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{ Category Archives } Professional

Facebook Privacy Settings seem very wrong.

As I referred to in a previous post, I believe that most users of Facebook do not appreciate the privacy issues regarding Facebook. I’m coming to the conclusion that Facebook may not appreciate the privacy issues regarding their own platform.
Maybe they just don’t care about these sorts of things.

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You had me at "tachypnea."

What could be better than a game about being a med student, right? The hostility of the first character in the game is perfect. That is clearly a post-call medicine R2 who views medical students as a hindrance.
Don’t miss out on their definition of ‘vomiting’.

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Does Open Facebook mean more Spam?

A post on the Facebook developer’s blog about new APIs to allow more access to users’ content is raising a bit of a blog storm. Everyone seems most concerned with whether opening up Facebook status updates will kill Twitter. My concern is that these advertising, aka ‘virality’, channels will surely increase the amount of spam [...]

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Facebook Localization is odd

I just received an email from Facebook in Spanish telling me that a friend commented on a photo I uploaded. I’ve never used Facebook except in English. The comment that the user added is in English. The commenter likely used a Spanish configured computer to make the comment. Why did Facebook choose to inform me [...]

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Open Source Model Applied to Cars

Salesman: Hi there. Since you’re on a car lot, you must be researching to get a car. Right? Me: That’s right. I know I need a car. I just need to see what the options are today. Salesman: Well… we have these ‘normal’ cars priced from like [...]

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Facebook Notes are the new Chain Letter

I’m about to turn off Notes notifications because Facebook Notes have suddenly become the new method of sending Chain Letters and Chain Emails.
I remember in the early days of email getting these “Forward this on to 10 friends and Bill Gates will give money to sick children.” or similar things. This caused me to reply [...]

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AAA Game Sells ‘Cheat’ to Players

EA is getting into the most explicitly for-profit side of virtual goods by selling a Time is Money DLC for Skate 2. The content of the DLC serves purely to unlock features that previously could only be unlocked by playing the game more. I have to commend them for the honesty of the title, at [...]

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Funware is gaming, not games

When I brought up the term ‘funware’ yesterday, a coworker said something about it not being ‘fun’ and that instead of ‘funware’ maybe it should be called ‘obsessionware’.
It has occurred to me that maybe the funware or social gaming phenomenon has more in common with gaming than games.

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If Funware isn’t fun then why are Games fun?

I’ve been having an email conversation in which I was asked, “I’m curious, as I don’t have a traditional games background, whether you saw the same drivers that web devs follow coming from the executive/business teams of traditional games?  I would have thought that there would always have been that pressure from the "accountants"?”

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Games People and Web People

[I will use the term funware to distinguish the new genre of 'social games' from what could be called 'traditional games'. It’s not a well-defined term. It's just to make it easier to write this post.]
Awhile ago, there was a series of posts in the game industry blogosphere regarding “games people” and “web people”. I’m [...]

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