blog.sparetomato.com

Tomorrow sees the opening of the 29th Summer Olympiad in China. It also sees Flickr attempt another social experiment, encouraging users to take a snapshot of life on 8-8-08.

Despite having some sympathies to the commericalism of Flickr, I still have a pro account and will be taking part (even though it is open to free accounts too).

No doubt Flickr and Yahoo will be hoping for many photos from China, and the rules for Flickr 888 basically give them the right to sell your photos for profit if they want to. Tomorrow my life won’t be as interesting but I’ve been spending the past week trying to spot potential photographs, and while I know one shot I’m intending to take, I have no inspiration for the rest of them. I’m going to have the camera with me all day, so I’ll see what comes out.

I’m dismayed about the lack of reports about the problems with the iPhone 3G launch. Granted, it seems that any anti-apple or anti-iPhone stories are banned from most of the main media outlets, but there are fundamental problems with how Apple and O2 have handled the iPhone 3G launch.

I am an existing, very happy iPhone customer, having bought one on the afternoon the original was launched last November. It is truly a fantastic device (calling it a ‘phone’ does not really do justice to it, but it is not really a ’smartphone’ either - despite being branded as one). When the 3G model was announced, I put my name down for further information, but was not too impressed with the features - I was waiting to see what O2 would offer existing customers.

The truth is that all existing customers of O2 get is the ability to end their 18 month tie-in to start a new 18-month contract. The cost of the phone is the same for new and upgrading customers.

(continue reading…)

It’s always nice when good things happen to people you know.
I’ve been listening to the excellent Podcast Novel 7th Son since the third episode of book one, way back in 2006. Two years, and three ‘books’ later, the Series is coming to an end as author J.C. Hutchins winds up his trilogy in explosive fashion.
Although I don’t actually ‘know’ J.C., we’ve communicated over emails, and he’s shared his journey with both me, and 30,000 other subscribers as he strove to become a professional writer.
Yesterday it was announced that the first part of 7th Son will be published as a novel in 2009.
Congratulations to Published Author J.C. Hutchins.
If you’ve not yet listened to the podcast novel, I encourage you to take a listen - it’s free

There has been an awful lot of media attention in the last few months about the ‘virtual reality simulator’ Second Life. Mainly articles about how people have made or spent ‘real world’ money in a virtual environment.

This is a far cry from the reports of Mr. Zhu who was killed in real life when he ’stole’ a virtual sword and sold it.

The same article linked above mentions that in 2003, the Internet Games section on eBay saw over £5m in transactions. Not all of this was for virtual assets, but there is no doubt that there are people daft enough to spend real money in a virtual economy.

As a World of Warcraft player, I’ve received in-game mail offering me virtual currency for my real-world cash. Some regard this practice of ‘gold farming’ cheating, others justify it by saying that because they work, they don’t get to spend as much time in-game as other people, and therefore need the virtual cash to spend on in game equipment just to keep up with their peers.

But what is the appeal of Second Life?

Part of the appeal would be the fact that you can create almost anything - from in-world art and clothing, to minigames. you can then sell these items on to other players for virtual money. However, in order to get the virtual money, you need to put in your real money.

Like a fruit machine, you get a sniff of some of the prizes for putting your money in, and you feel compelled to put more in. It can become an addiction.

I’m not saying that World of Warcrack is any different - I know people who are addicted to that game, and you do pay a £9 a month subscription to the online service. However, I believe that what you get for your money is far superior to any other online game. £9 a month is the equivalent of buying a new PC game every three months, which was average for me before I started playing the game. However, since buying the game, I’ve not bought a single PC game, and I’ve not been tempted to.

I’ve played Second Life, and in comparison, it is light-years behind WoW. It is slow, glitchy, and the avatars walk like the bizzare offspring of Kryten and Robocop. It is possible to walk and even fly(!) through the environment (and possible to fall through the world too). This is partly the problem in that the virtual environment is all user-created, wheras the Blizzard Empire employs hundreds of professional programmers to ensure that the floor is as solid as it can be.

SL is advertised as a life simulator (not disimilar to The Sims), and the appeal of adding your own user-created content to what is effectively an open-source world is appealing. However it is also time-consuming, and unless you have a super-powerful PC, it is slow…

However, like a rabid murloc, the media have jumped on the SL bandwagon, building it up and overhyping it. This leading to more people trying it, and the game world getting more cluttered and disorganised. The appeal of making money by ‘playing games’ is obvious, but the truth of the matter is, that aside from these few people who have made and spent a fortune in the game, the rest of the populace have not been as successful. But the end result is no matter how successful these virtual entrepreneurs have been, the only winner is the creator of the game, who has achieved more publicity than they ever thought possible, and are now actively encouraging real-world businesses to advertise in game. How much longer before SL becomes the equivalent of a 3D MySpace?

It could also be the fact that it doesn’t yet have a Mac Client that puts me off SL :p

last week, I made a post, admitting to uber geekhood, and linked to a great Star Wars site that advocated what we all knew - The famous scene in the first Star Wars film, where Han Solo ruthlessly shoots the bounty hunter Greedo should never have been tinkered with.

For both dramatic, and character-arc reasons, Han Solo should have no problem killing a bounty hunter in cold blood. As an audience, we don’t know if Luke and Ben can really trust the man who has agreed to smuggle them to Alderaan, and when Han redeems himself at the end of the film, shooting Vader’s Tie Fighter and allowing Luke to destroy the death star, we have seen him turn from someone who only cares about saving himself, to saving his new friends.

Anyway, I digress…

The owner of the site contacted me, and asked me what cards I needed to complete my ‘A New Hope’ card collection - and has actually found and is sending me 9 of the 10 I needed!

So, many thanks, you’ve made a geek very happy

But the story doesn’t end there - in a subsequent post, I asked about the missing card list, and the Star Wars Fan Boi came up trumps again! The cards from the Premiere two-player introductory game are now listed over at his site! Just goes to show, sometimes a question asked without expecting a response can sometimes surprise you.