Verbasterd
innovative technology, cross and social media, guerilla, advertising, communities and games
Foodspotting: mix van slimme ingredienten
Mar 4th
Fotografeer je eten, zeg wat het is en geef de locatie van het restaurant aan. Deel dit uiteraard met al je vrienden twitter etc. Op deze manier kun je in elke stad een ‘gids’ creëren die bol staat van de lekkerste gerechten en beste restaurants. Dit zijn de ingrediënten van Foodspotting ! Je kan het zelfs in een game gieten waarbij je ‘experience points’ krijgt door middel van meedoen. Denken jullie ook gelijk aan de presentatie van Jesse Schnell. 
It’s one of the most interesting location-based plays that will be on display at SXSW — a conference that will be rife with location-based services. But Foodspotting is a bit different because they’re not aiming to be a location platform like Foursquare or Gowalla. Instead, they’re happy to use location to augment their own reality-based game. That is, after all, essentially what Foodspotting is. Just like with the other two aforementioned location services, you earn some badges for tagging certain types of foods in pictures (they called them “Expert Badges”). And you earn others for participating in the Guides. And, of course, there are points for doing all of this. Bron: Techcrunch
Via Techcrunch.
Jesse Schnell: Game design outside the box
Feb 28th
Carnegie Mellon University Professor, Jesse Schell, dives into a world of game development which will emerge from the popular “Facebook Games” era. Bron: G4TV.com
De presentatie start met een aantal mooie voorbeelden van games en technologieën waarvan niemand ooit had kunnen denken dat deze aan zouden slaan. Als jij een aantal jaar geleden kon investeren in een game waarbij je met een plastic gitaar voor de tv staat, had je dat dan gedaan?
Zo ook de games op Facebook! “It knocked us on our collective asses; nobody saw the success of Facebook games as something which we would take seriously“. Bijvoorbeeld Farmville en Maffia.
Vooral het ‘creditssysteem’ is erg interessant binnen deze games. Farmville en Maffia hebben een ongeloofelijk schare fans die bereid zijn creditcards af te sluiten, websites te bezoeken of gewoon direct betalen voor virtuele credits. Als deze credits al zo aanwezig zijn in je ‘online aanwezigheid’ waarom zou dit dan ook niet in je het dagelijkse leven kunnen werken?
Kort wat citaten uit een erg mooie monoloog van Professor Jesse Schell:
Facebook math: FV > t ; There are more Farmville players than there are Twitter accounts. Facebook is BIG!
Club Penguin: Free to play, earn virtual money, membership to spend the virtual money: ‘The elastic velvet rope’.
The current grading system sucks. School’s a game… Experience points; you’ll level up through the class; class attendance is up, homework is turned in on time.
Disposable technology: there’s more technology in a Furby than we used to put people on the moon!
Als je nu niet nieuwsgierig bent!
Erg goede presentatie die je zeker aan het denken zet! Bijvoorbeeld waar we nu al zijn met Foursquare waar je punten behaalt en je verkozen kan worden tot burgemeester van een locatie als je er maar genoeg komt!
Kijken, maar vooral luisteren!
Via The Technium.
MIT wint ballonnenjacht door inzet Social Networks
Dec 7th
Een team van MIT, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, heeft $40,000 gewonnen in een “high-tech scavenger hunt” afgelopen zaterdag door de locatie van 10 rode weerballonnen te ontdekken.
The challenge was announced on October 29 — 40 years after the first message was sent on ARPANET, the precursor to the Internet. DARPA said it hopes the contest will lead to advances in the way the military communicates and coordinates activities among multiple geographically separated groups. Bron: CNN
Op de website van MIT werd vervolgens een oproep gedaan om samen met je vrienden mee te helpen zoeken naar de ‘rode ballonnen’. Op deze manier werd bekeken hoe informatie door ’social networks’ stroomt.
“We’re giving $2,000 per balloon to the first person to send us the correct coordinates, but that’s not all — we’re also giving $1,000 to the person who invited them. Then we’re giving $500 whoever invited the inviter, and $250 to whoever invited them, and so on…” it said.” Bron: CNN
The Coleman Campsite, The Original Social Networking Site
May 28th
Altijd al willen weten wie ’social networking’ op de kaart heeft gezet?;-)
At Coleman, we’ve been helping people get together to socialize and connect for as long as we’ve been making lanterns and stoves. All we wanted to do was create gear for camping. We ended up creating some sort of movement. Folks call it, “social networking”. A hundred years ago, we just called it a good time with friends. You can read about it in our advertising. Watch it in our commercials. Or better yet, grab your Coleman camping gear, your friends and see for yourself. Bron: Coleman
Via Ypsilon.
Investering van 594 miljoen dollar in 63 Virtuele Werelden
Jan 22nd
Interesting news:
January 19, 2009 – Austin, Texas — Virtual Worlds Management, the leading virtual worlds trade media company, has announced findings from a comprehensive study of accountable transactions showing that venture capital and media firms have invested more than $594 million in 63 virtual worlds related companies in 2008. Bron: Virtualworldsmanagement
Quarter for quarter, investments in virtual worlds are actually dropping quite rapidly. In Q4 $101 million was invested in 13 virtual worlds-related companies; in Q3 this number was $148.5 million, in Q2 it was $161 million, and in Q1 it was $184 million. Still, these huge investments show both how big the virtual worlds space really is and the fact that there’s still plenty of VC money to go around. Bron: Mashable
Club Penguin: mooi voorbeeld Customer Support
Sep 16th
Club Penguin’s customer support staff typically responds to 5,000-7,000 e-mails a day and strives to have a personal connection with each child. While this will tend to generate more e-mails as kids write back and forth to these individuals, Merrifield said he was all for that because all those e-mails contained valuable feedback. Kids will say what they think would be cool and what they think would be lame, if something was too hard or frustrating, and what they enjoy. Club Penguin listens to the customer and follows through because the company feels it’s important to make the customer always feel that his or her voice is important. They also rely on play-testing, forum and blog checking. Bron: Edge Online
Erg goed om te horen hoe Club Penguin, in handen van Disney, met haar jeugdige gebruikers om gaat. Disney’s mantra, to listen and serve the customer base in order to build a successful business, is zeker iets wat veel meer bedrijven die met grote groepen gebruikers te maken krijgen moeten nastreven.
When asked how Club Penguin distinguished between the wants and needs of the kids audience, Merrifield said they acted as parents. Kids routinely ask for a bed for their igloo. Club Penguin answers that there are no beds because penguins sleep standing up but he acknowledged that there are no beds because beds could bring up inappropriate discussions. Club Penguin also has implemented a timer so that the game can be turned off. This addresses the concerns of parents. Bron: Edge Online
Via Edge Online.
Twitter’s Fail Whale Art Competition
Aug 7th
De Fail Whale volgens Wikipedia:
Twitter experienced approximately 98% uptime in 2007, or about 3 full days of downtime.[28][29] Twitter’s downtime was particularly noticeable during events popular with the technology industry, such as the 2008 Macworld Conference & Expo keynote address.[30][31] When Twitter crashes, users see the “fail whale” error message. Beluga whales are known as ‘canaries of the sea’ due to their high-pitched twitter[32], and the fail whale is a whimsical illustration of red birds using nets to hoist a whale from the ocean.[33] The message reads: “Too many tweets! Please wait a moment and try again.”[33] The fail whale has been featured on NPR.[20] Bron: Wikipedia
Maak je eigen Fail Whale Pale Ale Art en win mooie prijzen! In de jury zit onder andere de maker van de Fail Whale. De eerste Fail Whale werd ontworpen door Yiying Lu en kent, sinds wat problemen bij Twitter, steeds meer bekendheid op internet. Van T-shirts (die je zelf kan customizen), een Flickr Gallery en Shops tot Facebook Groups, een 3D Fail Whale en een heuse fanclub. Nu dus ook een competitie!
Via readwriteweb, About:blank en GorillaSushi.
Nieuwe Virtuele Omgevingen Nickelodeon en MTV
Apr 4th
MTV, Nickelodeon and Family World have announced plans to build a variety of virtual worlds over the next year. The initial worlds will include SpongeBob SquarePants along with new worlds MonkeyWorld and World of Neopia. The company noted that the new worlds will be developed out of Nickelodeon Kids and Family Group’s Virtual World Studios with the goal of launching new worlds each year. Bron: Centernetworks
Een flink aantal virtuele omgevingen die wordt gelanceerd in de aankomende jaren die zich richten op kids. Ben erg benieuwd hoe ze dit gaan opzetten en welke verschillen er tussen de werelden zullen zitten.
Via Centernetworks.
Vijf meest memorabele MMORPG gebeurtenissen
Dec 11th
MMOCrunch beschrijft de 5 meest memorabele gebeurtenissen in de geschiedenis van MMORPG. Leuk om even te lezen!
In het kort:
- The Assassination of Lord British – Ultima Online – August 8, 1997
- LEEEEROY JENKINS! – World of Warcraft
- The Epic Heist – EVE Online – November 2005
- Plague Outbreak – World of Warcraft – September 2005
- Death of the Sleeper – EverQuest – November 15-17, 2007
‘Death of the Sleeper’ geeft mooi weer hoe enorme groepen in virtuele mythen geloven en hoe krachtig een verhaal kan zijn.
On November 15, 2003, on the Rallos Zek PvP server, the three top guilds (Ascending Dawn, Wudan, and Magus Imperialis Magicus) assembled over 180 players with the intent to wake and kill The Sleeper. This was in response to an attempt to wake The Sleeper by an Iksar monk named Stynkfyst, who partnered with the largest random-pk guild of the time. Having been a former member of uber-guild Ascending Dawn, he had the knowledge the random pk guild needed to wake The Sleeper. The top guilds did not assemble their forces until word of Stynkfyst’s intentions had spread, and it became clear that he intended to wake The Sleeper, forever preventing future guilds from farming the old loot table. Until this point, waking The Sleeper had not been seriously considered by any guilds, as it was believed that waking The Sleeper would make the offending guild’s players kill-on-sight to the other guilds of the server. Bron: MMOCrunch
Wii Channel: Check Mii out
Nov 9th
“The Check Mii Out Channel lets people show off their Mii creations and vote on those created by others,” says George Harrison, Nintendo of America’s senior vice president of marketing and corporate communications. “It’s yet another way that we’re building fun, interactive communities of Wii owners without charging them extra for the privilege.” Bron: Vooks
Op 11 november wordt dit nieuwe kanaal gelanceerd. Ben erg benieuwd of de community niet snel is uitgekeken op de bonte verzameling Mii’s. Aan de andere kant zijn er genoeg Mii-sites te vinden.