The Panic Status Board by Cabel, Steve and Neven. WebKit-powered via AJAX and various APIs, displayed full-screen in Chrome running on a Samsung professional display. Fantastic.
This will serve as some great inspiration for the web-based iPhone application I’ve been building.
Mozilla has posted these Firefox 4.0 Mac mockups. They look a bit contrasty and noisy to me, and the background loading indicator looks very awkward, but overall there are some nice new ideas being introduced.
Interesting that Mozilla is going with the tabs-above design. A beta of Safari had this, users revolted, Apple caved, and tools are above tabs again. We’ll see if Firefox 4 ships this way. I prefer it.
If you’ve wondered why there haven’t been many Gears releases or posts on the Gears blog lately, it’s because we’ve shifted our effort towards bringing all of the Gears capabilities into web standards like HTML5.
This talk goes into some great thought about our interaction with games and the world around us, with special attention to authenticity and the commercialization of games. It’s applicable to most any technical or design discipline and is well worth your next 28 minutes.
begin rambling
I realize the speaker, Jesse Schell (not Schnell as it was misspelled on G4tv), is, on the surface, talking about games and their player’s acquired points/achievement, but the concept of engagement, work (skilled and social), and reward applies to anything human1, and can be awarded by something more rewarding and interesting than trivial points.
I more than agree with the assessment of achievement based social games - a product of marketing scams - as crass, but do hold reservation that there may be a larger social good to come of our overwhelming connectedness. (Though, the good may not be simply explained as being more accountable because our lives are digitally recorded.)
I wish I had the foresight to think more about these topics when I was paying gratuitous amounts of borrowed money to study them… perhaps a game would have been more engaging.
As an aside, a lot of commentary has been made around the web about this talk, pointing out the “ethics” of the 1984-esque substance covered by Schell, but that’s just not the point. His examples are, though interesting, only surface-level ideas about what is possible and could happen. He wants his audience to think about the process taking place; not the implications a trivial (unperceptive) majority infer.
1 But may not be employed by scheming, snake-oil salesmen such as “social media gurus”, “seo experts”, and skeezy ad douche bags robbing the compliant and ignorant of their limited resources.
When meeting a girl at a bar to discuss her boyfriend problems, don’t:
1.) Refer to yourself when replying to her woes- “Well, I would never say that to you.”
2.) Reference specific facts about your and her relationship- “In the 4 months I’ve known you…”
3.) Earnestly reveal details about your prior relationships that distantly relate to your present company’s troubles- “Honest to God because of [girlfriend X] I learned how to communicate with the people close to me… Like you.”
Just some brief knowledge realized while in awkward proximity to a key discussion in the developmental period of a new (and likely short) relationship.
Bonus tip: if her vocational aspirations are “music marketing”, gtfo.
The author has a point. An incredibly valid point. An underemphasized point about “old” gamers.
I may not be old, but I am beyond the prime of most gamers. (The reservation in the previous statement is to reassure myself that I could succeed again one day). I’m old enough to desire “better”, more dynamic gameplay. 2:1 kill to death ratio; done it. Obscene killstreak lengths; done. 100% achievement unlocks; check. Tactical team communication and execution; … Uh, not quite.
I’m too busy having my sexuality analyzed and my balls busted for adhering to common tactical strategies.
I want a good, cooperative experience, dammit!
Whose responsibility is that? The developer? Maybe they can facilitate that (case in point: M.A.G), but it’s really up to us, the players to organize.
Someone tell me how. kthx
It’s easy to read this and be cynical about “how dumb everyone is”. But there are some seriously deep issues to analyze here for anyone interested in HCI.
stevenf, while I respect your expertise in this field, I believe your assessment is inaccurate.
The problem here is that the infrastructure is too easy to understand partially. No one ever munged their way onto ReadWriteWeb while looking for Facebook using Lynx. That’s because to do anything from the command line, despite the power it provides, you need a very deep, very specialized of understanding of how computers (and by extension the Internet) work. Neal Stephenson’s metaphor of free tank is very apt.
Graphical user interfaces, broadband connections, human-friendly URI’s, web browsers—all these things have lowered the bar tremendously. Some say that touch interfaces have dropped it even lower. That seems awesome, until you realize that these people are fumbling around with extremely powerful devices that have the potential to utterly ruin lives.
If these AOLiens can blunder their way onto ReadWriteWeb while looking for Facebook, just imagine how they’d do on a phishing site—or a malware trap? What if someone of them are using company machines full of proprietary and sensitive data? This is a near-daily occurance that’s sapping millions of dollars worth of productivity out of the economy.
We don’t need easier interfaces. We need more educated users.
+1 for education
This RWW Facebook Login fiasco is the reason Sarah Palin almost became the Vice President of the United States.
For those just joining us, please click through stevenf’s post.
