09:20, Tuesday 29 Jan., 2008 Link
SimCity on the OLPC, letting kids dig around with the dynamic system rules. Download Micropolis (its screenname in the open source world), and read more. I'd like this hooked into my todo list to have different districts as different projects, with the attention I give each manifesting as land value.
Visit Deyemon, my mini city which runs online like a simplified SimCity. The more referrer traffic it gets, the higher the population. I can encourage you to visit other URLs to improve its industry, transport network, and so on.
A viral loop is the steps a user goes through between entering the site to inviting the next set of new users
(more). The viral loop leads to: motivated users; growth; mutuality between websites in the ecosystem. By happy coincidence, I'll be speaking on a similar topic at the end of the week.
The OLPC Human Interface Guidelines concentrates not on applications but activities. (Run OLPC without an XO laptop.) cf. Human Interface Guidelines for Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard.
Rumoured gestures for inclusion in Windows Mobile 7.
The Internet of 1996 shows just how much is dependent not on the technology, but on the people making stuff figuring out where the grain is. Once upon a time, the entire Web was mapped in 3D to the continent of antarcti.ca.
Maintain eye contact to feel powerful. Keith Johnstone in Impro has a different view: breaking eye contact can be high status so long as you don't immediately glance back for a fraction of a second. ... status is established not by staring, but by the reaction to staring. Thus dark glasses raise status because we can't see the submission of the eyes.
Johnstone also says the best ideas are often psychotic, obscene and unoriginal
--it's in adulthood that we're trained to suppress these. Go for it, he says. Right on.
Copy someone else staring at the camera and making a gesture, then post it to YouTube [via]. Now get a tentacle arm.
Three thoughts:
- Satellites are very tall towers used for telecommunications. Are there any other profitable uses of space, or is that it?
- Burglars should be given objects of value to make them complicit with the aim of the state to preserve the concept of property.
- We used to chase horses off cliffs for food. Then we carried spears. A portable cliff!
Right. I'm off to Canada.