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.
Second Life is precisely as dull as a dictionary | 310107
Clay Shirky offers a very interesting analysis of why Second Life, in view of our expectations of it, is doomed to disappoint - and the fact that many people try it and then don't go back is the proof. He contrasts it with virtual game environments (such as World of Warcraft), which have demonstrated much more success in terms of user loyalty and satisfaction.
Shirky's point is that games create, in the terms of Homo Ludens author Johan Huizinga, a 'magic circle' - a microcosm governed by clear rules. It may mirror some aspect of the 'real world', would would never attempt to reproduce it entirely.
Isn't this, at heart, an argument - which we'd support - that computer games are an art form? This is exactly what novels do. Second Life is not so much an art form as a peculiar sort of reference book - as is common with dictionaries, people look up sex first and, after a few moments of dull titillation, away they go. Unless they're sociopaths...
Categories: play
Amazon plays tag | 250107
Read/WriteWeb offers an interesting post about recommendation systems. They say: "The Amazon system is phenomenal. It is a genius of collaborative shopping and automation that might not be possible to replicate. This system took a decade for Amazon to build and perfect. It relies on a massive database of items and collective behavior that also 'remembers' what you've done years and minutes ago. How can new companies compete with that?"
True it's impossible to compete with the amount of data Amazon has, but as we explain at WSIRN, you don't always look for stuff you like yourself at Amazon - it might be a gift for someone else, or you're just researching something.
In a subsequent post, R/WW draws a useful distinction between item-based and social recommendations. Now that Amazon is embracing tagging, it will be interesting to see which turns out to be best.
Categories: play
Electronic books update | 220107
The Sunday Times reports that Google and publishers are working on a format to make books readable on screens both desktop and mobile. Why is this noteworthy? Don't we have suitable formats already, notably PDF? (In related news, it seems even the Sony Reader has a long way to go to catch on. It will do of course, though at Thoughtplay we won't really be happy until there's a technology that can be read in the bath. So far e-Ink seems the most likely bet.
Categories: play
New models for search... Not yet | 160107
There have been many attempts to come up with new angles on the search engine format, of course. Two recent ones have caught our eye. One is ChaCha, which adds the option to have a real human being assist you as a guide. Interesting idea, though it hardly seems like a revenue winner (services such as the UK's SMS-based AQA work because of people's needs when mobile [or drunk]). Also, when we tried it, the guide went totally quiet for ages, and never came up with anything; user patience is eggshell thin.
This week now sees the launch of WikiSeek, which aims to offer a search purely of Wikipedia and the sites it links to, thus theoretically maintaining a high quality. Nice idea, and maybe it'll work out - but the vast majority of WP users are going to stick with the search facility there, aren't they? WikiSeek surely needs to be integrated directly.
That's if it works, of course. We tried a search for 'Captain Scott' (this week sees the 95th anniversary of the polar explorer's famous death). Absurdly, none of the results on the first page at WikiSeek were for the Wikipedia page on the captain himself; and only the fourth result had a passing reference to him. Contrast a search on Wikipedia: straight to the correct page.
The beauty of the commons | 110107
A few months ago there was much, largely downhearted discussion about 'participation inequality' (usability guru Jakob Nielsen) on the internet, focused around a general principle that websites relying on user-generated content show a similar pattern. The rule of thumb (Nielsen again) is "90% of users are lurkers... 9% contribute from time to time... 1% of users account for most contributions". Media commentator Seamus McCauley comments for example that "Wikipedia in 2006 isn't substantially more participative than Britannica in 1911" (the latter had around 1500 contributors; two-thirds of WP is created by a third of its users).
(The same general trend is observable at our own site, What Should I Read Next?. As little as 5% of traffic comes from registered users - though they account for around a fifth of activity at the site, and of course all of the data. Among those registered users, the pattern repeats: 27% of registered users generate 82% of the content. By the way, Ross Mayfield provides a nice analysis of the 'power law of participation' [thanks, jvvw].)
While the 1911 Britannica is a work of beauty, and the expertise of its contributors more clear than that of the eager Wikipedians, it was compiled under an authoritarian philosophy. The beauty of the participative commons is that we all have the choice. If only a small minority actually contribute, that's the way people clearly like it: more people want to consume than provide. We have only ourselves to blame if we don't like it - and isn't that better than railing at an authority - whether an encyclopaedia or newspaper editor, or indeed a dictatorial government - who we have little or no control over?
Categories: play, thought, thoughtplay
Can Apple do it again? | 090107
Steve Jobs has just announced the new iPhone from Apple - a video iPod with a wide touch screen, only one button, that's also a mobile phone and internet device. It looks very impressive, and possibly the revolution this market needs - in his keynote address at Macworld, Jobs made a big deal of how 'smart phone' keyboards are a sticking point. If they've genuinely beaten the fiddliness of phones, it's exciting stuff. (Though not available until June in the US and the autumn in Europe...)
Free to good homes - a list of gift economies | 030107
At Thoughtplay we're fascinated by gift economies as well as commercial ones. Here's a quick roundup of websites based around the idea of free exchange of goods, services or just friendly communication where no money changes hands:
- books - Book Crossing
- books,music,games,films - chanceXchange
- any goods - Freecycle (local groups worldwide)
- skills and services - the LETS scheme (UK) (see here for links to similar schemes in other countries)
- postcards - Postcrossing (send to and receive from strangers)
- digital text/images/audio/video - Wikimedia Commons and Creative Commons
In broader terms, blogging, geocaching and of course Wikipedia are all gift economies too.
WSIRN/TON monthly update: Jan 07 | 020107
A hearty happy new year from Thoughtplay! We'll be sending out the first edition of our monthly email newsletter, The Internet Crow, this week. Meanwhile, an update from What Should I Read Next?:
The 10 most popular books (figure in brackets is the number of registered users' lists in which the book appears; the figure in bold shows change in position from last month, if any):
The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown (2325)
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Harry Potter 6) - J.K. Rowling (1794)
The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy - Douglas Adams (1728) +1
1984 - George Orwell (1717) -1
The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger (1620)
To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee (1591)
The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien (1499)
The Great Gatsby - F.Scott Fitzgerald (1347)
Animal Farm: A Fairy Story - George Orwell (1324)
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Book 3) - J.K. Rowling (1186)
So not much change: once again 1984 and Hitchhiker's have changed places. We'll be keeping you updated every month. The What Should I Read Next? database now contains well over 290,000 individual recommendations, more than 30,000 new ones since last month. Well over 100,000 people have used the site in that time, too. Thanks as always for your support.
Categories: thoughtplay
«-- back