Researchers use magnetic fields to manipulate light
a collection of things i like and want to remember. by "scrapbooking" it on my blog i can go back and google it later
Posted by Augustine at 9:56 AM
Labels: light, magnetic fields
Posted by Augustine at 9:55 AM
Labels: pollution detector
How long will it be until we can stroll through the streets in a virtual world that is identical to our own? Given the state of a number of technologies, not very long. Over the last couple of years we’ve seen Microsoft Street Side and Virtual Earth as well as similar efforts from Google. But different technologies are now being deployed that are even more interesting that the results achieved from large companies taking and processing massive numbers of photos into now-standard 3D views.
Two standouts are Microsoft’s Photosynth Project and newcomer Everyscape, which Brady Forest wrote about today on O’Reilly Radar.
Posted by Augustine at 8:46 AM
Labels: virtual world
Continue reading Sanyo LP-XL50 projector touts uber-short throw
Posted by Augustine at 11:47 PM
The attention surrounding MMOs (massively multiplayer online worlds) has never been greater. But it’s not just role playing games along for the ride; non-game, avatar-driven virtual communities are just as popular, if not by more, and we’re not just talking Second Life here.
So in an effort to cut through the hype and glean some context, here are the most popular MMOs in terms of active users or subscribers, based on publicly available data. These titles may or may not be games, but the medium has expanded far beyond Tolkienesque fantasy worlds. They all are Mac-friendly/Web-based with exception of Guild Wars.
1. World of Warcraft, released 2004 - 8.5 million subscribers. While Habbo is giving Blizzard a run, the numbers generally support WoW as the biggest MMO in the world. Important qualification, though: only 4 million are based in the West and monthly subscribers, while its 4 million Chinese players only pay roughly 4 cents an hour to play it in Internet cafes.
2. Habbo Hotel, released 2000 - 7.5 million active users. The Finland-based “social game” MMO popular with teens and growing fast. Look out, Horde!
3. RuneScape, released 2001 - 5 million active users. A Java-based MMORPG operated by Jagex Ltd. with over nine million active free accounts. Boasts one million paying customers. Fancy that.
4. Club Penguin, released 2006 - 4 million active users. MMO for the kiddies developed by New Horizon Interactive. The game shares similarities with other social environments like Habbo Hotel.
5. Webkinz, released 2005 - 3.8 million active users. Here’s a novel idea: create beanie baby like stuffed animals, assign them a unique ID, then create an MMO portal in which kids can spend even more time using your product. When kids graduate from Club Penguin, they go to Webkinz (or so I’m told.)
6. Gaia Online, released 2003 - 2 million active users. Not quite an MMO, not quite a social site, but founder Derek Liu has openly stated the networks desire to focus on social gaming. Forums make up 30% of the current site activity.
7. Guild Wars, released 2005 - 2 million active users. Another MMORPG made by the popular NCsoft out of South Korea. No Mac love here, but a lot of active users.
8. Puzzle Pirates, released 2003 - 1.5 million active users. Published by Ubisoft and developed by indy king Three Rings, Puzzle Pirates merges casual games with a rising interest in pirate culture. Puffy shirt aside, it’s working like a charm.
9. Lineage I/II, released 1998 - 1 million subscribers. Published by South Koreas NCsoft, Lineage was once the most popular MMO of its day. At one point total active users peaked at 3 million. A Western release in 2002 mostly fizzled.
10. Second Life, released 2003 - 500,000 active users. No introduction needed here. Created by Linden Labs, this virtual world features a rabid fan base, inflated numbers, a high influx of corporate doppelgangers, and lots of digital genitals. First life optional.
Other popular MMOs are sure to exist, particularly new-comers and non-localized Asian games that are sure to grow. Also, this list reflects popularity alone, not necessarily revenue models, though World of Warcraft is performing well on both counts.
For all intents and purposes, the most popular MMOs represent an estimated 50-75% of the total MMO market (30-60 million active users.) Is that enough attention to justify MMO’s recent surge of attention? Maybe not all of the hype, but definitely a large portion of it. And who wouldn’t want a piece of Blizzard’s reoccurring pie or another revenue model with a similar install base?
Interestingly, however, it’s apparent that no single business model is winning out. Subscriptions work well for MMORPG games like WoW that are more akin to crack cocaine than mere entertainment. But what about other non-game MMOs? How will companies bank on consumer attention in those areas? One thing’s for certain: with all the popularity surrounding MMOs several new business models are sure to flourish in the coming years, as it’s not just about games anymore.
*Of Western origin or with a localized presence here. “Active users” based on most recent monthly log-in figures when available. Subscriber numbers are not necessarily a reflection of active users. Figures compiled from Wikipedia (excluding, to the best of my knowledge, free trials, beta users, and web visitors without accounts.) Virtual Worlds News also referenced; Habbo figures taken from company spokeswoman, Second Life figures from most recent published stats. Special attention was given to notable MMOs in terms of where they stack up when looking at the numbers in addition to their popularity and/or high profile (i.e. Second Life.) Amendments and additions welcome.
Posted by Augustine at 11:41 PM
Labels: MMO, secondlife virtual advertising, virtual world
Posted by Augustine at 11:38 PM
Labels: HD projector
Filed under: Good news, Bad news, Products and services, Law, AFLAC Inc (AFL), Allstate Corp (ALL), Amer Intl Group (AIG), Sunday Funnies, Progressive Corp,Ohio (PGR)
America is a "sue-happy" country. Where else can you sue the dry cleaners for $54 million because they lost your Hickey Freeman pants. You think I am joking; but this is a case of life being stranger than fiction. A Washington DC judge (who in my opinion should know better) is suing a dry cleaners that lost his pair of pants.
For a moment last week my trust in the American legal system began to fail as Paris Hilton, heiress of Hilton Hotels (NYSE: HLT) fortune, spent a heart-wrenching three days in jail before being released by the sheriff for "medical reasons." Then suddenly my faith was restored as the judge sent her back to jail.
Well it didn't last long. It seems this week a pair of lost pants is worth crying over -- and $54 million. I guess America is land of the free and home of too many lawyers. Maybe this is why I respect Vice President Cheney: I mean, we all talk about the problem with lawyers, but at least he shot one.
Continue reading Lawyers and the $54 million pants
Wow, talk about a visualization of Chris Anderson's "The Long Tail" in action! This graph indeed shows how the tail has lengthened and that music discovery sites like this one (iLike.com) are helping potential consumers of such content reach further into the tail to discover stuff that they like and to then be able to buy the song one at a time.
Posted by Augustine at 2:36 PM
Labels: discover music, the long tail
from TechCrunch by Nick Gonzalez
Toward the end of last year we covered a veritable cornucopia of question and answer sites. They mostly served as aggregation sites for members to post, answer, and rate questions. Yahoo effectively dominated the space, leveraging their user base and even adding an API. Q&A service Wis.dm has taken a different look at questions and answers, and added a Facebook application today.
Wis.dm is for simple yes/no questions, not about writing long answers to life’s most elusive questions. Within the Facebook application you can answer a stream of questions that appear on Wis.dm. Unfortunately you can’t ask questions through the application right now. As you answer questions, Wis.dm assigns you points and matches you with other users that answer questions similarly to you.
The long-term vision is to match up potential friends and help silo Wis.dm users into interest groups. Matching people based on their answer history is also gives them a clear way to insert contextual advertising into the question stream. Advertisers on Wis.dm will be able to target their ads based on a user’s question profile (i.e people who answer positively to sports questions, get the latest ESPN ad).
Chime.Tv’s video player has got the kind of flash and style Ruby developers would envy, especially since it’s programmed in PHP and AJAX. The player, which dishes out 22 themed channels of viral video content, with a bunch of added utilities.
The full page player is similar to Joost and Babelgum, but in your browser. Like the IPTV guys, you can flip through pre-made channels, roll your own, or search for content by keyword. The player is pretty hands off, and will just run if you give it a channel or a search term to munch on. The player searches through videos on YouTube, Veoh, Metacafe, Google Video, and DailyMotion. You can reorganize the results by title, length, or randomize. They also have a bookmarklet so you can add content to your channels as you surf the web.
So, iIf you want to create the “bikini” channel, all you have to do is search for “bikini” in the search bar and Chime will start playing through all the results. The player also has a friend feature for sharing your channels and vids with someone else.
The player can play in full screen mode, wide screen, or anywhere in between by dragging the corner of the video. It also comes with some color controls for brightness, contrast, and color in case the original quality is less than stellar.
All this thing needs is a mashup with one of the TV show aggregators.
Sparter, a stealth startup founded by Bessemer Venture Partners, launched this evening. They are jumping into the middle of the estimated $1 billion market for buying and selling virtual currencies in games like World of Warcraft (WOW), EverQuest, Eve and others. The current spot price of 100 gold on WOW? About $10.
The company is a true person to person trading company. Users can sign up and either buy or sell virtual currencies at market prices. There are already a number of sites that sell these currencies directly to users (IGE is the largest), but they don't take sellers, just buyers. And the prices are set by the company, not the market.
I spoke to Dan Kelly and Boris Putanec, the two executives Bessemer brought in to start the company, earlier this week. They say that a major supply of WOW gold today comes directly or indirectly from "farmers" in China and India. People are paid a very low wage to play the game and gather small amounts of gold, which are then sold directly to players or to services like IGE. Those models are fine, they say, for people who want to buy currency. But it gives no way for people who want to liquidate their virtual gold into real world money.
eBay is one place where gamers currently try to trade virtual currency for real money, but the company started restricting the sale of virtual goods on the site earlier this year, and proactively removing listings that include virtual money and other items. Sparter is simply filling the void that eBay has voluntarily created, the company says.
Others note that eBay left the market due to trademark and other concerns. In particular, it is a violation of the terms of service of many of these services to exchange currency in this way. Whether these virtual worlds will turn a blind eye to Sparter's activities, or attempt to fight it, remains to be seen.
Sparter acts as the go-between for the parties, keeping payments in escrow until both sides say the virtual transfer went through properly. Users are also asked to rate each other after a transaction. Users with higher reputational ratings may be able to charge a premium.
The company only supports trading in currency for now. Other digital goods cannot be traded on the platform. They say they have no plans to deviate from that strategy, unless users show strong demand down the road.
Posted by Augustine at 11:52 AM
Posted by Augustine at 10:51 AM
Labels: virtual sales associates
How to make a viral video and create viral profits
Consumers Have Changed, So Should Advertisers -- ClickZ -- June 4, 2009.
Social Media Benchmarks: Realities and Myths -- ClickZ -- May 7, 2009. The ROI for Social Media Is Zero -- ClickZ -- April 9, 2009. How to Use Search to Calculate the ROI of Awareness Advertising -- ClickZ -- March 12, 2009. Enthusiast Digital Cameras - Foveon, Fujifilm EXR, Exilim 1,000 fps A New Immutable Law of Marketing -- The Law of Usefulness -- Marketing Science -- February 17, 2009. Social Intensity: A New Measure for Campaign Success? -- ClickZ -- February 11, 2009. Connecting with Consumers: Next-Generation Advertising on the Web -- AssociatedContent -- January 30, 2009. Beyond Targeting in the Age of the Modern Consumer -- ClickZ -- January 14, 2009. Experiential Marketing: Experience is King -- ClickZ -- December 18, 2008. Search Improves All Marketing Aspects -- ClickZ -- November 20, 2008. Do something smart, not just something mobile -- iMediaConnection -- November 7, 2008. Social Commerce: In Friends We Trust -- ClickZ -- November 6, 2008. The New Role of the Digital Agency -- RelevantlySpeaking -- October 29, 2008. Make Digital Work for Your Customers -- ClickZ -- October 23, 2008. Social Networking: Make Your Product Worth Talking About -- HowToSplitAnAtom -- October 23, 2008. Social Media Ads are DOA -- MediaWeek -- October 13, 2008. Missing Link Marketing -- Marketing Science. -- September 22, 2008. The Need for Speed -- MediaPost -- September 22, 2008. SEO Can't Exist in a Vacuum -- HowToSplitanAtom -- October 8, 2008. A Different Perspective On Social Media Marketing -- Marketing Science. -- July 15, 2008. WOM: Just Don't Do It -- Adweek -- July 14, 2008. Tips for Success in a Web 2.0 World -- iMedia. -- April 23, 2008.