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Brain Food

I'm going to be away for the next few days, so here are some links to keep you busy.

May 11, 2006 | RSS | EMAIL | PRINT | 2 COMMENTS

In the next two days I will be in Chicago, New York and Washington DC. Should be interesting . . . Also means I won't be around this site, so let me leave you with plenty to read while I'm gone. (As usual, these links come from my Sidenotes, you can subscribe to the feed here.)

  • Google release Google Trends, basically you can search for a term and see its popularity over the last few years. You can also easily compare one search term to another. Simple but a nice addition to the Google roster. (Just so everyone knows, Noah Brier doesn't come up when you search for it, what a shame . . . )
  • Tyger is an absolutely beautiful multimedia video based on a William Blake poem called "The Tiger".
  • "Cookie monster searches deep within himself and asks: Is me really monster?" Poor cookie monster, just read what he says: "When me get back to apartment, after cookie binge, me can't stand looking in mirror—fur matted with chocolate-chip smears and infested with crumbs. Me try but me never able to wash all of them out. Me don't think me is monster. Me just furry blue person who love cookies too much. Me no ask for it. Me just born that way."
  • "Why Don't Ad Agencies Advertise?" That is a fine question. They're all into PR, but very few actually go for the big bucks they recommend to their clients.
  • Welcome to the New Dollhouse is a great article about how children, especially young girls are playing The Sims instead of playing with dolls. It's a really interesting way for children to experiment with identity and unlike dolls, the game actually has built in feedback mechanisms.
  • Douglas Rushkoff takes religion to task. Not going to say much about this one, I'll just let you read it yourself.
  • In Am I Condemning Myself Bryan Veloso tells the story of a friend of his who lost a job because her potential employer felt as though the image she put forward on her blog was not a good one. Bryan's take is an interesting one: "When it comes to jobs, let your blog be your screener. If you run into potential employers similiar to those Kristine had to deal with, then screw ‘em, there are better places out there that’ll have more respect for you." I've been thinking a lot about this lately. I'm very controlling of my online identity and believe it's important for everyone, especially young people, to understand that everything they put online makes up their image. That's not to say don't be honest and post what you want, just that you should be aware that people may see it, for better or for worse.
  • Time's big article about the Nintendo Wii. I have no clue whether they'll make inroads on XBox/Playstation, but I can respect that they've innovated based on an insight (what's keeping many groups from playing video games is the inaccessibility of the controllers).

Well, that's it. If anyone's got any comments on any of the articles, feel free to drop 'em in the comments.

Update (5/11/06): I don't normally do this (I usually only link to things I've read), but in an effort to keep things interesting, here are the tabs I have open at the moment in case you get through all this and want more to read: The Lucent Logo Legacy: Long Live the Big Red Donut, The Things You Never Hear, We're All Stellar Designers, Now, Being a Good Judge of Personality, As Chinese Students Go Online, Little Sister Is Watching and The Best and the Interesting. Like I said, haven't read any of them yet, so let me know if they're worthwhile. Now I'm really out. Bye.

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1Jimmy

Finally something that fits my expertise on Noah's website. Videogames! I have a few problems with what Nintendo is doing. I do think it is a good idea to have new innovations and obviously as we get more next-gen in video games we are getting closer to virtual reality which will indeed include motion sensors.

But seriously look at how they did this. Instead of modifying a conventional controller to also handle some motion sensors and have an option of using it either way, which is what I hope Sony is doing with their new motion controller, they go radical and give you what looks like a tv remote.

Now this might be a new interesting idea, that might be better used as an optional controller. In their article it says that they grasped two important notions, 1) Don't listen to your consumer. Ok to me that doesn't sound like a very good idea. I understand totally that the casual fan can make or break your system, but the base to your system is still the hardcore gamer. I would be very skeptical of this new controller and more complicated games. Now you might be able to play Mario tennis, but the article also mentions madden. Including the joysticks (clicking) on the Xbox, there are 10 buttons, and you use the joysticks for movement. I wont believe it until I see it that you can replicate all of these buttons and functions with simple hand movement, some yes, all fluently? I think not. Ok I am starting to ramble so I will wrap this up.

Basically if you forget the base of your market and ONLY aim at the casual fans, I think the risk is to great. Now I could be proved wrong and this could be the next big thing. But look at it this way... If you aren't a video gamer now, how do you get exposure to games and systems? Most likely your friends, that are hardcore gamers, or your children. Now if it is your children, Nintendo is probably the system you will get exposed to, but otherwise you wont see it in action, and the non-gamer isn't going to want to shell out the 400 bucks or so that the system will run them.

When will Nintendo realize that its best asset is its games. If they were to market only their games on other systems (like Sega after dreamcast) Mario and Link would be household names again. Ok enough rambling have to get some work done, I could go on about this forever.

May 11, 2006

2barbara

I am amazed at the breadth of your reading. I've visited a number of the sites you've linked to before, but I just 'discovered' Jason Scott, whose "The Best and the Interesting" is an awesome combination of insightful and revealing (not to mention beautifully written) and whose textfiles are absolutely extradorinary. In the course of my days, I run into a lot of people who seem to have stopped thinking. Thank you for preventing me from falling into that trap!

May 11, 2006