Just passed through Blogspotting and noticed a Stephen Baker entry (Link) which had a comment in it I thought was worth sharing since I’ve raised the issue of virtual “griefing” on several occasions (most notably this one – Link). His blog entry concerns the trials and tribulations of the now very well known “Million Dollar Homepage” entrepeneur, Alex Tew. As most people are now probably aware, the newly-minted millionaire is apparently becoming the target of denial-of-service attacks originating from Russian extortionists (i.e. they’ve infected the computers of average people worldwide and are turning them into “zombies” which repeatedly attempt to access the target website, thus overwhelming it and basically causing it to shut down). That’s a problem considering his obligations to those who purchased ad space on his website and made him wealthy. Here’s what Mr. Baker had to say:

The lesson? Success draws outlaws, who in the world of the net are just a click or two away. In retrospect, sometime between hatching the idea and gaining monster publicity for it, Alex should have secured the site, arranged for massive bandwidth, and hired a lawyer. Next time he probably will.

I’m not sure there’ll be a next time for Alex, but that’s good advice for whoever does have the next million-dollar idea.

I hope people – especially industrial designers – are following the progress of Muttpop‘s latest project over on the Vinyl Pulse website. Knowing that they’re providing updates every Friday should make that easy. I know I look forward to reading them and seeing how the project is developing.

And if you’re not familiar with what’s been going on over there (or in the “urban vinyl” niche toy market in general), be sure to take a look. “El Panda”, the current effort being profiled (Link to El Panda’s development blog entries), follows close on the heels of Muttpop’s “Tequila” project and looks to be just as much fun.

{Image source: Vinyl Pulse}

It’s time. This… could… get… messy.

Looks like the good folks at SLBoutique are on their way to helping blur the increasingly fuzzy line between what’s real and what’s virtual. As Jerry P warned readers of his blog last week (Link), SLBoutique is now selling real goods for virtual cash (see the latest post over on the SL Future Salon blog – Link). Guess it should come as no surprise the first product is a computer component; too bad they aren’t selling something more dramatic… like a puppy.

But the truth is, I’m not sure this will make waves. A lot of interested people have already read stories about people in developing countries earning living wages playing online games. Is this really so outlandish given that news? I don’t think so.

On the other hand, in an object culture full of people claiming they “love” McDonald’s fries, “love” their iPod, “love” their new car, and sometimes “love” their significant other, who knows. Now if it had been a puppy…

There’s been a fair amount of press associated with the apparently illegal Subway ads that showed up in Valve software’s “Counter-Strike: Source” online videogame. If I recall correctly, I first heard about it over on Clickable Culture who now has an entry (Link) directing readers to an Ars Technica story on the affair (Link) (as do a number of sites actually – it’s excellent reading; comments included). Here’s one small clip from the report:

Though the description of the process is technically true in this case, Townsend’s words suggest that IGA technology has been included in the game itself with the cooperation of the developer. For Counter-Strike, the code was “included within the game” by means of a special mod developed by IGA that displayed ads at various places in particular maps—but it was never cleared with Valve, the game’s creator. Because Counter-Strike games are not hosted on a central server, individual server operators made the decision to include the advertising mod on their servers, and this is where the story grows a bit murky. Engage or IGA apparently recruited server operators to run the mod, though how this worked was unclear.

I point to that particular part because that’s not exactly the kind of mod I was thinking of when I previously posted something suggesting game modifications and total conversions were the way to go (Link). However, it really is the obvious thing to do if you’re an advertiser looking for a quick and easy way into the game (pun intended). This might hurt Subway’s PR (emphasis on “might”), but this has put both IGA and Engage firmly on the map.