Seen in Lyon, during lunch. ...
The frontier
Major Fambrough: "You wish to see the frontier?"John Dunbar: "Yes sir, before it's gone" Quote from Dances with the Wolves ...
There’s no reason why WoW couldn’t be represented by anything other than an RSS feed
Gamasutra has an insightful write-up of Raph Koster's talk at the Austin GDC. The talk is about how the web is destroying games in terms of revenue and access and how to rely on the web model to design future playful games. Koster slides can be found here (pdf, 3.8Mb) (Another good writeup is here)...
Challenges for MMORPG on cell phones
In 2003, Tommy Palm wrote an insightful piece in Gamasutra about the birth of mobile MMORPG. What is interesting in this paper is the development challenges described by the author: " Latency: Whereas latency in network calls for PC games is measured in hundreds of milliseconds, for mobile phones ...
Sidewalk obstacles
"The following objects can make a sidewalk difficult for some users to traverse if they protrude into the pathway or reduce the vertical or horizontal clear space: Awnings, Benches, Bike racks, Bollards, Cafe tables and chairs, Drinking fountains, Fire hydrants, Folding business signs, Grates, Guy ...
Street graffitis as equalizer viz
When street graffiti looks like low-fi equalizer visualizations. Seen in Lyon, France last week. ...
Cops aren’t really looking for guys attaching grids of foam board to giant TV
The august issue of ICON featured an article about the physical customization of cities by Scott Burnham. It describes how the frustration towards municipal policies against street art has led to a "fresh wave of guerrilla urban design"/interventionists to focus on "physical objects, media channels...
About Intellectual Ventures
Some excerpts from an interview of Nathan Myhrvold (about his company Intellectual Ventures): "What I decided to do was create the invention capital model. Making funding invention an investment. Imagine this. That there is an invention capital industry that raises billions of dollars a year to fun...
It doesn't do "choo-choo" but it's a train
Overheard in the train tonight:"This, is a train, it doesn't do "choo-choo" but it's a train" says a mother to her kid point at the nice IC2000 CFF Double-decker train. (picture courtesy of railfan europe). Why do I blog this? It's curious how onomatopoeia, which start becoming names for things ca...
Location-awareness to initiate mobile phone call
De Guzman, E., M. Sharmin, and B.P. Bailey. Should I Call Now? Understanding What Context is Considered When Deciding Whether to Initiate Remote Communication via Mobile Devices. Proceedings of Graphics Interface, 2007. This paper deals with the problem of disruptive phone calls (to the current tas...