Category: Links

Apparently Mozilla is catching on and focussing more on user experience now. This description of how they designed a new feature is an example of that.

Playyoo’s chief architect David walks through the basics of the game creator.

Tom blogs a quote from Alan Kay he finds helpful (which was blogged by Mr. Greenfield, originally). It’s helpful for me too, thinking a lot about game literacy lately.

Some useful hands on suggestions for how to document rich interactions on the web.

A social site for gamers. Looks clean. Have signed up for an invite, will report back.

A service tracking Twitter hash tags. I’ve never been a fan of these, mainly because they make for poorly readable tweets, but this still is an interesting step towards better explicit metadata on Twitter. (Still not sure we actually need it though.)

“Games can have any amount of skill and chance at the same time, but you cannot imagine a game with neither skill nor chance, as that would mean the outcome was always the same and hence it would not be a game in any meaningful sense.”

Can hardly believe the quality of this little app. Free screen-grabbing and online storage. I’ve been looking for something like this for a long time.

Handy unobtrusive JavaScript to track downloads in Google Analytics without manually tagging every file.

Could it be… A well designed GTD Mac app that *also* features web based access to all actions? It seems too good to be true. Have signed up for preview, will report back. Thanks Alper!

“I want to download widgets off the Web, scan barcodes with my oven to share recipes with my friends on last.microwave, […]. This is what I mean about 3C products tapping into creativity, community and connectedness […]”

“[…] the mechanism for connection should be visible, rather than discreet. It should go out of its way to invite extension […]. The use of the mechanism, the act of extending should feel really satisfying too.”

Well written piece by Jane that illuminates why she as an anthropologist would want to work in social software.

A physics puzzle game that has you drawing objects to complete a level. Looks like fun. Via Hessel.

This is doing the rounds currently. A nice list by Ev of Blogger and Twitter fame on how to evaluate a new product idea. Useful!

“Overgeneralized lists of business “rules” are not to be taken too literally. There are exceptions to everything.” Despite the disclaimer another enjoyable list from Ev.

On the feasibility of a Google Earth powered virtual world.

“What we want is to make something that can illustrate the effects of real devastation if we want it to, without emotionally swindling you if you just want to think about urban growth.”

My friend Hessel’s game 1A90 gets a mention in this TIGSource roundup of Gamma256 entries! It rules. Go play it.

Pretty Processing stuff. Via Hessel.

Indie games developed with D. Also via Hessel.

“When we get stuck in work, play is the way we get unstuck.” This oldish research by fellow Utrechters backs that claim up.

A bluetooth headset with pretty impressive noise cancellation. I want one.

Dopplr has launched. If you’re not in there yet, make sure you sign up. It truly is a beautiful part of the web, not ‘just’ a beautiful web site.

Article on this year’s best game characters wraps up by naming “you” a memorable character (much like TIME did a while back). The authors perpetuation of the story/game dichotomy jars me a little to be honest.

Video of some sweet phone interactions: shaking your phone to feel how many messages are in your inbox, or how much juice is left in your battery — literally!

“This volume looks at games as systems in which young users participate, as gamers, producers, and learners.”

Greenfield interviewed by a Belgian IT mag. Recommended reading for my Dutch speaking friends.

Congratulations to my friends at Info.nl with the award for Volkskrant Banen!

List of all the finalists for the Independent Games Festival Mobile. A few depressing attempts to recreate the console experience, many fun looking casual puzzlers and a few that really try to take advantage of ‘the mobile platform’.

“The Story of Stuff is a 20-minute, fast-paced, fact-filled look at the underside of our production and consumption patterns.”

Wonderful interview with Burial, who turns out to be pretty eccentric. Interesting (truly) views on popular culture, music, digital games, ghost stories and the internet.

A free ebook on how the social web is game-like.

API using a very simple principle that can be used to generate all kinds of charts.

“I still hope that “core” and “hardcore” developers will not see casual cloning as an easy way out. My belief is still that a good original game will outsell any clone, and creating an original title has side benefits, like curing cancer.” Ha!

“As you may know, I’m suing a cigarette company because their product hasn’t killed me yet.” Excerpts from a wonderful interview with Vonnegut (the last in fact).

An overview of some of the stuff Gamevil (Korea) have been doing in the area of social networking crossed with mobile games.

A presentation by Philippe Starck about why he (or anyone) should be doing design right now. It is a bit challenging to follow but does offer some great insights. Plus Starck is surprisingly humble about his own achievements, which is refreshing.

“I would claim that true knowledge management-viewed as the management of strategic knowledge assets-is the process by which communities of practice are supported in completing the full cycle described here.”

NYT doesn’t have a design section. That’s what I love about a magazine like Monocle – they explicitly address design while at the same time putting it in context with other fields.

Dare I submit an XTech 2008 proposal? They’ll have a mobile track of some sorts, probably. Dublin in May, hmmm…

“Hard work is about risk. It begins when you deal with the things that you’d rather not deal with: fear of failure, fear of standing out, fear of rejection.” Bookmarking old stuff again, Labor Day is long gone but still this Godin piece is worth reading.

“When you are designing an emergent system, … you … need to take an entirely bottom-up approach, and think through the eyes of the elements themselves.” Oldish post from Simon Oliver on the challenges of designing complex emergent systems.

A great interview with Levine on the design of Bioshock. His comments at the end of the interview about games and stories are remarkable given the fact that Bioshock is still pretty storydriven…