|
The Archives
-
12.18.08Flash-Based Home Page Attracts New Users…and on the other handThere's a world, one where users generate their own content, where there's a sense of awe, of delight even. Now, this world has a Web site to attract people to enter this world. There are all kinds of other ways to attract people: blogs, youTube videos, Flickr streams. But this world, like all worlds, needed a home page to try to describe the experience of being 'inside', to try to express its character. The Web site design uses Flash. Now, that can be a bad thing, or a good thing, depending on your perspective. But they used it. And what they created ...
-
08.08.08Phishy Tips from Google LivelyGoogle's Lively posted some handy anti-phishing tips for its users, thus drawing attention to the fact that in a browser-based virtual world, well, there's a browser thing in the middle, and spoofing sites and log-ins isn't so tricky to pull off. Among the handy tips: "Always be cautions when clicking on links, especially if you see any of the warning signs above. The purpose of these sites is to direct you to a website where they can collect your username, password, or other personal info. " Of course, the fact that Lively rooms are embedded in the browser, and can be further embedded ...
-
08.02.08Users and Simulated Sex: Age Verification Uncertain for Launch of SporeFor all the hand-wringing over the years about sex in IRC, sex on the Web, sex in virtual worlds, and all the creepy dangers and terrors awaiting us, I figure it's about time to just finally throw up our collective hands and say: where there's a way, there's porn. This time, instead of it being the Lindens defending the presence of sex in a virtual world, it's the execs over at EA Games - defending um, Spore sex, which arrived with its Creature Creator release: "Within 24 hours ...gamers had gone creature-crazy, designing millions of critters that were all thrown into a ...
-
06.16.08Avatar Creation and the Newbie Experience: Lessons from SporeWhen I last debunked a Sacred Cow I talked about the orientation experience and concluded that the best thing to do was remove the avatar customization process from the grid entirely: (With Tabula Rosa once I entered the game I) became nearly instantly bored. But what occurred to me is why I stayed - and part of the reason I stayed, frankly, is I had spent so much time BEFORE I EVEN ENTERED the game setting up my avatar. Simple stuff. Choose your height, musculature, hair, eyes, and clothes. Choose a name. Decide whether you want the kick ass boots or something ...
-
06.14.08White Board from Spore – What’s on the Lab’s Walls?Digado argued eloquently about needing more WHY and less HOW when it comes to Second Life in a running thread from my attendance at the NMC conference. His argument is that: In actually communicating the advantages/application of virtual worlds beyond the developers and early adopters, the WHY question is the more relevant. It identifies a problem, gives direction to development, addresses a niche that could truly find a use inside the application and create a buzz based on achieved accomplishments rather than expectations (overly simplified, but a proven strategy and well documented in ‘Crossing the Chasm’). I haven’t seen that many ...
-
04.05.08Is the Metaverse Less Real if Madison Avenue Says It Ain’t? (Report from the Virtual Worlds Conference)The Virtual World Conference was a sort of giddy hallucination for me, never having been before, and maybe I'm LUCKY (based on other reports) that it's a bit more somber and less gushing than past events. Everything feels a bit more gray these days, constant drizzle in New York (gave me a cold) and all these "bad vibes man" coming from Wall Street and Main Street and CNN, but for me it was a thrill to see the Lindens, and Philip, who was looking well barbered and tanned in his Neko collar and visionary vision, all the Californians seemed to ...
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.