It's only a game untill someone gets hurt.

In online advertising and marketing, we sometimes have to explain why an interactive relationship can create much stronger bonds than those formed by conventional media. The usual way I do this is by pointing out that when a person is actively participating in a dialog, they've entered into a relationship in which they have a personal interest, as opposed to being disinterested spectators of a one-way message. This may be nice point, but I sometimes wish I had a really good, dramatic illustration to jazz it up. Here it is. Thank you, Japan.



October 23, 2008

Online Divorcee Jailed After Killing Virtual Hubby


TOKYO (AP) -- A 43-year-old Japanese woman whose sudden divorce in a virtual game world made her so angry that she killed her online husband's digital persona has been arrested on suspicion of hacking, police said Thursday.

The woman, who is jailed on suspicion of illegally accessing a computer and manipulating electronic data, used his identification and password to log onto popular interactive game ''Maple Story'' to carry out the virtual murder in mid-May, a police official in northern Sapporo said on condition of anonymity, citing department policy.

''I was suddenly divorced, without a word of warning. That made me so angry,'' the official quoted her as telling investigators and admitting the allegations.

The woman had not plotted any revenge in the real world, the official said.

She has not yet been formally charged, but if convicted could face a prison term of up to five years or a fine up to $5,000.

Players in ''Maple Story'' raise and manipulate digital images called ''avatars'' that represent themselves, while engaging in relationships, social activities and fighting against monsters and other obstacles.

The woman used login information she got from the 33-year-old office worker when their characters were happily married, and killed the character. The man complained to police when he discovered that his beloved online avatar was dead.

The woman was arrested Wednesday and was taken across the country, traveling 620 miles from her home in southern Miyazaki to be detained in Sappporo, where the man lives, the official said.

The police official said he did not know if she was married in the real world.

In recent years, virtual lives have had consequences in the real world. In August, a woman was charged in Delaware with plotting the real-life abduction of a boyfriend she met through ''Second Life,'' another virtual interactive world.

In Tokyo, police arrested a 16-year-old boy on charges of swindling virtual currency worth $360,000 in an interactive role playing game by manipulating another player's portfolio using a stolen ID and password.

Virtual games are popular in Japan, and ''Second Life'' has drawn a fair number of Japanese participants. They rank third by nationality among users, after Americans and Brazilians.

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-AS-Japan-Avatar-Murder.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

On stupidity and song.

There are many people who do very stupid things in advertising. I'm not pointing fingers, I've been among them.

But there's a particular brand of highly visible stupidity that I see constantly: advertisers not understanding the song they're using for their product. (this has nothing in particular to do with interactive, as the best-known examples are TV spots, but it exists in every medium with sound)

The latest example is the Lincoln MKS TV spot (http://tinyurl.com/67tf53), featuring a cover of David Bowie's Space Oddity. The whole MKS campaign tries to equate the SUV to a spaceship, (though a yacht may be more appropriate). To that end, we see the various high-tech goodies come to life as we hear Cat Power's cover - "commencing countdown, engines on", etc. Has it occurred to anyone that this song is about an astronaut dying because of an equipment malfunction? Do you really want to liken your car to a spaceship, then feature a song about a dead astronaut?
This is a particularly glaring example, since there's no doubt about the song's meaning.
Other examples are perhaps less obvious, but even worse:
Lust for Life (co-authored by David Bowie. Maybe there's a theme here, an Iggy Pop song about heroin addiction, is all over the air promoting Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines. They changed the lyrics, but come on, if you know the song, you know what it's about. and Iggy Pop isn't the best association for a family-friendly vacation.

The most glaring example has to be Ronald Reagan's use of Bruce Springsteen's Born in the USA in his campaign as a "patriotic" anthem. Does anybody listen to the lyrics?
Anybody?

So if you're tempted to use a song in your ad, site, banner, make sure you understand what it says before you put it out there.

Next time, why a dish named "Chicken Guernica" does not make people hungry. (seen at the Spanish place a block from my apartment.)

I love a good parody.

I love a good parody even more than a good whatever it is it's parodying. Lo these many years ago(9 to be exact), Being John Malkovich had a great parody site for the company that provided the journey, JM Inc. - thank you , Way Back Machine:

http://web.archive.org/web/20000229141541/www.jmincorporated.com/

Now Pixar has a very robust site for Wall-E:
***10/08 update: They took it down. What a pity.***


http://www.buynlarge.com/

It was great while it lasted.


Both feel real, contemporary, and even mundane. That's attention to detail. It's this level of detail that makes it an experience you can sink into, rather than a just a little joke. Of course the JM inc. site looks dated now, but a decade ago there were many sites that looked and felt just like that. The same is true for Buy n Large today. There are many attempts to come up with good parodies, but most fail because they're not detailed enough. A good parody demands even more work and better content than a "real" site. These two are among the best.

Kurzweil promises a nifty future. (but no jetpack)

In today's New York Times, there's an article about Ray Kurzweil, who's not a guy to be taken lightly. He invented a reading machine for the blind, then worked with Stevie Wonder to invent the modern synthesizer, and that's just a couple of his many significant inventions. I especially like the part about being able to eat anything and lose weight. Get working on that immediately, please.

*Yes, I know we should be combating world hunger, but I want to combat my own fatness. With a pill. That's the American way.

The article:
http://tinyurl.com/66cp3g

Monkeys, broken promises, and the return of Pong.

This is the 21st century, and monkeys can do more than we can:

Monkeys Control a Mechanical Arm With Their Thoughts
http://tinyurl.com/545x73


Why aren't we controlling everything with our minds? why am I typing this just like my grandpa would have, were he a writer and not a dance instructor who never owned a typewriter? Why am I not dictating this to my automatic transcriber thingie? where are the nutrition pills that taste like a steak dinner? I'm not even asking for the stupid jetpack, there are enough people complaining about that one.


Well, at long last there is a tiny little step: a brainwave-controlled mouse. Apparently, you can use it to play pong. Poorly, judging by the video on this review of the new OCZ nia.
http://tinyurl.com/55f55y

Still, it's a start. Not up to the monkey level, but not bad for for a couple of hundred bucks.

Cutting through the twitter thicket

This may be old news to those of you who know everything, but it's new to me and pretty nifty:
http://tweetscan.com/

Another way to find relevant content in a huge haystack is this Flickr search tool; particularly useful when you're looking for images with certain kinds of commercial CC licences.

http://www.compfight.com/

You don't have to know everything, you just have to know how to ask.
(I figure between Brian and Nat, I'll never need to actually learn anything ever again)

Perhaps the best thing ever written about writing.

The full version:

http://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/politics/english/e_polit


The 6 main points (for those who think they don't have time to read):

1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
   
2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.
3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.
5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

Web 0.000000001, yet supremely useful. (for a bicyclist)

http://www.sheldonbrown.com/

Sheldon Brown doesn't know much about making a pretty website, yet he built one of the most respected and frequently referenced bicycling sites on the net. I (and many others) have learned more about bicycling from Sheldon than from any of the many other much slicker bicycling sites around.

Is web 2.0 better than 1.0 better than no web at all?

Yes. No. It doesn't matter.
There are some great examples of wonderful content, delivered in the most awkward way imaginable, then there are others of great techniques conveying absolutely nothing. It's a medium; used properly, it can be a great medium. Used as a gimmick, it is often a meaningless waste of time.

Very often, style is the enemy of content. How often have you sen a beautiful looking site, banner, poster, or TV spot that says nothing? more over, how often have you heard people say "yea, there's nothing special there, but it sure looks good"

What matters most - in web 2.0, mobile, gaming, or ancient papyrus scrolls, is still the content. What are you saying? Id it interesting? What are you letting others say and do? Are you building a community? Are you building a hollow monument to your own ego? You talking to me?

So what I'll try to do here is show some examples of the best and worst uses and abuses I can find. Hopefully we'll learn something from that.