Ubiquity for Firefox

A very interesting tool that wraps Web 2.0 functionality up and houses it within the firefox browser. At first the thought of a command line driven tool in this interactive/Drag & Drop era is one that is set to generate a good ammount of interest.

So what is it about?
Well the phrase that this project is labelled with is “An experiment into connecting the Web with language”. This indicates what the application hopes to reach in terms of long term goals, using command keywords to perform various actions when the user needs it.

This experimental Firefox extension that could allow you to reclaim time spent looking up that address on Google Maps. I for one like the wikipedia functionality as it's a daily stop of mine. So will the time needed to perform online tasks be reduced overall? Hopefully, but I think there are some steps in learning that will need to be mastered before you'll see any benefit.

There are some dangerous with such a system becoming bloated and full of useful functionality that nobody wants or finds useful. I'll keep my fingers crossed that  it remains that way, currently the functionality appears limited to a set of tools that I'd happily use on a daily basis.

There is a video here that displays the functionality:
http://www.vimeo.com/1561578

Some screenshots can be found one this tutorial:
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Labs/Ubiquity/Ubiquity_0.1_User_Tutorial

In-game Advertising

Well it appears that the in-game adverts have arrived on the European servers and I have to say they look good.
Well done NCSoft on a good implementation.

If I’m completely honest there was a worry that adding adverts could seriously distract from the gameplay.
During my years playing Planetside the in-game adverts were only ever available if you where playing from the US, but using an ISP like AOL would allow you to see them in the UK.

I think the important thing to remember is that advertising need to fit in with the game and not appear to be just thrown in, just so that the company can make a cheap buck. This golden rule was lost on SOEs Planetside where 3 factions in a distance galaxy were getting adverts for todays films, kind of spoilt the immersion experience of the game-play.

With the rising costs of games development and continued service ingame advertising gives a very natural method to generate more income for the game without the killer move of increasing the subscription rates.

adverts.gif

Giving players the ability to toggle adverts on and off was an addition nice move, that will help out players without high-speed connections. But for all those that keep the adverts turned on there isn’t anything to worry about as they fit in just right and bring a little mordern edge to the game.

A month without plastic

I've been following an interesting blog for the past few days over at the bbc website, written by Chris Jeavans.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/monthwithoutplastic/

Chris is attempting to go for one month without buying or accepting anything which contains plastic or is packaged in plastic. A very challenging task and she has the plastic from a month with plastic for comparision at the end.

An interesting read if you get the time.