Next Gen MMOs

The Economist wrote about a new turn for massively multiplayer online and virtual worlds in a recent article in its technology quarterly.

The idea behind this article is that the platforms that exist today (World of Warcraft, Second Life etc.) are closed off, similar to the online landscape during the infancy stages of the internet.

What happened on the Internet, of course, was that the web came along and provided common, open standards for both client and server software, doing away with proprietary online services and bringing together previously separate communities as CompuServe, AOL and the rest adopted the web's open standards. Now a firm called Multiverse Network hopes to do the same for MMOs. It has created MMO client and server software based on open standards, and a way to move between virtual worlds built on its platform, just like following a link from one web page to another. And it has made its software available for free download by anyone who wants to build and host a virtual world.

The logic seems to imply companies like Multiverse Network should may eventually free up the virtual worlds to more sharing and interoperability. Does that mean someday you can take your dragon killing hero from World of Warcraft and run around in Second Life chopping off the heads of anxious teenagers? Not quite.


Hey baby. I'm a skeleton. Nice dagger.

Providing backwards compatibility with existing worlds is difficult, however, because each uses its own data structures and communications protocols. So just as the Netscape browser could not access Prodigy or Genie, the Multiverse browser will not work with “World of Warcraft” or Second Life. It is already proving popular among developers nonetheless. Over 10,000 developer teams have registered to use the platform, in part because of Multiverse's attractive business model. All of its software is free to use, but once developers begin to make money from their worlds—from subscriptions, in-game advertising or sales of in-game items—they pay 10% of their revenue.

If nothing else, this is an idea to carefully watch. The business model seems viable. The question is if they build it, will anyone come?

Other players getting into the open virtual world platform business:
Hero Engine
Big World Technology

The Evil Web

Wikipedia is Web 2.0 right? Yes, for the purposes of this entry it definitely is.

If you'd like to feel worse about the state of our society than you already inevitably do, please click here and read a fascinating Wall Street Journal entry on the horrors you may see when you use as a grad school reference peek inside Wikipedia.

As a read ahead, you will see word count comparisons of Wikipedia articles that may make you feel sorry for certain sects of our society that could produce visionaries able to write 10,000 words on the "lightsaber":

West Wing, White House (1,000)
"The West Wing," television series (6,700)

The Harlem Renaissance (1,300)
The Harlem Globetrotters (1,900)

Miles Davis, jazz musician (6,000)
Miles 'Tails' Prowler, sidekick of video game hero Sonic the Hedgehog (6,300)

Charles William Eliot, pioneering president of Harvard University (3,000)
Albus Dumbledore, headmaster of Hogwarts school, 'Harry Potter' series (5,200)

Steam engine (7,300)
Lightsaber, fictional weapon from "Star Wars" (10,000)

Apollo 13, space mission (3,900)
"Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan" (6,700)

Cecil B. DeMille (1,300)
Russ Meyer (3,500)

"Annie Hall" (2,500)
"Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back" (5,200)

Poker (1,400)
Magic: The Gathering, fantasy card game (7,800)

V.S. Naipaul, Nobel prize-winning author (1,500)
J.K. Rowling (4,000)

Miles Davis being less written about than Sonic the Hedgehog's sidekick makes me a sad panda.

25 Must See Web 2.0 Websites

Great article for discovering some of the best of Web 2.0


Note: I have just realized that every idea for the web has already been done.

Second note: I have also realized that the secret to naming your new Web 2.0 website is to find a cool nonsensical word and add a few vowels. Jaboo, Yammoo, Dabee and so forth.

The Guru says: Drink it.

Widget fun

I put a a couple simple additional features into The Guru to show how easy it is to integrate javascript and widgets into blogs.

The top Google news bar is added through the blogger interface under the "Template" tab.

The Netscape news widget in the right navbar is very simple to install also. Just click on the "Get Widget" link at the bottom of the widget and it will automatically install the same functionality into whatever blog you want. Or go to widgetbox.com to find some other widgets.

Web 2.0 is SO last year...

For those of you that are more than 24 hours behind the times, Web 2.0 is dead. There, I said it. Web 3.0 is the new hot thing. Why? Because 3.0 is a bigger number than 2.0.

Also, because the NYT wrote an article about Web 3.0 (in November of 2006!!!), thus ushering in the age of "better than 2.0". It is the circle of Internet life.

From the billions of documents that form the World Wide Web and the links that weave them together, computer scientists and a growing collection of start-up companies are finding new ways to mine human intelligence.

Their goal is to add a layer of meaning on top of the existing Web that would make it less of a catalog and more of a guide — and even provide the foundation for systems that can reason in a human fashion. That level of artificial intelligence, with machines doing the thinking instead of simply following commands, has eluded researchers for more than half a century.

For those of us still trying to grapple with Web 2.0, the difference is well defined:

The classic example of the Web 2.0 era is the “mash-up” — for example, connecting a rental-housing Web site with Google Maps to create a new, more useful service that automatically shows the location of each rental listing.

In contrast, the Holy Grail for developers of the semantic Web is to build a system that can give a reasonable and complete response to a simple question like: “I’m looking for a warm place to vacation and I have a budget of $3,000. Oh, and I have an 11-year-old child.

The business opportunities that lie with that depth of interaction are mind boggling. Excuse me while I lock myself in a room without food or water until I can think of the next billion dollar Web 3.0 idea.



The interesting thing about this chart (also from 2006!!!) is the last few words of the Web 3.0 text.

"All media flows in and out of virtual web worlds". Second Life? Should have seen this coming.

Pandora? Yes you should.

Pandora IS Web 2.0. Actually, it's everything that is good about Web 2.0. Actually it's everything that is good with the world. Effusive enough?

If you haven't tried Pandora yet, you are missing out on perhaps the greatest thing to happen to music since Flock of Seagulls.



Yes. It's that good.

Anyway you don't take my word on it, the tea leaves, they're everywhere:

CNET
TechCrunch
Best Stuff

Also, Alan Graham summarizes my feelings:

The big mistake I made with Pandora in the past was thinking of it as a “radio station,” when in reality it is a music discovery solution. It makes traditional radio look like a pile of poo. I’ve discovered dozens of new artists and bands that I might never have known existed if it weren’t for Pandora.

Pile of poo indeed.

I've gone ahead and created a Pandora box in the right sidebar so you can take it for a test drive if you'd like.

Safari for Windows

In this article titled "Safari on Windows? The real reason behind the new release" Alan Graham does a real good job of explaining why Apple decided to release its home grown Safari browser for Windows. (Almost immediately, people started finding bugs in the Windows version of the browser and Apple's stock went plummeting. Thanks Apple!)

1. As Safari continues to be downloaded and grow in market share, we’ll see more and more developers of web sites that will test their code to see that it complies and works with Safari. Good for Mac users…good for Apple. I don’t think it is impossible to see Apple jump another 5-10% in browser market share in the next 6 months.

That's it right there. I've made a lot of websites in my day, and VERY rarely do I do any testing on Safari. I test out the site for Mozilla and IE, and move on. Even if Safari wasn't able to display 10% of the websites on the internet, that's no way to hold on to market share. If Safari wants to play with the big boys, the decision to go to Windows is the logical next move.

2. It might save Quicktime, Apple’s slowly dying web streaming technology. While Apple might debate the dying aspect (given it travels with every version of iTunes), almost no site outside of Apple uses Quicktime anymore (I rarely see it) and there is no Windows Media support (MS killed it). Not to mention that flash has made some serious inroads on Apple’s once strong web technology. But with better Quicktime integration into the Windows-based browser, we might see a new push to recapture lost Quicktime market share.

Quicktime, worthless. Let it die.

3. iPhone, iPhone, iPhone. We know that Apple is releasing a Safari/webdev kit so developers can develop web apps for their new phone. Why limit this to Mac developers? The phone is obviously designed to appeal to Mac and Windows users, so to ensure development for the phone on the Windows side, they need a platform to build on. Safari will no doubt be the major component that ties the phone and iTunes together, and we’ll likely see an explosion of web app development this fall after the phone is released. Windows support is crucial to their long-term phone strategy and that is especially important when it comes to browsing. Just look at all the sites that are popping up to work with the Wii…I have no doubt in my mind we’ll see lean and mean Safari sites for the iPhone.

Totally on target. iPhone will drive Apple's bottom line for the next 2 years until production catches up with demand. iPhone is the driver, and Safari is along for the ride.