The MIT Technology Review website has a nice article, “Cinegames” (Link), discussing the ever-increasing realism in videogames. That’s really no surprise to me considering I watch those developments like a hawk. Even so, it’s a good article worth reading.

Meanwhile, now former-Sony Online Entertainment videogame guru, Raph Koster, has posted an entry, “Company-sanctioned RMT hits single-player games” (Link), discussing RMT (Real Money Trade) coming to a videogame on an XBox 360 near you. What’s most interesting to me are the comments. For some reason plenty of people seem to think consumers won’t spend a couple bucks for a virtual product. I think they’re wrong. I think the ones making those comments are mostly old-time gamers used to getting free mods. I also think that they’ve not been watching the mod community wither under the weight of increasingly realistic games. I’ve discussed that issue before, so I won’t go into it again now. Let’s just wait and see what happens.

I get a kick out of seeing “new” products that I’ve either seen concepts of years ago or actually designed at some point in my career. The recent wrist-mounted computer is one such product (the new Eurotech concept – Link; my old concept – reLink). Now here’s another, the Magellan Roadmate navigation system which looks to me like my 2nd year ID student concept from 1992-93:

That’s some old design there. Back then the project was all about exploring the *amazing* new technology of CD’s! Well, it was new to our professors.
Continue reading →

A couple of days ago I read a post over on Mashable (Link) about a new application getting ready to launch into beta. If you design products for a living – and especially if you’re designing/selling niche products – this might be of interest. It’s called MyPicklist (yes, another “My*”). From the development blog (Link):

An Ad-Creation tool that will allow members to create various sized banner ads that promote highlighted products from your picklist. We are positiong this as a google Ad-Sense alternative. Most people with blogs don’t make that much from those google ads and with this ad tool it will allow bloggers to create revenue from themselves by voicing their product recommendations to their readers.

The more I think about this, the more potential I see in it. Continue reading →

There’s an excellent essay written by Peter Lawrence over on Fast Company called “Why Design?” (Link). Here’s one part I liked:

One way to think of a designer is as somebody who has learned to speak a language that everyone understands but that the designer has been trained to speak. This modeling language is essential to an effective innovation process precisely because it gives everyone, from every discipline, a common ground and keeps them on the same page. With even a crude model sitting on the table, there are no words to misinterpret. Prototypes are a very important part of the discovery and development process, providing a tool to explore and expand an idea.

This makes a nice companion piece to some other written things about which I posted yesterday (reLink). With enough of this material, I’ll never have to explain what I do ever again; I’ll just give them some links to read.

Found an interesting article over on C|NET concerning a company with which I’m familiar, and whose employees I know through my time in Second Life. The piece, “‘Second Life’ dreams of Electric Sheep” (Link) is – you guessed it – mostly about the Electric Sheep Company. I’d explain what they do, but the article does a good job of that. So for those interested in virtual world and real world commerce, it’s well worth the read. Here’s one exerpt:

“For me, the most interesting thing was that…much of our interactions (with Electric Sheep) took place in ‘Second Life,’ avatar to avatar,” said Johnson. “The social aspects of ‘Second Life’ were a very interesting part of the project for me because a lot of this took place in that world, even though it was a real-world contract between two companies.”

I expect we’ll be hearing more and more about companies doing business inside virtual worlds. This is just the tip of an iceberg that includes stuff like UGS’s PLM software (about which I recently wrote – reLink).