Origami Rocketship

Posted on May 29, 2012 by Meg
IMAG1585-1

The press kit by which all others shall be judged.

The Whit.li API was one of the standouts from last week’s TechCrunch Disrupt. Whit.li uses social media telepathy, like public Facebook updates and shared links, to extrapolate the user’s personality and mood.  There are endless applications for this — from compatibility profiles to hyper-targeted advertising — but the current demo is more of a proof-of-concept than an application. You’ll have to sign up through Facebook, which is my un-favorite way of connecting with new and unproven sites, but the awesome demo will let you see what Whit.li thinks of you, and learn a bit about either your personality, or about how you use Facebook. (My personality type came back “Satisfied”, which I think is secret code for doesn’t use Facebook upates for whining.)

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Words With Coworkers

Posted on May 24, 2012 by Meg

At work, I’ve designed a mission chain, set in Ancient Greece, and I’ve brought it to a meeting to try to get it approved.

“Well, the first thing you’re going to have to do is change the name of that mission,” my project’s creative director tells me, almost immediately. “You can’t just call a mission in our game after another game.”

“What? Call a mission after another game? You mean… the one called deus ex machina? The one set in a Greek theater? Involving the gods? And an awkward playwright? Where the seemingly unsolvable is solved?”

“Yeah. Deus Ex is just too recognizable.”

(When you’re in college, and people ask if your classics major means you’re going to teach classics after graduation, this is probably not what they’re referring to.)

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Fireside Chat

Posted on May 22, 2012 by Meg

I’m at TechCrunch Disrupt, towards the back of a industrial hall during an informal panel of successful angel tech investors. It’s quite an interesting look at what makes a startup succeed. The interviewer’s gotten Ron Conway to admit to attending Mark Zuckerberg’s secret wedding a few days ago. Conway’s unwilling to give out any information, and finally tells the interviewer to stop asking, he won’t say anything about the other guests or the wedding itself, because we should all respect Zuck’s privacy.

A guy near me starts laughing, with those quiet, body-shaking laughs that occur only when you know you shouldn’t laugh, and you’re trying desperately to keep silent. I look over, mostly in solidarity with a case of inappropriate giggle syndrome, an affliction from affects me at awkward moments as well.

“Respect Mark Zuckerburg’s privacy,” he repeats, forcing a word out at time, through helpless chortles. “That’s great. Respect Facebook’s privacy!” He falls back into giggles.

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From TechCrunch Disrupt

Posted on May 21, 2012 by Meg


Spent today over at TechCrunch Disrupt, looking at new startup apps in Startup Alley, listening to the tech fireside chats, and, overall, just seeing trends in social media apps. After a couple pitches, I couldn’t help it.

Updatr Updatr uses your other social profiles to automate your Facebook updates. For example, Updatr pulls from your LinkedIn to automate updates about how no one in any other departments gets anything done, and how your coworkers are all morons. Updatr also finds your weather, localized by your recent checkins, before sharing a randomized comment on how depressing rain is, or how lame it is that you have to work when it’s so nice out.

Version 1.8 checks your marital status to create updates about awful in-laws, and checking the “City Resident” option will replace “Seriously, no one in *hometown* can drive!” with “Late again. Thanks, *local transit authority*!”

LoveMyLogo Every hot new startup already has a catchy name and logo. But, are hipsters really wearing your t-shirt? LoveMyLogo crowdsources actual t-shirt-wearing potential brand ambassadors, and enables real-time voting on your logo’s wearability and offline virality.  LoveMyLogo (beta) is available in Brooklyn, Austin, and Portland.

Footbllr After entering the football team followed by your significant other, Footbllr alerts you to during times of suboptimal contact, such as the last quarter of a close game, and also alerts you to major team negativity, such as a player injury or defeat to division rivals, that may affect a fan’s mood. Footbllr is free to download and use, but premium accounts offer the additional ability to set affectionate text messages of congratulation or sympathy, automated and sent based on the team’s success or failure.

Swagify Swagify’s new micro-location check-ins enable hardworking journalists to mark swag-positive locations on an interactive conference map, and enter a twenty-one-character micro-review to tag the swag in real time. Swagify also allows users to search swag-positive locations, read micro-reviews, and leave a seven-character micro-micro-review.

Ok… you probably caught on… these aren’t real apps. (Yet.)

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Subway Etiquette

Posted on May 17, 2012 by Meg

Sometimes I wonder about subway etiquette.

The other day I was on a train and noticed a man wearing an Autobots T-shirt. I poked Harold, with an attempt at subtlety, and pointed out the real-life counterpart to a Hasbro virtual-goods promotion we’d worked on for Next Island. I pointed out the three colorable fields, one of the attributes that caused difficulties, as if I could retroactively prove its desirability to players, and retroactively get back those hours arguing about it.

Exhibit A: Pretend Transformers Shirt

I’m not entirely sure why I want to snap a picture of the passenger in the Autobots shirt, it’s not actually my project and I can’t actually gather visual evidence to defend my argument last year, but I sort of do want a picture.  Is that weird? It seems strange, even invasive, but it seems just as artificial to maintain the usual subway commute fiction that no one else exists. We travel together in tiny boxes, shoulder-to-shoulder sometimes, refusing to make eye contact, and hoping no one break the the rules, and forces us to acknowledge another person. So, should I try to take the photo, while pretending to text, and he can follow the subway etiquette of ignoring fellow passengers? But what if he breaks it?

Can I tell him I worked on a project making virtual versions of the t-shirt  he’s wearing? Could I set up the camera, hold it in readiness, and then snap as I’m getting out of the subway?

There’s a commotion next to me, as I’m wondering whether I should take a video and look for a still later.  A couple near me is trying to see the cover of a tabloid that a man’s got folded under his arm, and after trying to get a decent view of it, they finally ask him for a look at the paper.

It’s one of the city’s daily rags, and the cover is a sensationalist news photo of a young girl, with bloodstained hands and an all-caps headline, standing in from of a yellow-taped crime scene.

“It is!” the wife says triumphantly. “That is the building next door to us!”

Like I said, I don’t always understand the rules of subway behavior.

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Words With Friends, GChatting Edition

Posted on May 15, 2012 by Meg

Roy: Why is the Muppet show theme song stuck in my head now?

Meg: because it’s time to play the music?
it’s time to light the lights?

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This American Life

Posted on May 14, 2012 by Meg

Listening to This American Life is usually a solitary activity.  I started listening to TAL regularly when I lived in North Carolina, and I was convinced that Ira Glass was sending dispatches from the urban world directly to me (and to Stick), reminding me that I was not actually Ovid in exile on the Black Sea. Now I usually listen to podcasts on headphones while I work, but it’s still solitary.

Last week, I went to the This American Life show with Harold, Roy, and Roy’s friend Simone, who all listen to TAL independently, and we sat down in a theater full of NPR hipsters, watching the show simultaneously with other theaters full of NPR listeners all over the country. A massive network of people laughing at the Terri Gross bank robbery, or at the RadioLab random numbers, or watching at the street portraits or dances just for the live audience, and listening to more typical TAL segments of audio blog posts and the obligatory David Sedaris reading.

And Ira Glass gave asked everyone to download the TAL Live app, which had three buttons to create three sounds, and appeared magically in different colors on different phones. We were asked to turn our phone volumes all the way up, and reminded several times that ordinarily one should never use a cell phone in a movie theater. Each player would watch the feed for icons of his color, and hit the corresponding button on his phone on the cue. Players without smartphones would be the rhythm section, snapping and stomping. (Audience members were not reminded that ordinarily, one should not stomp and snapping in a movie theater.) Then OK GO came on to play a song, with the accompaniment of that entire massive network of NPR hipsters.

If I had known that play massively multiplayer Cell Phone Hero with Ira Glass and OK GO was a thing to put on a life list, I would have put it on my life list.

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Look, A Three-Headed Monkey!

Posted on May 11, 2012 by Meg

I’ve recently learned that it’s actually much harder to work How appropriate, you fight like a cow. into the dialogue for a tropical island game than Monkey Island might lead one to believe. Just in case you were wondering.

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(I Attack The Darkness)

Posted on May 4, 2012 by Meg

Meg: Hi, *New beta tester*, was *endless grind assignment* the least fun you’ve ever had playing a videogame?

New Beta Tester: No. Yesterday Caitlin had me swimming underwater to take pictures of the darkness.

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Sunshine Challenged

Posted on May 3, 2012 by Meg

I ended up with my apartment in Bed-Stuy because it was close to the train to my office work, walking distance to Harold and to Roy, and near lots and lots of hipster coffeeshops, but my bedroom happens to have a skylight. It’s a walk-up, without a dishwasher, and the laundry is down the street, and my room is just barely big enough for my bed and my clothes, but there’s a gorgeous skylight over my bed.

As the days get lighter, I’ve begun waking up earlier. You’d think this is going to be a delightful story about waking up in the middle of the city, with sunshine on my face, but actually, I wake up in a panic that it’s so bright, it must be late, I must have slept through my alarm! And I leap out of bed in panic. Every day.

These bright spring mornings are totally overrated.

 

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