Kevin De Mulder

Jake’s logic seems to be thus:  once upon a time we had a thing which we understood called websites.  Then something new came along called Facebook.  Facebook was really different and we needed to find a way to understand it so we decided the best way to do this was to try and turn it into the thing we understood.

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• Bootstrap, from Twitter
  V2, fully responsive
• Dive Into HTML5
  by Mark Pilgrim
• Game Mechanics
  here are the tools, now go craft a story

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Channel 4 produces an online series powered by The Sims 3. Let’s see how such a production does compared to this one.

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I adore Amazon, but one wonders…

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We’re so, so close though: some major hurdles to continue to wrangle include coloured plastics available for the SLS printing we’re using, and how to make the finish dirtproof. But the doll stood, and balanced, on one foot today. There’s not many dolls out there that can claim that: we’ve made anaction doll ;-)

Can’t wait to see the result.

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This is your captain speaking, please abandon ship.

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This year, for the first time, I’m calling it: after three years of declines, the MPAA seems to be winning the battle to stop screener leaks.

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SUATMM

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After a while it gets ridiculous.

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It’s no secret that Will Wright is a personal hero. Hell, I guess loads of people think he’s amazing. It’s not only his vision that inspires me. He has also reached a certain status where he has ‘carte blanche’ when a new, crazy idea flares up. It’s like people with money know that the probablility that something he touches will turn gold is high enough to take risks. Will Wright, as it seems, has a license to dream.

I remember Pieter mentioning that his former boss Guillaume Van der Stichelen thought the next big taboo to break was privacy. Wright seems to agree and to even bank on it with his next project. He sees youngsters sharing a lot of stuff people used to keep personal, probably since they now have the tools. He hopes to give them even more with his new project codenamed HiveMind.

Gathering data about people is one of the main areas of R&D and we already see some cool stuff happening. Up, a wristband by Jawbone, allows you to precisely monitor your every move and combined with the amazing tech one can find in a smartphone it opens a whole new world enablingstuff like sleep analysis and health monitoring. Wright wants to go even further and collect as much data about the ‘player’ as possible.

You see, he’s going for the end game, the point where it all comes together. You might wonder whether it’s fair to use the term ‘game’ for this, but that seems to be his point. What he is working at is bringing down the boundry between the digital and the ‘real life’.

Sounds far fetched? I don’t think so. The tools  (smartphones, sensors, mobile data, …) and services (foursquare, facebook, twitter, last.fm, …) are in place. We just need a way to connect them in a very elegant way. And to make that happen, you need someone to pull it. Someone with a license to dream.

Someone like Will Wright.

Augmented Reality took the marketing world by storm a year ago. And technology, because of the hype, advanced quite fast. It was a matter of months between having to use a marker like this:

becoming an experience like this:

Yet one thing will always hold us back: the screen. All of this experiences requires a screen. It is our next Final Frontier. Yes, mobile phones made them more portable which enabled apps like Layar to do very cool and useful stuff, but imagine not even needing that. Imagine a real-life HUD.

The closest thing, I guess, would be contact lenses. And as a matter of fact, some people are already on the job. Talk to you again in a couple of years.

Immersion is everything, and on the iPhone, some games can do awesome stuff if they want.
Take for instance Contract Killer, an iPhone game where you are a hitman getting assignments. Gameplay is easy, just point the gun, use the scope if you have one and kill the people you have to (and take cover when needed).
The game uses a cooldown to prevent you from getting bored too quickly by the game in the form of energy that is needed for jobs and cooldown timers on the jobs you get. This mechanism, however, brings an extra advantage. If you enabled notifications, the iPhone notifies you if you have a ‘job’.

So here’s how I experience it. You’re at work, doing your thing. All of the sudden, the phone buzzes. It’s your employer, they need you to eliminate someone. You glance around whether anyone is paying attention and sneak out to do what you have to do.

Of course, there’s a little downside. Sneaking outside means going to the toilet and locking yourself up for 15 minutes. Oh, and the notification isn’t as immersive as it could be. But still… huge potential there. Can you make fake calls with the iPhone? Like receive a fake one from an app? That would be… woah.

From way back when it was called Project Natal, I was in love with Kinect. By the idea, the step forward this technology is. Yes, almost all games released with it are dance/sport games, but this is the start.

THIS is where it gets interesting:

More info here, with a link for downloading the software.

Social Gaming is hot and everyone’s in a rush to know the secrets. Hell, if even Will Wright says they’re good for 25%, what are we waiting for? We need to get in the game ASAP!

And sure, there are some mechanics that make this thing work. I’m taking the liberty of compiling the Top Ten mentioned at SGSVGS  (thanks to Alice Taylor for the tweeting):

10: Daily Bonus
9: Cuteness
8: Appointments
7: Boosts
6: Energy
5: Achievements
4: Neighbors
3: Crew
2: Crafting
1: Limited Offers

All sounds familiar enough? As you can see, not all are really linked to the "’social gaming’ phenomena, some are just plain general for the current state of gaming.

In posts to come, I’ll probably go a little deeper in some of these aspects as I prepare myself for the course I’ll be giving in 2011 at KHLIM. Stay tuned.

Doing the rounds on the interwebs: thisman.org. The site shows a man ‘hundreds of people’ see in their dreams. This is gold, this is the kind of stuff people want to hear about, want to believe and a lot of them even WILL.

But it’s a viral. How do we know? Actually a pretty basic thing gave it away: the domain is registered by Italian marketing agency Guerriglia Marketing. What frustrates me is that this is against some basic stuff. It even sounds too trivial to even be worth mentioning:

don’t register a domain that will be the base of mystery with your agency’s email.

A lot of people will argue with me, will say most people won’t take the effort. Well, sorry but you’re wrong: someone is bound to check this and, trust me, even A LOT will. By putting something like this together, you’re approaching a species that lives and breathes on the net. They will find out and they’ll start spreading the news (they know how to). This will take away all the magic you are creating, the story will lose it’s mystery and doubt and will become worthless for a big part of an important part of your audience: the ambassadors that will be spreading the word.

This isn’t about this being a viral, people don’t mind that. People love a good story and this specific case is the seed of a brilliant one. This is exactly what people are looking for. But if you take away the thrill of the hunt by doing this, what is left?

One thing I will agree on: some people will look until they find out, no matter how much effort you’re putting into keeping it hidden. And I agree, it’s pretty hard to do something like that on the internet without someone finding out eventually. But the key word here is ‘eventually’. When people are already into the story, it won’t matter that much when it comes out during the ride. Because they’re already participating, you’ve got their attention and the willingness to experience what you have in store. But not from step 1, that’s suicide for this kind of project.

A place where people can tell the story about their first love. Whether it’s in audio, video or just plain text, everyone’s invited to share it with the world.

Rather than allowing people to comment on the stories, the creators choose to put up a system where you can express the feeling it invoked. The “best loves” section hence contains a list of stories the people behind the project think worth a spot. Of course, filters are in place to get the ones you want. You can send in your own story here.

This project is produced by a group of student journalists in an interactive design class at the Medill School of Journalism.

No need for words here. Enjoy this short by Bruce Branit:

Although this blog tends to have a much broader view on storytelling, I can’t neglect to mention that March 20th (my birthday btw) will be this year’s World Storytelling Day. A day where you might consider telling your kids a story before going to bed. Or, should you be the parent that does this sort of thing regularly, perhaps you can go the extra mile. Dress up, use attributes, tell a story together, add something extra like a search throughout the house, …

Tell a story.

(picture by carf)

[Video Link] I couldn't figure out how he did it. I had to watch the video below to learn the trick.

(Via TYWKIWDBI)

The cover of the October 17, 2011, issue of The New Yorker.

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“To All” – A message from Troy Anthony Davis « The prison gates are open… http://smf.is/1xu6vc (from Ouni)

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Instagram • Introducing Instagram v2.0 http://smf.is/1xo456 (from Instagram, and saravdv)

Excerpt from an email sent by Walt Disney CEO Michael Eisner to a vast number of Disney employees in 2000:

History has shown that one of the best deterrents to pirated product is providing legitimate product at appropriate prices. In the music industry, we have already seen that people will gladly pay fair prices for legally-produced product even when it can be easily reproduced and unlawful copies can be easily acquired.

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I’ve always been a fond supporter of all things technological. Up till a few weeks ago, when something clicked. One of the few fundamental beliefs I had in this world seemed to disappear in thin air.

What if technology doesn’t make everything easier, what if it’s not helping in the way it should be, what if it’s a hindrance?

I was the one guy in a meeting having his iPhone, or as of late an iPad, on the table. Productivity has always been a goal of mine, bordering on the obsessive at some points. I couldn’t grasp that other people would prefer writing stuff down, using a pen and a notebook, not being able to search their abundance of information. They write down appointments, to-do-items and reference material everywhere, even on tiny scraps of paper they put in their pocket all mushed up. Oh what a wonderful world I live in, with my smartphone and my cloud services, not having to think about stuff and just relying on my system. Thank you David Allen.

Moving into a job with loads of meetings changed this. I found the technology bit becoming a hindrance, taking away attention better spent somewhere else. Writing down in a notebook is pretty simple, offering no friction at all, having all your attention available for the person talking to you. Adding stuff to your calendar, your OmniFocus and your Evernote isn’t frictionless and needs some attention from your part, albeit depending on you level of geekiness. We all like to think we know ourselves and all stuff in the universe, that our level of geekiness approaches a nirvana state. It doesn’t.

When you’re meeting with someone, don’t you like to have their undivided attention? You know that friend that has a 600-dollar-notification-device in his pocket, bounded to go off at any moment. Do you like having a drink with him? No you don’t.

I was that friend. And I’m sure you’re a little bit of that friend too. Soon enough I learned to use the little tab on the side of my iPhone to put it in ‘Silent Mode’ and tweaked that state to not even give a vibration alert. Whenever I encounter someone who I want to seriously talk too, or have a business meeting with, I flip that switch. In essence, I turn my phone off, since it has no way to communicate with me.

I started to write stuff down, using my red ink Sheaffer fountain pen and either a Moleskine plain notebook or a little Field Notes booklet. Other people seem not to notice me using these tools, which is totally the point.

This switch of tools, or rather adding an extra layer on my end, is somewhat of a hindrance for me, since I add stuff to my digital calendar, my Omnifocus and Evernote afterwards. This extra workload totally outweighs the added friction of using technology everywhere.

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This might go into the history books as CWI

Datamancer is one of the most skilled, detail-focused steampunk makers out there; I have one of his famous keyboards, which I love to pieces. This looks like a smashing laptop indeed.

These new versions will be better and faster than my original prototype, featuring cutting-edge internal components capable of running any of today's games and other software. They will also be much lighter and slimmer, so as to actually still be "portable" and as convenient as a standard laptop, and have a much more refined and professional design while retaining the elegant Victorian styling of my other work. Several customizations will be available including a few different options for the design on the LCD lid including clockworks as seen on the original (except these will be semi-functional and spin), recessed gold foil maps, brass plates with a variety of designs engraved or photo-etched into them, and any other ideas I can think up along the way. I also plan to include a key-shaped USB flash drive with every laptop that will also open a brass lock on each machine. Why not add a little analog security to your digital device? You will also have several options as to the color of the wood stain from light oak to a dark red mahagony and anywhere in-between as well as key fonts, metals, LED colors and styles, etc, etc.

Death rituals continue moving and developing online. A recent example is this story about an Entropia player who memorializes his dead fiancee in that virtual world.

After five years, Jacobs had finally found a way to make his late love a permanent part of their virtual world, honoring her in the virtual setting that meant a great deal to both of them.

Here's a different, interesting, sad approach:

One of the ways he initially dealt with the grief was playing as her character in Entropia, but Mindark has a one-person-one-avatar rule and he was asked to stop.  

(thanks to Arnaud Leene)

Submitted by: habib1234
Posted at: 2011-05-31 09:46:30
See full post and comment: http://9gag.com/gag/131538

There’s something adorable about tiny hands reaching up to grab your face or glasses with their baby strength.

Just watch out for the wolverine claws.

AWESOME!

– Email message –

Photo from: here

Submitted by: guilmoore
Posted at: 2011-05-30 12:35:41
See full post and comment: http://9gag.com/gag/130961

Screenstagram, een screensaver met je Instagram foto’s.

Ik ben fan. (via @bertzijngedacht)