social network
Twinity
Posted By Jeff On September 3, 2008 @ 10:12 am
At first, twinity seems like it’s just about virtual world attempting to play with the big boys at Linden Labs. In that sense, you’re right, but they have a trick up their sleeve: you.
Let’s start off with accessibility, shall we? Twinity requires a download to play and is currently only available for Windows. Though this is often a big concern down the road, I’m sure they’ll have something in the works once they come out of beta (hopefully). Next is price, which because of beta is free as well as they also give you some in-game currency to play with off the hop which is always nice.
One of the biggest things I look for in these worlds is creating my avatar (yes, I’m a fashion whore leave me alone) and Twinity gave me quite a shock here: you can actually import your face onto your avatar. I thought at first it would simply match the hair color, or eye color but no, It actually shapes my face onto the avatar. To be brutally honest with you when I was doing it (be it almost 3am) I said to myself “wow, that looks familiar…holy crap that’s actually my face!” does need a bit of work on that feature, but it’s off to a good start. The base selection of clothes/hair seems to be a bit limited, but I think it’s possible to have user generated stuff so I suppose it’s not that big of a deal.
The next list is things to do. My main interest is often creating a ‘home’ or ‘apartment’ and Twinity isn’t too bad at that. I was able to create a place that is going to charge me 47G (in-game currency) a month which isn’t too bad given that I was given 3000 when I signed up. Users have the ability to choose layout of the place, the style (apartment, office, cafe, etc) as well as location. It was the location here that shocked me, as they’re real places. I chose an apartment then for skyline chose Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Well to my surprise when I looked out the apartment window I saw the CN Tower. Now that is cool. On top of that, it has the basic abilities to wallpaper each wall, create the objects you want and has a nice list of textures you can buy as well as make and upload your own.
The interface and controls are two things that can use some work. Most of the things you need to do in Twinity involves right clicking, which is kind of annoying. On top of that, when the menu loads you have 3 different options for the one thing and none of them make a lot of sense (change texture, apply texture, change texture settings). After playing with them, you get used to them but some better wording would help, since all I wanted to do was make the walls red. The next issue is camera control, it doesn’t follow so you constantly have to be right clicking and swinging the camera around with the mouse as you walk which is annoying beyond belief. A little more user-friendlyness would be appreciated.
Another annoyance of Twinity is the fact that is a complete memory-hog and runs very slow. I understand it’s in beta, but the fact that it runs as though we were still in 1998 annoys me to the point of not wanting to play this any more. Every time I load something, I get a spinning loading icon, even if I’ve already loaded this window 3 times. A caching feature would be a nice touch.
There was also some options and talk about making movies, but at the time of this post I didn’t have the patience to check it out given how incredibly slow in seems to run.
All in all I think Twinity may show some potential for some users who want the ‘realistic’ approach to virtual worlds, but given that is lacks the friendly approach to casual players I can’t see it taking visitors away from competitors. Perhaps further along when it comes out of beta we can decide if it will actually become a player or not.
Ping.fm
Posted By Jeff On August 25, 2008 @ 1:07 am
Ping.fm is the best sNetwork manager EVER!
Ok, maybe not ever, but it’s really really good. Ping allows you to take tons of your microblogging, blogging, and status updating service and put them all as 1. This way you can update on Ping, and it will update everywhere (or only on 1 spot) without you actually having to go there.
What’s nice about this is that it has the different types separated, so you don’t end up making a blog post simply saying “I have cake” where as it should have maybe gone to status updating. What is nice about this aside from being able to post in one spot, with the aide of the PingPress.fm wordpress plugin I can now send out a small message to all of those networks telling people to come see my post; or in the cases of the blogging networks it hits, actually posting it (woot for posting on multiple platforms at once!)
Ping.fm is currently in beta, so you’ll need a beta key which is “vivalaping” right now. If it doesn’t work when you read this and it’s still requiring a key, comment on the post and I’ll update it accordingly.
Lively? Hardly
Posted By Jeff On July 31, 2008 @ 1:01 am
The other day I decided to play around with Google’s new play thing Lively and to be brutally honest with you it was pathetic. This comes as something really hard for me to say, given that I have a history of spouting off at every given opportunity about how great google is but Lively is just unbearably bad. For those of you just tuning into what Lively is (or at least trying to be) it’s an avatar based 3D char room. Players are able to ‘create’ and ‘customize’ a series of avatars and chat it locations similar to the real world. This is hardly a new concept, but given that it’s being backed by one of the most powerful forces online the expectations are fairly high.
The first issue I have with this is the idea of it being browser based but requiring a download. A download for something is normal these days, especially for virtual worlds/mmo; Having browser based with no download are no problem either. However, the expected quality between the two is going to variry a great deal. If a user is required to download something it should be far superior to something thrown together in java or shockwave. This isn’t the case with Lively which is a big turn off right from the get-go.
Next lets tackle what is actually in this world and how it’s presented. Avatar selection is very slim. Users have a choice of 8 (I belive it was 8, might be 6 come to think of it) different avatars ranging from an anime styled character to a cat-like creature. For each of these avatars, you have a very limited appearal options which includes mostly different colored hats. There is no skin tone option or clothing layering option which most other servies offer making uniqueness very limited among users.
As we’ve now established that all the avatars will be clones, lets look at the functionality of this system. In an attempt to ‘create a room’ (which is common in many virtual world to allow to to customize a small space to call their own) I managed to put down a sofa, a table and a poster to float in the middle of my room. This would have been easier if the viewing screen is not cropped so small and the camera angles were not horrid.
The last things I can possibly think of at this time which irritate me about this poorly designed website is that the characters use chat bubbles (which is ok if the whole environment is viewable, but quite obviously is not due to poor camera controls) but does not support a chat log feature that I was aware of in my time using it. On top of the chat bubbles, character movement is completely done with the mouse by clicking and dragging a character to place which becomes very annoying, very fast when the cameras try to keep up with the mouse location.
Final summation: If Google wants to make it completely browser based they have to remove the inital download and install of the modules and make control a bit easier. They did a fantastic job with Google Docs and not having to require any downloads so there is no reason why they can’t do it with this. If they choose to go with the download route make it a true virtual world download and up the quality of the product (which honesly has to be done even if you stick with a browser based envirtonment) to allow more customizable feature and some sort of user interface would be a huge help. Until then, I’d stick with Second Life.
Yoowalk
Posted By Jeff On July 27, 2008 @ 3:59 am
This is weird. It says it lets you “Walk around the internet”. It looks like they’re trying to mix websites with a virtual world using an avatar. From what I can tell, it’s just putting down chairs then putting the website on the wall.
The only catch here is that it it’s a real pain in the rear. I say this because there is no ‘plaster my site’ button. You have to reconstruct your whole site while hotlinking in Yoowalk. That’s not going to happen, sorry guys. Check it out anyway if you’re bored. Maybe I’m wrong and it isn’t a complete waste of time (but I doubt it).
Second Life'd
Posted By Jeff On July 26, 2008 @ 4:30 pm
I decided to download Second Life again so that we can hang out in there this year. LJ and I are dancing it up in…I have no idea where we are to be honest with you. But we’re here!
http://slurl.com/secondlife/AICR/226/212/22
Be sure to stop by, I’m dancing like an idiot. If you need help, my name is Ed Edman. Or message JL (Kirasha Urqhart). We’ll be here…until we’re not.
ListBums
Posted By Jeff On November 2, 2007 @ 5:35 am
I got a request earlier this week to review ListBums and the second I looked at the front page said to myself “Wow, this looks like it has something to offer, I’ll leave it until I have time to give it a proper review.” I’m glad I did.
PROs
+ Easy to use: Click and type. Editing is simple, double click on the section (title or description) that you want to edit and correct it without the need to go to another ‘editing’ screen which is useful.
+ RSS feed enabled for user or EACH LIST!
+ You can attach an image/video, related link and description to each list item.
+ Others can add comments to lists as well as add items to the lists you create.
+ ‘Digg’-like system allowing users to add points to lists for rating/popularity purposes.
+ Easy embedding. Just go to the bottom of the list, choose your colors, paste the URL. Sure you could just make a list using HTML on your site, but why? This way they can link back to ListBums to use the comments/additonal features as well.
+ Fun layout/theme. Funky faces, tons of graphical elements and (for the most part) easy to navigate.
CONs
- When creating list you have to add the item then add the description after you add it to the list. A field where you can put in both item title and description before adding would save time.
- I can’t for the life of me get the ‘reverse order’ button to work!
- Pain in the ass to figure out where the widget part was. It’s at the bottom of the list you’re viewing. Easy once you know where to look, I was looking for a ‘widget’ button for at least 5 minutes at the top of the screen.
In comparison to Listography (which I reviewed awhile ago here) I think ListBums is in the lead as far as quality goes. Listography seems to have simple ‘ it’s there and it works ‘ look to it, where as ListBums has more of a ‘ look I listed stuff and it’s pretty! ‘. That brings me to think that though both social sites based on lists, the targeted markets would vary. I’d think that Listography would be more for people who want to just get something down and be done with it, where as ListBums is for those who want to have fun with the lists.
Pagii: Php Powerhouse!
Posted By Jeff On September 17, 2007 @ 7:51 pm
I have to say I almost creamed in my pants at this, I was expecting something that completely sucked. Pagii is classifying itself as a new ‘social site’, but I wouldn’t quite call it that just yet. Instead, I’m going to call it a “website designing site on crack hit with a stupid stick”. And I mean this is the best possible way.
First, the interface rocks. It’s all click and drag (or double click) functions from a sliding sidebar. Text, speech bubbles, shapes (with text inside), video and ‘insert html code’ are all included with click and drag functionality. 
No need to remember HTML or screw around with finding the image. You upload, you apply and it’s there. Once the item is there you can drag it around the screen, stretch it by clicking the corners and even rotate it (I love this, takes the blockyness out of sites, yay!). Users can also ‘layer’ content to give it a 3D feel. Content such as images can also be clicked and using PHP shown their full size so users can see the whole image. It’s very easy to set up and I’m sure a child could master it in under 20 minutes.
You’re able to create more pages by simply clicking the ‘Add Page’ button. Users are given a ton of templates depending on what they plan on putting on the page (photo, diary, profile, video, etc) or they can start fresh and just have at it however they like. All pages are linked using a menu that pops down from the top of the page when hovered over, which saves a lot of time for people that are used to creating navigation pages (and most people suck at it, such as myself). This keeps it simple and consistent throughout all Pagii sites.
As far as the ‘social site’ part goes. I don’t think it’s prepared for that. All I can tell is that they have a comment widget and a messaging system. Aside from that, the only flaw I find with it is that non-members of the site are unable to view the member’s sites. I hope that fix that soon. Though I love this site for it’s uniqueness in allowing people to create useful sites like this so easily.
Be sure to check out my Pagii page, it’s purdy ^.^
Yahoo! Mash
Posted By Jeff On September 15, 2007 @ 12:12 pm
I’ve been hearing Y! Mash for awhile now, but didn’t really take any interest in it. After seeing that Mashable had invites up, I decided to check it out. Needless to say, I’m not that impressed.
My first thoughts was that it’s very ‘boxy’. By that I mean that…well it’s very boxy. Every module/section is separated into it’s own box. Though this gives it a very simplistic feel, it doesn’t make it very appealing to the eyes. The customization is limited to selecting a background image, font colors and module colors. However, the image section (at the top of the page) is designed like a classic Polaroid, I like that. The catch though is that when adding an image you’re forced to crop it if it’s too large, it doesn’t give you the option of simply resizing it to fit.
The network allows friends to modify each other’s profiles (if the option is selected) which is interesting, but not that great. Given the fact that many people add everybody who requests it to friend lists, many users will end up having their pages ‘violated’. I think right now Y! Mash is giving me more of a ‘Geocities page builder’ vibe than a social network. There just isn’t enough there to actually consider this to be anything more than an extended profile, not a social networking site.
The modules that they give you access to aren’t anything ground breaking (such as including an amazon wish list or Flickr RSS feed) so it’s hard to say if there is going to be something to make it stand out. Right now I’m thinking no. Let’s hope for some improvement by the time they get out of Beta. Also profile ID’s are a pain to remember unless you link it to your Yahoo account, which is a bummer. Oh well.
If you’re looking for invites, feel free to drop a comment and I’ll make sure to ‘hook you up’. While you’re at it, check out my Y! Mash profile
More Yahoo! Mash talk:
The Assumptions That Yahoo Mash And Other Social Networks Make About You @ Publishing 2.0
Yahoo Invites Us Into Mash, Its New Social Network @ TechCrunch
What Is Yahoo Mash? @ The NY Times
Pownce
Posted By Jeff On August 25, 2007 @ 10:32 am
I’m a little late on the draw here (like always) but I’m just checking out Pownce and I have to say it’s pretty damn cool. It’s like an instant bulletin board where you can put up messages, files, events and links to groups or single friends. I know you’re thinking “Can’t I do this with an IM?” and the answer is yes, but then you have to send the file to each of them. This uploads it to the Pownce server and allows them to just click and open it, much better.
The way I see it, it can be used as a whiteboard and simply throw just out for people to remember/do/see. Works better than posting a million and one “hey look at this url!” entries when you really only feel like targeting it at certain people. It’s currently still in Beta so requires an invite, hit me up in the comments if you want one.
Kaneva
Posted By Jeff On August 23, 2007 @ 1:28 am
To be blunt, Kaneva sucks. There is no easy way to put, it’s just pure and utter crap.
Let’s start with the graphics: they’re pathetic. There is virtually no detail at all, be it realistic or cartoonish. It’s gross mixture between the two with no details. If you were to have a 3rd grader make a person out of play-doh you could get the same results. Were this made 6 or 7 years ago, it might fly for ‘neato’ graphrics but even that is pushing it.
As far as the user interface goes, it reminds me of an old adventure game that you would pick up for sale at K-mart. It makes you say “what the hell is this crap?” when you can’t find anything you’re looking for. On top of that, most of the features make you leave the client and go to their webpage. That might be ok if you’re purchasing something with a credit card, but that’s about it. The in-game purchasing system uses either credits or rewards, which makes sense. Though there is no confirmation of buying anything besides your money going away in the bottom corner of the screen. I had 9 parts of black pants before I realized this. I wasn’t too impressed.
I ran around a mall for 15 of the 20 minutes I was on, only seeing 2 people. It seems that nobody else thought this was very good either, huh? As far as the system running without a lot of lag, it did do that right. But when you have less than a dozen people online that should be too bad. And don’t even get me started on having to do a 213mb update after downloading.
So as I said, it sucks. You should try something else or even dip your head in hot melted cheese instead of playing this.
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