Wonderland

New Infopop

Infopop's had a makeover and expansion drive; looks like they've bought a few companies, done a bit of tinkering, and bought a new server farm.
They'd now actually be capable of serving loads the size a major television corporation might receive, it seems; interesting.

Paula

..just used 'inalienably' in a sentence, except couldn't actually articulate it. Nor could I. Is this word even pronouncable?

Gentle reminders

So yesterday I went to get my legs waxed, and a month ago I sold the lady who does my pins an old computer - for her kid. She'd put it in her daughter's bedroom and - lo and behold - I quote:

"It's just getting worse and worse, I nearly threw it out of the window today. It takes an hour to load, the dvd's broken, the broadband is slow and the AOL man said the machine wasn't fast enough to upgrade, and my daughter can't use Ask Jeeves any more, or Google. They're safe to use, aren't they?"

I had a look - updated their virus checker, and set to scan. One hour later, and 1765 known virii, three trojans, two worms and one 'backdoor' - there on the screen for all to admire. It was horrific.

Serves as a reminder for a few things. How intrinsically broken Windows is. How some novice users believe results from sites via Ask Jeeves will automatically be safe. They didn't know to regularly run virus checkers or how to update them. They didn't know screensavers could be dodgy. In essence - how unbelievably vulnerable people can be. Of course you only have to learn the hard way once, but that poor machine is going to have to be completely stripped, and if I weren't around to do it for them they'd be at least twice the price of the machine out of pocket to pay a computer plumber.

In a fairly unrelated note, but still about users - a work conversation recently descended into a near argument over 'existing' users and not-yet-attained users, and how perhaps trying to attract the n-y-a users could upset the existing users. What was really interesting is that on analysis of the data, the existing users who are vocal in this instance are approximately 4% of the total. Who knows what the other 96% want, but I'll bet it's necessarily the same thing.. worth remembering when thinking about your current user feedback.

PENGUINS!

There goes my day.

http://ogc.ath.cx/files/tmp/pingu.htm

593.5. Beat that, ha haaaaah!

Bye bye gyms.

Genius - exercise meets gaming.
Out of this could come a whole subsector of business, companies that just produce exercise programs... Martial arts training. Dance lessons! God, sod the bloody gym, this is a brilliant idea.

Mm, more Sony

Toyko visit is very long overdue. Reported today at the Japan Corporate News Network, the latest Airboard goes wifi:

Tokyo: Slated to hit the market on March 12 from Sony (TSE: 6758), the Airboard LF-X1 portable personal broadband LCD TV system can be carried around virtually anywhere on the globe.

Consisting of a 12.1-inch wireless LCD monitor and a base station, the Dual Hi-Bit Wireless-compatible system supports both 5GHz IEEE802.11a and 2.4GHz IEEE802.11b/g broadband wireless connectivity. Users can remotely access the base station connected to a TV or a DVD recorder to enjoy TV programs and recorded video in real time.

Alphaville = Metaverse

Fantastic story on the reality of Alphaville (the Sims Online city):

Alphaville could have become a socialist utopia, a grand experiment in free-market capitalism or simply a reflection of the allure and the pitfalls of any real Western city.

As it was, Alphaville quickly turned into a hellhole of scam-artists, crime syndicates, mafia extortion artists and teenage girls turning tricks to make ends meet. It became a breeding ground for the very worst in human nature..

Isn't that intriguing.
Within five years MMOGs are going to be further integrated into daily life by many hundreds of thousands of people - trans-life confusion will be on the up, and perhaps for some the fantasy life will become more of a reality than the reality life. Clearly - as illustrated by Alphaville - players enjoy fantasies far more than the ordinary.

The question is, will this apply to the few - or the many?

I wonder how far out a true metaverse really is: how far out the day is when a significant number of people are living better, more fulfilling lives as avatars than as humans? Virtual worlds can already pay the real world way, leading to sweatshops and again the seedier side of human industry - practiced commonly in the real world.

I have moments of Quake intruding on real life. Someone asked me the other day if I thought we'd see another revolutionary event like the arrival of the WWW in our lifetime. I do - and it'll probably be via the realm of MMOGs.

Digital ID hits London..

Europe's first Digital Identity Management summit, apparently. Probably worth a nose, but dearie me, the Thistle hotel on Marble Arch? Dahlings, do you have any idea what that'll do to your reputation?

Quitmeter

For anyone else also quitting, Quitmeter is helping me give up smoking by showing me how many I haven't smoked and what that translates to in money terms.

Cigarettes not smoked
153

Money saved
$66.94

Just think how much chocolate I can buy with that!

Pillar-dancing?

Nintendo have announced a seekrit product that they'll apparently unveil at E3 this year. No news on what it is, or what it does, except that it

“will enable fun and movement not seen before... I expect it to become the third pillar, next to GameCube and Game Boy", says Satoru Iwata (Nintendo Big Boss).

Speculation reported in the article in Gamasutra (requires reg) says that it could be EyeToy-esque, although how that would enable fun and movement "not seen before" I'm not sure.
Almost sounds painful ;)