David Beach's Blog

Project Moon Colony - Concept

I wrote this brief and unfinished concept document a long time ago. I thought I'd open it up because I still like the idea. The audacity of Web 2.0 at its finest. I'd love to see this happen though, so someone run with it please....

MetaMoon:

Project Moon Colony/MetaMoon

Yahoo! Brickhouse and NASA Ames Research Center propose to create an online virtual world and community based on the actual geography and physics of the earth's moon. This virtual world would be an interative, online 3-dimensional environment, with support for "massively multiplayer" interactions, and would incorporate a set of 3D data analysis tools to explore and extend existing datasets.This would would be built as an open platform, and designed inherently to be extensible and customizable .

Background

Virtual worlds such as Second Life or World of Warcraft have become a "second" home for people as they live their daily lives. Yahoo! has very little insight on the impact and power that online virtual worlds represent. NASA is looking for an interesting opportunity to work with Yahoo! They are also very interested in virtual worlds and the wisdom of the crowds that they can represent.

In order to colonize space, many experts believe that a moon colony needs to be established first. A virtual moon colony could become one of first steps in understanding how people would interact and live in such an environment.

 

Context (where did this come from?)

Many people have had dreams of space travel and a moon visit. This could provide people with the ability to explore that dream. I enjoy moon science and lore as well as exploration history. I want to create an educational and entertaining environment based on the moon, its history, and its potential to colonize space.

+the potential of virtual environments for scientific data analysis and participatory exploration

 

Problem (what is the problem area?)

Many virtual worlds exist in a fantasy environment. Second Life is not reality based, nor is WOW or other MMOGs such as SPORE. This would provide the public with a realistic environment based on real science and actual data to interact with and participate in.

+there have been several scientifically accurate planetary data browsers created, and there have obviously been several very successful MMORPGs, but these have yet to be brought together in a meaningful way.

+separately, lack of standards and adoption of 3D immersive environments is a problem.

Prior Work/Competitors (what else is going on or has happened?)

Modern Virtual Environments

• Second Life
• SPORE
• WOW
• There
• SIMS
• MetaPlace

 

Space-related

• VirtuArts
• Google Mars/Earth/Moon
• http://colab.arc.nasa.gov/virtual

Objectives (what are we trying to accomplish?)

• Develop a working relationship with NASA
• Create a completely new experience for the Yahoo! brand
• Build an active and sustainable virtual world based on the science of the earth's moon
• Advance the state of the art in open, extensible, collaborative, immersive, and networked virtual environments, with a particular emphasis on science.
• build support/customer base for NASA and Yahoo! products and services
• get an early foothold in a key emerging technology
• develop interactive, immersive scientific and data analysis tools with the goal of making science more accessible to more people.
• raising scientific literacy about and interest in the moon,
• building awareness and support of space exploration,

Concept Explanation (describe the idea) 

Overview

Create an online virtual world community in conjunction with NASA based on the actual geography and physics of the earth's moon.

Use Cases (examples of how this will be used)

• A virtual meeting place and community
• An experimental environment for moon colonization
• Potential game or reward system for innovation and use within the environment
• An educational environment for teachers and students to study the moon and space colonization

Issues/Risks/Questions (what needs to be overcome, mitigated, answered?)

• Time. Can something be built that proves concept in a matter of months?
• Building a virtual environment compelling enough for people to visit and use
• Building a virtual world that replicates the moon and its properties

Implementation Possibilities

• Build a small portion of the moon first, to prove concept. Concentrate on Apollo mission landing sites or even just Apollo 11 first.
• Use open source software and environments
• Allow participants to build tools and scientific utilities for others to use to run experiements
• Consider a virtual economy to support developement
• Consider implementing two modes.
  • 1. Scientific/Educational
  • 2. Experimental/Entertaining

 

Hello, Goodbye...

I'm working on deciding how big an online footprint I want. My real shoe size is a 13, but I think my online one is a special order. I need to cut out some sites that I either don't use or don't find useful any more.

First let me start by saying what I'm keeping. This blog, Flickr, Facebook, YouTube, Upcoming, LinkedIn, Feedburner, Box.net, and MyBlogLog. I'll keep my gmail accounts as well as my various Yahoo! IDs for mail and instant messenger. I'll keep my Wink account, of course, and Lijit for the time being. I will continue to use eMusic, Pandora, Songbird, and iTunes. From there it's going to be difficult. I don't need much else. Oh and Meebo, Skype, and PBwiki every now and then.

Here is what I will either stop using or close: Digg, del.icio.us, Ma.gnolia, Twitter, Pownce, Jaiku, ClaimID, NewsVine, Spock, Yahoo! 360, Flock, ChaCha, ClipMarks, Kaboodle, Bebo, Friendster, Dogster, Maya's Mom, eventful, iLike, Last.fm, Myspace, Spaces, Mahalo, NetVibes, Bloglines, Ning, Oodle, Edgio, PageFlakes, Plaxo, Plum... anything that starts with a "Z"... and there are others.

Some of these aren't worth mentioning, some I haven't mentioned, and some may be controversial. Some of this actually makes me uncomfortable mentioning... I really want to use delicious or magnolia for instance. I've decided that I only have so much time to deal with Web 2.0, and I'd rather work on my own products than concern myself with others right now. Sure I'll keep my eye out to see if there are any changes or improvements, but otherwise, I've got better things to do.

I can keep up with my friends through their blogs or Facebook. I don't need 5 apps to help me with this.  I can use Amazon, eBay, and Yahoo! Shopping for buying stuff. Yahoo! and Google for finding stuff, and a few bits and pieces to enhance this blog. Bookmarking and feed reading are tough ones. There is not one service I find useful enough. If you know of one, I'd love to see it.

cya.

Top 10 Reasons To Go To Web Conferences

I was asked to help provide reasons for Wink to attend more Web trade conferences... So I came up with this list.

Top 10 Reasons to go to conferences:

1. Crappy wireless and lack of power outlets forces you to meet and talk to actual people
2. Hotel bedding only sometimes have mites, bedbugs, and other organic material
3. You might get snacks and beverages
4. If you're lucky you'll end up on Justin.tv
5. Scott Beale will be there (that's a good thing)
6. So will Jeff Clavier (Chris Messina and Dave McClure too - all good)
7. You may get a "free" t-shirt!
8. The chairs only start to hurt your ass after 45 minutes
9. Tote bags with loose paper and random schwag are really fun to carry around
10. 7:30 AM panels are almost psychedelic with a tequila hangover

Any other suggestions?

OpenID Conundrum

Carsten Poetter (where's my umlaut key?)  over at  Not So Relevant brings up the issue of having too many OpenID accounts. He has eight. I think I have four. ClaimID, MyOpenID, TypePad, Technorati... I probably have more.

More and more services are accepting OpenID logins. That's a good thing. If not great thing, but more and more services are also becoming their own OpenID Identity Servers. I suppose that it's good to spread the love, but does that begin to defeat the purpose of an identity system? Is it more about identity authentication than user ID management? The benefits are clear when it comes to micro tasks that would be best if there was authentication, such as commenting on blogs, or joining a message board, just enter in the URI and go! But the benefit fades for me when considering using OpenID for larger sites and more in depth tasks. For some reason I don't feel as connected to the site if I only use my OpenID URI to join.

At Wink, we are considering the implementation of an identity server. This way people can use Wink to manage their online identity plus use a Wink URI to login to other services that accept OpenID. It makes sense for us on a marketing level as it gets our domain name more exposure, plus it ties us with the burgeoning identity management community. As a people search engine, there's certain validity in our offering the server. But... is it necessary? We can just as easily become a MyOpenID affiliate and let that be that. We would get authenticated users who can log in and use Wink with little effort on their part (or ours). Why do we need to go through the hassle of having to manage other people's OpenIDs? If anything there could be a considerable customer service problem as people will think that we are the ultimate provider of this service. As this grows, this can become a problem.

I think it makes sense to accept OpenID logins. Everyone should be doing that, but I don't see the necessity of having there be just as many servers. Clearly Yahoo!. Google, Amazon, and other trusted large services would be smart to implement OpenID both logins and identity servers. They have a huge customer base and are trusted identity managers. They could then easily create their own syndicated services outside of their brand such as Yahoo! Shopping's Trovetopia, or Google's SearchMash using OpenID authentication but without losing the site's intended brand independence. 

To me the promise of OpenID is about identity management. If I can participate in a community using my own authenticated URI without having to complete a unique user profile to communicate who I am or where I am, I win. If I can use my OpenID to control who sees what and where, then I win. If OpenID can provide this in a clear and understandable manner for my Dad, then everyone wins.  That's the issue. The benefit of the feature is no where near clear enough for the average person to take the time to figure it out and actually be willing to use it. Having Yahoo! support OpenID would go a long way to helping the cause. Put an OpenID button in the Yahoo! tool bar to automatically fill in my authenticated URI without me having to type it or remember it... or better yet some kind of universal authenticated cookie... then my life would be complete.

Please let me know if you think I've got it all wrong. I have a headache.

Digg 3.0 Party

I went to the Digg launch party for their next version last night. Saw lots of friends and met a bunch of new folks. It was nice to get out.

The new Digg looks great and is a logical next step for them. They're increasing their categories from beyond tech by including World & Business, Entertainment, Video Games, and one or two more (i forget). They also are providing nice category navigation, customization of the navigation, and some awesome visualizations designed by the hipsters at Stamen Design. More on the visualizations... they're terrific eye candy that display real time activity in a very stylized manner. Dropping "Diggs" fall from the sky and stack up on stories to represent the instant popularity of a story in a time-line. Another one shows floating vector circle amoebas that grow as the popularity grows and presents how users are interacting with the story and how each story is connected through Digg critical mass. While it will bear out how useful these really are, one thing is certain, they are engaging and entertaining.

Digg now has 700,000 to 800,000 unique visitors a day... a number that out paces the NY Times. Adding more categories... one can only imagine.

(photo by Scott Beale - Laughing Squid)

Five Delightful Experiences

"Delightful" as a word has always tickled me. Not sure why. It's used in this industry by higher-ups to describe or define intended user experiences... They say things like; "We have to delight the user, see. It has to be delightful!" But for me, if every site I visited was delightful, I might have a seizure from the sheer joy of going from one page to another. It'd be like that sun baby from Teletubbies staring at you and giggling every time you opened a browser...

So with that in mind, here is a list of sites that I have found delightful recently. There is no criteria, just some places that I think are doing something special... see if you can find the pattern...

1. Newsvine - My source for news. It gets better everyday. I love the look and feel, interaction, purpose, and brand development.
2. ShopWiki - Lots to love here. Decent product search and very good product matching natch. But the wiki aspect of the site is sweet. Providing a way for users to contribute to the product and category content is great, but just using a wiki platform for content creation and management makes things so much better for the publisher. They do need to surface this stuff better, so dig around and you'll find it.
3. PopURLS - Saves time and wastes time at the same time.
4. Threadless - I feel like a nitwit... I had not been to Threadless before today. Here I am, one who prides himself on the t-shirts I wear as well as knowing about great e-commerce and social software experiences... I am ashamed. Threadless kicks ass and should be considered along with Etsy as the archetype for social commerce. Here's why... all merchandise is submitted and design by users, the designs are then rated and commented on by the community, winning designs are made into t-shirts, the community then purchases the t-shirt and submits images and blog posts featuring the shirt in use... it's a perfect circle of commerce. On top of that they have a great affiliate marketing program and the site design is near flawless... I want to cry.
5. There is no number five...

How Many Bookmarklets Do You Have?

So... how many bookmarklets do you have? It's getting a tad crazy.
Here are mine: del.icio.us, typepad, kaboodle, priceheat, wink, squidoo, newsvine, bloglines, ma.gnolia, wists, snipurl, web page analyzer, resize browser, zapics...  Then the Y! Toolbar with search, MyWeb, and all my other stuff. I've run out of room long ago. I'm sure there are those that have more. onlywire is trying to take care of social bookmarks, maybe there are others...

The Journal & the DLM

An important feature in the DLM is the journal. Different than your blog(s), this is an app that allows you to keep things separate and private if you wish. Typically a blog is something that you broadcast to the world. Some apps, like 360 or Flickr, let you define your social network and permissions; but even so, it's very likely that you'll want to keep some things to yourself. The journal should also act as a quick data entry catch all. It should allow you to take notes in a meeting, be an exercise journal, meal planner, schedule events, dream journal, task planner, list creator, personal diary, etc. etc.

Here's an example of what I would have written yesterday...

timetag: 830a, 02032006
geo:lat=xx.xxxx
geo:lon=xx.xxxx
Went to Isaac's class this morning to be "shared." Isaac was "VIP" all week and they get to share something. I was that something. Isaac stood at the front of the class and the teacher invited me up. I wore my Yahoo! hat and so the teacher asked me if I could explain what Yahoo is and what I do there. While Isaac danced around me in some sort of squiggle dance, I spoke about Yahoo and Yahoo shopping. I asked if any of them used Yahoo or if their parents did. Many hands went up. 

Kid 1: "Um my dad plays games and gets email there."
Kid 2: "I use google to find star wars stuff."
Kid 3: "My mom's cousin works for google."
Kid 4: "Your mom's cousin must be rich!"

tags: isaac, school, yahoo, first grade
---

timetag: 9a, 02032006
geo:lat=xx.xxxx
geo:lon=xx.xxxx
Went to the periodontist. I'm having gum surgery today. "Crown Elongation." Basically after they numb the hell out of you, they proceed to fillet your gums. Then they carve part of your jaw bone out with an assortment of grinders, scrapers, and other very noisy and disturbing things. Then they cut some gum away and stitch you back up. During the procedure the assistant and doctor had a conversation about murder, home invasion, karate, and Dirty Harry. I think they do this on purpose. It takes your mind off of the horror show in your mouth.

tags: dentist, gums, periodontist, pain, surgery
---

timetag: 12p, 02032006
geo:lat=xx.xxxx
geo:lon=xx.xxxx
Got my Vicodin and crashed. I had crazy pain dreams. I met Barry Bonds during an outdoor opera rehearsal. The Police got back together and played a show. I was stuck hiking in a river (probably had to pee or something). And some others that I forget now. My mouth is killing me.

tags: dream, pain, gums
---

I think you get the idea. With tagging, the journal can be used for almost anything. I imagine that plugins could be written to make timetagging and geotagging very easy. Permissions could also be set for each entry. Some might be private, some might be shared with your network, and some might be totally public. It's up to you.

By the way, if you want to check out one of the most amazing and inspiring journals ever published, "The Journey Is the Destination: The Journals of Dan Eldon" is it. If the DLM could provide people the means to express themselves like this, it would change the world.

UPDATE: Also... If I had written in my journal yesterday the following:

timetag: 1030a, 02142006
Follow up appt. with periodontist
tags: gums, dentist, sugery

I hope you'd get that this would be placed on my calendar on that date and time plus there would be an entry waiting in my journal in the future. Of course a natural language entry could possibly work too. 30boxes and Spongecell have done this. But I also like the thought of using something more structured.

New Theme? Digital Life Manager

I've decided I'm going to write more about the DLM and calendaring (I'm having trouble using the DLA moniker until I see it in action, I want to make sure we're on the same page.) Maybe this will become the DLM blog. Hell, I write and think about the shopping and search space enough at work.

In the mean time, to get you in the DLM mood, remember that goofy song by that band the Godfathers?

Birth | School | Work | Death

Web 2.0 My Head Hurts

I have trouble getting to sleep. I just lie there and can't shut my brain off. It's not a good thing. It could be the coffee or something else. My head reels with noise and clutter and ideas and crap. It's like I have some sort of internal tourettes syndrome. I think of the same thing over and over again from every conceivable angle like a tick. So now my head aches.

I was going to write somethin' about all the Web 2.0 hoo ha. I'm getting tired of it already. So much hype for so little. To me, Wikipedia is the only worthwhile application that's considered "Web 2.0." And if you don't, you're kidding yourself. The rest is a bunch of time wasting fluff designed to either do the same old thing but with a slick interface, or provide some kind of ego gratifying self expression. "LOOK AT ME!"

This is all cool, I mean I use some of this stuff, but are any of these new sites or features really making my life easier? Are they making my time online more productive? Think about it... aren't they actually complicating things a little bit more? The potential is there, but that's not enough. Here's what I'd like to see before we move on to 2.0 or 3.0 or whatever...

• I'd like search to be good. Right now Google sux, Yahoo! sux, they all suck compared to what they should be. If you don't agree, then you shouldn't be in this business.
• I'd like to not have to deal with spam. Everything up until now has been a hack. There needs to be a better way. Email, domain squatting, whatever. Kill it. Make it so I never have to see it again, ever.
• I'd like a way to deal with feeds that make the information I'm receiving more meaningful to me. I want to be able to subscribe to hundreds (thousands?) of feeds and still be able to easily absorb that information. The information that's important.
• I'd like to keep track of my digital life and lifestyle in one place. What have I done? What am I doing? What do I need to do? Then let me keep track of those whom are important to me in the same manner.

Do this please. Make my life better. Make my life easier. Make it so I can actually spend less time in front of a screen. Not more. Simplify, scale back, refine, improve. Remove all things unnecessary in everything that you're doing. Please. Then talk to me about the next generation of web applications.

I was going to write about all of that... but then I heard the new Flaming Lips song on Yahoo! Music and I realized that none of this really matters...