Think & Play
Thoughtplay is the creative team behind various popular websites and other projects. At this blog we give away bright ideas regularly, and comment on interesting trends both online and off. The thought channel is for more business-related trends, play looks at entertainment and leisure, and thoughtplay introduces our own creative ideas, as well as news about our projects.
WSYVF is back! | 180108
We're delighted to announce that we've relaunched our famous election quiz site, Who Should You Vote For? - this time focusing on the US primaries and presidential election campaigns. There are three quizzes at the moment, one each just for Democrats and Republicans, and one for people independent of either perspective. Try them now!
Categories: thoughtplay
Food for the future | 011107
While we're on the subject of environmental issues... this site about food waste is a great idea and very tastefully implemented, with lots of practical advice.
Oh, and a hat-tip to Undying King Games for drawing our attention to Predictify, an interesting new take on the growing betting-on-real-world-futures phenomenon (ie the 'wisdom of crowds').
Categories: play
I sing the city electric | 181007
It's got a New Zealand-specific bias, but ElectroCity is a great idea: a city sim game in Flash that's based around environmental and energy constraints, teaching some useful lessons about how power is generated and energy sustained in the content of global warming. Oh, and it's pretty and fun.
Categories: play
Make your own entertainment pt 2 | 151007
Wikinomics, Microtrends, Long Tail, Tipping Point... there's good money in coming up with some dubiously-argued premise for How Everything Works in modern society. Now Wired magazine has provided a handy concept generator for rolling your own.
Categories: play
Make your own entertainment | 250907
Here's more on crowdsourcing entertainment: (a) the enjoyable collaborative sitcom Where are the Joneses? (watch the episodes here), where episode ideas were discussed on a wiki (b) Crude is a documentary about climate change and the oil industry which has been 'crowd-funded' - and contributors have also been invited to appear in it.
Categories: play
Dear internet... | 130907
If your website:
1. Only works in certain browsers
2. Only works on PCs
3. Requires users to register before they can see what it does...
Leave me alone.
Kind regards,
A User
Categories: thoughtplay
Million dollar thoughts - for free | 280807
Quelle surprise - there's another variant of Alex Tew's infamous Million Dollar Homepage: the Million Dollar Wiki (MDW). Spend $100 to 'bag' a page which you can fill with content of your choice, rather like Squidoo, which is largely regarded as a failure since it's been over-run with spam (though is at least free). MDW guarantees your page is yours (unless you sell it on) for 15 years. Some people claim to be making small amounts of money from MDW, such as John Chow. Step back, though, and of course the only people advertising, or certainly only thos emaking any money back, are people advertising services to... people considering advertising at MDW...
This is the circular world of these get-rich-quick schemes. Generation 1: launch a get-rich-quick product. You'll make more money than... Generation 2: launch a service helping others to make the most out of the product. Anyone else - ie the majority for fall for these things, is simply spending money.
MDW is well put-together and has clearly made its young creator some bucks - good for him. But why would anyone visit such as ste over the long term, and therefore guarantee its content providers sustained traffic or income?
Categories: thought
Taking on Lulu | 090807
Interesting to see that Amazon has launched its own on-demand publishing platform, CreateSpace, covering video and audio as well as books. this could be a serious challenge to the main player so far in this field, Lulu.
Categories: play
In a mine, a few diamonds shine | 240707
It's not very well presented, and surely risks a visit from Google's trademark lawyers, but GoogleReport does offer something intriguing: a shorter, deeper set of search results. Basically it appears to mine the best results from Google, plus content at Wikipedia, when you enter a search term. Interesting idea that could benefit from improvement.
Categories: thought
A picture's worth a thousand free reproductions | 110707
Schmap's creators have had a smart idea. We came across them through an email requesting use of an image we'd put up at Flickr, in this case of a place in Edinburgh - Schmap publishes travel guides and is hunting down images people have posted publicly to use in them. They don't pay, but promise acknowledgement and possible exposure. They're the ones who gain, though: free content, already tagged and labelled.
Categories: play
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