My understanding of fun

Over the weekend I was attending NCA 95th annual convention, which is one of the largest communication conferences. This year, it was in Chicago, one of my favorite cities. Other than the conference, I got to enjoy the city, the food and the company of my friends and my fiance.

I had a chance to meet one of my best friends and her boy friend to have sushi downtown. We indulged our taste buds at OYSY with a bottle of wine, 7 sushi platters, and ice cream. We TRIED not to talk about our prelims dissertation or theoretical concepts, and we surely did make fun of each other, as always, remembering good old days.

We were on our way to have some more wine, but Marbles, the brain store tempted us to spend about one hour playing with all those mind games at the store. Here are some that I found really entertaining:

MindFlex - I managed to get the ball into one of the pipes and throw it into the other pipe right across with mere thought!!!!



Abalone - I actually bought this one. It is like a Sumo fight where you are pushing your opponent off the game arena.

Cathedral- My friend and her boyfriend played this for a while. An innocent game ended up with a rather funny fight.

Left the store euphoric, with bags of games and a smile on our faces. We no longer needed another bottle of wine...

Any other suggestions on brain games?

Registering for the Zombiekind, Tweeting for the Humankind

Amusing news from Journal and Courier today!

Purdue students played Humans vs. Zombies tag game across campus, using Nerf guns. Zombies were chasing Humans until their victims managed to get to a building or a bus. And then they chased some more... Once the participants were tagged as "killed" or "starved" they were off the game.

1200 participants registered for the game! How so? By hearing about it via Facebook and word of mouth. Then participants registered to their website, signing vaiwers.

How do the moderators make sure that it is organized and save? Well, they use their Website and Twitter updates, to not only monitor who is on and off the game, but also to make sure that the chaotic running around does not end badly, as if one really gets killed.

Blogging Trends

This article from Tecnorati portrays growth and trends in the blogosphere, and lays out how blogs are shaping the agenda for pretty much lie itself.
Blogs are no longer only "for fun" diaries, they are means for political and financial agenda setting.

Can you tell I am being sarcastic, Milo?

I thought a little more about Milo from the Project Natal.

In my previous posting I started thinking about whether it is possible to have a real, bonding relationship with the virtual chracter, Milo, who is nothing more than the graphical representation of Artificial Intelligence.

It would all depend on how detailed and developed the technology could get. The question is, would Milo get intelligent enough to recognize if I were being sarcastic or genuine in my interaction with him?

There are certain coding and de-coding mechanisms at work when humans communicate with each other. I believe the trick is to have the Artificial Intelligence differentiate between sarcasm and genuine interaction, having the sensors read into the cues that are transmitted in words and non-verbals. So far, human brain is the only intelligence that can do this (actually, not all human intelligences). But this technology is indeed promising that the virtual character can engage in a realistic interaction with an individual.

One Blog Away

It has been over a week now that Frank Gruber presented at our Com 435 class. But his words still echo in many of our minds. He must have touched some of our students, at least Erika and DJ already blogged about him.

Not only that, a Purdue student, Bram Wahl interviewed him on social media.

This is the beauty of new media technologies, even though your adventure is over, your legacy continues online, multiplying, connecting and multiplying even more. Frank is not at Purdue, we are not enjoying a Purdue waffle on a friday morning, but he is just one blog away.

Project Natal: Can Milo be a friend?

Project Natal is the source of the upcoming XBox 360 technology.

As Peter Molyneux states, this technology is a dream come true that was not even dreamed of. The virtual character (Milo) recognizes not only face, voice, actions, but also the emotions hidden in the individual's voice. He also responds to the individual with a tone of voice and gestures that reflects emotions.

This is a revolutionary technology, as it allows complete interaction between a real person and a virtual character. It further blurs the distinction between what is real and what is virtual.

Molyneux also explains that the individual feels so connected to the virtual world and the Milo character that they react to the game the same way they would in a real life situation. As the individual interacts with the objects in "Milo's world", it creates a stronger connection with Milo and immersion into a virtuality.

I grew up in a big city, with no playgrounds and no safe opportunities to explore the nature. I did not have video games either. I had a creative imagination instead that made my toys come alive, and my room turn into a magical pond with talking fish.

If I were 8 again and wanted to go fishing in the middle of Istanbul, could Milo be a friend? Would Milo be as real as my next door neighbor, or as fun as my own imagination?

Great expectations from the Project Natal XBox 360

Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3 ) is a massive annual gathering for any and every kind of interactive entertainment.

This would be my pilgrimage.

In the 2009 E3, Microsoft XBox360 announced a new gaming technology that is one step above Nintendo's Wii. Very soon, we will not have to use controllers to play, exercise, connect, shop, watch... The new XBox360 technology has object, voice, face and motion recognition.

This video is a demonstration of what can be done with it. Even watching it is exciting!

I will be discussing details of this technology here for a while...

Augmented reality and something between secondlife and first life

While I was moving, I used MS word (Photoshop works better) to create a scaled model of the new house and see how my furniture fits into the new place. It saves a lot of time and energy when you are moving to a new house. But it is in 2D, so you can not get a good sense of how it would be like to live in it.

I always thought it would be a good idea to create a house similar to mine on Second Life and find or script objects that represent my furniture, and move them around to see how it would look like in a different combination. Better yet, imagine that you have created your virtual house, and you want to change the decoration. Yet you do not know is a leader couch would look as chick as you think. You can always try it on Second Life, as the cost of a leather couch is the same as a fabric one. Better yet, you get to try different arrangements in the room and after you play with it for a while, you decide on the ultimate setting of your virtual room.

I tried to do that in The Sims as well, but you can not customize the objects as much as you can in Second Life.

This video on Technology review gave me another idea. You can use your iphone to transport digital objects onto your "potentially new home" and see how your old furniture will fit into this brand new setting. Saves time, energy, and probably money. Plus it is a 3D sense of how your house will look like soon.

Ratings and the wisdom of the crowds (?)

This article on Technology review discusses an issue that I thought about before, but never actually tested. I am thankful to those who empirically study the ratings on websites such as imdb and amazon.

According to the article, the ratings on such sites do not really reflect the wisdom of the crowds. Rather they are reflections of the wisdom of a few biased individuals.

If you look for reviews the same day a particular movie is on screen, you will find the ratings higher compared to a few weeks afterwards. It is rather fun to experiment on that. Those who see a movie the day of its release may have been waiting for it for a while. Without any conspiracy theories, having positive feelings towards an item (movie/book/new technology) influences the way humans make judgments. I like those passionate judgments, but it would be good to easily differentiate whether an item is ranked high because it is really good, or because Mr. X has a special childhood story about it.

From the same article, I agree with Niki Kittur that providing more information about the participants' review patterns is a way to make people differentiate between wisdom of the crowds and of biased few. This idea futher incorporates technologies into wikis and rating systems.

What I do with the available technologies is (not to wait a few months to buy a book or watch a movie, but) to look at multiple review sites (using my digital literacy skills, if you will) and actually read the comments that people make justifying their ratings. Yet I am excited about new (yet fair and democratic) methods and technologies of ratings assessments.

What kind of a blog is this?

I had an aha moment reading Rettberg's chapter on the definition of blogs. According to Rettberg (2008), there are three types of blogs: Personal blogs like Julie Powel's that I mentioned before, filter blogs such as kottke.org, and topic-driven blogs such as dailykos.com.

Personal blogs are very much "share my diary with the rest of the world" type of blogs. I was not that much up for it. No one except my sister is allowed to see my diaries.

Topic-driven blogs, as the name implies, are impersonal and topic based blogs. Those are usually collaborative efforts. Many newspapers or political parties have a blog site. Those sites remain professional, yet allow the readers to comment on the article or on each others' comments. Well, I was trying to escape from academic and serious writing, so I was not up for that either (not yet at least).

In filter blogs, the blogger covers a topic with a personal twist and perspective. The author can get personal about certain topics. This was what exactly it! I could get a chance to reflect on the issues I find interesting and comment on them as I would have with my fiance, colleagues, friends.

Feels good to know what you are doing...

Suggested Blogs

I'd like to share Dr. Kisselburgh's recommendations on some blogs, particularly for those interested in certain topics:

journalism
* Dan Gillmor for digital traces, tolerance, and career prospects

global issues
* Ethan Zuckerman from Ars Electronica

legal issues
* John Palfrey on the financial crisis versus the market for legal services

general commentary
* David Weinberger's blog

identity and social technology trends
* Danah Boyd's blog

From Blogs to the Theaters Near You

Julie and Julia is a pleasant movie about cooking, blogging, and connecting. It is based on real people and life stories. I have watched it over the summer and thought about it for a while, from an MTS perspective.

Julie Powel creates a personal blog to start the Julie/Julia Project. Her blog becomes a way to connect with Julia Child (an amazing woman who introduced French cooking to America), with her many followers, and with herself.

When you are writing a blog, like Julie Powell's personal blog, you are opening your diary to the world. It is not only a matter of writing consistently, or using a personal language, or walking your followers through a goal with you. I think it is the combination of all. People have commented on her posting and Julie Powell developed a relationship with and care for all the strangers who were thinking about her once in a while.

Monitoring flu with a GIS application

Apparently, germs have been hopping around on campus lately. It is not very pleasant to see all your colleagues and students sneezing and aching. Hopefully, it is just an ordinary flu, not the ones associated with a swine or a bird or any other non-human creature.

This article from Technology Review reports a rather brilliant and free ipod application. Outbreaks Near Me allows individuals to monitor location based data about reported cases of epidemic diseases.

Such location based information is made available with the development of GIS (Geographic Information Systems) technologies. Today there are many ways that GIS can be utilized, and yet many more are on the way.

What I liked even more about using GIS as an ipod application is that the users can report flu cases around their neighborhood and help update the data. With this wisdom of crowds, information grows even faster than it would have with official institutions.

Absolutely loved the idea. I wonder about the reliability of the data though...

Movies on Computer Games

Watching movies is one of the best things to do during a dissertation break. I am even more delighted when movies incorporate video games into its content.

Many many years ago, I watched Brainscan (1994). The movie is about a teenager playing a video game that goes real and bad. Even back then it made me think about the distinction between reality and virtuality. I also thought commanding your computer with your voice was very neat.

Yesterday, my sister recommended me a Belgium movie, BenX. She watched it from Netflix. It seems to have a much more humanistic perspective on video games. It focuses on the relationship between an authistic teenager and role-playing games. Watching it is on my list of things to do.

Another movie is on theaters now: Gamer. I am not very sure about that one. It does not have very good reviews, but out of curiosity and at a moment of weakness, I may watch it too.

What does “Serious Games” mean?

Even though co-occurrence of the terms ‘serious’ and ‘game’ sounds odd, serious games aim to cover a significant issue in an immersive environment. When the players engage with this environment, they are not only exposed to the concepts of the issue, but also they live through the experience of managing that issue in a safe environment.

The topic of a serious game may vary from cancer to healthy eating habits, from urban planning to social movements, from ecology to ancient Rome history.

A serious game does not have to be designed for education; commercial games that are already available can also be used as a serious game. Naturally, if the game is designed specifically for education, its audience centered approach boosts the game’s learning potential.

Ads in games

More on this Mc Donald's Ad

More on this Intel Ad

I came across with an interesting article from Technology Review. It says that advertisements are more memorable when they are placed in a violent game, compared to the non-violent version of the same game.

It is rather possible that the ads are more memorable because the players are exposed to the content with evoked feelings, and more importantly, with high levels of adrenaline. The players are biologically more open to all senses at those times.

The article does not focus much on the reasons why those ads are memorable, though. Rather it points out a dilemma about whether the companies should make a decision to place their ads on violent or non-violent ads.

It is indeed a big and somewhat ethical dilemma. If the companies will prefer to place their ads in violent games, it means that that genre is the one that will get supported more so than the non-violent games. This, in return will surely have an impact on the supply-demand dynamics of the game genres.

Digital Literacy Contest

Years ago, in 2003 to be precise, I did a workshop on media literacy in Istanbul, Turkey. The whole workshop was a discussion about this concept of critically analyzing the content before allowing it to get into your skin. We were focusing on print and Television back then. I did not even think about the Internet.

Today, as we are in the Information Society, the concept of literacy has changed its form. Now we are talking about "Digital Literacy": Being able to critically analyze the information online. Digital literacy as for me is going beyond awareness of a single message or an image. It is being able to run multiple assessments at the same time in order to cherry pick the correct information among thousands of messages and images.

How can you know that you are a "digital literate" person? Well, you need some assessment plan for that.

Thanks to Daniel Poynter and his talented team, there is a fun way to measure your digital literacy skills. They have created a Digital Literacy Contest, where you are competing against time to find the correct information from the right online source.

We tried it today in the class that I help teach. They were like bees, finding all those information. And they did well. Much better than I did! Moreover, majority of my students seemed to enjoy the challenge very much (with only a couple of exceptions, naturally).

If I ever create a workshop on media literacy again, anywhere on Earth, I would definitely integrate Digital Literacy and this contest.

3D, desensitization, and new expectations

The new 3D graphic technology allows you to experience more sensation compared to 2D movies. With the depth perception, you get a sense of presence and recognize more details in the "environment". Moreover as this technology is relatively new, it makes you cheer for its inventor, while you are enjoying the adrenaline rush... for a little while. Then it blends into the movie, becomes part of it. What you are left with though, is an overall heightened threshold for a new set of sensations (we also call that arousal, but usually to refer to violence in media effects studies)

The more you get sensation from media, the more you get desensitized overall. Conventional thrilling techniques become limited as you are now introduced to different sets of feelings with 3D: Those you can not experience even in real life. (I am pretty sure that you would not ever see a nail flying towards you in glowing colors/slow motion in real life. Even if you did so, you would not think "cool!" but something else). You get this weird luxury of enjoying a made-believe danger.

The audiences' increased expectation of heightened sensation will have implications on the future of the media technologies. It will be like Disneyland in the neighborhood movie theater. Today the "soaring ride" in Disneyland is an amazing experience. You do not have the 3D glasses, though. You only feel, see and smell. Tomorrow, we will be seeking the "all in one" experience any time we go to a movie.

I am looking forward to witnessing where the next available technology will take us.

Movies in 3-D

Ever since I got out of the 2D version of the movie Final Destination 3D tonight, I have been thinking about the 3D technology in movies.

I have to see it again in 3D! I will do that tomorrow. But before I do, I would like to brainstorm a little bit.

Obviously, the movie was made for integrating the 3D technology. The images that the main character was "seeing" were designed so that something (sharp) was flying towards your face almost constantly. (There was even a reference to watching a 3D movie in the movie!)

Technologies that become available and popular can encourage the movie industry to change the ways they write the scripts, edit the movie or integrate the visual effects.

What would a 3D movie do to you? And mind you there are a bunch of them out there. It surely would heighten the senses. In Dreamworks' Monsters vs. Aliens, or Disney/Pixar's Up, it is to give you more excitement and joy. The colors look brighter, and the audience feels almost right in the room. I wonder whether in a horror/thriller movie like Final Destination, 3D takes the fear and disgust to the extreme, or would these 3D effects work as an excitement in itself. Does it matter if it is a sharp hook or a funny bug flying onto your face in terms of creating excitement? I am thinking, if I am watching an intensely violent and horrifying scene, a 3D effect would not only intensify the story, but also have an additional effect; an effect of its own.

It does not make much sense to experiment on oneself, but I have to see the movie in 3D tomorrow and identify what I felt...

Capturing the game screen

I am trying to figure out a way to capture the players' game screen for my dissertation. The traditional method is to have them play the game and locate a video camera over their shoulders. However, this is not the most ideal, since the presence of the camera might affect their playing and the quality of the screen recording will not be as high.

I came across with an article on a usability testing program called VULab. It looks very neat, where you create a pre test, allow people to play with a website and give them a post-test. Unfortunately, when I have created a demo experiment, it did not save the screen for me :(

A friend of mine recommended me Adobe Captivate 4. Just like creating a demo, I can make the gamers record their game with that program.

Still searching for the best way to capture their game screens...