The German company responsible for implanting motion-tracking technology in soccer balls for use by referees during the World Cup are in discussions with the NFL about possibly using their technology in American football in order to cut down on game-deciding missed calls, reports engadget. Found at YouTube from AJSiokos.

via steverubel.com

Posted via email from David Erickson’s Posterous

Want to spice up your home videos to make friends and family pay more attention to your vacation footage? How ’bout adding a gunfight scene? And no gunfight scene is worthy of the name without realistic muzzle flares. Here’s how you do it. Found at YouTube from freddiew2.

Scott County Deputy CIO Perry Mulcrone goes to Lucky Linda’s Body Art to have his arm decorated in Google’s St. Patrick’s Day logo. He pledges to get a real Google tattoo if the Internet giant picks Scott County as a test site for its high-speed fiber project. Found at YouTube from ShakopeeValleyNews.

My college writing professor used to say that the novel is dead. I didn’t really agree with him then and I don’t know that I agree with him now, but it is true that film and, now, video games, are the preferred media for enjoying long-form fiction.

Video Games As Literature

Film has clearly proved to be a superb medium for telling stories; the jury, however, is still out on video games. Role playing games such as World of Warcraft and Oblivion are the genre most suited to storytelling but I’d like to see a literary genre emerge that allows the player to explore much deeper issues and themes that have thus far escaped the video game industry.

In short, I want to play Hemingway stories.

The Obstacles To Video Games As Literature

A primary obstacle to the development of such a genre is the video game’s absolute need for action. The player has to do something and the action always has to be compelling or entertaining if the video game is to be successful. That’s a big challenge. I think it will become easier as video games get more immersive, as the graphics become more photo realistic and once someone figures out how to apply virtual reality technology to video games.

I love first person shooters but more often than not, the story line, such as it is, is merely a pretense to kill. Halo‘s story was deep and well conceived but it was mere surface science fiction, it did not deal with any social, political, or psychological issues. And it’s story was told entirely through cut scenes.

The Call of Duty franchise’s story succeeds in large part on our understanding of World War II history and, in the case of Call of Duty 4, our understanding of current events.

The best most recent example of storytelling within a first person shooter that I can think of is Bioshock, with its dystopian themes and its remarkable sense of place:

Even so, video games in general and first person shooters in particular have a long way to go before they reach the level of literature. I’ve been thinking about this for some time, but a recent visit from a writer friend of mine got me thinking about it again and the result is a brilliant idea for a first person shooter that would allow you to explore any number of literary themes.

My Brilliant Video Game Idea

My working title is The Short, Miserable Lives Of Fran McNeal.

So here’s my idea:

You begin the game being pursued by some shadowy government agency that is out to get you. A long, elaborate adventure ensues during which you need to evade your persecutors while engaging other characters you meet along they way, evaluating their trustworthiness, and obtaining help from them in your efforts to escape.

Eventually, however, you will be cornered and required to kill or be killed. By killing your antagonist, you obtain the ability to become other characters in the game. With that ability you are able to see your character from the perspective of other characters and it begins to dawn on you that your character is a paranoid schizophrenic. With multiple personalities.

A power struggle ensues between your personalities; you get to play as each personality. That power struggle maintains the paranoia of the game and becomes the rationale for the game. The object is to conquer each personality by killing it.

Upon killing that personality, you absorb the characteristics of that personality and therefore obtain or become stronger for the characteristics that were unique to that personality. So, for example, if one of the personalities could speak French, was extremely witty and charming, and was an expert driver, by killing that personality, you would gain those characteristics: You would be able to speak and understand French, your charm would make you more persuasive and give you the ability to make friends with ease, and your driving skills would improve significantly.

The game then would also have a strategic aspect to it. If, for example, you wanted to take down personality X, you may first need to kill personalities Y and Z in order to obtain the skills and/or characteristics you would need to kill X.

Through each personality, you can explore a separate literary theme and the game would conclude in any variety of ways, depending upon which character you ended up becoming.

Now I just need to learn how to write video game scripts!

I was messing around with Google Maps’ new StreetView feature but hadn’t notice until The Vet pointed it out, that we’re on StreetView. You can’t explicitly identify us, but but you can definitely see the crew we play touch football with every Saturday of the year on StreetView.

If you look straight ahead, across the other side of the parking lot, between the cars you can see some people seated on the ground under the shade of the trees. That me and my crew resting in between football games. Amazing!

Here are some recent posts from my Internet Marketing blog:

• Webcam Stars – Product Placement At YouTube
  posted on March 24, 2006
  Logitech scores big with product placement in YouTube star’s videos.
• Citizen Branding Through Fanboy Ads
  posted on March 24, 2006
  Online
  video sharing services such as YouTube are exposing fanboy ads that are
  fundamentally changing the nature of product branding
• Comcast High Speed Internet Commercial – The Slowskys
  posted on March 22, 2006
  Comcast demonstrate’s the power of Internet distribution with their The Slowsky’s high speed Internet television commercial.
• Broadband Adoption Driving Online Video
  posted on March 17, 2006
  Broadband adoption helps explain the growing popularity of online video.
• NBC’s Botched Response To Natalie Portman Online Video
  posted on March 17, 2006
  NBC’s
  cease and desisting of YouTube over the Saturday Night Live Natalie
  Portman skit demonstrates the old school media company just doesn’t get
  benefits of the sharing Web.
• Microsoft Plans Virtual Spectator Sport
  posted on March 14, 2006
  Virtual
  spectator sport will be enormously successful as a pay-per-view
  service, as well as an advertising and product placement vehicle.
• Google AdWords Adds Demographic Targeting
  posted on March 13, 2006
  Google has added a demographic targeting feature to their AdWords search engine advertising program.

Technorati tags: google adwords | demographic targeting | video games | microsoft | nbc | viral video | natalie portman | snl | saturday night live | comcast | the slowskys | online video | tv commercials | citizen branding | youtube | logitech

• Thumbstacks.com – Live presentations on the web! – An online PowerPoint-style presentation application.
• Gcast – Free, ad-supported podcast service. You don’t need hardware, hosting, or even expertise.
• CarSpace – Edmunds.com’s social networking site for auto enthusiasts
• reddit: what’s new online
• my swickis – A swicki is new kind of search engine that allows anyone to create deep, focused searches on topics you care about. Unlike other search engines, you and your community have total control over the results and it uses the wisdom of crowds to improve search
• TechCrunch
• The Long Tail – Essential article on the economics of digital distribution.

Technorati tags: blogs | podcasting | online presentations | personalized search engines | the long tail

RSS Blog & News Readers

I have yet to find an RSS news reader that works to my liking. In case you don’t know, news readers are a piece of software or a web site that works sorta like an email program, except for blogs. Every time there is a new post at a blog you’ve subscribed to, you get a notification in your news reader. The RSS part is an acronym that stands for Really Simple Syndication, the technological protocol upon which blogs are based.

Since I track quite a few blogs, I’ve tried many news readers yet I’ve tried in vain to find one that I really like. I’ve tried software based ones like FeedReader, FeedDemon, AmphetaDesk and a disasterous experiment with Onfolio. I’ve tried web-based readers like Bloglines and the Google Reader but nothing has really worked that well.

FeedReader, for example, worked well enough at delivering blog posts as they came in, but I didn’t want another software program that was running all the time and when I’d close it, it was like out-of-sight-out-of-mind and so I’d forget about it. Plus, when it was running, I didn’t like the little pop-up messages that appeared from my systray whenever a new post came in; it’s already annoying  enough that AOL’s AIM does that whenever a buddy logs on or off. I don’t need more annoyance in my life.

The problem with web-based readers is that they pretty much defeat the purpose of RSS as a content delivery platform: You still need to remember to go to a web site to check your blogs, even if they are conveniently located in one place. Again, out-of-sight-out-of-mind.

But I think now I’ve found a service that does exactly what I need a blog reader to do: Send me an email when my blogs are updated. That’s what FeedBlitz does. It’s a free service that allows you to subscribe to any content that provides and RSS or XML feed (you know, those little orange buttons you often see on web sites) and it will email you a notification when your subscriptios have been updated.

It’s as easy as copying a feed and submitting it to your FeedBlitz account.

I’ve set up a couple of accounts. I’ve got one for Twins and Vikings stories, so every morning I get an email with a link to and descriptions of all the new posts for the site’s I’ve subscribed to.

It’s awfully slick. So slick, in fact, that I’ve set up a subscribe box for this blog so you can get my posts emailed to you. If I skip a day, you won’t have to bother visiting. Look at the upper right-hand side of this blog and you’ll see the subscribe box directly beneath the Blog Tools heading. Just enter your email address, click Subscribe Me, and FeedBlitz will walk you through the rest.

Enjoy!

Technorati tags: rss | xml | news readers | rss readers | blog readers | email | feedreader | feeddemon | amphetadesk | onfolio | bloglines | google reader | feedblitz

• Rochester Post-Bulletin’s
  blogs
• Guinness
  Blog – If you want to get in, don’t choose "Other countries".
• New Media Musings – Charting democratic, grassroots media.
• FLUXBLOG – Sometimes Shame Can Be Fun
• Into the Blogosphere – Acedamia on blogs.
• FeedBlitz – Email blog and RSS
  subscription service.
• PodcastAlley.com – The place to
  find Podcasts
• digg / diggnation /
  dugg – Dug stories from Digg Nation podcast.
• Radio Juno Beach – Minneapolis based Internet radio.
• How
  do I download a video to my Sony Playstation Portable? – An answer is needed because the PSP sure as hell don’t provide the answer in their manual.
• PSP Video Converter – PSP Video Express
• Digeo :: Moxi – Cable guide interface for DVRs.
• Revver – Video sharing and search engine.

Technorati tags: blogs | podcasts | internet radio | psp | playstation portable | dvr | video