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Useful summary of the web of data argument put forward by Coates, Biddulph and others. Down to earth. Explains the value of this approach well.
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“WriteMaps is a free web-based tool that allows you to create, edit, and share sitemaps online.” Perhaps useful sometime?
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Easy to understand explanation of Bayesian rating.
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How to create a webclip icon for use with iPhone and iPod Touch. Why not do this for leapfrog.nl, I think.
Month: January 2008
links for 2008-01-18
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“Another theory is, picross is just too unique. Especially for the mobile users. If you look at other games, the ones making noise are the very very simple and familiar ones.” Nonograms might take too long to solve for them to be suited to snack gaming.
Slides for my Oslo UXnet meetup talk
Last night I presented at the January UXnet meetup in Oslo. When Are invited me to come over I thought I’d be talking to maybe 60 user experience people. 200 showed up—talk about kicking off the year with a bang. I think the crew at Netlife Research may just have written UXnet history. I’m not sure. (Don’t believe me? Check out the RSVPs on the event’s page at Meetup.com)
The talk went OK. I had 20 minutes, which is pretty short. I finished on time, but I had to leave out a lot of examples. The original talk on which this was based is a 2 hour lecture I deliver at UX companies. (I did this last year for instance at InUse.)
The lack of examples was the biggest point of criticism I got afterwards. I’ll try to make up for that a bit in a later post, listing some examples of web sites and apps that I would call in some way playful. Stay tuned.
For now, here are the slides (no notes I’m afraid, so it’ll be hard to make any sense of them if you weren’t there). Thanks to Are Halland for inviting me. And greetings to all my friends in Oslo. You’ve got a beautiful UX thing going on there.
links for 2008-01-16
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Long, good overview of Dan Hill’s thoughts on adaptive design, interaction design, hackability and architecture. I agree with one of the commenters that he should write a book about this. Required reading for IxDs I’d say.
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“FATWORLD is a video game about the politics of nutrition. It explores the relationships between obesity, nutrition, and socioeconomics in the contemporary U.S.”
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Context aware stuff keeps fascinating me: “Shelf is an app for MacOS that looks at the current foreground application, and tries to figure out if what you’re looking at corresponds to a person in your Address Book. Then it’ll tell you things about the
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“…it clearly demostrates the power of access and general enablement that Playyoo is creating for the everyday gamer with an idea…”
links for 2008-01-15
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Reach the 16th floor by cooperating with previous incarnations of your own cursor. Fun little game concept.
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I’m impressed with this awesome effort to catalogue Thomas Jefferson’s library on LibraryThing. Not so much because I’m into Jefferson, but because of the potential of similar efforts for people I do find interesting. Time to revamp my LT account.
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“The web’s greatest strength, I believe, is often seen as a limitation, as a defect. It is the nature of the web to be flexible, and it should be our role as designers and developers to embrace this flexibility”
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Well-written, accessible article by Greg Costikyan seeking to define games. Over 10 years old but reads like it was written yesterday. “I have to believe that the solitary nature of most computer games is a temporary aberration…”
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Wired’s special on snack culture from a while back. Reference material for my GDC Mobile 2008 talk.
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Fun fact considering that I’ve been spending some time in Estonia lately: “Every Estonian eID holder (around 80% of Estonian population) has an unique OpenID with the format open.id.ee/[firstname].[lastname](.number)”
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“When working with games, it is helpful to consider both the designer and player perspectives. It helps us observe how even small changes in one layer can cascade into others. In addition, thinking about the player encourages experience-driven (as opposed to feature-driven) design.”
links for 2008-01-14
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“Flickr is playful, and it is structured to bend the trajectory of users back into it. […] With Flickr you get the feeling that you are playing in partnership with the developers, both of you playing together […] You have different abilities, that’s all”
links for 2008-01-13
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“If you thought that you could never reach enlightenment by playing a computer game.. well… you’re probably right. You can, however, fry your brain by trying to solve seemingly impossible puzzles that take place in a relaxing zen garden.”
links for 2008-01-12
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For all their talk about sociality, it’s strange to see Boyd and MacLeod advocate the life of a hermit as a prerequisite for a successful creative career.
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Thomas has posted a huge entry on his blog about the elements that make up any social software offering.
Speaking, lots and lots of speaking
First, the bad news: I won’t be able to make it to Interaction 08. Which sucks, because it looks like it’s going to be a wonderful conference with a smart crowd attending. I would have loved to meet up with friends there. And of course I was looking forward to sharing my ideas on playful products.
There’s plenty of other events in the pipeline for me though, both big and small. Here’s a rundown:
Next week on Tuesday 16 January I’ll be flying to Oslo on invitation of Are Halland at Netlife Research. I’ll do a short presentation at the UXnet meetup, focused on the application of game design to UX for the web.
Shortly after that, I’ll be participating in BarCampCopenhagen. I’ll probably do a session about my thoughts in mobile social gaming. Other than that I’m looking forward to just hanging out with the Danish geek crowd.
In February it’s time to cross the Atlantic to San Francisco for the Game Developers Conference. I’m speaking at GDC Mobile about designing casual gaming experiences for Generation C. I’m going to make good use of my complimentary all access pass. You’ll most likely find me playing weird stuff at the Independent Games Festival.
One final engagement taking place in June that I can already announce is From Business To Buttons, organised by my friends at InUse. Here I’ll get a chance to talk about the stuff that I had planned for Interaction 08: play, storytelling and complex systems. Looking forward to it.
If you’re reading this, and happen to be attending any of these events. Do drop by and say hi. I’d love to meet and chat!
links for 2008-01-09
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Reading the latest Acme Novelty Library at the moment and can’t help but agree. Comics can definitely move.
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“GTD doesn’t need to be complicated; for me it’s mostly about eliminating distractions, focusing when appropriate, taking care of the small stuff before it can pile up and capturing everything.”
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Huge deck of slides that look very shiny. Haven’t gone through all of them but looks like a lot of fun regardless. Would love to read a transcript or hear audio of Stephen delivering this.