Oddly, however, I spend plenty of time reading topic-oriented blogs– notsomuch people.

Maybe I’ll give that a shot.

One night, I was arbitrarily looking up domain names and discovered that rezzing.com was available– something I’m sure was taken when I registered rezzing.tv. No matter, I reg’d it (and already have corresponding usernames on various grids with it, including Twitter), got Wordpress up and running, and will probably treat it as something a bit more topical and less about me (not that I’ve been overtly ME ME ME, but seriously, I’m not that interesting– but the stuff I love *is*).

It will be slow, but that’s what comes with starting from scratch. http://rezzing.com will be a new starting place for me and the topics that are on my mind.

From: Playing for Change

Of course, in the past few years, that’s changed. ‘Changed’ to the point that it’s a new field with connections to dozens and dozens of areas of expertise and understanding.

A project I’ve been working on a bit under the radar (for reasons that it’s just not mainstream enough to prattle on about for days on end) is a dystopian science fiction work, particularly of the cyberpunk/infopunk genre (it might be old fashioned, but damn if it isn’t yet MORE FANTASY WIZARDS SORCERY).

My approach has been unorthodox– the notion of writing a novel seems so permanent and linear, especially in this world that’s so rich, non-linear and diverse with its implementation.

In doing so, I’ve found that tremendous periphery has emerged during research. I’ve spent countless hours attempting to understand military structures, urban design, architecture, system failures, architecture, ecological hazards, artificial intelligence, augmented reality, and other forms of technology not yet invented.

In a way, it makes sense. My career started (and has remained) in the world of design– graphic design, visual communications kind of design– and has seemed to progress systematically throughout multimedia, internet publishing, product design and other multi-disciplinary spaces.

The intersection of all of these things confounds me. Lately, I’ve taken deep interest in the latest installment of Israel-Palestine warfare, complete with the normal sympathy for people caught in the crossfire, complicated by the aesthetics and functionality of destruction and death (hey, I’m into dystopias, I’m *supposed* to study those things).

Unlike many of my digital-only peers, I adore the intersection between the analog and digital, including the merging of the two, and the logical extension of potential total system shutdown. All that social media expertise means precisely jack shit when someone decides to take out cell towers and data centers. You will be alone and confused and probably starving, much like those in a place like Gaza.

That’s where things like eco-friendly initiatives and sustainable power come in to play, which basically boil down to a few parts: making your output smaller (ideological), generating your own energy (functional), and not having to spend more money than you have (fiscal).

That’s where things like architectural survival in a destroyed environment come in. Mad Max might be the movie, but the Middle East is the real life soundstage. Can ruins be sustainable? Can ruins be *beautiful*?

Building a virtual city is one of the most difficult intellectual projects I’ve engaged in– for I’m blessed with an unfair and god-like power that doesn’t exist in reality. I can move entire city blocks with a click of the mouse. When I get stuck, I examine cities big and small, in the heart of the world and the outskirts.

And when I’m all done with that, I dig for answers and hypotheses about a world where smart machines and smart information agents are available 24/7, anywhere in the world. I ponder if we are new breeds of humans–software cyborgs, if you will– that exist above the average population.

And to think it started with games, those alleged child-like delights for so many. I never wanted to be a game developer, nor a writer– nor would I have thought that I’d be digging so deeply into worlds completely foreign to me.

Perhaps it’s just part of the new programming we install into ourselves– and no matter how weird it all is, it’s happening in real time.

Phishing scams against banks are on the rise in these troubled economic times. If you ever receive correspondence from your bank that is remotely suspicious– or if the web address doesn’t jive– call your bank immediately and get your passwords changed.

-ER

Facial recognition in iPhoto. Facial recognition in Google’s Picassa.

That’s not something entirely new, many companies have taken a stab at it– and we’ve been able to tag photos, improve upon search results for a while. It’s only curious because of Apple and Google are doing it. And it’s a huge start into putting those fancy-schmancy tools directly in our hands and pockets.

Here’s a scenario that may excite you, scare you, or perhaps, both.

You go to a party. Not even sure that you want to stay. Who’s here? You have your iPhone. So, you pull it out, hit the camera icon, and tap the not-yet-invented IDENTIFY button. Anything your camera sees will be shown on screen, with an overlay of information about what comes through the lens. The person, their job, how popular they are, etc. Hovering above someone’s head is their social profile– their myspace, facebook, twitter, friendfeed– whatever the trendy.app du jour is.

All this takes advantage of the facial recognition utility, which will certainly improve over time.

Apple is the retina. The camera app is the brain. Google is the memory. The experiences were created (and posted) by you. Social networking and media became the biggest user-generated database of humanity–for better and worse. Facial recognition at a social level means that now, we can google by sight. The interface-less interface.

Augmented Reality is simply combining the virtual with the real at the SAME time. My little party scenario is kinda silly, but the same concept can easily be applied to anything that requires additional information. Traveling to foreign countries, shopping for products (hello Amazon!) and playing video games (know anyone with an Xbox 360 or PS3? Ask to see Viva Pinata Vision or Eye of Judgement). Dozens of uses from the practical and educational, to the entertaining and frivolous.

Google has indexed everything from Earth and Mars, restaurants, 3D buildings, parts of the universe, and the rooftop of your mom’s house. If Apple can see something, pass it on to Google (or if Google can see it), then the slipstream of your data is made visible.

We are becoming software cyborgs (using tools). Perhaps next is augmented cyborgs (wearables), and after that we become hardware cyborgs (implants).

I leave you with a quote from some kinda famous guy:

“The solution isn’t to limit the information you receive. Ultimately you want to have the entire world’s knowledge connected directly to your mind.” -Sergey Brin

Basically, I’m working on a massive entertainment franchise that splits its own intellectual property down the middle, including things that are All Rights Reserved and Some Rights Reserved. A big part of Saijo City is gaming– but not like any model that exists in the industry today (Big Gaming needs to get broken up and disrupted big time). But I digress.

A big part of Saijo’s early development used the Second Life software as a rapid prototyping tool, sort of ‘visual basic’-ish type of platform. A multi-user environment with drag-and-drop 3D building. Massively Multiplayer Photoshop is how I’ve referred to my own use of it.

Anyway, I posted a long piece on the new Saijo City forums about why I have closed my final sim in SL, addressing the difficulty in shutting a community and dealing with the technical challenges with a platform I’ve used for many years.

Source: saijo.DATAPLEX: Q&A about Saijo closing in SL

This is the first in many articles about Sony’s Playstation Home. Today’s topic is about the embarrassing gender craziness.

Whatever it is that makes men take a game controller and move it instantly in the direction of female polygons, is beyond me. And, through the miracle of modern Schadenfreude, we’ve seen this backfire, in the notorious “Quincy-ing” where an otherwise convincing set of high-definition female anatomy quickly changes into high-definition male anatomy, much to the chagrin of the dance-humpers.

These are words I generally never think I’ll put together in a sentence. So let me break it down further.

Some guys find it funny to make their avatar in Playstation Home female. This will immediately attract male avatars (presumably *actually* male in real life (RL)), who gleefully engage in whatever dance animation that even *remotely* resembles humping, grinding, or whatever your term is. Double dance-hump score if the aforementioned female is sitting on the ground, where the crotch is right at the level of the seated avatar’s head. They switch it up and everyone gets grossed out, and attempts to call each other ‘fags’, which of course, gets caught by Sony’s overzealous language filter (and hey, not saying it’s overzealous to filter ‘fag’, but you know, when someone says the name of the game “Need for Speed” and it’s edited because it has the word ‘pee’ in it, you gotta wonder).

So, armchair conclusion #1: All chicks in Sony Home are dudes. Some of these fake women are not as clever, because honestly, ‘come_fuck_me69′ is not a convincing female screen name.

Now in the off chance you get to witness a female avatar telling a group of male avatars, ‘Leave me alone’, followed by moving away from the dance-humpers, it would be safe to assume that she is, in fact, female.

One thing I noticed in other games is how women are treated on voice. Depending on quality of connection, it sometimes might be difficult for some to differentiate between the sound of a 12-year old boy who shouldn’t be online anyway (according to the rule book), and a female voice. So, those conversations generally start with ‘Hey, are you 12′ (to which the female is naturally offended), and then end up (upon group consensus) with ‘Hey what’s up, add me, show me your tits’.

I’m not making this up.

The other night in Playstation Home, I witnessed an actual female change into a male avatar because of the depraved operators of the ultra-masculine manvatars (I think I just coined a phrase. Manvatar almost has a demeaning ring to it, like ‘mangina’, no?).

One thing that seems to help *only slightly*, is the existence in a lesser-public space, like the bowling alley, or a themed area like Far Cry. At least with the bowling alley, people can be *busy*, so the sexualizing has to come second. In Far Cry, one would hope people would be talking about the game or bitching about how they don’t know how to play Mancala (I’m getting good at Mancala btw). No guarantees though.

With only top-down content in Playstation Home, shopping, and dance animations, this is what we have to work with. And by ‘we’, I really mean, ‘this is what people connected to the virtual world space have to sell against’. You are only as good as your clientele and your competitors. Build more content, deploy it immediately and distract as much as possible. I can’t think of a common area in any virtual world where the lame factor pegs the needle. Pick a virtual world, it doesn’t matter. It’s always the same.

Naturally, this is nothing new.

So, here’s where I look for your take. What’s your idea on managing this in disposable public social spaces? (Trick question, I know: disposable + public + social)

That’s not why I’m writing, though. I’m writing as an indie developer and new media veteran. There’s one hideous fact I must face as I go forward towards the horizon.

The cost to do business with you is egregious.

For people who want to build games, there are plenty of options out there– and I won’t even bring up the Facebook/iPhone/iTouch side of it, since that’s a given that the game industry is slowing coming to terms with… no, it’s the Xbox and Nintendo franchises– both with robust and affordable environments and supporting toolkits that are not outside of the reach of the common man.

For 100 dollars a year, I can join the Xbox creators club with a copy of my Game Studio Express in hand for free. For 2000 dollars a year, I can participate with Nintendo’s WiiWare ecosystem. And companies like Garage Games have the Torque Game Builder, which not only has products specifically for Nintendo and Xbox (and iPhone, heh, pesky Apple), but clear porting paths to each of the consoles.

This is very bad, and you certainly know for whom.

The Playstation 3 environment appears to be so far out of reach that it doesn’t make the list of priorities for a product consideration at first whiff. Personally, I’m not even at the stage to determine which platform is easier to develop for (some Big Guys say Xbox, but I’ll just take their word for it– they have money).

Not even the Playstation 2– your own personal Wii– which would be a developer dream (EyeToy anyone?), is increasingly difficult to reach. The opportunities there could be exciting if we only had access.

Luckily, you have a browser. You can rest assured the irony is not lost on many of us that Microsoft–who makes the Xbox 360– also makes a web browser, and yet there’s no browser on the console. Nintendo figured it out. So did you.

So the porting path to the PS3 is through the browser– a crappy one at that. At least Flash 9 is there, hopefully someone will figure out how to access the camera for all those awesome Papervision Augmented Reality experiments out there.

Yet my optimism is limited, because the browser is horrible. It’s Netfront, not Firefox, not even Google Chrome (which ideally could work since Google+Sony seem to have a good relationship).

Things like high-price tags of the console– that will pass. It’s a luxury brand thing, much like the Apple thing. Things like the fantastic social media engagement the folks on the Playstation blog are engaged in? Good, but not enough to save the day. Playstation Home? Well that’s another article.

Embrace the creatives somewhere less than the rock bottom price of 10 grand. The options aren’t limited out there for us, except when it comes to a platform that some of us want to eagerly support.

Help us, help you.

I don’t have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It’s a depression. Everybody’s out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel’s worth; banks are going bust; shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter; punks are running wild in the street, and there’s nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there’s no end to it.

We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat. And we sit watching our TVs while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that’s the way it’s supposed to be!

We all know things are bad — worse than bad — they’re crazy.

It’s like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don’t go out any more. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we’re living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, “Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials, and I won’t say anything. Just leave us alone.”

Well, I’m not going to leave you alone.

I want you to get mad!

I don’t want you to protest. I don’t want you to riot. I don’t want you to write to your Congressman, because I wouldn’t know what to tell you to write. I don’t know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street.

All I know is that first, you’ve got to get mad.

You’ve gotta say, “I’m a human being, goddammit! My life has value!”

So, I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window, open it, and stick your head out and yell,

“I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!!”

[source]

“Mastermind”

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