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.

I want this end-blog to be a catch-all; I don’t want to have to start another site if I add or change an area of focus. For that reason, 3pointD seems like not the right place (although I may yet leverave the many people still subscribed to its RSS feed to drive traffic here). I’m not entirely sure of the value of a Tumblr blog, aside from the fact that it’s easy to post to. I suppose it’s a good thing to have if you are generating a great deal of content; one stream carries one kind of thought (longer thoughts here, obviously), and the Tumblr stream carries links that just get fired off. Something about that doesn’t sit right, though: the last few links I put on my Tumblr blog were about just what I’m interested in these days: location-aware services and games. These should probably just go directly to Twitter (where they end up anyway). Tumblr is perhaps better for things like photographs (which of course I keep on Flickr), videos, etc.: things that don’t require a link out to yet another site.

I’m sure it will all settle down with time. But if anyone out there has any related experience or thoughts, bring it on.

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.

Things get interesting when you notice that PK shows you the location of other players near you, and lets you interact with them, either in duels or by grouping up to go adventuring together. There are few ways to venture far outside your current location on the map without physically getting up and moving, but your contacts can invite you to join them at their real-life location, which is a nice touch. You seem to be able to plant a flag when you’re across town, then visit it from your home location, and you can stake a claim to real-life plots of land, which is interesting. A new version of the game (no longer free), is apparently due out very shortly.

Games like Parallel Kingdom are important, for a couple of reasons. (Here’s Wikipedia’s somewhat random list of location-based games. I’ve also been checking out Sphericle, which seems to have at least a small community of players.) Expect to see more of these kinds of games qua games, as powerful mobile devices become more widespread and people and become more accustomed to having information streamed to them on the go.

But location-based games are also going to be part of what gets people used to location-based services in general. Apps like Foursquare are already using game mechanics get people engaged, giving users points for “checking in” at the establishments they frequent. These and others are already giving us a taste of what life may be like when we’re streaming our locations to our friends all the time.

One thing that’s interesting to note is that this could well mean a return to the time when relationships with the people you actually knew and saw every day had a different status than those you just kept up with online. Needless to say, we never really left that time, but when you’re Facebook “friends” both with your significant other and with people you’ve never physically met, it begins to feel that way. Will we soon have Facebook “acquaintances” as well as friends? You can create cohorts using the broadcast and privacy tools of a service like Facebook, of course, but when those services start to offer such labels explicitly, you’ll know we’ve moved on to the next stage of their evolution.