one part truth, two parts mixer

Double dinners

2009-11-08T22:44:28+00:00

I've written about 2 screen or double dipping - or whatever you want to call it - a couple of times before (here, here and here), but was interested to see Channel 4 facilitating it on Come Dine with Me. While the show is live, they invite viewers to vote and as the show wraps up, there is a screen that shows your vote, the average viewer vote and the shows' actual winner.

Not the most advanced use of online support for television broadcasting, but it's nice to see that broadcasters are acknowledging that it's rare that one screen gets our full attention anymore. Hopefully this is the start of something beautiful.

Make it hot

2009-11-06T17:07:00+00:00

I was searching for some vintage Versace prints today (the chain one) and came across this unbelievably dope early 90s Versace advert. I wish I had the wardrobe to dress like this:

Found on Zone7Style

Being thoughtful

2009-11-05T00:42:00+00:00

This email from Wired arrived this morning. All the more powerful because it was unexpected. We shouldn't be waiting for our customers to tell us what's wrong all the time, but instead pre-empting and addressing their problems. Nice one Wired.

Finally!

2009-11-04T09:55:45+00:00

I was quite happy to see this when I checked into Amazon today:

I remember once recieving a ricer in a box that could have fit a microwave. Grrr. Seeing as I broke said ricer yesterday with my superhuman strength, I may order another one to see if they really have changed.

Playtime part 2

2009-11-02T21:45:11+00:00

Repost from Run on Toast

My round-up of Playful continued from here, no faffing about - I'm just going to jump straight in.

Russell Davies mainly spoke about how we use pretending to make things more interesting (reminded me of a kid at school who used to go to the CIA/FBI websites and pretend that he was hacking into their mainframes). For example, the role of a watch:

And also how stuff that allows you to pretend has to be hidden in the detail (i.e. you can't pretend to be in an army vehicle driving a Hummer, because you are in an army vehicle - too bleeding obvious).
Most importantly, after his talk I desperately have to go here.

Molly Ränge talked about some really cool examples of Scandinavians playing, but crucially for me raised the question of how you 'evaluate' play, i.e. prove that it works. How do you make sure that when you put playful events into practice, that they aren't just limited to one-off events.

Duncan Gough: All I can say is that he made me think about what it would be like to play Friends (yes, the TV show). Slightly disturbing. Although, he also talked about what it would be like to play the Wire or Press Gang, which sound much more interesting ;).

Rex Crowle did his presentation on OHP:

The second analogue presentation in as many weeks (other one here)!
One of the interesting things he bought up the point that to help people play, we should give them the pre-defined bits to create a whole because that is less daunting. Also that a naïve animation style (like on Little Big Planet, which Rex worked on) encourages people to play.

These themes were revisited in Simon Oliver's talk: he gave the example of Spore, where the low level work of creating 'bits' is done for you, so you can get on and create a character. He also gave the example of South Park with the warning that slick visuals doesn't guarantee a good product.

The thing that made me happiest was hearing about TimWright's Kidmapper project. Basically when reading Robert Louis Stevenson's book Kidnapped (which follows the story of 'David Balfour running for his life across the Highlands, sometimes accompanied by tough and rebellious Alan, sometimes pursued by the English army'), he came across a passage which showed that the whole book happened between the dates of 30th June to 25th August. He basically decided to follow the trail, on foot, to see if the dates were right. What an awesome project!
I think he's organising a project where people meet up and follow a set trail from a book together, but I can't find anything on the interwebs (granted, I haven't looked that hard). He also wondered how nice it would be if books came with real maps of the areas covered inside, along with space for notes. The 'adventurer's version' if you like. I really like the idea of tying fiction to the real world. In fact visiting the spots from Bulgakov's Master and Margarita in Moscow ended up being a key to discovering a whole bunch of cool stuff.

Thanks to all the guys who organised it, looking forward to next year.

Playtime part 1

2009-11-01T16:43:45+00:00

I was absolutely gutted to miss Playful last year (damn work!) but made up that pesky deadlines didn't get in the way this year. Roo Reynolds has written a good summary of the whole thing here, so I won't do that again, but in typical fashion list out my highlights, interesting bits and thought-starters from the day. So here goes:

Firstly there was a little plug for Wordr at the beginning of the day, which is like twitter but you can only use one word. Reminded me of the 1-track mixtape project that Martin and I never started, where you made MP3 mixtapes on floppy disks (3.44MB is generally enough for one lowish-quality tune).

Roo Reynolds started the day off with an interesting look at films of computer games and vice versa:

But it was a mostly excellent talk because it introduced me to this. The full talk is up on his site (here), it's well worth a listen.

A couple of things from Daniel Soltis (from Tinker.it):

I liked the idea of a competitive picnic (basically go fish with picnic food) which was from a student project
The joy that you get from physical gamepieces, the tactile experience, assigning them meaning
The idea of trying to play a normal game with Guitar Hero/Rock band controller
The Reverse Geocache Puzzle project by Mikal Hart, where a box is modded so it doesn't open until you reach certain co-ordinates. Read more here

The Reverse Geocache Puzzle Box (pic from here)

Lucy Wurstlin touched on a project by Mudlark to help people access data that's kept on them, for example from their oystercard, and play with it themselves. Also touched on a project to create an binaural game - Papa Sangre. Definitely have to investigate more into both of those.

Robin Burkinshaw was interviewed by Matt Locke about the awesome Alice and Kev, and said one of my favourite quotes of the day: 'Interesting things happen because of the character's free will'. Free will? It's mad to think of video game characters as having free will, but did get me thinking about how video games are changing from a narrative determined by the game-maker to one defined by the gamer. The Sims may be the only game that truly does this now, but most games that exist within a world (such as Grand Theft Auto) allow the user to do their own thing to some extent. I wonder when gamers will be able to create their own story arc, or build their own missions that can be downloaded and played by their peers (it's very likely that this is already possible, I'm just not into those sort of games).

James Bridle's talk was just unbelievably awesome. He recreated MENACE (Matchbox Educable Noughts and Crosses Engine) which is/was an analogue machine that can learn how to play noughts and crosses (I think). I don't think I can really do any better than that so I'll leave you with another of my favourite quotes of the day ('Babbage was really into miracles') and some pictures (more here):

Tired now, going to have to make this a two-parter.

UPDATE 2/11: James has posted his slides and notes here, definitely worth a read.

Trick or treat

2009-11-01T00:52:48+00:00

I'm a big fan of the Google logo; in fact I'd always meant to start a blog where you recorded every day's image and what it linked to. While today's (now yesterday's I guess) wasn't as aesthetically pleasing as previous ones, I liked how it told a little story:

It would have been quite cool to have tricks and treats when you clicked through.

Playful

2009-10-29T12:28:49+00:00

I'm off to Playful tomorrow. Quite excited about it. I liked this cheeky little Google calendar programme - it made me giggle. Very playful :)

Smell-o-vision

2009-10-27T15:54:00+00:00

Just read an interesting example in this year's Trendwatching:

"Cinescent has successfully tested its scented-ad technology in German theatres for Nivea, with 60-second ads showing a sunny beach scene while the aroma of Nivea sun cream permeated the theatre. Exit polls showed a 515% rise in recall for the Nivea ad when compared to moviegoers who saw the spot without the scent.

Smells are pumped through the cinema's air conditioning system in a way that minimizes the allergy and irritation problems associated with previous attempts to dispense aromas via boxes places among the audience."

Martin Lindstrom was right!

I'mma let you finish

2009-10-26T10:33:00+00:00

A lifetime ago, when #IPASocial was almost a trending topic, I spotted this comment by Crispin Heath's on Amelia's principle:

"One of the most interesting things I noted from the recent developers presentation of Google Wave was that they have built in functionality that allows you to start generating a response before the person you're communicating with has actually finished their reply.

This effectively replicates one of the least useful characteristics of human communication i.e. a speedy response rather than a considered one, that takes into account what has been communicated, not what you think is going to be communicated."

Reminded me of this quote that I really liked in Herd:

Just one of things that you never really thought about, but when someone points out creates a little spark.