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- Who Put the Google Eath in my Game?Today
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I just saw the trailer for Sony's new game The Last Guy. In it you run around a city trying to lead people to safety with a top down view reminiscent of Google Earth or Yahoo! Maps or Live Maps. People follow you around the city creating an ever longer line, while you try to avoid monsters. As your line gets longer you get more points and can do more things like surround buildings to free all the trapped people.
I was struck by how ingrained in our society this (relatively) new way of looking at our world has become. Google Earth is the most useful virtual world that I interact with on a regular basis and I doubt that I am the only one who feels that way. It is on its way to becoming its own gaming platform (if its doesn't qualify already). Google added a flight simulator mode and GoogleEarthHacks hosts Gemmo, an MMO for the geobrowser. The still-in-Beta - Ignite NYC II - Submit a talkYesterday
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On the night before the Web 2.0 Expo NY Ignite is coming back to NYC! On September 15th we will have 10 Ignite speakers who each get just five minutes on stage. Bre Pettis, the co-creator of Ignite will be hosting a cupcake decorating contest. Ignite is going to be at New World Stages (340 West 50th Street) where we are a guest of the New York Television Festival. They are providing us a ~400 person theatre and free beer (during the cupcake contest).
We are currently looking for speakers. If you have something geeky to share then submit a talk! Each speaker will get 20 slides that auto-advance after 15 seconds for a total of five-minutes. Put in your talk idea here. We will let people know by September 10th but submit early as selection is rolling.
If you plan on entering the cupcake decorating competition plan on bringing your own decorations. We will have some on-hand but if you are going to be the cupcake decorating champion of NYC then you'll need to bring something unique. You will not be required to use our cupcakes; feel free to bring your own.
Here is a rough schedule for how the night wi
- Social Networking for Books: One Ring, or Loosely Joined?August 27
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I have to confess that one of the social networking tools I find most valuable is Goodreads. (It's a close second to Twitter, and way ahead of Facebook, Friendfeed, or Dopplr.) Unlike twitter, where I follow hundreds of people (possible because of twitter's minimalism) and am followed by thousands, on Goodreads, I follow and am followed by a small circle of friends and people whose taste in books I trust. As someone who loves books, it is the pinnacle of private social networking for me.
So it was with some interest that I read about Amazon's acquisition of Shelfari. Much of the resulting commentary has focused on the problems this poses for LibraryThing, in which Amazon also has an invesment (via their recent purchase of Abebooks.) I'm a bit surprised that the articles have seemingly ignored the fact that Goodreads appears to be the market leader, at least based on data from compete.com:
Of course, that could
- The Google Alphabet, 2008 editionAugust 27
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Google has added Google Suggest to their homepage. When Google suggest first-launched Buster McLeod (AKA Erik Benson) checked the suggested term for each letter to create the Google Alphabet, 2004 edition. When Google News Suggest launched in 2006 I did the same. Now in honor of Google Suggest graduating from labs here is the annotated Google Alphabet, 2008 edition:
John Lewis, a UK retailer that I had never heard of till now)A = amazon
B = bebo
C = craigslist (in 2004 this was cnn)
D = dictionary
E = ebay
F = facebook (in 2004 this was firefox's turf)
G = gmail
H = hotmail
I = ikea
J = john lewis (the first result is for
K = kelly blue book
L = limewire
M = myspace
N = nbc olympics
O = olympics
P = photobucket (over Paypal and beating out 2004's Paris HIlton)
Q = quotes (the first result is for The Quotations Page; I hadn't realized how popular quotes were)
R = runescape
S = sears (I am impressed that Sears is able to beat second-place Skype; 2004 winner Spybot is gone)
T = target
U = utube (you k - Flickr's Burning Man Map Uses Open Street MapAugust 26
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Flickr is best known for its photo-sharing, but increasingly its most innovative work is coming from its geo-developers (Radar post). Yesterday they announced the addition of a street-level map of Black Rock City so that we can view geotagged Burning Man photos. Flickr got the mapping data via Open Street Map's collaboration with Burning Man.
Flickr uses Yahoo! Maps for most of their mapping (and fine maps they are). The underlyin
