HotorNot’s New Mobile App

Posted on February 10, 2014 by Meg

sponsored

Ranking website Hot or Not has been reborn as a local dating app. The original version of Hot or Not was pretty racy in it’s circa-2001 day. Strangers could upload their digital photos (which were pretty hard to get a decade ago — I remember dropping off rolls of film in the drugstore and then took my photos to a computer lab scanner to email home pictures of my study abroad in 2005.), and let other strangers rate their looks. OkCupid is currently using a similar mechanic to allow users to thumbs up or thumbs down potential matches, based on looks alone.

The new mobile app for HotorNot offers the same photo rating but adds a dating component for actually meeting the users you’ve rated as hot. Users can find attractive people nearby, or find friends of friends. It’s interesting that dating app OKCupid added the rating component, while rating app HotorNot has added dating, flirting and meeting.

screen568x568The relaunched HotorNot mobile app is now climbing the app store, reaching 13 for free apps, which is above Facebook. (For anyone saying that Facebook is finished, or that it’s all annoying posts from people we’d rather ignore, #13 is also above the insanely popular and profitable Candy Crush Saga, meaning more people want to rate strangers than pop candies. So, yeah, pretty impressive for a dating and flirting app.) Hot or Not is completing with popular dating apps like OKCupid and Tinder, as well as with smaller romance apps, like start-up Datini or Down, the revamp of Bang With Friends. There’s an Android version as well, which is #12 on Amazon apps for social networkers. HotorNot is also on Facebook, with over 14K fans using the app to rate and date.

When online matchmaking sites like Match.com got going, the excitement of internet dating came from connecting with potential partners in ways you might not be able to meet someone in a bar. Online daters might meet a partner over a shared hobby, or you might use a simple search to weed out potential dates with a dealbreaking viewpoint. It’s interesting to see online dating coming full circle, and becoming more and more like meeting a cute guy or girl in a bar, only without the actual bar part of it.  (Or possibly meeting a date from two different bars!)

hot or not banner

This post has been sponsored by HotOrNot.

hot or not logo

sponsored

Posted in Chapel Hill | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

In Bloom. #blog

Posted on February 9, 2014 by Meg

In Bloom. #blog | February 09, 2014 at 04:53PM
In Bloom. #blog

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Adventures, Games, Harold

Posted on February 8, 2014 by Meg

Sometimes it’s challenging to work in games and have a partner who also works in games. Sometimes the very idea of having two stable game jobs at two different studios in the same city seems completely insane, impossible and ridiculous.

Today, though, Harold came into my study and asked me I was working on. I looked up from my flowcharts and scene breakdowns, and told him.

“Having written entire hidden object games in a weekend,” he said, “I’ll leave you to it.”

Posted in Chapel Hill | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Perils of The Lady Gamer: A Graphial Diversion Regarding Women and Games

Posted on February 8, 2014 by Meg

fair lady gamer

I wrote about this hilarious and sad comic on female gamers by Shaenon K Garrity for The Absolute. You may have seen it by now — this is actually the 4th time* I’ve covered a story right before a Gawker imprint does, which makes me feel like a fantastic journalist,  with my finger on the pulse of breaking awesome. Of course, immediately after that,  people will comment and email to call me a terrible hack for ripping off Gawker, so there’s that to keep me from getting conceited.

Perils of The Lady Gamer: A Graphial Diversion by Shaenon K Garrity, is a wonderful comic about being a female gamer… at a gaming convention set in a sort of alternative World’s Faire.

Game writers will notice a reference to Penny Arcade’s Dickwolves and a parody of IndieStatik’s recent embarrassment. Women who play games will find the whole thing terribly familiar, although with an amusing twist. A booth babe raises her hemline to reveal her ankles (scandalous!), fanboys whistle and ask lady gamers to show their shoulders, while other games insist that Mumblety-Peg isn’t hardcore enough to be a ‘real’ game.

via The Perils of The Lady Gamer: A Graphial Diversion Regarding Women and Games | (The) Absolute.

*’Comic Book Heroines in Pants’ hit Jezebel right after I wrote about it on Geek Insider, Jezebel covered Carly’s Choice: Texas  after I wrote about it for IGM, and Robert Yang’s talk at G4C was covered on IGM and Kotaku, just in case you’re reviewing my blog while considering whether to hire me.

 

Posted in Chapel Hill, Gaming Culture, My Other Writing | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Indie Games Blog Carnival

Posted on February 6, 2014 by Meg

indie games wordleBack in ancient times, cavepeople would make gather around the campfire and share blog carnivals (it was around the end of the Geocities age, just before cave painting really took off as an art form). That makes it retro cool, right?

I think this blog carnival format would work well for finding and sharing indie games and game reviewers, so I’m starting an indie games blog carnival. This is going to be a collection of links and little blurbs, I plan to include most (or all) of the submissions I get, but curated lightly to avoid repetition.

I would just love it if you’d submit indie game pieces and encourage friends to submit! This includes reviews written for magazines, communities or personal blogs, as well as essays on indie games, thoughtful dev blog pieces, and related creative writing. You can also submit indie games, too. This begs the question of what makes an indie, of course, but any game made for a game jam, developed with friends, or created as a solo project counts as an indie. You’re welcome to submit either your own projects or projects you enjoy.

Here is a form to make it easy for you to send cool things my way:

If for some reason the BC form isn’t working for you, then you can email submissions to me at my first name at my blog domain.

Posted in Chapel Hill, Gaming Culture | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

‘The Boleyn Bride’ by Brandy Purdy

Posted on February 5, 2014 by Meg

The Boleyn bride of the title is Elizabeth Howard Boleyn, mother of George, Mary, and Anne Boleyn. My entire previous knowledge of her life is basically me noting that the Boleyn siblings got their family prestige and connections through their mother, and their wealth through their father. Also that Anne Boleyn (Wife #2, Beheaded) and Catherine Howard (Wife #5, beheaded) were cousins through the Howards, so I was interested in learning more.

The book didn’t need any plothooks for me, because Tudor, but the story is narrated by a regretful Elizabeth in an extended flashback after Anne and George’s deaths. We see a young, spoiled aristocrat married off to the son of wealthy shopkeepers. Elizabeth’s in-laws may be styling themselves Boleyns now, but they’ll always be the new-money Bullens to her.

Elizabeth is a bizarrely likeable character, throughout all her hardships. We see her loyalty to Queen Catherine, even as her Boleyn family enjoy the benefits of Henry’s affairs with her daughters.  She carries on plenty of affairs herself, one long-running romance and loads of other encounters, and basically shrugs and says that there’s no question of the paternity of her children and that she’s not publicly embarrassing her husband, bring on the young men! She’s also vain, but in an oddly sensible way, showing awareness that her value is her face and figure.

    I’m already familiar with George, Mary, and Anne from all the other Tudor fiction I’ve read, but I enjoyed Purdy’s versions of these characters. Mary Boleyn is usually characterized as a dull-witted pawn for the power hungry Boleyns, or an immoral hedonist. But here, Mary is shown as a golden little girl who mimics her parents’ affairs, but finally finds love in a lowborn match and a removal from court.

The Anne / George incest theme always gives me the creeps in Tudor novels, and I felt like Elizabeth shared my squick, jumping to insist that nothing happened! Not any of those times they spent the night together alone, nope, totally not, because that would be gross.

The story of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn is a familiar one to me, but Purdy’s unique and oddly sympathetic Elizabeth Boleyn is a new character and a new twist.

The Boleyn Bride will be released by Kensington Books  on February 25, 2014. This review is based on an eARC from the publisher. (Thank you!) Opinions are my own and  free copies have never stopped me from snarking about a bad book before.

Related:

Posted in Books, Chapel Hill | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Adding Awesome with ‘If This Then That’

Posted on February 4, 2014 by Meg

New post on Yahoo about using IFTTT to save time and add awesome:

ifttt

If This Then That is a repository of recipes to take advantage of services and sites you’re already using, by integrating actions on one service with a result on another. At it’s most simple, it’s the one add on to rule them all, replacing all the WordPress plugins that send posts to Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr.

…

I found plenty of recipes to automate and facilitate things I was doing anyway, and then I discovered recipes to do things that hadn’t ever occurred to me, like connect my location and the local sunrise time with the Phillips Hue app, to wake up to a simulated sunrise , even in the smallest, windowless urban apartment. (IFTTT user Benright, you are a genius!)

via Automate Everything with ‘If This Then That’ – Yahoo Voices – voices.yahoo.com.

Posted in Chapel Hill | Tagged | Leave a comment

Imposter Syndrome, Part 273

Posted on February 3, 2014 by Meg

Meg: I’m working on your bio for our hipster startup profile, how many years have you been teaching?

Colleague-who-will-not-be-named: Oh, man, I have no experience and no training. It’s a wonder anyone lets me teach their kids anything.

Meg: What are you talking about? You have loads of experience, your classes are awesome and all the kids love you! Why would you say — WAIT A MINUTE. You’re trying to make some kind of a point here, aren’t you?

Posted in Chapel Hill | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Stories From Space Camp

Posted on February 2, 2014 by Meg

I have a new story, Star-Crossed, out in Stories From Space Camp. Stories From Space Camp is a scifi zine with an issue theme of assimilation / liberation.

Star-Crossed is about aliens and alienation. Although I’ve been writing science fiction since I was a teenager, most of it has never seen the light of day. For good reason, that is. Either I like the world but nothing interesting happens, or there’s no particularly reason to set the action in the Delta Quadrant. I’m happy with Star-Crossed, though. There’s a different world, characters perform actions, there’s not too much exposition, and the story resolves.

After The Subway Bride, though, I felt a bit awkward talking about it. Hey Meg, didn’t you just finish a story that’s basically about being transplanted in a slightly-twisted South? Yes, yes I did.

I wrote Star-Crossed in the spring, before I began teaching at Youth Digital, and sent it off to Stories From Space Camp, and didn’t really think about it until it arrived. When I reread my story, I found this whole secondary (tertiary?) theme about finding satisfaction in challenging work and good colleagues, even if the job isn’t quite what you’d expected.

(Also, I’m incapable of rereading anything I wrote without wanting to go back and make changes. )

Speaking of surprises from my subconscious,  I recently came across an old paperback of E Pluribus Unicorn (from high school, you know, when I thought I would be a science fiction writer), and reread it. Apparently the story The World Well Lost made a larger impression on me than I’d thought, because of the arcs in Star-Crossed is not so much inspired-by, more stolen-from.

Anyway, new story, I don’t hate it, it’s on dead trees and it’s part of a really lovely collection. Plus it was mailed with a candy bar, which is how all zines should arrive.

Posted in Chapel Hill, My Other Writing | Tagged , , , , , , | 4 Comments

The Future of Games Journalism

Posted on February 1, 2014 by Meg

…is turning out 1000 ~ 2000 not-quite-original words, in 6 hours, for $1.

Looking someone to rewrite 100 to 200 word game news. Each 100 to 200 word game news is priced at $0.10

Please include these words in your application: I understand that “Each 100 to 200 word game news is priced at $0.10”

Please do not apply if you cannot rewrite 10 game news in 6 hours, or you’re not serious. This is a long-termed job.

From an actual job posting for a Game News Writer on oDesk.

Posted in Chapel Hill | Tagged , , , , | 4 Comments