Sierra Kilo

Alex Albrecht guest hosted the last Geekdrome podcast. Somehow, they mentioned Jim Henson’s Dark Crystal. Alex mentioned how cool it would be to make a Dark Crystal MMORPG. I wholeheartedly agree. I would love to see an MMORPG based on that world. What’s more, I would love to see it be fairly kid-friendly (10-12+) and slightly educational.

How could it be kid-friendly? Well, while combat could be present, it should be played down and limited to age. Another method would be to implement twinning, like in the movie. For each Skeksis, there was a Mystic, so by killing an enemy, you would also be killing an ally.

Another kid-friendly feature would be to make it more like an online Animal Crossing. Change the goal structures so that players are rewarded more for making the Virtual World better somehow: cleaning litter, feng shui, planting vegetation, making discoveries, etc.

Adding educational elements would also make it more kid-friendly. Apply real-world science to certain goals. Towers of Hanoi, Go, Soduku, and Sokoban are very good teaching games that could be made into quest-like mini-games. Go, for example, could be made into a fun game of wits between a player and weeds in his/her garden. You kill weeds by planting around them, but your plant could die if the weeds surround it. All of those games teach logic very well. Other games could be as simple as matching colors, or items.

One fun feature of Star Wars Galaxies was getting “badges” for visiting different areas or completing all of the missions from an area (called Theme Parks, like Jabba’s Palace). One way to incorporate educational elements and discovery is to guide the player by a series of riddles. We went geocaching one time and we had to piece together the coordinates by going to 3 different spots and gathering information. One spot, we had to count the number of trees in the orchard. Another, we had to decipher a code based on the name of the park.

This would be the perfect medium for teachers to assign homework. If players could create their own quests quickly and easily, teachers could create quest homework for their students. You wouldn’t be able to create a curriculum based on this, but it would be good extra credit.

These ideas could all be incorporated in any setting, but the Dark Crystal was always a favorite of mine. With the upcoming sequel, The Power of the Dark Crystal, this would be a good license to work with.

The MyDreamApp finalists were announced last night. Congratulations to the winners:

Atmosphere: Changes your desktop background depending on the weather outside
Portal: A new synchronization application to go between two different workstations
Cookbook: (My favorite) A cookbook application that stores recipes, notes, and can generate menus and shopping lists

T-Mobile rolled out “The only phone you need” in Seattle. You get a wireless access point for your home network and a phone that uses VoIP and normal cellular networks. When you’re within range of your access point (at home), your calls are free. When you’re at a T-Mobile hot spot (i.e. Starbucks), your calls are free. When you’re not at a hot spot, you use your cellular plan minutes.

I barely use 1/3 of my plan’s minutes, so I’m not too worried about saving the minutes, but there are plenty of people that would benefit from this. Even if this service cost an extra $20/month, it could be beneficial. The plan requires special phones that have the ability to switch from VoIP to cellular seamlessly. So, if you’re talking on the phone and drive to work, you won’t get disconnected, just switch networks.

I see this being a good thing for PDAs and laptops, too. If you’re at a hotspot, you could use WiFi, but if not, you could use cellular bandwidth. Now, if only someone would come up with a phone/high-capacity media player/PDA/game player that used this service, that would be a moneymaker.

Update: This device is part-way there. My question is, if it’s possible, why not just go ahead and do it? So what if it’s big and clunky as long as it does everything well? I mean, just look at the original cellular phones, music players, and laptops. Eventually everything gets smaller. That’s not what you need to concentrate on. You just need to make it work right.

Home Depot to offer solar panels (via TreeHugger)

Home Depot is going to start offering solar panels and installation. It’s still not financially accessible for most folks, but it’s getting there. According to the cost calculator, it would take 30 years or so to recouperate your installation costs. This might be a viable option for people who are building a new house and planning on staying there a while. Of course, this depends on how much value this adds to the equity. Still, it’s a good start.

I’m a big fan of solar power, as I’ve said before. It’s a free source of energy. Although it’s not as efficient as current sources, it’s much less pollutive and the actual cost of such energy is dependent on the manufacturer of the collectors. That means you don’t have to pay to harvest or trade the fuel like you do with fossil fuels. Plus, you can either store the energy that you don’t use or sell it to the power company for others to use.

Some say that asthetics of solar panels are lacking. I disagree. I’d rather see panels on my roof than drab asphault shingles. Part of that is the pride of knowing I’m using a renewable energy source, though. Another downside is that some collectors are prone to damage from hail, etc. Plus, you’d need to clean them periodically for optimum performance. Oh, and the current price.

Apple “announced” (I saw it on Digg, but the Apple website has been updated) that they’re bumping the specs on the MacBook Pros. They now include an Intel Core 2 Duo (instead of the ancient [1-year old] Core Duo). They also have the option of up to 3 GB of RAM (that 3rd GB costs $575!) and you can have a 200 GB hard drive for a paltry $100 more.

I priced the one that I would get (2GB RAM, 200GB Drive, w/ warranty) and it’s $200 less than it was the other day when I priced one. That’s one step closer to being worth it for me. The rumors are that the next version of the OS (10.5 aka Leopard) will be released in January. If the specs for the notebook are bumped again around that time, I might have to bite.

My current notebook still has plenty of power (3.2 GHz P4, 1GB RAM, 60GB Drive), but it can’t hold a charge for more than about 30 seconds. Plus, it requires 2 fans to keep it cool, it weighs in close to 10 lbs, and the power brick adds another 5 or so, it seems. It would be a perfect desktop replacement, tethered to a desk, but simply cannot be mobile. It could play the heck out of some games, which is what I’d probably use it for.

The Apple, however, would become my new “everyday” machine. It would handle my email, calendar, web browsing, music, and development. I would either dual boot OS X and Windows XP Pro or run XP in a virtual machine under OS X. If the performance is good enough, the second option would be best. I would also be able to take this to client sites and be able to ferry it back and forth from work without dragging 50 accessories.

TiVo is offering an 80-hour DVR with 1 year of service for $125. That’s a pretty darn good deal. As some may know, my beloved ReplayTV died and I’ve been wrestling with my PC as a PVR. If the budget looks okay, I may take advantage of this deal (or the 180-hour box for $150 w/o 1 yr of service). With the TiVoToGo and iPod conversion software, I might be able to wrangle my recordings onto my iPod for those lonely nights. The deal expires on Halloween, so I’ve got some time to stress over it. Do I hop on the bandwagon and get TiVo, or do I stick to my exasperated guns and use my PC? I’ve been riding the iPod bandwagon for a while and I’m fairly happy with that, so who knows.

First, Universal and Fox backed out of the Halo movie. Rumor has it that the budget was around $200 million. While that budget would make a great movie, it’s unlikely that it would be the next Star Wars or Lord of the Rings. Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh were producing and they had the director of those cool Transformers-like commercials with the dancing cars. Surf the Wikipedia article for more info (Blomkamp’s short films are pretty cool). So, I say concentrate on a good script and decent (though not extravagent) costumes/effects/locations/sets instead of going for some kind of budget record. After watching the LotR special features, there was alot of stuff that they could have saved money on and nobody would have known the difference.

Next up is Internet Explorer 7. Microsoft finally released an update to IE with features that have been in Firefox all along. The UI is so Vista-ized that you’ll probably have trouble finding what you need. For the average user, I’m sure it’s just fine. They hold your hand, wipe the drool off of your chin, and chuckle when you make silly ga-ga noises. For the more advanced user, good luck finding what you need. Good luck turning off the babysitter. Will IE7 keep you from getting spyware? Nope. That’s still a pebkac. It will probably fit in nicely with the other “enhancements” in Windows Vista, though. Anywho…it still uses less memory than Firefox. What’s up with that, guys? I know it has to do with the way you cache pages in memory, but give me a setting to turn it off so that it won’t bloat up to 300MB!

There are more rumors of a 480p touchscreen iPod (6th Gen) coming soon. The biggest problem I have with this is that touching the screen will result in fingerprints and possibly more scratches. Plus, how would that work with a hard case like my Agent18? The patent for the touchscreen shows that it’s a proximity sensor, so it might work fine. We’ll see. How would you power on/off or reboot if the interface is all software? Also, they recently applied for a patent for wireless music. This could mean Zune-like features, or maybe just streaming from your music collection at home. That doesn’t make sense to me, though. Why have a high-capacity media player within range of your media collection? Why not just play your media on your stereo or TV? Wireless synching is a different story, but then you lose some speed. I must admit, though, that I’m fairly happy with my iPod. I thought that the shuffle method would be a huge problem for me, but I’ve adapted a bit. There are still things that irk me, but it’s been a good investment. Now, if I just had more storage for my media library…

On a related side note, Apple should release a firmware update to allow you to customize the interface a little. I want to see the cover art, song info, my rating, and the song length/current position all on the same screen. I don’t mind clicking through the functions to do the fast forward, rating, or see the lyrics, just put more info on the main screen. Also, it would be nice to skin the interface. Bright white is a PITA when you’re watching a video at night (unless you’re using the screen as a flashlight). Ooh! Add an ambient light sensor to change skins based on light conditions. Ooh! Add a gyroscopic sensor to control the UI! That way, you don’t have to touch the screen. Just touch a button (touch-sensitive like the current model) on the side and tilt the device up or down. To select an item, click the button.

The lead designer for AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) has left AOL for Google. He will most likely work on Google Talk. Evidently, AOL came to an agreement with Google to link their IM networks like Microsoft and Yahoo! did.

So, what does that mean? My thoughts are that there will soon be a Web 2.0 version of AIM. Those who have seen Meebo know how that could work. In fact, it wouldn’t suprise me at all if Google bought the fledgling (although growing fast) Meebo for this purpose.

So, they would have:
- Web-based AIM
- Web-based Word Processor
- Web-based Spreadsheet
- Web-based E-mail
- Web-based Calendar
- Web-based RSS Feed News Reader
- Web-based media player (YouTube)

Now, look at your taskbar and see what’s running. Odds are that you are running several of these applications. Windows, Mac, or Linux, it doesn’t matter. These applications are day-to-day functions that would be difficult to live without in our digital lives.

What else could Google do to wear the crown?
- Buy Digg: Adding another social-oriented website would increase the flow of traffic and revenue from AdSense.
- Create/buy more essential Web 2.0 applications: I’m still waiting for web-based financial software like Quicken.
- Enhance Google Desktop to synchronize your data with mobile devices: Instead of synching your phone contacts and calendar with Outlook, you could synchronize with your GMail address book and Google Calendar.
- Open more APIs: Allow other application developers to place more of their users’ data in Google’s hands.

“When kids start showing up in ERs with slingshot wounds at the hands of Bully enthusiasts, don’t blame me.” - Jack Thompson

For those who don’t know Jack, he’s an attorney who has basically made it his personal mission to destroy all mature content in video games. He fought Rockstar on the “Hot Coffee” modification and recently went to court with Take-Two (Rockstar’s publisher) over the game “Bully”.

Bully is a game where you play a bully in a prep school. You give wedgies, do swirlies, graffiti the walls, etc. Homeboy Jack’s argument is that he’s “pretty sure that the game is harmful to minors”. Well, according to Neowin, the judge in Florida “came to the conclusion there is nothing in the game that a child cannot see on TV every night.” This is after the developers skipped around different parts in the game and showed it to the judge. From what I gather, Thompson expected the judge to play through the entire game, but the judge only needed a few hours to make his decision.

Here’s my take on it. Games are a good way to escape from reality for a bit and put yourselves in the shoes of a fictional character. Sometimes it’s fun to be able to drive any car you’d like, get going about 90 MPH and hit a ramp that launches you over 10 city blocks. If you happen to land on somebody walking down the street, it’s okay: they’re just more fictional characters.

Would I do this in real life? Hell no. Not only do I have a respect for human life and the law (most of them, anyway), I’d rather not hear Peter say, “Um, Steve, you’ll need to catch that firey bus right over there because these gates are closed to you.” I think the Golden Rule is a good one to follow.

I also think that children are (mostly) the product of their parents. Good parents teach their children what is right and wrong. They don’t give up if the kid doesn’t get it the first time, they just try a different path. Am I going to let my daughter play Grand Theft Auto? If she wants to, then absolutely. I’ll be sitting right beside her waiting for my turn to play and making sure that she understands that it’s pretend and that doing that stuff in real life is wrong. Of course, she’ll be old enough at that time that I won’t have to talk to her like a 2-year-old. Why wait? Because you don’t build the house before laying the foundation.

It’s about 8am and I’ve been at work for 4 hours now. The dog woke me up around 2am and I couldn’t get back to sleep. It was a combination of L’s loud breathing, work, AnAppADay.com, and the latest Hak.5 episode. I kept thinking about my current work project, other little projects that I could do, and the “USB Hacksaw”. Once my mind started going, I guess there was no stopping it. So, I walked the dog around 3:45am and headed to work.

I kind of like working this early because I’ve been pretty productive. One problem, though, is that I’ll be dead around 3pm and I’ll need a nap. I’ll probably just take the afternoon off.