Tag Archives: #marketing

The Ideas That Get Out

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A few days ago there was news (over on New Scientist no less) about a coaster that has embedded electronics that sense when a glass is empty and wirelessly notifies the barkeep. This struck me since I had that idea about 4 or 5 years ago and am surprised it’s now something new and innovative. Maybe it is. But there are practical reasons I discarded the idea – ranging from the obviousness of the idea (to me at least) to some of the patents I’d seen on the USPTO.gov site (yes I did some research). I have plenty of these kinds of things floating around in my head or doodled on scraps of paper I keep in a pile. Some of them extensions of this idea not discussed in any of the articles I’ve read, but which I’ve no doubt someone will now stumble upon.

What quite frankly bugs me is that someone could take an idea I had years ago and now claim a patent as if the idea first came to them before anyone else considered it. Yeah, I know, there’s a zillion people out there saying the same thing and I’m not alone. But there’s a difference now. I can broadcast that idea on the net so that some corporation can’t just come along and monopolize the idea. Just think if someone had broadbanded Amazon’s “One-click” patent, or Microsoft’s “Skin As Conducting Medium” patent.

So in the spirit of letting some ideas out, I just posted an idea on the Core77 forum. It has to do with the Nike/NBA2K6 videogame I mentioned earlier and updating content (which I discussed over on another blog). I’ll just quote the idea I posted directly:

This shouldn’t be hard to implement. A range of basic shoe models could be built into the game from day one and assigned a generic name. Each model has an associated UV map. When Nike or some other company has a new shoe design, they associate that with one of the generic models and generate a new UV map (or “skin”). This then gets streamed to the game. But in addition, that skin carries a “tag” – a code fragment. So say that when the real shoes are announced for sale in the real world, the virtual shoe code could be released so gamers can use that virtual model ingame.

For example:

Generic polygon model Code Main Fragment: 344566543
New shoe design skin: adfa433

Code to unlock the content: 344566543-adfa433

Next year’s shoe design using the same basic platform comes along and you get a new code frag: akea597

New product code to unlock updated content: 344566543-akea597

Of course someone probably has this one patented already, but regardless, it feels good to just say it. I’ve done this once before; the RadTag security device. Perhaps I’ll do this more often.

Much Ado About Ads

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Well, a portion of the Second Life virtual community is up in arms over an article over on the GameDaily website. The article is about the move of real life advertising into games and virtual worlds. Here are some excerpts from it, including bits of an interview with Linden Lab Marketing VP, David Fleck:

“There is a place for anybody to participate,” said Fleck, “including big corporations.”

Currently, Second Life has a program developed by Wells Fargo called Stagecoach Island, which features Wells Fargo ATM machines that give out “Linden Dollars” that can be used to buy products in “Second Life.”

Fleck said he is currently in discussions with other brands about advertising in Second Life and is hopeful that additional deals could be reached by year’s end. He mentioned he would even be open to the idea of using avatars as advertisements.

Of course this has some people screaming bloody murder. Apparently everything changes when the virtual Nike stuff residents covet for their avatars goes from being the product of illegal trademark violations to legitimate content blessed by the brand owner.

Millions of Indie Dozens

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BusinessWeek is reporting news of a new independent videogame publisher on the block, Manifesto Games. From the BW article:

According to the press release, Manifesto will employ a digital distribution method to sell its games. The site will offer gamers a place where they “can find ‘the best of the rest,’ the games that the retail channel doesn’t think worth carrying.”

I need to check out the indy game dev boards to see how they’re responding to this “Long Tail” news. Distribution is one topic that seems to come up repeatedly on those forums, so this will doubtlessly make some waves in those ponds. And who knows, we may even see someone take an open-source Quake engine, and sell what would have once been a total conversion. Cool. And can indy game content be far behind?

A Chainlink Fence Still Has Holes

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Wells Fargo Stagecoach Island

I just came across an entry over on Clickable Culture that I fully expected to be reading… if not quite so soon. Read the news here. And I’ll just paste in the comment I made over there:

having come across the backdoor on the forums, i assumed LL was allowing residents to take a peek… or something (since the thread was rather long and still open). so i took a peek. and i mostly did so because while my curiousity level wasn’t too high initially, it has been recently piqued by search engine queries sending people looking for “Second+Life+Wells+Fargo+ Stagecoach+crack+password” to my blog.

so much for protected (cyber)spaces. ha.

Oh well, at least I got a few snapshots before the door got bolted closed. I suppose serious code jockeys looking for work might want to keep an eye on the Linden Lab employment page; especially those will backgrounds in security.

{Edit: it appears it’s not quite as bad as Clickable Culture lets on. From the referenced entry:

An obfuscated back door to Stagecoach Island was recently opened by a handful of Second Life residents who quickly found a number of bugs, exploits, and similar glitches–the most serious of which, perhaps, is the ability to transfer items between the Main Grid and Stagecoach Island.

Having read comments from those involved in the project, this appears to have been a kind of beta test – which explains the endorsement of the Lindens when this “back door” was brought to the community’s attention.

However, the beta has revealed some potential issues as reported by CC. But then that’s what a beta is for. That doesn’t mean my expectation for a cracked client won’t go unrealized. I hope it doesn’t happen, but the ease with which the client was recently hacked doesn’t fill me with confidence.}

{Image Copyright © 2005 C. Sven Johnson}