social networking
Latest
Animal Crossing MMO for the Wii confirmed
Our good friends at Joystiq are reporting that Edge, a European gaming magazine, has confirmed that the next version of the realtime animal friends/life simulator Animal Crossing will be a "social networking MMO" for the Wii. This had been rumored before, and it really shouldn't be a surprise to anyone who's ever played Animal Crossing-- raises hand for both the DS and the Gamecube-- as it already works more or less as an MMO, and taking the whole thing to the next level will just make it that much more addictive as a game. And it will be fun to see what Nintendo does with social networking and the MMO format.Of course, this probably also means that we'll have to start working the graveyard shift coming up with bells for that slum lord Nook again. That shifty raccoon is a slave driver, you hear me? A slave driver! At least now we'll be able to commiserate virtually together.
Google almost certainly creating multi-user virtual world
World of Googlecraft? GoogleQuest? Pirates of the Google Sea? No, really. It could happen. Sort of.Apparently Google isn't satisfied with how massive it is already; the tech juggernaut might be developing a virtual online world. Okay, so it probably won't really be an MMORPG per say, but it could be something similar to Second Life. Rumors of the project have been gaining momentum for a while now, and we here at Massively are laying out all the evidence right here for you to see.
Blue Mars sneak preview
We had a chance to sit down with Avatar Reality's VP of Development, Li-han Chen, at E for All to get some details about their recently announced title, Blue Mars. Set on a futuristic, terraformed Mars circa 2177 AD, the world will be far more akin to something like Second Life than like other more typical MMOs; in fact, the company is calling Blue Mars a "massively multiplayer virtual world," or MMVW, in lieu of labeling it specifically as a game world. Two main mechanics will separate Blue Mars from SL: a suite of pre-programmed in-game activities (minigames, essentially) to provide a framework for socialization, and no user-generated content -- all environments and objects in the world will be coded by third party developers. By the time Blue Mars enters closed beta at the end of 2008, Honolulu-based Avatar Reality hopes to have at least 3 of these minigames developed and ready for testing. With golf and vehicle racing listed as two of the activities, it seems clear that Blue Mars is going to cater to the more casual side of the gaming audience. If combat exists at all in the world, it will be relegated to specifically designated areas -- the core mechanic is casual socialization. Perhaps paradoxically, the game is going to be aimed at users with high-end machines and graphics cards (Quad Core CPU and GeForce 8800 or better) in order to feature the CryENGINE2-rendered "breathtaking graphics."%Gallery-9463%
Wakoopa for iPhone keeps tabs on web apps
Reader Robert sent me a note to tell us that his startup site, Wakoopa (which, I was sorry to note, has nothing to do with Mario's enemies) has created a section specifically for (and compatible with) the iPhone.Wakoopa is a social network of sorts that lets you discuss and recommend different software applications for various platforms. If you like using Firefox, for example, you can discuss that and track your use of it, and your software preferences get displayed for anyone to see. Just like Slife, I'm thrilled by the information available here, but not so sure I want to participate myself.But the iPhone site is pretty useful as a directory. From the browser, it's a little slow to navigate through, but the real genius of it appears on the iPhone itself at i.wakoopa.com. As Robert told me, it's basically like Apple's web app directory, but easy to browse where you actually need to find and access web apps for the iPhone.The implementation on the iPhone works well, and if nothing else, you can bookmark just one page and be able to access all the popular apps right from there. These web apps still aren't any substitute for a real SDK, but you need something to hold you over until February, right? I think the stuff at the top of Wakoopa's list is about as sweet as this solution is going to get.
VoIP comes to MySpace through Skype partnership
Skype and MySpace -- that just sounds like a match made in heaven, no? If you're still scratching your head on how the two actually fit together, here's the low down: a new partnership between the pair will soon allow MySpace members to dial up other users by simply clicking a button in their profile. Of course, this is assuming you can actually find the aforementioned button in all of the site's clutter, but we digress. Starting in November, the service will reach users in some 20 countries around the globe, and while vanilla PC-to-PC calls will obviously be gratis, "premium options" such as personal phone numbers, voice mail, call forwarding and PC-to-landline / mobile calls will have an undisclosed pricetag attached. Welcome to a whole new realm of shock callin'.
Slife updates interface, adds social networking in 1.3
We wrote about the 1.0 of Slife in February, and I thought it was a fascinating application-- there's nothing you look at more every single day than what you do with your own life, and yet here's a piece of software that lets you look at how you spend your time in a different, more objective way.And now they've sent word that Slife has entered version 1.3, with numerous additions to the interface. The program can now work in the background, and apparently it no longer has to scan your hard drive for all the different applications to track-- if a new app shows up in your usage, it'll start tracking it automatically. They've also added a few social networking options (which sounds like a better idea than an actual feature to me-- do I really want people knowing how much time I spend playing World of Warcraft?) with their Slifeshare service. You can track your friends' activities, even down to what app they're using at the moment.But while I'm personally not interested in completely sharing my pastimes (I'm sure there's an option to turn it off), I do really like the idea of the program, and I love the abilities it gives you to take a close look at exactly what you do on your computer when. Slife is available as a free trial (will track 3 apps), or as a full application for $34.
AOL plans WoW social network at wow.com
Those of us who have ever tried to buy a domain know what I'm about to talk about. All those really great, short, three-to-five letter domain names are taken. You may think you've thought of something nobody else would use, but as soon as you run to your web host of choice and type it into the search box your dreams are shattered as you discover it's already registered to someone else.Over the course of it's many corporate acquisitions over the years, AOL has obviously picked up the ownership of a premium domain name or two. One of them -- wow.com -- was acquired when they took ownership of the remaining assets of Compuserve many years ago. In its article posted this morning, Techcrunch.com reveals that AOL has decided to pull wow.com out of mothballs and use it as a social networking site for World of Warcraft players.I guess this is one instance of patience paying off. They've owned this domain for what appears to be a very long time, and now they've found a great use for it. All I know is that if America Online has decided to take this on, they will do a fantastic job. I'm looking forward to seeing how they execute this plan.Oh. And I should probably take a moment to "do the voice" of that guy who reads the fine print really fast at the end of the car commercials and say "WoW Insider is a part of the Weblogs Inc. blogging network which is owned by America Online."
Subsume: Facebook updates via Growl and Address Book
If you're looking for the 'next thing' with which to boost your Facebook ninja status, Subsume just might be it. Right now it's an alpha so it's a little rough around the edges, but it primarily displays updates from your Facebook friends with Growl, a TUAW favorite that allows applications to display useful popup alerts when something happens (your song changes in iTunes, new email arrives, a buddy goes offline, etc.). Setting up Subsume is easy, just like with any other app that hooks into Facebook; you're taken to a Facebook login that prompts you for your credentials (if you aren't logged in already), then Facebook asks you to authorize Subsume to display your info. At an interval that Subsume's site doesn't describe yet (remember: it's an alpha folks), the app will check your Facebook account for any status updates from your friends, then display them in Growl's handy, unobtrusive update alerts. For the Facebook obsessed, this could turn out to be a great app that keeps you on top of what's going on without having to keep some kind of a window always open and taking up space.Subsume is provided as free for now at subsume.info. I should note that the developer, Jacob Jay, developers one of my favorite picture sharing utilities: PictureSync, which we've mentioned on TUAW a few times before.
Panasonic "Pixi" cellphone picture dock is designed for social networking, idiots
We're not certain it needs to get any easier to post compromising photos to social networking sites, but apparently Panasonic's R&D labs think it's a problem in need of a giant, garish solution: say hello to the Pixi, a concept cellphone dock / cameraphone companion designed to send photos directly from your mobile to mixi, a Japanese MySpace clone. Sliding your phone into the Pixi automatically brings up your photos, and then configuring your phone and sending those latest bleary-eyed bar pics to the web is as simple as smacking one of the six touch-sensitive icons on the unit. Of course, you won't be doing this on the sly -- the unit's bright red shell with carnival-style LED chaser lights might tip off your companions, but if you can't figure out how to email photos to a website from a modern phone, you probably deserve the scorn. Check a video of the concept Pixi in action after the jump.
MoodSwing multi-status utility: Now in convenient menubar dosage
Attention all ye users of Adium, Skype, iChat, Twitter, Facebook and Jaiku - Brett Terpstra has struck again with MoodSwing, his excellent utility for updating your status across all these apps and services. Why do I call it a utility instead of just a Quicksilver action, you ask? Because Brett is now providing both the original action and a new full-blown menubar app - at the request of TUAW readers - called MoodBlast. Both now live on the same download page at Brett's Circle Six Design blog, and they both allow you to update your status across all the aforementioned services at once. While MoodSwing is an action you set-and-forget to work with Quicksilver (though you can reconfigure later), an advantage of the MoodBlast menubar app is that you're presented with the UI you see above every time you activate it, with any services you used previously already selected for updating. The other advantage of the MoodBlast app, of course, is that you don't need Quicksilver in order to minimize the effort spent for online socialization.As with his other excellent projects, Brett Terpstra provides MoodSwing and MoodBlast as donationware.
Nokia acquires Twango, gets deeper into media sharing
Nokia is once again shouting that it wants to be a major player in the mobile media sharing arena by acquiring Twango. If you're big into sharing pictures, video and other digital garb, you may know Twango (founded by former Microsoft employees). And since Nokia sold over 140 million connected digicams (almost all cellphone-based) in 2006, it makes sense for the company to ensure customers are, you know, using all that mobile multimedia goodness as much as possible. Nokia's Multimedia division head puts it great: "the Twango acquisition is a concrete step towards our Internet services vision of providing seamless access to information, entertainment, and social networks - at anytime, anywhere, from any connected device, in any way that you choose."
MyCyberTwin knows why you cry, but it's something it can never do
An Australian company has grand plans to reinvent the lowly chatbot by giving it a little personality -- yours. And no, it's not just for messing with your friends. MyCyberTwin is a chat robot designed to be easily programmable by ordinary users. The 'bot accepts high-level input in the form of detailed questionnaires about politics, religion, and sex, as well as the answers to any questions you might anticipate it being asked, like "What are you doing on Saturday?" The idea is that you'll install the chat widget on your blog or MySpace profile, and then visitors can talk to "you" based on what you've programmed into the 'bot. But besides the thorny problem of managing an army of emo MySpace robots, the MyCyberTwin people seem to have overlooked the obvious name for their product: with endless online relationship questions and politics quizzes plus the thrill of filling out personality profiles, this thing is just begging to be called MyFreshmanDorm.[Via TechnologyReview]
Online gaming to become MySpace?
Nielsen Media Research released their newest Active Gamer Study a few days ago, and according to the new stats more than 56% of the 117 million gamers in the U.S. spend at least five hours a week gaming socially in places like Xbox Live, World of Warcraft, and on WiFi platforms such as the PlayStation Portable and the Nintendo DS. Social gaming reaches more gamers every year with the addition of new hardware and games that allow people to compete or cooperate online. Last week's episode of The Office featured Jim and his coworkers playing Call of Duty, and South Park showed us the evils of WoW, which only attests to the growing popularity of both. If you've ever doubted the popularity of social gaming, you need to read about how our very own Christopher Grant got some ass within moments of hooking up his Xbox Vision Camera.Social networking in the U.S. is currently dominated by MySpace, where more than half of its 90 million U.S. users are over the age of 35. As social gaming and networking continue to grow, their areas of influence are bound to overlap. Companies would love to sink their teeth into a demographic that uses their product for more then five hours a week, and users want an online experience that puts them in touch with with old and new friends, while pimping themselves out. Don't be surprised when your gamertag turns into your MySpace page, complete with sparkling stars, unicorns, and a Ben Kweller song that starts playing at full volume immediately upon loading.You only have a few months until My SecondLifeSpace of Warcraft Live is released worldwide by Rupert Murdoch, don't tell us you weren't warned.
Get your social network on with Spyder
Spyder is an interesting concept: an app that leverages the APIs of allows you interact with and manage social networks from within the power of the Mac OS X environment. If you're a chronic social networker, Spyder might (eventually) allow you to speed up your obsessive profile checks so you have a better chance at getting outside for once. The reason I say 'eventually,' however, is because Spyder isn't without its shortcomings.First and foremost is the fact that the language at Spyder's site makes it sound like it will (eventually) work with more than one network, but for now, it only shakes hands with MySpace. While it allows users to manage more than one account (for example: if you run a band or an org in addition to a personal account), it doesn't let you do much more than browse friends and their friends, send messages and leave comments. No blogging, no iPhoto integration for picture posting, no vlogging, etc. While these missing features (hopefully) might arrive in a future version, there is still the glaring problem of price: Spyder is $40. Now I'm not really a fan of MySpace (though yes, I succumbed to peer pressure and opened an account in the hopes of silencing my friends), but $40 sounds way, way too high of a price for the minimal convenience it offers above going directly to the site itself. I could see $10, maybe $15, but $20 and above for Spyder - in its current state of minimal, MySpace-only features - is just too much to ask. I think the developer would get a lot more attention if he/she offered the app at a discounted price during its present feature-maturing state, while simultaneously promoting what features are coming, and how the price will increase through development (commercialism 101: people love a sale, and they love to know what they can get for their money in the near future). I've seen other developers have success with this open promotion and development method, and Spyder could really capitalize on this due to the relative cornering of its particular market; I've never seen another (potentially) full-fledged social networking app like this.Long story short: Spyder is a great idea and it has a lot of potential, but I can easily see its price knocking it off many potential customers' wishlists. It will be interesting to see how Spyder evolves in the future.[Update: readers have noted in the comments that MySpace, for some mind-boggling reason, doesn't have an API, while others like Facebook, Flickr and Upcoming do, making it much easier for 3rd parties to make apps like this. My gut reaction as to why Spyder stuck with MySpace for its launch is probably because of its massive popularity.]
Live Anywhere bad news for gaming IM
Being able to seamlessly connect with your friends while playing games is becoming increasingly important, both to gamers and to games companies. Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony all emphasised the importance of online as well as offline play, but Microsoft's announcement of Live Anywhere must surely have struck a nerve with a few niche companies.Niche up till now, that is. Companies like Viacom and Verizon who are heavily investing in the gaming IM space -- bringing social networking and gaming closer together -- are now in direct competition with a company that can reach multiple platforms easily. By connecting Xbox Live, Windows Vista, MSN Messenger and mobile phones together, Microsoft will make it hard for others to encroach on their territory.
Jambo, Social Networking Tool at MWSF
I'll never forget the first Mac conference I attended where we all used SubEthaEdit to collaboratively take notes during presentations and lectures. It was exciting to see software used in such a refreshingly new way.%uFFFD The social aspect of working together to evolve a working document was fascinating to me.And so I'm bummed that I won't be able to witness what Jambo Networks will be doing at January's Macworld Expo. They've created an application that you can download to your computer which will help you to interact with other attendees."You can download the Jambo application to your PowerBook or iBook to discover other attendees you want to meet that are in proximity, wherever you happen to be. Jambo can detect like-minded attendees throughout Moscone Center, your hotel, the airport, or up to 5 or 6 blocks away from wherever you are. Jambo can even discover other attendees on your same airplane flight too, since Jambo works online and offline."This is exciting. For me, Mac conferences have always been about social networking. I love meeting people that share my same passion and hobby. Anything that can help facilitate that social aspect of a conference is a plus i n my book. Perhaps one of our lucky TUAW bloggers attending the conference will do a review of the software during the conference [I look in Scott and Laurie's general direction].
