You might remember the novel in its earlier form; it had a cover, and many pages, forethought of plot, editors and agents weighing in, and, oh yes, it generally had sentences and punctuation. And, finally, some poor suckers had to take the time out of their busy days to actually read it.

Who has time for all those niceties? They’re so first half of 2008.

Introducing the Twiller. Recently, a handful of creators (present company included) have scrapped pen and paper for mobile phone and keypad, and started texting their novels — in real time, just a few characters at a time. Our medium is Twitter, a service that lets you broadcast bursts of 140 characters at a time to be read by people who subscribe to get your updates.

Really, so first half of 2008. For more, visit Matt’s site and go pick up a copy of Hooked from Amazon. See you in the tweet-stream.

How is it that some members of online social networks have so many connections? Connections that number in the high hundreds, and sometimes even thousands? Do these users really know that many people?

Observing how some users of LinkedIn and Facebook have hundreds of “friends” or more, and wondering how that was possible, Scott’s research led to a theory called Dunbar’s Number, the “the supposed cognitive limit to the number of individuals with whom any one person can maintain stable social relationships: the kind of relationships that go with knowing who each person is and how each person relates socially to every other person. Although no precise value has been proposed for Dunbar’s number, a commonly cited approximate figure is 150.”

Not content with theory alone, Scott took the time to look at different levels of connectedness he has with others, and plotted those relationships to see if Dunbar’s number holds up. Does it? Read more here to find out.

The studies cited include “Four dimensions of Video Game Effects,” William Stone, BS, and Douglas A. Gentile, PhD, Iowa State University; “Games, Stealth Assessment and Learning,” Valerie Shute, PhD, Florida State University; “Informal Scientific Reasoning in Online Game Forums,” Constance Steinkuehler, PhD, and Sean C. Duncan, MA, University of Wisconsin at Madison; “Children’s Problem Solving During Video Game Play,” Fran C. Blumberg, PhD and Sabrina S. Ismailer, BA, Fordham University. For more visit the APA website.

New York, Aug. 1, 2008 - Tabula Digita,Inc., an educational gaming company delivering pre-algebra and algebra software programs to K-12 schools and consumers, announced that it recently closed its Series B funding led by Ascend Venture Group, LLC.

“Tabula Digita’s educational video games have been embraced by some of the most respected thought-leaders in K-12 education,” said Ntiedo Etuk, chief executive officer of Tabula Digita. “This tremendous acceptance, coupled with positive reviews from all corners of the market, has been both flattering and suggests that we will be successful in transforming the way children learn and their level of engagement.”

Nt and his founding partner Rob Clegg were early entrants, making serious games for K-12 against skepticism and long odds to pioneer the market. With that back story in mind, this new round of funding is even sweeter and comes with our wishes for continued success.

The idea of BuddyPress is to take a standard vanilla installation of WordPress MU and turn it into something that represents more of a community building tool, or niche social network.

BuddyPress is essentially a set of WordPress MU specific plugins. Each plugin adds a distinct feature (or component) to BuddyPress and only handles functionality for that specific component (for example, private messaging). BuddyPress also has a core plugin that all other plugins require, it contains shared functions and performs the basic modifications to the WordPress MU interface.

When using the default theme, BuddyPress will move the main focus of WordPress MU away from blogs, and onto the actual member profile. However, members can still blog and use all the blogging features they would normally expect from WordPress. When someone uses BuddyPress, they will be going there to build or enhance their profile first, and write something on their blog second. The blog is turned into another component of BuddyPress.

The first two questions are easy but I admit to being pretty dodgy about answering the last one. I know of a professional librarian who uses it to query her colleagues around the world, and of at least one remarkably large company with a staff tweeter who monitors the bit-stream for customer insights and respond to any complaints that bubble up from the chatter. But what about smaller companies, professional practices, consultants, creatives, writers… you?

In my short life as a tweeter I’ve found a few business uses — it’s gotten me back in touch with a colleague for a possible collaboration, for one — but really I’ve gotten hooked on Twitter to follow the “story” that some tweet-streama reveal. For example take Ingen Bio Group, “the leading private human pharmaceutical development company in the world” and Dr. Leonard J. Kendall who tweets as IngenBio and has said:

05:38 PM July 30, 2008 from web
Thorne log> I wasn’t able to stop him. Kendall was killed in the explosion. 03:46 PM

July 30, 2008 from web
Thorne, Sgt. Garrett - INTRAGEN EXPOSURE >QUARANTINE HOLDING 4.30.95 >Ingen Bio - Security Command >ITC CLEARANCE LEVEL - RE … … 03:17 PM

July 30, 2008 from web
. …- . .-.. -.– -.

02:47 AM July 29, 2008 from web
http://tinyurl.com/6qom2q

09:12 PM July 28, 2008 from web
The Salt Lake Times - Warehouse Explosion Kills Cancer Scientist April 16, 1995 - 10:13 a.m. CT

08:48 PM July 28, 2008 from web
KENDALL LOG//DELETE - FILE RECOVERY INCOMPLETE / UNABLE TO RESTORE

12:38 AM July 28, 2008 from web
1:08:00:00 FIGHT.SURVIVE.INFECT.

Wait… back up… “Fight. Survive. Infect?!

Then I played the video Dr. K linked to this morning… and have to conclude this is either one of the best viral marketing campaigns or social media art works I’ve seen. Very cool. Though the excitement of discovery has passed the intrigues of Dr. Leonard J. Kendall and the Imogen Bio Group continue amaze and entertain. And I still don’t know if they’re a corporate security breach, a marketing promo for a movie or video game, or an emerging literary form.

What do you think?

Update – I just ran across a January post called 9 Benefits of Twitter for Bloggers by Darren Rowse on ProBlogger that expands considerably on my post. What caught my eye was this chart of Darren’s traffic since he started “taking Twitter seriously.”

Suffice to say that if you found my post of interest and you’re a blogger you want to check this out.

But now that I’m gettiing my tweet on, MIT Tech Review reports that Identi.ca has written an open source microblogging code base called Laconica that anyone can use. Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water.

Is this too much of a good thing? Will my peops migrate there, forcing me to follow if I want to keep up? Should I be running an instance of Laconica on my server, the way I do Wordpress, to foment my own microblogging network? These were my immediate questions but I realize the bigger meme is that everything on the Internet is mutable, no matter how original, no matter how well done. If you build it they may come, but you can count on someone else building it too. Maybe better. And they’ll try to eat your lunch. How’s an entrepreneur-developer-businessperson to cope?

Just as with bricks-and-morter businesses and tangible products — you know, the old fashioned kind you could touch or hold in your hands — the differentiator has to be design. One obvious example is Apple (a few stumbles notwithstanding) who have built design into the company’s DNA. Arguably Google, paragon of the lean interface, has too. Need some inspiration to get your design on? There are lots of places to turn for inspiration, but the thumb-worn copy of Tom Peter’s modest booklet Design (as modest as anything associated with Tom Peters can be, that is) that’s a fixture on my desk is one of my favorite places to start.

He wrote an excellent “waterfall vs. agile vs. stage gate” post on project management which has been on my Resource Page for some time, and he’s written an index to his best posts that I’m often referring to. So on this dog-hot summer day with nothing else to write about I decided it was worth another mention, and an expression of thanks to the north west forest gamer guy named Danc.

From the home page we’re told that as long as we have Windows Vista or XP we can “download the local client software and create our own virtual space, chat and interact with friends in rooms we design; customize our avatar; and invite friends to chat and help decorate.”

Knowing some of my friends I’ll pass on the decorating help. The rest is pretty cool, though, including the Facebook widget (and reportedly soon one for MySpace) and the ability to stream your own video and music.

A Google search brings up lots of stories and almost as many blog posts in the past day or two. There’s a hands-on review in Ars Techica and more reports in Wired, on TeraNova, in the New York Daily News, nextNY Blog and of course a ration of Google Lively machinima on YouTube. [kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/zjOMjhnT4nA" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

Many of these first reports and posts sound like they were written by greifers, and the lack of a Mac client is a disappointment, but like most things in early Beta — particularly those that are funded by Google’s billions — my bet is it’s going to get better over time. It’s also hugely validating for the new convergence of social networks, virtual worlds and user generated content we’ve been talking about and working on here lately, and that alone brings a certain satisfaction.