via dresdencodak.com
These are awesome. Love "the reverse robot reveal" Also just learned what a petard is.
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Friday, October 23, 2009
Facebook’s Redesign Screenshots Show Viral Channel Changes for Social Games
This could have some real implications for social games if it makes viral messages less prominent...
Google Reader adds "Magic" (popular items, personalized ranking) - what took so long!
http://ping.fm/ncZWZ
http://ping.fm/ncZWZ
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
World of Goo’s Pay What You Want Game Pricing: “Huge Success”
Last week we wrote about indie video game World of Goo’s birthday sale, in which the developers encouraged people to pay what they wanted for the award-winning puzzle title.
The results are in, with 2D Boy reporting the endeavor a huge success. So successful, in fact, that they’re continuing the experiment by extending it until this Sunday, October 25.
In the interest of sharing the data from the experiment, they published some interesting statistics on how payments broke down over the course of the sale, plus a zeitgeist of why customers chose the amount they did. In all, about 57,000 new customers were brought in by the “Pay-What-You-Want” initiative.
The average price paid was $2.03, with a larger than usual 13% going to Paypal in transaction fees because of the way service fees are structured (larger percentages for smaller transactions). Almost 17,000 customers paid $0.01 for the game, which was the largest bar in the sales histogram (below). Closely behind, almost 16,000 purchases were between $1.00 and $1.99. A couple of spikes in the long tail occurred in the $5.00-$5.99 and $10.00-$10.99 brackets.
Some other interesting observations included an average contribution increase over time as the sale went on. Also somewhat fascinating to note was that regular price sales through SteamSteam
actually also rose 40% from the week before. It seems clear that word of mouth exposure for the title itself increased overall, even extended to folks who apparently didn’t hear about the actual birthday sale.
After adding a brief survey to the post-transaction process, they discovered that people were more likely to choose a price based on what they could afford versus how much they thought the game was worth. This is perhaps counterintuitive considering the popularity of concepts like the dollar value of an hour of play and similar value-oriented discussions in the video game industry. If you’re interested, 2D Boy made the entire results of the survey available for further data munching. And of course, you can still pay what you want for the game until this Sunday.
Did you buy World of Goo during its birthday sale, or do you plan to pick it up? Do you think “pay-what-you-want” business models have a future in the video game industry? Do they or would they work well in other industries?
via mashable.com
Interesting use of a "Pay What You Want" method. I think such dynamic pricing schemes have a lot of promise, but you have to tailor them appropriately. It's analogous to the free-to-play games model.
Sunday, October 18, 2009
BBC NEWS | Science & Environment | Bad memories written with lasers
Science reporter, BBC News
This work in flies will help understand how the human brain makes memoriesLaser-controlled flies may be the latest addition to the neuroscientist's tool kit, thanks to a new technique.
Researchers have devised a way to write memories onto the brains of flies, revealing which brain cells are involved in making bad memories.
The researchers said that in flies just 12 brain cells were responsible for what is known as "associative learning".
They describe their findings in the journal Cell.
Associative memories are made when an animal learns to link a cue to a particular outcome. It might for example learn that a certain odour is a sign that a predator is nearby.
"So the appearance of that odour predicts that something bad is going to happen," explained Gero Miesenbock from the University of Oxford, UK, who led this study.
Previous research had already identified that the brain cells or neurons responsible for this type of learning are those that produce dopamine. This is a chemical which acts as a signal that can be transmitted from cell to cell in the brain.
Professor Miesenbock and his team "tapped into these gene regulatory mechanisms" of the neurons - programming them to respond to a laser.
A laser flash releases a chemical that activates the neuronsThey modified the neurons by adding a sort of trigger, or receptor, to each one. This receptor was activated by a chemical called ATP.
"Since there's no ATP floating around in the fly's brain, the [modified] receptors remain closed and the flies behave just like normal flies that don't have the receptor," said Professor Miesenbock.
Now for the laser-activated trickery.
The scientists injected ATP into the flies' brains, in a form that was locked inside a light-sensitive chemical cage.
"[Then] we turned on the laser light and the light sensitive cage fell apart," Professor Miesenbock explained. "The ATP was released and acted only on the cells [with] the receptor."
Memory circuit
The laser flash was paired with an odour, which allowed the scientists to find out if their memory-writing experiment had been successful.
They gave the flies a simple choice between two odours - one of which the flies had been exposed to just before the laser flash.
"[The flies] moved along a narrow chamber and at the midpoint they were presented with an odour on the left and an odour on the right," said Professor Miesenbock.
He knew that the laser had successfully written a bad memory into the fly's brain when the insect avoided the odour that had been paired with the laser flash.
This is a real breakthrough in our understanding of how memories are formed
David Shepherd, neuroscientistThe flies associated the smell with a bad experience, so the laser flash gave the fly a memory of a bad experience that it never actually had.
Simply by looking inside the flies' brains with a microscope, the researchers were able to narrow this memory formation process down to just 12 neurons.
"We labelled the cells .... that were made responsive to light and which ones were not, so by elimination we could narrow it down."
This finding, said Professor Miesenbock, has begun to unravel how animals and humans learn from mistakes and how "error signals" drive animals to adapt their behaviour.
"In the fly we have isolated and manipulated these error signals, so what we can now do is try to understand how these signals are calculated in the brain and how this works mechanistically.
"I have every expectation that the fundamental mechanisms that produce these error signals are the same in the brain of the fly as they are in the brain of the human.
David Shepherd, a neuroscientist from the University of Bangor in North Wales described the study as "a fantastic piece of work".
Professor Shepherd, who was not involved in this study, told BBC News: "We have known for years that flies are capable of sophisticated behaviours such as learning and memory. We have also been able to manipulate gene and cell function in flies.
"This work combines these elements to make a real breakthrough in our understanding of how memories are formed."
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via news.bbc.co.uk
Muahahaha. This is impressive.
Saturday, October 17, 2009
Friday, October 16, 2009
![Zynga's use of appointment gaming: [cid:image001.png@01CA4E69.B59B58F0] http://ping.fm/5h4Yk](http://p.ping.fm/img/toePZby0/64543791eb87668c.png)
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Apple Announces In-App Purchases For Free iPhone Applications
via techcrunch.com
They should have done this long ago. They are forbidding virtual currency still though. Still this could create some great new opportunities.
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
RUMOR: EA Acquires Facebook Game Maker Playfish for $250 Million
via mashable.com
If true this would make sense – EA would want to get into the space and Zynga is probably not buyable right now. It’s also dangerous though. Playfish has done great, but Zynga’s clone of their Restaurant City has basically matched their user levels of 16m MAUs in less than two weeks.
Payvment Enables Retail Storefronts On Facebook
via techcrunch.com
Interesting functionality here. An issue will be where Facebook allows you to display these storefronts.
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Friday, October 9, 2009
StumbleUpon Recasts Itself As A Social Search Engine “Between Google And Twitter.”
via techcrunch.com
StumbleUpon is recasting itself more as social search. This is a great idea, but the execution will be very difficult. Will be interested to try it out.
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
UK Energy Research Centre : Global Oil Depletion
The Global Oil Depletion Report: Launched 08.10.09
What evidence is there to support the proposition that the global supply of 'conventional oil' will be constrained by physical depletion before 2030?
The 'peak oil' debate is polarised, contentious and characterised by competing interpretations of the available data.
A growing number of commentators are forecasting a near-term peak in global oil production with potentially serious economic impacts. Others, however, argue that production will be sufficient to meet rising demand well into the 21st century.
The report, a review of over 500 studies, analysis of industry databases and comparison of global supply forecasts, seeks to bring some clarity to this debate.
If you would like a hard copy of the report, please contact Angela Knight
The report finds:
- Despite large uncertainties in the available data, sufficient information is available to allow the status and risk of global oil depletion to be adequately assessed. But the available methodologies can frequently lead to underestimates of resource size and overly pessimistic forecasts of future supply
- The rate of decline of production is accelerating. More than two thirds of existing capacity may need to be replaced by 2030 solely to prevent production from falling
- While large resources of conventional oil may be available, these are unlikely to be accessed quickly and may make little difference to the timing of the global peak
- A peak in conventional oil production before 2030 appears likely and there is a significant risk of a peak before 2020. Given the lead times required to both develop substitute fuels and improve energy efficiency, this risk needs to be given serious consideration
via ukerc.ac.uk
A new independent report on Peak Oil. I'd love someone to tell me that this is all overblown. And then show me why.
Invisible RSS Technology in Visual Feed Readers: RSS for the Rest of Us
via readwriteweb.com
Interesting couple of companies that are trying to bring feeds to the masses....
Someecards iPhone app rejected for making fun of celebrities? « some blog
http://someecards.wordpress.com/2009/10/07/someecards-iphone-app-rejected-for-making-fun-of-celebrities/ Does anyone understand the apple approval process?
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
iPhone's Flash Apps: Let the Games Begin
Lumosity, a learning games community with more than 1 million members and a Flash-based iPhone portal, is particularly excited to see the CS5 announcement. Said resident game designer Ben Katz, "We release new products every month. This is an interesting solution that Adobe's decided to pursue, and so far it looks like the transition will be smooth. Our development time will depend on whether these applications actually look and feel like native apps."
High-traffic Flash-based gaming communities like Lumosity, Newgrounds and PopCap Games will be some of the first groups to utilize Flash's Low Level Virtual Machine compiler infrastructure. If these groups really do find the Flash customization as easy as it sounds, Adobe will be opening the floodgates to casual gaming. PopCap's titles alone have been downloaded more than 1 billion times by consumers worldwide. With reduced development time, it will be interesting to see the fortunes amassed by gaming houses. Some of the light games that have already been created using CS5 include Chroma Circuit, Fickleblox and Just Letters.
via readwriteweb.com
This could really help expand the gaming ecosystem on the Iphone. now if only they would update the payment and sharing capabilities...
Sunday, October 4, 2009
Adolescent Alcohol Expsoure May Lead To Long-term Risky Decision Making
via sciencedaily.com
Rats, Jello Shots, and Risk. This has really challenged my stance on underage drinking: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/09/090921162142.htm
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