Archive for the ‘Trends’ Category
When games invade real life
See also: 5 creepy ways video games are trying to get you addicted
And:
Jane McGonigal: Gaming can make a better world
So far, World of Warcraft players have spent 5.93 million years solving problems in the game. . Jane McGonigal
“We’re witnessing what amounts to no less than a mass-exodus to virtual worlds and online game environments” – economist Edward Castronova
Wired: Reality Is Broken. Game Designers Must Fix It
Human computation, a talk by Luis von Ahn
Over 9 billion human hours of solitaire was played in 2003.
Luis von Ahn talks about how to “constructively channel human brainpower using computer games. For example, the ESP Game, described in this talk, is an enjoyable online game — many people play over 40 hours a week — and when people play, they help label images on the Web with descriptive keywords.” Not sure that is very useful or constructive, or fun, but perhaps some other real world game can be made using the same mechanisms.
5 iPad apps I’m looking forward to
Carters Encyclopaedia of Health and Medicine
Why: Great for factloving hypocondriacs! Find new and scary things that might be wrong with you.
Comixologys Apple iPad App For Reading Comics
Why: Because reading comicbooks on paper in public when you are an adult is plain embarrassing! But on the iPad everyone will think I’m finetuning my keynotes presentation. :)
Wired iTablet Concept App
Why: This is just a concept, but recreating magazines in all their glory will be a great way to rekindle (no pun intented) myinterest in glossy magazines. I recently stopped by subsription to Wired and Computer arts, not because I don’t like them, but because they kill trees and spew co2 under transport. Buying magazines on paper is completely insane, but I think the iPad will do a good job at recreating the experience of holding and reading a print magazine.
Apple Tablet PC for IKEA?
Why: No, I am not homosexual. But I am appalled at the energy used and waste generated by distributing unwanted paper catalogs to consumers each year. Our household received hundreds of pounds of garbage each year, and I would love to see a more intelligent way to assemble information about available products and services in useful and entertaining ways. And who knows, maybe advertisers could pay US instead we paying to have their trash hauled away?
CourseSmart Tablet Concept
Why: Because textbooks are just so 1999. This CourseSmart Concept is not the best designed app, but I do believe in an integrated, sexy, multimediarich e-learning environment where you also can buy access to new modules as you need them. Apples apps with their low prices are great gateway drugs in the sense that they help people who are still sceptical about buying content online check things out on products that costs next to nothing, and when they first have gotten over the hurdle of buying that lolkittens app for a dollar, the step to buying an elearning app or module about the intricacies of Heideggers philosophies will be that much easier. Or not :)
Farmville is the shit!
If you are on Facebook you have probably seen the annoying messages from your friends who’ve just found a deer in their cabbage patch. Actually, chances are high that you ARE that friend, because according to this screenshot, Farmville is played by over 82 million users.
I have only one thing to say about that: What the fuck!
Found: Internet Archaeologists Find Ruins Of 'Friendster' Civilization
Stortingsvalget 2009 – slik dekkes valg-kvelden på nett
Oppdatering: Du finner nå en litt strammere versjon av denne artikkelen på NRKbeta.
For webdesignere og utviklere er Stortingsvalget bestandig en spesiell kveld. Det er da de store mediehusene pleier å vise seg fra sin beste side. Forsidene er nystrigla, serverne nyboota, og man har brukt sine beste folk til å planlegge og laget nye fine tjenester for å vise info-porn (aka valgresultater som Geir Heljesen liker å kalle det) til sitt publikum. Valgkvelden er på mange måter selve ild-dåpen for en nett-redaksjon og det er bestandig spennende å se hva folk leverer.
Jeg var også spent på å se hvordan sosiale medier ble brukt rundt omkring. Var det noen som fikk til noe like stilig som det CNN leverte i forbindelse med USA-valget?
Målet mitt med kvelden var å fange så mange skjermbilder som mulig, og skrive litt om hver tjeneste, til bruk som referanse ved neste valg, og til allmenn glede for alle web- og valg-interesserte.
Good augmented reality examples
I wrote about Augmented reality back in 2005, but little seem to have happened in this field until this year, when good demos and sturdy real life applications started to pop up everywhere. Here is a collection of my favorite examples.
Get you popcorn ready! Voddler screenshots and details
Voddler is an eagerly awaited video-on-demand service with a business model quite like the popular Spotify. Here are some screenshots and gathered facts to tie you over until the real thing is released.
Buzztracker – World News, Mapped
Ad some realtime buzz to your site. The images are updated along with buzztracker.org. They’re always fresh.
For instance, what’s up in Mexico City? Oh that’s right, a pandemic.
“It’s friday and I’m in love”, a Spotify collaborative playlist
I am a huge fan of Spotify, it is basically running 24/7 at work and at home, but yesterday I wanted to test the collaborative playlist feature. I made a Spotify playlist called “It’s friday and I’m in love” and inviting people on Twitter to join in. The result was really interesting. We created a very strange soundtrack indeed, but I feel like people respected the theme set by the playlist name and first song, and without being explicitly asked to do so. The list even got Rick-rolled by someone adding “Never gonna give you up” on every other line (and then regretted and removed them again), which in my opinion is the ultimate honor.
Cute and social experiment, it almost feels like magic when you see the list growing by the minute.
Spotify is still very barren when it comes to social features, the collab lists is basically the only way you can interact with people at this point, but I am sure this will be expanded upon with new releases of the software, or with plugins. It sucks to not be able to see who adds a particular song, or to be able to comment and talk to people, so hopefully it won’t take too long before such features are added.
The list, as of March 21 2009:
Ps: All links open directly in the Spotify application. I you don’t have it installed you are out of luck. Read more about how I put it online at the bottom of this post.
Open the whole playlist: It’s friday and I’m in love
Or click on each track to listen to it:
Rick Astley – Never Gonna Give You Up
The Levellers – What A Beautiful Day
Katrina and the Waves – Walking On Sunshine
Michael Jackson & The Jackson 5 – The Love You Save
Bo Kaspers Orkester – Dansa på min grav
Yeah Yeah Yeahs – Date With the Night
The Lionheart Brothers – 50 Souls And A Discobowl
La Bionda – I Wanna Be Your Lover
Walter Wanderley – O Samba Brasileiro
The Thrills – Whatever Happened to Corey Haim?
Neil Young – Out on the Weekend
Stan Getz – Samba De Uma Nota So
Death Cab for Cutie – Marching Bands of Manhattan
A Tribe Called Quest – Can I Kick It?
Belle and Sebastian – The Boy Done Wrong Again
Daryl Hall & John Oates – Rich Girl
Cab Calloway – Minnie The Moocher (The Ho-De-Ho Song)
Gerard Joling – Somewhere Over The Rainbow (Reggae Version)
The Doobie Brothers – What a Fool Believes
Waylon Jennings – I’m A Ramblin’ Man
Mott The Hoople – All the Young Dudes
Todd Rundgren – Can We Still Be Friends
The Highwaymen (Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, Kris Kristofferson) – Highwayman
Catherine Feeny – Hurricane Glass
Gösta Jonsson – Samling vid pumpen
Åge Aleksandersen – Dains me dæ
Åge Aleksandersen – Ljus och värme
Åge Aleksandersen – Langt igjæn til Royal Albert Hall
Tom Waits – Christmas Card From a Hooker in Minneapolis
Pet Shop Boys – I Wouldn’t Normally Do This Kind Of Thing
Eagles Of Death Metal – I Want You So Hard (Boy’s Bad News)
The Smiths – William It Was Really Nothing
Jackie Davis – Manana (Is Soon Enough For Me)
Poor Rich Ones – I Was Made For Loving You
Wall Of Voodoo – Mexican Radio
Bryan Ferry – The Way You Look Tonight
The Magnetic Fields – Too Drunk to Dream
Vømmøl Spellmannslag – Auksjonsvisa
Flight Of The Conchords – Business Time
The Be Good Tanyas – When Doves Cry
Flight Of The Conchords – The Prince of Parties
Terence Trent D’Arby – Sign Your Name
Paul Simon – How the Heart Approaches What It Yearns
The Cardigans – And Then You Kissed Me
Wyclef Jean featuring Mary J. Blige – 911
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds – Something’s Gotten Hold of My Heart
Queens Of The Stone Age – Feel Good Hit of the Summer
MC Hammer – U Can’t Touch This
Buzzcocks – Ever Fallen in Love (With Someone You Shouldn’t've)
Jojje Wadenius – Kalles Klätterträd
Queens Of The Stone Age – In My Head
Mojinos Escozios – Mi Barrí de Servesa
Prince & The Revolution – Raspberry Beret
Elvis Costello & The Attractions – The Other Side of Summer
The Magnetic Fields – The Luckiest Guy on the Lower East Side
Pixies – Where Is My Mind? (Remastered)
New Kids On The Block – Hangin’ Tough
Jahn Teigen – Det Vakreste Som Fins
Jahn Teigen – Min Første Kjærlighet
Crowded House – Chocolate Cake
Tori Amos – My Favorite Things
I Was a Teenage Satan Worshipper – OMG, Techno Chicks!!!
Jerry Reed – East Bound & Down (Jerry Reed)
Billie Holiday – That Ole Devil Called Love
The White Stripes – I Just Don’t Know What to Do With Myself
Dusty Springfield – I Just Don’t Know What To Do With Myself
The Stooges – I Wanna Be Your Dog
The Stooges – Down On The Street
The Killers – When You Were Young
The Stone Roses – I Wanna Be Adored
Joy Division – Love Will Tear Us Apart
The Jesus and Mary Chain – Just Like Honey
Stealers Wheel – Stuck In The Middle With You
George Baker Selection – Little Green Bag
Liam Lynch – Electrician’s Day
The Verve – Bitter Sweet Symphony
Jimi Hendrix Experience – All Along the Watchtower
They Might Be Giants – Infinity
The Specials – Our Lips Are Sealed
Depeche Mode – Never Let Me Down Again
Morrissey – The More You Ignore Me The Closer I Get
MC Júnior E MC Leonardo – Rap Das Armas
Kylie Minogue – The Loco-Motion
Tricky – Hell Is Round the Corner
Tommy Tokyo & Starving For My Gravy – Derail And Demise
Mitch Hedberg – Mitch in the S’th
Mikael Wiehe och Ebba Forsberg – Allra minst en morgon
Fred Åkerström – Jag ger dig min morgon
Sex Pistols – God Save The Queen
Simian – We Are Your Friends (Radio Edit)
Jay-Z – Brooklyn Go Hard [feat. Santogold]
Lupe Fiasco – Daydreamin’ Featuring Jill Scott
Arctic Monkeys – Dancing Shoes
Known collaborators (based on conversations on Twitter):
MrChrister, Eterg, lastninja1980, _Rolf_, mariusgenser, johanhal, Barstein, degarden, paljoakim, nielsw64, Markussss, nech
How to publish a Spotify playlist on the web the easy way
You might be wondering how I was able to put all the songs from the playlist in the post? Spotify still hasn’t got an API, so my plan was to actually build it by hand. I first tried to mark all the songs in the playlist and CTRL-C/APPLE-C them, but instead of a lovely list of artist and song names I got the http links to all the tracks, so there went that idea. But to my amasement something magic happened when I posted all the urls into Textedit on my macbook! All the urls got transformed into clickable links automatically! All I had to do was save the Textedit document as html and open it in my browser to test it, and it worked like a charm! Just a view source and a copy paste away from this blog post! (I believe the Spotify software needs to be running when you do this).
If you want to copy the nice Spotify URI direct links instead of the HTTP links you have to select all the songs in your list, the right click and choose “Copy Spotify URI”.
There are alread plenty of sites where you can share your Spotify playlists, and when those can access a proper API I believe great things will happen. Spotify is already a fantastic product. When people can start adding cool stuff it will explode!
My week in a Virtual Sweatshop
I am disappointed!
I have been toiling away ALL WEEK over at Amazons Mechanical Turk, but what do I have to show for it? Not much, I can tell you that!
Here is my weekly pay check statement:
Greetings from Amazon Mechanical Turk,
The following is a summary of activity for your Mechanical Turk account for the week ending Mar 29, 2008.
Your HIT activity for this week:
- Number of HITs accepted: 27
- Number of HITs returned: 5
- Number of HITs abandoned: 0
- Number of HITs submitted: 22Approvals and payments that occurred this week:
- Number of HITs approved: 15
- Number of HITs rejected: 0
- HIT reward earned: $0.15
- Total Amount earned this week: $0.15For more information about your account status and activity, sign in to
http://www.mturk.com/, then view your “Dashboard”.Sincerely,
Amazon Mechanical Turk
http://www.mturk.com/
1200 12TH AVE South, SUITE 1200
SEATTLE, WA 98144-2734 USA
How do you like them apples? $0.15! What can you buy for $0.15! Nothing at all! That’s what!
But seriously: I actually love Mechanical Turk, it is a great and cheap platform for solving problems where machine code can’t help (yet), like describing the content of an image or transcribing audio content. The best use of it that I’ve seen so far is a PHD student who uses mturk workers to transcribe audio interviews she has done for her thesis. The audio is pretty clear, but the subject she interviews talks pretty slurred and fast, it is sometimes difficult to make out what he says. Transscribing a five minute audio segment actually pays pretty “well”, at least compared to a smaller task like tagging images, but you need to be super consentrated and prefferably experienced to complete the task with high enough quality to be approwed.
