Well it looks like the writer’s strike is on! I support the writers and their quest for ground floor new media revenue, but it’s too bad it will have such sweeping effects when the money’s not obviously rolling in. I hope they get their demands quickly. It’s taking long enough for Lost to come back without a writer’s strike on top of it!

…and boy are my arms tired. Err, well, actually my butt’s tired, there was a lot of sitting and listening to interesting lectures. It was a great experience, but I don’t know if I’ll be able to go again as it’s normally in Barcelona, and that’s not as easy to get to as New York City. At the very least I got to meet some very cool Swedish people, buy some cheap Stash DVDs, and have a great time third-wheeling with Sam and Katie.

Goal
The goal is to have a fun, addictive web site that actually turns things into a work out. Having highly physical almost callisthenic activities are very involving and can hold attention well. If their minds are engaged and their bodies are moving then I think they are going to enjoy the experience on a more complete or whole level. This means people will be more likely to spread the word regarding the site, so it can become viral. Like the break-through success of the Nintendo Wii, which tends to wind people as they play, the act of playing with the whole body can be invigorating.

Inspiration

• Comcastic High Speed Internet Games
  Interesting puzzle games that involve quick use of the mouse. The theme is about navigating a computer or the Internet, so the use of files, folders, and preloaders gives it a consistent feel. But it also takes on classic arcade game structures, there’s Asteroids, there’s a Bejeweled-like efficiency game, there’s a maze involving timing, and two test of speed/precision. You know how and that you can move to the right spot and click, but as you attempt to go faster you also go down in accuracy, and these games understand that completely. It keeps things balanced, and encourages practice to really improve hand-eye coordination.

• Big State Games
  A great design, it is very playful and still sophisticated. The perfect blend of down-home country photos with absurd animations. More time-based games that really inspire competition, for example I really wanted to do better and better at the tire game, and kept going until I sort of leveled off in terms of lowering my time. And the challenge of the sausage game really kept me there for a while until I realized I was not going to get anywhere near the top scores.

• Mouse Game
  Much like the Comcastic precision maze game this uses the mouse to navigate, avoiding walls to get to a goal. However, it also adds a series of traps, and requires colored power-ups to progress through. This version is more based on problem solving than speed, but still it made it so that I did not want to move from the site until I completed the game. This was a particularly good difficulty level because I knew that I was capable of completing the challenge, and yet it was not easy enough to do it the first time through. So even though it took me 200 tries (or deaths, as is kept track of), I still beat the game and didn’t want to stop until then.
  

Style
Much like the Big State Games I will incorporate photography with quite a bit of exaggeration in their motions. But the theme of the project is lab mice, which you control with your computer mouse. It should have a highly scientific look. The technologically advanced lab will be in the background, with selectable elaborate tests set up in the foreground. You, as a mouse will be competing against other mice, and your scores for each trial will be recorded. Your placement amongst the pack will be indicated on the leader board.

Games

1. Test of Strength: Click repeatedly in order to lift a weight above your head, it starts to fall if you let up on your clicking, and falls faster when you’re near the top than just starting to lift.
2. Test of Speed: using the L and R keys on your keyboard in an alternating rhythm mash them quickly and make your character run, jump with space bar, the goal is to eventually get your wheel to break off from the cage.
3. Test of Mind: Move the mouse to avoid walls and escape a maze, also timing your movements to avoid traps, and make sure you swing down the path with the switch first, as you won’t get far without it.

Payoff
After completing all three games, a movie will play in which your mouse escapes the lab. But then the user is presented with a choice… to return to the former life of competition (play the games over) or to run off in the distance with newfound freedom (fade to black). Also, the top score amongst in the combined games will win the Annual Mouse Olympics, and they will receive a golden test tube trophy in the mail as a takeaway. People could keep coming back and every year a new winner can be crowned, and possibly, more events added.

Marketing is a huge part of our culture, you get ads on television, radio, in the mail, on billboards, even in the sky. It’s inevitable it would find its way to the Internet as well. But the key difference is how easily interactive the advertisements are online. Banner ads do not have to simply be magazine ads (although there a plenty that just show attractive people using products online too). With a little code they transform banners on pages into experiences where you could do anything from shoot a duck, participate in trivia, to control a dirt bike. This is powerful, as the user is more immersed, more likely to remember the product, or at least visit your web site.

But a constant flow of absurd ideas and no substance can lead to the ignoring of banner ads completely. Too much attention-grabbing becomes annoyance real fast. Ads do not need to flash repeatedly that I’m a winner, nobody gives away prizes for being the 1,457,023rd person to click past their ad. The banners that take over your screen and need to be closed before viewing the web site removes enjoyment from my web browsing process, and I can begin to associate that with the product. Or the constant trick ads: after you know that you’d have to sign up for 5 credit cards in order to get a “free” iPod Nano you NEVER want to visit one of those sites again. And yet they appear all over the web, announcing their presence through your speakers, with all four embedded on the page playing their audio at once.

It is little wonder that the average click-through rate is around 0.5%. People begin to tune these banner ads out, even the less Net-savy grandmothers who clicked on them in the beginning learn to stay away. There is a better way: web sites about products actually provide information to potential consumers, create a memorable experience in their mind, and increase your product’s recognition. People visiting a web site are much less likely to feel cheated or tricked because they could have found it searching the web or heard from another source that it is a good web site to visit. And what a great way to advertise your product: to have a web site that a person likes so much that they tell people (as someone they can trust) that they should also check it out. It is hard to imagine a nicer way of advertising than spreading around your concept virally without the cost of a multi-media ad campaign, and through a growing and impassioned fan base.

And in the future hopefully web sites will grow even more immersing, utilizing new technology that stimulates more senses. Imagine a little box next to your computer emitting a web site-related smell, or wearing virtual reality gloves that can change temperature and textures inside on your hands. Or in the distant future after we outgrow advertisements completely and start getting chips implanted in our brains that manipulate our emotions even more precisely and efficiently. Then “You could win a free iPod Ultimatron” could be your own inner voice (playing four times at once).

Did you guess correctly? Project 1 was a series about connections.

Hello, this is Derek Hall (another star in the vast universe of blogs). I’m putting this up as a 4th year student at the Rochester Institute of Technology in order to display some of my projects, experiments, and thoughts. I’m sure there will be plenty of:

1) work to be shared
2) lessons to be learned
3) fun to be had
4) minds to be blown