As the title says, I added an image gallery page for the photographs I have taken – and those I have yet to take! You should go take a look at them. I’m not a professional by any means though, so be forewarned.
Granted, none of my pictures really have anything to do with the main point of this blog, but it is a hobby I enjoy and I’m trying to do more of, and I think getting them up here will help. Plus, I still think the site looks pretty plain, and more stuff like this might help.
Near the end of last month I started a little experiment to use web-based applications for most all of my computer-needs. Some of my experiences doing this were positive, but some of them were also rather negative. As a result, I believe I have a better idea of what I’d look for in web-based applications, and how I’d really like to see the whole cloud idea develop. Because of this, I’d like to start a little series here that’ll cover these topics, and eventually sum everything up with an article to sum up my final thoughts.
First off, I should probably come clean: Meebo doesn’t really suck. Actually, it is a very useful tool. However, the problem is that I can’t see it, or similar services, as anything more than a simple tool. Meebo is very useful if you are on a computer that you can’t install applications on – or would feel rude to install applications on, like if you are using a friend’s computer. Beyond that though, I see no reason to use it.
Meebo suffers from a major problem that I feel is pretty common among web-based applications: they’re trying to be … normal applications as opposed to taking advantage of what the web could provide. Meebo doesn’t reside on my desktop and should darn well act like it persists on a separate server.
Right now I am running a desktop application that does everything that Meebo does, plus extra features on top of that. It is no more difficult to use, with the exception that it does need to be installed – which isn’t a big deal, given that installing new programs is a pretty common thing for most computer users. Heck, it even saves what services I use, login information, and what settings I have across any computer I use.
But what if, just maybe, when I closed my browser on a web-based IM application it just set me to ‘away’ but kept me logged in? What would happen if I were able to open the service on another machine, in another browser, and still have every conversation that was opened still open – with new messages that people sent me while I was away? Suddenly, web-based IM services would have a leg-up on desktop applications.
Admittedly, that would turn Meebo into a light version of Google Wave – which does exactly what I was referring to, and effectively hybridizes (casual) e-mail and IMing – but with the ability to easily connect to networks that people actually use.
So, that is my request for web-based applications: Make more use out of the web, don’t pretend you’re a desktop application, and just because I close the window you’re in doesn’t mean that I want you to stop functioning.
Well, they may not be new pictures by any stretch, but I finally uploaded my images from when I studied abroad in Japan. These were taken with the camera that I bought there closer to the end of my stay, so the images don’t represent everywhere I’ve been, or everything that I’ve done by any stretch – and I don’t think I could have ever hoped to capture that to begin with! – but they do show an awful lot of some pretty great areas, and also some great people that I knew while over there.
While I uploaded these to Flickr, I haven’t paid for a pro membership yet, so… Here are links to the relevant Facebook albums:
… I need to start taking more pictures again.
I’ve decided to try out a little experiment: I’m going to try switching off a lot of desktop applications that I normally use, and start using web applications that meet the same purpose. Why? I’m curious to see how far some web applications have developed, and how well some of them can actually replace desktop applications. Really, most of what I want to do connects via the Internet as is.
I’m not going to totally dive in head first with everything, though. For example: I’m not about to live with just Pandora and Last.FM when I have a perfectly good music collection. I’m also not going to be able to replace some applications like Photoshop, and many games. However, things like IM, Twitter (although I am counting browser-plugins!), IRC, productivity software, e-mail, etc… will get moved over to help make the browser the main focus of what I am doing online.
So, while I already use Gmail as my e-mail client, and Google Reader for my RSS feeds, I’m going to try out a few other services.
So, while this isn’t a huge list – granted it covers most of what I do online/on my computer – I am interested in other options. So, if you know a spiffy web application, or any other neat web services, post it up in the comments! I’d love to give it a shot.
While not having the best social network, BioWare (perhaps unintentionally) presents an interesting question.
To say that I’ve been enjoying BioWare’s latest RPG Dragon Age would probably be somewhat of an understatement. The throwback to classic gameplay with an interesting world, fairly good story, and great characters, has done plenty to capture my attention for more hours a day than I’d care to admit to. However, while it is solid game, I’ve found that it has done a lot to interest me in entirely different areas than I would have expected. This is largely due to the BioWare Social Network. While as a social network it is… weak, buggy, and generally flawed, I do think that it proposes a few questions, that sadly Dragon Age itself cannot answer: could a game be run without a true persistent world running on the servers of some game company, but still feature MMO-like community and gameplay?
Dragon Age doesn’t feature any multiplayer capabilities – which I feel is quite a shame really – but it does integrate with this social network. Players can upload their statistics and character portraits, post status updates, mingle on forums, and even seek out other people who are interested in building mods for the game. Yet, what would have happened if the game included multiplayer, and truly made use of that social network, which I have no doubt few people actually use as is?
If it wasn’t for the fact that that you were controlling four characters at one time, and that you are frequently pausing the game when playing through combat in Dragon Age, the game would basically play like an MMO. If you happened to have a few other people in your game, who were controlling the other characters as you traveled through the depths of some dungeon, it would be indistinguishable from an MMO instance. If characters were kept persistent, that would be even more true.
The social network would allow for the community to form. You could have ‘groups’ like Facebook, which would function similar to guilds. Just, instead of grouping up to grind out a level somewhere, you’d be grouping up to run through various instances in the game. In a lot of ways, if you’ve ever played Warhammer Online, and experienced the Scenarios, I’m sure you could no doubt imagine similar things in such a game, as well. In fact, if Warhammer Online had cut out the over-world, they could have created a game focused on a variety of scenarios, and still even retained the zone control mechanics.
If you combined similar PvP scenarios, with dungeon instances – even ones that allowed full-sized raids, as after all, Neverwinter Nights allowed for 64 or so people to play on the same world – you could have a strong framework for a game built around a similar social network. The really crazy part though? Unlike an MMO, you could let users host the servers, just like your general FPS games. I imagine it could work well with a free-to-play model.
