Nintendo sent some media outlets copies of Wild World, an Animal Crossing game for the Nintendo DS. Apparently you can share and import some of the player-created content into the Nintendo Wii’s console version of Animal Crossing.
Wired’s reporting that somehow a player managed to get around Nintendo’s content filters and inserted an offensive word into the game. This offensive content was unlocked and incorporated into the version Nintendo sent out to the media outlets. See below:
Apparently Nintendo has since been scrambling to pull these copies back, and has released an official statement. Oops.
If you know me, you know that I can’t resist any opportunity to lambast Steve Scher, Senior Host of KUOW’s Weekday program here on Seattle’s NPR station. Now, Steve Scher in the past has had some real awesome shows…again if you’ll know me you’ll know these are three of my favorites:
“Best pho restaurants in Seattle” - this insightful hour told us that all the best pho restaurants in Seattle were located…in San Diego. Thanks Steve!
“Birdwatching at Marymoor Park” - Steve invited local Audubon Society members on the program to talk about great bird watching in Marymoor Park. Conclusion: at the time of the broadcast sometime in winter, there really weren’t any great birds to be seen in Marymoor…but come Springtime….
“Weekday Halloween Special!” - call us and tell us about your scary costume, or what you would think would be a great scary costume. Describe it to us. In detail. The show featured calls from locals such as King County Executive Ron Sims, who pretended to be the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man. Nice!
That’s all fine and dandy. But what has this to do with new media or tech? How can this be related to your blog? Are you just bitching? YES AND YES!
Steve today gave me a reason to gripe about him and legitimately link it to the loosely defined theme of this blog. Because today, Steve asked Weekday listeners to…
Yes folks, that’s right. Call in to the radio show and help them create a wiki on the air. Excuse me for getting technical, but Wikipedia defines a wiki as:
A wiki is a page or collection of Web pages designed to enable anyone who accesses it to contribute or modify content, using a simplified markup language.
So tell me Steve. Do you even know what a wiki is? Is your idea, or is it one from Sage Van Wing? Unfortunately I pulled into the parking garage before I got too deep into the expansive discussion that was about to take place, but I fully plan on listening to it once the podcast is available. I can only imagine it was a great one. What better way, for instance, to make a Weekday Wiki, then by CREATING A BLOG ENTRY ABOUT IT. Solid! If this is any indication of how the rest of the hour went, I’m sure I’ll be in for a real treat when I get to listen to the whole thing.
Perhaps the only great thing to come out of the Weekday Wiki blog entry was the fact that one of my favorite people who used to call into DJ No Name’s show, Durnady, left this comment, when asked by Sage Van Wing “What Would you write a Wikipedia entry about? And, how did you get this knowledge?”:
I am a Duran Duran poster archivist in Bellevue, Washington. As curator/owner of the world’s largest collection of Duran Duran-related posters, I have a unique perspective on one of the biggest artists ever to emerge from the 80’s.
-Durandy
One of the most interesting aspects of my archive is the comparative study of how Duran Duran has been promoted and embraced across cultures and over decades.
The band’s influence has been felt in nearly every creative realm –from film, art and video to fashion and music. My collection offers an unprecedented look at Duran’s legacy, showing how the band has evolved, adapted to a changing musical landscape and continues to break new ground in the present day. It is a niche that I never expected to fall into, but one that has yielded an amazing journey for me over the years.
Milestones have included a loan to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland Ohio, two public exhibitions, and recognition from the band and fan community. Posters offer a wealth of insight and information about the bands being promoted. When viewed on an international, comprehensive scale, a music artist can be appreciated in a most revealing and rewarding context.
So I have two “WTF” factors for this post. One is Fred, the other is the ZipIt. There is this YouTube dude called Fred (his YouTube page)(or his home page). I just don’t get it. I don’t get it at all. I stumbled upon his blog post from Videogum, which talks about how Fred is now advertising for some bullshit my-first-Blackberry device called the ZipIt. Which he now uses in his craptastic videos.
If you haven’t watched anything from Fred, you can try watching Fred talk about his attempt to run for class president:
Now, I don’t usually swear online (hahah), but I really have to classify this in the What The Fuck category. I just…don’t….get it. Are 2.5 MILLION other people also viewing this video just for the What The Fuck factor? Judging by the comments, there are a ton of people who are either lying through their teeth, or genuinely think this kid is funny.
And i very much agree with the author of the Vidoegum post, Gabe, who says:
I think there are definitely a few things that I would totally buy after watching a Fred video, like noise-canceling headphones, or an industrial grade eye-shower, or a gun with one bullet in it.
I’m trying to think back to childhood…I know many of the things I liked growing up were probably stupid and lame and awful and unbearable if I were to watch them now (Pete will tell you that’s SeaQuest but I still stand by it)…but Fred? Really? Huh? Barney is forgivable because 3-year olds just don’t actually know what’s going on. But 14 year olds should have started to develop some kind of taste for the non-shittastic.
I wonder if Fred will really drive sales of the ZipIt. It has some “interesting” features. It’s an “All-in-one WiFi Messenger” which only costs $49.99, plus a $9.99/month service contract. You can chat with up to 99 friends at the same time. 99? Damn. It does “let u chat, control ur IM accounts, and set IM options.” What is good about it is that they let you send and receive text messages to other cell phones, and your parents will “luv” that there’s never any (why not “ne”??) overage charges or surprise fees. Built-in mini-SD card for showing off “ur favorite pics” (again, why not “ur fav pics”??). Interestingly you can listen to music and also stream live internet radio from “ur favorite stations.” ”How much do you <3 that?” I <3 that a lot.
So…this is almsot like a glorified pager. For $50 that’s really not that bad, and I suppose I’d much rather see parents buy this for their kids than an overpriced smartphone. I don’t really see this taking much market share away from mobile phones though. Kids are going to want to have gigabytes worth of songs. They’re going to want to surf the web. They’re going to want to make phone calls. They’re going to want to take pictures and send them via MMS. So while parents will be stuck with a heftier monthly bill, I don’t really see this product taking off, unless it’s with kids who aren’t quite at the point in their social lives where they’re wanting to talk on the phone all the time. And honestly I don’t think a 12 year old needs a) one of these, b) a mobile phone, or c) anything more than an iPod Shuffle.
Plus this device looks huge…definitely not hip and trendy at all. That being said, I almost want to buy stock in the company, because if even a fraction of Fred’s fans go out and buy this silly device, there’s big money to be made. Sadly, Fred is probably getting a decent chunk of money for this. Which is annoying. Just like the Kev Blaze video featuring Fred. Who the hell is Kev Blaze? And more importantly, how did “Fred” manage to get the username “Fred”. I suppose that means he should get some kind of “props”. But not from me.
Update: CNN gives a glimpse of who is behind Fred. Ending with “it’s really incredible…” I consider this to be…incredible yes…but I’m glad I haven’t rocketed to stardom this way.
…and even fewer people care about it than when Windows 7 was announced. The Techland blog from Fortune today talked about the new face lift given to Windows Live social networking. Four years ago Microsoft tried its hand at social networking my releasing Windows Live “Spaces”. Spaces was a place to blog, share your photos, and do other generic social networking things. It was supposed to be something to drive large amounts of traffic and new users to the Windows Live platform which had recently relaunched (think MSN Messenger to “Live Messenger”). Spaces never really caught on, just as the whole of Windows Live hasn’t ever really caught on.
That being said, MS is going to make the new social networking service more like Facebook and have lots of status updates…which can integrated with a lot of other accounts you might have–allowing your status to be updated automagically when you write a blog post or a review or something.
I highly doubt that this service is going to take off like MS hopes. Granted it is possible for new social network sites to take off and make it big, but at this point Facebook is so ubiquitous that I feel the switching costs for most users are too high to try and bother switching over to the Live network. That being said, MS seems to be taking the approach of making the network more about providing status updates about what you’re doing on other sites. This could either be really great, or fail miserably. I suppose if they linked it to Facebook status updates it could be okay. But this service doesn’t seem to really bring anything new or innovative to the table. But then again…when was the last time MS did something new and innovative?
And you gotta love this:
“For its fiscal first quarter, which ended in September, Microsoft lost $480 million from its online unit. “We have to get great at the advertising business,” Hall said.
Hrm…they have to get great at the advertising business…isn’t that why they acquired aQuantive? One would think that $6 billion would go a long way towards being great at something….
Good time at a party last moth? Perhaps it was a great time even? And perhaps now you’ve got some…residual issues? And perhaps you’re embarrassed and don’t want to call up and say, “Um, so hey! I may have left you drunk on the couch that night, but my syphilis may still be with you!” So what are you to do?
Thank you The Internets for coming to the rescue once again! This is one of those great things like inmate greeting cards which really lets The Internets shine (or the Google news bar for all the zany articles!). Instead of making that awkward phone call, just send them an anonymous STD email. inSpot.org is a site dedicated to allowing you to do just that. They’ve got rather plain to rather spicy versions of the messages. I’m not really sure what the best approach is–sending the sterile doctor’s office version or the half-naked man in a towel…but hey you’ve got options!
Further empowering the receiver, if you’re in one of a number of cities supported by the site you can be linked directly to information on where and how to get tested. Apparently some health clinics would do the calling for you, but this online method not only allows the sender to still remain anonymous, but frees up health workers to be doing other things.
Of course, if everyone outside of real America would just practice abstinence until marriage, which works, clearly, the world wouldn’t need a tool such as this. But until that day, just know there are resources out there to help!
Here’s my great idea: the anonymous Twitter STD stream–make a new account, add all your hookups, then tweet about your infected meat.
Online Scrabble knock-off Scrabulous, which serves up Scrabble games on its website, over email, and on the popular social networking site Facebook, will now be getting some competition from Electronic Arts. EA will start offering an authorized Scrabble game on Facebook.
Scrabulous has been one of the top apps used by Facebook users when Facebook opened its platform to outside developers. EA and Hasbro, Inc. hope to take a bite out of unlicensed versions of the game.
However, the “official game” will only be licensed in the US and Canada, meaning you won’t be able to play the game in the States with your friends overseas. Restrictions like this to me mean the official app will have a hard time dethroning Scrabulous with its 450K daily users.
Engadget has a story about a woman who’s camera was stolen in Florida. What the thief didn’t know was that the SD card inside her camera was actually an Eye-Fi card. It’s a sweet piece of technology I myself own and enjoy using.
The card somehow manages to squeeze 2GB of memory and a 802.11 transmitter inside the card. When the camera is powered the card (using simply the internal battery of the camera–and to no noticeable detriment so far as my usage has shown) automatically looks for a wireless network to upload your pics to your computer (if a sync point was set) or your favorite social networking site(s).
My Eye-Fi card automagically uploads my pics to my Facebook account for instance. So too did this lady’s card, uploading images taken on her vacation, and after her camera was stolen, to one of her sites. One of the photos included a clear enough shot of the thief himself to allow the woman to contact police, who were then able to track the man down and recover the stolen equipment.
I just wish this card existed 6 months earlier than when I received mine, in which case it may have helped me to recover the Nikon D70 that was a beloved graduation gift from my mother. Sadly, this was not to be, and I’m rocking a Nikon D80 now so I can’t completely complain, but still, kind of an unintended but pleasant use of the Eye-Fi card.
Yahoo! and Google aren’t trying to become another social destination like facebook or myspace, instead they are trying to take it to a whole new dimension. By incorporating several of the applications and features that social networking sites already contain the companies are trying to build, once again, upon the social dynamics of the web. Connecting users to their similarly minded browsers.
While I don’t see this being a negative step I also don’t see it as a huge step forward. I think social networking sites are destinations for a reason. Most people don’t trust, nor care to share, a lot about their web habits with friends or families. The goal of these new developments would allow users ”to share photos, videos, news reading habits or calendars with their friends and receive alerts about what friends are up to.” While I know Google and Yahoo! are both competing to become your all in one source for everything you need on the web I feel like it defeats the purpose of the world wide web. It might work for some people but I’m a fan of the web’s vastness and want it to continue to expand not shrink down to two or three monopolized sites. Sure, I use Google for most searches, but when I want to read the news I check CNN, and when I want to see what my friends are up to I call them… or stalk their facebook.
So I tried the new chat feature in Facebook today for the first time, and wasn’t altogether impressed with it, at least so far. Here are some observations.
I liked the fact that the chat window is somewhat larger than the Gmail/Google Talk window that is anchored in your Gmail session. It seems to allow a few more characters which makes for slightly less scrolling.
However, you cannot reposition the chat window. This is true of Gmail as well, although Gmail anchors the first window to the far right of the browser window, while Facebook implements a few extra tags so your first chat annoyingly appears right in the middle of the Facebook page you’re trying to read.
Unlike in your Gmail session, Facebook doesn’t display your online friends to you all the time in an unobtrusive way. With Gmail those contacts are always there below your inbox and other folders, with the option to expand/collapse the list. Facebook has the list hidden by default, and revealing it takes up even more space on the Facebook page than the expanded chat session does.
You can choose to keep the Facebook online buddy list persistent, but like I said it takes up valuable screen real estate, unlike the Gmail buddy list.
It is prettier to look at, with a more polished feel and the small user pictures is a nice feature.
Facebook provides persistent chat so you can pick up a conversation where you left it, and scroll back and find things you’ve previously said.
Persistent chat is cool.
However there does not appear to be a way to search through your previous conversations.
There also does not seem to be a way to disable the chat logging features. Sure even if you disable them in Gmail someone could maliciously copy-and-paste the conversation before closing, but it’s an added level of privacy which would be nice to have
All in all, I’d say it’s a nice implementation but is missing a lot of features I’d like to see. I’m also still a lot more likely to have my Gmail open more frequenly than a Facebook window, so I’ll be accessible to friends on IM much more through Gmail. If I could link all my chat accounts together into Facebook that might changes things though. We’ll have to see how things change as Facebook works through the first iterations.
