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Pleo roundup: spy cam / XBee hacks, dino visits the day spa
Oh Pleo, it's been far too long since we've seen you out and about! Thankfully, we've stumbled upon a handful of Pleo news all at once, so we hope you're ready to catch up with your favorite dinosaur. First up is a pair of useful hacks from GRIP: a spy cam hack -- which transmits images from the pet to a PC sans wires -- and an XBee hack, which allows users to monitor Pleo's sensors and control its servos in real time. For those looking for less work and more laughs, you'll definitely want to venture on past the break. Wondering what's there? Pleo visits the day spa -- need we say more?Read - Pleo hacksRead - Pleo's day spa adventures
WoW Rookie: Embracing the official forums
WoW Rookie is brought to our readers to help our newest players get acclimated to the game. Make sure you send a note to WoW Insider if you have suggestions for what new players need to know. I spend most of my evenings perusing the North American and European WoW Foums for interesting topics for our Forum Post of the Day feature. I've come across all kinds of threads from the uplifting, to the whiney, to the popular discussion. They are a great resource for tips and strategies. Blizzard welcomes constructive criticism and suggestions from the WoW community. You are welcome to be a part of it as well. There are a few things you should know about the forums.
Missing teen found after she ran away with her 27 year old WoW boyfriend
Morgon Douglas Jones, a 27 year old gamer, is going to find himself in a lot of trouble. He ran off with a 14 year old girl he met through WoW. They were found safe in a campground in Franklin County, Washington. We (and several of you commenters) have covered age related issues before: from age restricted servers to youths applying to raiding guilds.I am amazed at some of the creeps who play this game, and Morgon Jones definitely falls into that category. 27 years old and running off with a 14 year old girl he met through the game. It's time for him to get outside and enjoy life while he still can, since hopefully there'll be some good ol' prison time coming his way.Reader Basic sent us the tip for this story posted on the KTVB.com website, and you can read the full article over there. There is an error in the article however, where the author says WoW is a science fiction based game, when it is actually a fantasy game (unless the author was making a critique on Outlands being too SciFi for the game, but that's highly doubtful and not given at all in the context of the article).
All the World's a Stage: Something to remember me by
All the World's a Stage is a column for creative minds, playing with roles every Sunday evening.The best characters in novels and movies often leap into your mind from the moment you first see them -- something they say or do sets them apart and captures your interest, and from that time on, you're hooked. Likewise, when we roleplay, our characters should always have some memorable trait which can hook other people's interest. Too often, I see roleplayers focusing too much on dark secrets that they only reveal to their closest friends, and neglecting those mannerisms which could give everyone they meet an instant and profound impression of their character. Of course, if some people prefer to roleplay this way, that's fine. But to my mind, roleplaying is best when it avoids cliquishness, and the best roleplayers are those whose characters stay with you, even if you never see them again. When I'm creating my own characters, I think of such memorable traits as "gimmicks," but that word usually has a negative connotation that doesn't apply in this case. For now, the best word I can think of is "quirk." It's an instantly recognizable pattern of behavior or speech that can let others know who your character is right away. Below you will find some of my favorite quirks I have seen people use in their roleplaying in WoW, each of them entertaining and inspiring it its own way.
Teenager burns peer, blames WoW; WoW incredibly not sued
According to the Beijing News, a teenager was recently hospitalized by another, who set him on fire with gasoline, claiming later to have 'transformed into a Fire Mage' a la World of Warcraft. The author of the referring article has it right: had this occurred in America, Blizzard would have been sued by the victim's parents. Apparently the legal mechanisms for doing this are not (yet) in place in China, so this did not occur.This is an old, old topic, but since it's come up, I'll throw my 2 cp in. I've always thought it odd that whenever something like this occurs (which is all too frequently), parents and the media are so quick to demonize videogames, yet this behavior has been around since the dawn of mankind itself. Violence in movies is so much more pervasive and visceral than anything you could possibly see in a game, yet movie scenes are very rarely cited as the source of antisocial behavior.
The concept of MMOrality, and how players pass it around
Ryan Shwayder has a look up at what he calls "MMOrality"-- the idea of a calling within any given game that determines how we as our avatars act. When newbie players first sign on to a new game, they are innocent in every meaning of the word-- they have no idea how to act, and even though they may do things that are against the ingame code (killstealing, ninja looting, grabbing quests without grouping, and so on), they are innocent, because they don't know yet what's right and wrong. Only after they're introduced to the "MMOrality" within the game can they figure out whether they want to be immoral, and go against the codes put in place by the game, or moral, and follow the etiquette and standards laid out by the other players.It's an interesting thought, and not a new one-- just as we have morality in the real world, our virtual worlds also have their own codes that can be upheld or broken. Shwayder speculates, however, that this morality requires PvP-- players can only uphold the morality they've put in place if they have the option to control other players by ganking them. But I'm not so sure that's true.
'Anti-social' behavior much more innocuous in Second Life
An interesting new experiment from University College London, UK has an unmanned avatar wandering around Second Life randomly accosting residents in an attempt to study how people react to their 'personal space' being invaded.The description of the methods used to make the bot operate have me giggling a little -- "The control software sends the avatar off in a random direction until it finds another avatar or object to watch or interact with." How often have I seen someone stumbling around examining this or that object, awkwardly bumping into people, and generally behaving cluelessly? At least 3 times per login session. This 'anti-social bot' is the perfect 5th columnist!However, I have to take umbrage with the concept of personal space in SL. Other factors influence how we drive our avatars that don't exist in real life, including avatar occlusion and line-of-sight issues. I personally have no problem with someone walking right up to me, but frequently will back off just to be able to see the other person's avatar better. In its effort to understand SL, perhaps too much hay is made of it hewing too closely to real life. Not all conventions come across the same way. Remember this the next time you log in; learn a new vocabulary!
Flickr Find: Jailbroken iPhone at Apple Store
Just like Macenstein, I can't actually tell you whether this photo is real, photoshopped, or just staged (my guess is staged), but it is funny. This iPhone, seemingly on display at the Apple Store, has one too many icons, and so apparently what the AT&T salesman told a customer in front of me at the AT&T Store when I went to buy my iPhone is untrue: you can, in fact, put your own applications on the iPhone. Who knew?!That said, we at TUAW can't recommend you do something like this yourself-- those geniuses at the Apple Store don't get paid enough to put up with your mischievous behavior, so give 'em a break. Plus, it's only funny once. But this one time, it is pretty funny.
UK traffic wardens to wield handheld camcorders
At this point, the near-daily implementations of added surveillance in England is bordering on comical, but for the residents of the country, we're sure it feels more like infuriating. Just days after introducing the British to flying all-seeing police bots comes news that traffic wardens in Salford are becoming the first in the UK to wield handheld video camera. The move was reportedly made so that attendants could have "evidence to prove beyond doubt that the penalties its wardens hand out are justified," which sounds like it could cut down on any questionable penalization that disgruntled employees had the power to administer. Additionally, video from the camcorders will be used in cases where wardens are "assaulted or abused" while on the job, and while we're sure it's not part of the plan, the UK government could have miles of footage for its own rendition of COPS should it choose to use it.[Via Inquirer]
Wii Warm Up: Antisocial behavior
The Wii is a very social console. From the marketing campaign to the pack-in, everything about it is designed to get a bunch of people together and interacting in the same room. It can even be fun to have a group together for single-player games, with everyone helping out and enjoying the events of the game together.But video games are not always social events. Sometimes you just want to get immersed in the game without all the interruptions and talking and people. Are you the kind of gamer who prefers to be alone with your games? Or do you always prefer to share your experiences? Or are there certain games that you just can't stand having people in the room while you're playing? Killer 7 on the Gamecube, for example, was something we preferred to play alone because we didn't think others walking in would have a clue what was going on. Especially since we didn't.
Smart surveillance systems may soon detect violent behavior
If implanting employees with RFID chips violates practical HR policies, and rolling out eagle-eyed drones to monitor defensive behaviors seems a bit too intrusive, researchers at the University of Texas in Austin are hoping its smart surveillance system can lend a hand in detecting that pent-up rage. The "computer vision system" can reportedly analyze human movements as they occur, and distinguish between "friendly behaviors such as shaking hands, and aggressive actions like punching, pushing," or launching pocket rockets. The hope is that this creation will make the oh-so-platitudinal jobs of security guards even less demanding by alerting those on duty of violent fits automatically, curing the problem of sleeping through a battle royale in the east parking deck. Developers created the baseline by breaking down CCTV films and "examining the interplay of different clusters of pixels in order to classify interactions between individuals." The aptly-dubbed "semantic analysis" allows the software to assign a probability that a particular activity (like exchanging trade secrets) is being observed. While the current system has been "80 percent" accurate in testing, a computer vision guru at the University of Leeds, UK claims that it needs a bit of refinement before loosed in security bunkers, but it could probably thrive when keeping watch over those sure-to-be-tumultuous Wii demo kiosks.
Breakfast Topic: The crazy things we do
I've been having fun with sheep recently. Admittedly, I am Welsh, but I'm talking WoW -- and odd behaviour. While skilling up in Engineering I made several mechanical sheep; I tried making them attack nearby Horde players, who were thankfully laughing too much to retaliate. There's nothing like an angry sheep in the morning to get your blood boiling.I also wasted valuable minutes of my life repeatedly polymorphing a sheep, just to see what would happen. No prizes for guessing the result! So, what are some of the weirdest things you've found yourself doing in WoW -- with or without farm animals?
Breakfast Topic: Acts of cruelty
In stark contrast to yesterday's wonderful tales of altruism, today we're looking at the flipside -- unwarranted cruelty. Have you ever ganked someone just because you could? Pulled a quest mob knowing that those nearby would have to wait another 15 minutes for it to respawn? Given a newbie purposefully bad directions? Summoned people to their death?There are quite a few nasty tricks you can play on others in WoW, whether they deserve it or not. I like to think I'm a nice person, but I've done my share of "run in, get the named quest mob before anyone else can, run out" -- sometimes it's an easy way to finish a quest, as everyone nearby will fall on the mob in hope it becomes theirs. On the other hand, the excuse "everyone else is doing it" doesn't hold much weight amongst grown adults. What are your tales of cruelty and horror towards other WoW players? What's the worst trick you've fallen victim of?
