Wonderland

Acceptable.tv

I've been waiting for something like this to turn up: Acceptable TV, the site - and the show.

Instead of some crusty old television executive determining which of these pilots are worth watching, we're enlisting you (yes, YOU!) to determine which of these pilots deserve the right to be seen again and which get cancelled. Here's how it works.

[...]

Step 2. VOTE.

Immediately following the episode, you can come to Acceptable.tv and VOTE for your two favorite pilots. From there, the wheels of democracy are set in motion. The two pilots that garner the most number of votes will return to the air the following Friday night with a brand-new installment that continues where the original left off. Only now, the defending champs will have to square off against three NEW pilots, wholly unrelated to what aired week.

This is like.. reality TV for TV?!

I like it.

PAX: the games festival

Gabe and Tycho have posted the latest on PAX, which is shaping up to be a fantastic event this year. PAX is by-the-gamers, for-the-gamers event. It's $40 to go, and there are hot bands, live games, hacking... you name it. They're calling it a festival, rather than a conference or any such thing: rightly so...

Freeze Pop

This will be their first year at PAX but you’ve probably heard their tracks on Harmonix games like Guitar Hero, Amplitude, Frequency, and Karaoke revolution.

Jonathan Coulton

Folk rock about zombies and writing code? Oh yeah, this guy belongs at PAX.

The OneUps

I’m super excited to have these guys at our show this year. Please just go to their Myspace page and listen to Bossa De Link. That track will make you an instant fan.

Ume blossom laptop sleeve

Saltygal continues to produce just lovely laptop sleeves: I get asked about my (set of two) sleeve(s) all the time. Here's her latest:

Bargain at 35 bucks, if you ask me.

Brain-scanning game peripherals

Vincent sent this in weeks ago, but I've been all over the place. Maybe this is related to BoingBoing's brain-scanning stuff from the military that Cory posted today; maybe not. Either way, it's cool: a bike helmet type thing with a brain scanner attached:

The first aspect demonstrated was facial recognition. Without a camera of any sort, Emotiv's headset is able to detect a variety of facial expression. Smiles, frowns, open and closed mouth are detected in real time, as is the direction the wearer's eyes are looking. It even detects blinks and winks.

Okay. Whoa.

The second aspect we saw was the headset's ability to judge states of excitement or calm..[...]..Emotiv's reps suggested a variety of gameplay elements that could be based upon this recognition, from mood-adaptive soundtracks to unlocking berserker modes in first person shooters on the basis of the player getting amp'ed up on real adrenaline.

Here's the third and final completely wild ability:

By focusing upon physical movements, users are able to translate their thoughts into movement in a 3D virtual environment. Push, pull, slide, rotate, lift, drop, and six other motions can currently be detected by the Emotive tech.

The article goes into detail about the demo'ing engineer building stonehenge by just using his arms, and thought commands.

Ordinarily I would think this was a complete scam, except it was demoed at GDC, and lunchtime conversation today included stories of someone livehacking someone else's embedded finger-RFID...

(Thanks Vincent!)

Super-kawaii MySims

Bits and pieces of Robin's new game MySims are trickling out, and Kotaku featured a clip on the character customisation. There's one that looks almost exactly like what I'd choose for me:

Soo damn CUTE! This is EA's way of getting the Sims to port nicely to a) consoles and b) Asia (and possibly c) children?). I think it's going to work.

Real estate agents move into SL

These news stories are turning up weekly now, as that wave of Business Week-esque articles a few months ago bear actual Second Life fruit. Last week it was taxes, with H&R Block, this week it's actual estate management, with Coldwell Banker (not actually a banker) moving in and buying up land by the sackload. They're even doing property development, for rental purposes:

Coldwell Banker has bought extensive tracts of property on the central "mainland" of Second Life. (Most companies own "islands" scattered all over.) It subdivided this digital land into 520 individual houses and living units, half of which it will sell and half it will rent.

Their SVP of Marketing says:

"A small number of land barons mostly control real estate in Second Life," he says, "and we thought we could bring real estate to the masses."

Carr says the danger is not so much land barons like Anshe Chung (who famously claimed she had amassed over U.S. $1 million in digital assets in Second Life) as it is "people who offer to sell you the Golden Gate Bridge. For every legitimate real estate broker there are a thousand scammers."

I guess they have a point: you won't get scammed (per se) by a real-world company like Coldwell Banker ...  then again, you're not guaranteed to get the best price, either.

I like the idea of rentals. Most virtual places are somewhat transitory except for the very hardcore I think; they're onto something with rentals, not least for things like 'holiday getaways'. Imagine.

(via Slashdot)

Oh yes, I forgot to post this too: Reebok are advertising their Scarlett Johansson-advertised line of clothes. Check out their shop there, super futuro.

This in-world architecture is really getting quite impressive...

Mario Crack

Threadless has this fantastic submission in, titled "Keeping It Real":

Got to vote to get it made...

(Thanks Kim! You were right...)

Virtual Taxes

Press release of the year, this is:

The company [H&R Block] today launched “H&R Block” Island , a new destination for the multitudes of people who spend more than 7 million hours per month as they live, work, and play in Second Life.

With digital tax professionals sharing free advice, providing access to the latest tax preparation products, and hosting tax-related events, tax time may never be the same.

As I sit here contemplating the idiotic mound of paperwork required to do a US tax return, the thought of Second Life "tax-related events" makes me laugh.

Cricket

Someone was bemoaning the lack of cricket in videogames recently, although I forget who it was. Apart from Brian Lara Cricket, you rarely hear much about the videogaming-cricket world. In fact, I'm not sure even BLC is mentioned much these days. Although, on googling, it seems to be going strong... Brian Lara Cricket 2007 is up there, who knew?

Anyway - did you know Xbox Live has an India version? It does. And what was all over the front page yesterday? Cricket. Yuvraj Singh International Cricket 2007, in fact.

• Vastly enhanced graphics:new head and skeleton technology for the players and improved texturing, lighting and bump-mapping throughout.
• Play with Officially Licensed cricket equipment: from manufacturers such as MRF, Kookaburra, Gray Nicholls and many more.
• Official Hawkeye ball-tracking analysis (as seen on TV).

Oh god. There'll be a cricket MMO next, if we're not careful.

While we're at it, don't miss the Xbox Live India tv spots. Totally energetic.

(Thanks Kim!)

Fair Trade machinima

Fair Trade: that decent organisation that means some coffee growers get paid properly for their wares, while some companies, like Fourbucks, can claim to offer Fair Trade coffee when in fact they offer it on their drip machine and not for any big drink you have made at the espresso machine. Watch out for that.

Strange Company have been producing some machinima recently to illustrate the plight of the farmer, using both The Sims and World of Warcraft as engines:

The Sims 2 Fair Trade ad was made as a collaboration between Machinima producers Strange Company, ethical marketing group Hand Up Media, and a creative group from Rosehall High School near Glasgow, who came up with the concept, the storyboard, and acted in the film.

The World of Warcraft Fair Trade ad was made entirely by Strange Company, after we became enthusiastic about the idea.

Not only are these little movies on a good topic, they involved kids from local schools, and the movies are deeply Creative Commons'd. Windows Media Player won't let me take a screenshot of this via usual sources (Print Screen, FastStone Capture), the DRM in it means I get a black jpg. God I hate Windows Media Player. Can't even screenshot from VLC.. have they snuck this anti-screenshot stuff into XP now??

ANYWAY. Sod downloading the stupid .wmv file, you can see them right here.