Random Thoughts

Metaplace: tiny personal virtual worlds like homepages
Posted by Cory Doctorow, January 20, 2008 10:32 PM | permalink to original post and comments at Boing Boing
The Technology Review has a great feature on Metaplace, a virtual world startup that aims to allow users to create tiny, individual multiplayer worlds that they can link together like homepages. I’m a huge fan of the founder, Raph Koster, who previously created Ultima Online and Star Wars Galaxies, and I love the idea of letting players shape their worlds in simple, easy-to-understand ways.

With Metaplace, designers can build worlds using a markup language, style sheets, modules, and a scripting language. Every world acts like a Web server, Koster says, and every object in a world has a URL. What this means for users of these worlds is that they can move seamlessly from the rest of the Web into the virtual world and back again, he says. A user can browse to any object in a Metaplace world from outside, and every object can be linked to the rest of the Web and exchange information with Web services. With this architecture, Koster says, he plans for users to be able to build worlds with games as simple as a two-dimensional Tetris game, or as complex as the World of Warcraft, a massive, multiplayer, online role-playing game. Users might also build widgets, such as a virtual weatherman who could deliver the latest news from weather.com, or a Coke machine that gives them a real-world coupon whenever they drink a virtual Coke. Koster says that users should be able to stage up a basic world with chat functionality and a map within about five minutes.

Koster envisions users coming to a Metaplace world by clicking on a link in a Web page. That link launches a page where the user finds herself inside a world, perhaps using a default avatar, but no log-in or registration is immediately required. “They don’t make you log in to play a YouTube video,” Koster points out.

The Metaplace client is basically a Flash application, he says, and, consequently, is available to nearly everyone who uses the Internet. Currently, Metaplace does not allow users to build 3-D worlds, but Koster says that he expects Flash to add 3-D capabilities in the near future. The client will work anywhere on the Web, and Koster adds that he hopes to see user-generated clients built for mobile devices such as iPhones.

Link (via Wonderland)

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Test hotel lets guests try new gadgets in lodging
University of Delaware’s Room 114 at the Courtyard by Marriott ‘room of the future’ with 17 experimental features
Article found via the Tennessean

In Room 114 at the Courtyard by Marriott hotel at the University of Delaware, it takes more than reaching over and pressing the snooze button to silence the alarm clock. In addition to bleating an ear-splitting tune at the designated wake-up time, the gadget rolls off the dresser and hides in a corner, forcing sleepy users to get out of bed.

The showerhead in the bathroom has 70 percent stronger water pressure than the average fixture, but it uses 70 percent less water.
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When visitors arrive, there’s no looking through a peephole. Instead of glass, the hole in the door contains a digital video camera connected to an LCD screen mounted on the inside of the door.

Room 114 at the Courtyard in Newark, Del., is unique for now, but researchers at the University of Delaware hope it won’t always be that way. They’re using the experimental “room of the future” to test new technology in a real hotel environment.

Guests’ feedback helps industry insiders figure out which gadgets should be rolled out at hotel chains worldwide and which need more work.

“It’s a living/learning lab of lodging technology,” said William Sullivan, managing director of the hotel.

With analysts expecting little, if any, increase recently in occupancy rates nationwide, hotels are looking for more creative ways to stand out in a crowded marketplace.

Since last year, for example, guests at the Gaylord Opryland Resort & Convention Center in Nashville have the option of getting recorded wake-up calls from country singers such as Kellie Pickler or Montgomery Gentry.

Owners of the Union Station Hotel in Nashville, meanwhile, recently completed a $10 million renovation that included the addition of high-definition TVs and clock radios with iPod docking stations.

But with Room 114, University of Delaware researchers are hoping to find even better ways to serve guests.
17 new features offered

Room 114 also features flameless electric candles, a digital picture frame and a bedside digital assistant that allows guests to control room temperature, lighting and a digital radio from under the covers.

Right now, Room 114 includes about 17 experimental features, worth a total of about $50,000. There are more are on the way — including an electronic wine chiller and a version of Nintendo’s Wii designed with hotels and business travelers in mind.

Some products will be removed eventually, others will take their places, and a few may return after changes.

Guests can stay in the X-room by choice, but some have been booked by chance. All are given a survey so the UD researchers and developers of the products can collect data about what travelers like and don’t like.

For example, guests complained that it was hard to figure out which of the six remotes operated which gadget.

Cihan Cobanoglu, an associate professor who co-manages the project, is hoping to develop a voice-recognition program that would control all of the machines.

While hotel rooms always contain the standard bed, desk and dresser, travelers’ increased reliance on technology is changing expectations.

“It used to be that we’d only have two electric outlets per room,” said Sullivan, the hotel’s director, but today’s travelers need more.
Cleaner beds sought

Sullivan said technology can be a powerful marketing tool for hotels because certain features may persuade travelers to seek out a particular chain.

Increasingly, travelers are interested in hotels with all the comforts of home, he said.

The Courtyard-Newark is testing a stain-resistant mattress cover from W.L. Gore on all beds, including Room 114.

“You used to see all of those 20/20 stories about hotel bedspreads, and the hotel said they needed to get rid of spreads. Now the bedding is changed every day,” Sullivan said. “It’s a lot better sleeping experience.”

Wendy Lee of The Tennessean contributed to this story.

Is this true?

A Chemical That Improves Memory (and Cures Loneliness)
from: http://io9.com/347030/a-chemical-that-improves-memory-and-cures-loneliness

Social isolation makes people stressed out and forgetful, but soon a drug could cure this problem. Late last year, scientists isolated a brain enzyme that triggers the “loneliness” feelings during periods of solitude. Replenishing that enzyme in the brain could enhance memory and relieve stress when you’re spending a lot of time by yourself working (or space traveling).

Researchers at the University of Illinois kept several mice in isolation from each other to see what chemical changes took place in their brains. Turns out the lonely mice experienced reduced levels of a brain enzyme that helps create a stress-relieving neurosteroid called allopregnanolone. A release from the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science, where the researchers’ paper was published, explained:

Such alterations in the synthesis of allopregnanolone may account for the anxiety, aggression, and memory impairments that result from social isolation, the authors suggest.

It’s possible that boosting the enzyme that helps create allopregnanolone could relieve feelings of loneliness that trigger memory blocks. Or perhaps simply administering allopregnanolone would do it too. Either way, further research might uncover a drug that would make it possible for humans to undergo intensive periods of aloneness without going mad.

Image is of a fluorescent neuron.

I know there have been a lot of new developments lately, including a hormone or chemical or something that erases the need for sleep, and genes that may cause addictions. IS this true too?

Study: Online privacy concerns increase
from yahoo news / AP
By ANICK JESDANUN, AP Internet Writer 1 hour, 15 minutes ago

NEW YORK - Privacy concerns stemming from online shopping rose in 2007, a new study finds, as the loss or theft of credit card information and other personal data soared to unprecedented levels.
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Sixty-one percent of adult Americans said they were very or extremely concerned about the privacy of personal information when buying online, an increase from 47 percent in 2006. Before last year, that figure had largely been dropping since 2001.

People who do not shop online tend to be more worried, as are newer Internet users, regardless of whether they buy things on the Internet, according to the survey from the University of Southern California’s Center for the Digital Future.

The study, to be released Thursday, comes as privacy and security groups report that an increasing number of personal records are being compromised because of data breaches at online retailers, banks, government agencies and corporations.

The Identity Theft Resource Center, for instance, listed more than 125 million records reported compromised in the United States last year. That’s a sixfold increase from the nearly 20 million records reported in 2006.

Data breaches often result from lost or stolen computer equipment such as laptops, though the single largest breach was a case of online hacking. Early last year, TJX Cos. disclosed that a data theft had exposed tens of millions of credit and debit cards to potential fraud.

The card numbers were typically collected during brick-and-mortar retail transactions at T.J. Maxx, Marshalls and other TJX chains. The breach is believed to have started when hackers intercepted wireless transfers of customer information at two Marshalls stores in Miami — an entry point that led the hackers to eventually break into TJX’s central databases.

Nonetheless, concerns about credit card security have largely stabilized, with 57 percent very or extremely concerned last year. It was 53 percent in 2006, a difference within the survey’s margin of sampling error of 3 percentage points in either direction.

As of 2007, two-thirds of adult Internet users shop online, compared with just half a year earlier. Most spend $100 or less a month, and two-thirds of online shoppers have reduced buying at brick-and-mortar stores.

“You’d think the logical attitude would be to look at this level of concern and say I’m not going to shop on the Web, but it’s not happening,” said Jeff Cole, director of the Center for the Digital Future. “The advantages, the conveniences are so extraordinary.”

With credit card fraud, a customer’s liability is capped at $50, and even that amount is often waived. Customers often know of fraudulent charges quickly if they check their accounts online or are notified by their banks, which have security measures in place to flag suspicious transactions.

Identity theft, on the other hand, can take months and sometimes years to find out about and resolve, Cole said, possibly explaining the greater concern over privacy.

Among other findings in the annual survey, online parents are more likely than ever to withhold Internet use as punishment — 62 percent in 2007, compared with 47 percent a year earlier and 32 percent in 2000. For the first time, denying Internet access is on par with banning television for bad behavior.

“What we’ve seen over those seven years is parents really now seeing that the Internet has lots of great stuff on it and can be really important, but also can be a time waster,” Cole said. “They view it much closer to the way they see television.”

Nearly two-thirds of parents, meanwhile, worry about kids participating in online communities and about half believe online predators to be a threat, notwithstanding other research showing fewer youths receiving sexual solicitations over the Internet as they become smarter about where they hang out and with whom they communicate online.

“The perception is higher than reality, but the perception is significant and leads to how much access you give your kids and whether you let them (surf) unsupervised,” Cole said.

Internet penetration continues to show signs of plateauing. The percentage of former users who say they have no intention of going back online continues to increase, and less than half of those who have never used the Internet plan to log on in the coming year.

Newer users are more likely than veterans to access the Internet through a dial-up connection, and newer users tend to spend an average of 1.2 hours a week more than veterans playing online games. Veterans are more likely to read a newspaper or listen to the radio over the Internet.

Twenty-one percent of Internet users have stopped a newspaper or magazine subscription because they could get it online, while half of the Americans who read a print edition of the paper said they would miss it if it were to go away.

The study of 2,021 Americans was conducted Feb. 28 to Aug. 6, with participants selected randomly by telephone.