Dipity Timelines

My experience with Dipity was overall, a good one. Once i had setup an account, the timeline was right there, ready to go. It was very easy to navigate the user interface and everything worked fairly smoothly. The only issues i had with it were some technical ones that could be easily fixed with some tweaks to the code behind the timeline programs. I think the fact that i used a Mac (which uses a special type of Java) contributed to the minor imperfections in the Dipity interface. When finishing adding an event, the function "Save and Add Another" didn't work; it only saved. Not the biggest deal but continually repeating the mundane task of finding and clicking the add event button can get a little boring. Other things included the disappearance of some of the events when clicking "View Timeline in Fullscreen." I suspected that i did not give the most recent events time enough to load onto the real timeline (Vs. my personal view timeline) and therefore did not show up in the fullscreen. After a couple refreshes,they eventually showed up. Another attribute of the UI that caught me off guard was the minimization of smaller events that were too close to other events. I just didn't expect it and it scared me for a quick second.

Interactive Timelines can be extremely useful in the future for things like tracking personal illness for medical use, tracking expenditures for personal or business finance, or tracking your movements over time on a vacation or other travel. Since time is always running, the possibilities are endless.

Kirk Hansen Genealogy on Dipity.

The Future of Society

If we can say one thing about the future, it's that it will definitely be integrated with social networking technology. I like the idea of a device worn like a pair of glasses, or even neural implants that can enhance your natural vision, that enhance reality and annotate everything you see with basic information about it. Users can choose what information they want to portray about themselves and what information they want to see, if any, about others. Everything will be interwoven and controlled by the mind. You think about what the specials are at a local restaurant you like and the menu pops up in your HUD. You like what you see and decide to make a reservation, that's when a timetable of available reservations for the restaurant pops up and you choose what time you want to arrive and with how many people. You can even pre-order your food and have it be ready when you arrive to save time, all while walking home from work. Certain safety devices will have to be implemented, like the device turns off while driving in a vehicle, but the vehicle can still display important road information on a designated section of the windshield. Cell phone type services will go hand in hand with this device and cell phone numbers will be a thing of the past. Instead, you will just be calling a person, not their number. Texting and all the other great technology associated with cell phones today will be included in the device. Another aspect of the device will be crime. As long as authorities can identify a suspect, they can track him using his implants and, although a probably controversial subject, even possibly be able to "shut him down" and put him into a deep sleep for easier apprehension. The future of social networking is extremely bright and i think there are possibilities out there that no one has even though of yet and will hopefully one day become a great asset to our society. The faster information moves, the better society functions and when everything is connected and information moves freely and at the speed of light between all people and things, anything is possible.

Design Analysis of Plancast

I joined a new social networking service today by the name of Plancast. It's a service much like Twitter but instead of proclaiming what you are currently doing, you post any future plans that you may have so that others can see what you will be doing and decide whiter they can/want to join you for your plan. A friend that i work with designed the company logo and he lives with the guys that invented and developed the idea. It may not be the most unique idea since it's roughly based on the Twitter idea but it's still very clever none-the-less. Like Twitter, people can follow you and you can follow others and every time that someone posts a new plan of theirs, anyone that is following them can see the plan and meet up with the friend when the plan occurs. The person that posts the plan writes a small description of what will be happening along with location, time, and any other relevant information. Others that want to join can click the "count me in" button and be included. They can also write comments on the posts of events to ask any questions about the event. It's a really neat idea thats just started getting off the ground running. It's very easy to setup an account. Just visit the site, choose a screen name and password, and your in. You can choose a picture to be your avatar for any posts you make and theres eve an iPhone app for the service, so you can be in the know on the go. Your home page on the site is very simple; it shows your info at the left and any upcoming plans that the people your following have on the right. The service isn't very popular yet so it hasn't been corrupted with ads or anything so the user interface is still fresh and clean. In order to be socially successful in this service, you must have your actual friends following you. A cool feature it has is the search function for finding your friends. You can connect to Facebook, Twitter, or your e-mail and it will find people in your contact lists that use the service and allow you to start following. That way people you actually know and will enjoy hanging out with show up to your events. It's a very cool service with a lot of potential and hopefully it will take off in the near future.

My History with a Digital Society

My first experience with social networking was in 6^th grade when I attempted to create a Geocities site from a template. Long story short, not many of the features worked a smoothly as I had hoped if at all and after a few hours of trying, I gave up. Things like getting 3 pictures to show up separately in each of the templates 3 picture slots proved impossible, not to mention that none of my friends were experimenting with Geocities. At the point I was testing it out, to my knowledge, it wasn’t really a social networking thing yet. It was more of a build-your-own website type of service which intrigued me, but again, technical difficulties made me lose interest quickly.

My next venture into social networking was when most of my friends were first experiencing the idea, in 7^th grade with the advent of AIM. Now we didn’t have to talk to each other on the phone, we just logged onto AOL Instant Messenger and chatted away. It my first real taste of the disconnection the Internet can inflict on us. On AIM you were pretty much free to bash on anyone else and the magic of the Internet somehow protected us from harm.

When high school came into the picture, so did MySpace, my first experience with social networking as we know it today, with profiles, messages, bulletins, and all that other good stuff that make up the stereotypical social networking site. I was one of the hold out kids that didn’t care for it at the beginning and was finally coaxed into getting one. Once you have one, it’s hard to stop though and at that point I was hooked.

Once a senior in high school, with college right around the corner, Facebook made its debut into my life. It was MySpace but “cleaner.” It was fresh, clean, and somehow more mature. It had all the same mainstay features that MySpace had plus a few more. After Facebook, most people start listening to little birds and not caring what they have to say. Twitter tends to go hand-in-hand with Facebook and these are the only two I currently use.

Geocities was never really a full time thing, just an afternoon of experimenting. MySpace became too overpopulated and buggy to keep trying to deal with and after Facebook came around, MySpace was left in the dust. With the advent of texting, AIM mostly faded into the past. I use Facebook on a daily basis and usually post a tweet every couple days. I enjoy social networking and it has become an integral part of our society that most people take for granted.

The Belief is in the Binary

1. In the in-game HUD, there are multiple text-based items that provide you with information. The most used text-based tool is the chat window located in the lower left corner of the screenshot. Here is where you look to read what other players in your team or area are saying and also where you can communicate back to them. Another text-based tool is the target window in the upper left corner of the window. Whatever enemy you have targeted, this is where you'll find information on what level he is, what rank he is, and who he is associated with. a third text-based tool is the names of players in your immediate area. Each character that you can physically see in your immediate area has their name floating above their head, so you can easily identify who they are.
2. Non-text-based tool include the color of the floating names above each characters head. For player controlled characters the name is usually blue unless they are a member of your team, then their name is green. For enemies, the color of their name reflects their level compared to yours. Gray means they are below your level, green is equal, yellow is 1 or 2 above your level, and pink is 3 or more. Fighting pinks on your own is a dangerous endeavor. Another non-text-based tool is the target box that surrounds whoever you have targeted. Whenever you target someone, a box forms around them that can be seen from anywhere in the area (even across the map through buildings and other obstructions). A third non-text-based tool is the power window in the bottom right corner of the screen. It contains rows of powers that are represented by icons for each power you can use. Each slot has a keyboard shortcut attached to it for quicker use of powers, or you can just click the icon.
3. Color plays an important roll in the interface design of the game as color tells you how hard an enemy is, who is on your team, and it differentiates all the chat channels in the chat window (gray for broadcast, green for team, yellow for a personal message). It also tells you if something is full (the name of whatever is full will turn red to indicate that you have reached the maximum amount of whatever item you have). Position also plays a major roll in this game as it is a free world type game so there's no specific path to follow, you have to determine your position on the map and move yourself to the goal. Sound, like in any game, allows the game to seem more real. Each power makes a different noise when used, and any cut scenes you watch have audible conversations with NPC's (non-player-characters).
4. When you first build a character, you can choose to enter a tutorial zone to teach you the basics of the game. In the tutorial zone you receive items that you wouldn't otherwise and gain enough experience points to level up by the end and get a new power immediately. You are then introduced to your first contact who gives you easy missions to complete to level up a little more. Once you have 15 or so levels under your belt, the game gets interesting. You can choose who you want as contacts and what missions to do. A casual player like myself has never actually gone through the maze of contacts and missions that the game gives you, i just play with other peoples teams doing whatever mission they happen to have. The game really encourages playing by providing a level system where you have to fight and gain experience points in order to level up and get stronger and learn new powers. Other incentives include getting money from each kill and badges for various achievements and accomplishments. Some badges even give you small but cool powers that can give you a slight edge in any battle.
5. The biggest feature of this game that makes it immersive is the environment. Since it is a free world environment, you can go just about anywhere and do just abut anything. Giving the player control over his actions makes the game very fun and immersive. The socialization with other characters and the creating of teams and supergroups (a sort of club of players that usually play together and even have a supergroup base) also makes the game more real. the ability to talk to other real people,not just talking robots, really draws you in. The biggest thing that breaks the immersion feeling is the interface HUD used to play the game. It crowds the viewing area and is a constant reminder that you are in front of a computer screen. The graphics aren't the greatest thing ever either, so when everything looks unreal, the feeling is unreal.
6. Socializing with other avatars is easy. If you are in a certain area, just type something into the broadcast chat channel, and everyone else in the same area can read and respond to it. To keep it more private, the local chat channel only displays the text to people in your immediate area or the team chat only displays the text to your team members, wherever they are. To get really private, you can send a tell to someone (a private message that only they see). To search for a team to play on, i usually send a broadcast message to the area that says what class i am, what level i am, and that i'm looking for a team (LFT). The name isn't important because each message in the chat window is next to the name of the person that sent it. Sometimes i get immediate team invites but if you are playing on one of the games 10 servers that isn't very populated at the moment, it can be hard to find anybody that is willing to talk.
7. The economy of City of Heroes is ingenious. Every time you kill someone you get infinity (the monetary unit in this world) that can be spent at stores for upgrades to your powers, spent at the Wentworth market to buy items that other players are selling, or to pay for modifications to one of your characters costumes. You can even directly trade items or money with other characters.
8. My favorite in-world activity is teaming and doing missions because you gain a lot of experience points, gain entertainment from the mission storyline, and get to socialize with your other teammates throughout the entire ordeal. The most fun i have is when i team with the people that got me into the game originally. I have four real life friends that play the game and I often play in the game with them.
9. Items in the game are all operated by clicking. At the Wentworth's store, you click on one of the salesmen to bring up the buying/selling window where you can search for what you want and bid money on it. Many functions have keyboard shortcuts for them (power use, targeting, chatting, etc.) but for the most part, other than movement, the game is mostly conducted using the mouse.
10. The biggest part of this game is spacial navigation. Except for a few exceptions, you have to navigate your character through the virtual area to get to your objective. Since it is a free movement type game, each area is strikingly detailed with the addition of roads, trains, trees, grass, and multiple building to move through and around, with varying landscapes of ways to navigate the world. An entire power set in the game is devoted to travel powers with four different types, teleportation, super speed, super jumping, and flight. Each has advantages and disadvantages but the virtual lay of the land is a wonder to behold in itself. The developers of the game spent a long time designing each area and they all came out wonderfully. And although there are enemies spread out throughout the land, it is very easy to avoid them and navigate peacefully. If the enemies are far weaker than you, they won't even bother you if you walk right up to them, therefore allowing each character to successfully discover every inch of an area to their hearts desire. Although the graphics aren't amazing yet, it is still fun to search around the area for cool new things and funny oddities that the devs purposefully put in. The developers are actually working on an upgrade coming soon that will make the graphics rather incredible comparatively (reflections on windows and water and even day cycles with accurate movement of the sun and moon) and a whole new aspect of the game that allows heroes to become villains, villains to become heroes, or the ability to sit in the middle as a rogue. It's an exciting new endeavor and i, and many others, can't wait to see it.

Virtual Social Event

City of Heroes may be an action fighting game but just about every aspect of the game is designed for socialization and team-based objectives. When attempting "missions" one must first gather a group of willing volunteers to help you with your goal. Teams can have up to 8 people on them. A strong team will have varying types of characters (some for directing enemy attacks, some to heal, and others to pick off the weaker foes). Teaming up with others for missions is the most basic form of socialization in the game. If you start a team you have a get a mission and then start searching for other players who want to help you in the chat box provided on the screen. If someone asks to help, you invite them to the team and they join. If you have a partial team and are waiting for more, the teammates usually meet at the start of the mission and socialize. They talk about anything that comes to topic, like they are just hanging out. Once the mission starts, each member must communicate with the others to help win battles and defeat enemies. A typical battle conversion involves letting others know if you are being "held" by an enemy's power and need freeing or warning others of battle plans like "pulling" an enemy from a group (blasting just one enemy from a large distance in order to just get him to run over to the group so that the group doesn't have to fight all the enemies at once).

A more pure form of socialization in the game are areas where characters like to congregate for socialization and asking questions about the game. Each side of the game (Heroes and Villains) has multiple areas to navigate within the world itself. Areas are connected by virtual trains or gates to adjacent areas. Each area usually has a normal hang out spot where characters go to socialize but there is one special area called Pocket D that characters can go that connects both worlds. In Pocket D, Heroes and Villains alike can socialize with each other. Upon entering this area, each character is turned neutral and therefore is unable to be targeted for attack, so fighting is never an issue. In Pocket D, there is a floating DJ in the middle that plays basic game soundtrack music, there's a PvP area where characters can setup private matches against other characters to determine who's better, and when holidays occur in the real world, there is usually a special event setup in the virtual world to coincide with it. These event areas are usually attached to Pocket D so both Heroes and Villains can access it. The biggest events coincide with Winter Holidays, Halloween, and Valentine's Day.

Pocket D is also the locations for the broadcasting of the Internet radio station "The Cape". The Cape is a player run internet radio station (playable through iTunes or the like) that several real people operate as their virtual world counterparts. Whenever one of these DJs is broadcasting, they log into their character and hang out in Pocket D while playing their music online. Many other characters join the DJ in Pocket D for socialization and i attended one of these small events as one of the real world DJs is a real world friend of mine. I mostly danced (there are in-game emotes that allow your character to dance) and talked with other attendees. Most of the socialization i "overheard" was playful flirting and discussion of upcoming game updates and add-ons. This particular meeting of the players had about 8 people in attendance, not the biggest i've seen, but it was still fun.

My Virtual Identity

I play City of Heroes, an MMORPG, that is all about creating heroes or villains and acting as such in multiple virtual areas in the City of X (Heroes or Villains) world. One of my favorite characters that i play as is Charles Wentworth.He is a Hero that is classified as a Peacebringer. The Peacebringer class is one of 7 classes to choose from in the game that decides what powers you can choose and what their basic statistics will be like. The classes vary; one class is a heavy brute type that is strong and can take a lot of damage; another class heals others but has low health and weak attacks. Peacebringers are a special class who are spiritual beings that can transform into different forms that mimic some of the other classes (one form is strong, another form has ranged powerful attacks). The two power sets that Charles has are Luminous Blast and Luminous Aura. Blasts are for attacking people and Auras help protect Charles from different forms of damage. Charles is on the side of Peace and will sacrifice himself to defeat the forces of evil. He always does the right thing and helps others whenever possible. He is a beacon of hope in dark times and helps lead the fight against the villains.