Author: michael
OMG! Yesterday, at the Blizzard Invitational in Seoul, South Korea, Blizzard announced that they’re working on StarCraft II. If that doesn’t send shivers of unearthly delight through your spine, then you really need to go and read a bit more about the original Starcraft. In fact, why don’t you go out and buy it and spend the next few weeks losing yourself in the tightly balanced gameplay, the superb characters and one of the best control interfaces for real time strategy games ever (hint, use the keyboard shortcuts – they help). I can almost guarantee that the type of excitement the original generated in Korea will sweep the rest of the world with this next iteration. It’s definitely swept my apartment already!
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BarCamp / MobileCampNYC
BarCamp / MobileCampNYC should be a fun event this weekend organized by Alexis Rondeau of Semapedia fame. The official blurb sounds promising:
MobileCampNYC hopes to support the many voices helping to unlock the potential of a truly digital life. Topics may include – but are not limited to – mobile gaming, entrepreneurship, social mobility and presence, near field communication, physical hyperlinking, mobile storytelling, the importance of open standards, protocols, and platforms, linux based devices, and mobility on other continents.
Socialight will be out in full force – I think we’ll have the entire team there (except possibly Joel who will be touching down from Hawaii that afternoon). See you there!
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links for 2007-05-08
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Sydewynder is an SMS receiver and sender module written in Python for S60 phones. It can automate the responses of messages and may be used as a mobile application server in areas where setting up a traditional server may be difficult or ill
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I don’t even remember what this thing was called last year but it was a bit different when we saw it in Vegas in March/April. Kudos to them for some beautiful design. It is a bit strange that they don’t support some of the largest social networks out ther
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Cam puts together a super simple lat/long findery tool. Very useful.
A response to danah’s Twitter curiosity.
First, the practical question. Can i quote you?
[x] Yes, and you *must* use my real name.
1. Why do you use Twitter? What do you like/dislike about it?
I use Twitter extremely infrequently to jot down my thoughts and occasionally describe what I’m doing or about to be doing. I like the immediacy of being able to send texts that are then archived elsewhere.
2. Who do you think is reading your Tweets? Is this the audience you want? Why/why not? Tell me anything you think of relating to the audience for your Tweets.
About 14 friends and 4 randoms. The audience I want is vast, terribly interesting and extremely global, but they just don’t seem to want to read my tweets. Why? Probably because the volume and subject matter of the Tweets I produce is insignificant to derive any real value from unless you’re a closeish friend. Or more realistically, not even if you’re close friend. Related to my audience – I’m uncertain why some of my “audience” (SusanBratton, Paul Terry Walhus) subscribed.
3. How do you read others’ Tweets? Do you read all of them? Who do you read/not read and why? Do you know them all?
I used to read others’ Tweets back in the glory days when Twitter was populated by 2000 geeks and a pet pooch. I definitely do not read them all and part of the reason for that is sheer signal to noise ratio. There are some people I follow that publish far too much for me to ever keep up with them on a regular basis.
4. What content do you think is appropriate for a Tweet? What is inappropriate? Have you ever found yourself wanting to Tweet and then deciding against it? Why?
What is considered Tweet-safe content varies tremendously from person to person. In my own experience, friends that keep their tweets private publish the most risque / inappropriate Tweets. I find most things are safe for broadcasting, but I draw the line at bodily functions, regular food updates and questions about coffee. I’ve found myself wanting to Tweet a few times, composed the message, then left it unsent in my drafts folder. Once or twice I’ve composed a Tweet, thrown it into the drafts folder and then published it a day or two later. What that says about my issues with immediacy and self-censorship… I’m not quite sure yet.
5. Are your Tweets public? Why/why not? How do you feel about people you don’t know coming across them? What about people you do know?
My Tweets are public. I find that since I use it more as an immediate blogging tool rather than an unmoderated stream of consciousness log, I have no problem with people I don’t know coming across it. Since I’ve been publishing Tweets and blog posts with approximately the same frequency and subject matter, I don’t feel like this is a problem personally. I would worry about this more if I was looking for a job and my Tweets contained more personal subject matter, but honestly, it’s the same issues I would have to deal with if I started publishing more personal blog posts.
6. What do i need to know about why Twitter is/is not working for you or your friends?
Twitter is vaguely working for my friends. The dynamics seem to be like that of a group mailing list – a handful of people account for most of the traffic with vastly lower frequency from everyone else. It’s definitely improved a hell of a lot in the last few months, and by improved, I mean I had to switch to Twitterific-only mode because my phone was getting too many txts.