musings of a social architect

The Carrrier StrangleHold is loosening...

The carriers are starting to get some real competition as a distribution channel for mobile games -- website downloads are catching on in Japan, now in-store bluetooth kiosks. are being launched in the US.

Video game retailer Electronics Boutique Holdings Corp. will offer downloads for cell phones in some of its stores starting this holiday season...the games to be sold through the EB (Research) kiosks are larger and more complex than those typically sold via network download...Owners of some advanced cell phones will be able to download games, game trailers and other content via Bluetooth short-range wireless connections to their handsets...

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Kids, Video Games and Alternate Controller

Fascinating NYTimes article exploring how video games are reaching into the under-5 set. This article explores how alternate controllers like the EyeToy camera and the Donkey Konga bongos (shown here) make games more accessible to little kids.

This definately maps to our experience. My 5-year-old son, Gabriel, loves to play videogames and is especially ethusiastic about Groove (an EyeToy game) and Karaoke Revolution (which uses a microphone as the input device, rather than a game controller). Can't wait to get Donkey Konga -- it's at the top of my holiday gift list.

John Battelle's Vision for merging TV and Search

Wow. I just read John Battelle's essay about how TV & serch could merge. He wrote this piece from a first-person, target-user perspective and it's VERY compelling. At least to me (speaking as a working parent and inveterate multi-tasker).

Half an hour later, you and your wife turn on your television to catch the Learning Channel show. As it starts, a small box appears on the bottom of the screen, alerting you to several advertisements that have appeared in your programming feed. You know that should you decide to watch them, your local cable bill will be reduced by a buck or so (or, alternatively, you’ve selected the programming option that gives you free cable, but requires that you review ads at preset intervals). No matter, that’s not really the reason you might want to pause the show and check out the ads. Turns out, you rather like watching them, as they are often extremely relevant to your wants and needs, not to mention informative.

Who Says Tecnology Isn't Sexy?

This Gizmodo article started my day off with a bang (so to speak :-) -- check it out! Circuits Discover... Each Other

Flash for Mobile is getting some traction...

Good article in The Feature about Flash players gaining a respectable foothold on handsets in Japan. I'm especially interested in the promise of alternate distribution models for mobile S/W.

Since its launch on both DoCoMo and KDDI, 13 percent of Japanese have Flash Lite on their handsets... that translates to between 10 and 16 million Japanese Flash Lite users... Although that number is nowhere near the number of Java or BREW capable handsets, it is enough to seed an ecosystem of "several thousand websites" offering flash content to Japanese subscribers...

...one of the strong points of Flash Lite is that it is far easier for non technical users to create a multimedia application in it than Java. The proliferation of user created Flash content in Japan is not that different from the overwhelming popularity of i-mode sites -- both are fast and simple to develop. Although Flash doesn't allow users to create content on devices, it does allow them to produce content for devices, a feature which becomes more critical as blogging and other user-created multimedia takes off on the desktop as well as on handsets.

What the Mobile Industry Can Learn from Ovaltine

Great article about cross-media promotions by Doug Rushkoff called What the Mobile Industry Can Learn from Ovaltine.

wireless devices will proliferate by making themselves indispensable to the total enjoyment of an existing pop culture phenomenon -- rather than trying to become one themselves.

Tracing the Evolution of Social Software

I finally read all the way through Christopher Allen's useful post tracing the evolution of Social Software. I was particularly pleased to see an image from There, a virtual world that I worked on which included some highly sophisticated social interaction mechanisms.

Thanks to Chris for putting this together! I'd love to see this topic turned into something meatier -- say, a book chapter or conference session.

Bringing the real world into a mobile RPG

Darn! Sometimes I wish I lived in Japan, so I could play some of the coolio new mobile games available there. Case in point: the recently-released Final Fantasy VII: Before Crisis, which is a prequel-of-sorts to the next installment in the wildly popular Final Fantasy series. This game runs exclusively on the Panasonic FOMA P900iv, an advanced mobile phone that's sold more than 4 million units in Japan so far. To me, the most interesting aspect of this game is how it utilizes the phone's camera.

Materia is an integral part of the game and players will need to use the F900's camera and phone features to make the most out of it. To activate the various types of material, you must take a picture of an object of a similar color. However, each phone can only have a finite amount of material; the only way to get more is to interact with other users. (It's almost as devilishly clever as needing another player to catch all the Pokemon.)

Location Based Entertainment

I'm on the Advisory Board of Blister Entertainment, a small Canadian company with big ambitions for location-enabled entertainment. Blister recently shipped Swordfish - a simple, cool location-based fishing game that's quickly become a top-10 download for Bell Mobility in Canada, and is a showcase for Blister's location-based platform.

Although Blister is making their own games, their focus is on enabling a broad spectrum of location-based entertainment through platform licensing and game publishing. Consequently, they're actively seeking content partners who're interested in location-based games and services. If you're looking to get into this area, Blister is definately worth checking out.

Blister is looking for content partners who want to location-enable their brands to markets including North America, Europe, and Asia-Pacific regions. If you have branded content that you want to extend through a location-based game, or if you’re a game developer seeking to location-enable your games, lets talk.  Please drop a line to: stephen.nykolyn@blisterent.com or visit us at the upcoming Mobile Entertainment Summit on Oct. 24 in San Francisco or at NAVTEQ’s booth at the CTIA show Oct. 25-27. 

TellUS delivers SMS Gossip

Popgadget is a great blog for following female-centric technology trends - and this week they report that US Weekly is launching an SMS gossip service. Gosh, do ya think it'll be popular? :-)

Of particular interest to me is the description of the US demographic - a largely overlooked audience for cellphone services:

"Us To The Minute" capitalizes on its reader demographic: highly educated, relatively affluent women with the average age of 32, who tend to live in metropolitan areas. "It's that young educated person in the workforce, the early technology adopter and the alpha shopper -- she's gotta get it now."