Nude Skin Patch for… the World?
Posted on | November 5, 2009 | 1 Comment
Mashable reports on an augmented reality iPhone app that lets you see the world as if no one in it were wearing any clothes. Catch the video from the “clever marketer” who created the app.
Of course, it isn’t real. But what’s interesting about it to me is that it’s the real-world version of a gamers’ mod that’s existed for years. Both World of Warcraft and The Sims (as well as other games) have seen their versions of the “nude skin patch,” alternately delighting players and disgusting critics, both in the press and on the internets. It’s a very durable kind of pre-teen humor, but it’s also an example of how technology is making the world more and more like a video game. Nude skin iPhone apps aside, that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
Four Second Skin T-Shirts to Give Away
Posted on | November 2, 2009 | No Comments
Just realized I have four t-shirts to give away for the film Second Skin (in which I appear very briefly, giving an interview to the filmmakers), a documentary about online game addiction. The film is actually very good. It’s a little slim on explaining in a positive light what’s so engaging about games like World of Warcraft, but it does a great job painting portraits of the film’s subjects, a handful of gamers who have truly got it bad.
If you want a shirt, email your address to me at themetaverse at gmail dot com and I’ll get one off to you. The design is essentially the same as the cover of the DVD, but in green instead of red.
On the State of My Blogosphere
Posted on | October 10, 2009 | No Comments
I chose The Last Weblog as the name of this blog because I’d like it to be just that: the last Weblog I set up for the somewhat personal, somewhat professional ruminations that are too long for my Twitter feed but don’t really have another place to go. The question now is whether one last Weblog is enough, or whether I need to supplement things with something like a Tumblr site (which I’ve been doing as well). What exactly is the optimum state of my blogosphere anyway?
I have run a small handful of blogs over the last seven or eight years, including GulfReporter (now extinct, archives lost), which covered my trips to the Arab gulf; BoyReporter, an archive of my magazine and newspaper articles which I’ve torn down and am now slowly rebuilding; Walkerings, my thoughts on gaming and virtual worlds from a certain period (which isn’t live at the moment, but which I’m working to restore); and perhaps most notably 3pointD.com, where I covered developments in virtual worlds, massively multiplayer online games, and the rest of the metaverse. 3pointD gained a very healthy readership, brought in some cash, and launched me into two years running a startup (during which I didn’t blog much at all, though I did a lot of Twittering). Now that the startup adventure is changing shape, I’m back to broadcasting my thoughts (on a variety of subjects) a bit more often, and (especially since starting a Tumblr blog as well) find myself faced with the dilemma of what exactly is the right channel (or channels) for all this. Read more
Conquer Your Neighborhood in Parallel Kingdom
Posted on | October 5, 2009 | No Comments
Parallel Kingdom is a location-based game that lays a massively multiplayer online role-playing game over the top of a Google map of your current surroundings. It’s not the only game of its kind, but it’s a very cool concept, one that points toward the future for much of mobile gaming — and for the mobile incarnation of social media as well. Think of location-based gaming as the teaspoon of sugar that’s going to help people swallow location-based services in general.
PK is fairly straightforward, giving you simple mobs to hunt down and resources to collect, within half a mile of your GPS-determined or tower-triangulated location, whether you’re on an iPhone or an Android handset. One note: I got the game going on my iPhone for about a day, but haven’t been able to get it launched since. According to a recent interview with the developers, however, there are about 70,000 more or less active players, which sounds fairly respectable to me, given the nature of the game. Read more
Hark! Comes Calling
Posted on | September 24, 2009 | 1 Comment
The crack team at Hark! launched our browser plugin the other day at TechCrunch50, though to seemingly mixed reviews. This is a project I spent more than two years working on as CEO and co-founder, and one I’m still involved in as a board member, and it’s a service I strongly believe will change how we use the Web. Some of the people who’ve taken a cursory glance at Hark! see only a privacy issue, but to me that’s a straw man: everything from Facebook to iPhone apps like FourSquare and games like Parallel Kingdom are changing how we think about what’s private and what’s not. As my co-co-founder Jerry Paffendorf puts it on his 7 Billion Friends blog, Hark! creates “an entirely new experience of being online live with other people.” As Jerry points out, this will branch out into many powerful and unforeseen places both on the Web and off. Sign up for the service and see for yourself. And add me as a friend when you get there. I look forward to bumping into you on the Web.
Inchvest in Detroit: $1 an inch
Posted on | September 15, 2009 | No Comments
Jerry Paffendorf has a cool new project that’s looking not for investors but for inchvestors: for people to spend $1 to purchase one square inch of the city of Detroit. Check out the Loveland page over at Kickstarter for more details. Jerry has been chronicling his Detroit adventure in colorful detail over at his Tumblog, 7 Billion Friends. Inspired by the Million Dollar Home Page, Jerry wants to take participatory investment art off the Internets and onto the ripe canvas that is Detroit — a city that could use a good dose of free thinking if ever there was one.
How the Xerox Machine Changed Publishing
Posted on | September 11, 2009 | No Comments
Image stolen from The New York Times
I just noticed a great short piece in last Sunday’s New York Times by Joni Evans, one of the important figures in book publishing from the mid-1970s to mid-1990s (and now founder and CEO of wowOwow, a site for women). Evans gives a great, succinct portrait of the evolution of technology in the publishing trade, and how it changed how business gets done there. One great example: Before copying machines, there were rarely any bidding wars to acquire manuscripts, because the author would be sending a typescript copy around to one publisher at a time. If that publisher didn’t buy the book, it went to the next one on the list. Copying machines meant that manuscripts could go to many publishers at once. Having the property distributed simultaneously changed the competitive nature of the publishing market. These days we see similar effects at work across the Web, perhaps most notably in the news business at the moment. But Evans’s brief account is a great example of how such changes can come from unexpected quarters. Never underestimate the power of even the most pedestrian innovation to work the most profound of changes.
Discount Passes to Engage! Expo
Posted on | September 10, 2009 | No Comments
You can use code MWVIP to get $200 off an all-access pass to Engage! Expo, which takes place September 23-24 at the San Jose Convention Center. It looks to be an interesting couple of days, featuring panels and talks on social media, virtual goods, 3D environments and more.
Online Game Addiction: DVD Giveaway
Posted on | September 9, 2009 | No Comments
I have a few copies of Second Skin to give away, the recent documentary that looks at the phenomenon of addiction to online games like World of Warcraft. (I appear briefly in the film, commenting on virtual worlds in general.) The movie doesn’t do much hyperbolizing; the players that are followed in the film really do have it bad. The portraits are well drawn, and the games themselves aren’t really demonized, though if the film has a shortcoming, it’s in not adequately portraying the positive aspects of online gaming. Definitely worth watching, if you can find a screening. (It’s in San Francisco at the end of September.) If you want to check it out in the comfort of your own home, send me your name and address at themetaverse at gmail dot com, and I’ll fire off DVDs while supplies last (which isn’t going to be very long). I may have some t-shirts to give away as well.
Mothballs: the End of an Eve Online Corporation
Posted on | September 7, 2009 | 3 Comments
I’ll begin this blog with an ending: My friend Jim Rossignol writes this week (over at Rock, Paper, Shotgun, a site he co-founded) about the five-year spree of StateCorp, a player-run “corporation” in the massively multiplayer online space opera known as Eve Online. (Eve’s corporations would be known in most other games as guilds or clans.) Jim helped run StateCorp over the entire course of its life — for much of which time he was arguably its lifeblood, without which it would have broken up. I was a member for a couple of years near the beginning, and on and off throughout. Now, with the corporation “in the process of moth-balling and disbanding,” Jim looks back at what he calls “the lengthiest and most fulfilling gaming experience” of his life. Considering the impact it made on me, I can understand his effusiveness. Read more