Black-and-white patterned boxes called Semacode bars will be placed on advertisements which carry coded information that will bring the shopper to the retailer's product catalog. You'll then be able to buy the clothes using your cellphone account, making it that much easier for your spouse to rack up an insurmountable debt and send you to an early grave. [CherryFlavor via SciFi]
I guess most of the people reading this will have seen some of the multi-touch demos by Jeff Han, Apple and Tactiva. I wanted to play around with some ideas that required a multi-touch pad, but there aren't any devices available (Tactiva aren't shipping...)
Long story short, I made a simple one from a plastic bag, some dye and a camera:
Cancer or no, I wouldn't go near an RFID implant. These things don't have off-switches. They don't have disclosure policies. They don't have logs, or even notifiers. That means that you can't stop people from interrogating your RFID, you can't choose who gets to interrogate your RFID, you can't see who has polled your RFID -- and you can't even know when your RFID is being read. You wouldn't carry normal ID that behaves this way, but from London's Oyster Card to the DOT's FastPasses to the new US passports, these things are being stuck to our person in ever-greater numbers.
And while manufacturers claim that these things have inherent security because they can only be read from a few centimetres away, hackers have already ready them at more than 10m distance.
Leading cancer specialists reviewed the research for The Associated Press and, while cautioning that animal test results do not necessarily apply to humans, said the findings troubled them. Some said they would not allow family members to receive implants, and all urged further research before the glass-encased transponders are widely implanted in people.Link See also: How thieves steal RFID-enabled cars HOWTO disable your new, RFID-laden US passport CA bill would ban forced subdermal RFID-tagging of humans HOWTO make an RFID virus Report: "contactless" credit cards with RFID are easily hacked DIY self-RFID-chipping HOWTO, Wed. Jan 4 at Dorkbot in NYC HOWTO build an RFID skimmer Hello Kitty anti-RFID skimming sleeves Personal firewall for the RFIDs you carry Interview with RFID implantee Former Bush official signs up for RFID implant How RFID hackers can steal gas, cars, and office access HOWTO turn a disposable camera into an RFID-killer UK RFID passports cracked US Passports to get RFID chip implants in 2006 US starts issuing RFID passports, despite security concerns Audio from Bruce Sterling's "Arphid nor RFID" rant Why RFID-chipped US passports are a bad idea Why new US passports can be read without permission US govt admits RFID passports are danger to AmericansTo date, about 2,000 of the so-called radio frequency identification, or RFID, devices have been implanted in humans worldwide, according to VeriChip Corp. The company, which sees a target market of 45 million Americans for its medical monitoring chips, insists the devices are safe, as does its parent company, Applied Digital Solutions, of Delray Beach, Fla.
Augustine: one of the oldest online multi player "worlds" around
Gamasutra was on hand to take great notes, which is a good thing, because very few developers reportedly attended Haro's talk. (The phenomenal success of Habbo Hotel continues to be criminally under-appreciated by the game industry.) Reading Gamasutra's coverage, I've gleaned five takeaways that strike me as most valuable.
Old School Ages Better
Originally launched in 2000 as a two room space made to promote a Finish pop group, Sulake was surprised to find the place swamped by international players who couldn't even speak the language; they retooled and expanded as Hotel Goldfish, then re-dubbed to become Habbo Hotel. Throughout that time, Habbo has retained the same look of blocky, pixel-heavy, 2.5D graphics.
"It's actually served us pretty well," says Haro. "If you think about 3D games from seven years ago they look pretty terrible. And the kids who play this game don't even know what the word 'retro' means. It's just another look to them." Upgrading to 3D graphics (the game industry assumption) would have required enormous development costs, and by requiring a better computer to run, cut out much of their audience.
More Revenue Streams, not Less
Initially launched with premium SMS as a payment model for virtual furniture, Sulake had to tweak this scheme to prevent hacking, then when they went opened in UK in 2001, where few kids had cell phones back then, changed to selling virtual currency. They've added "rare item" sales, external advertising, and other revenue channels, and a wide variety of ways for kids to pay. This is in marked contrast to most other MMOs, which are generally tied to a single major stream. Not a good idea, especially when dealing with an international audience. "Credit cards and prepay cards are cool — but they just don't cut it in the global market."
Roll with the Churn
To me, the biggest surprise is just how many Habbo accounts have been created, in relation to active users: 80 million to 7.5 million. (Parenthetical: this is roughly the adoption rate of Second Life, which is 12-15%, and I suspect most other free account-driven worlds, too.) Haro evidently didn't address Habbo's high churn rate at GDC, but what's striking is that it hasn't mattered to its popularity. My guess is that the turnover is a necessary part of it, as kids experiment with numerous different avatars, before finding the community and the identity they want to stick with.
Different Countries Mean Different Audiences
Haro mentions a fascinating demographics analysis of players according to personality types (Rebels, Creatives, Achievers, Loners, Traditionals), and unsurprisingly, these vary according to nation. (The US has a lot of Achievers, and Japan, a lot of Loners.) This suggests that content and experience should be tweaked to cater to these types, and to national expectations around them. At one point, Habbo's Japan area was swamped by Finns, leading to "a total catastrophe — the Japanese locked up their rooms and didn't allow people in their rooms unless they had a Japanese name." As a result, Sulake closed off the Japan region until its users had grown large enough not to feel overwhelmed by outsiders.
Another key demographic: Habbo is 51% boys and 49% girls, a rare gender parity that's surely crucial to its success as a social game.
Think Play Space, Not Game
Haro calls Habbo a "gameless game", adding "I'm very proud that we have this core gameplay without going out and killing monsters." Instead, they've created a number of themed rooms and let the players devise their own games around them. Habbo users have joined together to run their own roleplay areas, and the company keeps a light hand on community management, because then, "the players forget that the player-created content is the core of the world."
The reason this has worked so well, he speculates, is because it serves a deep need for adolescents. "If you look, little kids will play for hours… but teenagers are reaching the age where that's not socially allowed anymore. We're providing an environment where that's OK." (Also a philosophy behind Gaia Online, the US-based teen MMO showing amazing growth.)
If there's anything more interesting than the actual Habbo Hotel talk, it's who didn't really attend it: the game industry. GDC is the preeminent conference for both the creative and business sides of it, but according to several attendees, Haro's presentation attracted but a tiny audience, especially compared to a re-tread presentation on WoW, which was packed. "It was downright shameful how few people were at this keynote," veteran game designer Raph Koster moans on his blog. Koster has been the industry's biggest advocate of merging 2.0 principles to games, but he's still a largely solitary figure. "This was stuff that the crowd here needed to hear."
"Most of us are slow," fellow MMO vet designer Scott "Lum the Mad" Jennings acknowledges in his own worthy GDC wrap-up . "We obsess over what the big news was last year, much like hidebound militaries that always train to fight the war that they just got finished with." By that logic, maybe the industry will be ready to hear about Habbo Hotel in 2008– but as I've argued, it's probably way too late for them already.
Image credit: Habbo.com
I was asked in the comments of a previous post how I managed to run multiple versions of Skype
With the Windows operating system, everything runs under a user account which you log into when you boot up the computer. Say for the purposes of this discussion, my main default user account on my PC is MARK_1. Well when I boot up the PC in the morning, MARK_1 will load and all programs I subsequently use will run under MARK_1.
But I sometimes help out a friend who runs a virtual telephone answering service
First, you need to set up more Windows user accounts. To make this simple, I’ll name them MARK_2, MARK_3 and so on. Since I have a German language computer, I can’t really post too many screenshots and I am unsure of the terminology on an English language computer so I will describe it to you in general terms and perhaps you can tell me the exact wording. In the Windows start menu, you have a “System Setup” option and in there is an option called “User Accounts”. This is where you maintain your Windows accounts, including the main administrator account.
Just open that option up, choose the new account option and set up as many new accounts as you need. YOU DON’T HAVE TO LOG OUT OF YOUR CURRENT USER ACCOUNT TO DO THIS! Plus you need to have administrator privileges to set up new accounts. So trying this at work is probably not a good idea as your IT department will probably not appreciate it.
Using this method, I have run up to five Skype lines simultaneously and the ICQ chat program three times (although I am sure more is possible if you have the CPU capacity to support them all). As I said before, you can also use this method to run more than one Firefox browser to check email accounts or perhaps you want to be logged in as two different users in a social network? The possibilities for running more than one Windows user account is endless.
Can you think of other scenarios where running more than one user account would be beneficial? Let’s hear it in the comments!
The latest brainwave from an industry that continues to bleed revenue is the Ringle: a product that combines the single format with ringtones.
Each ringle will contain three songs: one popular track, a remix, an older track from the same artist and a ringtone. Distribution method for the Ringle: a CD with a slip-sleeve cover.
Reuters reports that the idea is that if consumers can download any ringtones they want, why not let them buy them on CD.
Sony BMG Music and Universal Music Group will release 50 and 20 titles respectively in October and November. The CD’s will sell for either $5.98 or $6.98. Distributors will include BestBuy, Wal-Mart, Target and Amazon.
I’m nearly speechless. The CD Single is dead and the Record Industry believes that people will spend near $7 on buying a Ringtone and single on a CD. I think the multitude of Ringtone sellers and even Apple has nothing to worry about.
(image credit: icanhascheeseburger)
In 2005, two weeks following the approval of VeriChip Corp's RFID chips, FDA overseer Tommy Thompson left the FDA. And five months later he ended up on the board of VeriChip Corp. Coincidence? Honestly, we're not sure.
While most of us fear the Big Brother aspects of RFID, the positive medical prospects are quite promising. You know, if they don't cause gigantic tumors in the 2,000 people who currently have implants. [AP via engadget]
These interesting, but admittedly vague and flaky estimates come from computer Scientist, Peter Gutman. Although you can pick at the numbers quite easily, the guy makes a very interesting point. While projects like Seti@Home can harness a lot of computing power, a virus or worm that doesn't need to ask permission from a user could conceivably be vastly more powerful. Imagine the potential if virus writers found more interesting things to do with those cycles than send spam.
Will the first person to find extraterrestrial signals be an amateur hacker, rather than Seti? Could complex protein folding solutions be found by bored crackers? And would the benevolent act of finding a cure for a genetic illness outweigh the malevolent act of creating the worm that rounded up the processing cycles needed to do it? [Uber Review]
http://www.flickr.com/photos/bcnbits/
and a slideshow/grid of her work
http://picturesandbox.com/lightbox_install/7jhs7u27
Install your tuner card and SageTV Last year, Adam gave you the skinny on how to install a TV card and start kicking homebrew DVR ass with SageTV. If you haven't already, you'll need to follow the exact same process to get started with SageTV before you install the web interface. SageTV will cost you $80 and comes with a 15-day free trial if you want to make sure everything works before purchasing. For those of you who already dropped the ducats on SageTV, it's about to become the best $80 you've ever spent on a piece of software.
Download and install the web interface The SageTV web interface is a run-of-the-mill Windows executable that you can download from Sourceforge and is very simple to install. The only setup required is to choose a username and password. I have found on more than one occasion that I wanted to share my username and password with friends and family so they could check it out—or even so they can schedule recordings of their own. (I recommend choosing a username and password that you'd be comfortable sharing, but that's your prerogative.)
On the "Installation Options" screen, leave all of the defaults enabled and choose "Install." When the installation completes, make sure SageTV is running and pull up http://localhost:8080/sage/Home in your browser of choice. After entering your username and password you'll be greeted with your sparkling new web interface for SageTV.
Open a port on your router
In order to access your web interface from outside your home network, you're going to need to enable port-forwarding for port 8080 on your router. Port forwarding will differ from router to router, but typically you should add an entry that looks similar to mine below. Be sure you to substitute your own IP address for the computer hosting the web interface (your homebrewed DVR).
Assign a domain name
As long as you're going to access the web interface from outside your home network, you can go ahead and assign a domain name so you don't have to track and remember your computer's external IP address whenever you want to log in. Remember that the Web UI installs itself into subdirectories on port 8080. So after you assign a domain name you'll need to point your browser to http://yourdomain:8080/sage/Home.
Schedule recordings
Scheduling recordings over the internet with the Web UI is a breeze. The Web UI syncs with your existing SageTV program listings so you can peruse listings and schedule recordings with one-click. The Web UI has many different views you can choose from. In my opinion, the most intuitive is the "EPG Grid View" (see below), which can be found under the "Program Guide" drop down.
Setting SageTV to record a show for an entire season is as simple as choosing the show, and clicking "Add Favorite." SageTV has a whole slew of management options like which channels you want to record the show on, how many episodes you want to save, whether you want the recordings to expire and much more.
Stream your recordings or live TV
My favorite feature of the Web UI is the ability to create a playlist and stream live TV or your recordings. The one drawback to streaming is that you are limited by your upload speed. When you're on your local network you'll have no problem, however, when you leave the network you'll need to reduce your stream quality so the playback isn't choppy.
Extra help for the SageTV Web UI (should you need it) is available in the SageTV forums. Besides the satisfaction of completing a fun DIY project, a home grown DVR with a web UI gives you instant access to your favorite television shows no matter where you are in the world. Also sharing, burning and transferring your videos becomes that much easier since you don't need to physically interact with the computer running SageTV. For the total price of $80 you can't go wrong with SageTV and a free web UI.
Kyle Pott is Lifehacker's Contributing Editor who can't dream of returning to a world without SageTV and its Web UI. He has never ever purchased any third party applications for Windows except SageTV.
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