Warhammer Online:Age of Reckoning compared to Counter-Strike?

I've already written a review of this game but to be honest that was when the beta ended and the NDA was lifted so the game I'm playing today is very much different than it was back then. Of course the mechanics and all the other things are the same now as they were then but when beta ended I had little hope that this game would be able to compete with the, then upcoming, Wrath of the Lich King expansion to WoW. Today I must say I view this game completely differently.

I started playing WAR because a lot of my mates were saying how much fun they had with the game and I must say I envied them quite a bit especially considering several of them had played DAoC for, what in this business can be considered, many many years. So I bought the game not with the beta days in mind but with a hope that I could find a way to view the game in a different light and find a game that I could come to enjoy for many days to come.

Which is exactly what I did. I installed the game over a month ago and for an MMORPG I've played it very few hours since, maybe a couple of hours a day spread out over that time. A bit more during weekends or days I've had off from work but some days not at all. Which for me is a completely new thing when it comes to MMORPGs. If know me or have read other posts on this blog you will understand what I mean.

The big difference between WAR and other MMORPGs I've played is that I've had a completely different view on this game. I usually play MMORPGs as just that, a role play game with massive amounts of players. WAR I've played more like Counter-Strike (also called CS) though which might sound odd if you usually play MMORPGs. But the fact is that one of the things that made CS so popular was that you could jump into a game and play for 15-30 minutes and have loads of fun. Over time people started forming communities around the servers and so you got to recognize people and you started chatting and so friendships were born. Take this parallel and move it over to WAR and you have a game here too where you can jump on for 30 minutes or so and play pretty much for all of those 30 minutes against other players and in the meantime also chat with your buddies in your guild.

I realize that it might be hard to picture the similarities if you haven't played both games extensively or both genres extensively. But both things are there in my opinion, now lets just hope that Mythic succeeds with the other thing that made CS so successful and that is to cater to the newbies and not to the pros. Many FPS games has died because the developers listened to much to the professionals (or in MMORPG terms the power gamers), the developers of CS managed to not do that though and so the game had a steady flow of new gamers coming to the game.

So in conclusion, Warhammer Online:Age of Reckoning is a great game for those that want a game that they can get online with for about an hour and get some good game time during that time. There are of course other parts of the game that has much more in common with the classic MMORPG genre and much less with the classic FPS genre. But the parts that made CS so successful are also there and so, at least, this blogger hope that Mythic has found a concoction that will make this game live on for many years to come.

Spotify ... just wow

I recieved my invite for the free (but with ads) version of Spotify the other day and all I can say is wow.

For a person that love music but has a pretty low income I have been batteling with rising prices on music for years and so I've ended up listing mostly to internet radio and youtube to get to new music. It was probably almost 10 years ago that I actually bought a new album (except for the occassional gift for somebody). This is where Spotify comes in, at the moment I can listen to it free of charge and I can search through tons of tunes and listen to them how ever much I want. Only downside is that it's still a bit like listening to radio in that I get ads stuck in between the tunes.

Considering it's only about €10 per month (actually less now since it's 99 SEK wich is less than €10) for an ad free subscription I can definitely see me getting one as soon as Spotify moves out of beta, or more likely when I can afford it. So yes, Spotify is currently in beta but so far I haven't noticed it to be honest. I quite often use beta software (granted it's mostly computer games though) and most of them have bugs which prevents you from using them from time to time. However this flows really good and I've yet to have any issues what so ever with it. Although I haven't had a chance to try it on any other device than my stationary computer which is running Windows.

Anyway, one can only imagine how companies that still want to sell tunes for €1 or more with heavy drm protection can survive when services like this show up. As long as I have an internet connection, a device able to connect to it and the ability to produce sound I can now get to all my favourite tunes. Which pretty much means if I have a phone. So in the words of a famous American General, all I have to say to the big record labels that hasn't caught on to the fact that the market is changing yet is ... Nuts!

Oh and one last thing, Spotify seems only to be available to the Swedish market so far but hopefully they'll open it up to the rest of the world soon enough.

Scratching the "Web"-itch

My internet connection has been down for the past 48 hours and while I have lived without an internet connection since I first got one at home back in 2001 this is one of the first times I have really felt what has to be described as an itch to get online. I can only conclude that it has to do with the fact that while it has happened before (that something has broke down and I've been forced to live without connection for several days) I today spend a lot more time just browsing the web and utilize my connection in various ways. 

As an example I start each day by browsing a handful of newspaper sites while listening to 'SomaFM Indie Pop Rocks' and having my morning coffee. And I'm sure that most people that have a morning ritual that include reading a newspaper and listening to the radio feel that something is missing everytime they have to start the day without those things.

Most days I continue browsing the web for various entertainment news (be it games, music or films) and also other news sites. While I also browse a handful of different forums. Much due to the fact that I only work in the afternoon and night these days I have a lot of time to kill during the days. So after all this browsing I usually start on one of my many programming projects which includes browsing for more tips and tricks about how to solve specific issues I may or may not have.

So while one might consider me a bit of a web-oholic (if you catch my drift) I actually do something productive with my time infront of the screen ... at least some of the time :)

15 year old collapses while playing WoW

This past weekend a Swedish 15 year old boy collapsed in his home (or his parents home rather) after playing WoW for about 24 hours straight. He was brought to hospital and found to suffer from sleep deprivation and malnutrition. Here is a link to the Swedish newspaper 'Dagens Nyheter' that runs the story.

Now as a gamer myself I really have to ask, what the hell is wrong with his parents? To me it seems like they have failed with teaching the boy the simple art of staying alive. How hard is it to remember to drink and eat really? I have myself had sessions in front of the screen that has lasted for more than 24 hours and I have gamed so much that I have lost my appetite but I have never once collapsed or been in danger of it for the simple reason that even if I'm not hungry I know to eat and drink just because of the simple fact that I like living more than I like gaming. That does not mean I'm a fatty either, I'm about 185 cm short and weigh in at about 80 Kg. So it's not like I shovel in food while I game I do however stop to get to the kitchen and grab some food or drink.

Now I do realize that a game like WoW can be addictive and I do realize that a lot of people can have trouble detaching themselves from these games (it has been argued that I have had such problems). Also the research into how these games affect us are not really done but it would not surprise me if there is a chemical released by our body that affects us pretty much like a drug. But it still amazes me that you can go to the point of almost killing yourself just by sitting to long on your behind and looking at a screen. Actually that would be a lie, I do understand how and why that could happen but a 15 year old boy that does not seem to suffer from any sort of illness or anything like that. How does that happen?

This might all seem a bit harsh but for a person that has not been down the road of long gaming sessions. But if you have read about people dropping dead or collapsing because of gaming and do not understand it then I just want to say that I do not either and I am a gamer that periodically play so much that it would probably be considered unhealthy.

On an other note, the new WoW expansion (Wrath of the Lich King) has already been played through by a European raid guild. The content of the expansion will take most people months to go through and many of the WoW subscribers will never even finish the new raid instances. The guild, that is so far called, 'TwentyFifthNovember' went through the new instances within 68 hours and 30 minutes after release of the expansion. One can only assume that these people has also burned the light at both ends.

Spotify - Streaming music For The Win!

I'm sure a lot of people has already noticed that Spotify has opened up to the public by now. It's a iTune-like thing that lets you browse through and listen to music from all over the world. However you only pay a relatively small subscription fee to get access to all this music. To me this sounds like the best way to combat piracy so far, granted that I've not red that much about the different ways to combat piracy when it comes to music.

Anyway, have a look for yourself over at Spotify to see what it's all about. Personally I don't see any reason for this to work very well for the guys that started it.

Bloody nagging Facebook ads

Ok, so I get it. I am alone. Every time I login to Facebook I'm met by the question 'Alone?' from some bleedin' ad. Yes I am alone, does not mean I'm lonely though so stop bugging me already.

I do understand that Facebook need to have ads, capitalism and all that, but if they don't want people to stop visting the thing they should either allow you to just remove the ads or cycle them more or something to stop the same ones show up every time.

So Facebook, yeah I'm alone, what is it to you?

Paul Newman has passed away

Paul Newman passed away at the age of 83 on Friday the 26th of September. He had been suffering from Cancer for quite some time and so even if I, together with many other people in the world, feel that we have lost a great man I do hope that he is in a better place and pain free.

Newman was a very interesting actor in many ways, for one he was plainly a good actor that took part in many memorable films but he was also a generous man that used his celebrity status for something good. At least during my life time. I've heard actors mention that Clint Eastwood is a man that has not been faced by his celebrity status in the way that he runs around on parties or other places and abuses his celebrity status but I have to say that I have never heard Newman do that either. I have however heard about Newman donating large sums of money from his business, so not only was Newman a great actor he was also a humanitarian.

Newman's career was as brightest during the 60's and 70's when he was part of films like 'Butch and the Sundance kid' (one of my personal favourites).


But he also received an Oscar for his part in 'Colour of Money' where he played against Tom Cruise. His last full feature was in 2002, 'Road to Perdition'.

About Warhammer's failed EU open beta launch

Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning had an open beta launch this past Sunday 7th of September, in the USA it was handled by the company that made the game, namely Mythic, while in EU the launch has been handled by the company GOA (sorry, that is the best link I can find for GOA).

Now before I start criticising I have to say that I have not personally been involved in this open beta launch because even though I am still a beta tester I have decided that the game is not for me and that I have better things to do with my time than to beta test a game that I do not personally enjoy. So why am I writing this then? Well I'm writing this because quite frankly I am shocked about the way both Mythic and GOA has treated their customers.

Some more background might be needed here. When you buy a collectors edition (CE) of the game you gain access to the open beta. So when the open beta failed to launch in EU on Sunday and many of the people that had paid for their product still had not been able to even register on Monday night they were essentially denied access to something they had paid for. This is something that usually only happens when it comes to software and some people even expect it to happen which to me is kind of odd but considering this is how it is all over the world it might even be considered to be expected behaviour.

If we make a comparison with a guest to a hotel that has paid in advance for a room and when they get to the hotel they are told that they will have access to the room in a moment and then 36 hours later are still waiting in the lobby most of us would not be surprised if that guest was upset and we would also expect that guest to not have to pay for the rest of their stay.

So while I do agree with Mark Jacobs (CEO of Mythic) and Ian Compton (English Community Manager for GOA) that a failed open beta launch does not warrant death threats. If we go back to my example with the hotel room, I would say that that does not warrant death threats either but I would expect the guest to make them. So while I do agree with them both on that point I do however not agree with how they have communicated with their customers. On Mark Jacobs' blog he questions his customers mental health and in a letter to the community today Ian Compton pretty much says right out that he believes the customer base to have a screw loose.

Mark Jacobs:

Are you really the kind of person who thinks it’s socially acceptable to threaten people just because you are having problems with a game? Are you and your life so perfect that you don’t have your own issues or make your own mistakes?

Ian Compton:

If having delayed access to a beta test really drives you to such depths of anger and fury that you felt compelled to make the death threats, racial slurs and other deeply unpleasant posts then - and there is no polite way to put this - there is something wrong with you.

Personally as a gamer I would not touch a product these people has had their hands on ever again for the simple fact that they are, in my oh so humble opinion, missing the whole point of what good communication is. As a gamer and a paying customer I would have had no problem with GOA telling me that they were sorry but the open beta would have to be pushed up but that they would figure out a way to repay me for not giving me the product I paid for. But I would have expect them to tell me so on Sunday and then close the whole thing down until they could open it up again maybe 48 hours later. Of course they would have caught some flack for that but giving people the hope that if they just hang around and wait and keep trying eventually tends to get people very upset. Even I know this and I only have about 10-20 previous beta tests of MMORPGs of experience to base this on. So people that run a computer game company should definitely know that.

I can make an other comparison here with an other beta that I took part in almost 2 years ago that was held by two totally different companies. That time it did not entail any paying customers but there were still a lot of people upset as it was a very anticipated title and a lot of people that wanted to try it. The problem was then was caused by a database error too that was caused much due to the massive amount of people trying to communicate with it and while I know GOA claims that the traffic was not have an essential factor in this case my guess is that either it was or they should fire the person responsible for checking the database functionality before the gates were opened. Any way, the difference between this other company and GOA was that even if it took that company almost 3 days to sort out the problem they communicated on a whole other level than GOA has done and so while people were dissapointed nobody was really angry.

So GOA and Mythic, the gamer community does not expect wonders and we do not expect these kind of products to be without errors but we do expect to be told what is happening and we do not enjoy being told to be patient and just wait. We, the gamer community, just want you to treat us with the same respect as you want us to treat you. It really is as simple as that.

Edit:
It would seem that GOA has understood that they made some mistakes too and to their favour one has to say that they admit to their wrong doings (even it takes a while) and compensate for them. In my opinion the later part of those two are the most important part. That part was also the basis of this article.

Bonus days
Due to the many problems and delays during the first few days of the Open Beta GOA's CEO decided to take action and give seven free days of game play to all Open Beta players.

• Open Beta participants: 7 bonus days

Punk rockers don't have no flowers in their hair

Ok, I know this tune isn't really new or anything but I was just sitting around browsing the genre Punk on YouTube and stumbled on Sandi Thom's 'I Wish I was a Punk Rocker' and so I watched it. In all honesty I do like the tune but what the *insert strong word here* is up with the lyrics? She sings and I quote "I wish I was a punk rocker with flowers in my hair ...". I have to admit that I wasn't a punk rocker during the age of Punk but I have both seen and known a few late 80s early 90s punk rockers and from what I know about that particular genre of music and life style the only way a punk rocker would get flowers in their hair would be if they fell alseep in a garden and the flowers got stuck in their hair.

To me it seems more like Thom is mashing the hippies (and the anti-war demonstrations from the late 60s and early 70s) together with the Punks just to get a cool sounding lyric or even just to get to the title of the tune. Not that I really mind but at the same time it just seems wrong to me. Possibly because I still have my heart and soul in the Punk genre even though I've never looked like one.

Edit:
I've been corrected by Jeffrey Lewis.

The Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning NDA has been lifted

Those of you who have anticipated the release of this game has most likely already read about this and you may also have read some of the comments from the beta testers around the world. If you have then you will have noticed that there is a huge difference between what the US beta testers and the EU beta testers have experienced. But in case you have not read anything or if you want to read yet an other view of an EU beta tester then here is my take on WAR, a game produced by Mythic by the way.

For starters I must say that I am a bit of the old school when it comes to MMORPGs to begin with, I did play WoW for a few months but I did not last long as I do not enjoy the new generation of games in this genre that is released. To me they are far to 'casual gamer' friendly and even though I no longer have the time nor have an inclination to spend the time needed to be in the 'hardcore gamer' camp I still believe that the past years of released games in the MMORPG genre has become watered down. Much because of the great success of WoW most likely.

Anyway, I started playing WAR in early May this year as a beta tester and while I recognised many things from other games such as the simplistic crafting style (even though it is marketed as a recipe free system it still has a lot of similarities with crafting in games such as WoW when it comes to complexity), the character development, the fighting and the total lack of anything else to do in game than either quest or fight other players I still did realize that this was a game totally focused on RvR (or Realm versus Realm). RvR was a concept that was developed by Mythic when they created Dark Ages of Camelot (DAoC) and essentially it means that the servers are devided into "factions" and these are pitted against each other in large scale Player versus Player (PvP) fights. This is also where WAR differs from all other MMORPGs I've ever played. But lets take it from the top.

The General Frame of the Game
Might not be the best title but I just want to put down some points so we all know what we are talking about here before I start off describing details of the game. So, first off the game is divided into two factions called Order and Destruction. The Order side consists of Empire (humans), Dwarfs and High Elves and the Destruction side consists of Chaos, Greenskins and Dark Elves. Each race belongs to a racial pairing together with an other race from the opposing faction. The pairings are Empire vs Chaos, Dwarf vs Greenskin and High Elf vs Dark Elf. Each of these racial pairings are divided into four tiers each with a different level range, so tier one (T1) goes from level 1 up to about 12 and T2 from 12 - 21 and so on. Just prior to release Mythic changed T4 into a large castle at the end. When a realm holds two out of the three castles from the other side the unofficial T5 is opened up and the city siege begin. Just a few months ago each pairing was going to have a capital city for each of the races that you could fight over but now that has changed into just two capitols for the whole game. So the unoffical T5 consists of the capitol siege and the capitols themselves.

Except for all of this RvR content there are also a lot of PvE content spread out through the tiers. Unfortuantely it has a lot of gaps and, at least to me, it feels a bit detached from the rest of the game and more importantly it seems pointless when compared to the RvR aspect of the game. One thing that Mythic has succeeded in though is to create a new mechanic that they use both in their PvE content and their PvP content and that is the Public Quests. The Public Quest is a quest that you get from just entering an area of the game world. It is not instanced or anything like that and everybody in the area can work on the same quest and most of these PQs you need to be at least one group and sometimes a full raid group to be able to complete. When the quest is completed you take part in a random roll for loot from a chest. The roll is modified by how much you contributed towards the completion of the quest even though if my experience is that you can very often be the highest contributor but end up with nothing. This has however been adressed in a patch recently and hopefully that will not be the case in the current release of the game client.

Character Development
As usually this is done by earning XP to gain levels or ranks as it is called in WAR. When you gain a rank you can talk to a NPC trainer and buy one or more abilities. However, in WAR you also gain renown points which will eventually lead to you gaining renown ranks (or rr for short). You also gain points for each of your rr that you can use to buy abilities from a renown trainer. Your rr also enables you to buy equipment from certain NPCs and this equipment is specifially tailored to be useful to you in RvR.

When you reach rank 11 you will also gain access to the mastery paths, these paths are used to let you specialize in one of your characters areas of expertise. This is how Mythic hopes to give their players a chance to create unique characters. Of course we all know that that is only right to a certain extent as within a month or so there will be cookie cutter builds out on the internet that explains what abilities you should choose to be the most efficient in the game. And yes, that is the kind of sarcastic remarks you can expect while reading this post.

So bottom line when it comes to character development. There really is nothing new under the sun here, we have seen the same kind of character development in several other games and WAR does not really bring anything new to the table in that department.

Crafting
Crafting in WAR has been marketed as being recipe free and yes it is, it is also something I have pretty much avoided testing as as long as I have been beta testing it has not really functioned well or there has at least not been any game mechanic around to explain how it is supposed to function. Thus it has so far for me been an utter disapointment.

Mark Jacobs did an extensive explination through videos a while back on how crafting in WAR was supposed to work. He spoke about how there would be no grinding and how wonderful it was that the whole thing is not based on recipes but as we all know there is again just a matter of time until the recipes is posted online, something I believe (if memory serves right) Jacobs also has stated that he realize. Also the whole thing about crafting not involving grinding is of course just nonsense. The only reason to not grind would be to create items that are not top of the line and the only reason to do that would be see how they look ... or gain the next level in crafting which will of course lead to grinding out massive amounts of items that just get trashed and we have exactly what Jacobs claims the system does not include.

By the way, as far as I can tell the crafting system is pretty much of the same complexity and usefulness as in WoW. That is the top of the line items might be a bit useful but thus far the items you build up to that point will just be scrapped. This might of course change and for all I know it may already have as I have not tried out crafting in the last few patches.

Fighting
As mentioned earlier the focus of the game is RvR, which means you are meant to be fighting against other players pretty much all of the time you are logged in. If you do not do that you will miss out on the essential part of renown ranks which will hamper your ability to fight other players later on in the game.

But if we start with the mechanics then there really is no visual difference between the mechanics of WAR and WoW. The 'global cool down' is apparently longer in WAR than in WoW and the auto attack damage in WAR is much less than in WoW (so gear is less important in WAR than in WoW). Otherwise it is essentially the same mechanics behind the fighting.

An other thing with WAR is that while there are 20 different classes (or careers as they are called in WAR) in WAR they are all mirrors, which means that it actually is only 10 which then are mirrored once to produce a career in the other faction with exactly the same game mechanic. Some of these mechanics we recognize from WoW, the most similar one would be the Iron Breakers Grudge points that he builds which are very similar to the Warriors Rage points from WoW.

Realm vs. Realm
I really have to make a sub section for this as this is the essential part of the game. This is where this game shines. I have to give it to Mythic for succeeding in creating a world where "war is everywhere" (something that they have chanted for a long time now). The RvR combat is easy to get into and most importantly it is fun. I have played MMOGs for about almost 10 years now on and off and while I have not played DAoC where RvR was created I have played other games with PvP in and I have always felt that PvP in other games has been absolutely pointless. In WAR it is quite the opposite though, I happily through myself into a PvP fight even though I personally have no chance of winning the fight but I know that I can help the players on the same side as me and while my rewards might not be great I will at least get something out of it.

The RvR fights are held in specific zones of each tier. These zones include Battle Objectives (or BOs) and from T2 also Keeps. The Keeps get larger for each tier and the fights to take them and defend them can turn into epic fights where several raid groups fight on each side of the battle. Both the attackers and the defenders can use siege equipment such as catapults and other things. The attackers also has to use a ram to get through the keep gate and the defenders can then use oil to fend off rammers.

The majority of the renown points you gain are gained through taking a keep or BO in one of these RvR areas of a tier. There are however also instanced scenarios that you can queue for and join. They usually take about 15 minutes or so to play through and there is a room for around 10 - 15 players per side in them. The scenarios are played on a very limited map usually with a few flags on that you try to take and hold on to. The longer you hold on to them the more points you gain and the first side to 500 points win the scenario.

Well that should cover the basis of RvR in WAR, you really have to try the game yourself to get a feeling for it though as it is impossible to describe how it is to run together with 40 other players up towards a keep on a hill and fight your way in through the gate and eventually kill the keep lord.

Player vs. Environment
PvE is as I have alluded towards earlier in this post a big waste of time, in my own humble opinion, in this game. For starters it is way to easy to finish quests by yourself so there is not much insentitive to group up while questing and the awards you get from the quests are not really worth spending the time on getting. Compared to other games on the market the PvE of WAR is not really that different except that it does not have much in the form of instanced dungeons. That however is something that might very well come and there is a few already in the game it is just that I have not tried them and they are very few compared to many other games.

Hopefully PvE is something that Mythic intends to spend a lot of time on after release as in my opinion it will prevent those players that just want to run about with a Warhammer character and do something in the Warhammer environment from playing the game.

End Game
End game is of course RvR and more RvR and capitol city sieges. There really is not much to say about this other than if you get WAR with the intention to not partake in the large war then you will not have anything to do once you reach level cap as the whole game is built to allow players a nice experience filled with RvR on their way to level cap and once there they are supposed to take part in the epic and constant struggle to reach the point where their side can siege the other sides capitol.

Graphics
Not much to say about the graphics. Partly because my system is at the low end of the requirments but also because the game has been built with low end systems in mind so they do not differ much from an other well known game ... yes, I mean WoW now too.

Conclusion
If you believe that you will enjoy fighting against other players constantly and your only interest in a MMORPG is PvP but you have think that other games has lacked purpose in that department then WAR is definitely the game for you.

However if you want to enjoy some interesting PvE, crafting or just plainly goof around with other things then WAR is not the game for you. In that case I'd recommend a game like LotRO instead as that has set the focus on PvE. On the other hand, LotRO is also a casual gamer friendly game so I would not really recommend that either to be honest.

Lastly, I posted an article about my experience of MMORPGs earlier on this blog. You can find that article here.

News flow and critique of sources

I just red a piece by Peter Bart, the editor in chief of Variety. He wrote in his column this past Friday about 'Fear and loathing in the blogosphere', it's a piece about how the news flow works in Hollywood today. He describes how the executives marvel at the fact that they can fire somebody at 10:15 and read about it on the web at 10:14. Something that might seem a bit disturbing and something that might seem as grounds for firing in itself in an other business as, at least to me, it would seem that somebody has definitely leaked inside information.

Bart goes on to make more examples of how people has received news that affects them through internet and blogs before they have received it through the official channels and he also explains that this is how it works today and that it would seem unproductive for the executives to try to work against it even though they still do to some extent today, if they do not just simply ignore the fact that this is how it now works.

Something that struck me though when I red Bart's piece is that it seems that people has completely stopped using criticual thinking or at least simply ask themselves where the information behind the news comes from or who might benefit from the news. Which pretty much means that the rumour mill can run haywire in Hollywood because nobody seems to stop to think why the news is out there or where it comes from.

So my point is simply this. The new newsflow that Bart is talking about in his piece should not really be such a problem for the executives and established traditional newsagencies as both of these carry with them a large piece of credibility while most blogs or other online sources does not. Sure some of them have been established for so long or have links to traditional press that has been around for long enough to create credibility but the vast majority of the sites out there has not. So the executives should be able to carry on with their press conferences for a while longer if you ask me.

But there is also something very disturbing that surfaces here and that is the general movement towards not using criticism of the sources in general and that is something I have notices over a long period of time through my online activities. While I was taught about this in school when I was around 12 it would seem that people in general are not even talking much about this anymore. It of course differs a lot depending on where you are from, as an example I met a Russian in the mid 90s that said that you really had to read between the lines when you read a news paper in Russia and during the late 80s and early 90s he was most likely right but the thing is that today it might be even more important but in a totally different part of the world. Today it is not politics that try to control the news flow but rather large corporate interests and this should not really come as news as this has been the case for many decades at least.

Unfortunately it would seem as though people has become complacant and just take things at face value. Which of course makes me life a lot easier as a blogger but at the same time it makes me wonder about the world of tomorrow.

'The Cure' releases new material

As an old 'The Cure' fan it is hard not to notice that they still produce new things even if I have not really listened much to their stuff since their 'Wish' album in 1992. It is not that I do not like what they do any more but I have to admit that I was a lot more into their early 80's music than I was into their later material. Possibly because I was in my mid teens when I discovered them around 1990 and their music suited my mood a lot back then but also because I feel that they left their niche and unique sound and moved towards popular music to much with the 'Wish' album. They have not stopped moving in that direction since then either so I have pretty much stopped listening to them.

However, it is cool to see that they (or should I say Robert Smith) is still going strong and while I might not listen to their music much any more it is still nice to hear their new release 'The Perfect Boy' and realize that their is still a lot left of that old The Cure sound that I feel in love with almost 20 years ago.

If you have not seen the video for the new tune then have a look at it over at YouTube.

Tropic Thunder premiers tonight

In the USA the film 'Tropic Thunder' premiers tonight and since I have to wait until at least the 18th of September to see it I thought I would have a look around the internet and see if there is any more news about the film and I soon find out that yes there is.

For starters they have made a "mocumentary". Actually, they have not made a complete one but at least they have made a trailer and a site. It's called 'Rain of Madness' and just the site itself is worth visiting. It takes a lot of inspiration from the documentary that was made about Coppola's 'Apocalypse Now', 'Hearts of Darkness', and so it is filled with totally crazy things.

They have also made a viral video, that is also a bit insane or should I say in a true Jack Black and Ben Stiller spirit. It of course also includes the third main actor of the film, Robert Downey Jr and what is supposed to be Stiller's nephew although I have no idea whether that is true or not but it would not surprise if it was true.

What personally interests me a bit about these things around the film is that these things, together with the three sites for each of the characters [1] [2] [3], tries to draw on the power of the internet for advertisement in a relatively new way and that is through viral advertisement, well new to me at least even though the concept has been around since the late 90's. Which of course include this very blog post but I on the other hand look forward to this film so much that I do not mind helping in marketing it a bit.

By the way, do not miss the trailer for this film over at Apple and you can also find the review for the film over at Variety.

The Swedish government is "tapping" all Swedish citizens

I have to admit that I'm not an avid blog reader myself. Well, some blogs I read every day but I'm quite bad at checking the general blog flow through ping services and such and so I have totally missed this as it is something that has not been a big thing in traditional media for some very odd reason. That could also be the reason why the Swedish blog community has pretty much exploded around the subject, again something that I have totally missed until I red an article on SvD's site (a Swedish newspaper).

What is going on is that on June the 18th the Swedish government pushed through a law that allows FRA (Försvarets Radio Anstalt, translation: the National Defence Radio Establishment) to listen to pretty much all communication in Sweden. I say pretty much because the law states that FRA is only allowed to tap communication that passes the border but today that pretty much means all communication such as email, sms, webb traffic, IMs, cell and landline phone calls. This in practice means that the Swedish government through one of its' military departments is listening in on everything the Swedish citizens has to say over electronic communication devices (which today is everything except snail mail) whether those citizens are criminals or not. Further more, they do not even need to ask anybody for permission to do this. The law gives FRA a blanket permission to record everything 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Of course this should not really come as a surprise to us Swedes as our government has moved closer and closer to the USA way of doing things for the past years and the US government has been listening in on phone calls and internet traffic for a while now according to these two [1] [2] articles on arstechnica. com. So that the Swedish government wants to abuse their citizens in the same way is not really surprising.

To work against all this in Sweden a website was started not too long ago called stoppaFRAlagen.nu. It is a party independent gathering of organizations and regular citizens working to get the new law ripped up and trashed because they believe that the law is a huge dent in the democratic process and personally I can only agree with them. For the democratic process to work the citizens should be able to raise their voice about anything without being nervous of the government cracking down on them. This law pretty much means that the government classify all its' citizens as criminals that needs to be checked on 24/7 and that is not a good basis for a democracy.

Asimov's Foundation becomes film

Ok, so it is not really news any more for a lot of people but to me it is. I first read about it today and I have to say that I am excited. It is Bob Shaye and Michael Lynne, the producers behind the successful 'Lord of the Ring' films, that has decided to rework Isaac Asimov's work and release the Foundation triology through their rather newly created company 'Unique Features'. Asimov happens to be one of my favourite sci-fi authors and so it will be very interesting to see what they make of these books as they are not really made for the screen. The Foundation triology is quite philosophical and not so much filled with action, even if there are parts that can be very thrilling and exciting but it is still far from being a 'Matrix' story.

In 2004 an other of Asimov's books was reworked for the screen, namely 'I, Robot'. While it was considered a success by Fox, it was considered an utter failure by many of the Asimov fans. Personally I quite enjoyed the film even if the story differed somewhat from the book and I do not have a problem with Will Smith as an actor which some people seem to have.

A bit rainy

I live in a town in Scandinavia, a part of the world that is not really well known for having massive rain ... and so that is not the case here either. However it would seem that drain on the street is really down at the corner next to where I live as it took about 20 minutes for the street to flood today when it started raining all of a sudden. I tried to snap a picture of it but as I only have a camera on my cell phone and I did not want to go out in the rain to take the picture this is the best I could do.



Might not seem like much if you do not live in Sweden, actually might not mean much to you unless you know the intersection to be honest but thought I would share anyway :)

Just a quick note

Just thought I'd post something on this blog since tomorrow it will be one month since I posted something. I wanted to post something since I haven't decided yet whether I'll keep blogging or not but obviously I don't have much to say on a blog or I'd have been posting a lot more. Fact is that I have such an active life on the internet in other places that there isn't much stuff left for a blog. That together with that my personal real life is in a bit of a funk at the moment means I don't have much to add to the ever growing information stream of the internet.

But as I said, I haven't quite decided yet whether I will continue to blog or not. I actually find blogging quite fun so I don't want to give it up but I don't want to fill the blogosphere with stuff like this post either. So we'll see what happens.

The one news I can hand out about myself at this moment though is that I'm officially unemployed as of yesterday. I've already had some leads on some work though so I think it will be alright pretty soon and maybe that will make me blog more once again :)

Short note on my final paper

Since I'm home sick today I thought I'd put together a quick note with the points I believe my teacher wants to know today about my final paper in the course 'information retrieval and new new media' that I am taking.

My topic is 'Real Life on the New Web' and it will take a look at how we use the web 2.0 features and how it affects us as people. Of course this might seem as a very broad subject that includes several aspects of how we work as human beings and how the internet works so I will be limiting my paper down to a few, in my opinion, key features of web 2.0 and also limit the areas of how the web affects us.

The sources I will use will mainly be Sherry Turkle's books 'The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit' and 'Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet'. I will also use the internet as a source of course and quite possibly some of the other literature that can be found on our course wiki, if I find that I need it.

When it comes to structure of the final paper I must say that I have honestly no idea. As of now I have mainly just crammed out text to get to where I want to go with my thoughts surrounding this area and as I happen to be an amateur when it comes to writing these sort of papers I must admit that I am not fully sure what my teacher when he is talking about the structure of the paper. So this is something I will have to talk to my teacher about.

Well that should cover it for now hopefully.

Thoughts around Science Fiction

If you for some reason happen to follow me on Twitter you might have noticed that I have been to a seminar on Science Fiction (SF), actually there has been two of them. I have to say that they have been quite interesting, mostly because I really enjoy SF and try to at least see as many films as possible in the genre and also read books from the genre that I hear are good. But my interest for SF is not really what has made these seminars interesting, even though it probably has helped, instead it is the discussion about SF from a broader perspective like what can SF teach us about us that made these seminars interesting.

The seminars was of course given during my course 'information retrieval and new new media' but the speaker was a guest speaker on the course called Michael Godhe. The link is for the a Swedish university site, Godhe works for Linköpings Universitet (or University of Linköping, also called LiU). It tells us that Godhe got a bachelor's in History of Ideas at the University of Uppsala in 1997 and a doctorate in Technology and Social Change at LiU in 2003. His works has centred around SF and popular science, culture and media. Of course the site says a lot more about Godhe but that's at least a quick review of where he comes from as a speaker on the subject of SF. Here is also a couple of links to first a video of an interview he did for Utbildnings Radion and for his thesis. Both are unfortunately in Swedish.

During the first seminar we tried to cover the definition of what SF is, something that lead Godhe to ditch his lecture notes and just dive into the debate. We had several very good ones and essentially we boiled it down to what Godhe had as a definition from the beginning.



"Where the past, the present and the future meets is where science fiction lives". It might not be exactly what Godhe said but that's pretty much what it comes down too. What this means is that science fiction usually takes a problem that we currently have and with the help of the past, the present and the future it puts that problem in the future and either gives us a solution to the problem with the help of science and or technology or it paints us a picture of how the future will be if we do not do something about the present or solve issues from the past. As an example, today we have a bit of a environmental problem (whether you agree with it or not it is at least spoke about quite a lot) so today we see films like 'The Day After Tomorrow' as an example of what will happen in the future if we do not deal with today's problem. A couple of decades ago there was a scare about the surveillance society and so we had films like 'Brazil' show up. Go back an other 40 years and we get back to when George Orwell wrote the book 'Nineteen Eighty-Four'.

Lots of other people through history has also tried to define what SF is, Wikipedia has a list of some of those. So as you might see defining SF is not an easy task. The seminar got me thinking in new ways about SF that I have not previously done and so it was a couple of hours well spent.

During the second seminar we spoke a bit about what SF can be used for (other than entertainment which is what it is at its' core) and what it can possibly teach us. One interesting part of this is what the US government thinks it can help us with or possibly prophecies about. About 15 years ago Arlan Andrews put together a group of SF writers and dubbed them Sigma, today Homeland Security Department is using the group to combat terrorism. All according to USA Today in an article written by Mimi Hall. Personally I do not put much stock in what USA Today writes but I do not believe that they would put together a full article that was a complete lie and also it is not all that inconceivable that there really is a group such as this helping HSD to come up with ideas on what might happen. Especially considering a lot of businesses most likely has used ideas found in SF over the years to make new things. Take a look at the list on that article page and you will find that we have H.G. Wells to thank for things like the atomic bomb, air planes, television and joystick controls. I would not be surprised if that was true and according to Godhe that is the case. Godhe says that we encounter things in SF and come to terms with them there and when we later come into contact with them we instinctively know what they are used for and why we should use them.

It would surprise me if there were not more examples like the one from Wells' literature. One of Godhe's favourite works to use as reference is Star Trek, mainly of course because most people know what it is, and one example of items used in there that could be compared to items we use in every day life is cell phones. Even though Robert Heinlein is usually acknowledged as the inventor (in terms of the inventor of the idea of it) of those.

SF can also be used to explore humanity and this has often been done through the help of aliens from outer space but there are many other examples of how this can be done. One of those examples is the film 'A.I.' by Steven Spielberg, where we meet an artificial boy that is coming to terms with that he is in fact artificial (if I remember correctly that is, it has been a while since I saw the film). There are several other facets to the story too but that is to much to delve into here. The story is based on a short story called 'Super-Toys Last All Summer Long' by Brian Aldiss.

Other than these things we also learned a little SF history, like the first person to define SF was Hugo Gernsback and the first piece of work in the SF genre was Mary Shelley's 'Frankenstein'. Something we unfortunately did not delve that deep into was post-apocalyptic SF works. We did speak about films like 'The Day After Tomorrow' and 'The Terminator' and what they had to teach us but since post-apocalyptic SF happens to be the area I enjoy the most of the genre I thought it was a pity we did not speak more about that. The main reason I enjoy post-apocalyptic SF more than other is that I believe it both serves as a proper warning about where we are headed and also because it pulls humanity back to the basics without all the technology we have today to help us in our every day life. And so we can learn a lot about what makes us human by exploring the animal side of us you might say.

Fallout 3, a post apocalyptic computer game

Since I have fairly recently been on a seminar about science fiction and because I'm a computer gamer I had the urge to check up on the progress of Fallout 3. The Fallout series happens to be one of my absolutely favourite computer games. Not only because I really like sf and neither because I'm a die hard fan of post apocalyptic stories but also because the Fallout series happen to be pretty well made and fun to play computer games.

Anyway, so I look around a bit and happened upon this Fallout teaser that I happen to think is pretty well made. When I thought a bit about it, while watching it, I came to realize that if you compare this very short little film made to promote a video game to a full length Hollywood productions with the same theme, then you might also come to the conclusion that Hollywood films are usually of lower quality. Something that does not really surprise me considering the genre is pretty narrow and so the big bucks are not spent on it but rather on a lot of other things that has a broader audience. Not that I can say that I do not agree with that but I do wish that the post apocalyptic science fiction genre had a slightly larger audience since then we might get to see a whole bunch more good films of that type.

What makes a community a good community?

Continuing on with my posts from my course 'information retrieval and new new media' we have now reached the community phenomena and discussed a few things that has to do with communities. So here I'll take a look at those and discuss around them a bit.

• Quality versus quantity and what is quality?
  
• Gated versus open?
• Free versus fee?
• Moderating styles, dictator style versus democratic style versus self policing?

Considering this is probably my longest post on this blog I'll give my conclusion here in the beginning so that you may easier decide whether it is worth your trouble to read it all they way through. My conclusion is that there is no simple answer to the questions but it rather comes down to a balance between several things but in my opinion the key is what kind of moderating style you have and how police your content. When you have set a good moderating level you can start to worry about things like gated, open, free or fee or a combination of these. Because when you find a good combination of these and have a good moderating level you will get high quality for free.

Internet communities also affects our way of living and how we interact with each other, which in turn also affects our local press. In fact, lets start with that.

Local press
In today's society where a clear majority of the western world is connected to the internet and a large part of all industrialized nations around the world are too. Are we in fact having a larger social network online than we have in, what many call, "real life"?

The term Real Life by the is a pretty old term when it comes to communities associated with computers. I'm definitely not sure when it was first used but I read about it in Sherry Turkle's book Second Self when she were describing her meetings with the hacker community at MIT. I wrote a review of the book a while back on this blog.

Going back to the time we spend on the internet, a quick Google search will tell you that it is pretty hard to come by fresh numbers on how much time we on average spend online across the globe (here are a few links to places that try though 1 2 3). One thing we can be fairly sure about though is that we do spend more and more time online, something that the British newspaper the guardian wrote about not long ago when it was discovered that the Brits spend more time online than they do watching the TV. Which is something that again makes the question of what will happen to local news media when we no longer have an interest for local events because we dedicate our attention to events happening to our friends at other place on the globe, relevant.

Personally I have to say that I do not believe in the doomsday prophesies that claim that in the future we will have no need for leaving our homes and no need for ever meeting each other in person. I have both worked and lived in ways that has meant that I have not had much human "real life" contact for extended periods and let me just add to this prophecy that it is folly to believe in it since from my personal experience I have almost run screaming towards perfect strangers with open arms just because I have been desperate for some human contact. Of course I am only one person so I could definitely be wrong and there is nothing scientific in my "research". But the fact that we still have local press and the local press are also available online makes me think that there will always be a need for it. Also there are many people that move away from their birth place but in some way keep in contact with it and a lot of them do that by browsing local press news sites online or subscribe to a local newspaper.

So even though we might have more friends online in different communities than we do have in "real life" I still believe we will always have an interest for our immediate surroundings, especially considering I believe we will always have a need to meet real people face to face occasionally. Mostly because I believe that humankind is a social group animal that is in need of sometimes huddling together with other similar animals.

Quality
Taking the thought of the social animal with us we continue through the list I posted above. We will start off with the question of what quality really is, which is not really an easy question to answer. Of course one answer might be "what ever I think is good has high quality" but that just makes me ask "what about the things I think is good?". Then we have the fact that lots of people claim that 90% of the internet is filled with garbage and most of the last 10% has only of decent quality. One aspect of quality might be that something is "stamped" with a quality level that most people can agree with while an other aspect might be that it receives a quality level by each individual that comes into contact with what ever it is.

Using Google to define quality gives back a whole array of different results that both has to do with the argument I'm trying to make here and that also doesn't. For the sake of this discussion I will nail quality down to this "The level of quality is decided by the majority of people using and/or viewing a service and/or site on the internet." Thus high quality is what the majority think is high quality. As an example if we Google for "buy books" the first result (below the sponsored links) is for bookfinder.com which may mean (I say may since there are other ways to get a link to the top of a Google search) that when it comes to buying books online people in general think that bookfinder is a high quality store. However it might actually also mean that they think that bookfinder is the worst place on the internet to buy books from. My reasoning springs from the fact that Google will move a search result up their list of results depending on how many sites on the internet link to the place you search for. So apparently a lot of places has linked to bookfinder.com.

So what about quality versus quantity in communities? Well, what would you prefer. Would you prefer a lively place where lots of people contributed with loads and loads of stuff but all of it had low quality or would you prefer a community where the members contributed with less but with high quality things? Personally I have always believed in balance, to much of anything is bad but to little of anything is equally bad. I do not believe that Mona Lisa alone is enough to make the Louvre a high quality museum. But maybe I'm getting a little a head of myself? It might be easier to discuss quality versus quantity in communities if we first look at a few different general forms of communities.

Gated versus open?
A gated community is a community where you have to at least register to be allowed in. This makes most communities online today into gated communities but there are still some out there were you can contribute anonymously, this blog in it micro community way is one of the places where anybody can contribute without any restrictions. These places are what is called an open community. Open communities of all kinds are unfortunately places where there will eventually show up spam, if the community reaches a minimum level of regular visitors of course. So open communities are usually considered to be low quality communities both for the reason that there are spam but also because there is no trust what so ever between the members of the community since they can come and go as they want and not have to share anything about themselves with anybody.

On the other end we have communities like Jaiku, and as Gmail started out, as an example of invite only community. You have to know somebody somehow that already is a member and that way you can get an invite. In the case of Jaiku and Gmail the gated community is usually used to create a feeling of exclusiveness around the community. Only you and the people you know are members. There are of course other types of communities too, as an example the three links I have listed on the right on this very blog are links to gated communities. The first two you need to present yourself to the community and tell a bit about yourself and then after a type of trial period, usually used to let the community have a chance to get to know you, you get included as a full member in the community. The third one is even more gated than that, it consists of about a score of people and nobody is invited to the community unless the whole community agrees on it.

Looking at these two types of communities from a quality/quantity aspect I have to say that I prefer some sort of gate to weed out the poorest quality because again I believe in a balance. To little contribution and the community falls asleep and slowly disappears but to much contribution of low quality things also suffocates a community and while it might not slowly disappear it is more likely to eventually explode because of some sort of internet drama (a term I have to admit I thought were more well documented but here is a link to Encyclopedia Dramatica at least). An example of a type of gated community that tends to eventually explode is the the official forums that surrounds MMORPGs. Actually it has gone so far that the next big thing on the horizon that is produced by the company Mythic Entertainment will not have an official forum because the company do not want the hassle of taking care of it.

Free versus Fee
Most communities online today are free communities, actually that should be most forums I have been in contact with are free. There are a bunch of communities surrounding programming that you have to pay a fee to get full access to. Maybe because the contributors to those places work with programming for a living so why should they give away their trade secrets for free? My previous example of the communities around MMORPGs are example of communities that you usually have to be a subscriber to the game to have access to, so they are also examples of communities you have to pay to be a member of. But take communities like YouTube, Flickr, Blogger and so on, they are all free of charge.

Of course many communities that charge you a fee to become a member actually spends that money on the members. There is several PC game communities in the world that charge you a fee and then give you access to servers to play games on. Nobody in the community makes any money but the money is used to sustain the community online.

Again, when we look at free versus fee from a quality versus quantity angle some will claim that you will never have as high quality in a free community as you have in a community with a fee. Personally I do not believe this is true for the simple fact of this example from Flickr. It's totally free and I do not even have to register at Flickr to view it which makes at least that part of the Flickr community not only free but also fully open. In other words fee does not equal high quality but free definitely does not equal high quality either. Personally I don't believe quality and money has anything to do with each other. There are enough examples of people through out history that has made absolutely great things and received no or very little money for it as an example or made great things from very little money for that matter. Most of the great works or art are examples of painters that did not receive any recognition nor any large sums of money while they were alive yet they are today considered to be the best pieces of art through human history. Of course this has little to do with communities but I bring it up as an example of what people do even though they don't get paid for it.

Moderating styles
And so we have what I consider to be the key to creating a high quality community. If we consider spam, trolling and just regular abusive behaviour to be things that we consider be low quality but we do not mind if the community we belong to is both open and free. Then we have to have a way to control all the aspects of that community that lowers the quality of the community and that is where moderating comes into the picture. Personally I consider moderating to be a bit of an art, it is hard to be a good moderator and I can not claim to be a good one at least not on a forum.

But I'm getting ahead of myself again. To start off there are several styles of moderating and then there are also several ways of moderating, which to some extent connect back to the styles. As I said earlier we have the dictator style and the democratic style and then there is also the self policing method. The dictator style usually means that a person is responsible for one section of a community and in that section he/she rules with an iron hand along the lines of the rules that are setup for the community. As an example the community might have a rule that disallows the promotion of any other community within the community, so the dictator style moderator will then delete any such content and in some cases also relieve the member of his/her membership privileges. The other way is when we have a democratic style moderating where the members might have a chance to vote for if the member that broke the rules should be allowed to break the rules or keep his/her membership. An other common democratic way is for the membership to be select moderators through a democratic process and then those moderators becomes a kind of democratic dictators. That is they are elected democratically but they conduct their work as a judge, jury and executioner all in one.

Self policing is very common in large open and free communities like YouTube and the likes. Self policing is also usually only concerning the reporting process but when the person in charge of the community has received the report a dictator or democratic process takes over. Self policing usually means that there is an abuse link to click next to a post, picture, video or what ever kind of user contributed content it may be that will send a notice to the moderator of the community.

When we take moderating into the equation of quality versus quantity I personally see moderating as the filter that removes all the unwanted content from a community and thus lifts the level of quality of the community. Of course bad moderating might push the quality of a community in to the toilet. I see moderating as a bit of an art as it is important to find a good balance between the atmosphere in a community and the rules that are set up for the community. A too hard line approach will usually work in a contradictory way of what is intended with the moderating in the first case. A too lenient approach will end up watering down the rules and thus flood the community with unwanted or in other words, low quality content.

In Conclusion
What it all comes down to, in my opinion and highly layman approach to sociology and psychology, is that we humans are social beings and as social beings we are all individuals that go nuts when we are stuck together in groups but at the same time we can not live without belonging to a group. Communities are a sort of group and in any group there is social interaction and thus chance for us social beings to start acting in a way that does not make sense from either a logical nor rational perspective. If we keep that in mind when we approach the internet community as a phenomena and look for a community that we, as individuals, consider to be of high quality. Then we can also understand that the only way to find such a community is if we find a community that exists in a balance between the gated, open, free and fee parts but most importantly that is moderated in a way that we agree with. Because the bottom line is that we as humans can not communicate with each other in our social groups without rules and/or regulations because of the social animals that we are. Because without these restrictions we turn into animals only and ditch the social aspect of our form somewhere in the polite land of hello and welcome.

Swedish law against cell phones in the car.

To be quite honest I'm surprise we do not have a clear cut law against this already. Especially considering we usually outlaw things like these before the Americans do and there are already five states in the USA that have clear laws that prohibits you from speaking on a handheld cell phone while driving. In Denmark, Finland and Norway (our neighbouring countries) there already are laws against using a handheld cell phone while driving and in Great Britain you can even get prison time for using a cell phone in the car.

In Sweden we are even taking a more serious look at fiddling with other devices in the car, as the radio and a GPS device. There is no plan to outlaw these devices from the car but there is a plan to punish people harsher if they cause an accident because they have been tuning in a new radio station or are trying to plot a new route on the GPS. I have to say that I think that is good, personally I don't even change CDs while driving. It's easy to just pull over for two minutes if I need to do something that take my attention away from driving and then get back on the road. If you are in such a hurry that you can't do that then don't listen to music, talk on the phone or plot the GPS course before you leave.

If you now Swedish there is an article in Dagens Nyheter about this today.

Peking, a nickname for Norrköping

A girl asked me the other day why it says that I'm from Peking, Sweden in the 'About Me' section of this blog and if that was because I'd lived there or something like that. The truth is actually far from that, but possibly a bit more interesting.

Peking is an old local nickname from the town I'm from in Sweden, Norrköping. The literal translation of Norrköping is norr = north, köping = market town, so Norrköping would pretty much be North Town today. The town got it's nickname Peking from a lecture held by a Swedish explorer in one of the secondary grammar schools in Norrköping. His name was Sven Hedin and he held the lecture in 1910. He was telling the students about his travels in China and Peking and explained that Peking literally means "Northern Capital", which is something Wikipedia at least agrees with. He also told them that Nanking meant southern city and as it happens south of Norrköping there is a town called Söderköping (söder = south), unfortunately for Söderköping (or maybe fortunately, what do I know) the Nanking nickname didn't stick, however Peking has stuck with Norrköping over the years.

So although the girl I spoke to the other day told me that Peking didn't mean "northern capital" that is still where the nickname came from originally. At least according to a small handbook called "The handbook to the art of enjoying norrköping" put together by the municipality of Norrköping. In my humble opinion it matters little who is actually correct about the meaning behind the name Peking though, what does matter to me is where Norrköping got the nickname from.

40 years since Martin Luther King was shot

Today it's 40 year since Martin Luther King was shot in Memphis, Tennesse. I have to admit that I do not know as much as I would like about Dr. King but what I do know is what kind of symbol he is today and just as Gandhi might have had his faults I'm sure Dr. King had some too but that matter very little today because today he is a symbol of anti-violence and the world definitely needs more of those. So for that reason I bow my head in silence today to revere the memory of a great man that fought for something very important with only the help of words.

What do you actually agree to when you click "I Agree"?

As I have mentioned before I take a course in 'Information retrieval and new new media' and in that course we have had a discussion about EULAs (End User License Agreements). More specifically we spoke about Facebook's EULA (or Terms of Use) since that one has some really interesting parts. A quick Google on "facebook eula" gives back some interesting results that pretty much lets me know that since I am registered at Facebook I have sold my soul to the Devil.

A few things stick out. First we have the fact that Facebook owns everything you put in your profile which includes but is not limited to photos, videos and drawings. This is of course very bad news especially if you happen to be an artist as Anna Goodson says in her article over at the Little Chimp Society. Facebook also has the right to sell your material to a third party. So what you are actually signing up for is to let Facebook taken any and all material you make available to Facebook by adding it to your profile, or any other part of Facebook, and have them make a profit on that material without giving you a dime for it. Personally I'm just glad that I don't produce all that much, especially nothing of any real value. Because I have to admit that I have definitely not read the Facebook EULA, like I would guess most people have not.

It would also seem that once you've added data to Facebook you can't get it back, something that Robert Scoble discovered in January this year. He tried out a beta version of Plaxo (a social networking tool) and ended up locked out of his Facebook account as he describes in a blog post. Grant Robertson writes about Scobel's problems over at the Downloadsquad and tells us that the reason for Facebook to not work towards integrating themselves with other social networks is because they can't compete that way. He also gives the creator of Facebook a bit of a kick up his bum and calls him a follower not an innovator. Maybe he is, I do not know him personally so I do not feel I can comment on his personality but fact is that Facebook is by no means the first social networking site of it's kind.

In comparison to Facebook's EULA it might be a good idea to look at an other social networking site and see if what I have written about above is a common phenomena. So lets look at Orkut (wikipedia link), a service run by Google, and it's EULA. To start off since it is a Google service the TOS for Orkut is the same TOS you agree to when you use Google's search engine, at least that is how I understand this part of the TOS.

2.2 You can accept the Terms by:

(B) by actually using the Services. In this case, you understand and agree that Google will treat your use of the Services as acceptance of the Terms from that point onwards.

Which when you think about it is of course necessary but my first reaction is of course "wow, I accept that document just by Googling?" as I would think is how many people would react that are not legally savvy. Anyway, continuing on. Google actually have a TOS highlight section which of course is very nice, especially if you are not a legally savvy, and if that wasn't enough Google is also pushing OpenSocial. For the purpose of this post I have read through the full TOS and also had a quick gander around the internet to see if I could find anybody, with a better legal nose than I, who have found anything questionable about the TOS. As I thought, before reading the TOS, I did not find anything odd with it (except for the above) and Google, surprisingly enough, did not give me any eye opening hits either. However making a search on Yahoo gave me an interesting hit, the EULA Hall of Shame (or EHOF as they call themselves in their EULA).

The people over at EHOF mostly reacts against the privacy parts of the Google EULA. One good point they make is the fact that how can a person agree to something that they do not know anything about, which is pretty much what it used to say in Google's privacy policy. However that seems to have changed and although it still says that the policy may change from time to time it now also says that they "...will not reduce your rights under this Policy without your explicit consent...". Which is kind of nice. Many of the other privacy issues that EHOF lists has also changed and maybe it is because of all the heat Google caught a while back from their stance towards China as it is written about in this New York Times article.

A different problem with the Google TOS is written about over at the OSVDB Blog. That has more to do with secrecy and security issues. It seems that some of Google's terms forces people to keep quite about security issues that might show up when you use Google's services. Personally I do not see this as a problem as it would surprise me if I discovered a security issue with Orkut. However it would of course be a problem if nothing was done about it by Google but that does not seem to be the case here.

Lastly I just want to add that while this blog article might give a lot of credit to Google I have to say that I do not think they are any different than any other company. Google wants to make money in what ever way they can. However considering how large of a company Google is they have a lot of responsibility and thus I do not in any way shape or form agree with how they have handled the China situation as an example.

Finally got around to adding a Label Cloud

I've always liked the look of them and so I finally got around to adding one to this blog. I Googled for some code and found one over at the Phydeaux3 blog. It comes with a very easy to follow step by step guide on how to "install" it and to configure it the way you want it and since I'm happy with how it turned out for me I can only recommend it to anybody who wants to have a label cloud.

Blogging and good design versus good content

In the last seminar we had in the course 'information retrieval and new new media' (that I've mentioned earlier in this blog that I'm taking) we discussed what effect bad design can have on good content and how good design can affect bad content. Since I've studied usability a bit and try to incorporate that in everything I do I went to see if my good buddy Jakob Nielsen had anything to say about usability in blogs. When I say good buddy I of course don't mean that I know the man but rather that his ideas has helped me out in the usability department before.

As it turns out he has written a ten point list about usability issues in blogging too, just as he has done with web design in general and other things. If you have a blog then read his list because it pretty much cover it all in ten, easy to read and understand, points.

One point that I have thought a bit about but not so much that I have realized the full ramification of it is headlines. As Nielsen says, most RSS feeds and ping services and the like only display the heading of your post and so a new reader will decide just from reading the headline whether he or she wants to read what you have written. This is also something that my teacher, Mark Comerford, has written about on his blog.

Going back to what we discussed in the seminar I would have to say that if you follow Nielsen's 10 points then you will have cleared out the worst issues and so you will at least have a decent design, you will not have a blog that covers ten different areas (like this one do) and you should not have really bad content in your texts. However Nielsen can of course not help us write good, that is something that we have to do ourself and that leads me to the end of my thought process regarding good design versus bad content and vice versa.

Good design can help bad content but bad design will mostly turn people away from a place even before they even start looking at the actual content. Just compare with your every day life. Say you are going to buy a new car, would you rather buy a car that looks like a Skoda or a Dodge Viper? To me the answer is pretty easy, even though I can't afford a Viper. Of course good content will help to keep a loyal reader reading your blog once you have managed to capture their interest but you will never get to that point unless you first have good design.

Twitterfeed

After spending an hour or so trying to find out how to make my blog posts from blogger show up as a tweet in my Twitter I finally came across a post in the Search Engine Journal about Twitterfeed. Being a bit lazy as I am (and hungry as a wolf at the moment) I just scrolled past most of the text and basically filled in what seemed to be needed and pressed create. So I have no idea if it will work or not but hopefully I'll have a tweet with this post in about an hour or so.

Until then ...

... Ok, now maybe it works (forgot to add the actual rss feed to twitterfeed :O ). As soon as the people at Twitterfeed has noticed my mistake and activated the feed again of course ;)

The Annoyance of bad packages

Why is it that every food item or candy ever produced was wrapped in packages designed by morons?

I don't know how often I've had to tear packages apart violently out of frustration because it's absolutely impossible to open them where it says they should be open. Take the above candy wrapper as an example. You see down to the right where it's clearly pointed out that that is where the package should be opened? Guess what? Yep, of course the package isn't perforated or even weakened there so it's easier to just tear in to the package at the middle since there at least you can get hold of enough of it to get a good grip. I guess the name of the candy should be a clue really (it's a Break in case you don't see it).

It's the same with almost every food item ever produced. Most of them you end up using a knife or scissors on even though it clearly says "rip here". Actually come to think of it I might have overstated it a bit, I actually ate a candy bar the other day that was very easy to open so obviously every food package designer out there isn't a moron. Which just makes things even more annoying since if some are able to come up with a smart solution why doesn't the rest of the business use it too?

If I were religious I'd guess that it was the devil that came up with all these bad package designs since there can't really be an easier way to cause more anger in the world with less effort. Brilliant Mr. Devil, you win again.

Weird Memories (80s revival)

This weekend I've had a bit of an 80s revival, as an example I watched Rumble Fish last night. A Coppola film that anybody that grew up during the 70s and/or early 80s should have to watch in my opinion, so if you haven't seen it then find it quickly and see it.

As with all 80s revivals there is of course music involved but for me it is for some odd reason not the usual music. Something I come back to every time I start thinking back to the 80s is a band called 'Los Ronaldos'. It's a Spanish band and as far as I know they haven't made any tunes in English (I could of course be very wrong about that though). They made one hit song (as far as I know) called 'Adiós papá'. As far as I can tell it's one of the major hits in Spain of all times, since it is featured on the Spanish version of SingStar (a Playstation 2 game). Anyway, what is weird is that I personally never saw this band however my bro did.

When he was about 18 he went through Europe by train during a summer with a couple of friends. He met a couple of Spanish girls somewhere in Europe and then met up with them again in their home town in the northern part of Spain. While he was there he went to see Los Ronaldos at a concert and also bought a CD of them. So a few weeks later he comes back home and tells me this whole story (me several years younger than him at the time) and we listened to the disc together. I don't know if it was the music or his story that made me absolutely fall in love with this band at the time, I listened to that disc on repeat for months to come and for years after that I always put it on during the first days of spring.

A few years later I had the opportunity to study Spanish in school and I ended up listening through the disc again and also translating several of the songs. I've never been to Spain nor bought any of their other records though so I'm still not sure what it is with this disc that still has me spellbound each time I listen through it. It could be the fantasy of summer, music, freedom and adventure of course and that would also explain why I've never felt the urge to go down to the northern parts of Spain and try to experience all that my bro told me about the place.

So except for the fact that my main 80s memory isn't my own, why am I telling this story? No reason really, but I thought it might be worth a thought to think why we remember things the way we do. Why is it always the good things we remember? And why do I almost always only remember the bad things? Food for thought maybe?