Here Come the Big Boys

Seems Microsoft has been listening in on our discussions and is eager to simmer some buzzword soup. I am sure our two Google visitors got their ears burning. Their ecosystem model for enabling Web content, innovated via the help of their Popfly tool, sure sounds politically correct. By all means, give it a whirl and let us know what you come up with via an entry or two here.

In fact, anyone who stumbles on our awesome TC 505 blog who has any Popfly experience should leave a comment here (please).

Relevant TED Talks

The secretive, once-a-year TED talks that take place in Monterey, California, are finally being shared with the world via the video publishing craze. I find them strong contributions for stirring important debate in societal issues. Of course you can comment back to the presenter as well and read the comments while listening to the speaker. Three presentations I find most relevant to our time spent this quarter:

How a ragtag band created Wikipedia

How cooperation trumps conflict

Technology evolves like we did

Half of the other talks frame something or other from class with thoughts of the implications

Virtual Cities

Please take a look at my Virtual Cities site and provide any feedback you might have regarding the potential of a community-based, open source virtual city for a city's residents to use. The goal of the site is to motivate potential participants to generate virtual city content after a short demonstration session where the creation process is demonstrated. Before our class together, I would have just sent this link around to try and promote the idea. Now, I hope to get feedback through comments to my blog on the subject. Eventually, I'd convert these Virtual City Web pages to a Wiki once I had enough people interested in maintaining it.

I've started communicating with the Providence Waterfront Park Architects, suggesting a virtual Providence would help promote their project better. In June, I plan to meet with interested city and state government officials to pitch the idea. With so many creative college campuses in the city (more per capital than Boston even), I am hopeful to find a groundswell of interest. I'll demo in class but am providing the site ahead of time for those interested.

Another form of social networking

I found this article really interesting. It features Meetup.com, a website that helps users form social groups. Meetup.com is unique in that CMC social networks translate to real traditional social interactions.

Facebook expansion: from social networking site to a social operating system

Really interesting article on the NYT today about Facebook's plan to expand its services to a massive level. The CEO said that he wants Facebook to be "at the center of its users' online lives in the same way that Windows dominates their experience on a PC". Very interesting plan, a bit too risky I think.

Judge for yourself, read here

Week 9 Reflection

Hi Class,
Link to my reflection on video game articles. Thank you.

Tomorrow's discussion

Yay games!

Here are a few of the things I'll be touching on in class tomorrow.

Neopets - a web based game where you raise and care for "pets" of various kinds. This was the game mentioned the RAPUNSEL article.

Peggle - a free trial download for PCs. Play with the sound on. I don't want to give away the secret, but if you complete one level you'll see why people prefer playing games to doing work.

The power of the DS. This is a YouTube video of a DS party. Turn the sound down for this one because there's a lot of screaming involved. The first minute pretty much says it all... not much changes for the rest of the time.

Pirates of the Burning Sea - This is the website for the game I do playability testing for. Notice the interaction between designers and fans and the socialization that takes place, especially on the forums. This is mostly discussion about the game, but it translates to in-game and real-world interactions as well. (For example, there's a PotBS meetup tonight where developers and fans get to socialize.)

As a side note, we're watching some CMC at work right here on this post. Because I included the string "Pirates of the Burning Sea," the community envoy at Flying Lab is probably going to get a Google Alerts message tomorrow indicating as such. Everybody wave!