~ Aaron

At its core, Fantastical blends simple functionality with a beautiful design ethic. An icon sits in your menu bar which, when clicked, reveals a well-presented calendar and appointments list clad in a chic HUD-black. Every single element is meticulously arranged, with a level of detail that easily makes Fantastical one of the most stunning Mac apps around today.

One of Fantastical’s most distinguishing features is its so-called “natural language engine”. In human language, this means you just type your appointment into a text field (e.g. “Groceries 6pm to 7pm tomorrow at the supermarket”) and Fantastical will fill out the event fields for you. No more field filling tedium. What’s more, the words actually fly from the input box to the fields in which they belong. It’s an ingenious way of letting you know exactly how your words are processed, and kudos to the developers at Flexibits for coming up with that. Although the text input works 95% of the time, it’s not always that accurate at pulling out the relevant bits of information. For example, when I typed “make dinner 6pm til 6.30″ Fantastical mistakenly pulled “til 6.30″ as a location, I had to use either the word “until” or change the formatting of “6.30″ to “6:30″ for it to be interpreted correctly. Fantastical also had problems pulling event titles when they were end of whatever I’d typed (e.g. “6pm to 7pm tomorrow Groceries”), times where the digits and am/pm were separated by a space, and was puzzled by the use of the phrase “all-day”. Although it’s described as natural, you may find that you need to adapt in some situations.

Beyond looks and natural language input, Fantastical’s other pull is its wide range of calendar sync options. The most popular desktop applications are supported, including iCal, BusyCal, Entourage, and Outlook, as well as cloud services from Apple, Google, and Yahoo. I found sync to be quick and efficient when Fantastical was paired with iCal and Google Calendar. However, several of the Appstore reviews indicate issues syncing with some of the other services, particularly BusyCal and Outlook. Without owning a copy of either of these apps I was unable to confirm these reports.

The remainder of Fantastical’s features are fairly spartan and mundane. Search allows you to browse your upcoming and past events easily, and the settings section offers some minor interface tweaks together with the option to set default alarm and calendar options. There’s not a lot here, and it’s a reminder that Fantastical is a companion app and not a fully-fledged desktop calendar application.

So finally we come to the issue of value-for-money. At £13.99/$19.99 Fantastical is by no means cheap. Although what you get works really well, I have to wonder if it’s not over reliant on aesthetics as a selling point. QuickCal for instance, has a little less flare but offers much the same functionality, including natural text input, and costs just £1.99/$2.99. Fantastical is a beautiful menu-bar calendar application, but at this price, it’s tough to recommend.

Fantastical is available for £13.99/$19.99 at Flexibits.com and the Mac Appstore. A 14-day demo is also available.

In the late 60s and early 70s, most telecommunication companies were hard at work developing technology they believed would be as successful as the telephone. They were enamored by a vision of the future that was filled with home-video conferencing, remote computing services, and telecommuting. Produced by The Post Office in 1969, this short film encapsulates much of that way of thinking.

From the place profile:

Mysterious Wave opens its doors.
Sim minimalist , sculptures exhibition on a musical and outstanding atmosphere that inspires creativity .
A world apart , must see !
By Cherry Manga & Anley Piers .

At the centre of the sim, you’ll find a massive tree-face-bird-statue hybrid thing. I really have no idea what to call it, or what it’s supposed to represent. It’s a little creepy, but also impressive in its scale and detail.

You can find Mysterious Wave at Zone (215, 123, 22).

Both sims are meticulously detailed and the end result is fantastic. If your computer can handle all the sculpties and high quality textures then Alpha Point and Omega Point are really worth the visit. You can find them at Alpha Point (244, 133, 101).

I recall that tooth-brushing was held up by an early gamification commentator as something that could massively benefit from gamification principles. At the time it seemed a bit far-fetched and needless, but here it is. If I’m honest, it does look kind of neat, but I’m still not comfortable with gamification in general. I’ve previously outlined how gamification may unfairly discriminate against females, but this push into our everyday lives seems to encourage reward seeking behavior at a more pervasive level. And I can’t help but wonder if this comes at the expense of motivation to do tasks where the payoffs are less apparent.

Consisting solely of a tree in the middle of a field alongside several chairs hanging from balloons, HuMaNoiD is described perfectly by the parcel’s description: “Beautiful. Serene. Peaceful.” Not only is this a great place for photos, but the extensive use of white textures will really show off your meticulously crafted WindLight/environmental settings.

HuMaNoiD can be found at Gilmour (65, 196, 360).

The real-world Horuji Temple is a UNESCO World Heritage site and an important landmark in Buddhist culture. It was built in 607 by Shōtoku Taishi in memory of his father, Emperor Yōmei, who died some years earlier from illness. Naturally, the temple is dedicated to Yakusi Nyorai (Bhaisajyaguru), the healing Buddha.

You can find Second Life’s Horu-Ji Temple at Mieum 17/175/77.

Sign Ups

The rate of new resident sign ups increased significantly ² across 2011. This followed a flat-lining of new accounts during 2010. The improvements began around April 2011, which coincides with the addition of breast physics to the Snowstorm client. Some other periods of notably large sign-up increases include:

• Sunday 14th to Monday 15th of August, the last day of SLCC and the day following it. These two days saw the most new sign-ups during 2011. However, the Sunday figure is almost twice that of the Monday, indicating a possible error. It does seem odd that an event barely publicised outside of the SL community would result in such major increases.
• The weekend of the 8–9 October saw more sign ups than any other weekend during 2011. This followed a week in which @Rodvik shared “What’s New in Second Life”, and Shaker, a 3D chatroom service likened to SL, raised $15 million.
• The weekend of the 5–6 November saw the third biggest number of sign-ups during any two-day period. This followed a week of media attention for Philip Rosedale’s newest project Coffee and Power, as well as reports surrounding the inclusion of Second Life in an FBI crime dossier.

Daily Concurrency

A statistically significant negative trend was observed for mean daily concurrency during 2011. This followed 2010’s much steeper decline. Taken with the increase in sign-ups, this could indicate substantial decreases in new user retention.

Search Interest

Search interest in Second Life saw a statistically significant downwards trend over the course of 2010–2011. A sharp spike in interest was observed during August, which Google attributes to the announced closure of the Dresden Gallery. Removing this spike from the data reveals a significant negative correlation for 2011, albeit smaller than the year prior.

Towards 2012

2011 saw something of an improvement over the previous year. Sign ups increased, and the rate of activity and interest decline lessened. It remains to be seen whether this slow down is a result of actions by the Lab or whether activity is approaching a natural minimum maintained by sheer user habit and curiosity. I suspect the former is true, which leads me to speculate a plateau of activity for 2012, with possible increases closer to 2013. This is contingent on the Lab maintaining or increasing their current rate of platform development, as well as the rate of publicity. I don’t think we’ll see any reversal of fortunes just yet, but I remain optimistic about Second Life long-term.

Sign Ups and Concurrency from GridSurvey
Search Interest from Google Insight

Tang and Isaacs (1993): Generally positive attitudes, system was so popular that it was difficult getting it booked.

Henderson and Henderson (2009, reflecting on user attitudes in the late 90s): “It was common belief at Sun that videoconferencing was horrible, and to be avoided at all costs.”

Makes you wonder who to take more seriously. Most likely that they’re both skewed, the former because of its focus on users and the latter because it’s largely anecdotal (and possibly reflects the most vocal rather than the most representative opinion). Still, it really highlights the importance of careful methodology when it comes to user studies.