03.30.05
Posted in forum archive at 3:58 pm by
We’ve talked about Guild Wars before back when they had a public beta. Its a free MMOG that really seems to have a refreshing approach to gameplay. Gamasutra has a great interview with one of the creators.
Philosophically, despite all the trappings of the fantasy RPG, Guild Wars is on an entirely different pole from the traditional massively-multiplayer online game. First off, it features no traditional subscription fee, with the initial purchase providing unlimited access and further investment rendered optional in the form of bi-annual add-on packs.
Secondly, once past a certain point, your character growth is not delineated by greater stats but a greater flexibility in their combat tactics more akin to Magic the Gathering than the direct contest of statistical attributes commonplace in most RPGs, thereby eliminating, at least to some extent, level grinding.
This sounds like something that a casual player like myself could get into. Unfortunately they’ve closed the beta to only those players who have pre-ordered their copies. 
Oh well. There’s always the free online Golf MMOG… naw, I’m not that desperate.
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Posted in forum archive at 11:19 am by
The big problem for festival concerts is finding a place that will put up with all the spillover noise. In the past solutions have included moving the events to the middle of the desert. Now, however, the world famous Glastonbury festival will have an after hours dance tent that won’t utter a peep.
For those seeking tranquillity at Glastonbury, a dance tent packed with clubbers is not an obvious sanctuary. But this will be the silent event – 3,000 festivalgoers are to be issued with headphones this year so they can turn the volume up to 11 without waking the neighbours.
Crazy! For anybody looking for a taste of what it might be like just stop by my cubicle any given day around 4pm. 
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03.29.05
Posted in forum archive at 11:16 am by
McDonalds is continuing its mission to be the cool thing for young and gullible types. How? Well, they’re going to pay rappers to mention big macs in songs. Next Paris Hilton and Ron McD get freaky in her new video.
Though it’s not offering money upfront, the fast-food giant is willing to pay rappers $1 to $5 each time songs with the plug hit the radio, according to today’s Advertising Age. McDonald’s hopes to have its signature sandwich in several songs by summer, the mag says.
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Posted in forum archive at 11:10 am by
The day has finally come: Today the Supreme Court begins hearing arguements in MGM vs Grokster. As discussed before here this has wider implications than whether or not a crappy little app can remain in business (and as far as crappy apps go Grokster is up (down?) there). However, today’s decision could very determine the direction of technology for years to come.
What’s at stake is the well-known 1980’s betamax decision. At that time the movie industry was outraged that people could copy their movies. It was ruled that the betamax (and its more popular cousin, the VCR) didn’t copy movies, people did. The people that made the technology could not be held responsible for the misbehavior of the users. This gave technology permission to continue to develop products that users wanted – CD-Rs, DVD-R’s, iPods, paper copiers, TCP/IP, etc.
It’s not just the lunatic finge that are rallying against the music industry on this. Artists have come out in support of new models. Content creators themselves are paying for Grokster’s defense. Add to that the fact that it still has to be shown that P2P decreases music sales and it really looks like the music industry is pursuing a dangerous path.
When content had to be distributed in analog or a physical format for delivery, all distribution could be controlled by just a few gatekeeper companies. Music Labels and Movie Studios owned distribution. In both industries anyone outside the major companies were called independent , and for a good reason. They were on their own, on the outside looking in.
When content went digital, the floodgates opened. Content could be delivered digitally in thousands of different ways, and the number of methods for distribution would only expand over time. To me this meant the power of the gatekeepers would diminish and the power of independent content creators and owners would increase. With the explosion of the internet and then broadband, not only did households explode with digital content replay devices, but more importantly, consumers became comfortable with the concept of what digital was and what it meant to them. From CDs to DVDs to cellphones to email to cameras to HDTVs, in all cases the move to digital represented an improvement in quality, availability, flexibility, mobility and more.
Sure there are earthquakes. We’re still stuck in Iraq. There are hundreds (thousands?) of things happening right now need attention and resolution. Maybe if we can get this one out of the way we can then feel confidence in attempting to create the technological solutions to solve them.
Here at mutednoise I wait with an anxious eye on my news feeds.
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03.28.05
Posted in forum archive at 11:40 am by
Couple of Orrin Hatch news items today. First off Hatch has been put in charge of the Senate Panel on Intellectual Property. That’s right, the man who was looking for a way of remotely destroying copyright infringers computers, is in charge of creating the nation’s IP policy.
Talk about letting the fox in the hen house. It might be why Xmission’s Founder, Pete Ashdown will be running against Orrin in the 2006 election. I’ve used Xmission, a Utah ISP, for a couple years now. It’s a great company that is very pro-user. They’ve even gone so far as started linking up Salt Lake’s diverse communities with their own fiberoptic network.
Hmmm… I need to find out some more about where Pete stands on various issues but this is very much a campaign that I can see myself becoming involved in. Anyone else have any thoughts about getting involved with something like this?
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Posted in forum archive at 11:30 am by
I’ve been talking awhile about principles of the long tail and how savvy people can use the power of networks to link together many social slivers. Now there’s an entire site to explore the phenom.
Today’s dish has a great discussion about the changes facing television:
Other industries with great Long Tail potential either know it, are already feeling the pressure, and are well on their way to doing something about it (music, print media, books, radio) or they are doing so well that they have little incentive to shake things up (film, games). TV, on the other hand, is just about to hit its crisis, whether its executives are willing to admit it or not. That crisis includes: ad-skipping, the disappearing 18-34 male, rising ad rates despite chronically falling ratings, and the death of the 30-second spot (see also Sunday’s NYT piece). My friends in the biz suggest that this year’s upfront will be the first in memory to go negative. If so, that would be a real wake-up call.
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Posted in forum archive at 11:23 am by
The BBC has been doing some really neat stuff with their radio. The latest item from the legion of cool was allowing people to program their playlist from their mobile phones:
The BBC interactive team developed software to retrieve, parse and tally the incoming SMS messages into a coherent playlist that the DJs would then broadcast. This is far from a trivial task, since parsing (near) free form text to extract a track name and an artist name is not a simple task — especially via SMS where people are used to using abbreviations for event the most common words. I won’t get into the greater details of how they implemented the system, but here are some buzzwords for you: SMS, XML, FTP, SQL, text indexing and a web interface.
The upshot is that the project was a huge success — a vast number of people participated and sent in their requests. The project was so successful that it has been repeated on two other holidays. After the session, an audience member asked if the resultant playlist differed much from the normal BBC 1 playlist and the answer was: Yes. At first people starting requesting the usual music that BBC 1 would play, but the team initially preferred tracks that were more off the beaten path. But once listeners understood that the sky was the limit, the requests became very different from the normal playlist.
Neat stuff. Are we going to see this kind of thing in the US? Not likely, at least not with most stations. Because the BBC is owned by the government (and once removed, the listeners) it attempts to derive the best value for the listeners. American stations are beholden to the share-holders. Little bit different and not likely to fund technological feats like this.
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Posted in forum archive at 11:17 am by
How geeky as this? Graffiti that is actually a hyperlink for more info – a phenom known as Grafedia.
Grafedia is hyperlinked text, written by hand onto physical surfaces and linking to rich media content – images, video, sound files, and so forth. It can be written anywhere – on walls, in the streets, or on sidewalks. Grafedia can also be written in letters or postcards, on the body as tattoos, or anywhere you feel like putting it. Viewers “click” on these grafedia hyperlinks with their cell phones by sending a message addressed to the word + “@grafedia.net” to get the content behind the link.
Neat neat. With the emergence of increasing persistant online availablilty (mobile phones, blackberries, etc) where getting hyperlinks in new places. Just another convergence between the physical world and the virtual one.
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03.27.05
Posted in miscellaneous at 2:03 am by
Excuse me if this seems rambling and a bit off-kilter from the usual fare here on mutednoise. It’s almost midnight and its been a big day. That, combined with a slew of recent changes, have put me in a funk – and not the Sly-and-the-Family-Stone sort of way.
In the past six months I’ve (in no particular order) had a child, said goodbye to a lot of friends, bought a house, had my dad fall gravely ill, taken on a renter, recommitted to my current job for the next 3-4 years, filed my own taxes (well, my wife did it), bought window treatments… To sum, there’s been a lot of changes lately. The sudden rush of adult responsibility has been hard. It has made me wonder about my time in college and all the other people I knew there.
College was an incredible time in my life. I can’t count the number of defining moments. My time there with exceptionally talented, opinionated, activist, and passionate people is something I’ll always cherish. (An aside, I see the student newspaper is using a custom BB software developed by SDSM&Ters themselves! Way to go!)
Of course that has already been (holy crap) 5 years ago. I’ve lost track with nearly all those in the above paragraph. Recently I’ve started using LinkedIn.com in attempt to build and track my social network. With memories of past friends coming up it was time for some Googling.
I turned up personal sites – weddings with pictures of people I once new, parties with faces familiar in new locations, and life unfolding. I came across professional accomplishments, business associaitons, and careers building. I discovered lives that have branched out from that one place and time. Inevitable? Of course; it should be no surprise that the same force (time + life = change) has worked its way into other people’s experiences.
I wouldn’t give up my life now for anything – work is fullfilling, the house really is amazing, I finally told my father I loved him, my son is precious and my wife is a brilliant and beautiful person who pushes me everyday to be a better person.
But on nights like this Saturday I just wish we could all be together again; just one more night at a houseparty rave, using technology for art’s sake, discussing campus politics and the relationship with the Pixies, laughing like it would never end and making plans for a 5 am Perkin’s breakfast.
Man, I feel old.
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03.25.05
Posted in forum archive at 5:20 pm by
Well, it won’t be available right away. However, it will be. One guy started with a neat little hack to put an MP3 player inside a pez dispenser. Now the Pez people have given their blessing to a full blown production run. Awesome!
# The first version will be 512mb.
# There will be six buttons along one of the skinny sides.
# There will be an LCD screen.
# The head will be removeable and compatible with existing PEZ heads.
# The first production run will be small and made in the USA.
# The first production run will be early summer.
# Supports MP3, WMA, OGG, USB 2.0, mounts as flash drive.
Neat – it’s the same guy that has created the extremely affordable SecondHand Monkeys player. My favorite? The Creative Commons one:
http://www.secondhandmonkeys.com/images/rect/copyleft.jpg
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