COMM 3344: Interactive Multimedia Communications

[WD] Multimedia and the web

2007-10-06T22:59:06Z

We've been asked to discuss the pros, cons and current trends regarding multimedia usage on web pages. Multimedia meaning in this case, the incorporation of more than one medium of communication such as video, music, Flash, and so on.

My immediate gut response, that multimedia implementation has increased substantially throughout the web, is aided somewhat by the page I'm typing this entry into, which has convenient buttons at the top to enable me to include images or embed media. I think I'll use the former now.

Interestingly, as I try to upload the photo originally as a bitmap, an error message informs me that there are only four supported image types, and .bmp ain't one of them. Clearly, this multimedia movement is still new in many ways. But it is becoming more and more prevalent.

Hypothetical situation: You're bored one afternoon while waiting for your next class. You've got ten minutes to go, which is just enough time to make leaving for somewhere else pointless, while making twiddling your thumbs become new record in the Guinness Book of World Records. So you browse to YouTube, and check out some old favorite, or see what new gems are waiting to be found. YouTube, a site designed around the inclusion of multimedia was so successful that Google bought it out. As an added bonus, they include visible code on each video page so that you can link to or embed it on a web page of your own.

Clearly, some of the advantages of using multimedia are that it's flashy (in some cases, just Flash) and attracts a lot of users. Unfortunately, there's such a thing as too much of something good. Adding multimedia is uncommonly a simple or easy process. Here in LiveJournal, they have a GUI to do this for you, but it generates code that can be tricky to recall offhand. Embedding video and audio usually necessitates scripting in a player of some sort, and managing all the variables that go along with that (view this source). It will also undoubtedly increase the load times for the page on which the multimedia gets used, hindering the expereince of those users who still have a slower connection. Finally, YouTube has had many copyright infringement claims filed against them for possible misuse of copyrighted material.

And yet despite this, Google chose to absorb the pending lawsuits, and purchase YouTube anyway. It seems clear that in the minds of some, the benefits far outweight the consequences.

[WD] Special Guest Star: Lewis Smith

2007-09-19T20:13:29Z

On Monday, we had the opportunity to listen to guest speaker Mr. Lewis Smith. Mr. Smith spoke to the class about his experiences in the field of online communication. He also advised us on the skill sets and process of development that are crucial to creating professional online content

The two things that stuck with me the most were his iterative, sequential work process for creating a web product for a client, and his extensively detailed site architecture diagrams. Having developed a website for a class before, I can say with certainty that these are steps that cannot be skipped or minded only superficially. Both of these precursor steps revolve around understanding the functionality as well as the limitations of designing a web site a particular way (what the site will and will not be). This helps ensure that all parties are on the same page; as Mr. Lewis indicated, it is sometimes the case that the person who directly discusses with the client what the product is that they want, is not always the person who goes and codes the website.

Mr. Smith spoke extensively about the first step in the process: discovery. This is the time where the client is questioned extensively about what they want in, and from, their website. Included among the standard queries about what the site should do and what it might look like, are questions such as how the success of the website will be measured. Discovery is perhaps the most important step because it is the part of the process where the developers will get the best understanding of the client's vision. The better they understand them now, the fewer time-consuming and expensive revisions must be made later.

What I personally found most appealing about Mr. Lewis' discussion was how what I heard served to reinforce things I already knew; it's a good feeling to think that you've finally got some real-world, marketable skills. Aside from owning at StarCraft.

[WD] Jeremy's Journey: An Interactive Construction of the Web

2007-09-12T22:25:23Z

Last class, we were given the opportunity to hear a presentation on metadata for the web from resident librarian Jeremy Donald. Additionally, we were tasked with reading this "web style guide" which was a laundry list of do's and don'ts to consider when constructing a website.

Jeremy's presentation was solid; he raised several relevant points about the uses and misuses of material posted to the web. Of particular interest was the image he brought in of an artist's rendering of what the web would look like all mapped out. It really underscores the notion that the world wide web is incomprehensible in volume, and that doesn't even include this "dark web" – web pages that are blocked behind passwords, firewalls or other exclusion criteria. Also of keen interest was his acknowledgement of porn and the tremendous number of masturbators that each of those ip's might represent. Dark web indeed, Mr. Donald. The sheer volume of the web as portrayed segued nicely into the need for relevant metadata, or to use Jeremy's phrase, data about data. He even went so far as to accredit the web as being a potentially more user-comfortable medium for research than a library proper, citing "library anxiety" as being prohibitive to many would-be consumers of information.

He raises good points about the need for very accurate metadata to support an efficient search methodology to keep up with the continually increasing amount of information (both light and dark) available on the web. The next article (see above) details appropriate measures, mentalities and behaviors for constructing a professional website. A summary of a summary of ideas seems wasteful, but might be stated directly as: "More of the same."

It isn't that the site doesn't outline or detail important concepts that one (or many) should keep in mind when constructing their own website, it's just that none of the points they raised seemed to fall outside the category of 'common sense.' They are quite helpful in compiling such a thorough list, and it is true that websites should fit their users rather than serve their creators sense of aesthetics, but especially to someone who has spent most of this class already investigating the things that one should or should not do when conceiving a web site design.

What I am for more curious about is when we'll get to the actual web site making. I realize that fools rush in, but I think we've splashed around in the kiddie pool long enough – it's time to get more than our feet wet.

[WD] If Wishes Were Horses (Article Review)

2007-09-05T21:33:21Z

This is a reflection on Dr. Vannevar Bush's 1945 article "As We May Think." He would've gone with "As I Lay Dying" but Faulkner beat him to it. Shame, too, because Dr. Bush's fable, despite an insistence on skullduggerous technical detail, was far more enthralling. Oh, it also happened. Eat it, Faulkner.

That's right, more than sixty years ago, a doctor trained in the science and understanding of the era hypothesizes the origins of Microsoft's Encarta. Extrapolating on technology actually available, Dr. Bush constructs a strange but familiar version of the modern workstation complete with Wikipedia homepage. If you think that his notions are implausible leaps of imagination, try to remember that Isaac Asimov was also doing a bit of writing at the time.

Dr. Bush recognizes a concept that all contemporary students are well-acquainted with: there's too much damn reading to do. Dr. Bush points out that the voluminous amount of publications simply number too many to be meaningfully absorbed by anyone wanting to get a comprehensive view on what was quickly becoming almost any topic. Science was expanding too quickly. Bush's solution handles not only a method for compressing data, but for recalling it quickly (at the press of a button, in fact) and, to use his word, linking to other data meaningfully. The closeness with which Dr. Bush has approximated modern conventions of things like wikis and blogs is staggering. Even voice recognition protocol is beginning to become more commonplace (see VOIP).

The only thing out of place in Dr. Bush's vision seems to be the levers. One is left to assume that he is an avid gamer of the piloting genre. Three cheers for Dr. Vannevar Bush. Where would we be without all the joysticks?

[WD] COMM 3344: Introductions to Blogging

2007-09-05T16:59:34Z

Welcome to my original 3344 blog. If you've found your way here from Trinity's TLEARN page, it isn't a mistake. I created this blog as a requirement of taking Virtual World Promotions with Dr. Delwiche in the Spring '07 semester. (There seems to be a calling for better blog comprehension among students from the department or at least the professors of COMM 3344 classes.) Previous postings with a title of [VWP] refer to this class, and it isn't so bad that I feel the need to create a whole new blog on a new site. Feel free to peruse previous entries if you should get stood up and truly have nothing better to do.

In case you're wondering, "Impirator" is my gamer persona. If you ever get stomped in The Sims Online or Hello Kitty Island Adventures by someone bearing that title, rest assured that it was someone else. I play real games like Starcraft and World of Warcraft.

'Keylime Pye' was the name of my avatar from Virtual World Promotions. I tried to make the best of the limited set of last names available. Obviously, I rule.

I will repost the original blog entry from the TLEARN site below for sake of completeness.

XHTML, PHP, JS, WTF?

Hooray for the first entry in a new class blog. The first thing you should do is read my profile to get a sense with which to read my entries. Another thing you can do is read my previous class blog (curiously also for a COMM 3344 class) here.

Assuming that you do read my former blog, even a little, you'll realize that I've already immersed myself quite a bit into the art and science of the www. When you think about how much there is to know, my experience really doesn't make me a virtuoso on the subject. However, I am hopeful to take away more from this class than an understanding of how to close tags.

I have two websites that I like to take partial responsibility for:

TigerTV's webpage—notice how up to date it is
Slueth3D—the result of my previous COMM 3344 adventure

The first is a project I inherited from someone else, who had created and maintained it until they moved on to better things (commonly known as 'graduation'). In defense of it's out-of-date condition, I have no way to access and update it over the summer, and the managers haven't met yet to tell me what they want changed or updated. The other site is much more my own creation, and is the end result of the efforts of last semester's COMM 3344 crew. I say that it's the result of the efforts of that class, but really the site itself boils down to me and one other, the extremely talented and positively radiant Kathryn Cornelius. She is responsible for the site design, and has the rare talent of bending Photoshop to her will. With her mind. The keyboard just gets in her way. If you like the way the site looks, it's all her, and if you like what it does, it's me.

This touches upon the heart of what I want out of this class – and why I was so disappointed to hear that we wouldn't be designing inside web building programs. I agree very much that the fundamentals of HTML should be understood, and what can go wrong without a good grasp of the basics, but after that, there are a great many things that can be gained from using a program like Photoshop (or Dreamweaver, though I prefer the former). Chief among them are the beauty and grace that Kathryn transfers from herself to her creation.

With this in mind, here are three things I would like to take away from this class.
–An ability to craft professional looking sites
–A better grasp of scripting (ASP, PHP, javascript, ActionScript, etc.)
–XML, CSS, advanced uses for HTML

The application of any of these has a highly professional aspect to it. Despite the widespread adage "never judge a book by it's cover" many people do just this every day. The same way a lawyer would be quite out of place delivering his opening arguments in a Hawaiian shirt on, so too would flashy images and sparkling cursors be on that law firm's homepage. Indeed, unlike changing attorneys mid-trial, it is very easy to redirect your browser from a page that is unprofessional (or even uninteresting) to one more suitable. Then you don't even hire Hawaiian lawyer in the first place, which is okay, because he'd rather be sipping Mojitos anyway.

[VWP] Blog entry 8: Reflections

2007-05-09T05:19:54Z

This is the final blog entry for this class. We've been asked to look back on our time spent, and reflect on what we've done. To be completely honest, I feel like as many things went well as they did poorly.

The Good:
Working on this project has, in my opinion given me a good feel for what it would be like to actually work on a project of similar scale and direction professionally. I feel like the size, communication and time devoted to work could potentially reflect that of an actual real world job. Additionally, and although it lacks complete functionality (yet, hopefully), the website is a tremendous achievement on our behalf, and is something I genuinely believe would provide a much needed service for a growing community of Second Life users and developers.

The Bad:
Despite how it came (sort of) together at the end, there was a lot of unclarity about the direction the project would take. This meant that ultimately much of the actual developmental work on the website specifically would be crammed into the final weeks (notably finals week proper). Unlike a job, where people would be paid for their skills, the skills and capabilities of our coworkers are not guaranteed. As a result, a huge amount of the work fell to those who already knew what they were doing, and nobody else on the team made any real effort to assist. I will state this explicitly to ensure that there is no mistake, if it weren't for Kathryn C. and myself, I do not believe this project would have even been feasible. In point of fact, I expressed this precise concern at the beginning of the semester. Additionally, the sheer volume of daily e-mails I felt was quite unnecessary. I feel that that mailing list could've been used for group-wide messages, and that for specific groups or even personal correspondence, a folder in the under-appreciated googlegroups page would've been much more appropriate.

Ultimately, I have mixed feelings about this class in retrospect. While there were some serious issues that I don't feel were handled well, I do feel like we came together to make something really pretty good. I wish there was some established plan of continuance, but both the professor and many of the students are leaving next semester so who knows. At the very least, it doesn't look so bad on the résumé.

[Edit:] I wanted to add that I feel like this class is good thing. Companies and people really are moving into Second Life and heading into social virtual worlds. They are a growing construct, and it is not at all trivial to assume that one can just apply the same methods of building something in real life to building something in a virtual world. But this class needs to address that more directly. We didn't get started on the actual project until a good ways into the semester, and even then I there were a few weeks where we were sort of theorizing about a project and sort of reading papers and publications about Second Life and virtual worlds. I think it needs to come down to pick one or the other, or integrate the two better. Some of the papers were interesting, and others were absolutely unnecessary (or repetitive). I had to upload my midterm from London, England, and I'm not sure at this point why I bothered. Distill out the things that worked and emphasize them. This is not like your standard class, to be sure, and about 60% - 70% worked pretty well. Trim the fat, and it'll be one hell of a class in the future.

[VWP] Blog entry 7: Class contributions

2007-04-23T16:51:01Z

The topic of the day is, "How have you contributed to the class project?" Let me get straight to it.
Here: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Now I've contributed.

As far as contributions go towards completing the overall group project, I think I am the record holder for greatest number of people prevented from working due to my absence. I've had many a Wednesday nights (and indeed time in general) taken away due to rehearsals for Trinity's main stage production, The Madwoman of Chaillot (hope you got the chance to see it, it was excellent, props to all cast and crew). In response to that timesink, most of my work has been done away from the public eye and in the black of night, occasionally into the wee hours of dawn. Unfortunately, the majority of this time has been spent either learning about PHP and MySQL directly, or indirectly when the knowledge I supposedly gathered from online instructions and offline "bibles," volumes and tomes throws an exception at runtime.

In spite of everything, I have managed to actually produce some work for the group benefit. I did some initial HTML modeling to create a rudimentary form for people to look at and respond to. I'll also take credit for the architecture diagram (conceptual system design) for the implementation of our virtual network, as there was no one on the web team who loved doodling on the whiteboard more than I did (can I get a round of applause for the "teammate" who magnificently erased the only needed code I put up there? Backstabber). I helped Manny get the in-world "televator" (teleporter-elevator) operational. Eventually I even managed to set up the database structure on GoDaddy.com and enough scripts to send information to the database and get stuff back from it. Sometimes, even the same stuff submitted in the first place. I'm currently trying to expand the scripts to implement some developer-friendly tools for ease of use, but even without the actual play still being in production, the lost time is catching up with me fast on all fronts, and I have approximately 913 things to get done for various classes in the upcoming two days. In retrospect, it would've been nice to have someone else able to work tag-team with me on the database stuff. I suppose I'd feel worse about not getting more things done for the database, except that most database admins don't also have four other classes and a director's farewell piece de resistance to participate in (we'll miss you Dr. Rinear). At the most, their extra duties include not getting killed by the level 20 dragon guarding the way to their girlfriend's apartment. Fathers can be so meddlesome. Not a great excuse, but hopefully one that counts for something. For the record, of all the work I have left to do in the semester, this is far and away the class I'd prefer to focus on.

I'm not sure that I had any direct hand in the marketing aspects of the site. Except to say that LAIM would've been the greatest thing ever, and you've all made a terrible mistake here. Terrible.

[VWP] The Articles of War and Peace as related by ozat_folly

2007-03-21T20:40:17Z

This is an examination of the articles reviewed by one of my colleagues over spring break. Ozat_folly, or as he's known in a few, remote circles, Patrick, analyzed three articles: “It’s an Ad, Ad, Ad, Ad World,” “Improving Online dating with virtual dates,” and “Atmospherics." Excerpt from Coercion: Why We Listen to What 'They' Say. (pp. 65-98).”

While it was clear from his reviews and bullets that Patrick had in fact read the articles assigned, the summaries seemed on the meager side. We happened to share a common article (we were both assigned the "Improving Online Dating..." article), and I noted that his summary wasn't wrong but it was very sparse, particularly given the length of the article. As for the other two, it seemed that the reviews only scratched the surface; I was left wanting to know more about the summarized information. Perhaps that is the mark of a good summary--to entice the reader into reading it's source, but I would have preferred to have gotten more from his reviews. I tend to be more verbose, so perhaps Patrick's notations were just right. In contrast however, Pat's insight as to how the lessons of the articles could be applied towards our class project were quite good. As these are ultimately the point of why we'd read the articles anyway, they nicely compensated for the bare-bones article notes.

[VWP] mobile workstation

2007-03-11T08:57:38Z

I've used Pat's Google personalized homepage solution, as he described last class on the projector.

For my blog choices I've got 3pointD, In the grid, Second Life News Notes, New World Notes.

[VWP] article: exam.dating.and.romance.virtual.dating

2007-03-11T08:36:41Z

Title: Improve Online Dating with Virtual Dates

Article authors: Jeana H. Frost, Michael I. Norton, Dan Ariely

Full citation: Frost, Norton and Ariely (2006). “Improving Online Dating With Virtual Dates.” Social Science Research Network.

Summary by: Michael Elder

Key concepts, terms, and buzzwords:

Dating
Online dating
Online dating dissatisfaction
Virtual dates

Summary:
This paper is a scientific/statistical examination of the realm of online dating. The authors quickly point out that the internet is a readily effective measure for forming platonic relationships. Then why, they ask, does “anecdotal evidence” indicate widespread unhappiness with the same medium used to attempt romantic relationships?

Their position is that in the absence of direct interaction, people construct wholly desirable, less-than-accurate profiles of themselves that do not stand up in a real social meeting and which lead to inflated expectations, and as a result, greater disappointment with the system as a whole. To counter this, the authors propose ‘virtual dating’: an online experience that better emulates an actual real life date.

The research of the paper is presented in three studies. The first dealt with general experiences in online dating. Surveyed participants responded on a 1 – 10 scale to how they felt about online dating, real dating, and (as a control) watching movies. The second study pertained to more specific experiences with online dating. Using the same means as before, participants were asked to respond to how excited they were about an online contact before and after an actual date. The third study conducted attempts to gauge the effectiveness of their ‘virtual dates’ technique. Again, the participants were asked questions on a 10-point scale: “How much do you like this person? How similar is this person to you? How excited are you about this person? How comfortable do you feel with this person?”

The results of these studies were fascinating. From Study 1, people preferred real dating to online dating, but enjoyed watching movies most of all. Study 2 concludes that people using online dating methods and then met in real life were fairly regularly dissatisfied with a misrepresented partner. And Study 3 successfully demonstrated that going on a virtual date with someone improves the reaction to that person subsequently in real life, a certain improvement over the results of the second study.

The authors feel that the success of the third study is due to the greater similarities between virtual dates and real dates than online profiles and real profiles. While a user of a dating service might have a long period of time to model and construct their online selves however they please, couples on a virtual date must respond relatively immediately to queries and actions from their real-time (if not real-life) date. They do admit that virtual dates allow for the same kind of distortion as online profiles, but not in nearly the same quantity: “Compared to face-to-face interaction, then, Virtual Dates do permit distortion, but compared with standard online dating – the focus of this investigation – they correct it.”

Potential relevance to class project:
This paper really seems to directly stress the importance of choosing (and packaging) date locations. This will encourage direct avatar-to-avatar contact, which leads to a more satisfactory relationship in the event of a real life meeting. Clearly, as far as the dating portion of our services is concerned, for those interested, we should strongly recommend in-world meetings, rather than just browsing the social networking pages.

[VWP] article: exam.design.programming.funny.error.messages

2007-03-11T07:45:37Z

Title: ‘Stupid’ computer error messages leave users befuddled

Article author: Steve Ulfelder

Full citation: Steve Ulfelder (October 1998). “’Stupid’ computer error messages leave users befuddled.”

Summary by: Michael Elder

Key concepts, terms, and buzzwords:

Humorous error messages

Summary:
This article is tangential to the Wilska error message one. It provides a listing of some of the worst ever (but highly hysterical) error messages of all time.

Here are my three favorites:

3. Printer on fire
2. Not enough memory to display this dialog.
1. Error: keyboard not found. Press F1 to continue.

Potential relevance to class project:
It doesn’t really. I guess the main thing to point out here is to note that people do keep track of these things, so don’t end up on the list.

[VWP] article: exam.design.programming.error.messages

2007-03-11T07:26:26Z

Title: Non-fatal errors: Creating usable, effective error messages

Article author: Emily Wilska

Full citation: Emily Wilska (2005). “Nonfatal errors: Creating usable, effective error messages.”

Summary by: Michael Elder

Key concepts, terms, and buzzwords:

Error messages
Effective vs. unclear
Good error messages
Poor error messages

Summary:
This article examines the sad state of error messages in general, and discusses several strategies for improving their quality to make them a beneficial, rather than frustrating, component to any application.

It is a well-established fact of life that software is not perfect. It’s impossible to exhaustively test these massive compilations of code to work out all of the places where it will break down. And it will break down eventually. You know it, I know it, and the programmers (like it or not) know it as well. And from this circle of knowledge comes the error message, whose purpose is in theory to alert the aforementioned users of a given program that something has gone wrong, and then to identify what that something is and what’s the best way to recover. Rarely does an error message make it past step one.

Wilska quite accurately notes that these messages are routinely of little use to almost everyone outside the original software development team, as the jargon used is hardly English. It’s easy to see what the problem here is—error messages are an afterthought in nearly every program. Error messages are never primary to the functionality of whatever application they’re included in (quite the contrary), and as such, no one wants to waste time developing them. As a result, error messages are the offline equivalent of pop-up messages, looked at only to gain the knowledge of how to close it. We see an error box appear telling us that something’s gone wrong, and any further information is detailed in something that’s undoubtedly clearer in the original Greek.
Segmentation fault at 0x00FFFFF8. Application must terminate.
If problem persists, contact your network administrator.
It’s complete gibberish, that doesn’t tell us what’s wrong in any meaningful way, and the best suggestion it can offer for help is essentially, “Hope it goes away on it’s own.”

Wilska details 3 separate areas for improving the quality of the error message: content, format, and tone. The first addresses the currently unhelpful computer lingo; the author’s suggestion is to provide lay “translations” of the cause of the error, by investing resources specifically in the development of these error messages. Format deals with the manner in which the message is presented. For example, a “website down for scheduled maintenance” error in browsing should present differently than a “this program has memory leaks that could damage your hardware” error. And last but not least, tone handles the softer side of semantics. This recognizes that presenting a user of your software with an error message is never a popular choice, but it doesn’t have to become an instance of insulting their intelligence; present the error message clearly and unabrasively, with explicit instruction on how to handle it.

Potential relevance to class project:
Just because our service is a more passive and sedate web form as opposed to a rigorous and computing-intensive program such as Command & Conquer 3, does not mean that we should cut corners on the error messages. There are a lot of ways for users to enter data wrongly, so that the web app or database would be confused when it tried to interpret their entries. We should attempt to make our error messages clear, concise and friendly.

[VWP] Article: exam.technology.trends.simple.is.better

2007-03-09T17:53:25Z

Title: In Defense of Stupid Users

Article author: Todd Miller

Full citation: Todd Miller (2005). “In defense of stupid
users.” Library Journal. March 15, 2005.

Summary by: Michael Elder

Key concepts, terms, and buzzwords:
• Google
• Search engines
• Interface simplicity

Summary:
In a nutshell, this article describes in a very graspable, straightforward manner what separated Google from the pack way back in the day when people used other search engines to browse the web.

Author Miller discusses and explains how the pre-Google search engines put too much of the responsibility for good searching in the hands of the users, 95% of which are not familiar with the native programming languages or command line arguments requested by such engines. These engines are incredibly powerful tools, in much the way a functional MRI machine is, but without proper understanding of how to use it, the tool’s power is wasted, and in fact, the additional features rapidly become overwhelming clutter, turning people away from that company’s search engine (or fMRI).

What Google did was to take the befuddling power of the search engine and make it covert, greatly simplifying it’s layout and look, and reducing it ultimately into what people are really after: a search bar that knows what they want. Google invests heavily in the algorithms and functionality behind the searching without leaving a trace of complexity to be seen or dealt with by the user.

For what it’s worth, if you do happen to be one of the nerd elite (like myself), Google has it’s own search string language for those who want to use it (see earlier LJ post). On the other hand, 95% of the time, you won’t ever need to. Google’s just that good.

Potential relevance to class project:
While Google itself has very little bearing on this project at all (until we get our name out there and it becomes the number one hit for “second life social networks”), the lessons learned from Google’s example of simplicity is invaluable. It’s very easy to get carried away with making this form up, trying to make sure you have enough content and customizability to satisfy the vast majority of SL subscribers, but we all need to be aware that too much of anything can put people off of it, in search of something more manageable. It is important that our final site be fully functional, yet easy to digest. At the very least, easier than operating SL itself.

I feel like it would be safer to err on the side of too simple, because wants and needs can always become apparent out of user base, but if the interface scares away people before they start using, it won’t matter how complete our forms are.

Simplify, simplify, my friends.

[VWP] Blog entry #6: What's in a name?

2007-03-05T21:42:25Z

So, we've been having some trouble as a group coming up with a name for our soon-to-be-offered SL services. I'll cut to the chase, as class time is fast approaching. Nowadays, it is not at all uncommon for a brand name to make or break a new product, business, whatever, because we are, as a society, inundated with media messages. I'll assume we've all heard that spiel a hundred or so times by now, and I won't go into detail, but you get the point. If it's not catchy, you don't remember it. There's also concern for getting the bad kind of attention, where you sort of become a laughing stock of a community. Don't pick a name that "sounds awesome!!!!!!11" but people wouldn't be caught dead admitting they were a part of.

Person A: "Hey man, what're you up to?"
Person B: "Filling out my new SLAMM profile."
Person A: "........"

There's no telling what impression Person A now has of Person B, but you can be sure that my roommate won't soon let me live it down.

It might even be easier to come up with a name that doesn't follow the "Second _________" form. Apple doesn't need to have any correlation between it's name and products to be successful. I've got to be off to this class now, and I'm sorry I haven't added any useful names to the mix, but frankly I'm more concerned about quick-picking a name that will be detrimental in the long run.

[VWP] Blog entry #5: What is Web3D?

2007-02-26T21:32:19Z

For today's lucky LJ listing, we've been asked to look into the possible future of the interweb as told by Dr. Delwiche. Web3D is the subject of this little investigation, which inevitably starts where all difficult investigations do: the Google homepage. A quick search for Web3D returned the extreme abundance of websites that Google is famous for finding, but most related to 3D modeling on the web. While a lesser man might've been stumped here, the greater nerd-boy would not be defeated so easily. I used the exclusion search string operator '-', which allows you to search for all of X that doesn't have Y, for instance spoon -utensil returns only naughty results, anything -porn returns less than half of the entire internet and awesome -me (my initials) returns nothing at all. In the end, I searched for Web3D -animation -art. The results were pages that were different in name, but not in content to the ones I had already searched for.

I think this touches upon something important, that being that Web3D is essentially whatever we (the users of the internet) want it to be. Right now, I believe that most people's vision of Web3D is going to be something like The Lawnmower Man, Disclosure, or The Thirteenth Floor. A kind of dated virtual reality (VR) environment where you navigate through pixelated and polygonal representations of "web pages." And that's okay. Like most things in life, Web3D will be an amalgamation of what people want, need and expect. If people want the 90s VR look and feel to replace what we have now, then that's what'll happen. Personally, however, I have to ask a different question. Who cares?

From what I've seen, this great new Web3D just doesn't add anything to the functionality of your ordinary web browser, with the notable exception of Microsoft's Internet Explorer, which is quite amazingly the only interface harder to negotiate than SL (a trivial acknowledgment, to be sure, up there with the love triangles on Lost and Grey's Anatomy; Grey's are worse, but is anyone still watching to care?). Does SL serve as a gateway towards the future that is Web3D? Maybe. In the end, the real winners will be companies like Nvidia and Raedon into whose pockets we will empty our bank accounts for video cards that will hopefully be able to display even 10 "pages" of Google results. Anyone remember the days of the 56K?*

In case you are interested in pursuing this further, the link above does have some interesting results on it, including the official conference and forum for forming, discussing, and regulating these technologies. Also available is information about the internet programming language to support and develop Web3D cleverly called VRML for Virtual Reality Markup Language (as opposed to Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML)). For a simple explanation of VRML, go here.

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*: Clearly I know that a 56K modem is not the same thing as a graphics card. The comparison was for benefit of known example.

[VWP] Blog entry #4: What are we doing?

2007-02-19T21:27:05Z

This post is a discussion of our potential class project for the semester in Second Life (SL). Cleverly, I elected not to raise my hand when assignments for research were being handed out, so I have no specific area of information to report on to augment our study here. Instead, I've looked into some of my own interests, concerns really, about our proposed course of action.

Despite the briliance of my suggestions here (and I am speaking in no uncertain terms about LAIM) the class has opted to attempt to create, or rather re-create a Match.com kind of dating service for SL. I have to be honest--I feel like this selection was chosen because it's a humorous idea, and to that end, something I fully endorse. I've even volunteered a name for such a service: SecondWife. However, I find two things distinctly off-putting about continuing with this idea in a serious capacity.

The first is easy to point out. In earnest, I feel like most people didn't come in with strong opinions on how to spend our semester's time. The Match.com idea floats to the surface over other ideas on humor alone, and people sign on with a "why the hell not" attitude. This is by no means accusatory; my other suggestions include playing SL via wiimote or watching cats sleep on keyboards. Frankly, my concerns here would be easilly mollified if I knew that people were actually taking this seriously. Because other people do, which leads me into beef number two.

Problem two comes from the poking around I did do on google, in an attempt to see how online dating sites (chiefly Match.com and eHarmony) actually matched people. My search queries were all met with countless blog postings and online discussions regarding the bogus or unsatisfactory nature of both the aforementioned sites. There were a few success stories (heavy emphasis on "few") and obviously I'd be remiss in omitting other factors which may contribute to the very disproportionate ratio. For instance, it stands to reason that people who are matched successfully have begun spending more time with their significant other rather than time online in the search, from which an easy leap can be made to disgruntled blogging. However, the point remains that people are taking these services very seriously, and in turn we should give serious thought to exactly what we're doing.

Is our SecondWife (or SecondMate, SecondDate, etc.) attempting to match real people via the medium of SL, or are we attempting to match fictitious avatars with one another. Either answer brings up serious ramifications, not the least of which is 'would it be seriously worth pursuing? Seriously.' If we're just looking to get something done that satisfies our sense of humor, I feel like the latter (or completely different) option would be better suited.

As for how it would actually get done, I've only scratched the surface for profile matching, but in both the cases for Match.com and eHarmony, extensive personality questionaires are involved, and then the responses are algorithmically scored and evaluated against one another for compatability. Let's just be sure that what we're about to do is what we really want, and that we're trying to swim a lap pool and not the English Channel.

[VWP] Blog entry #3: Class Project Ideas

2007-02-07T18:03:02Z

So, we've been asked to discuss basically what we'd like to do as a class in Second Life, as in a large project to be undertaken en masse.

Before I even looked at any of the online "journals" regarding SL, my mind went immediately to what a potential class project might be in say World of Warcraft. Not a lot of customizability there, but everyone loves a good fundraiser. And thanks to some of our Chinese gamer friends, this is not only possible, but perfected to a science. Thus, my first proposal is that we become Linden$ Farmers. We could look at various pyramid/scam schemes, explore the methodology of the gold farmers of WoW, and then implement our own money making ploy in Second Life. Money might not grow on trees in real life, but it sure can here. Object Tree = new Tree.growMoney(true); (Viva the Linden Lottery.)

I'll move on under the assumption that this won't get a ton of support. We can always use that as a fallback. One thing I did see on both 3pointD.com and the Second Life Insider was the mention of machinima in various forms (contests, random user creations, etc.) and I feel like it is something that a class of this size could reasonably accomplish. The trouble here is that this is no easy feat; the learning curve for how to get a project like that done is not so gradual, a problem further augmented by SL's powerfully crippling User Interface (UI). The things we'd need to know would vary depending on what kind of machinima we wanted to do, and as a result, how much content (actions, costumes, other stuff) we'd have to make on our own. Could have some really awesome themes though. A personal favorite involves a group of Warcraft characters being accidentally loaded into Second Life instead of their regular domain, and we watch them struggle with the various differences, including no in-game objectives (quests), impossible movement mechanisms, and a sudden immersion in a world of bow-chicka-bow-wow. Alternatively (and I can't imagine why you wouldn't spring for that first idea) we could just develop characters who live in Second Life and some creative story along those lines. We could even create a hybrid machinima/movie that explores the boundary between a character's First and Second Life.

One thing that makes the machinima idea (and other potential projects) more complicated is licensing issues. ABC might not be too thrilled if we tried to recreate characters from their show LOST (which returns tonight at 8 central for two glorious hours--do not miss) on an island of our own. Or more likely, Dr. Delwiche's. I feel like the headache generated by contemplating legal issues is prohibitive to many ideas, otherwise I would suggest SL as a perfect forum to create spoofs of well-established commercial products.

That being said, I think we should continue to look into the possibility of writing an interface for the Wiimote (Nintendo's remote game controller for it's new system, Wii). As the good doctor noted last in-world night, if companies are really looking into holding meetings and training events for their employees and staff, then they're going to need something more intuitive to first-time users. In my opinion, this is a better approach than Linden's recommendation: hit yourself in the face with a rock until the current UI becomes clear and obvious, or you die. And they wonder why there is such a gap between registered users and subscribing customers. The difficulty in this project stems from the fact that people involved would be helping to rewrite quite a bit of interface code. The goal is to make a user's Heads Up Display (HUD) easily accessible to a Wiimote from something that cannot be used by someone with two hands, a keyboard, mouse and all the swear words in the dictionary. And I don't even have a clue what the code looks like yet. It would be a very simple matter to get a Wiimote to use the current "interface," but that's not much of a project.

[VWP] Blog entry #2: The Adventures of RL in SL

2007-01-29T21:40:41Z

In my previous entry, I've identified the fact that Second Life (SL) is by no means a game in the traditional, questing, leveling, crafting of war sense. It does yield enjoyment to a great many users, however, and by definition of being a medium through which people play with one another on a computing machine, we can call it a computer game. It certainly meets the massively multiplayer online part of MMORPG, which is what catches the eyes of the outside corporations and organizations. A great number of people committed to seeing some area, environment, or at the very least, loading screen on a regular basis, sometimes many times in one day. It is, in theory, a well of untapped marketing potential. Some true games (notably Everquest 2 and PlanetSide) have already implemented some corporate involvement in their worlds, by means of billboard-like advertisements or even in-game macros (computer interpretable commands) that pull up an online order form for Pizza Hut.

After doing some browsing around, there were a few companies that I noticed were interested in becoming more involved in SL, such as Toyota, GM, a handful of banks, eBay and even MTV. But while those groups all seem to have a similar vested interest in gaining user interest within the server-world of SL, there was one new venture that caught my eye. Sweden. As in, the place. In Europe. They're pioneering the way for public rather than private sector involvement in this MMO by installing a virtual embassy.

To regurgitate what several sources online have said, this embassy will not have the functionality of a true embassy. You can't go there to seek asylum from the American police (they have an extradition treaty with us anyway, suckers). Nor can it issue and official passport or visas. However, it can instruct you how you would go about doing those things. Additionally, it will function as kind of a tourist agency that will tout some of the attractions of the nation. And likely, just by virtue of being the first to do so, it will draw quite a crowd. Representatives have stated that they are hoping to purchase an island of their own, which in my limited understanding of the SL universe will give the proprietor great control over what things can go on the real estate with their embassy. Ideally, this would help bar some of the more unpleasant aspects of SL from snaking their way into a relatively official forum.

While I was not able to find a location for the embassy for purposes of firsthand investigation, I imagine that this will be a great success, at least initially, with some lasting benefits for the community at large. The novelty of having an embassy in the game will draw a crowd (some of whom looking for ways to denigrate and defile it), but I don't know that it will have a dramatic impact on the tourism % of Sweden's GNP. In any event, I believe it is likely that it will spark other countries to take similar action. This sounds like a good idea on it's face; a network of virtual embassies, each fronting their country and how to get there (and spend your actual $ rather than your L$). What troubles me is what will happen when political strife crosses the digital divide. If I log in to the game to learn about the newest embassy bombing (or pornographic spray painting), then I might as well just turn on CNN. Although, if someone were actually to put porn on the side of someone's embassy, I might just have to take a field trip. You know, for art's sake. Isn't nonviolence just great?

One thing to take away from Sweden's project here is that, like many things in life, it's great to be first at something. Pressure's on to design that Wii-SL interface, I guess. Or at least to continue the adventures of Tucker, Church, Tex and others outside of their ring-worlds.

[VWP] Blog entry #1: What do I want out of Second Life?

2007-01-29T21:10:37Z

Let me be completely honest. I am a gamer. I crave the dungeon crawling, NPC bashing, spell casting World of Warcraft. When I signed up for this class, I was pretty sure I was signing up for a class on gaming. That would be a mistake, Second Life is no game. In the purest sense, Second Life (SL) is literally a virtual world, a digitally crafted and displayed representation of a world that has an uncanny resemblance to the one human beings actually live in. People walk (or fly) around and interact with one another through ActionScript-ed motions, movements and emotes.

This is not nearly enough to sate my, let's call it what it is, addiction to the MMORPG. So the first thing I thought of when moving around in Linden's VR was how could I make the game more like WoW. Or at the very least, how do I make Second Life more appealing to the gaming community. When I was teleporting wantonly around the environment, I ran into quite a bit of porn and scripted actions of a sexual nature. Like most everyone, gamers enjoy sex just as much as anyone (more even, since surely our passion for online gaming draws much time away from partaking of the passion between the sheets), however I feel like it appeals to pretty much any community and wouldn't really draw the gaming crowd away from say a potential 40-person strong raid on Molten Core--the hottest thing you can do in Warcraft, to my knowledge. There were some gambling and simple dice rolling games (Yahtzee, not D&D) I discovered, and a friend even found a kind of First Person Shooter, but nothing that would really satisfy the questing needs of an addict like myself. Perhaps the D&D thing isn't such a bad idea...

Stemming from this first idea of how to make SL more accessible to gamers would be how to make SL more accessible to everyone. If you have never indulged yourself in SL, then you have not experienced such profoundly counterintuitive controls and interfaces anywhere. Open heart surgery is an easier feat (and I would know--I just got Trauma Center on my Wii). And speaking of the Wii, I don't know that I can think of a more intuitive control mechanism than the wii-mote (Wii motion-sensitive controller). My fifty-something year old father was able to take the controller for the first time and hit a ball out of the digital park. My 13 yo sister was equally adept, but then again she plays WoW as well as I do. What a wonderful child. As a computer science major, I was interested to learn that the guys at Linden have open sourced the Client application to SL, allowing for tinkering and (hopefully) improving on their interface design. Frankly, my cat could accomplish this task by sleeping on the keyboard until the interface no longer functioned at all, at which point the design would be better than what they have now. I would like to explore both the open-sourced code for SL as well as the possibility of an interface for Nintendo's Wii.

Finally, as a topic not so much suggested as reminded to me by my professor, the wonderful art of machinima. If you've never heard of it before, you're probably not reading anymore, thinking I'm talking about some kind of deviant porn. While I won't say that isn't one of the applications of machinima, it is by no means the only one. Machinima is essentially using a machine's digital environment to create cinema (hence the portmanteau). It is different from Computer Animation in that CA is used to create movies or moving animations directly. With Machinima, the digital environment has an alternative primary application than filmmaking, such as Halo (and the associated Red vs. Blue). I would love to explore the machinima potential of SL, beyond that of simple instructional videos. And, no, it wouldn't be a porn. Mostly.