Passively Multiplayer Online Games

Come back and spend some time looking over this site. It's an interesting premise.

Passively Multiplayer is a system for turning user data into ongoing play. Using computer and mobile phone surveillance, a user and their unique history. These resulting avatars can be viewed online, and they interact with other avatars online.

Passively Multiplayer Online Games

While I'm here, the article on SmartMobs.

Smart Mobs: Justin Hall tells Annenberg Center seminar about passively multiplayer online games

Justin wants to experience the same visible sense of goal-oriented progress he gets in World of Warcraft when he looks at his screens and sees exactly what level his activities have earned him. What if you could get points of various kinds for various activities, and compete with your friends? What if you and your friends and their friends could constitute a sufficiently large population to add collaborative filtering to the mix -- making recommendations for things to learn, see, hear play, do?

Corp-pocalypse - Chapter 1

Counting down to broadcast armageddon.

"THE ABC's director of television, Kim Dalton, has stopped production of the network's only new children's program fornext year because he does not want to spend the money internally.

ABC staff who worked on the pilot said there was a chance the concept, in which three animal puppets look after real farm animals, would be an international hit like Bananas in Pyjamas. Bananas brought in tens of millions of dollars to the ABC."

ABC bosses slip up by axing 'next Bananas' | The Australian

**UPDATE**
Should just point out the article that ran the day after.

ABC talk of outsourcing fires debate | The Australian

Aah, journalism in action. Don't like what they have to say today? Wait until tomorrow.

Fake it and they will come

The birth of an internet phenomenon.

"(LonelyGirl15 Co-Creator, Miles) Beckett is clearly frustrated. "The Web isn't just a support system for hit TV shows," he says. "It's a new medium. It requires new storytelling techniques. The way the networks look at the Internet now is like the early days of TV, when announcers would just read radio scripts on camera. It was boring in the same way all this supplemental material is boring."

What's needed, he says, is content that's built specifically for the Web. It doesn't need to be lit like a film -- that would make it feel less real. The camera work should be simple. There shouldn't be a disembodied third-person camera -- a character is always filming the action. Each episode needs to be short, no more than three minutes. "You wouldn't show a sitcom at a movie theater, right?" Beckett says. "You make movies for the big screen, sitcoms for TV, and something else entirely for the Internet. That's the lesson of Lonelygirl15.""

I'm a little surpried it's still going forward after the "revelation" of a few months back. Suspension of disbelief in action.

Wired News: The Secret World of Lonelygirl

The Comment Challenge continues

It's been a month. Still no end to the Comment Challenge in sight.

What do I have to do to get a response? Maybe it's because I haven't offered anything in payment.
No one wants to bother if there's nothing in it for them. Perhaps I need to offer to go vegetarian for a week, or do someone's laundry for a month, or offer money! Would that do it?

Note to potential sponsors - look elsewhere. No one comes here but me.

The Avid :30 Spot Contest

Avid may have gone off the boil somewhat with their products in recent years, but someone in their marketing department has been listening to what's happening out there.

So, you've got a series of products aimed at creating video content, with a creative and skilled user base who tend to be more than a little devoted to the brand. What better than to cash in a little of your user devotion and get them to create ads for you!

Beatsuite.com Sponsor Avid 30 Spot Contest - The Beat Suite

The next step - the entries are being shown at moviemaker.com so people can vote for a favourite, but it will be interesting to see if the clips are able to be spread "into the wild". Similarly, it will be interesting to see how they handle the possibility of negative, disparaging or farcical interpretations, or whether they just won't qualify.

BTW, in the interests of transparency, the link above is to a sponsor of the event, BeatSuite.com. These guys sell Royalty Free music and effects and I'm in the process of deciding if I'm interested in doing a little quid pro quo with them. I'm still undecided about the business model of copyright in the world of digital reproduction, but the site is legit with a professional broadcast quality product. They even have some freebies which, based on my reading of the terms and conditions, fall under their "Standard License" (any non-broadcast use up to a maximum of 1000 copies) which is a hell of a lot better than the freebies offered at the laughingly named "Freeplay Music".
Anyway, just thought you should know.

Blinkx Video Wall

So here's what's so cool. Blinkx is a video search engine. They've come up with this very nifty means of displaying search results, a "video wall" of relevant videos built into a Flash interface. Best of all, the wall can be embedded in a separate site (such as I've done here - give it time to load), and the results are constantly updated using RSS so what's here now isn't what's going to be here tomorrow.

Downside - The search was for "Adobe Premiere Tutorials". What I tended to get was "Adobe Photoshop Tutorials". Close, but not quite. Besides, it's so cool who cares if the search is a little out?

Blinkx

The Zune is incompatible with Vista | ZDNet.com

It's true: The Zune is incompatible with Vista | ZDNet.com

Who runs these companies?

Sell-out claim on AFL TV deal | The Australian

You cannot begin to believe how hard I'm fighting simultaneous urges to scream, retch, laugh and point my finger in an accusing manner.

"AUSTRALIAN football rights holders Channel 7 and Channel10 are looking to community television stations in Sydney and Brisbane to meet their obligation to broadcast eight live AFL games a week and avoid a financial black hole on Friday and Sunday nights.

It is understood the AFL consortium of Seven and Ten has drawn up contingency plans to purchase air time on TVS and the Brisbane community station Briz31 if no agreement can be reached with pay-TV provider Foxtel."

As someone who was part of the launch of Briz 31 back in 94 and who heard the snide derision that flowed down the mountain to that West End studio I can't begin to explain what I think of this. Not without risking getting this blog banned.

Sell-out claim on AFL TV deal | The Australian

Attention Australian Video and Filmmakers!!!

The ABC's Australia Wide program is looking for new filmmakers for its weekly "Video Lives" segment. This is a great chance for people, young or old, with a story to tell to get their content out to a pretty big audience.

General FAQ

Who can submit a video?

Anyone resident in Australia. Please note that although you can get friends and colleagues to help you make the video, you must submit your video as an individual and not as a group or company. The exceptions to this are schools, school groups or classes. Australians living outside of Australia are welcome to contribute but the video must be set in Australia.

Video Lives: Steps to Follow to Submit a Video

No time to talk!

Things to learn, stuff to do. Exam tomorrow. Finally got Blog-This extension to work with 2.0 thanks to a workaround shared on the extension's site's comment section. The power of community.

More later.