DISQUS

But in the meantime, people are saying my world is reminding them of Half-Life 2 and various titles from XBOX 360.

Given where I've been in blogging, podcasting, vlogging, etc... what could be my potential opportunities in the game space...?

Life waits for no one.

Damn, wordpress ate my long snark post :/

Ah, crap I'm logged in as Spin, not Eric Rice. So, ericrice.com it is.

Hiiii.

Can we go ahead and post all the textbook crap we KNOW we'll hear?

1. More like 'get a life'
2. I don't have time for a first life
3. Clay Shirky playing with Excel spreadsheets again and not social issues
4. I don't get Second Life
5. Insert something about gaming here
6. Child Porn
7. Gazillion damn dollars being spent via corps
8. BTW, Microsoft and the Visual Studio thing is KICKING MUCH ASS IN SL
9. More like 'get a life' oh wait I said that already haw haw haw it was funny the first 9842309482098 times.

Okay, wtf did I forget? Cuz really, I wanna save everyone the bandwidth.

10. There are other Second Life competitors out there, also. Some of them are better and worse. But, see #1 if this worries you.

Prokofy, I question the issue of 'laissez-faire' in the internet era. Do you regulate or do you not regulate? Do you take a hands-off approach to data or do you monitor it all and take liability.

(this does kinda circle around to the Kathy Sierra/deceny in blogs/should comments and chats be 100% moderated, etc)

There are a few things going on:

1. The open letter of angry residents didn't seem to get any responses that had been heard before. (Also, Linden needs help business blogging-- turning off comments randomly is not cool. Residents are pissed.)

2. The age-verification thing is terrifying to almost an EFF level. Linden Lab is sending the verification thing outside to a company run by Aristotle.com. SL's oldest tabloid, the Herald, did some awesome digging into it. This ain't your typical 'ohnoes email spam sharing' thing. And, with 50% of the users being non-American? Eesh.

3. I'm against the age verification thing like I'm against the separate grids-- but that's an issue that is so deep beyond the politically correct 'save the children' campaigns which is a) a real concern and b) a political strawman (who is gonna disagree with protecting little Bobby? Exactly. it's easy win). Hasn't research been done showing that it's not the 'adult content' but predatory behavior that's the problem online, SL or otherwise? The implementation is a technological and administrivial nightmare. Just wow.

And for the teens that are on the main grid (even people like our dearly departed jmalthus, who was a code and social media prodigy in the making), they aren't actually sitting back and laughing at the idiot grownups having cartoon sex? It's an American thing. It appeals to our fat asses in our SUVs. Seriously. You can market and PR to it and make money off it with your eyes closed.

4. I'm always amused at the stories of sex in SL regardless of its seriousness or grossness-- the horrible pedophilia thing being an example-- since the place is so free-money driven and dance-clubbish. Sex sells and atrocious sex stories sell even more. No, not suprised at all that it exists. So it makes perfect sense that Linden Lab has to regulate-- pushing them further and further away from being a common carrier.

I want my own SL server software, because at the end of the day, for ME, it's Twitter 3D. I can make things in 3D and my friends hang (you know, the real ones). This is of course, uninteresting to the standard textbook driven idiot trolls (See: "I dont have time for a first life" or "I don't Get It" or "More like Get a Life" hurrrr, it's funny the first 1000 times, kthxbye, you are no longer clever, digg'rs)

Will all of this proceed? Probably. Interestingly, as SL is the only dog on the block, far far ahead of its many existing and up and coming competitors, people are kind of locked in, like all good social media services are. This kind of thing would never fly on Twitter, Wordpress, Flickr or pick-your-rounded-cornr site du jour.

But hey, at the end of the day, we learned new things, continued to network, and continued to tackle the barriers of 'no son, you aren't allowed to try and build video games.'

The hell I say! :)

I was just alerted that Gnomedex is now in August, so there's no overlap between the two. http://gnomedex.com and http://pixelodeonfest.com

Could be worse, you could have 2 conferences at the same time both run by friends. I have to choose. I also have to choose based on good for industry and good for career.

RE: 10K speaking gig. Babies cost money dude, they will cost you time later on. Friends understand that.

Your friends will also understand if you are engaged of something that furthers progress for all of us, them included.

I have to weigh Pixelodeon against Gnomedex-- they are at the same time. One conference is in a new area in a new place, where there will be very very new faces in a very very new space-- where lots can be taught and learned; the other conference, while valuable socially, is lots of the usual suspects and questionable impact vs. lessons to be learned. Gotta choose, it sucks but meh, that's the life.

These things run way deeper than on the surface. Besides, we have uStream. heh

Also, RSS?

Holy crap, the ads actually MAKE NOISE. Remember in the olden days when everyone used to say that the way you could read WIRED magazine was glue together the ad pages and you could stomach it? The ads weren't audio-enhanced.

I'm kinda creeped out.

I haven't written about this yet, but will. Jesse was a good pal, in SL and also Twitter. It's also surreal being the last @ he posted. Re-reading his Tweets puts me between tears and laughter. And standing at his memorial that someone built in Second Life, trying to figure out what to place there, is just, weird and different.

Ironic, the kind of different angle on 'getting a first life' since that's the single thing that makes this hurt so bad.

Not to beat people with a dead horse, but the 'I don't get owning virtual blah blah blah' thing has run its course.

When you pay 60 bucks for an XBOX video game, aside from the disc, you are buying something virtual.

You aren't *really* a warrior on a battlefield in the year 2142, juuuuust in case that part might have fallen off the radar.

But back to Weblo, I wouldn't think it's anything like Second Life or Sim City at all, instead, it's more like, "domain registration site calls their stuff virtual world". And by that argument, everyone from Verisign to GoDaddy allows you to HAVE A HOME ON THE INFORMATION SUPERHIGHWAY with _their_ virtual worlds.

Comedy gold. I

Valleywag is gonna have a field day with this one. Tony Walsh from Clickable Culture wrote briefly about it in October 2006 and is convinced they are going to get sued into the ground. Time will tell.

Whoa, hold on, did I read this right about Digg's owners and such? So then what, go after all the blog sites too, and forum owners?

Be consistent if you passionately agree with that, across the board, is all.

Er, she= Kathy, not Amanda. That was the most disorganized comment.

We've had 'the conversation' at home regarding this.

When Amanda Congdon and Rocketboom split, the vibe of conversation on the USA Today blog was light years away from various topic/industry blogs. YouTube/digg/and others are part of a wider culture.

Do you think it's easy for me to start a show on *gaming* ffs? I'm walking into the widespread culture of life. It's a lion's den.

What baffles me is why she was targeted (it's wrong no matter who targets it), over people who do cause people to have an axe to grind. It's horrible and not a surprise overall and I fully expect it to get worse.

I wanted to buy one for my dad for his birthday, but, widescreen only. He has a nice tube television that is 4:3 and it *might* work. Bad.

I'm a geek, I have an XBOX, a media center, and maybe an Apple TV. I *could* but probably *won't* ever use the XBOX for anything other than gaming.

At least Apple has that ipod-for-TV spin, but if we can't stream, not sure how that plays out.

Then again, DirecTV/DISH (which people have has a built in recorder) is a tough competitor. Getting dozens of components could be annoying, yet we'll do it.

We can look at the Apple TV in isolation all day long-- that's what geeks do so well-- but we might miss how the world works outside of our sphere.

I agree with the commenter who noted the 1.0-ness of awards shows. Podcasters went through this (heck, the whole top-10 idea is so silly comparing things that have nothing to do with each other) so it was inevitable to happen to video.

Now if we could get the communities to stop thinking their own selves are the end-all, be-all of the definition of the word, whatever the word may be.

Why do I get the feeling 'vloggies' != anything from YouTube, and now this is the same, but reciprocal? Argh.

Video is video, doesn't matter who does it, where it lives, what they call it, or if they even believe they are part of a movement. I see no difference.

Merge thinking, not divide it!

Outside of a conference and social space, it's kinda silly. However, I've found it to be extremely helpful during the conference, much like ever-changing iChat status messages have been in previous years. It's passive presence. I was lost, found people, and didn't have to worry about not having phone numbers or whatnot.

But going back home, I'll see little use. Time will tell.

Did they really put panels back to back? I'm on the panel when 3d Models Meet Business Models... I have to look at the schedule. Yarg, I hate being on a panel upagainst a panel I want to go to. Heh.

Hey check it, Joost has an RSS reader in it, I was skimming this post about Joost on Joost. meta!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ericrice/407943934/

Joost might be the first to get large format stuff to my home theater.

I didn't pay 50,000 bucks to watch postage stamps in flash. If Joost can be the one to change that, fine.

I'm a tech guy too, but we're outnumbered by normal guys. We as tech bloggers should focus on them as our prime directive.

People playing video games don't have the same tech drama that Windows or Mac users have. When was the last time you heard someone saying they went XBOX literate or iPod literate?

Anyway enough about that, is there going to be a Vloggies award show at SXSW?

I was more concerned with the new UI, not the full screen UI. Software isn't just on the desktop, your iPod, XBOX and other things have full UIs.

I can't agree here, I think it's tech superiority kicking in.

Betcha moms and dads will love it. They can't accidentally do other things.