Betsy Book has posted an announcement over on Terra Nova that her latest paper, “Virtual World Business Brands: Entrepreneurship and Identity in Massively Multiplayer Online Gaming Environments“, is available for download. Get it here.
This is a subject that’s been occupying my mind of late, though regarded from perhaps a slightly different perspective. I look forward to reading this.
I’ve not seen much news on the Computex show, so I’ve not seen many pictures. However, ExtremeTech has a nice little slideshow from the event which is worth a peek. There’s a mix of case designs, internal components, accessories, and of course “booth babes”. The above image of BenQ’s new mp3 player was the most interesting to me as it does seem to show that BenQ is at least trying to create their own look (when they’re not busy being heavily influenced by companies like Apple).
The unusual case shapes in that slideshow (am I the only one who thought some looked like plastic cosmetic cases you see at the dollar store?) reminded me of ExtremeTech’s 2005 Case Mod Competition (details here). The first weekly winner has been posted and is this hybrid desk-pc:
Okay. A little too niche for the mass market perhaps, but better than some of the stuff in that Computex slideshow. Obviously someone knows how to use shop tools. If only they knew how to use a camera to compose a nice photograph…
I’m surprised this hasn’t been covered by any of the design sites I visit, but niche toy site, Android8.com, in partnership with Josh Spear’s blogsite, has announced the winner of their toy design competition – Derek Duncan. And here is the winning design:
Personally, I really like it and look forward to seeing how this translates into a manufactured piece. In the meantime, check out some more pics and a couple other entries here.
If you didn’t read the Wired articles I mentioned in an earlier post, this one may seem to come out of left field. The point of that post was mostly to show how technology seems to be driven by the *needs* of the extremes of human behavior. On the one hand you have the military developing swarming robotic/remote-controlled fighter aircraft (see this early post as well), and on the other hand you have the “pron” industry feeding technology into the public arena – whether it be vcr’s or webcam peepshows. And because they were both about telepresence technology, they were relevant to what I write here.
Now here’s a guy who’s integrating things with videogames (see related post here). From the Wired article:
His fascination with teledildonics — sex toys that lovers can control for one another over the internet, whether they’re in the same room, the same house, or 3,000 miles apart — grew out of his interest in video games.
Well, that does it. Videogames are most definitely eViL.
(p.s. I hope it’s not lost on you that this guy has hooked up a sex toy to a game called “Quake”)
Reputation capital is something I’ve recently become more interested in since joining the Second Life virtual community. It’s certainly something I’ve used in my real life – my rep and not my salesmanship have gotten me the design projects that pay the bills. Most people understand how it all works… in the real world. But how it functions in a virtual world or online is a bit more complex. That old New Yorker cartoon “On the internet, nobody knows you’re a dog” comes to mind here.
In the real world, there are obvious consequences for bad behavior. But in a virtual world the perception of anonymity leads many to behave in ways they wouldn’t dare in real life. Except there’s often a consequence from what I’ve observed which takes at least one of two forms:
a) the shroud of anonymity is removed and inappropriate virtual behavior is linked to a real life person… surprise, surprise. So the “dog” isn’t entirely correct; with effort, a person’s real life identity can often be determined. The RIAA’s lawsuits against “anonymous” music pirates are one example.
b) the real life person has invested time and effort in some facet of their virtual representation and their poor reputation at some point becomes a barrier to further reward. For example, they might have stated their dislike for a particular group of people… gays, liberals, asians, whatever… but then find that to “level up” in some fashion they require the assistance of another individual who belongs to one of the disparaged groups. Open mouth, insert foot.
If you’ve been reading my blog, you might recall this post that dealt with reputation. There’s a link in there to a WorldChanging post (here) and inside that is a link to a Terra Nova entry (here). Interesting reading. Add to that this video interview over on Release 1.0 that discusses Online Reputation Systems with an eBay representative. It’s not too long and very informative.
The reason I bring this up now is the big news that eBay has purchased Shopping.com. For more about that, BusinessWeek online has a report you can read here. And notice this line in the BW article:
The purchase is true to eBay’s custom of following its customers into new markets.
Now if eBay follows their customers, and more and more virtual goods start changing hands, then it stands to reason eBay will at some point move into that territory. So now you see why reputation is such an interesting element. Without their feedback system, eBay might not be the success they are today. And reputation systems are increasingly important in virtual activities – whether games or worlds.
And btw, I assume people are aware that eBay’s founders have invested in Second Life and perhaps other virtual world projects.