A soon to be released game for the Nintendo Wii called Blast Works: Build, Trade, Destory is a side scrolling shooter with a great UGC element to it. You will have the ability to create your own character, enemies, shooting patterns, and levels - all of which you can post to the game’s website for download by any Wii owner.
User generated content for games is nothing new, however we are really starting to see a trend where games are becoming specifically designed to allow for all sorts of customisation and online communities to facilitate sharing of the assets they develop.
Young Aussies are fitting 38 hours of activities into every 24-hour period thanks to multi-tasking, new research from Synovate has found.
The annual Synovate Young Asians study, which covers 11 markets across Asia Pacific and looks into youth media perceptions and consumption, has for the first time published findings on Australian youth.
The survey found that 52% of Australian youth say their internet usage has increased from the previous year, compared to 16% of respondents who reported an increase in TV watching, 17% in reading newspapers, 13% in reading magazines, 30% in playing sports and 27% in “offline†meetings with friends. Read more
Powerset, a much talked-about start up search engine has finally launched. It’s not really a search engine, as such, but a clever toolset that interprets natural language queries, and facts on a web page to radically change the way we consume information.
May 14th, 2008 Posted by: Simon Morgan Comments (1)
In addition to Vodafone, Gizmodo reports that the iPhone will also be offerred by Optus through Singtel’s Asian deal.
So Apple’s carrier exclusivity deals are over. Probably just as well.
To me the philosophical question for carriers: if you are so against becoming BDPs (bid dumb pipes) then why take the iPhone? Sure, it will buy network utilisation, but unless I’m missing something, won’t that be at the expense of your own content assets, the ones that you have been spending so much time and resource building.
To quote from a favourite movie: “Can you hear it? That is the sound of inevitability, Mr Anderson”.
Unfortunately Apple and Google are just better at owning hearts and minds than most carriers.
Maybe the best solution would be to accept the inevitable and focus resources on creating iPhone and Android applications…
It’s certainly going to be a fascinating year in mobile.
If you’re sick of having to set up a new profile for yourself every time you join a new social network - you may be in luck. MySpace have launched a “Data Availability” effort with big-name partners Yahoo, eBay, Twitter, and fellow News Corp. unit Photobucket. The initiative’s goal is to let MySpace members share their public profile data outside of the walls of the social-networking site.
In a nutshell you create one profile representing your online identity and then you can take this with you wherever you go. Imagine all the time saved!
Facebook have responded with their own data portability initiative called “Facebook Connect” - expect to hear the phrase “opening of the walled garden” to be used a lot in the next few weeks.
An Aussie company is gearing up to release a computer headset that allows people to control video games using only the power of their minds.
In short, this cool little device features 16 sensors that measure electrical impulses from the brain, enabling machines to register facial expressions, emotions and even cognitive thoughts by visualising them.
Players will be able to just think about performing actions, such as lifting or pushing objects or making them disappear, and have the game act accordingly without the need to push any keys or buttons.
While the headset will work in a very limited sense with existing titles, Emotiv CEO and co-founder Nam Do said the major game developers and publishers were designing a number of their upcoming titles to take full advantage of the technology.
