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Monday, December 22, 2003 |
Listening. I’ve written before about how listening is the most important skill a software developer can have.
One part of listening is the art of listening to feature requests.
Sometimes you get a feature request that describes a problem and proposes a solution that’s right on the mark: all you have to do is implement it. Sometimes you get a feature request that’s just about right, and with a little modification and back-and-forth you end up with the right thing.
And other times you get feature requests that describe a problem but propose a solution that’s not right. So the art here is listening to the problem. Sometimes it’s not always plain, you have to figure it out (often by asking questions of the person who made the request).
For example: think about how Exposé must have come about. Users made requests about ways to find a given window easily when you have a bunch of windows open. I imagine people suggested solutions like a system-wide window menu.
But what Apple did in this case was listen to the problem rather than specific solutions, and they came up with a solution that probably nobody had asked for—but that works wonderfully (and that, as a bonus, delights people who use it).
Not every feature request will be solved so dazzlingly. Most requests are for small problems with simple solutions. But it’s worth keeping Exposé in mind as an example of the art of listening. [inessential.com] 
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Web services and natural-born cyborgs.
"While a business process is running," an IBM white paper on BPEL4WS dryly notes, "it might be necessary to undo one of the steps that have already been successfully completed." Translation: Things can get screwed up, and then they need to be fixed. If there's anything revolutionary about Web services, it's the notion that we'll be able to deal with the inevitable screwups in more realistic and more effective ways. Compensation can't simply mean what it does to a programmer: chaining back through a nested series of automatic exception handlers. We have to accept that it's often people who both throw and handle the exceptions, and we have to build software systems that gracefully include them. [Full story at InfoWorld.com] This short article, part of InfoWorld's special report on Web services, touches on some things I'll say more about in my talk at XML 2003 next week. ... [Jon's Radio]
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Power to the Edge: A new book by Dave Alberts and Richard Hayes - open sourced in its entirety by CCRP.
This book is truly a must-read for anyone interested in decentralization and the social and organizational relevance of shifting power to the edge, whether in a commercial or a defense context. As you read about the technology enablers of the edge, it'll become clear why products such as Groove - as COTS enablers of the fully-networked collaborative environment - have such immediate relevance to the defense community.
A debt of gratitude goes to John Stenbit and Lin Wells for catalyzing the creation of this tremendously timely, useful and relevant piece of work. [Ray Ozzie's Weblog]
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Jason Kottke does it.
Mr. Micro-content puts his blessings on Mr. Minimal Designs new Micro-Content approach to blogging.
This is an important moment. Jason Kottke has shown how reviews, quotes, posts and comments can all live peaceably together - in one 'list' (as he calls it.) It's all so minimal and sparse that it's hard to see the difference between each kind of content - but kids today - they seem to like that minimal look.
Me - I'm an old timer who likes texture, color, photos, stationary, video - you know that multimedia stuff - that I got so famous about - way back when. I guess Jason still think everyone's got dial-up. Maybe once broadband hits 75% - these "straw sipping" aesthetics will get steamrolled over by more 'media rich' experiences - but that's not what this important moment is about.
No - this is about the evolution of micro-content. The evolution that started with blogging and which has hit torrential proportions - now that everyone from the NY Times, to Microsoft to every data source on the web - has discovered RSS.
Jason Kottke has shown how various micro-content types can be mixed and matched on one page - and for this Jason wins the "I grok the various kinds of Micro-Content" award! Congrats to Jason!
To do this - Jason had to kludge together five different blogging tools - just to get the effect he wanted (now THAT'S dedication!)
I don't necessarily agree that ALL a movie review needs is: "a title, a link, rating, a photo, and some text." Whatever happened to actors, genre or category and the every popular "length" or "IMDB" unique identifier? Getting the taxonomies right for Reviews is a big deal - and we're working on that as part of an OpenReviews effort.
Even if end-users don't want to fill out all the fields of a properly constructed Review format - those fields need to be there. And what about sharing these Reviews? Isn't Jason tired of having his Reviews locked up in his own personal data silo?
And where are Calendar Events? Doesn't Jason ever go out and DO anything (I know Meg must want to.....)
And what about his Resume? Doesn't Jason ever want a job - again?
But regardless of the imperfections, Jason's designs are 'spot on' - as they say. A real lesson in the future of blogging. What I'm really impressed about - is how clean his thinking is - how focused he is on something - that will be huge years from now. We can all look back on this moment and remember. TIME SAMP.
jason rethinks weblog content presentation. kottke's putting more thought into the display of microcontent than almost anyone there, and it's great inspiration for the future of publishing tools [anil dash's daily links]
Marc's FINAL note.....
Notice how I said that Jason's new design is about the future of blogging. He's integrated all his micro-content postings within his blog postings - seemingly assuming that folks want all their micro-content mixed up together - like some elaborate salad, exotic pizza or cold stone mix-in sundae.
But what he's missing - is that this micro-content stuff can stand on it's own - that it doesn't have to be shackled to the browser or tied to intellectual postulating or personal publishing meanderings of one's own data silo.
FREE your micro-content - that's what I say! Don't leave it shackled to the tyrrany of the blog page! Afterall - we know where the idea of a micro-content client came from - right? [Marc's Voice]
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The Fusebox Lifecycle Process (FLiP) - iterative web app development process. (SOURCE:FLiP: Steps)- Very cool. I particularly like the concept of Wireframes.
QUOTE
The Fusebox Lifecycle Process (FLiP) is a process for developing web applications. FLiP grew out of some of the best practices employed by Hal Helms and other members of the Fusebox community in the early days of Fusebox. Although, as the name indicates, FLiP came from the Fusebox community, its use is not intrinsically part of a Fusebox application. In fact, the ideas found in FLiP may be successfully employed in non-Fusebox projects as well.
There are two fundamental ideas behind FLiP. The first is to use a process that is, at all times, closely tied to client feedback. The second is to encourage inexpensive changes in the design early in the process, resulting in a reduced need for changes later in the process, when those changes become progressively more expensive.
It is also important to note that FLiP is designed for the technical aspects of the project, starting at a point when you are ready to begin building an application. For many simple web projects, FLiP may be sufficient from the start of the project. For more complex projects, other research techniques may be necessary to understand the business model before starting on the application development with FLiP.
UNQUOTE [Roland Tanglao's Weblog]
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Waterfall software development processes result in unusable software. (SOURCE:OK/Cancel: Two Worlds Archives)- Consulting the users and getting a usable application shouldn't conflict with getting something that is engineered well. Sadly, this happens all too often and that is why lots of software today has loads of great features but is unusable by non technical people. Need to change the software development process to make it more iterative to allow usable applications to emerge and develop.
QUOTE
The engineering project manager wants maximal efficiency, this means trying to prevent the same work being done twice. The Art director wants maximal creativity, which guarantees that the "same" work will be done dozens of times. An artist under his/her direction will work through many drafts, discarding most, and adapting the others until reaching one that hits the mark. This probably sounds familiar to readers of this site, because this is what UI prototyping is all about. Usability closes the loops bringing the feedback to the design that an Art director might typically give.
Now let's get back to the engineering project manager. He knows engineering. He knows software. He wants to drop HCI in the timeline as a clear cut block. The idea that an HCI person might work on something for 2 weeks or a month and then scrap it because it flopped in usability tests is a scary one. If any coder or engineer on his team had a monthlong "setback" then it become a significant project risk.
Thus we arrive at our situation today:
Project manager: where HCI should be in the process?
HCI people: everywhere!
Project manager: [furrows brow] Hm. I don't know how to draw the chart.
What HCI people are not really saying they want to be everywhere in the process, but rather that they want a different process which affords iterative design. It will take some time to change this, and sadly in many situations the process is outside of the HCI person's control. To cope with this reality we have created "discount HCI/Usability". We are like guerilla fighters winning battles here and there using small targeted attacks. Yet the larger problem remains.
There is hope though. Within some domains, for example game development, the creative role is so obviously important that it would be hard for the engineering side override their process. Game development stands as an example of how creative aspects can play with engineering and project realities (don't get me started on their interaction design though). Another avenue comes from within the engineering and project management community. The Extreme programming movement, fast cycle time, and others light a pathway for engineering projects to move toward iterative design with fast feedback loops. One of our goals should be to work on how we should insert ourselves into these new processes... not as "discount" guerilla fighters, but as equal and essential elements of the project.
UNQUOTE
[Roland Tanglao's Weblog]
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Stunning board-game history book.  In a shop today, I came across "The Games We Played: The Golden Age of Board and Table Games," which is a stunningly illustrated book from an academic press, which collects board and token-art from a museum collection of boardgames. It was one of those books that I wished I had someone on my Xmas list to buy it for. Link
[Boing Boing Blog]
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Zoomable UIs are useful for phone and for reading email and RSS feeds. (SOURCE:TheFeature :: A View Into Your Phone)- I think zoomable UIs are useful for PCs too to make sense of emails, and RSS feeds for example!
QUOTE
In terms of memory capacity, mobile phones just keep getting better, but screen size is a problem. Smartphones are now able to store everything from photos to documents: finding your friend's phone number by scrolling through an alphabetical list is one thing, but how will you find a file or photo among hundreds when all you have to help you is a two-inch screen?
Zoomable user interfaces, or ZUIs, may be the answer. Imagine being able to view all of the files on your phone by simply zooming out to see an overview of all data, and then zooming in to pick the item you want. That's a much more attractive proposition than scrolling through a hundred-item list.
ZUIs aren't new, but thanks to the generous size of most PC monitors, the average user hasn't had much call for them-until now. With mobile phones increasing in functionality while their screens continue to shrink, there's an urgent need to find a better way to see the contents of your phone.
UNQUOTE [Roland Tanglao's Weblog]
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Radical Simplicity. (SOURCE:How to Save the World)- Wow! I look forward to reading Dave Pollard's blog posts about his journey to Radical Simplicity.
QUOTE Radical Simplicity is a complete workbook for making the change -- with step-by-step charts and tables for measuring your ecological footprint, evaluating your life's priorities, assessing and honing the effectiveness of your lifestyle (how you use your time and money), and assessing with your loved ones how happy you are, now and as you make changes to the way you live.
Merkel spends a lot of time dealing with those visceral fears that keep us in line as massive, wasteful consumers and wage slaves. He appreciates the power that our current culture wields over us, and carefully dismantles the myths that prevent us from living radically simple lives -- that this entails hardship, risk, heavy physical labour, deprivation, danger, or sacrifice, and that radical simplicity requires some kind of spiritual conversion, reveres or romanticizes primitive or savage lifestyles, requires a lot of money, or cuts you off from the rest of 'civilization' (it does none of these things). It is a thorough, systematic, practical step-by-step process, promising personal liberation and happiness with no investment beyond the modest price of the book.
At first blush after reading this book, I think I'm ready to make such a change. Much will depend, of course, on the views of my wife. And my life is so complex and so full of possessions that the change for me will be particularly momentous. I will of course be blogging my progress, or lack of it.
UNQUOTE [Roland Tanglao's Weblog]
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Mightylady.net.  Warren says:
"When clambering into an anime-girl body suit just isn't enough for you: there's MightyLady.Net, for those who derive special enjoyment from giant robot women, either in bondage, wrestling, doing gymnastics or on a slab being repaired. "
[Boing Boing Blog]
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Feed on Feeds - Server Side RSS Agregator. (SOURCE:feed on feeds - about)- Missed this one.
QUOTE
Desktop aggregators are great. They sit there all day, pinging away at sites, and as soon as they notice something new, they pop up little windows on your desktop, and let you read items. But what about when you go home from work? Or what about when you are on a trip? You get totally out of sync, and don't know what you've read and haven't read. You are enraged.
 A server side aggregator solves this. It keeps track of what items you've read, and keeps happily checking up on your feeds no matter where you are. Whenever you want to see what's new, you just bring up a web page and scan the newest items. You can mark the items as read so they won't be shown again. Or, you can just always show the most recent N items, like the way LiveJournal's friends pages work. Also, having the aggregator in your browser eliminates the "impedance mismatch" that sometimes occurs between a desktop aggregator and your browser. All your native browsing methods work on a FEED ON FEEDS page. Open pages in new tabs, bookmark them for later, browse whatever way you like.
UNQUOTE [Roland Tanglao's Weblog]
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Steve Gillmor predicts RSS powered revolution in 2004. (SOURCE:Look Out, Outlook: RSS Ahead in 2004 via Scripting News)- Wow! Bold, visionary predictions! I want to believe...
QUOTE
Now for the predictions.
RSS information routers will emerge in 2004 with the following characteristics:
• Persistent storage of XHTML full-text/graphics/audio/video of RSS feeds
• XPATH search across local and Net stores
• Self-forming and reordering subscriptions lists based on the aggregated priorities of user-chosen domain experts
• Use of IM notification for post notification to aggregate affinity groups and active conversations
• Integration of Hydra-like collaborative tools for multi-author conference transcripts
• Videoconferencing routing and broadcast/recording tools
• Integration of speech recognition and real-time indexing to allow quoting of linear audio and video streams
• Mesh networked peer-to-peer synchronization engine for item propagation across shared spaces on multiple clients, including phones; iPods; and eventually Longhorn PDAs (circa 2006).
Armed with these tools, new industries will emerge in rapid succession:
• Metadata-driven directories that dynamically create RSS feeds based on affinity
• Virtual conferences
• IM/RSS presence networks for rich collaboration and e-mail replacement
• Content-generation tools based on small, routable XHTML objects
• A DRM network with enough creative and hardware support to blunt the Microsoft/RIAA DRM threat to peer-to-peer port hijacking.
Why is this a problem for Exchange/Outlook and Domino/Notes shops? Because Microsoft and IBM are wedded to strategies designed to maintain their installed base and revenue models. At best, Microsoft will deliver some of these capabilities via ISVs between now and Longhorn, while IBM must first wean its Lotus Business Partners off the Notes .NSF architecture to WebSphere and DB2.
While Redmond and Armonk fiddle, Apple burns—CDs, DVDs, iTunes, iChatAv, iSight, iMovie, iTcetera. Any delay works to the advantage of those who provide these services today while prying the Windows grip loose from the desktop. And don't underestimate the power of RSS to form and deliver targeted information to developer communities far more rapidly and with immediate ROI, particularly in the SMB market.
I don't need a time machine to be sure these things are going to happen in 2004—they're already happening right now. A fluid alliance of Web services architects, open-source contributors, open-standards negotiators, entrepreneurs and inventors are making it so. Even the disenfranchised have a chance in this remarkably transparent ecology.
It's not too late for Microsoft to see the light. Its engineers already have. As the philosopher Billy Preston sings: "Nothin' from nothin' leaves nothin'/ You gotta have somethin'/ If you wanna be with me." UNQUOTE
[Roland Tanglao's Weblog]
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Bruce Sterling hits his stride on his blog. Bruce Sterling's been running his new Wired blog for a couple months now, and this morning, though, he hit his stride with a classic cyberpunk-dense review-cum-rant of a Brazillian electro-pop CD. This is killer prose.
I am digging this thing. Even a white-guy-samba chestnut like "So Nice (Summer Samba)" springs into a weird post-60s afterlife once it's been globally cyberized with a samplerdelic melange of hisses, whoops, whooshes, bleeps, thuds and twitters. The spacey remixes of "Tanto Tempo" sounds like they're scratching at the edge of the universe with thick rubber spatulas.
I pay attention to electronica for obvious reasons, and I can always get along with easy-going, caiparinha-blurred Brazilian beach music... I mean, who couldn't like such stuff, it's so harmlessly sexual and ingratiating... but techno gives bossa nova some serious nova-osity. The fact that these are actual songs, with verse-verse chorus and that ruthlessly slinky beat, gives all that synth dithering some useful spine. Hey, it's "Brazilectronica!" This stuff could conquer the world! Link [Boing Boing Blog]
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Made a brine-soaked roasted turkey today (we ate at a friends house for T-day so we needed a replacement turkey). It was one of the most succulent turkey's I have ever had. The white meat was as juicy as the dark. Nice. BTW, the brine was a mix of coarse salt, thyme, sage, and rosemary. [John Robb's Weblog]
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Chris Phoenix: "Imagine a horror story about baseball, in which the batter keeps hitting the ball hard enough to kill the fans. The story might be entertaining, but it's obviously unrealistic." [Scripting News]
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GigaOm: Essays: The Cult of Lone Coders. (SOURCE:GigaOm: Essays: The Cult of Lone Coders)- Inspirational!
QUOTE
Thanksgiving Day might be over, but there is one group of individuals who we have a lot to thanks for. The lone coders - who put-in hours, days and months and develop a piece of software that we so desperately need but cannot, find anywhere. How to synchronize your Pocket PC with an Apple? Or a news aggregator which runs on OS-X? Or that tiny little code that can synchronize Entourage personal information manager with a Sony Ericsson phone!
Many of you must be wondering, why should I bother with these folks, given that this weblog is about broadband? Broadband is a great enabler which has allowed many of the lone-coders to get into business for themselves. Thanks to a high speed connection and cheap hosting services, a programmer in Oregon can set-up shop without as much as idling the engine on his decade old Honda. Today, when outsourcing and off-shoring are threatening the American way of business, the lone coders are perfect example of how technology and broadband can counter those macro economic forces.
The Internet boom has proved to be a boon for programmers who refuse to climb the corporate ladder; or kowtow to the whims and fancies of venture capitalists. An increasing number of talented coders are setting up shop on their own, developing niche products for under served markets and making a decent living. Rick Ellis, a musician turned programmer. It is a counter-culture movement and has gaining strength especially with the scarcity of jobs. Mena and Ben Trott were dot.com road kill when they wrote blogging software, Moveable-Type just on a lark when unemployed.
UNQUOTE
[Roland Tanglao's Weblog]
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Check out Stephen Downes Web. (SOURCE:Stephen's Web ~ Refer a Resource)- Thanks for the link Stephen. Just like to point out that Stephen's Web is an amazing collection of links and commentary on a wide range of subjects including but not limited to education, blogging and software.
QUOTE Following the fate of one of my articles this morning (aka 'vanity searching') I happened on Roland Tanglao's contribution to the blogsphere, a set of links each one better than the next. Great stuff for people interested in RSS, blogs and social networking.
UNQUOTE [Roland Tanglao's Weblog]
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My Smart Content Aggregator stores stuff my way and presents personalized data in the way I control not some company's backend webserver. (SOURCE:snellspace: Data Emergence, Self-hosted identities, Auto Discovery and the Future of Web Browsing via Seb's Open Research)- Great ramble and great vision. Yes, we should be in charge of storing our data and controlling how that data is used by websites and computers! Read the full post for two amazing diagrams that illustrate the Smart Aggregator approach and today's approach as typified by Amazon.
QUOTE
A better solution: when I visit a site like Amazon, the data captured about me is stored in a location I control (e.g. on my machine). In fact, rather than my "personalized experience" being generated by Amazon's backend systems based on information about me they're collecting on their systems, I want my "personalized experience" to be generated on my own system based on information about me that I'm collecting on my own system. I want Amazon to do nothing more than provide a catalog of the products and services.
I want web sites to become nothing more than raw data feeds. I want a desktop application that
a) allows me to maintain a database of personal information b) allows me to selectively share that data with anybody I choose c) allows me to autodiscover new sources of content d) allows me to completely control how I view and interact with the content sources I've chosen
This is the traditional approach where each individual content provider must capture and collect any information about me it can in order to be able to make a guess as to how I'd like to interact with the information or services they are providing. This is horribly inefficient and their guesses are usually wrong. I've never visited a web site that I've enjoyed interacting with.
This is the right approach. Content providers should not be trying to guess how I want to interact with their information. They should just be providing the information. I will customize my experience as I see fit.
My "Smart" Content Aggregator would automatically capture any data that emerges about me and would store that information in a way that gives me easy access to it. I could use and share that information in any way that I see fit.
UNQUOTE [Roland Tanglao's Weblog]
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Boxes and Arrows: Natural Selections: Colors Found in Nature and Interface Design. (SOURCE:Boxes and Arrows: Natural Selections: Colors Found in Nature and Interface Design via Derek K. Miller's penmachine)- Someday, I'd like to have the money and time to change my website to have a more natural colour scheme.
QUOTE
The World Wide Web is awash with sterile design solutions. Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Dell, Microsoft, and countless others are virtually indistinguishable from each other (similar layout, similar color scheme). Though one might say that this uniformity makes web browsing easier by virtue of a standardized interface, the reality is such sites create mundane experiences for their users and fail to make a positive connection with their audience.
One easily remedied cause of such drab design is color. Perhaps no other design element has as much influence on how we feel in a space (a website, a home, etc.) as color. Colors can instantaneously change our moods and alter our opinions. They can make us comfortable, put us in a state of awe, or get us excited. In the case of interface design, color combinations found in nature are especially useful. From complex web applications to informative “brochure-ware” sites, naturally occurring color combinations have the potential to distinguish (by helping create a more memorable website), guide (by allowing users to focus on interactions), engage (by making page layouts comfortable and more inviting), and inspire (by offering new ideas for color selection).
UNQUOTE [Roland Tanglao's Weblog]
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The future of blogging is systems that generate static pages served by Apache and IIS?. (SOURCE:Tuttle SVC: September 10, 2003 Archives via UBC's SGM's 42)- So the future is systems like MovableType and Radio that generate static HTML that can be served by simple static servers like Apache and IIS? Or is the future hosted systems like Blogger and Blogware? I think the future is both and most people will use hosted systems as long as they can get their data out quickly and put it in another system. I've been working with Blogware and it's very cool and it takes maximum advantage of being centralized to implement features like secure RSS.
QUOTE
- Create a database and a system of templates for HTML and RSS that plugs in current values "on the fly" as the pages are requested. Zope works this way. Slash does. I think Frontier/Manila does, but I really don't know; and I bet Drupal does, based on the nature of PHP, but that is a guess. I'll open comments so you can chime in if you know.
- Create an application that takes user input, creates or re-creates the appropriate HTML and RSS docuements and places them on a web server to be served up by a standard web browser. Radio and Movable Type both work this way (although few people run their own Radio Community Server). Blosxom can swing either way, but feels like it because of its overall lightweight architecture and extensive use of the filesystem instead of a database.
This isn't a value judgement, I'm still a firm Zopista, but I blog on MT. Regardless, I'd venture that the tools in the second category have been more important to the growth of weblogs. I think this is because of their relative simplicity on the server side. Dynamic database driven products like Zope feel like the wrong tool for the job. Too burly, and too much to load on a school sysadmin. Slash was a truly painful install (MySQL, mod_perl, finicky version dependencies) when I tried it in my classroom three years ago. It also crushed my pc like a bug, although that might have been a memory leak. Frontier is probably the most user and admin friendly of this breed (although, I have to add, it seems significantly less powerful, flexible or lively than Zope). In contrast, any sysadmin that can't or won't install MT or Blosxom is of no use to you in any situation.
So I think one of the subtler messages we can pick up from this "revolution" is that systems that de-emphasize complexity on the server side are driving a lot of the growth we're seeing. This isn't entirely surprising, because weblogs are at their core pretty simple. Nonetheless, this effect is likely to be more pronounced in schools. Most districts (I hope) have at least enough tech staff to run their district-level systems, but in Providence at least, the servers in schools are virtually unmaintained. Weblogs, however, seem like they need to be run at the school level (or else a MT installation with 26,000 users?), so they'll need to install quickly and run by themselves on a basic webserver.
All this eventually wraps back around to my current work, where I am trying to apply these ideas, designing Lowry to locally render HTML and RDF versions of standards-based planning and assessment data to be simply uploaded all public data to a standard web server, using a specialized database only when necessary. So perhaps Lowry might someday fit as one of those "wings" for blogging tools in schools.
UNQUOTE
[Roland Tanglao's Weblog]
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Koha - Open Source Library System. (SOURCE:About Koha via UBC's SGM's 42)- Cool!
QUOTE
Koha is the world's first free Open Source Library System. Made in New Zealand by the Horowhenua Library Trust and Katipo Communications Ltd, the Koha system is a full catalogue, opac, circulation, member management and acquisitions package.
To our knowledge Koha is used by public libraries, private collectors, university faculties, not for profit organisations, churches, schools and corporates.
Key features
- Simple clear interface for librarians and members (patrons) to search right from the front page.
- Customisable search - you choose which fields you want on your search forms when you set it up
- Reading lists for members - now you can find the name of that great book you read last year. NOTE: Our librarians and customers love this, but if you have concerns about keeping this information it could be disabled. This is really useful for helping homebound users get fresh books
- Full acquisitions including budgets and pricing information (including supplier and currency conversion), being kept so that you can see what you've ordered and received - so handy at end of year and audit time.
- Simple acquisitions for the smaller library
- Able to catalogue websites as items, or have them as links to existing biblios.
Koha is the fruit of a lot of volunteer labour, 2 years of hard work by the staff of Katipo Communications, and funding by Horowhenua Library Trust and other libraries.
Koha was developed in 1999 and the first library went live in January of 2000. Koha's code has been in production since then and is continuing to move towards higher levels of functionality and standards compliance, including embracing the international records and cataloguing standards MARC and Z39.50. Our development community has also grown and now includes contributors on four continents and ports in several languages. UNQUOTE [Roland Tanglao's Weblog]
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Haystack - cool drag and drop PIM. (SOURCE:Haystack Overview via Jay McCarthy's makeoutcity)- Haystack sounds great except for its minimum of 512MB RAM, preferred 768MB. Wow, is this from the Haystack code and data or from the required Java libraries or both?
QUOTE
Haystack represents a significant departure from traditional notions of information management. However, our work is grounded in a handful of simple principles, upon which the entire system is built.
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UNQUOTE [Roland Tanglao's Weblog]
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Twiki - yet another Wiki in Perl. (SOURCE:TWiki - A Web Based Collaboration Platform)- Yet another Perl Wiki. This one seems to have tons of features.
QUOTE
Welcome to TWiki, a flexible, powerful, and easy to use Web-based collaboration platform. Use TWiki to run a project development space, a document management system, a knowledge base, or any other groupware tool, on an intranet or on the internet. Web content can be created collaboratively by using just a browser. Developers can create new web applications based on a Plugin API.  Tell a Friend
"TWiki ... is ... powerful" said Jon Udell, a BYTE.com editor. "Among other things, TWiki eases one of the concerns about classic Wiki, which is that the radically egalitarian Edit this Page scheme leaves no change log. TWiki includes powerful revision support. Every change leaves a footprint, and you can follow these easily and effectively."
UNQUOTE [Roland Tanglao's Weblog]
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UseModWiki - An easily installable Wiki in Perl. (SOURCE:UseMod: UseModWiki/Features)- UseModWiki looks to be an easily installable yet powerful wiki written in Perl
QUOTE
- Simple setup:
- A single file for the script
- Does not require external programs (but can use "diff")
- Requires CGI.pm and CGI::Carp, which are standard in modern Perl installations
- The script can autocreate needed directories and files
- All configuration variables are at the top of the script
- The script can be tested without changing any configuration (if /tmp is writable by the script)
- The LinkPattern is commented and easily changable for local needs
- Optional HtmlCache which significantly reduces CPU usage
- Pages are stored in ordinary files, allowing simple renaming, deletion, and backups
- The script code is developed with "use strict;"
I would like to add: (HelmutLeitner)
- Link patterns can be easily configured to allow _ 0-9 and/or foreign characters.
- Simpler text formatting (no tabs for levels of indentation, preformatted sections ease source code examples)
- Configurable email-notification (users may leave their email-address, editor may decide on each individual change to send a notification to all these users)
- Configure raw html-sections (even include Java applets)
- Nearly perfect code quality. Never saw better code published (20 years of experience). And it's free! (However, see /CodeQuality for a dissenting view.)
- Free is good !
UNQUOTE [Roland Tanglao's Weblog]
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Writing blogs improves writing but it's difficult to get students (and people in general) to blog. (SOURCE:Weblogg-ed Vol.2: Using Weblogs in Education via Jay McCarthy's makeoutcity)- Like language has many levels of fluency so too does blogging. Reading blogs is one level. Writing blogs is another. And there are various kinds of writing. Such as mine which is primarily a paragraph or two per post and others who write multiple paragraphs per post. Both levels are valid and help improve your writing.
QUOTE Having said that, however, I feel like I’m leaving San Francisco with more questions than answers. During our conversations yesterday, it became clearer to me that I need to start differentiating between using a Web log and "blogging." (Dan Mitchell noticed something similar.) This thought isn’t really a new one, but it just sort of crystallized itself here as I noticed a lot of what was being said about the art of blogging, the physical act of writing in a Web log, was really irrelevant to our discussion of education. I don’t think there was anyone in the room yesterday whose students were truly blogging. There are many who have students using Web logs, but, for instance, when I asked Pat's student Nathan Edelman what he used his school sponsored space for, he said it was basically to post assignments. (And he drew a chuckle when he said that he likes this ability because it allows his classmates to use his work if they need to.) When Nathan wanted to start really blogging (i.e complaining about some of his grades,) Pat set him up with a site on Weblogger. And Nathan is going to town.
UNQUOTE [Roland Tanglao's Weblog]
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Designing a Class Weblog Application. (SOURCE:Designing a Class Weblog Application FrontPage)- Excellent "design in progress" for a blog system focused on classroom use. Need a wiki like this for all vertical domains; not just education. Perhaps one for journalists, one for lawyers, etc.
QUOTE
This school year or so a number of teachers (insert links...) have experimented with using weblogs to facilitate writing in their classrooms. Certainly many other scattered experiments with Manila and other tools go back further--I tried to get Slash running in my classroom two years ago, but it crushed my puny recycled server like a bug. Existing individual weblog tools are fine for small scale experimentation, but as more teachers become interested in trying weblogs in their classrooms, problems become apparent. Students need a writing environment that is more private by default, and commenting systems that allow the teacher to maintain a safe learning environment.
I'm sure there are lots of issues I've never thought about (I don't teach classes anymore, so I haven't actually tried any of this...), which is why this is a wiki and you can click that edit link below to add you suggestions and experiences, which I encourage you to do freely. --Tom
UNQUOTE [Roland Tanglao's Weblog]
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Finance for Geeks (The Business of Software). (SOURCE:Longhorn Developer Center: Finance for Geeks (The Business of Software))- Good advice!
QUOTE
On my weblog I write a series of articles entitled Marketing for Geeks. The concept of these articles is that a lot of technically oriented people actually do end up involved in marketing decisions. Most software startups are founded by one or more geeks, often without the presence of experienced people in other areas like marketing. For these people, a little marketing knowledge can go a long way.
The series has been quite popular, but marketing is obviously not the only functional area that a geek entrepreneur might need to learn. Several readers have asked me to write a similar geek-oriented overview of accounting and finance. This article will highlight several things that a geek in a small ISV should know.
Before I get started, let me offer a disclaimer or two. I am not a lawyer, nor am I an accountant. I can't give legal or financial advice to anyone, and nothing in this article should be construed as such. I am simply a geek who has learned just enough about accounting and finance to have an intelligent conversation with the experts who advise SourceGear. I'd suggest any geek entrepreneur should do likewise. Find some financial experts you trust. Learn enough about their field such that you can talk with them. Hopefully this article will help with some terminology and basic concepts.
I'll begin with a short summary of what accounting is all about. Then I'll cover the concept of profit margins. Finally, I'll talk about outside funding sources and the perils of building a company with money from other people.
UNQUOTE
[Roland Tanglao's Weblog]
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K-Collector Manifesto and whitepaper. (SOURCE:evectors)- Congrats on shipping K-Collector 1.0.
QUOTE
Organisations do not only move thanks to the efforts of individuals working for them but also because they are acted upon by external forces. Most often markets, competitors, customers and government bodies. The better an organisation can understand and predict these external forces, the more chance it has of achieving it's goals.
This is where RSS aggregators help, and where K-collector, which is a topics-based RSS aggregator, can make the difference.
K-Collector is a server based RSS aggregator that automatically builds an onthology of posts organised by topics which are defined by the users. The topics as markers for points of interest around which K-Collector can cluster information. In particular it can be used to filter and categorize content coming via RSS from newspapers, magazines, web sites, weblogs, email, data bases and other sources.
Besides, being tightly connected to a weblogging environment, the K-collector aggregator allows an organisation to leverage the most powerful information filter available: ourselves. Each of us has developed the skill to quickly detect relevant knwoledge in the huge flow of information that we receive every day. By using weblogs and aggregators, each person can contribute by highlighting this knowledge and share it instantly with others.
This allow the organisation to be aware of the surrounding world and to take timely action when needed.
UNQUOTE [Roland Tanglao's Weblog]
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Bill French - RSS for personal information management. (SOURCE:RSS and Productivity | MySmartChannels)- Slogan der Woche!
QUOTE
This is a landmark event for me - I receive about 100 business-related emails every 24 hours (used to be 200, and about 500 if you include spam). I deal with this level of communication by supplementing email with RSS and channels. Both afford me the latitude of responding to many inquiries with a simple link (i.e., an answer that is encapsulated in some content item previously created). I've learned that the best way to improve my own productivity is to publish discrete information objects that can be easily shared and consumed by people seeking my help, guidance, or direction. Making that information available as RSS causes many productivity-enhancing events to unfold:
- I can harvest my own RSS content to my local system (or notebook) through NewsGator. This makes all this information available for local search with Scopeware Vision, and also when I'm disconnected (i.e., I can still respond to an email with a URL that contains a referenced answer or response).
- Other people that I deal with on a frequent basis can also subscribe to a vast array of things I write. This has multiple advantages - they get my thoughts in real-time and I don't get as many messages requesting my thoughts.
I think I'm about 7% more productive by taking the time to publish more and react less - and in a form that supports immediate RSS availability. That's the equivalence of about fourteen 8 hour workdays per year which is roughly equivalent to the amount of time I plan to spend in Kona, Hawaii.
RSS for personal information management - who'd a thought?
UNQUOTE [Roland Tanglao's Weblog]
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Status Reports should be discovery and sense making tools for variations. (SOURCE:McGee's Musings)- McGee nails it again. Not only do organizations need to be more internally transparent through real-time status reports, what's reported needs to change. The variations and the reasons behind the variations are what status reports should be focused on.
QUOTE
My current hypothesis is that you have to start with the individual knowledge worker and work from the bottom up. What I haven't cracked to my own satisfaction yet is what the organizational support requirements need to be.
Current status reporting requirements are still rooted in industrial assumptions about projects and processes. Key to those assumptions is the notion that variation is bad. Things are supposed to go as planned. In a knowledge economy those assumptions are inverted. You still need to plan. But now the plans are to help you recognize which variations are important, which are trivial, which are bad, and which are good. Status reporting should become more about discovering and understaning the implications in those variations.
UNQUOTE [Roland Tanglao's Weblog]
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Weblogs as status reports - It can work but the barrier is cultural not technological. (SOURCE:Rands In Repose: Status Reports 2.0 via McGee's Musings)- We've tried over the last 2 years to replace status reports with blogs at a e-commerce company I do consulting for. Success has been mixed. Even though most of the people are engineering staff (i.e. technical people who should have no problem with the 'geekiness' of today's blogging tools), getting them to document in real time what they do has been more difficult than I anticipated. Transparency, even internal status transparency, is a new and hard thing for today's business culture. I think this will shift in time as people become more used to the idea of making themselves more transparent. Not only will the tools get easier to use, but the idea of being transparent (internally at least) will become more and more common just as the idea and culture of email took a while to take hold. Remember the executives who got their email printed out by their secretaries? Just as this is perceived as being quaint today, so too will today's resistance to internal transperancy be perceived as quaint in the future.
QUOTE There needs to be some creative incentive for individuals to write stuff down. For the Wiki, there is the promise that if you write it down, maybe you can avoid future lame redundant questions. For the weblog, the timely conversational style of the medium keeps the content focused on news of the moment and that's really the question; is news of the moment interesting to an engineering organization?
What I'm curious about is if anyone has had any success using web-based collaboration tools as a means of augmenting or replacing status reports. I know Wikis have successfully emerged as semi-structured information repositories... have they evolved into anything? How in the world can I get out of writing Status Reports?
UNQUOTE [Roland Tanglao's Weblog]
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Blogware secure RSS doesn't use SSL!?!. (SOURCE:Random Bytes :: Thursday Pre-Cleanup Musings)- Does this mean that Blogware secure RSS doesn't use SSL? Does this mean it isn't really secure? Or am I missing something? Patiently awating Ross's screendump which hopefully explains everything.
QUOTE On another Blogware note...In response to my post about Secure RSS, Roland wondered what the "command line" syntax would be to retrieve a secured RSS - try: "http://userid:password@www.byte.org/index.xml" ... Even better, if you are using a newsreader like Newzcrawler, you can simply pop in a user name and password into the feed properties and let your aggregator do the funky hard URL stuff...
I'll screenshot something up tomorrow that illustrates this...
UNQUOTE [Roland Tanglao's Weblog]
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MMGs Are So! Games -- And If Not, They'll Die. The developers of Second Life and There claim that their massively multiplayer--things--are not games. Raph Koster says that he works on "persistent worlds," not "games," and that these are "more than just games." Eric Zimmerman agrees that MMGs are not games because they do not come to a "quantifiable conclusion."
Let's start with Zimmerman, since his reasons are different from those of the others. Zimmerman is working from the definition he and Katie Salen provide in their landmark Rules of Play: "A game is a sytem in which players engage in an artificial conflict, defined by rules, that results in a quantifiable outcome."
Now here's the thing: This definition exclused MMGs as well as tabletop RPGs, because none come to an "outcome." Zimmerman says "well, they're boundary cases," but I disagree: They're among the most interesting and vital game forms of the last forty years. And from my perspective, if you produce a definition of "game" that excludes things that most people call "games," either your definition is clearly wrong, or you need to make a strong argument for why the excluded entities aren't really games. Simply saying "they don't come to quantifiable outcomes" is circular, since it is saying "This is my definition of games, these don't fit, they aren't games, QED". A better argument is "These are clearly games, they don't fit your definition, therefore your definition is inadequate, QED".
MMGs and tabletop RPGs provide quantifiable advancement; you rise in level, gain skills, or whatnot. They provide goals for players to strive for--but that goal isn't "victory." The problem with Zimmerman's definition is not with "quantifiable," but with "outcome." Zimmerman is fundamentally a boardgame-and-console gamer, and thinks primarily about games that do indeed have endpoints, with clear winners and losers (or, in the case of many arcade-style games, inevitable loss but a score you can try to improve on). It's not surprising that he wouldn't think of MMGs and RPGs as "games," but it's patently silly to exclude them. The people who play them certainly consider them "games," and they have every right to do so: They have rules; they provide goals for players to strive for; they are structured; they create the same sense of a special sphere in which people act as if goals matter, but fundamentally agree that they don't really matter; they are forms of structured play. They certainly fit my definition of "the game," but it's clear to me that they should also fit any reasonable definition of "game."
Koster
Koster wants to exclude MMGs from "game" for quite different reasons. I think the main reason is so that he can claim
I AM KOSTER, CREATOR OF WORLDS! TREMBLE, YE MIGHTY, AT MY NAME!
In other words, they he doesn't create mere games, he's creating something much more vital, important, and interesting: Virtual worlds. Games are jejune. Virtual worlds are cool.
Needless to say, I find the attitude annoying.
Okay, okay, I'm overstating it. Actually, Koster is rather self-effacing, but I can't resist a good line, and "I am Koster, creator of worlds" is nothing if not that.
Koster's claim is, in essence, that MMGs are not games, but worlds in which people live (in some sense), and that they can eat other games for lunch. Quite literally; you can implement a version of Blackjack within an MMG, for instance. Indeed, you could include just about any game within an MMG as a "subgame" if you so desired.
And then there's the pervasive meme that MMGs are the first step toward Gibson's cyberspace, or what Stewart Butterfield of Ludicorp calls "the metaverse." Supposedly, virtual worlds will eventually be our interface for everything online, a far friendlier and more fun and "easier" interface than, say, eBay. This is, when you think about it, a crock of shit; when I want to buy a shirt, I for sure don't want to walk through a virtual mall. In fact, the reason I go online to buy a shirt is to avoid walking through a goddamn mall. Give me quick access to your shirts and swift checkout, and I'm a happy puppy. Search and shopping cart in a web browser is what I want, thanks, not some high-concept notion of a high-touch universe. 3D worlds are lousy ways to find most of the things you want, precisely because they use the phenomenological universe as a metaphor. They're great environments for games, though, because they (almost) make good on the promise of transporting you to a different universe, which is one of the things many game styles try to do.
Sure, some people effectively live in MMGs; people who do deserve our sympathy, and an effort to get them out of the house to have some fun with friends. MMGs are great, but not if you're in them 20 hours a week. Then, you got a problem.
Sure, people make friendships online; that's great, but it's not something that happens only in MMGs. When I was a househusband, the old science fiction roundtable on GEnie practically saved my sanity; it was a way of keeping in touch with people with shared intellectual interests, when practically the only other folks I socialized with were other local moms and dads, and there's a limit to how many conversations you can have about burping before going nuts. BBSes, virtual communities like the Well, blogs, IM, email, and dating sites are all great ways to make friendships online. MMGs help establish quick intimacy, it's true--shared intense experiences are a great ice-breaker. But the ability to make friends online is a function of networks, not a function of MMGs.
It's also true that MMGs are something different; they're vastly huger undertakings than conventional game projects, they have infinite (or at least very long) lifespans, and because of their complexity, intensity, and longevity, they spawn all sorts of phenomena that we haven't seen in other sorts of games, or at least not on the same scale: trade in virtual property, people using the system for things like in-game theater, uber guilds. That's great, and fascinating, and fun, but it doesn't make MMGs something entirely other or new.
When you come down to it, EverQuest is just a large-scale version of D&D with an automated (and therefore inferior) DM. All things being equal, I'd rather spend six hours with buddies and a good DM playing D&D than playing EQ--but EQ is always there, and it's pretty, and I don't have to spend time and energy getting folks together or designing a campaign. Sheer scale--thousands or tens of thousands at once on a single server--does create phenomena you don't get in a D&D campaign, but so what? It's still the same basic thing.
As for the argument that MMGs can "swallow" other games--so what? Sure, I can sit down with folks in Second Life and play a game of D&D--but, uh, why? Pretty silly, if you ask me.
For sure Star Wars Galaxies and Ultima Online are games. You play in what Zimmerman & Salen term a "magic circle" (a space set off from the 'real' world), you have goals to strive for (character improvement at the very least), there's a structure to limit potential behavior.... How is this not a game?
The only way a massively multiplayer--thing--can be something other than a game is... If it isn't. Which brings us to Second Life and There.
Non-Game MMGs
There and Second Life both claim that they aren't games. The reason they claim not to be games, of course, is that their creators are under the delusion that they will increase their potential audience by making this claim, since games are for geeks, and they want to create MMGs for "the rest of us." The idea being that only geeks play games, a small percentage of the population are geeks, ergo, to create a 3D world that achieves a mass audience, you must create one that isn't a game.
Let's start with the assumption that only geeks play games. This is patently false. At this very moment, tens of millions of people are playing Hearts, Spades, Chess, and other classic games online at sites like the MSN Gaming Zone and Pogo.com. Every PC on the planet is loaded with Solitaire and Free Cell and Minesweeper, and I'm willing to bet that, on 95% of them, one or more of those applications is run at least once a week. And let's not even talk about sports. It's true that not everyone plays games, any more than everyone reads, or watches TV. But, well, almost everyone plays games. Most of them don't play the kind of games that geeks like.
And it's true that a huge majority of the population is never going to be interested in a fantasy-themed hack-n-slash game, and there's a huge opportunity for someone who does figure out how to create an MMG that appeals to "the rest of us". But I believe, at any rate, that if it isn't a game, it's never going to appeal to more than a small minority of people.
Why is that? It's very simple, and it derives ultimately from one piece of my definition of game that is core and essential: Games provide goals. Sometimes, as with SimCity, the goal is not explicit in the game--but in SimCity and games of its type, the simulation provides a broad range of potential player-selectable goals (build a city that relies solely on mass transit, say). Sometimes, as with MMGs, one goal is explicit (character improvement) while others emerge through play (make my guild the best, defend Britannia against the evil Hibernians, help my buddy get the Staff of Eternal Whatchamacallilt). But goals are what motivate play; if I don't have a goal, I'm stuck with something like a hypertext novel, where there's no strong reason to select one branch over another, and the whole thing is rather dull. (Actually, even with a hypertext novel, you do have a goal, or you do if the writer is decent: To achieve some kind of ephiphany, to understand what's going on in the story and the writer's subtext.)
If an interactive structure doesn't provide those who play with it with goals, then players will play with it for a time, realize there's nothing to achieve and nothing much to do--that it is, in fact, pointless (=goal-less)--and quit.
So much for theory: Let's look at some examples. The earliest massively multiplayer non-game (as far as I'm aware, anyway) was Morningstar & Farmer's Habitat. Habitat was 2D (and operated on PCs with 64kb of memory!), but had many of the features we've come to expect from MMGs: inventories, customizable avatars, the ability to trade and buy items, a substantial world to explore, items with special powers and effects. I remember playing with it briefly when it was in development at Lucasfilm Games, and thinking, wow, this would make a great game--too bad it isn't one. Because, when you came down to it, it was a graphical chat environment with objects: no character advancement, nothing really to strive for or do.
Habitat survived, in various permutations, for many years; it may still exist somewhere, for all I know. I last returned to it about ten years ago, when I did a survey of graphical chat environments for the Markle Foundation, which was thinking about doing something in this realm. At that point, it had mutated into Worlds Away--basically the same product, but renamed, then owned by Hitachi, and operated on Compuserve. I went into the world, created an avatar, started walking around and chatting with folks--and "looked at" a character I'd run into (essentially, pulling up her profile). It said (among other things) "I am so-and-so's bitch."
Oh-kay. Anybody who's spent any time on IRC knows this rhetoric. She's so-and-so's online sex slave, and they like to engage in hot bdsm cybersex together. Whoopie. This is a direct artifact of the non-game nature of this thing. Not that cybersex (and bdsm) don't happen in MMGs, but... The problem with online chat is the difficulty of finding something to chat about. Sex is always the default (if you don't believe me, go onto IRC sometime and try to figure the ratio of sex channels to non-sex channels), because an interest in sex is about the only thing you can rely on. Everyone (well, virtually everyone) is interested in sex, and you can generally find someone to chat about it with. Finding someone interested in, say, Cantorian transfinites is a lot more difficult.
Habitat, and Worlds Away, had their following--but when you come down to it, they were cute toys, but inferior chat environments to text-based chat. That's because they replicated the problems of the real world; you had to walk through the world to find someone to chat with, whereas on IRC and the like, you can simply go to a room on a subject you're interested in. The graphical nature of the environment is interesting, for a while; and if you do develop some friendships there, you might stick around--but since there aren't really any goals to pursue, it palls quickly for most folks.
Then we come to The Palace. The Palace was another 2D graphical chat environment, developed (if memory serves) by the Time Warner Interactive Group, which is now defunct. It was a little different from Habitat, in that you "moved" around the world more like a text MUD--not moving in space, but going through doors from one room to another. And in addition, there was a sort of teleport function that allowed you to go straight to a particular room.
You were represented by a little square image. You could select an image from a bunch provided with the application, or upload your own graphic. E.g., I remember chatting with one fellow who was represented by an image of Milk from Milk and Cheese, which I thought rather clever. Additionally, there was a little scripting language you could use to do things like spray a brief rainbow effect in space, or implement a version of Backgammon, say. Of course, few users were experienced programmers, so only a few took advantage of the scripting language.
You could copy square images, and "drop" them, too, leaving them in place in a room until someone deleted them. And you could "show" someone a larger image by juxtaposing a bunch of standard-size images together. I remember walking into an empty room, and discovering that, scattered about the place, were little components of the image of a naked chick... I reassembled them, because why not. As I did, it became clear to me what had happened: I'd walked into the aftermath of cybersex. Some folks had been doing the virtual nasty here, and one, at least, had showed the other a pr0n image as part of the process.
Because, of course, there was no goal to The Palace; its only real appeal with the novelty value it offered. People fall back on sex when there's nothing better to do or talk about. IRC is still a better chat environment, not least because The Palace's server software wasn't very scalable, and once you had more than a few dozen folks on a single server, it became slow as molasses. (And if you want to show someon a pr0n image, you can do it more easily via DCC.)
The Palace never became all that successful... Though it's still available as a free download, if you're interested.
Second Life
And so we come to Second Life, which I spent a little time with over the last few days. Second Life, remember, claims to be another non-game MMG.
It's pretty; it's smooth; the avatars are highly customizable. The interface is far simpler than, say, EQ. But it doesn't take long, walking (or flying, which is neat) around before you start to wonder: Okay, what now? What's my goal? What am I supposed to do?
Second Life allows you to create in-game objects, with a relatively simple interface to build solid shapes, stretch and attach them, paint them with textures, and so on. It also provides a very complicated and extensive scripting language that allows you to attach all kinds of behaviors to objects. This is sort of cool, and encountering such objects and interacting with them is interesting. There are areas where you can engage in gun battles, play classic midway-style games, bounce about on trampolines, etc., etc.
Once you've created an object, you can set up a store to sell versions of the objects to other players for in-game money. Also, there is a "rating" system that allows you to rate people and the objects they create--and there's a leaderboard that reflects these ratings.
Okay: So actually, this is a game. There are at least two goals I can strive for: getting rich, and being popular. Sure, I can just treat it as a graphical chat environment if I wish, but if I actually want to do something, there are some things to do.
Cool... Except that....
If you want to become rich, you need to create objects that other people want. To do that, you're either going to need to be pretty facile with the object design system, and with Photoshop (for the textures); or you're going to need to be a pretty good programmer, and get familiar with Second Life's scripting system. In other words: This aspect of the game (at least) is not a "3D world for the rest of us" (meaning non-gamers). Instead, it's a 3D world for graphic designers and programmers. I suspect that's a smaller subset of the population than game geeks. And, ah--doing anything sufficiently interesting with the scripting language is going to require enough programming work on my part that I'd rather spend the time developing a game for MIDP Java. If I'm going to program, I'd rather create something real, thanks. This is too much like work.
Or you can try to become popular. The problem with this is that the metaphor is a leaderboard. Leaderboards suck, particularly for large-scale games, because only one person can be at the top. In a level-based system, by contrast, everyone can increase in level, and everyone can reach the top--eventually. And while some may progress quicker than others, it doesn't really matter; everyone knows they can reach level 65 in EQ, eventually. There's no reason to become discouraged, just because there are level 65 characters about; if anything, that's a motivation. If they can do it, so can you.
But only one person is ever going to be ranked #1 on a leaderboard.
I have no problem with games that provide social status or popularity as a goal; in fact, I'd love to see a good MMG implementation of such a game (and, in fact, tried to get funding for one, some years ago). But you can't do it through leaderboards; you need a system of ranks, with promotion to a higher social status by achieving intermediary objectives. A massively multiplayer version of En Garde!, if you will. It would work, I have no doubt.
In other words--if you view Second Life as a game, it is a weak game. There are only two paths for advancement (money and popularity), and the first requires specialized skills that most folks don't have, while the other path is constrained to reward only one or a handful of people at any given time.
Of course, the Second Life folks maintain that it's not a game at all. And if you view it that way, okay, it has a lot of similarity to The Palace and Habitat. As with The Palace, you can create visual artifacts, you can write scripts to create interesting in-game effects, you can hang out and have fun with folks. As with Habitat, you can explore space, play with objects, and, uh, hang out and have fun with folks. But as with both those products, Second Life (treated as a non-game) quickly palls; without goals, an interactive product is dull.
There seems to be a lot of cybersex going on in Second Life, by the way--and a lot of hot girl avatars. Riiight. As I've argued before, this is indicative of the basic problem. Nothin else goin on.
I'm going to go out on a limb: Second Life will fail. Oh, not utterly; it will get some press, people will be interested in it for novelty's sake, but I'd be astonished if they break 40,000 users.
Why? Because it's not a game.
Now--I haven't played There yet, and I suppose I'll get around to it at some point and report back... But I'll make the same prediction. Possibly the There folks are making the "not a game" claim because they are under the delusion that this will attract folks--and actually are sneakily implementing a game. But if not, if it really isn't a game, I'll make the same prediction. It will fail. Because there's no game There.
[Games * Design * Art * Culture]
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Tim Bray on RSS - Anyone in the business of publishing info to an audience should think about implementing an RSS feed by this time next week.. (SOURCE:AIIM E-DOC Magazine - Enterprise Content Management at Work!)- RSSify your org or die!
QUOTE
AEM: What are some of the more interesting uses of XML?
Bray: RSS. It's a syndication format. It's a simple XML tag to describe what's changed about a website recently. Doesn't sound like much, except that there are programs called aggregators that poll websites and read the RSS every so often. For example, I don't go the New York Times' website anymore because I read the paper's RSS feed and I've got a little application that I check back with every so often that tells me when there is new stuff. I don't even really use the notion of the home page anymore because I'm notified when something new pops up on the sites that I like to read, enabling me to keep track of an immensely wider range of information. Anyone in the business of publishing info to an audience should think about implementing an RSS feed by this time next week. It's useful and falling-off-a-log easy.
The other one that has me humming is SGV (scalable vector graphics). It's like Flash, but non-proprietary and open and in XML. It's being pushed hard by Adobe and is starting to get some real traction.
AEM: Looking out a year from now, what's coming?
Bray: My personal and professional bet is the kind of visual applications I'm building now.
AEM: So, in a few years, instead of getting text back from Google, we'll get a visual look at our searches?
Bray: Yes. The notion of Google, that when you search for anything that the results line up in a one-dimensional row from most to least important, is just bogus. When I'm searching for "stock" am I searching for equities or soup base? There's no one dimensional way to express the richness of what you can potentially find.
UNQUOTE [Roland Tanglao's Weblog]
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Skype: putting the hype in VoIP. (SOURCE:The Register)- Nice overview and review of Skype!
QUOTE
There is a lot of loyalty to messenger programs and phone services, but a sub-culture that doesn't require communication with the rest of the world, just its own sub-culture, could certainly thrive. There are both technical and political difficulties in attaching this network to normal wired telephones, but if this is ever overcome, Skype has the potential to become the world's next phone network, hijacked by the young. If it makes the leap to respectability (which will be a long way off) in the way that business instant messengers have emerged, then, with layers of PABX function added, Skype could become a serious threat to the future profitability of wireline telcos.
UNQUOTE [Roland Tanglao's Weblog]
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Fanimatrix: stunning Matrix fan-film. I'm at the ToorCon infosec after-party at DachB0den labs, and they've just screened a stunning Matrix fan-film called The Fanimatrix, which had a roomful of hackers enraptured.
 "The Fanimatrix" is a fan-made, zero-budget short film set within the Matrix universe, specifically shortly before the discovery of "The One" (i.e. the first "Matrix" feature film). It tells the story of two rebels - Dante and Medusa - and of their fateful mission onto the virtual reality prison world that is The Matrix.
The film was shot on the Sony Mini-Digital Video format and edited on a PC editing suite utilizing Adobe Premiere, After FX and AlamDV Special FX. The entire production was completed over nine nights, ranging from six to over fifteen hour shoots, not including rehearsal and blocking-tape-shooting sessions. Most of the props, sets and lighting equipment was borrowed and locations were either hired or shot guerilla style. Although the film was a "zero budget" production, the final cost of the movie (combining personal expenses of cast and crew such as investment into costumes, transport costs, food etc) has reached upto approximately $1000 NZ (or $400-$600 US). The movie was shot entirely within Auckland City, New Zealand (our home).
Link [Boing Boing Blog]
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Here is a quick overview of the RSS/E-mail world. There are three ways to integrate the two worlds:
- Web-based e-mail service with RSS integration. Example: Oddpost. I use this service. It has an interface that puts Hotmail and Yahoo mail to shame. They have integrated RSS feeds into the service.
- E-mail client plug-ins. Example: Newsgator. This client software plugs into Outlook. Lots of great features.
- RSS to e-mail gateway services. Example: Blogstreet. This service allows you to subscribe to your RSS feeds through a standard e-mail account. It is e-mail client agnostic and extremely simple to use.
An innovative bit of conceptual client software in this area is Zoe. It puts a Google UI on e-mail. It uses search filters to sort mail for you (so you don't have to spend time putting things into folders, all you need to do is search or use your stored filters). Given the e-mail glut, this is a natural evolution of the e-mail client UI (it won't look much different, but it will seem easier). It can create RSS feeds from filtered e-mail (very cool). See question below.... [John Robb's Weblog]
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Bill Gross has finally launched X1, his fast search tool on the desktop (Web, e-mail, files, and attachments). There is a full-featured, no time limit, free version available. This is a good replacement for the hideous search feature in Outlook.
 [John Robb's Weblog]
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BTW: if you want to search your RSS archives in Radio use Mark's "Radio Kit." He also has a tool for trackback (which UserLand has already added), search weblog (for the desktop), a browser-based outline editor, and a way to change the dates of Radio posts. Maybe Mark can give us an update on the status of Kit.
[John Robb's Weblog]
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What if there was a weblog publishing system and web server on a chip? It gets even more interesting if it is combined with low cost geopositioning, low power wireless connectivity, and "controller functionality." Embedded weblogs solve the problem of how to add interactive intelligence to a physical object. If the cost of a system like this was inexpensive enough, you could effectively put a weblog on everything of interest in the physical world. The weblog would record the history of the device: location, controller setting changes, etc. The weblog navigation system on the left or right would provide access to controller settings. Let you imagination go wild thinking about where they might be embedded.
 The biggest impediment to embedded computing isn't the cost, its the plethora of proprietary user interfaces. People just won't take the time to learn them. The tablet PC offers a large visual environment to display the interface (as well as an easy to use pen-based input device), the weblog offers the most basic of web site interfaces, RSS offers a way to interconnect or aggregate systems in a human readable way, wireless connectivity provides seamless networking, and the embedded webserver provides remote access/viewing.
Buildingblogs, deviceblogs, sprinkerblogs, heatingblogs, coolingblogs, carblogs, securityblogs, airportgateblogs, TiVoblogs, product trackingblogs, the list goes on (I will leave the snappy names to others). [John Robb's Weblog]
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Apprenticeship in a Software Studio. (SOURCE:Ted Leung on the air)- This sounds like a better way to educate developers!
QUOTE The current classroom education model is fundamentally flawed. In order to become a competent or great software developer, wisdom is needed more than knowledge. Wisdom is best gained in the context of apprenticeship to a master. This paper discusses a software studio model of education, based on the experience of a master and his apprentice, and their vision for the future.
UNQUOTE [Roland Tanglao's Weblog]
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OOVM - a real time Smalltalk VM for embedded systems from Lars Bak. (SOURCE:email from Simon)- Lars strikes again! Only a matter of time before this technology/company is bought again.
QUOTE Lars has been implementing object-oriented virtual machines for 18 years, including Beta, Self, Strongtalk, HotSpot for Java (150 million downloads), and then a small HotSpot for cell phones, and now he started his own company called OOVM. OOVM produces a Smalltalk for embedded systems which is a bit different from standard Smalltalk: reflection is only available in the development VM, there is an atomic test and store statement for synchronization, namespaces are supported, and blocks can optionally be typed and LIFO for performance. Pool variables and class-instance variables were removed.
The OOVM embedded platform executes platform independent bytecodes directly on the bare metal, without any underlying RTOS nor C library and with a small memory footprint. The programming environment connects to a running program, supporting true incremental development and full serviceability of running application.
The programming environment (written in Smalltalk/X) provides all reflective behavior and is connected to the virtual machine's more limited reflective interface with a simple protocol. It can run as a web server including the bytecode compiler, the debugger, the profiler and introspection support; but you can even use ``vi'' to type Smalltalk code, which will please C programmers: in order to do so, a syntax for classes was introduced.
UNQUOTE [Roland Tanglao's Weblog]
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Steve Kirks's vision of a new kind of browser- RSS feed aware with intelligent filtering and Tivo "learn my interests" technlogy. (SOURCE:house of warwick : house of warwick)-Great vision!
<QUOTE>Create a different kind of aggregator, one that's a browser first and a RSS reader second. The browser has a preference page where you subscribe to feeds of interest. Second, add a list of keywords to find in the feeds. Third, add technology to monitor your site view habits (think Tivo without the privacy issues). When you launch this program, it displays a "customized home page" using the prefs from the paragraph above. Click a button on the page and the app opens news/info/entertainment of interest where each category is a window, each web page a tab. Info you wanted to know is highlighted (cues from CSS embedded in the feed or web page). Keywords are highlighted differently. Wow...where did this post come from. Too much caffeine too early.... Anyway, all of the technology exists for this today. Apple's WebKit and Microsoft's integration of IE allow an app to be written that displays valid HTML correctly, but not be limited to a web browser app.</QUOTE>
[Roland Tanglao's Weblog]
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Web 2.0. WEB 2.0 ( Personal Broadcast Networks) is starting to get some traction. Adam Bosworth (the CTO of BEA) is writing extensively about the Web Services Browser and Kevin Lynch (CSA at Macromedia) has written a white paper on rich Flash applications that utilize Web Services (he calls them Rich Internet Applications). Each takes a different approach to solving the same thing: how to build new client (desktop PC) software that realizes the vision of Web 2.0?
What is Web 2.0? It is a system that breaks with the old model of centralized Web sites and moves the power of the Web/Internet to the desktop. It includes three structural elements: 1) a source of content, data, or functionality (a website, a Web service, a desktop PC peer), 2) an open system of transport (RSS, XML-RPC, SOAP, P2P, and too an extent IM), and 3) a rich client (desktop software). Basically, Web 2.0 puts the power of the Internet in the hands of the desktop PC user where it belongs.
So far, we have made excellent progress on the first two elements necessary for Web 2.0, yet the remaining element has undergone an abortive development path. The primary reason for this is due to Microsoft's dominance of the browser market which has resulted in stasis. Additionally, both VCs and developers have been frozen in fear of fighting Microsoft on the desktop. Regardless, the Web 2.0 desktop applications I had hoped for years ago haven't arrived in sufficient numbers. Fortunately, the tide is about to shift.
Three development paths are now in contention. The first is a desktop Web site approach (Radio). A second is an enhanced browser method (Flash, see picture). A third is a custom desktop application (.Net and nifty custom apps like Brent's NetNewsWire). I suspect that all three approaches will gain traction over the next couple of years, but my personal preference (for a myriad of reasons) is to put a CMS (Web site content management system) on the desktop and leverage the limitations of the browser to provide an enhanced experience. This makes it possible for a seamless transition for users from the Web 1.0 to Web 2.0. Regardless, it is extremely nice to see motion.
Note: I changed the name of this post to Web 2.0 to make it more understandable. [John Robb's Weblog]
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Cosmic Encounter. I've been thinking about how long I've been playing this game, and how I was going to post about it--and how I could do so without making myself out to be a fossil. Of course, it's questionable why I don't want to appear a fossil; I get something of a kick out of being an "eminence terrible," and the only real audience I'd mind appearing a fossil to consists of cute geek chicks, and probably not many read my blog.
But anyway.
If I recall correctly, I first played Cosmic Encouter at a Lunacon, sometime in the late Jurassic, at a time when Deborah Harry had not yet become a star--or about at the same time, anyway. I was inveigled into a game by Evan Jones--who I haven't seen in at least a decade, but apparently co-designed the new Marvel Universe RPG with Dan Gelber (co-designer with me of Paranoia).
I continued to play it throughout college, primarily with my college buddies Mark Malamud and Carey Hammer. (Last I heard, Mark was a middle-wig at Microsoft, and Carey founded the interactive department at, if memory serves, Scholastic.) [Geeks all, obviously.]
And when I was director of R&D at West End Games, I published a dreadful version of Cosmic--possibly the worst print edition ever published. Thankfully, Mayfair and, later, the Avalon Hill division of Hasbro, republished better ones. (Though Hasbro has since killed its Avalon Hill division.)
Cosmic is the example par excellence of what Richard Garfield calls "the exceptions game." An exceptions game is a game with very simple basic rules--which are then extended and changed by "exceptions" printed on another component. In the case of Cosmic, each player is dealt an "alien card," printed with a special power that changes the basic rules.
This is a very useful concept because in any game--print or digital--there's a limit on how much you can expect players to be willing to learn before they start to play. If anything, there's more of a problem with the players of digital games, who typically want to plunge in without learning =any=thing first. (And, indeed, this is why, I believe, sophisticated games have grown so radically during my lifetime--with a paper game, a player has to learn not only how to play, but also how to operate the game. With a pre-digital hobby game, you have to learn how to perform combat calculations, add up terrain effects, determine lines of supply, and/or check armor effects versus opponent level--its complicated, and requires a degree of intelligence and commitment. With digital games, you click and go.)
From my perspective, the idea of the exceptions game, along with the idea of "programmed learning"--pioneered in Avalon Hill's original Starship Troopers game, back in the 70s, but followed by every extant realtime strategy game--by which you are introduced to new rules gradually, scenario by scenario--are fundamental to making essentially complicated games accessible to a broad public.
Or to put it another way, Cosmic Encounter is one of a handful of games that are hugely important from an historical perspective; and if you wish to understand the evolution of game design, you =must= understand Cosmic, and its role in the evolution of the field.
And you should therefore play it. At once.
That being said....
I have two severe qualms about this implementation of Cosmic.
First, it absolutely cries out for a tutorial mode. I am an experienced player of the boardgame--but there were at least two occasions when I was at a loss, where it took me a fair bit of time to figure out how to play. The first time when was I wanted to invite other players to ally with me; it wasn't at all clear that I had to click on their icons, rather than their "power" name or their "user" name to do so. The second was when I wanted to make a deal with an opponent, and it wasn't at all clear to me how to offer something in exchange for a deal--I should have clicked on one of my planets, to offer a base there, but there was no indication that this is what I should have done.
Yes, I figured these things out, after looking at the FAQ. But I ain't no dummy, and if =I= had to look at the FAQ, God help Joe. Q. Gamer. Cosmic Online needs a tutorial.
My second problem? It's got to do with the pricing.
When I talk about pricing, I guess I have to give you an idea where I'm coming from. I'm willing to spend a high proportion of my disposable income on games. Back in the day, I was willing to spend hundreds of dollars a month playing games on the old commercial online services.
But the reality of the industry at the moment is that very few games support subscription prices. Sites like Uproar and pogo.com offer classic games for free. Most subscription services---like EverQuest or Dark Age of Camelot--charge $12.95 or so a month, but incur substantial hardware, bandwidth and (not least important) community support costs to do so. I can think of only one game that isn't an MMG that is successful and supports a subscription fee--that's Laser Squad Nemesis. LSN is an exceptionally cool game, and costs $25 for a 6 month subscription.
Cosmic asks $39 for 6 months.
N-no.... I'm sorry.
Unlike MMOGs, this is not a game I'm going to play excessively and exclusively. I can see paying a chunk of money for lifetime play; I can see paying a lesser chunk of money for a year. I can see paying that much for a site where, say, I can play Cosmic, and Diplomacy, and Settlers of Catan, and, oh, I don't know, Bohnanza.
But.... This is a game that lasts 20-30 minutes. And it's a good 20-30 minutes, and I suppose there's a level of persistence with the high-score and "m-rich" system.
But it doesn't seem to me that the pricing is in line with the value received. And that's a shame, in a way; this is a cool game, it ought to be able to find a venue online, and at the monthly price ($8.95), I can certainly see myself, at times saying, fuck it, I'm bored tonight, I'll pay that for 2-3 games.
I'd love to see this game as a free download with several weeks free play and sub thereafter at, say $20 for 6 months, on RealArcade or Shockwave.com (the latter ought to be interested, as the client is pure Flash). And I wonder whether aggregating several games of this type for a single monthly sub might be worthwhile.
Of course, Peter Olotka seems to have "subscribed" me for the next 10,000 years or something, so I really shouldn't complain, and should simply praise it to the skies and get you dweebs to drop your money on the game.
And I do love the game, and wish it all the best. But...
We need a business model that lets this kind of game survive--and thrive.
I'm not sure Peter and crew have found it. [Games * Design * Art * Culture]
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Wired. New Sony PEG-UX50 Clie (Pics: 1,2,3, and 4). This new Palm O/S PDA sets the standard for desktop organizers. It includes:
- Organizer and productivity functionality. Schedules, etc. Basically, PC companion functionality that has been standard on PDAs since I got my first one in 1995.
- Wireless applications. Web and e-mail. 802.11b and Bluetooth.
- Multimedia. The ability to playback video and audio. Low res camera and audio capture.
Pressures on the PDA market
However, the future of PDAs is uncertain given the competitive pressures from alternative products. In order to stay competitive, Sony bundled as much functionality as it could into a product that costs a whopping $699. Here's a recap of the alternatives:
- Laptops and Tablets. With laptop sales booming (the majorty of PC sales are now laptops), this pricing puts the Clie into direct competition with low-end laptops with much larger screens, full-size keyboards, and much more functionality. Although Tablets are not yet proven, they offer a form factor and means of usage that competes favorably with PDAs. Detachable screens are also a player.
- Storage devices. New stand-alone storage devices with multimedia capture and playback functionality offer a compelling alternative to standard PDAs. Although they cost about the same as the new Clie, include much better multimedia capture and playback options, nearly 10 times the storage capacity, and are much simpler to use with a PC (they are merely an additional hard drives when attached to a PC!).
- Smart cell phones. These new phones include multimedia, organizer capability, and e-mail on top of the basic phone functionality. The only thing working against these phones is that they are still difficult to synch up with PCs.
The PDA is the Canary in the Coal Mine
Sony's new Clie demonstrates that the future of the PDA is in deep trouble. The attempt to evolve the PDA into a more versatile product has failed, it will retreat back to the low cost pocket organizer market from which it was spawned (short Palm). It's failure also points to the difficult future ahead for fully integrated mobile computing systems. Why? The future of mobile computing is in components and wireless glue. Here is what I mean:
- Components that serve a single purpose. Portable storage for stand-alone applications, multimedia storage, multimedia play-back, multimedia capture. Stand-alone LCDs and digital TVs (low cost HDTVs). Independent input devices including keyboards, trackballs, TV remotes, and more. Home servers and profile-based computing for PCs.
- Wireless glue. These independent components will be held together by high bandwidth wireless glue (both Bluetooth and 802.11x). Wireless technology will connect screens, input devices, and portable storage to computing resources. If connected to the Internet, these devices will be able to leverage computing resources remotely (with security and profiles that save preferences and enable access to additional resources).
- Absorbtion of consumer electronics. This componentization and wireless connectivity sets the stage for the inevitable absorbtion of consumer electronics.
[John Robb's Weblog]
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Just a quick note on FTP hosting for those who haven't done it before. Here are the instructions I used to publish to my site using Radio (for those of you who know what they are doing technically, please disregard this post):
First, I bought a domain at Network Solutions (cost: $75 for three years). I then used the account manager at Network Solutions to put in the location of Digital-Crocus's (my hosting company) DNS servers for the domain I just bought (Note: Network Solutions defaults to their own servers, so you need to change them):
primary: ns1.digital-crocus.com and the secondary: ns2.digital-crocus.com
OK, now that I did that, the new location of my domain will take 24-48 hours to percolate through the Internet's domain system. In the meantime, I published my weblog to the new location.
First, using Digital-Crocus's domain manager to register my domain www.mindplex.org. I waited a bit until it showed up and then I created a subdomain: jrobb.mindplex.org
I then went to my FTP preference in Radio (with Radio running click this link):
http://127.0.0.1:5335/system/pages/prefs?page=1.5
and put in the following information:
- UserName: xxxx (the UserName on my Digital-Crocus account)
- Password: xxxx (the Password on my Digital-Crocus account)
- Server: ftp.digital-crocus.com
- Path: /jrobb.mindplex.org/
- Url: http://jrobb.mindplex.org/
After submitting that information, I then republished my entire weblog from Radio. To do this, I right clicked on the Radio icon in the system tray (near the clock) and selected "Open Radio." Next, I selected from the menu in the application: Radio>Publish>Entire Website. I set down the computer and waited, 30 minutes later it was done.
A final note: I did use Radio's category feature to publish additional category weblogs to different locations on my domain. More on how I did that later. [John Robb's Weblog]
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© Copyright 2004 William J. Maya.
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Discovery toys is selling an $80 toy called the DNA Explorer, which allows small children to extract and sequence the DNA from a variety of foodstuffs. 
