharing tour news and other delights that I don’t really care about (well from these two anyway). I obviously find it hard to believe that the stars themselves are posting to these sites, but I can’t help but feeling they are nothing more than glorified websites? 50 Cents site contains a little more content than Kylie’s admittedly, and has just clocked up 160,000 users which can’t be sniffed at. I can understand that if you are a 50 Cent fan, then this is your paradise but it leaves me feeling that this is simply an alternative to MySpace created by his PR agency.
Visual Complexity
February 27, 2008 | Leave a Comment
I absolutely love this site. Visual Complexity was founded by Manuel Lima, an interaction designer who is currently Senior User Experience Designer at Nokia Design. Manuel describes the site as a resource space for anyone who is interested in the visualisation of complex networks. I can guarantee you won’t be able to put it down for at least 10 minutes.
Qik live streaming
January 17, 2008 | 1 Comment
I have been watching Charles Frith’s antics in Beijing through his Qik streams, and have been yearning to test this technology myself, and now I can. Qik allows you to stream videos live from your mobile browser directly to web. It is really simple to use and the quality is surprisingly good. One of the best examples of this technology being used so far is to report on current events a la MacWorld where Qikkers streamed the latest product demos from Apple at the event. SMS Text news have also demonstrated it’s great capabilities as a shopping assistant in this post. It’s still in Alpha phase, but i’m really looking forward to seeing this grow over the next few months and for those who are interested, you can follow my streams here.
Adidas originals build your own festival
January 14, 2008 | 2 Comments
Adidas have teamed up with Vice magazine in Australia to launch a great new site allowing users to create their dream music festival. The Originals Festival site allows users to select from a range of artists within their $100k budget, pick their running order, pick their location for the event and then design a poster to advertise the festival on their MySpace pages and blogs to friends. The users with the highest attendance (most number of visitors) will win tickets to the Berlin Festival 2008. I spent most of my money on Underworld and LCD Soundsystem so mine was more of an evening affair rather than the full festival!
Second Life forced to close banks
January 14, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Linden Lab, owner of Second Life, have been forced to close all banks within the virtual world due to fraudulent business dealings within the virtual world. They state that they were never responsible for the transactions but solely the software. Linden lab have said that banks must ensure they produce proof of an applicable government registration statement or financial institution charter. Technology Review first published the story when they cited the possibility that one virtual meltdown may have produced losses of up to $700,000 in real money.
Moshi Monsters
December 11, 2007 | 1 Comment
London-based gaming agency Mind Candy have developed a new social-networking sites for kids called Moshi Monsters. Instead of creating their own user profiles, kids can adopt their own monster. Users can choose the colour and name of their monster before taking it home. Every monster has a personality that changes and develops as you play with it. Treat it badly and it will misbehave, treat it well and you will have a very happy little monster. Kids can play puzzles and feed their monster and they can also customise the house that it lives in. Users can also make other monster friends and communicate with them by leaving messages on a regulated pin board. Source: Cool Hunting.
Second Life calling
December 11, 2007 | Leave a Comment
Second Life developer Linden Labs have created a way for avatars to receive phone calls whilst they are actually in Second Life. Users phone numbers will be connected with their avatars and using the existing voice technology, they will be able to receive calls.
Second Life for the blind
December 10, 2007 | Leave a Comment
Students at IBM in
Social networking for bumps
December 4, 2007 | Leave a Comment
Someone had to do it. Yes, Foops is a new social network due for launch in April 2008 for bumps. Now you don’t even have to be born to have your own profile page. Until the site is launched, the information available is currently limited but I will provide a full write up after launch.
