I remember Pieter mentioning that his former boss Guillaume Van der Stichelen thought the next big taboo to break was privacy. Wright seems to agree and to even bank on it with his next project. He sees youngsters sharing a lot of stuff people used to keep personal, probably since they now have the tools. He hopes to give them even more with his new project codenamed HiveMind.

Gathering data about people is one of the main areas of R&D and we already see some cool stuff happening. Up, a wristband by Jawbone, allows you to precisely monitor your every move and combined with the amazing tech one can find in a smartphone it opens a whole new world enablingstuff like sleep analysis and health monitoring. Wright wants to go even further and collect as much data about the ‘player’ as possible.

You see, he’s going for the end game, the point where it all comes together. You might wonder whether it’s fair to use the term ‘game’ for this, but that seems to be his point. What he is working at is bringing down the boundry between the digital and the ‘real life’.

Sounds far fetched? I don’t think so. The tools  (smartphones, sensors, mobile data, …) and services (foursquare, facebook, twitter, last.fm, …) are in place. We just need a way to connect them in a very elegant way. And to make that happen, you need someone to pull it. Someone with a license to dream.

Someone like Will Wright.

becoming an experience like this:

Yet one thing will always hold us back: the screen. All of this experiences requires a screen. It is our next Final Frontier. Yes, mobile phones made them more portable which enabled apps like Layar to do very cool and useful stuff, but imagine not even needing that. Imagine a real-life HUD.

The closest thing, I guess, would be contact lenses. And as a matter of fact, some people are already on the job. Talk to you again in a couple of years.

So here’s how I experience it. You’re at work, doing your thing. All of the sudden, the phone buzzes. It’s your employer, they need you to eliminate someone. You glance around whether anyone is paying attention and sneak out to do what you have to do.

Of course, there’s a little downside. Sneaking outside means going to the toilet and locking yourself up for 15 minutes. Oh, and the notification isn’t as immersive as it could be. But still… huge potential there. Can you make fake calls with the iPhone? Like receive a fake one from an app? That would be… woah.

THIS is where it gets interesting:

More info here, with a link for downloading the software.

Social Gaming is hot and everyone’s in a rush to know the secrets. Hell, if even Will Wright says they’re good for 25%, what are we waiting for? We need to get in the game ASAP!

And sure, there are some mechanics that make this thing work. I’m taking the liberty of compiling the Top Ten mentioned at SGSVGS  (thanks to Alice Taylor for the tweeting):

10: Daily Bonus
9: Cuteness
8: Appointments
7: Boosts
6: Energy
5: Achievements
4: Neighbors
3: Crew
2: Crafting
1: Limited Offers

All sounds familiar enough? As you can see, not all are really linked to the "’social gaming’ phenomena, some are just plain general for the current state of gaming.

In posts to come, I’ll probably go a little deeper in some of these aspects as I prepare myself for the course I’ll be giving in 2011 at KHLIM. Stay tuned.

Doing the rounds on the interwebs: thisman.org. The site shows a man ‘hundreds of people’ see in their dreams. This is gold, this is the kind of stuff people want to hear about, want to believe and a lot of them even WILL.

But it’s a viral. How do we know? Actually a pretty basic thing gave it away: the domain is registered by Italian marketing agency Guerriglia Marketing. What frustrates me is that this is against some basic stuff. It even sounds too trivial to even be worth mentioning:

don’t register a domain that will be the base of mystery with your agency’s email.

A lot of people will argue with me, will say most people won’t take the effort. Well, sorry but you’re wrong: someone is bound to check this and, trust me, even A LOT will. By putting something like this together, you’re approaching a species that lives and breathes on the net. They will find out and they’ll start spreading the news (they know how to). This will take away all the magic you are creating, the story will lose it’s mystery and doubt and will become worthless for a big part of an important part of your audience: the ambassadors that will be spreading the word.

This isn’t about this being a viral, people don’t mind that. People love a good story and this specific case is the seed of a brilliant one. This is exactly what people are looking for. But if you take away the thrill of the hunt by doing this, what is left?

One thing I will agree on: some people will look until they find out, no matter how much effort you’re putting into keeping it hidden. And I agree, it’s pretty hard to do something like that on the internet without someone finding out eventually. But the key word here is ‘eventually’. When people are already into the story, it won’t matter that much when it comes out during the ride. Because they’re already participating, you’ve got their attention and the willingness to experience what you have in store. But not from step 1, that’s suicide for this kind of project.

A place where people can tell the story about their first love. Whether it’s in audio, video or just plain text, everyone’s invited to share it with the world.

Rather than allowing people to comment on the stories, the creators choose to put up a system where you can express the feeling it invoked. The “best loves” section hence contains a list of stories the people behind the project think worth a spot. Of course, filters are in place to get the ones you want. You can send in your own story here.

This project is produced by a group of student journalists in an interactive design class at the Medill School of Journalism.

Tell a story.

(picture by carf)

Alice announced on her fantastic Wonderland blog the start of a new project Channel 4 Education did together with Welcome Trust and Oil Productions.
Today, dear students, we’ll be learning about DNA and genome, the fun way. By playing Routes.

The 8-week during game will contain a lot of platforms as players play mini-games (obviously), solve puzzles and watch comedian Katherine Ryan as she discovers what exactly defines who she is. Is it our genes, or does our environment play a bigger role there?

They kick off with a first mini-game where you get an organism. When breeding with other players, your organism evolves, creating a lineage you can look back upon.  You can show off your organism by using widgets like the one below:

Feel free to breed, but please, be gentle ;)

For those looking for a bit more challenge, the real game starts on monday and there will be prizes ;)

I can’t tell you how excited I am about this. Using games to educate people is a strategy not explored enough and hugely underestimated. On the other hand, I can imagine projects like these don’t come cheap so my hat of to Channel 4 for seeing the value of this.