This year is the first time I remember none of our kids trick or treating (since they were babies). Instead they are at the local church doing community service helping with an event. We’re home handing out candy.
2006 - 6 posts - a series of alternating trick or treat posts + $6.66 comment contest
2005 - 3 posts - an evil twisted podcast audio mix
2004 - 1 post - a single post with celebrity masks linking to Yahoo — now 404
2003 - 4 posts - fell on a Friday and radio show day with a party inside the virtual world There
And what about this year? Expended a little brain energy trying to figure out something wicked for this year but as Ray Bradbury wrote something wicked way this comes, nothing has knocked on my skull yet. It’s getting dark out side, maybe now the moment of inspiration will arrive.
In the meantime, a little housekeeping: added every post in the history of this blog on October 31 to the Halloween category (14 total posts, not counting this year).
It’s almost completely dark outside. Where are the trick or treaters? Wait — there’s the doorbell! This year’s first visitor dressed up as … little princess?
Trick or treat? Treat: Phonespelling looks like fun.
Our business line number is 253-843-6283 which is also TDavid on Skype. I kind of like Ale-then-Bud, but then my ale lager of choice is Budweiser (Update 6:17pm PST: I’ve since been corrected in the comments below that Budweiser is a LAGER, not an ale, now you know why I’m not a brewmaster). Or does the phone number reefer (!) to that other bud? Haven’t touched that stuff in years, sorry to disappoint the stoner crowd.
ALE = 253
THEN = 8436
BUD = 283
Slick, huh? I also like: 253-THEN-ATE, 25-DUG-EM-CUE (could be a call to digg something?)
On a serious note: please always include the numbers when spelling out your phone number. Not cool when people only include the name without the actual numbers and force us to work it out on the keypad.
Even though this is Halloween, the following screenshot is not a trick:
iPod fanboys and girls might not like hearing news that their favorite player didn’t even make CNET users top 20 most wanted products list. The only Apple products to make this week’s top 20 list were the Apple iPhone 8GB at #5 and the iTouch 16GB at #10.
Yes, it’s true that the 80GB black Zune v2.0 is topping the CNET users wish list (thanks Zune Insider). The Zune v2.0 player will not be available in stores until next month.
Now for the devil’s advocate position: this is a far cry from Zune vindication, as wish lists don’t necessarily equal sales and the most wanted item isn’t for sale yet. And look who’s #3? The Sony PS3 which hasn’t burned up the sales charts to date (but is getting more attractive). The AT&T Tilt weighs in at #4 and I’m not familiar with.
Any readers planning on buying the Zune 80GB? I’m trying to decide between a Chumby and the Zune. The Chumby isn’t portable, but is programmable, unlike the Zune. I was hoping we’d see some kind of API for the Zune. Maybe that comes in version 3? I am looking forward to the increased podcasting features.
Last night there was a Zune preview event in Seattle that I couldn’t make because I was DJing our VTOR Halloween Party — which we were pleased with how it came out (a ssssssnnnnakkke avatar won). I’m guessing if I had been able to be at this event — why oh why can’t we be at two places at the same time? — I would have learned more about Zune v2.0. Maybe would have seen and been able to touch one of them.
On Halloween 2007 the Google (disclaimer: I own GOOG stock) juggernaut has pushed past $700 for the first time ($703.93 as of this writing). Tomorrow they will be launching an OpenSocial API at http://code.google.com/apis/opensocial which they hope will provide developers the ability to create applications that will run on multiple social networks.
Except for Facebook and MySpace. Facebook employs their own markup language while Google will use Javascript and HTML, similar to what they did with Google gadgets. If you know Javascript and HTML, you’ll only need to learn what API calls to make. It’s a juicy proposal and one that has my mind clicking and whirring with the possibilities. Looking forward to tomorrow to see and start playing around with the OPenSocial API.
As for the stock price? When will Google slow down? I’m not going to even try to guess, but remain curious what others think. The movement from $600-$700 was fast. Yahoo (YHOO) and Apple (AAPL), two other stocks I own, are also doing well. Gotta love how Q4 has begun and hopefully will forget the misery of Q3.
Being a horror movie fan and especially since it’s Halloween I’d just love to encourage readers to get out to the theater this witching time of year and see Saw IV in the theater, but can’t.
The movie [Saw IV official website] has raked in over $30 million already and is #1 in the theaters as I write this. My wife and I went last night.
Saw IV opens with a gruesome autopsy scene and devolves from there. I’m still trying to figure out what happened in the end. Jigsaw puzzle? Indeed.
After seeing Saw III I wondered how they could contract Jigsaw for five movies when his head was almost chopped off at the end of his cancer ravaged body. Jigsaw can only live on in backstory logically — and guess what, that’s what we get in Saw IV. Jigsaw’s ex-wife seems only to be in the story to relate the backstory of what drove Jigsaw into being the brilliant, mad scientist of traps and gadgetry.
By the time the end credits rolled I was even more confused about who was the bad guy? An essential component of horror is understanding who the bad guy is so you can sense FEAR. I sensed more repulsion than fear with Saw IV. More shock about the visuals and what I was seeing than being legitimately fearful. Lionsgate needs to go back to the sawhorse for Saw V because IV lost its edge. The only thing keeping this horrible horror flick from total failure is the inventive, yet sadistic traps. Grade: D+
Let’s embellish on some Quiet Riot: Bang your head. Web sites that will drive you mad!
Face it, neither your websites or ours are perfect. We need help. We need to listen to what visitors are saying aggravates them and do something. One good way to becoming a better listener is being accessible through services like Skype, answering email and replying to comments (instead of claiming you’re too busy), perhaps even [gasp] getting involved in social networking where your site niche is relevant.
The list scene is hot right now. Some days I think maybe that’s all we should do is just sit around and make lists. Would probably increase the traffic to this site tenfold. One interesting list I came across today was from PC World.
Noticeably missing from their 10 Biggest Web Annoyance list is something very annoying:
Unnecessarily spanning pages for articles — almost always to artificially increase page views — that could easily fit on one one page. It’s inconvenient and insults reader’s intelligence. Note that PC World’s list spans four pages instead of one. Shame on them. Why didn’t this make the top 10 aggravation list? Are there people out there who actually like having to click multiple times to read one article?
PC World’s list of 10 aggravations
With that said, let’s check out what is on their list and suggest some possible tips for how to combat aggravating site visitors and readers.
1. Dubious Privacy Policies. Aggravation factor: 69 percent. Privacy concerns continue to abound on the web. Do we need any more evidence that people visiting your site want to know what you’re doing with their information? If your site collects anything from people, what is the site doing with this information? Can they get it back out through an export function or non-crippled API?
How to avoid aggravating tip: Spend some time reading and going through and stripping the legalese in your privacy policy. Shorter is better. We need to do that with our privacy policy at Hmm. Short and straightforward privacy policies are better than long and convoluted.
2. Difficult Online Forms. Aggravation factor: 65 percent. I wonder how much we should thank spammers for this? The need to incorporate CAPTCHA or other less and more complicated techniques to trick the bots has added complexity to online forms. Also, with a growing desire to collect more information at some sites (see #1).
Tip: forms gotchas to avoid:
illegible CAPTCHA. Offer quick refresh option like we have in the comments below using reCAPTCHA.
forms with too short timeout. Ticketmaster, anyone? Not everybody is a speed typist.
should allow entering in secure passwords. Why have a password field if one can’t enter in a secure password? This means allowing for password lengths as much as 12-24 characters, allowing symbols, upper and lowercase as well as digits. If your password doesn’t allow all of these or forces passwords smaller than 12 characters it is insecure.
let us enter in valid emails with a + in them. A frequent gripe. It’s a handy Gmail filtering technique, although I picked up another one recently using a period in the email address (e.g h.m.m at gmail same as hmm at gmail).
too many items on a single form. Unlike page spanning articles, I’d rather see page spanning for large forms. Let me go through the process in stages rather than show me a bunch of different things that are wrong.
3. Overcommercialization of the Web. Aggravation factor: 62 percent. I think with popup blockers in the mainstream we’re past that, but publishers and advertisers still have plenty of other annoyances to throw at us. I’m not a fan of those hover over text ads. They always seem to get in the way. The Flash overlays that run across the article you’re trying to read suck. And let’s not forget interstitials — those “skip to next page” full page ads.
Nice bit of honesty from PC World:
At MySpace, Yahoo, and even (we have to admit it) PCWorld.com such advertising has grown more aggressive, increasingly annoying, and impossible to avoid.
Tip: Laser focus about where to put ads and instead of adding more advertising, add more content. Keep the content to ad ratio no less than 70% content to 30% advertising on each page. Shoot for 90% content to 10% ad or better. Your visitors will love you and bookmark. So will the search engines.
4. Need for Standards. Aggravation factor: 58 percent. From the publisher side, trying to design sites that look good in all the major browsers isn’t quite rocket science, but feels like that with all the competing formats. We experienced this recently trying to get the search box CSS in the header in Internet Explorer (thanks again to web designer reader, Mikull).
Tip: Use tools like browsershots.org to see how your website looks in different browsers and work with designers — or do it yourself — to get your site looking good on the most popular browsers. And don’t forget about mobile users.
5. Trolls in Forums. Aggravation factor: 58 percent. Free for all forums aren’t about Free Speech, they are about free abuse. I’m in the crowd that strongly believes in at least some moderation of public areas. I’ve yet to see any completely unmoderated area that hasn’t devolved into a spam, flame and troll infested swamp. Yes, some of the comments from the “anonymous cowards” are funny, but too much and they turn people off.
Tip: moderate public areas and employ policies that keep some level of civility.
6. Buying Event Tickets. Aggravation factor: 54 percent. A whole annoyance devoted to Ticketmaster ticket fee gouging? Guess I don’t buy enough event tickets through Ticketmaster to get upset by this one. I’m thinking there are bigger annoyances than this, although it’s interesting that Pearl Jam thinks TM has a monopoly.
Tip: I don’t have any tips for this one, do you? Use the comment section below to suggest how to get a better deal buying event tickets online.
7. Web 2.0 Help Doesn’t Help. Aggravation factor: 49 percent. This could have been classified better as ‘Unhelpful help.’ I’m not sure who started the whole knowledge base scene, but I cringe when I’m being sent to one of those for help. The more technology employed, the higher the level of possible compatibility problems, I get that, but our browsers and OS can stay caught up.
Tip: don’t send people to a knowledge base or customer support form for support. Try using live help, provide Skype or other IM options. Don’t staff those live support options with people who follow moronic scripts.
8. The Expense of E-Books. Aggravation factor: 41 percent. I wonder if the expense of eBooks (or is it E-books?) have hurt the medium as much as the fact that people don’t want to read books on a computer screen? There is a distraction factor associated with computers. Some people associate — perhaps rightfully so — that the computer is for work, not for pleasure. I’d argue against this perception that the computer can be used for work and pleasure. Work hard, play hard, but I understand those like my wife who would rather relax with an old-fashioned paperback book over an eBook any day of the week.
Tip: If you release an eBook version, make it half the cost of the paperback version, at least.
9. Disappointing Web Video - Aggravation factor: 38 percent. No, they’re not talking about Scoble’s seemingly endless raw footage … or are they? It’s criticism of not enough top shelf tier content. Projects like NBC’s Hulu might help which bring more of the shows we see on TV to the computer screen. The subpar resolution and bandwidth constraints are a real issue. I’d like to see more HD quality video being released over the web. People are shooting HD video but then compressing the hell out of it so that it looks like pixelated crap when shown on a larger monitor or TV screen.
Tip: Shoot and share more high quality video using sites like blip.tv (better quality videos than YouTube). Use the medium (edit, edit, edit!). Don’t waste people’s time.
10. Boring Virtual Worlds. Aggravation factor: 9 percent. Since being active in virtual worlds since December 2005, I’m convinced those who label virtual worlds “boring” just aren’t trying hard enough. Go spend some time and really, really try to have a good time in virtual worlds. There are tons of things happening covering thousands of different interests. To say virtual worlds are “boring” is a statement about one’s own ability and effort, not about virtual worlds. The 9% aggravated need to be more creative.
Tip: the group blog I’m part of, VTOReality, is having a Halloween Avatar Contest tonight at 6:36pm PST. Dress up as your favorite avatar, create one from scratch, buy one from one of the virtual stores, and stop on by. Maybe we’ll judge yours as the best and you’ll win some L$.
Parting thought on the importance of listening
Stop a minute and ask yourself how good a listener you really are? Lately I’ve been trying to increase my listening skills by getting much more involved with a few third party sites/services that focus on social networks. I hope if you enjoyed or disliked this post you’ll take a second and either rate it above and/or leave a comment. Give me something to listen to, good, bad or indifferent.
Checking out the official Iron Man trailer and wishing it was already here but alas, we need to wait until May 2, 2008. Note from the screenshot below that Apple made sure to make versions for 420p, 720p, 1080p and yes, yes, yes, the iPhone.
Iron Man was my favorite comic book as a kid, followed closely by The Incredible Hulk and X-Men. Hat tip to Ami-Chan.net (your husband has good taste!). Here’s how I rank the Marvel movies I’ve seen to date:
1. Spider-man 2
2. X-men
3. Spider-man
4. X-men 2
5. Spider-man 3 C+
6. Fantastic 4 Rise of the Silver Surfer
7. Ghost Rider
8. X-men 3
9. Hulk
10. Fantastic Four
11. The Punisher
12. Daredevil
13. Howard the Duck
14. Elektra
15. Blade
Haven’t seen: Blade: Blade II, Blade: Trinity
I’ve got high expectations for Iron Man, although must admit I’m worried about Robert Downey, Jr. being able to pull off the part. He’s a good actor, but I don’t see him as a superhero any more than Ben Affleck (Daredevil) worked. Would like to see Iron Man make my favorite top 5.
What’s your top five Marvel superhero flicks to date?
My wife came in the office this afternoon and asked me if I wanted to go buy Guitar Hero III and Leopard. Didn’t have to ask me twice, where are the keys?
She went out with a girlfriend tonight so maybe it was some sort of quid pro quo. I’ve been staring at the Leopard box for awhile and am becoming increasingly impressed. Haven’t removed the shrink wrap yet, just looking at it and the faint holographic glow behind the black X.
I started to think about some of the other operating system box art I’ve seen and bought over the years. I remembered the red from Red Hat and the green from SuSE and of course the boring Microsoft Windows boxes through the years. Must admit the box style for Vista is attractive. It isn’t really a box, it’s sort of a cross between a clamshell and container with rounded edges. I like the shape of the Vista box better than the square OS X Leopard box, but that’s where the designers left at Microsoft and the Apple ones got busy.
That purple space looming behind the X — I’m transfixed. Maybe I’ll just leave it up there for the whole work week and keep staring at it. Or is it staring at me? I can’t be the only person who bought Leopard who is so fascinated by the box that they don’t … open … it. This box is the kind you don’t throw away, it’s kind of like the Apple store bags. Apple designers are brilliant. Haven’t even gotten into the OS and I’m visually impressed.
And with that, the pillowgate to dreams beckons. Night.
As games are a favorite hobby of mine, I’m always on the lookout for new and different games. From role playing games like Dungeons & Dragons to online MMORPG to puzzle games and thinking games like Chess. Card games are something I enjoy playing too and I’ve even coded a few card games in my time. Something I hadn’t tried playing before is a card game played on a mat with a webcam that acts out the results of different player/computer moves.
Until buying and playing the PS3 Eye of Judgment.
Quick thoughts? intriguing use of a camera. To date, eye camera type games have seemed more like gimmicks than fun games but Judgment is somewhat unique and I can see why people were having fun playing it at PAX (Penny Arcade Expo in Seattle recently). Here’s one where a game camera is used as an active participant in a card game that can’t be played without the PS3 (maybe it can, but it’s not meant to be played that way). I was able to beat the computer solo on the Beginner and Amateur settings but have not yet been victorious on Normal mode. Haven’t tried playing against others online yet. Not quite ready to take my skills to the masses. Soon.
The Eye of Judgment bundle comes packaged in finger slicing bubble wrap — be careful cutting the outside with a razor blade — and then you can pull the contents out which look like the picture shown at the top of this post. The package contains the following:
- starter deck of 30 cards
- booster pack containing 8 additional cards
- PSEye USB camera
- PSEye tower (assembly required)
- PS3 Eye of Judgment game
- player mat
PSEye video
While you are setting up PSEye camera tower, yes, some assembly is required, you might want to download from the Playstation store the free video camera software called EyeCreate.
You can use EyeCreate to make videos on your PS3. I’ll cover this functionality in a separate post.
Setting up the PSEye tower
As mentioned above, you do need to assemble the PSEye tower, but no tools are required. The instructions are inside the Eye of Judgment instruction manual, but you can probably assemble without them. Here are step-by-step instructions with pictures.
STEP 1. Open the box and bag inside containing the four plastic pylons.
STEP 2. Attach two of the pylons into each side of the base.
STEP 3. Attach the center black base support to the top of the two pylons. Note the notch in the back for the wires. It should be on the opposite side of the writing on the bottom base.
STEP 4. Attach the two other pylons to the center black base support.
STEP 5. Attach the camera black top support so it’s facing up at an angle.
STEP 6. Now slide the PSEye camera into the support so it’s facing down. It should slide easily into place.
STEP 7. Gently pust the wire from the back of the PSEye camera into the notches in the center of the plastic base. I found that not inserting in the bottom base made it more stable, but your mileage may vary.
STEP 8. Lay out the mat on a flat surface and place the PSEye base in middle of the edge. There are spots along the edge to line up the PSEye base. I put the PS3 Eye of Judgment game box in the center of the playing mat to show scale in the next picture.
Note the picture above shows placing the PSEye tower base on a bed, which isn’t advised because you will need to setup the camera settings new each time you play the game if it’s not in the same spot. If you don’t mind spending a couple minutes setting up the camera placement each time you want to play, it does work when placed on a soft surface like a bed, but a desk or table is better. That’s where we moved it to after the first night of playing.
STEP 9. You’re ready to turn on the game and do the initial camera setup. There is a (too) long cinematic introduction that you can bypass by clicking the start (>) button.
STEP 10. The first time you load Eye of Judgment you’ll automatically be taken step-by-step through the camear configuration, but after that if you move the camera as we did then you can reach it from the ‘Options’ in the main menu. During this phase you need to choose where of the four spots you placed the camera. The configuration wizard is easy to follow and shows pictures of each setup.
Once you’re done setting up the camera you need to place a card on the playing mat. If the PSEye camera recognizes the card, a white image will appear over the card. This part confused me a bit, I expected it to show something a little more obvious, so hopefully that helps others.
There are different lighting settings you can use depending on the brightness of the room. We used the ‘automatic’ setting with overhead lighting and it seemed to be fine.
Woohoo, now we can play!
Time to play solo match against computer
I’d recommend playing against the computer to get the hang of the game. So far that’s all we’ve done, taking turns since Eye of Judgment only comes with one starter deck and 8 booster cards. Additional decks aren’t available in any stores yet — at least in our area — and Amazon shows 1-2 months before any new decks will ship. Come on, Sony, why aren’t you selling additional starter decks so people can play against other people locally? I realize you can play it online against other players.
As for how to play the game, there is an option in the main menu to view some videos of how to play the game. The videos do a decent job explaining the basics of the game and taking you through a hypothetical game.
How to play Eye of Judgment
Here’s my brief and hopefully easy to understand explanation of how to play. Strategy is a whole different matter. We can cover strategy in the comments section.
Shuffle the starter deck of 30 cards. Start by drawing five cards. You can look over your cards and if they aren’t good replace them with five additional cards which is called a mulligan. Press the start (>) button when you are ready to start the game against the computer. The object of the game is to be the first player to have creatures occupy five of the nine spots on the player mat. You can only place one creature card on the map — this is called “summoning” — each turn and your opponent can attack and kill your creatures to thwart your progress, so a game could last 7, 10, 15 or more turns, although an average game seems to last around 10 minutes or less.
There are a few events that can prevent you from being able to lay down a creature card (summon a creature, remember) every turn:
1. You don’t have any creature cards. Each turn you start by drawing a new card with the exception being if you start the game out on the first turn first (a slight advantage). You can have the computer randomly assign who starts first to even out the advantage. The second number beneath your mana on the game screen shows the number of cards you should have in your hand at any given time. Also the computer will remind you to draw a new card at the start of each turn.
2. Not enough Mana to summon the creature. This is more common than #1. If you only have high mana creature cards in your hand, your only move might be to wait until next turn. Each turn you get +2 mana points and if any of your creatures are killed you will gain back some mana, but I found several times I didn’t have enough mana to place a creature on the map. Kind of frustrating, but common.
3. A summoning lock. Some of the more powerful creatures can only be placed if summoning is unlocked. You can tell by the big padlock at the top of the screen. If that’s on, even if you have enough mana, you can’t summon these creatures.
4. You run out of time. Although this one is a bit more unlikely, a timer can be set on the length of each player’s turn to choose what cards to play (default: 5 minutes). I found myself up against the five minute timer in my first game.
Spell cards
You can perform spells with some cards and will want to play these before summoning a creature. Important: the direction you place the creature card on the board determines how they interact with other creature cards on the player mat. Before setting down any card pay attention to which way the creature attacks, which is shown at the bottom of each card. It’s recommended to study what each card looks like and what it does. This will help. The Eye of Judgment instruction manual does a good job of showing what each attritube on the card means.
Tip: Creatures can gain or lose points by being placed in the wrong environment (known as element fields). Of the nine spots on the player map they are randomly placed by the computer earth (2), wood (2), water (2), fire (2) and Biolith (1). If you place a creature on the map in the opposite element — say water instead of fire — they will suffer a penalty and can be killed easier.
Hopefully these instructions reduce the number of times you see this:
Unstick the discard
Sekerah in the Playstation forums has the answer to a problem with the PSEye acknowledging your discards:
You need to “offer” it to the eye, meaning you hold above the mat in your hand.
The vast majority of popular internet sites don’t give me the privacy creeps. Amazon? I’m more troubled by their patent obsessions. eBay/Skype/Stumbleupon? Nope. Yahoo and Google? Still own stock in both. One popular site that gives me the privacy willies:
Facebook.
Yes, it’s suspect using Valleywag as a source because they seem to delight in stirring up dust that isn’t there (National Enquirer of Silicon Valley), but yesterday’s post on Facebook employees profile activities rang true to me:
Turns out Facebook employees can (and do) check out anyone’s profile. Not only that, but they also see which profiles a user has viewed — a major privacy violation. If you’ve been obsessed with a workmate or classmate, Facebook employees know. If Barack Obama’s intern has been using the campaign account to troll for hotties, Facebook employees know. Within the company, it’s considered a job perk, and employees check this data for fun.
Again this is Valleywag and thus could be completely bogus, but I could see a group of FB employees gossiping about what profiles people are looking at and that creeps me out. Why don’t they have a company policy that forbids this type of behavior? They should get one — ASAP. Even a gossip rag like Valleywag can make a good point once in awhile.
Facebook has a chance to react by beefing up their privacy policy.
In case anybody is curious, I’m not worried if FB employees know what FB profiles I’m looking at, heck, those that interested in what I’m up to online can already follow services like Friendfeed which provide a running stream of my daily online activity at some popular sites. I’ve been thinking about pulling all these services together plus Friendfeed and putting it on my personal site which is in need of an update.
Remember AOL offering up data that violated their own privacy policy? They quickly apologized after being hammered over it, but it planted seeds of doubt. I’d put that type of carelessness into privacy that concerns me. In defense of Facebook they do offer many tools to specifically set what types of information you are willing to share with applications, friends and others — except employees can bypass all these settings.
That should change. Let us encrypt our Facebook data even from the prying eyes of employees.
Recently we had one of our bank accounts breached. A real pain that we had to change to a new account, order new checks, change the account that was hooked in different online places. This breach wasn’t because of identity theft online. It was because an employee of a vendor used by a retail store sold our data along with some others. The FBI is still investigating the matter. Moral of the story: a company’s hands are only as clean as their employees.
Must admit it’s real events like this that have prevented me from putting too much information into Facebook. That and Facebook seems a little too closed to me. Are these employee-related concerns valid?
What major sites privacy handling give you the creeps? And does it impact how much time you spend at these sites?
On Halloween 2007 the Google (disclaimer: I own GOOG stock) juggernaut has pushed past $700 for the first time (
Face it, neither your websites or ours are perfect. We need help. We need to listen to what visitors are saying aggravates them and do something. One good way to becoming a better listener is being accessible through services like Skype, answering email and replying to comments (instead of claiming you’re too busy), perhaps even [gasp] getting involved in social networking where your site niche is relevant.
