WOW MMORPG legal article

Interesting article about Blizzard and chat spammers.

http://www.wowinsider.com/2008/02/01/blizzard-puts-peons4hire-out-of-work/

Half-Formed Idea: Message in a Bottle

Okay, this is a half-formed idea, but I'm going to try putting it out there in spite of it not being too well thought out. Further, instead of my usually super-expansive (and unwieldy) thinking, I’m going to try and keep it short.


I was listening to On The Media (http://www.onthemedia.org/transcripts/2008/02/01/07) when a guy brought up that an app named ForwardTrack (http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/122/is-the-tipping-point-toast.html) had been developed as a way of getting people to look at ads online by allowing them to not only send the ad to friends, but to get info on who their friends in turn sent the ad to. I thought it was a brilliant way of getting people to map their own networks by giving them feedback on the nature of the network they were charting. In fact, people wanted to grow the their network of ad viewers in order to see how big they could go:


“Watts and Peretti set up a regular mass-market ad buy, running banner ads on several prominent blogs and news sites. Like many ads these days, they added a button on the ad that allows people to forward the ad to a friend--a way of collecting eyeballs for free. Typically, people ignore this "share with your friends" pitch. But Watts and Peretti included technology called ForwardTrack, which displays the route the ad travels once you've forwarded it. This turned ad forwarding into a piece of social cartography. People would pass the ad specifically to those friends most likely to keep it moving. It became a Facebook-like contest to sign up the most friends.”


All of this made me think of the papers I’d read on semantic social networks and cluster maps. What if one hollowed out ForwardTrack and allowed people to forward images, text, links, whatever? Let people take such an app and do what they please--pushing messages, images, and seeing what networks of viewers they can get. The app will give them feedback in the form of semantic cluster maps (covering concepts, f2f relationships, existing ontologies, etc) of their choice regarding who looked at their media/message. This could potentially lead people to make new sorts of connections.


This new app could be a network or semantic analysis/research toolset that could be expanded and tweaked over time. It might be tested in Second Life (Can this sort of thing be done in SL?) before crossing the virtual divide onto the web or f2f social relationships. Perhaps future students might extend the toolset to design new collective intelligence or social networking apps in Second Life.


Dovetailing off of Dan’s post from Tim O’Reilly, a ForwardTrack-like app (Let’s call it “MIAB” for Message in a Bottle) could be used to create on the fly GIS (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIS) maps. It could also be used to support growing psychological research efforts in Second Life
(http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=a-virtual-laboratory) (http://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/getArticle.cfm?id=2179)

What can mobile do for virtual worlds?

This is not virtual worlds specific, although with little thought you can see how virtual worlds and mobile might go together. Anyway, I posted over at last100 regarding Nokia's N-Gage gaming platform, and Ovi, the social media sharing site. Obviously Nokia has a content/social strategy, and it makes me wonder what can mobile do for virtual worlds.

Also, a brief note at the emac blog on the same matter, with an eye toward Mobile Lab and content creation. The last quote from a Nokia dude is interesting. Again, what can mobile do for virtual worlds?

gesture based augmented reality

Augmented Reality: A Practical Guide

For everybody interested in augmented reality and virtual worlds. Most things Tim O'Reilly writes is worth reading ...

Augmented Reality: A Practical Guide: "

By Tim O'Reilly

I'm jealous. The Prags have just published a book I wish I'd thought of first: Augmented Reality: A Practical Guide.

I've been talking quite a bit about augmented reality lately, especially when people ask me about what I think might represent a discontinuity significant enough to represent a paradigm shift of the scale of the PC revolution or Web 2.0. Sensors instrumenting the world and driving collective intelligence applications that provide new information layers in our everyday experience is one big element of this next revolution.

The topic also comes up whenever people ask me about Second Life, because I'm much more fascinated by the possibility of SL to create additional information layers on top of this world than I am about the idea of it as a complete alternate reality. I usually point to an SAP project I learned of last year, in which SAP is working with a Swiss property management firm to build instrumented models of their buildings in Second Life. That is, you open a door in the building, a door opens in the SL model. The building catches fire, so does the SL model. And of course, that's why I was so excited about Google's acquisition of Sketchup. It seems to me to be a really important long-term play in the mapping space. After all, so much of the built world we interact with isn't represented at all on the maps we use. An address on the 37th floor of a building looks just the same to our mapping system as one on the first floor. But does it need to be that way? Not in a future where we've populated our maps (at first perhaps Google Earth, but eventually web-based maps as well) with additional layers representing the human-built world.

Augmented reality is also coming at us in the news, especially forward looking news outlets (hint: 'News for nerds. Stuff that matters.') Take a look at these recent Slashdot headlines and think about them as all part of an emerging augmented reality trend: Smart 'Lego' Set Conjures Up Virtual 3D Twin, Cellphone App Developed that Could Allow For 'Pocket Supercomputers', Stanford's New Website Converts Your Photos to 3D, and The Coming Wave of Gadgets That Listen and Obey. Add in the recent Radar posts The Future of Cell Phone Headsets and More on the Virtual Reality Audio Headset. Season with a dash of Nintendo Wii and innovative cell phone games like Mobzombies (Radar post.)

We're clearly careening towards a world in which virtual worlds are overlaid on the real world, bits interpenetrated with atoms.

I should be clear that this broad-strokes definition of augmented reality isn't what's covered in the Prags' new book. They are focused on a more traditional definition: 'to create the sensation that virtual objects are present in the real world.' They provide some first tools for developers to explore interfaces and techniques for doing so, with an emphasis on overlaying rendered objects onto real time digital video. This is a subset of the big picture I'm drawing in this post, but an important one. And perhaps even more to the point, this book will help to socialize the idea and to get people started building the new skills that will be required as augmented reality interfaces go mainstream.

I was thinking after class about how we represent ourselves online, and how we could show a connection between ourselves and our avatars, when I happened along this neat idea for a sort of performance piece. Avatars, wearing approximations of our own face. now, I'll fancy up the handle for the item that it'd give up to the class, but if people are interested in taking part, they can send me pictures of themselves and I'll make the masks

Tornado Transport System

Dean has been wishing out loud for a free-fall, random delivery transport system for ATEC's new architectural plan. What good, chaotic fun it would be, he thought, if an avatar could be plunked down somewhere totally unexpected. He also asked that all designs for the New ATEC Island be non-static, ever-dynamic. Always game for Dean's version of controlled chaos, the rest of the team agreed, and thought it might be practical to have an option for a direct transport to a specified destination as well. The obvious solution: a Tornado and Hurricane Delivery System. A tornado is unpredictable, ever-shifting its form and its path, so it could be the random delivery unit. A hurricane follows a path capable of being tracked, yet it too is a shape-shifter, so it could be the direct delivery unit. A sketch for a layered-form tornado design is shown here, having gobbled up Avatar Blake Wake for delivery who-knows-where. Research is now in progress to explore design and scripting challenges. Interested builders & programmers for this insanely bold project should contact Diana Souza or Liz Rittenhouse.

Island space plan

Dan is out

I am not in class today as the kid has a particularly nasty strain of the flu that's going around. I'm fine, but I'd feel really bad if I brought it to school with me and one of you got sick. Even with drugs, she's been down four days. Without drugs, you could be out two weeks. And you guys would then hate me.

Anyway, the diagram I posted the other day is just a starter. We had four good areas to talk about, and ideas within those areas. I'd like to have flushed those out better, spending time on each other, rather than jumping from idea to idea. I guess if you guys do that today, somebody take notes and we can update where we are -- either with new ideas or builds off the ones we already have.

Habbo and Paramount Pictures to Sell Virtual Movie Paraphernalia

Virtual goods for movies. If only I could find a virtual Veronia Mars. No, wait, that's TV. Damn.

from Mashable

Virtual world Habbo has announced a deal with Paramount Pictures to create virtual goods for movies. Think Spiderman lunchboxes, but in the virtual world instead of the real one.

Specifically, users of Habbo will be able to buy things like accessories for their avatars, virtual furniture, and other worthless crap movie paraphernalia based off the movies “The Spiderwick Chronicles,” “Beowulf” and “Mean Girls.”

As cynical as I am about virtual worlds in general, this deal makes a lot of sense and could probably be pretty profitable for the two companies assuming they are adding virtual goods from titles that are hot with their young and fickle audience. Habbo claims more than 1.8 million teen users, most of whom can probably nag their parents into buying them a virtual Lindsay Lohan “Mean Girls” action figure if they really want one.

see also Reuters story.