December 2008
81 posts
November 2008
79 posts
CBS Social Room - CBS.com →
cbs.com
Join A Social Viewing Room Browse viewing rooms and connect with others to share Join family, friends and fellow fans and watch your favorite episodes of your favorite shows together. Boo the latest villains on CSI: Miami and CSI: NY at the same time, LOL in unison at the same crazy antics on Worst Week and Gary UnMarried and toss tomatoes at your least favorite Survivor. Hop right into one of the rooms below, invite your friends and start socializing!
“With all the news on Friday about Apple’s release of iPhone OS 2.2, there was another iPhone news item that got less attention than it deserved. Two young iPhone developers, Danielle Cassley and Jason Citron, released the sequel to their much-acclaimed iPhone puzzle game, Aurora Feint. Aurora Feint II: The Arena (iTunes link) introduces the concept of ‘casual asynchronous massively multiplayer online gaming’ for iPhone.”
—Asynchronous Multiplayer Mobile Gaming - O’Reilly Radar
The New York Times - Video Library - Magazine Playlist →
video.nytimes.com
Immersion Photographer Robbie Cooper shows just how focused young video-game players can be.
“Starting in 2010, a handful of faculty members — “principal investigators,” the university calls them — will join graduate students, undergraduate interns and visitors from the film and book worlds in examining, among other things, how virtual actors and “morphable” projectors (which instantly change the appearance of physical scenes) might affect a storytelling process that has already been considerably democratized by digital delivery. A possible outcome, they speculate, is that future stories might not stop in Hollywood all. “The business model is definitely being transformed, maybe even blown apart,” said Frank Moss, a former entrepreneur who is now the media lab’s director.”
—M.I.T.’s Media Lab Will Study Film Narrative in Center for Future Storytelling - NYTimes.com
“Home is a tremendously ambitious undertaking and I don’t know of any home that isn’t built on a foundation,” Shane Kim, head of Microsoft Interactive Entertainment business strategy, told me, referring to the robustness of the Xbox Live infrastructure built up over the past six years. “We do not think a virtual world is what people want, it is connecting to people and entertainment they care most about - social networks have far outpaced the growth of virtual worlds.”
—FT.com | Tech Blog | Microsoft upgrades Xbox experience
Play
“One could argue that the first online social networks began in the days of IRC and rudimentary email — when the Pentium 386 was blazing fast, and the first color monitors from Macintosh were still years away. Watching the space makes it very clear that it is evolving quickly, and is being adopted by an increasingly broader audience. The vanguard of users — young and technically sophisticated — are moving onto mobile platforms, and leave their networks when other, less cool users show up. Advances in technology will help spread the growth of multiple platforms, as it becomes increasingly easy to move friend data from one place to another. Ultimately, social networks will become an increasingly useful tool for the brand marketer, provided that they use careful research to distill business objectives into a platform of interest to their specific audience.”
—Social Networking: Where it’s headed (page 2 of 2) - iMediaConnection.com
“November 14, 2008
Anonymity on Internet message boards should be banned. - Inspired by Kentucky State Rep. Tim Couch Earlier this year, Kentucky State Rep. Tim Couch, proposed legislation to ban anonymous messages online. The bill requires users to register their true names and addresses, the goal being to address “online bullying.” The bill was proposed in the wake of controversy surrounding gossip sites like JuicyCampus, which allow for anonymity. The right to speak anonymously is protected by the First Amendment, and the Kentucky proposal raises questions about the Constitution.” —“Earlier this year, Kentucky State Rep. Tim Couch, proposed legislation to ban anonymous messages online. The bill requires users to register their true names and addresses, the goal being to address “online bullying.” The bill was proposed in the wake of controversy surrounding gossip sites like JuicyCampus, which allow for anonymity. The right to speak anonymously is protected by the First Amendment, and the Kentucky proposal raises questions about the Constitution. ” | Fast Company
Anonymity on Internet message boards should be banned. - Inspired by Kentucky State Rep. Tim Couch Earlier this year, Kentucky State Rep. Tim Couch, proposed legislation to ban anonymous messages online. The bill requires users to register their true names and addresses, the goal being to address “online bullying.” The bill was proposed in the wake of controversy surrounding gossip sites like JuicyCampus, which allow for anonymity. The right to speak anonymously is protected by the First Amendment, and the Kentucky proposal raises questions about the Constitution.” —“Earlier this year, Kentucky State Rep. Tim Couch, proposed legislation to ban anonymous messages online. The bill requires users to register their true names and addresses, the goal being to address “online bullying.” The bill was proposed in the wake of controversy surrounding gossip sites like JuicyCampus, which allow for anonymity. The right to speak anonymously is protected by the First Amendment, and the Kentucky proposal raises questions about the Constitution. ” | Fast Company
Boxee →
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quick intro to boxee from boxee on Vimeo.
One of the big “aha moments” for me in the past couple years came when I hooked up a Mac Mini to a large display in our family room in the spring of 2007. Slowly but surely, our family started…
quick intro to boxee from boxee on Vimeo.
Video: Jane McGonigal and gaming’s engines of creativity →
wwolives.wordpress.com
WWO’s own Participation Architect, Jane McGonigal, continues her business-of-ARGs evangelism in this article in Businessweek, and answers five questions posed by Businessweek about Alternate Reality
The Reason Why Most Research for Business is Useless →
clarkaldrich.blogspot.com
Why is most research on business issues so useless? Why doesn’t it drive the results that businesses require? Organizations may have commissioned reports on Second Life, or Web 2.0, or outsourcing or…
“ARGs work best for brands with target markets that enjoy the aspects of interactive, social games with online components. Commenting on why “I Love Bees” was so successful for Microsoft, James Hilton, creative director for AKQA, the agency that developed the ARG, said, “It worked well for Xbox because its audience is inclined to investigate further, hack into sites and solve problems.” There must be a good fit between the brand, the meaning the brand wishes to communicate, the target market and the story and plot that anchor the ARG. After determining fit, roll up your sleeves. ARGs demand substantial work — from initial conception through planning and execution. Further, because the storyline can change depending on response from players, ARGs require agility, quick writing and responsiveness from game architects (known as puppet masters) through the game’s conclusion. Additionally, if player response takes ARGs in unintended directions, marketers charged with tightly controlling brand meaning may find themselves taking unwanted risks. Finally, compared to some marketing options, an ARG’s reach can be small. For example, measures of Audi’s success with an ARG referred to reaching 500,000 people. A display ad on the MySpace homepage, for example, could have reached millions. Of course, the attention and involvement components are entirely different for these two examples, and it is important to consider the entire range of benefits and disadvantages associated ARGs and other marketing activities.”
—Dark Marketing and Alternative Reality Games (ARG): Social Media Marketing
Play
“If a publisher’s content is being read online, chances are it’s not happening on their own site. That remarkable finding is part of new research being released today by tech firm Attributor. On average, Attributor found, content publishers gain nearly 60% of their content views off their destination sites. What’s more, in categories like automotive and travel, that percentage is even more severe, with auto content getting almost 6 times more views off-site than on the original destination site. With the help of Web analytics firm Compete, Attributor tracked the content of over 100 publications across roughly 30 billion Web pages for its new study. “Across all sites in the study, publishers have an untapped off-site audience that is almost 1.5 times the size of the audience that visits their site,” said Rich Pearson, vice president of marketing at Attributor. Using a CPM of $1, Attributor found that 40% of the publishers studied are missing out on a minimum of $100,000 in annual ad revenue, while 58% are missing out on a minimum of $50,000 in annual revenue. Attributor licenses content and reader analysis technology to about 14 top publisher clients, including Reuters, Condé Nast, and the Financial Times.”
—MediaPost Publications - Study: Publishers Missing Out On Untapped Monetary Value Of Online Content Proliferation - 11/13/2008
