Web advertising begins to pay

A story in the Guardian Unlimited title, Online cashes in at last by Own Gibson (Oct. 18, 2004) reports on new UK data that shows that internet advertising has risen past Cinema to challenge radio.

According to research due to be unveiled today by Microsoft’s internet arm MSN, confidence is higher than ever among sales staff at major sites such as MSN, AOL and Yahoo! and the agencies that buy space on them. After years of trying, and in some cases under-delivering, it looks as if the internet’s accountability, measurability and targeting is finally making an impression on the big brands. In certain sectors, notably cars and finance, online ads are now an integral part of any big campaign, rather than an afterthought.

I wonder what percentage of this is Google ads?

Retailers to ID buyers of mature games in Canada

canada.com in a story “Want game? Bring your ID, retailers ward”, reports that major retailers like Walmart, The Bay, Zellers, Blockbuster and Radio Shack will ask for ID when selling mature games. The game business in Canada is about $1 billion and retail chains account for 90% of sales according to the Retail Council of Canada. The ratings system being used is the Entertainmenet Software Rating Board in New York.

Croquet Project

The Croquet Project is developing an architecture for educational 3D networked computing. The idea is an OS that supports multiuser 3D shared worlds. Could this be an architecture for game studies to use?

Croquet is a combination of computer software and network architecture that supports deep collaboration and resource sharing among large numbers of users within the context of a large-scale distributed information system. Along with its ability to deliver compelling 3D visualization and simulations, the Croquet system’s components are designed with a focus on enabling massively multi-user peer-to-peer collaboration and communication. (Introduction, http://croquetproject.org/About_Croquet/about.html)

Continue reading Croquet Project

Change the world: Institute without Boundaries

Institute without Boundaries is a collaboration between Bruce Mau Design and George Brown College. The Massive Change project is one of their joint projects. (See previous entry on Massive Change and Overrated Sight.) I am not sure what to think about the hubris of their announced goal, “Change the world” and their suggestion that design is the way, “What if life itself became a design project?”. It is good they are audacious, but when you exaggerate design into a salvation project can you live up to your design? Does the project remain a sketch?
Continue reading Change the world: Institute without Boundaries

Mau: Massive Change and Overrated Sight

Bruce Mau of S, M, L, XL has a show in Vancouver coming to the AGO in Toronto called Massive Change and a web site with the same name. I hope the show is better than the site which is less-than-massive. Most of the web site is light on content with high-concept pop-corn ideas followed by blog-like “did you know” factoids. One part of the site, however, makes up for the rest – there is a number of full-length streaming audio interviews from a radio show at CIUT in Toronto with interesting people on the change. The creator of the Massive Change – Radio show, Jennifer Leonard redeems the site with content.
I assume Bruce Mau’s content is in the show or the book – it’s not in the silly plastic plates for Umbra that look like a massive advertising opportunity. Let me guess who one of the sponsors of the show is.

A National Post reporter asked Mau about what is overrated and he said, “I think the first image that pops into your head is exactly what is overrated: the visual.” See, National Post, “Design not in the eye of the beholder”, by Vanessa Farquharson, Oct. 4, 2004. The site proves his point – what I can see is overrated, what I can listen to is not.
Now I have to figure out how to get the hours of interviews onto my iPod. It’s time for an “Import Into iTunes” feature.

Stephenson: The System of the World

Neal Stephenson’s third and final volume to the Baroque Cycle, The System of the World, is out! See this Slashdot review for a good summary of the plot, strengths, and weakness – The System of the World.
What’s with the title? The System of the World is (as we are told in the novel) the title of the third book of Isaac Newton’s Principia Mathematica. More importantly it refers to the way the world is run and the transition from a Tory system based on land, aristocracy, and slavery to a Whig system based on currency, industry and mechanical power. (See my previous entries on the earlier titles Again and The Confusion.) The trilogy could be read as the fictionalization of the birth of global scientific capitalism. Stephenson tries to dramatize (in more ways than one) the ideas at this birth. This culminates in a nice, but incomplete confrontation between Newton and Leibniz (and the character Waterhouse as the simple sceptic) that is almost a philosophical dialogue worthy of Hume, but which doesn’t, unless I have missed something, really deal with their differences.
In the end I liked the book (more than Confusion) but felt let down by the Cycle. Stephenson isn’t sure if he wants to write history, accurate historical fiction, or retro-Sci-fi that is based in history. He started so many interesting threads that then wind down in dissappointing ways, partly I suppose, because they would not be true to history if he embellished them. But, what if he had had the courage of Gibson and Sterling, who, in The Difference Engine, feel free to change history following their speculation? Stephenson doesn’t dare, even when he has set up the idea of a logic mill so carefully – it just ends up packed and sent off to Russia and we are told it will be another century before it might get implemented. (Is there a sequel coming?)
So, if he doesn’t dare alter history, why doesn’t he stick closer to it? Why does he introduce these rather useless plot props like the wizards Enoch and Solomon who just show up to tweak history in some (right) direction or to represent some age that is perfectly well represented by others. (Just what do wizards add?) Why couldn’t he have rid himself of these and just written historical fiction? Or, for that matter, plain old accessible history?
I was expecting a big bang of an ending after the thousands of pages I traversed to get there, but was dissappointed. He wasn’t able to pull off a Tolkein epic climax. He didn’t dare speculate about how things could have been different and he also didn’t dare try to weave his tale into the possible as historical romance. I sense he got so caught in the research that he ended writing history but didn’t dare leave his sci-fi audience behind so he wove in some themes as bones for them. A good editor would have helped him ditch the bones, get rid of a thosand pages, and weave all the strands into his day’s ending in November 1714.
Continue reading Stephenson: The System of the World

Fallen Sites

In response to a post on the Humanist Discussion Group about online ruins and grottoes, Vika Zafrin pointed at The Fall of the Site of Marsha by Rob Wittig of tank20.com. The Fall of the Site of MARSHA has three instants of a site by a character Marsha about angels that is then vandalized (possibly) by angels. It is an original work that develops a narrative around defacement of a web site and the arguments between the authors and hackers on the site.