Nintendo Wii Interactivity
When the Nintendo Wii comes out in the US, I’m really interested how it feels to use this innovative controller.
Add comment September 21st, 2006
Archive for September, 2006
Nautilus - Chilled & Deep Breaks
A building breakbeat set, starting out chilled & hypnotic and progressing into more intense progressive breaks grooves.
DJ Spyhunter releases a fresh hour long mix every two weeks. Click here to add the podcast series directly to iTunes. Or subscribe to the podcast RSS Feed with your favorite app.
Nautilus - Chilled out deep breaks.
Mixed by DJ Spyhunter. Breakbeat + more.
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http://www.djspyhunter.com
1. Quivver - Space Manoeuvres Part 3 (Quivver’s Breaks Mix)
2. Alucard - Lighthouse (Ozgur Can and Likwit Furry Nipples Mix)
3. Digital Witchcraft - Pocket Universe
4. Jono Fernandez - Deliver Me (Digital Witchcraft mix)
5. Delikate Imposters - Sleepless City
6. Lustral - Solace
7. Desert Dwellers - Musiki Ukabili (AFK’s Moon Over Myakka Remix)
8 .Blue Room Project - Liquid Motion (Demian Heck’s New World Breaks Mix)
9. Momu - See It Thru
10. Daniel Gregory - Oceana (Forth Remix)
Add comment September 19th, 2006
Fear at the Theme Park
Add comment September 19th, 2006
AMV: The Race
Anime fans always seems to be right there on the forefront of popular internet trends, perhaps even helping drive them. One place this is true is the mashup phenomena. AMVs, or Anime Music Videos, have been aroun for quite a long time, certainly at least as long as the mashup trend. These are fan created videos, using clips from animes and set to music, to convey a new story. Well, the latest I have come across (not really the best out there), The Race by Istiv Studio gets props for the amount of work spent on it. In many of the scenes with multiple characters in them, they have been painstakingly cut out of multiple different animes, and edited into one scene, creating the ultimate cross-over themed race. While not the best AMV I’ve seen (YouTube: AMV) it sure must have been a lot of work and to be fair, there are much much worse out there. Music is Oooh La La by the Wiseguys horribly abused by the pitch controller.
Add comment September 19th, 2006
Super Mario Cake
I knows lots of people who would absolutely LOVE a Super Mario cake.
2 comments September 19th, 2006
Talk Like a Pirate!
Today is International Talk Like a Pirate Day! Run out of eye-patches? Is your skull-n-crossbones in need of some dis-repair? Well, Hoist your mainsails and set a course for San Francisco and plunder some booty at the Pirate Store. Ship in pieces from your last raid? Then go Pirate style in World of Warcraft - my guild is having Pirate Night where we eat Deviate Delight (can turn you into a pirate character) and wreaking havoc on unsuspecting hordies. Walk the plank matey!
Add comment September 19th, 2006
Fly without ID (or, Put on your Tin Foil Hat)
It might be quite appropriate just after the 5th anniversary of 9/11 to link to this interesting article about the right of American citizens to fly without government issued IDs. It might seem that showing your ID at the airport is unavoidable, however this might be one of the lies the government is feeding us, along with the corporations/airlines. I’d really like to learn more about this issue and what the real dirt is. It is scary that in our increasingly controlled society we are fed BS and so many accept it without question. I’m no conspiracy theory nut, but the grip of the government on the masses of deluded seems to be growing stronger.
Add comment September 13th, 2006
Bird Record Player
jeroen diepenmaat is an artist much of whose work seems to revolve (ha ha) around vinyl (you know, records?) and other audio gear. The bird beak as record needle is quite humorous, yet it doesn’t feel forced.
[via we-make-money-not-art]
1 comment September 13th, 2006
Japanese Capsule Hotels
At the Capsule Inn in Akihabara, Japan, a separate capsule unit is available for each guest, as a sleeping space. Each room has blinds to be drawn for complete privacy. In the capsule unit, amenities like a TV, radio, alarm clock and adjustable lighting are provided. You can control all these devices in a sleeping position, as if you were in a cockpit of an aircraft, or spacecraft.
[via Cynical-C, via Neatorama]
1 comment September 13th, 2006
Opening Hours Visualization
These Opening Hours visualizations are an interesting regional style of information display specific to Riga (Latvia), apparently due to the talent of a designer in the area with an eye towards information graphics.
[via infosthetics]
Add comment September 13th, 2006
komaneko, cute stop motion
Komaneko (ã“ã¾ãã“) is a super cute stop-motion cat that gets inspired to make it’s own stop-motion animation. Set to super kawaii tune. Update: found 4 more trailers that follow the story of the first.
[via TV in Japan]
Add comment September 12th, 2006
English <-> Murloc Translator
Ever get that feeling that nearby Murlocs are casting sideways glances at you, looking for any chance to run up to you with their gurgling scream and thwap you? Perhaps it’s time to get to know your friendly neighborhood Murloc a little better with theEnglish to Murloc Translator. Soon you’ll all be having a mug of Moonberry Juice with them outside the Auction House in IronForge. Gotta love the Javascript error messge I got!
Add comment September 12th, 2006
Bring the InAnimate to Life
If your cubicle feels as sterile and dull as an science lab, maybe it’s time to add some life to it - with these cute inAnimate Stickers, you can bring any inanimate object to life.
Add comment September 12th, 2006
Stephen Levy on World of Warcraft
Stephen Levy has an article about World of Warcraft: Is It a Game?
“My girlfriend—who actually bought me the game—was ready to kill me,” says Alex Rascovar (Level 60, Gnome Mage), a New York City actor who often binged with eight-hour sessions before he went cold turkey a few months ago. There are parental controls available, but most parents haven’t a clue. (Only when embarking on this story did yours truly learn that his son [Level 60, Troll Shaman] had hit the level cap in WOW.)
Read the article after the jump. Image from Molten Core raid video.
Is World of Warcraft a game, or is it a harbinger of virtual realities that we all might inhabit? Only a Night Elf knows for sure.
By Steven Levy, Newsweek
Sept. 18, 2006 - Two years into the history of World of Warcraft—an online game that accommodates 7 million players around the world—no one had successfully ventured into the dungeon to slay a group of computer-generated villains known as the Four Horsemen. But four experienced “guilds” of players—one in Europe, two in America and one in China—were coming close, posting updates on separate Web sites they maintained. Finally, a 40-person contingent from a U.S. guild conquered the last beast—and its members became instant international celebrities in a massive community where dragons and Druids are as real as dirt.
In the physical world we vainly scrounge for glory. Bin Laden still taunts us, the bus doors close before we reach them and leave us standing in the rain. But in the fantasy realm of Azeroth, the virtual geography of World of Warcraft, the physical pain comes only from hitting a keyboard too hard, camaraderie is the norm and heroism is never far away. In simple terms, Warcraft is the most advanced and popular entry in a genre called Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games, or MMO. “I call it the Technicolor, Americanized version of ‘Lord of the Rings’,” says Chris Metzen, VP of creative development for the game’s maker, Blizzard Software. But for millions it is more than a game—it’s an escape, an obsession and a home.
Engaging in this orgy of sword-swiping, spell-casting and monster-slaying generally involves a $50 purchase of the software and a monthly $15 fee thereafter to play online. Players in Asia—a clear majority of the WOW population, despite the fact that the game was created by digital dudes in Irvine, Calif.—buy cards that allow them WOW time for a few cents an hour. Then there’s the merchandising: T shirts, jackets, hats, a nondigital (!) board game. In China, 600 million Coke cans were festooned with WOW figures. There are seven novels based on Warcraft lore. And Blizzard recently inked a movie deal with the studio that produced “Superman Returns.” Games-industry analyst David Cole estimates that Blizzard (part of Vivendi) has made more than $300 million from the game so far. Blizzard COO Paul Sams says only, “We are an incredibly profitable company.”
What distinguishes Warcraft from previous blockbuster games is its immersive nature and compelling social dynamics. It’s a rich, persistent alternative world, a medieval Matrix with lush graphics and even a seductive soundtrack (Blizzard has two full-time in-house composers). Blizzard improved on previous MMOs like Sony’s Everquest by cleverly crafting its game so that newbies could build up characters at their own pace, shielded from predators who would casually “gank” them—while experienced players continually face more and more daunting challenges. The company mantra, says lead designer Rob Pardo, is “easy to learn, difficult to master.” After months of play, when you reach the ultimate level (60), you join with other players for intricately planned raids on dungeons, or engage in massive rumbles against other guilds.
“Ninety percent of what I do is never finished—parenting, teaching, doing the laundry,” says Elizabeth Lawley (Level 60, Troll Priest), a Rochester, N.Y., college professor. “In WOW, I can cross things off a list—I’ve finished a quest, I’ve reached a new level.”
Like many WOW players, Lawley is active in a guild. Some of the high-ranking guilds, like the one formed by noted Japanese venture capitalist Joi Ito (Level 60, Gnome Mage), are mini-societies with their own Web sites, online forums and private lore. First Ito invited people he knew professionally, like Ross Mayfield (Level 60, Human Palladin), CEO of an Internet company on whose board Ito sits. “Warcraft is the new golf,” says Mayfield. “I actually closed a deal with a company I met through WOW.” But as Ito met others in WOW, the roster diversified. There is a priest whose character is … a priest. There are soldiers, bartenders, truckdrivers, lawyers and Goggle engineers. The guild’s “raid leader”—who organizes the twice-weekly ventures into the feared Molten Core to slay the powerful “boss mob” monsters—is Jamie Ray (Level 60, Night Elf Druid), a night-shift nurse in Parkersburg, W.Va.
Though WOW is a fantasy world, the interaction between guilds and individuals relies on human choices and morals. The first thing one does when joining the game is to choose an avatar from one of eight “races,” split between two factions: the human-looking Alliance and the more bestial Horde. Edward Castronova (Level 42, Priest), an Indiana U professor and author of “Synthetic Worlds,” once roiled the WOW community by a blog posting entitled “The Horde Is Evil,” in which he charged that only the antisocial at heart would pick that darker side. Castronova believes that if someone behaves badly in the game—an example would be the WOW equivalent of spree killing, where someone ganks a character of a much lower level, just for the hell of it—that person should be judged harshly in the real world as well.
Another example of questionable behavior is viewable in a video that more than 80,000 people have accessed on YouTube. When one guild member died (in real life, not Azeroth), his grieving friends decided to hold a funeral for him inside the game. The solemn affair was disrupted when a rival guild burst upon the unarmed mourners and slaughtered them mercilessly. “It’s unfortunate that someone would do that to people trying to honor one of their guild members,” says Mike Morhaime, Blizzard’s president. Another event that bothered Blizzard’s management was an in-game protest march, when hundreds of naked Gnomes gathered to call for more powers.
Generally, though, players of the game enjoy a form of com-ity rarely seen in the real world; higher-level players go out of their way to tutor newbies and accompany them on quests. Deep friendships are forged. Relationships begin that flower into marriage, with Tauren brides and Undead grooms tying the knot in some virtual tavern in Thunder Bluff.
Warcraft even has its own economy, as the gold and exotic armor and weaponry that players accumulate are much coveted in trade. Despite the opposition of Blizzard (which thinks that using real money to gain an edge in the game violates WOW’s egalitarian spirit), a thriving industry makes tons of real dollars by “gold farming” (accumulating in-game currency and selling it) or “power leveling” (borrowing someone’s avatar and grinding through the game to gain experience). Most of the manpower is supplied by Chinese workers like Zhang Hanbin (Level 60, Rogue), a 24-year-old dropout who works in a grim apartment-cum-sweatshop in the provincial town of Wuxue. An eight-hour day collecting game loot can yield 100 gold pieces, worth about $30 on the black market.
Are you getting the idea that “Warcrack” (as some call it) eats up a lot of time? “Of all the games that my [addictive] clients are involved with, World of Warcraft is the most popular,” says clinical psychologist Kimberly Young. Mostly, trouble comes in the form of kids who fall asleep in class, and furious spouses. “My girlfriend—who actually bought me the game—was ready to kill me,” says Alex Rascovar (Level 60, Gnome Mage), a New York City actor who often binged with eight-hour sessions before he went cold turkey a few months ago. There are parental controls available, but most parents haven’t a clue. (Only when embarking on this story did yours truly learn that his son [Level 60, Troll Shaman] had hit the level cap in WOW.)
In China, a competitive society where real life is becoming as freaky as anything you’d find in Azeroth, players seem even more prone to go overboard. According to the Xinhua News Agency, one girl died of exhaustion after playing WOW for several days without a break.
Even those who dropped out will be tempted to return later this year when Blizzard releases its long-awaited update The Burning Crusade. The key features include two new races, a new continent to explore and an increase in the level cap from 60 to 70. Hundreds of thousands will jam the WOW servers until they once again reach the peak.
Edward Castronova sees all this as an early indicator of what will become a vast participation in synthetic worlds, with fuzzier and fuzzier lines between virtual and physical realms. “In 20 or 30 years the technology will be here to create incredibly more realistic and immersive worlds,” he says. “There will be a world that fits the fantasy of any life you want to lead.” Those deep into WOW, of course, are already living that future. “Yes, it’s just a game,” says Joi Ito. “The way that the real world is a game.”
With Melinda Liu in China and N’gai Croal and Peg Tyre in New York
Add comment September 11th, 2006
Underground Fortress
You too can now buy your very own underground fortress!
[via cynical-c]
Add comment September 11th, 2006