ouroboros

Toilet Paper Users and Facebook Users

We social media wanks often earn our fear money through hyperbolic/histrionic presentations laden with "you're business model is f***ed" slides, typically including a gasp-inducing image that compares the population of users of Facebook to the population of actual countries.

But Facebook isn't really a country.  Individual users of Facebook have as much in common with each other as individual users of toilet paper. 

And come to think of it, there may be more TP than FB users for a little while yet.

(FB heatmap when they were limping along with 200MM users back on april 8th,2009, stolen from Dave Know's HardKnox life blog...and interesting to note that if in April they were "admitting" 200MM, and in December Zuckerberg claims 350MM, HOLY HOCKEYSTICK, batman.)

If FB were a country, it would be an interesting one - a preselected technological "upper" class who have sufficient material resources to at least guarantee access, so they probably aren't hurting for basic needs - food, shelter, etc. 

They'd be the world's third most populous country - 350MM+ people, all a few rungs up Maslow's ladder.

And in spite of various valuation discussions, this "country" of tech "haves" wouldn't be a G-7 or G-20 candidate.  Various estimates peg the FB "GDP" at about a billion for 2009 - with about half that coming from ad revenue, the other half from monetization of the FB platform via third party developers.  that puts them at #169 for global GDP, a few steps behind St. Lucia, and just edging out Dijibouti.

The smartest, wealthiest, tech saavy folks in the world, 350MM strong, barely edging out a win on Dijibouti?  Golly.

But there is something much more interesting and a little sad going on here.  A real country has many things that make for an engaged citizenry.  The two I think are relevant here are

1. economic/social/emotional barriers to leaving, and
2. a national mythology/narrative

Friendster, MySpace and Facebook are cheap, easy, and addictive, but their glue is driven by the critical mass of friends (network effect) and the difficulty of porting your entire life onto the NEXT BIG PLATFORM.  Facebook Connect is a brilliant way to deflect the need to re-port, but at the end of the day, FB loyalty will be proportional to its perceived utility.  Like toilet paper.  If there is a softer better cheaper toilet paper, I'll use it.

(stolen from extremefunnyhumor.com)

But none of these social nets has an embedded narrative or mythology.  they have a perceived "cool" factor, or not, but they are social tools, little more.  FB is doing its best to become the Leatherman of social nets, with a tool, port or app for every need, but I question the loyalty of its users and the longevity of its position.  Because they have no narrative.  The US Army/Marine Corps CounterInsurgency Manual (available as a pdf here - Download COIN-FM3-24) defines a "narrative" as:

"a story recounted in the form of a causally linked series of events that explains an event in the group's history and expresses the values, characters, or self-identity of the group.  Narratives are means through which ideologies are expressed and absorbed by members of a society."

There is no common purpose to FB, no shared mission, no shared narrative. 

Like Toilet Paper. 

We flush (TP) and upload (FB) our crap every day.

When will a virtual social net nourish our souls?

W+K+Schmidt+Birkett+N900+OneDotZero = fun

As part of our effort on behalf of the Nokia N900, W+K London partnered with computational designer  Karsten  Schmidt and software architect Gary Birkett in conjunction with OneDotZero to demonstrate what happens when

per Birkett:

“we are using a 3 inch display to try to control a 70 foot display”. Based on the N900’s accelerometer, the software uses an interface that takes movement data from the handset and sends it to the projection app, created by Schmidt."

Lego Bricks It

NYT's Andrew Newman reported today that Lego prohibited the makers of the Spinal Tap "Unwigged and Unplugged" tour DVD from using a two-year-old stop-motion animation video of "Tonight I'm Gonna Rock You" (below) created by Coleman Hickey that they had been using on their tour.

And why was this piece of content disallowed?

"We love that our fans are so passionate and so creative with our products,” said Julie Stern, a spokeswoman for Lego Systems, the United States division of the Lego Group, a Danish company founded in the 1930s. “But it had some inappropriate language, and the tone wasn’t appropriate for our target audience of kids 6 to 12."

Cluephone, Julie - 6 to 12 year olds aren't the only ones who love Lego products.  Nor are they the ones, typically who BUY it.  Their parents do.  The same parents, probably dads, who love Spinal Tap.  And loved Lego.  And would have loved to see this little mashup - maybe as much as the Spinal Tap guys themselves, who worked it into their stage show for their recent tour.

Lego is making a classic error.  They don't own their brand anymore.  More than anyone, they should know that - they've been giving their brand to their fans to play with for years, in the shapes of those little bricks and every other shape they make.  And we have played with them - making things Lego never dreamed up, including an entire genre on YouTube of stop motion animation.

Which is of course where my five-year old got his first intro to animation.  through legos.  on YouTube.  Unfortunately it was watching this classic:

When other brands would KILL to get the kind of mashup Lego was just handed (Lego + stop motion + YouTube + SpinalTap Tour + DVD) rolled into a compilation DVD as a free ad for their product to adoring fans, why did Lego kill the fun?

“YouTube is a less commercial use,” Ms. Stern said. “But when you get into a more commercial use, that’s when we have to look into the fact that we are a trademarked brand, and we really have to control the use of our brand, and our brand values.”

Darn, Julie. 

You can't control your brand anymore. 

You can choose who to spotlight though - and Coleman Hickey LOVED you. 

Loved you enough to take the time to build a movie using your product.  So what did the now sixteen-year-old Mr. Hickey have to say about the silliness?

“In a way I’m disappointed that it won’t be forever memorialized in a DVD.  It’s not like I was going to get any money for it, but it’s too bad. Lego has the right to do that, but it’s unfortunate that they don’t have a little more of a sense of humor.”

You nailed it, Coleman.

This is so cool, it must be 37 degrees

OK - so that's a reference to the "perfect pour" temperature of Coke - 37 degrees Fahrenheit - that optimizes the drinking experience to the point you have to sit down to drink it or your brain will explode with pleasure.  And frankly, that'd be a mess, what with the bubbles and all.

I know that because (disclaimer) I have the pleasure to work with Coke.

Read about Coke's "interactive fountain" in Fast Company today.  Touch screen + 46-ounce concentrated flavor cartridge = your perfect Coke.  That in and of itself is pretty neat.

But I like it for two reasons - one that was stated in the article, one that wasn't:

(1) According to the article, "Another perk is the business data the dispenser sends back to Coke's headquarters in Atlanta. The machines upload data about beverage consumption, peak times, and popular locations. Coke can also talk back to the machine, letting it know if a particular flavor needs to be discontinued or recalled and causing it to stop serving the drink immediately."  This is FANTASTIC.  The machines become real-time focus groups and interactive sales terminals.  As long as the info generated isn't left in the hands of the inventory department but rather feeds the broader marketing organization, this has significant implications.

(2) This machine will feed a fundamental behavior intrinsic to Coke's target audience - sharing.  you can't create a witch's brew flavor without the friend next to you asking for "just a sip" to compare to their concoction - and you'll probably see an uptick in sales as people 'experiment' with different flavors.  Expect different flavor combinations (the more esoteric the better) to form fan groups and passion communities online.  Expect #Coke flavored hashtags cropping up on Twitter, etc. etc. etc.

The machines don't just mix flavors, they start conversations.  probably not unlike the ones that mmay have happened at soda fountains.  Even better?  Good-natured arguments.  And THAT is cool.

"My Diet Vanilla Black Cherry Bomb is tastier than Biff's Crap-tastic mix..."

Kudos to Coke for harnessing a technology that speaks to both their heritage (the soda fountain) and their future.  And for turning their product into a participatory experience. 

Win.

Poken

talking poken on 12seconds.tv Thanks to Shingo, Mai and Yuko for showing me their Pokens.

GPS Drawings

Human tech-hacking: Jeremy Wood creates art "drawing" with his GPS data contrail. 

Wood's GPS drawing gallery:

Mobility at the Youth Ball

and this image via Adam Frucci @ Gizmodo:

 

What's the sound of one hand clapping?  Ask Barack.

See the Future in Malmo

Unsworn Industries, maker of the 'Telemegaphone Dale' have just announced the launch of their 'Parascopes, Malmo' - site-specific "binoculars" that show not the present, but the future.  Specifically, the impact of a proposed urban planning effort.  Rather than put the plans on view in Malmo city hall, they built immersive viewers people can use to see the potential of the proposals in situ.  Nice.

Runs in the family?

My six-year-old wanted to make a birthday card for my wife.  He grabbed a pen and mumbled something about "doing a computer thing", then came back with this.  He informed me that the 'Happy Bir' is followed by "a blinking cursor, because I'm still typing".  He put on the 'Caps Lock' and though my wife uses Safari @ home, Daddy uses Firefox, and that browser made the cut.

Geek waters run deep chez Gleeson. 

Detail:

Can't wait to see his Linux/Maemo version next year.

\o/ FrontlineSMS Makes Us Better \o/

Ken Banks (@kiwanja on twitter) is an honest-to-goodness tech hero.  When much tech-related news and developments wallow in wonk and wank, or seem aimed at folks with more daily discretionary spending power than many global households make annually (PS3 Home launches!  Waaa waaaaah), Ken's FrontlineSMS (@frontlineSMS on twitter) is a free piece of software that enables NGO's and grassroots organizations worldwide to communicate rapidly and effectively with geographically dispersed groups using basic text-messaging (SMS) technology.  If you can get a signal, you can communicate/aggregate/congregate/advocate.  And it works in spite of the natural disasters and power outages that regularly cripple other tech solutions. 

Just how far ahead of the curve is Ken?

After a year of exhaustive research and millions spent, Larry Brilliant's Google.org announced (at TED 2008 last year) that they'd arrived at the conclusion that an SMS-enabled tool could be a good idea to invest MORE time and money to create a team to build and research and prototype and maybe, just maybe, deploy.  Net: according to Google, it would take years and millions to do, in effect, what FrontlineSMS had been doing for years.  Like announcing in 1973 that a moon trip looked "feasible".  Proof yet again that insitutional hubris and groupthink can blind even the smartiest of smartie-pants to nimble people with a passion doing a reverse windmill dunk over them.  [See "Salamis"]

Sure W+K sells soda and sneaks better than anyone, but we love passionate folks using innovative technologies to make peoples lives better.  We were honored to work with Ken on his web presence and logo - both of which had to work on low speed connections and use text characters (since many folks would interact with them only via text message).  BTW - the logo we developed with Ken is ASCII friendly and does some great stuff when you paste it into skype.  seriously. 

And it looks good on a button (see photo above).

\o/

NIN Secret concert...finally

Maybe my favorite bit about the NIN Year Zero ARG was that damn concert that I had heard about but never actually saw documented.

The story went that players and fans were made aware of an 'Art is Resistance' meeting...then climbed into vehicles (I had heard buses, but apparently it was vans ok, it WAS buses) and driven to an undisclosed location in the LA factory district for a wild 'experience'. Sounded cool, but though I kept coming across references, I couldn't find documentation. Until now.

Karl Bode's WordSoup blog mentioned the concert back in 4/07, and though his video's been yanked, he links to one of the YZ websites 'Open Source Resistance' where the video still exists. bingo.

It's worth watching to see

• the crowd reactions - they shift [frequently] between willing disbelief, outright disbelief, mild discomfort, wild euphoria and s--t scared. Just try to quantify the 'engagement metric' on that puppy, Holmes.
• watching the intersection of realities between Trent and the actors/assistants with the fans - Trent is firmly embedded in the album's alternate worldview, and for once, the fans don't just imagine it after huffing airplane glue and cranking it up, they get to be there when the SWAT team bursts in. Shooting.

Trent and 42 Entertainment built the Year Zero roller coaster ride that turned music into a game you could play. And kudos to 42 Entertainment, but make no mistake: Trent has spent the better part of the last two decades doing the heavylifting of brand narrative world building. And with the dystopian foundation laid and the narrative arc in motion, you can subcontract/modularize the activation to map to technographic, demographic, and psychographic subsets. And net a solid selling album in the process. Yes, I am a NIN fanboy. Sue me.

For anyone unfamiliar with this year's Cannes Viral Advertising Gran Prix winner, here's the synopsis, from their entry:

"The ambitious Year Zero alternate reality game (ARG), a work of cross-media art involving websites, emails, phone calls, album packaging, tour t-shirts, thumb drives, music videos, murals, interactive games and live concert events with the new music of Nine Inch Nails at its core. Playing out over 10 weeks, the Year Zero ARG engaged over 2.5M participants. It started with a message hidden in the back of a concert t-shirt that lead to online websites, ultimately over 29 websites discovered over several months, 7.5M page views, 7M forum postings, 2M phone calls and thousands of original art submissions."

Are you letting people play YOUR brand communications?

Dead people are fun to trick.

[Disclaimer:  If anyone tries to stiff my rotting carcass with mock fake real things, not at least real fake real things, I WILL come back from hell and go 'Ring' on your ass.  I mean it, people.]   

Studio Leung brings a Chinese tradition dating back to the Tang Dynasty (739A.D.) up to date with .pdf's, just in time for the Qingming Festival (April 5th).  Real on the left, 'Printable offerings' on the right, below.  And yes, if you were dead, it would be hard to tell the difference.

Per Studio Leung's site:

"when a person dies, their spirit will still need the things that they used when they were alive...if the spirit [is] not content in the after-life, he or she will not bring good fortune to the living...in response to this Chinese tradition and today's widespread access to the Internet, we have created a range objects to be printed, assembled and offered to loved ones."

Collection 1 is environmentally better than real fake objects printed on metallic papers, etc., is formatted to work on printer-friendly A4-sized paper, and "focuses on everyday objects that play a huge role in Chinese culture, such as the Octopus travel card and Bic biro".  And apparently, the iPhone. Download 'em here and burn 'em:

• Wallet.pdf *
• Passport.pdf *
• Mobile_Phone.pdf *
• Notebook.pdf *
• Pen.pdf
• Letterbox.pdf *
• Cigarettes.pdf
• Pocket_Tissues.pdf

And have no worries:  Collection 2 is expected to hit a month before the Hungry Ghost festival.

[caught by Core77 and Textually, photo from Textually]

 

Sex-bot's coming. Hey wait a second...

Calling the Porn industry: your future has arrived...PreSurfer digs this one up.  Thanks to the magic of a Head Mounted Display (HMD) and a force-feedback robot, you no longer have to deal with pesky humans.  Cast their avatars over a handy, easy-to-wash green screen mesh and take "interactive" to a new level. Brrrrrrrrr.

Virtual Realities - San Francisco, New York, Dubai-land, Falcon City, Second Life, Cloverfield, oh for gosh's sake

Some I'm going to apologize in advance for bad logic, poor application of social theory, bad understanding of the neurologic basis of memories and the like.  And I welcome any thoughts anyone has on the following.

I was talking with Penny Brough of W+K London about the Golden Gate Bridge.  I'll admit, I was a little jet-lagged, but from what I recall, she was saying more folks know San Francisco through images of the Golden Gate bridge than will ever see the real bridge...so there are probably more virtual Golden Gate bridges traveling the world in folks heads than real memories experienced by folks who've actually seen it.  And the SF of the mind may be as real to the non-visitor as the real one is to folks who've been there.   And sometimes when you finally do see something, the real one isn't as pretty as the cumulative virtual one you remember though you'd never really seen it, anyway.

Maybe, somehow, getting a gray day downer the first time you cross the Golden Gate is like when you meet a movie star like Tom Cruise, and find out he's REALLY SHORT.  Or not.

The power of cumulative virtual memory, not Tom Cruise, may be part of the reason why NYC seems to keep getting blasted to bits in movie after movie - it's a quick cheap "gimmie" for a filmmaker/storyteller to leverage the virtual NYC in viewer's heads, built from postcards, movies, TV shows and commercials - to create an instant pang of connection. 

Below, does Lady Liberty get her head torn off so Cloverfield can tap the collective unconscious?

Side note - Lady Liberty gets the short end of the stick in quite a few movies - Planet of The Apes, The Day After, Escape From New York, etc. - she's even in the movie posters for them all.)

A good storyteller, one who engages and moves an audience, weaves the most effective tale when they leverage their listeners' cultural conventions, ideals, shared images, symbols, archetypes, creation myths, known characters and historical situations to create entry points - think Aesop's fables, Grimm's tales, Disney, Tolkien, The Apostles.  NYC, through the cumulative weight of visual imagery and narrative, has entered the world's global memory bank.  It is a virtually 'shared' city, though few (proportionally to the globe's population) have actually been there.  A terrorist attack there, then, became an assault on a real thing AND on our global collective virtual memory.

We're familiar with taking a real thing (Golden Gate Bridge) and provide virtual copies (postcards) to create a virtual visual memory (of the card initially, but ultimately of the "Bridge").  Now we can personally create a virtual thing (an avatar) and create real copies (paintings, figurines, etc.) - like a 3-D printed 'Spore' figurine, a World of Warcraft figurine, or a portrait of your second life avatar.  In the former, shared virtual memory is gleaned from a representation of the real.  In the latter, real is distilled from virtual.   Is one of those more real, less real, or more virtual?

Something happens, anything, and if the experience makes it out of your short term memory into long term, you are left with an accessible memory.  Is the similarly accessible memory of a virtual experience  (say finally mastering and manning the turret guns in Gears of War - FTW!) somehow less real than the memory of a real experience? 

 

As worlds become truly immersive, the distinction between real and virtual is going to get awful gray, especially since you'll be able to upload your brain to the data cloud by 2050 and get rid of that pesky meat-space interface we call a "body".

Second Life is a real thing, and a virtual place and a collective memory fed by its citizens activities and preserved by Linden Labs infrastructure. It's a place where people can live out their fantasies (mundane and/or bizarre).  Players create real space (and value) in a virtual place, 'real' because it can be perceived by the senses, remembered accurately by the brain, bought and sold, and it adheres to a rule system that preserves and protects the reality it creates.  And players pay for the privilege of creating more value for others with each interaction.  Sweeeeet.

Dubai-Land is a real thing, too.  But it started as a (mind-numbingly expensive) dream, and is being forced, inch-by-terra-formed-inch, onto an incredibly inhospitable landscape.  Watch the video below and be simultaneously blown away and appalled...and not just by the "action-movie-voiceover" narrative with memorable quotes like "think eco-tourism, but BIGGER", or "watch your kids turn into adults INSTANTLY, and live out their DREAM professions", but by how much this promo video reads like the opening sequence for a soon to be released post-apocalyptic film riffing on the follies of man:

 

Falcon City of Wonders, my favorite part of Dubai-Land, is a land mass tastefully formed to resemble a falcon spreading its wings, and features scale reproductions of the Pyramids ("with retail space the Egyptians would never have dreamed possible!"), the Eiffel tower, Big Ben, and the Taj Mahal.  To keep this thing humble, the designers thoughtfully put in a jogging track around the scale Central Park in the form of a section of the Great Wall of China.

Falcon City of Wonders = big.  Tom Cruise = not as big?

Are virtual worlds creating new collective memories?  Yes.  Will Dubai-land create a new collective memory pool (before its overrun by nuclear/plague/ebola/alien infested zombies)?  Yes.  Is Master Chief the new Luke Skywalker?  Yes.  What happens when you can't tell the difference between a virtual world and a real world?  When does the difference not matter anymore?

 

Jonathan Harris: Whale Hunt

If you haven't seen Jonathan's work over at Number27.org, go now. 

I'll wait for you to come back.

Just got a note about the launch of his latest piece, Whale Hunt.

Here's how he describes it:

"Last May I spent ten days with a family of Inupiat Eskimos in Barrow, Alaska, during their annual spring whale hunt. I documented the entire experience with a plodding sequence of 3,214 photographs, beginning with the taxi ride to Newark airport, and ending with the butchering of the second whale, seven days later. The photographs were taken at five-minute intervals, even while sleeping (using a chronometer), establishing a constant “photographic heartbeat”. In moments of high adrenaline, this photographic heartbeat would quicken (to a maximum rate of 37 pictures in five minutes while the first whale was being cut up), mimicking the changing pace of my own heartbeat.

Then I made an online framework for browsing this story in some interesting ways. You can read more about the piece, see some highlights, or jump right in. Happy hunting!"

Digital connections leading to real world "interactivity"

Tech may lower the barriers to human interaction in the real world, but it sure doesn't make us honest online.  Here's a quote from a study of online dating...and deception:

"In another attempt to collect objective data on deception, economists Guenter Hitsch and Ali Hortaçsu of the University of Chicago and psychologist Dan Ariely of M.I.T. compared the heights and weights of online daters with the same statistics obtained from national census data...they found that online height is exaggerated by only an inch or so for both men and women but that women appear to understate their weight more and more as they get older: by five pounds when they are in their 20s, 17 pounds in their 30s and 19 pounds in their 40s.

For men, the major areas of deception are educational level, income, height, age and marital status; at least 13 percent of online male suitors are thought to be married. For women, the major areas of deception are weight, physical appearance and age. All of the relevant research shows the importance of physical appearance for both sexes, and online daters interpret the absence of photos negatively."

[full article, from Scientific American, here]

One way to get around the fake photos and "nuanced" descriptions?  Go real world.

• Ice Brkr mobile - "TXT the boy/girl of your dreams in the bar - if he/she responds, go for it"
• CrazyBlindDate.com - hookup right now.  at a coffeeshop or bar.  No photos.
• Shyno - apparel with SMS codes so you can txt the wearer

NATO's new Afghan battleground: YouTube

[via picturephoning.com]

NATO is acknowledging YouTube as its new battleground in the six-year war on Taliban fighters in Afghanistan, as the military alliance posts formerly secret surveillance and attack video. CNN reports.

"The strategy aims to counter years of propaganda video posted on the Internet showing Taliban attacks on NATO forces which fighters use to claim that NATO's position in the Afghan war is deteriorating.

"The Taliban, who are literally cave-dwellers, are doing better than we are on a key battleground -- and that's video," said NATO spokesman James Appathurai. "They deploy with videographers. We don't. They have DVDs out in an hour, we don't."

Wielding video cameras like weapons, fighters quickly upload images of their attacks and create a valuable morale booster for their supporters.

Now, after much internal debate, NATO has begun declassifying and posting top secret combat video on YouTube and other Web platforms to try and beat the Taliban at its own game."

Who are you? Pt. 2

In an increasingly cluttered media landscape, brands stand as lighthouses over seas of mediocrity.  They mean something - and in defining themselves and what they stand for, they help us define ourselves.

"Consider that as our identities, data flows and allegiances (can) become more fluid, refined and environmentally responsive given the increasingly connected edge, long-term differentiation becomes less a byproduct of A Big Idea (what you’re doing), or your technology or distribution plays (how you’re doing it). Connected consumers will want to know who you are and why you’re doing certain things (and keep constant tabs on these indicators) to see if you’re worth their affiliation.

In a sense, this is arguing for the primacy of reliable narrators and powerful story (read: brand), even as it charts the rapid decay of traditional branding approaches."

                    [from Brian Oberkirch's blog Like it Matters]

Pirate Skwirl says ARG!

ARG let you play a game in real life.  Don't just pretend you are a squirrel with a sword - BE the squirrel with the sword.

For all you ARG (Alternate Reality Game) fans out there (Tom - talking to you!), Gamasutra has an interesting interview with Elan Lee, founder of 42 entertainment.  Elan's outfit created The Beast and I Love Bees, amongst other gaming experiences (including NIN Year Zero effort).

What is an ARG?  Elan's definition...

"...is very loose. An alternate reality game [ARG] is anything that takes your life and converts it into an entertainment space. If you look at a typical video game, it’s really about turning you into a hero; a super hero, a secret agent. It’s your ability to step outside your life and be someone else. An ARG takes those same sensibilities and applies them to your actual life. It says, what if you actually were a super hero, what if you actually were a secret agent? Instead of living in the box that’s your television or your computer, why not use your actual life as a storytelling delivery platform?"

For more delicious ARG info, check out the Alternate Reality Gaming Network (with a good list of current games), a rundown on them from Wikipedia, and a history of Nokia's plays in the space.

Pump up the Jams with TweetVolume

The user base and the list of applications built on the Twitter engine grows.  Which may be why it keeps crashing.  Twitter has been eloquently described to me as "SMS masturbation".  But it's so much more.  No really.  When it doesn't crash and give you this heartwarming message.

So now this in from From textually.org:

"TweetVolume compares up to five different keywords based on how often they appear on Twitter. So, if you want to find out if Scoble is more popular than Steve Rubel on Twitter, this is the place to go."

It's Googlefight gone Twitter.

the writing on the wall

Give us a flat space and a tool with which to leave a mark, and we will.  In the "Found" tradition, a site dedicated to images (curated and found) of the people's public ruminations.

WearTech

this one from Rahul Panchal, W+K NYC:

CLOTHING INVENTIONS: Amazing Embrace
Remember when PDA stood for something other than personal digital assistant? It can again with the Hug Shirt, a high-tech garment that simulates the experience of being embraced by a loved one. When a friend sends you a virtual hug, your cell phone notifies the shirt wirelessly, via Bluetooth. The shirt then re-creates that person's distinctive cuddle, replicating his or her warmth, pressure, duration and even heartbeat. And, yes, the Hug Shirt is fully washable.
Inventor: CuteCircuit
Availability: Not yet for sale
To learn more visit cutecircuit.com

World Without Oil

Alternate Reality Gaming (ARG's) meld digital tools and real-world activity to create a seamlessly immersive gaming environment.  Nine Inch Nails Year Zero effort is a particularly kick butt one, and the latest from Jane McGonigal (ex-42entertainment, creators of the infamous "I Love Bees" game for XBox's Halo) is called World Without Oil , and it officially launched today.

What's particularly interesting about this one is that it appears to be less about playing a traditional game.  In fact,

"It's not immediately clear as to how the game will take shape, but it seems that player-generated content will be at the heart of the experience, as the game will revolve around "citizen stories in blogs, videos, photos, audio and phone messages posted all over the Internet."

 

Announced at ARGFest 07 (yes, I know you all were there) the game is a "live interactive month-long alternate reality event" that will explore the idea of a worldwide oil shortage.

According to PR Newswire,

"The self-proclaimed grassroots experience bills itself as "an insight into what happens when a great economy built entirely on cheap oil begins to run short," as it looks at the "impact on people's lives -- work, social, family and personal -- and explores what happens when our thirst for oil begins to exceed supply."

How can you play?  Go to the gaspump, OR read the player wiki, official game blog, and the MySpace blog.  You can also register at the trailhead site, and check in with developments at the Unfiction forums.

The Twitter-ing Continues

Twitter. 

If you haven't done it, somehow, people just know.

It's worthwhile to bone up on Twitter.  And I wouldn't have said this a few weeks back.

Twitter lets you update anyone who gives a toot up-to-the-second updates on your sad little life.  Via your phone primarily, but also by web.  As a tool, it really blew up at the Austin based geekfest "South by Southwest".  Then it was supposed to die.  But it's only gotten bigger.  Mad bigger.  I've got one word for you:  twittervision.   I watched this thing til I was bleary-eyed.

http://www.twittervision.com

Believe me when I tell you its like Mr. Pibb and red strings = crazy delicious.  See a self-involved world updating live.  Please.  Go.  Now.

Twitter's burrowed its way into the general subconscious and stuck - why?  well, first thing is they released their code to the public, so anyone can create their own twitter "mashup" or tools.  This took a pretty basic tool and actually made it intersting.  Two, its an embodiment of "reachability" - the ability for others to know where you are at all times.  Three, it a chance for celebrity - to show up on the general posts at twitter, to appear on a map mashup, etc., has value.  Fourth, It's a great tool for connecting with people on the fly, and that's how it was used at SXSW, where it became a way to leave virtual posts and set up spontaneous gatherings. 

But there is something deeper here to this phenomenon - I'd love to hear your thoughts on it!

Twitter's like digital kudzu.  Here's just a partial list of Twitter related stuff from franticindustries:

Mashups

Flussgeist - an unorthodox but interesting mashup between Twitter, Flickr, and several other services. It combines tweets with images, videos and an ambient soundtrack.
Swotter A contestant for the weirdest Twitter mashup out there, Swotter is “reading” books to Twitter. It’s essentially just sending lines of text from a book to a Twitter account. You can see it in action here: twitter.com/booktwo
Twapper - a mashup between the online calendar 30boxes and Twitter, created by the folks from 30boxes themselves. It works on both mobile and standard web browsers, and it’s useful even without a 30boxes account
TwitterEarth - similar to TwitterVision (which came first), but based on Live Maps, and works in 3D, too - at least it should, but at the time of this writing clicking on the 3D icon does nothing.
Twitterer - a Twitter/Second Life mashups, which shows updates from a certain Twitter accounts over Second Life spheres.
TwitterMaps another Twitter/Google Maps mashup, with a simple function: find out where a Twitter user is located. You can also update your current location with a special command sent to Twitter.

Mobile

 Autotwit lets you automate Twitter updates. Quite useless, unless you want to keep up an image of a man that never sleeps.
EmailTwitter - allows you to post Twitter updates and retrieve your Twitter timeline via your cellular phone or other e-mail enabled mobile device, without incurring SMS fees.
Mail2Twitter allows you to post tweets through e-mail, as well as any email-enabled mobile device.
RSS2Twitter - converts an RSS feed into Twitter tweets.
Twitter Badges: This comes straight from the developers of Twitter: Flash badges intended to be displayed on your website, showing your latest Twitter posts
TwitterBuzz is an interesting tool that turns Twitter into some sort of simple Digg. It displays a list of most popular links on Twitter. You can see all the Twitter messages mentioning the link.
TwitterFeed - a service that combines OpenID and Twitter to let you feed the entries on your blog to Twitter
Twitterholic keeps a top list of users based on how often the post, how many friends they have, and other factors.
Twitteromatic - a tool that posts all sorts of information (weather, Firefox updates) to Twitter automatically.

Widgets

Twadget - A Windows Vista widget (Microsoft calls them gadgets for no understandable reason), which shows you the latest Twitter updates and gives you the ability to post to Twitter right from your desktop.
Yourminis Twitter widget that shows tweets, and enables you to post updates to Twitter.

The mad dwarf and the nympho schizo

Good rule of thumb:  don't email anything you wouldn't want to see in print.

In what the FT calls "one of the highest profile libel cases in England to focus largely on blog postings and electronic traffic", Sir Martin Sorrell, founder of WPP, is suing two former business associates.  These associates are alleged to have sent a company-wide email to their ex-WPP subsidiary referring to the WPP founder and Ms. Weber [a colleague] as "the mad dwarf and the nympho schizo".  (from the Telegraph, UK, 15.03.2007), and set up a libelous blog.

If anyone can find the blog, please send it my way.  you'll have my undying love and a featured post.