Gaming Open Market is a website that lets you trade real money for virtual game money and vice versa. It handles money from several of the largest online games including Ultima Online, The Sims Online, There, SecondLife, Horizons, and Star Wars Galaxies. In their own words: “GOM is an exchange site designed specifically for trading standard online game currencies, items, and accounts. Not only are we cheaper than the auction sites, but our trades are instant and secure.” They plan to eventually let people trade directly between the different game currencies. They need more people to participate to create a viable market in every currency first. Who knows how long this thing will last once the major game companies catch wind of it, but it’s an intriguing twist to the world of online gaming.
January, 2004
24
Jan 04
Dream Conductor
Wired article about a machine that can supposedly help you dream exactly the dream you want to dream using a combination of lights, music, smells, and recorded phrases in your own voice. It’s still in development now, but should be available in the U.S. in 2005. It looks like it’ll cost something like $140. Whether it works or not, it seems like a fun thing to play with!
21
Jan 04
One Step Closer
This New York Times article describes a new form of online advertising debuting today that’s closer to television advertising than anything previously seen. I guess it had to happen at some point. I think it’s great that online content providers can feed themselves by creating and publishing ‘free’ content, but I’m still saddened by how commercial the Internet has become in the last 5 or so years. I didn’t like banner ads when they first appeared, but I got used to them like everyone else. Overall they are visually annoying, but they don’t tend to get in the way of what I’m doing that much. Television style commercials cross that line into the realm of wasting my time and that’s what really irks me.
15
Jan 04
A Purpose
Tonight I’m stuck thinking about what I’m doing here on Earth. I feel the need to have a purpose but I haven’t yet found one thing that I feel like I can throw myself into for the rest of my life. Do you think perhaps I hope for too much? Is the world just not the way I want it to be?
I saw a talk by Cassidy Curtis, the guy who started Graffiti Archaelogy, tonight and it was inspiring to see someone so into what he was doing. He has a real love for Graffiti art and has found a way to chronicle and hopefully preserve some of it for the future. It felt to me like he has found a life pursuit and I was envious.
It makes me happy to look back on the things I have accomplished and it’s exciting to think about the potential of this technology and capital engine I have helped to create, yet still I want more… I feel that not all of my needs are being met. More and more I’m starting to feel like I may be looking in the wrong direction and that may be why I’m not seeing the magic staring me right in the face.
11
Jan 04
Fashionable Electronics
There’s been a big hullabaloo about Apple’s recently announced iPod Mini, a smaller and cuter version of the iPod that comes in 5 different colors. Everyone seems to think it’s a nifty device, but everyone is simultaneously whining about the high price. At $249 it’s only $50 less than the cheapest iPod, which holds over 3 times as much music. Ok, maybe $249 isn’t exactly cheap, but it’s still a nice step for Apple. Also, it seems like everyone is overlooking the fact that somehow Apple (along with Sony and a couple other companies) has turned consumer electronics into fashion accessories. People will buy iPod minis at $249 because they are small and cute and while white may match everything, having 5 colors to choose from is even better for the fashion conscious. $249 is fairly expensive for a single purchase, but lots of women buy handbags that cost $400 or more and even a geek like me owns a pair of $150 jeans. While I don’t plan to buy an iPod Mini myself, I think Apple knows exactly what they’re doing in this case (I still think they screwed up with the cube).
