Dragon Quest VIII Coming To Nintendo 3DS
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[image: Dragon Quest VIII Coming To Nintendo 3DS]
Square Enix has opened a teaser site revealing that Dragon Quest VIII:
Journey of the Cursed King will be ...
Thanks to OStatus, Statusnet / Identica has become more than just a microblogging platform. It's a way to follow other social networks right in the comfort of your Stautsnet / Identica site.
As of the moment, Statusnet 0.9.2 can only follow these sites. Take it from me when I say that the Livejournal following does not work at all, but I read they're working on it.
If you want to follow people in Tumblr, Posterous, or Google Buzz, then follow the instructions below:
Open the Posterous/Tumblr/Google Buzz Profile site you want to follow
Copy the URL
Open your Statusnet or Identi.ca page
Go to Subscriptions
Click on Remote
Paste the URL you copied
Click on "Continue"
Click on "Confirm"
Easy as that and you'll be seeing their posts soon! However, only Google Buzz posts with notes before the Google Reader shares and direct inputs will appear.
After reading Kurt Starne's article on Going Native In The Age Of Aggregation, I knew there were people like I who are tired of jumping hoops, making social network services connect with each other, and seeing duplicates in the same sites. I used to do a one clicksharing to the SNS world, but doing that just made my sites feel like soup with too much water in it.
In response, I'm thinking of approaching these sites like how I would write for blogs: niche sharing. Niche sites cater to a community that has particular needs and interests (example, MMORPG.com is for MMO gamers, TechCrunch is for techies and gadget lovers, etc.). Looking at my main SNS (Twitter, Identi.ca, Facebook, and Plurk), I see a trend in my audience's interests and shares that will be the basis of what I'm going to share with them.
Just because something seems good now doesn't mean it'll be good in a few weeks.
Always keep a positive outlook that things will change for the better, with or without that service/product.
Allods Online: Massive Multiplayer Online Fail?
Allods Online was to be one of THE BEST MMORPG OF 2010, until they unveiled the Cash Shop. Saying that the items for sale there is overpriced can be considered as a massive understatement. For example, a bag costs $20--$5 more than a monthly MMO subscription that offers everything.
The forum has been covered in flameposts and threats of boycotting that any questions about builds and questing questions are almost non-existent. Some of it's premier players have voiced out their disgust at the current events and are now contemplating of leaving the game (with their entire guild) entirely.
Buzz: Google's Waterloo?
Google Buzz was supposed to be one of the best social network services that will make Twitter/Facebook/etc. make a run for their money. But instead their lack of filtering features, user control, and security flaws have deemed it to be a failure. It's coincidental that Buzz was created in Waterloo, closely named in the phrase, "meet one's Waterloo": a word signifying a great test with a final and decisive outcome- usually a negative one.
Both situations are at their worst tight now, but we've all been through this before: a service starts good, but ends up worse. Yet there are some services/products that have gone through these things and ended up better than originally thought.
Let's give them both a chance to do a strategic retreat and recover their losses.
With both Robert Scoble and Jason Calcanis (and Steve Rubel thinking of) stopping their Tweets from entering Google Buzz, they have joined the movement of lessening the noise on the said social network.
All these actions remind me of the theory of Dunbar's Number which states that the number of social interaction is limited to 150 only because:
"this limit is a direct function of relative neocortex size, and that this in turn limits group size ... the limit imposed by neocortical processing capacity is simply on the number of individuals with whom a stable inter-personal relationship can be maintained."
Whatever the "right" number would be, I have no clue, but reducing the massive number of people you follow to what you can handle is essential in making your social network really work for you.
I'll be posting soon on how I will do this on ALL of my social networks. There might even be some social sites that I will totally leave in order to put some sort of order in all of this noise and chaos.
I am a big fan of Google. I love Chrome, Reader, Wave and almost anything else Google ( I even have an Orkut account for pete's sakes), however their newest foray into the socialsphere, Google Buzz, needs to be overhauled immediately.
On the first two days (gosh, even on the Q & A portion of the Google Buzz launch), all I read was how it was almost like Friendfeed. However, I consider Google Buzz as Friendfeed vanilla ultra lite. It doesn't even come close to what Friendfeed is today even after its creators left for Facebook.
A large concern for its early users was the security flaw that opened up their Google Profiles to outside people to look at who their contacts are and who they chat most with. With so much noise on this issue, Google has decided to do something about it by emphasizing the option to have the people you follow and contact with remain private.
My personal concern here is how to reign in all the noise. For example: I'm a Robert Scoble follower because I like reading his status updates but his Buzzes (jeesh even his Friendfeed posts before) gets quite a lot of responses that it keeps popping on top of the Buzz list that I fail to see other Buzzes below. I know it's a testament to the man's power to connect with a lot of people, but I'm now muting his lengthy buzzes just to read the other people I'm following. I'm not sure if he likes being muted by hundreds of people, but I definitely won't like it.
There's no way to categorize people I follow. Reading my Buzz list is like reading a newspaper that updates itself every few minutes and not knowing whether I'm at the Sports or Business page. Again, comparing to my Friendfeed experience, I was able to sort out the noise by putting people I follow in different categories thus allowing me to view them whenever I feel like it. Unlike in Google Buzz now where different topics pop up, making me feel disoriented.
Since Google Buzz is still a few days old, I expect it to make strides in its development, but until they've been able to put in user controls that makes the noise easier to organize, I'll be hanging out somewhere else.
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