[This piece has already got scads of feedback in its original Gamasutra form, and on Slashdot, but nonetheless, it's worth reprinting here - Benj Edwards asks if advances in video game technology toward photorealistic gaming experiences make virtual killing more and more disturbing.]

You know, I used to laugh at the term "murder simulator" when it was bandied about by knee-jerk opponents of video game violence some years ago. Preposterous, I said: video games are video games -- easily distinguishable from reality, and reasonable people know the difference between fantasy and reality. That was in the Mortal Kombat and Doom era, where the violence seemed cartoonish. And I love those games.

Then I played BioShock. For the first time, hell started to freeze over, and I found myself beginning to understand the critics' point of view. As real-time computer graphics inch ever closer to absolute photorealism (which some industry professionals believe to be no more than 10-15 years away), violent video game critics' arguments are slowly beginning to look more sane. And yes, you're reading this from a life-long video game fan who staunchly opposes institutional artistic censorship.

But censorship is peanuts compared to the conundrums we'll be facing in the future with our favorite hobby. Once our computer simulations of the real world (still called, somewhat quaintly, "video games") begin to effectively duplicate reality, the issue of video game violence won't be a matter of artistic merit or censorship anymore. It will quickly become a matter of morality, ethics, and law.

The coming storm is inevitable: turn one way, and you'll see ever-more realistic portrayals of graphic, gratuitous human violence in games like BioShock, Grand Theft Auto 4, and Fallout 3. Then turn the other and observe the exponential explosion of computing power and graphics rendering potential driven my Moore's law. Put two and two together, and you've got quite a mess brewing.

Welcome to the Slippery Slope

Within the next 10-20 years, your virtual victims in Grand Theft Auto 6 could look, sound, and behave exactly like a real human would if you stabbed him in the neck or shot him in the gut. There'd be plenty of blood, screaming, and carnage to go around. You could watch as they bleed to death in agony.

The funny thing is -- and I'm just guessing -- you wouldn't want to do that in real life to a real human, so why would you want to do that in a video game? The violent scenario above seems silly now, but the stunningly realistic, PS3-era violent games we play today would have seemed unthinkably graphic just fifteen years ago.

At the moment, we rationalize our simulated violence with statements like: "It's just a game. It's not real. The people don't suffer." All this is true (at the moment); but as the experience of virtual murder becomes ever more realistic, I believe that we as players will begin to suffer emotionally every time we cause realistic suffering to any virtual person, just as if we caused suffering to real living creatures.

With each act of violence, a piece of us grows cold, calloused, and uncaring towards the well being of others. Repeat that, and we become slowly desensitized to pain and suffering.

As gamers, we've already begun desensitizing ourselves to simulated murder, or else we wouldn't be able to play the violent games we have now. Games featuring endless killing for points are nearly as old as video games themselves, with Space Invaders, (1978) probably being the most influential. Back in 1992, Wolfenstein 3D was the most graphically realistic simulation of murder you could find in a video game. It shocked people (including the author) at first.

But as the body count racked up, each Nazi became easier to kill until we no longer had a second thought about the act. The same desensitizing effect stretches back to every violent video game that pushed the limits of realism -- all the way back the early arcade title Death Race (1976), where players mowed down human-like "gremlins" with a car.

Today, we see older violent games like Wolfenstein 3D as primitive and cartoonish, but technology didn't stop there. As the years went by, graphical realism in violent games continued to ratchet up as each generation of software took advantage of the increased computing power available to it.

As violent graphics have grown more convincing, we as a gaming populace continued to de-sensitize in tandem. Despite leaps and bounds in graphical rendering power, Death Race's kill-everything gameplay stayed the same. We're still killing those gremlins and Nazis, but today they look a lot more like people you'd find on the street.

In fact, due to our continued cultural desensitization toward violence in video games, certain game developers kept pushing the limits culturally thematically with ever more violent, gory, and shocking gameplay than before -- what was once forbidden was forbidden no longer, so it took a greater controversy to get attention. Thankfully, this quest for controversial violence is not a universal goal of the industry, but there are always the standouts who effectively "push culture forward" by testing the boundaries of what we consider acceptable.

So, for the moment, we're ok, right? Photorealistic graphics aren't here yet, and we continue to justify our violent entertainment by saying "it's not real." But if we're not careful, we'll be justifying our consumption of violent games all the way to, say, 2030 when, thanks to photorealistic graphics and improved mind-machine interfaces, the experience of virtual murder may be nigh-but-indistinguishable from reality.

As technology improves, the well-defined boundary between reality and fantasy provided by a TV set and hand controller might evaporate, making the gaming experience less like a game console and more like Star Trek's holodeck. (And we needn't wait two decades for that boundary to start blurring: with Microsoft's Project Natal -- a camera that captures motion with no other peripherals required -- the line between real and virtual is already disappearing.)

If, in this hypothetical future, we're capable of stripping away our empathy and compassion to murder a 99% realistic virtual human (and maybe even enjoy it), will we be psychologically any different from people who actually murder those of flesh and blood? Having perhaps unintentionally trained ourselves to become cold-blooded killers through systematic desensitization, will we be emotionally capable of doing the same thing in waking life?

With that kind of realism, we're not talking Pac-Man blip-bloop video games any more: to give you an idea of what we're really in for, imagine walking up to someone on the street outside your house and shooting them in the head. By 2030, the video game experience of murder could be exactly that realistic -- if we choose to make it that way.

As Common as Murder

In our modern western society, death is a relatively rare event. One can live 50 years and know only of a handful of personal friends or family members dying. Those deaths usually result from an illness that strikes in the later years of life, or occasionally from accident or suicide. But how many murders have you personally witnessed in your lifetime? How many people have you killed?

When someone kills one real live human, it's a terrible tragedy that makes the local news. They usually go to prison for life. When a crazed gunman shoots down eight of his coworkers, it's called a massacre, and it stays in the national headlines for months.

Last year, a grand total of 31 real live humans were murdered in Raleigh, NC, my city of 380,000 people. But that figure is chump change for a video game: just the other day, I murdered 40 virtual people in one BioShock session. If eight is massacre, then what's 40? Wholesale slaughter? Systematic genocide?

Every real murder has far-reaching effects that ripple through the fabric of society, tearing apart the lives of both the murderer himself and the victim's friends and family. Each murder influences the practice of law and law enforcement and compels people to feel a little less safe and a little more paranoid about their neighbors. But we simulate the act all the time. For fun.

Speaking of BioShock, it's not like murder is incidental to the main premise of the game. The developers have specifically created a virtual world where you are forced to kill realistic humans to succeed. The fact that you're inflicting suffering and death upon very realistic humans is a key game mechanic. That's a very large part of why it's supposed to be fun. Take away that, and you take away the game.

These BioShock victims aren't like cartoonish Doom monsters anymore. They're definitely humans, and they look very real. They talk and rummage about, then run at me and attack. If I bludgeon them with my wrench, they scream in agony and blood gushes forth until his/her limp body falls to the ground like a rag doll.

To maintain the persistence of reality, that bloody, lifeless body stays where it is on the floor, able to be trampled, pushed, and even bludgeoned further if so desired. BioShock's designers have put a lot of thought into making the experience as realistic as is practical on today's hardware. And they should be commended for this technical feat -- BioShock is an incredible work of art. But dagnabbit, it really is one of those once-mythical "murder simulators" we've been hearing about for years.

This sort of interactive death-as-entertainment is very mainstream (BioShocksold over three million copies, including one to me) -- but only in the video game world. Show BioShock to a non-gamer -- someone who hasn't been desensitized to killing virtual people -- and watch their reaction. Show them how you bludgeon people to death with a pipe wrench. If they don't wince and express some form of shock at what's taking place on the screen, they're either seriously disturbed or they're a seasoned gamer.

Industry Ethics

Ethics and morals vary by region. They vary by culture and religion, and they vary from person to person. Dare I say it, but ethics and morals can be downright arbitrary. Despite this fact, and despite the wide spectrum of opinion on what is right and wrong, there's one moral I think most of us can agree with: killing humans is usually bad. World legal systems made that judgement long ago and codified it in law. In spite of this, if many popular mainstream video games were your guide, killing humans is also incredibly fun.

Then again, many video games are fun because they let us do many things that are impossible and/or illegal in real life. But the fact that murder has become a ho-hum event in mainstream video games is something that should make us re-evaluate our hobby.

As a card-carrying member of the human race (one of those things you're pretending to kill), I can't help but feel that such a profound and tragic event as human murder or even "justified" human killing should be a rare and powerful statement in games, not a common theme. With the ever-increasing power developers have in their hands to rip apart virtual lives, I think it's time to re-examine the use of death and killing as a core game mechanic.

Perhaps the public is already beginning to tire of wantonly violent gameplay with its enthusiastic embrace of both casual games and the Nintendo Wii's lighter fare. Many players are flocking to innovative, less intense games that make the "hardcore" (read: "mostly violent and/or realistic") gaming world shudder.

If the video and computer game industry doesn't begin to show concern over widespread and flippant depictions of realistic human violence, game publishers will soon be asking players to regularly murder scores of astoundingly realistic virtual people, enjoy it, and defend the practice from critics of the art form. (Actually, they already do, but I digress.)

But the industry shouldn't be asking this of its loyal fans and customers. This is not just a financial issue between publishers and their wallets; it's an ethical issue that will increasingly affect our laws, culture, and society on a deep level.

But make no mistake: not all violence in video games is bad. After all, I love Doom, and Monolith's Blood (1997) is one of my favorite games. I alone have been responsible for the deaths of countless thousands of residents of the Mushroom Kingdom over the past two decades.

Despite this, I am reasonably confident in saying that my violent video game escapades have left no lasting damage on my psyche. Nor do I feel that any violent game play necessarily hurts any of us at this moment. But if things get as realistic as what I've mentioned above, they very well might harm us in the future. My concern centers solely on gratuitous and graphic violence against ultra-realistic virtual humans -- the kind you'll be seeing more and more of in video games over the next decade.

Some violence will always be necessary in games that portray the human condition. There are many times when very decent people in our real world have been forced to kill to survive. It would be a disservice for the exquisite and singular art form that is video games to restrict portrayals of violence or human suffering outright.

If handled properly and sensitively, violence and even murder can be a powerful political, ethical, or artistic statement. But the use of gratuitous, gory violence against realistic humans as the main point of any game needs reconsideration.

We should start rethinking these issues now before we all slide down the slope together and can't pull ourselves back up again. Or, even worse, before governments step in and dictate what can and can't be depicted or simulated in video games via legislation. But then again, if things get as realistic as I'm predicting, there might not be anything we can do about it.

A Legal Quagmire

All this brings us to the question of what we can do -- or what we'll have to do -- as a society about this fast-approaching issue. If, as I have postulated, certain video games eventually become so realistic that they convincingly mimic reality, then no self-imposed rating system like the ESRB will cure the problem (i.e. It doesn't matter if it's an "adults only" game -- even adults shouldn't murder realistic virtual people).

In 2040, the only difference between killing a virtual human and a real one might be whether you're linked to a computer when you do it. And the virtual humans you kill might very well be representations of real people in a massively multiplayer online world like Second Life, leading to all kinds of confusion between what's "real" and not. And we're not even scratching the surface when it comes to AI that could be close to human-level sentience by then.

As a result, governments might have no choice but to step in and define a legal ethical limit to virtual killing and simulated suffering, opening up a can of worms that will only be untangled through years of difficult deliberation and hand-wringing.

If we come to that, should it be illegal to simulate player imposed suffering of photorealistic humans in video games? If so, where do we draw the line with regards to realism? For example, BioShock is "OK" now, but how much more realistic will the virtual human's appearance and behavior have to get before virtual murder is considered genuinely and irreversibly harmful for the player?

Will it matter if it's done "by hand and knife" in a holodeck-style brain-machine interface, or if it's executed through a 10-button game controller? Will it matter if it's a quick death or a slow, drawn-out one? Will it matter if the human-killing enacted by the player fits the legal definition of murder or if it is done in self-defense?

I don't know the answers to these questions, but I do know that they won't come easy, especially if the game industry fights back against government regulation. As we grow ever closer to 100% graphical and situational realism in games, hopefully game publishers will decline to encourage the stunningly accurate simulation of gratuitous human suffering.

My concern is not that these violent simulations described will happen; they probably will at some point. I'm concerned that we as an audience will continue to consider gratuitous virtual murder a form of mainstream entertainment. The kind of violence I'm describing should be relegated to the bottom, back-corner shelf of any game store -- not by law or punishment, but by consumer demand.

Forget the Kids

Contemporary opponents of video game violence inevitably mention "the children" and how we need to shield them from evil media like video games. Yes, 100% photorealistic violent video games of the future would have a profound impact on children. But you know what? It's not the kids I'm worried about. It's the adults.

After all, reasonable parents can protect their children from exposure to harmful media, as they (ahem) have been doing for decades with movies and TV. But when adults -- the supposedly responsible people of our world -- find it morally acceptable to enjoy the realistic suffering of others as mainstream entertainment, we have a real problem on our hands.

Obviously, what makes an acceptable game play experience for each player is a personal choice that should be judged on a person-by-person basis (or on a parent to child basis), and I believe it should stay that way. As for me, I'm already drawing the line at BioShock -- I can barely stomach the game as it is.

Sure, I could play it more and desensitize myself, but I don't want to. And that's just me. It's up to you and a million other adult gamers to decide what's best for yourselves and to draw the line on virtual violence where you feel most comfortable. And it's up to the video game industry to recognize exactly where they're taking us, because quite frankly, it isn't looking good.

The next time you load up your latest, greatest super-gory shooter, stop and think about what you're doing. If you weren't already steeped in the video game culture of thematic violence that stretches back to the 1970s, would realistic simulations of human murder like BioShock seem acceptable?

In case you've forgotten how a non-gamer thinks, show these violent games to your grandparents, or better yet, a WWII veteran. You'll get a better look at the moral compass of people born before the video game generation, and it might make you take a second look at that long, steep slope you're already sliding down. Because, honestly, we don't know how deep it goes.

[Benj Edwards is a freelance writer who specializes in video game and computer history articles for publications like PC World, Gamasutra, Ars Technica, and 1UP. He is also Editor-in-Chief of Vintage Computing and Gaming, a blog devoted to vintage technology.]

You can't swing a stick on the Web these days without hitting a photo or media sharing service. Some of the most popular ones like Flickr and Photobucket have become an indispensable part of our online lives. Among the most recent services to enter the game is Expono, a photo sharing, organizing and protecting service with added features like GPS tagging and the ability to connect with social media services Facebook, Twitter and Friendfeed. Expono has everything you would expect to find on a media sharing site like online backup, easy sharing, albums and tagging, but adds a whole bunch more features that you might not expect all in one place. It is certainly worth taking a look at.

In September of 2008, Expono went live with its site and made the bold choice to go with 100% cloud computing. Other sites like SmugMug have done this with great success and it feels like a growing trend. The lower cost and ease of scaling made cloud computing a sensible choice for Expono and the company set about building its incredible array of features. Those features, combined with the company's talented and ambitious team based in Oslo, Norway, make Expono a potential contender in an increasingly crowded media sharing marketplace.

Sponsor

Expono is a "freemium" service that allows its non-paying users to transfer 10GB of data a month, use 1GB of storage space and have one custom group. The $45 Plus account allows for 100GB of monthly data transfers, 10GB or more of storage space and up to 10 custom groups. Plus users also have access to a lot more features.

You can go here to view a complete list of Expono's features. It's an impressive list, if not a little overwhelming, and you simply need to have a look for yourself. Here are a few of the main features we like:

Geotagging has become a pretty popular thing to do with photographs. It's just interesting for us to see on a map where a photo was taken. It gives viewers added perspective, helps the photographer better organize their collections and could even help businesses attract customers. Expono has a feature that lets users drag a pin, place it on a map where the photo was taken and give that place a name for future reference. It's a simply but useful tool and a nice feature.

Expono has not forgotten our Spanish-speaking friends and allows English-Spanish translations. The company is frantically working on translation to other languages like Danish, Russian, French and Hebrew and is actively searching for help translating other languages.

Expono allows users to share full quality photos and activities and connect on Facebook. It looks pretty straightforward and easy to do:
"Simply go to Facebook Settings on Edit Services menu, press the "Connect with Facebook" button and follow the instructions. It takes 10-30 seconds!"

"After your accounts have been connected, you will be able to tag your Facebook friends on your photos like any other contacts you already have in your address book. With your Facebook friends now on Expono, you can add them to your contact groups, give them access to the photos you want them to see and tag them on your photos.

You can post stories to your wall when you favorite a photo, comment or tag a Facebook friend on Expono or just be able to tell the story behind your precious memory.

Face Tagging and Sharing to FriendFeed and Twitter:

Expono has extended its integration with Friendfeed and Twitter that allows interaction between users of those services:

Basically, you connect your Expono account with FriendFeed or Twitter, tag your friends' photos, add them to your contact groups and give them access to the photos you want them to see.

See what Expono's small but loyal group of followers are talking about on Twitter and also on FriendFeed.

Oh, did we mention Expono's context aware media RSS that allows users to enter a URL into your Wii Opera browser URL field, run it fullscreen and watch a slideshow on your TV? Don't forget authenticated RSS feeds, GPS support, photo editing, iPhoto photocasting, EXIF and IPTC support and much, much more. We also like that Expono takes your privacy very seriously.

This hungry startup (a core team of six, including Co-Founder and CEO Magnus Jonsson) means business when it says there are other exciting things in the works. Expono team member Daniel Bentes hinted at the company's interest in a developing a mobile site, similar to Flickr's new mobile site, that uses Apple's Core Location service right from Safari. Bentes says, "this kind of location awareness will be the future of not only search and discovery services, but even ad-based and paid content, giving even more value to viewers and readers alike. As of now, Apple's Core Location is the prime example of this ability". He adds that the company "...would like to implement the same kind of functionality on Expono.com for the coming iPhone version. But would REALLY love to implement it on the main web version as well, enabling this functionality to an even broader audience".

Like we said, there are other sites out there that do similar things. But when you combine all these things together and they are done well (in this case they did a great job), you get a very powerful and useful tool that just may be worth forking over your hard-earned money for. If you don't want to take our word for it, check out what our friend @CleverClogs had to say about Expono over on Friendfeed. She is quite knowledgeable and discriminating about such matters. You might want to also go to the Expono Customer Support Community on Get Satisfaction to see what others are saying and to throw in your own two cents.

Be sure to read the Expono blog for even more information and follow the company's Twitter updates @expono. The service is still in Beta, but you should have no problem getting an invite if you sign up at Expono.com.

Why a Trusted Expert?

Because people want to do business with people they trust.  It’s as simple as that. And unless you’ve got millions of dollars lying around, you don’t have the money to put into an advertising campaign to gain recognition for yourself and to build trust with your target audience like the major corporations do.  And really, does anyone trust anything that’s said in advertising anymore?

Instead, you need to start looking at your communications in a different way.  You need to come up with a strategy that will help you reach people, and build a level of trust with them that will cause them to seek you out when they need your product.  And all for little to no money spent on your part.  Just time, effort, and some authenticity are all that is required.

You just need to make other people start seeing you as a Trusted Expert.  People want to do business with people they trust, and there’s not a whole lot of trust in online business.  By being authentic and genuinely helpful (and don’t worry, I’ll explain how to do that if it seems like a foreign concept for business) you will position yourself as an authority in your niche or category.

By putting information first and sales second, it will actually make people want to buy from you more.  It sounds counter-intuitive to everything you’ve read (trick them into buying stuff, hypnotize them so they don’t know what’s going on!) but it works, and even better, it establishes a long-term relationship that can provide you with sustained revenue down the road.

It may seem daunting (and a tad egotistical) to brand yourself as a Trusted Expert…

But there ain’t no room in business for humble, and you’ve got to blow your own horn because no one else is going to do it for you!

But to become a Trusted Expert, you first have to know more about your audience.  In order to provide them with the information they want, you have to know what they need and why they need it.

So whats your thoughts on this post?

Click Here Now to Download “How to Build a Business Not Just a Blog” for FREE and Learn the Right Way to Make Money Online! - Copyright JohnCow.com - All Rights Reserved

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Yesterday, on 4th of July started one of the biggest song and dance celebrations in Europe. In this year`s celebration which is held in Estonian capital city Tallinn, almost 35 000 performers and more than 100 000 spectators come to celebrate Estonian singing and dancing heritage that goes back 140 years.

The repetitions of the dance celebration started already on June 30th. Choirs and brass bands started to arrive to Tallinn on July 2nd. Alltogether there will be 864 choirs and brass orchestras, including 26430 singers and musicians who will perform at the celebration along with 534 dance and gymnastic groups with 7460 dancers and gymnasts. In addition to Estonian singers and dancers, 41 foreign collectives with 1340 singers are expected to participate.

Being the most important festival in Estonia - all Song and Dance Celebration tickets were sold out already a week ago, state and Tallinn city government is doing a lot to support musicians, dancers and spectators. For example, free public transportation and free food for performers, free Wireless internet connections in and around Song Festival Ground, free first aid etc.

"I have been performing in two Dance Celebrations and thus have close relation with this epic event. This is definitely the most important event in Estonia," so Oliver Tubarik from Estonian navy.

The first nationwide Song Celebration was held in Tartu in 1869. At the time this was seen as the first attempt at national self-determination. Fifty choirs and musical ensembles from all over Estonia performed before an audience of thousands, who experienced a blissful sense of belonging, enhanced by the beauty of the music and the songs. This celebration evolved into a tradition that still flourishes today.

The small nation which started the tradition has had to prove to foreign authorities, even in the 20th century, that they are a fully fledged nation with its own rights and resolves. Song and Dance Celebrations were not just big festivals of singing and music, but a way to demonstrate the national spirit and to strengthen the sense of belonging.

The age of foreign rulers is past but Song and Dance Celebrations are still alive - both local and nationwide. It is definitely not only the spirit of protest and resistance that brings hundreds of thousands of Estonians - and an increasing number of guests from around the world - every five years to Tallinn. The total number of performers in the last Song and Dance Celebration in 2004 was 34 000 and they performed before an audience of 200 000.

More information about Estonian Song and Dance Celebration:

Song and Dance Celebration blog:

http://tobreatheasone.wordpress.com

Song and Dance Celebration Twitter feed:http://www.twitter.com/tobreatheasone

Song and Dance Celebration photos:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tobreatheasone

Song and Dance Celebration videos:

http://www.youtube.com/tobreatheasone2009

Critics say emphasis of Gay Pride march on fun ignores liberation movement's fight against injustice

When the gay clientele of a New York bar staged a revolt against police harassment in June 1969 it sparked the awakening of the homosexual liberation movement. But 40 years on from the Stonewall rebellion, Britain's gay community is riven by a dispute over which should come first: politics or partying.

As thousands take to the streets of the British capital today for Gay Pride, which traditionally commemorates the US riots, critics hit out at Pride London for "depoliticising" the event and failing to feature its history in its literature or website.

Peter Tatchell, of the lesbian gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) human rights group, OutRage, and a patron of Pride London, condemned this year's slogan "Come and Play" as "totally anodyne" and accused the LGBT community of "huge apathy and complacency".

He said: "I'm shocked that Pride London has hardly mentioned the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall riots on its website or in its magazine. Most of the content is about entertainment and partying. To ignore and downplay this important anniversary is an insult to the veterans who began our momentous fight for freedom."

Citing police statistics showing a 63% rise in homophobic hate crimes in Manchester last year and a recent report from the Association of Teachers and Lecturers showing the term gay is still the most frequently used insult in schools, he said: "Lots of people assume that we've won equality and everything is hunky dory. But the battle for LGBT equality is still far from being won. Same-sex marriage is banned and there is a ban on gay and bisexual blood donors. LGBT refugees are often sent back to renewed persecution to violently homophobic countries like Uganda and Nigeria. Police refuse to prosecute fundamentalist clerics and reggae singers who openly advocate the murder of LGBT people. The government's current equality bill gives protection against harassment on all grounds except sexual orientation."

Echoing Tatchell's call for a stronger political message, Anisa de Jong, the director of the UK Lesbian and Gay Immigration Group, said: "Gay Pride should be providing more of a political space in line with its history which is about visibility being a political statement in itself. The whole Pride issue is not just about celebrating our identity but about making a political statement about our identity and addressing injustices."

Joseph Galliano, the outgoing editor of GT magazine (formerly Gay Times), welcomed the celebratory aspects of the march but warned against the loss of its heritage.

He said: "I don't want to be po-faced about it but that celebration is standing on the shoulders of people who made great sacrifices and they should be remembered."

Paul Birrell, of Pride London, defended the decision not to feature the Stonewall riots on the website, but said it would be mentioned in the rally at Trafalgar Square after the march today.

"We decided that the Stonewall anniversary would get a lot of mainstream press interest and, short of being a commemoration event of the Stonewall riots, there's not much Pride can do. We will talk about it on stage on the day."

He stressed that London was one of the few Pride UK marches to retain a campaigning element, but admitted that its focus had changed in recent years to attract more people.

"There's no point in having a march just for already politicised LGBT group members – you would be preaching to the converted," said Birrell. "If you want to campaign, you have to have an audience, so you need to make it fun. When we took over in 2004, only 10,000 people attended, but last year we had 823,000. Our predecessor, mardi gras, was run on a more militant basis, but no one was interested. It collapsed in 2003."

Birrell said the campaign behind the march this year was to protest against the ban on gay men donating blood, but there would be "important but boring" speeches from, among others, Harriet Harmen, the deputy leader of the Labour party, on anti-discrimination issues such as the Single Equality Act.

When asked if sponsorship was a factor in deciding the march's message, Birrell replied: "To a degree. If we were heavily politicised, there's no way we would be in Oxford Street and Regents Street. The traders wouldn't want it and they have a lot of clout with the council, but when they can see it attracts people into the city, they're happy."

Soho Pride cancelled its event this year due to a lack of sponsorship, while the recently elected mayor of Doncaster, Peter Davies, has threatened to cut funding to the town's Gay Pride event as part of his pledge to fight political correctness.

• Gay rights
• London

Et c'est reparti pour un Tour ! Comme si de rien n'était, la caravane fourbit ses slogans publicitaires ; les radios et les télévisions salivent d'avance sur les audiences ; les journalistes font mine de s'enthousiasmer, glosent sur la « légende » ; les coureurs et leurs staffs parlent stratégie, osent quelques pronostics ; le grand public s'arrache les journaux, la carte des étapes, la liste des équipes... Le dopage ? Plus tard.

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International media coverage of the Iranian protest movement in the past weeks has widely celebrated ‘Twitter power' as a tool of organizing and reporting on protests, but the reliance on Twitter has had both positive and negative results in this crisis. We look at some of them here to demystify the actual degree of impact.

There is no doubt citizens protesting the results of the June presidential election have made efficient use of  Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and blogs to ‘immortalize' their movement and broadcast scenes of violence by security forces, but the centerpoint of this movement are the people and not technology.

With journalists prohibited from doing their work and a world audience thirsty for information from Iran, citizen media has often become a primary source of information. Unfortunately, the true identity and reliability of twitter users was not always known, and we saw instances where the lines of fact and fiction blurred - just as they may have in the presidential election results themselves.

1-Communication tool for reformists leaders

After the election on June 12, several websites belonging to reformists were filtered. Security forces heightened their control of newspapers, reformist personalities were jailed, and those who were still free were barred from access to national television and radio. The Internet is still almost the only window for them to communicate with the public. The Facebook page of Mir Hussein Mousavi's campaign has more than 100,000 supporters. On Twitter his campaign has around 30,000 followers. Ghloamhussein Karbaschi, a top adviser to Mehdi Karroubi, a second reformist candidate in the election, tweets to inform his 5000 followers of events. Twitter and Facebook along with reformist websites such as Ghlamnews help communicate the decisions of reformist leaders and pass on the message.

2-Closing the gap between Iran and the world

Iranian tweets touched thousands around the world and it seems by following and re-tweeting people feel involved. The most common search topic on Twitter for days has been #iranelection (the “hashtag” for discussions on Iran) and global media outlets are relying on information and images disseminated via Twitter as well. According to Bloggasm, tweets coming out of Iran are retweeted an average of 57.8 times.

3-Twitter does not organize demonstrations:

Reformist leaders and their supporters make decisions to organize protests and they communicate it through different means. We have no evidence that people tweeted each other to organize a demonstration. As Evgeny Mozrov, a fellow of the Open Society Institute in New York said to the Washington Post:

“[Twitter] has been of great help in terms of getting information out of the country. Whether it has helped to organize protests — something that most of the media are claiming at the moment — is not at all certain, for, as a public platform, Twitter is not particularly helpful for planning a revolution (authorities could be reading those messages as well!).”

4-Tweets can misinform people:

Recently one of several people tweeted that 700,000 people had gathered at the Ghoba mosque in Tehran. Several people re-tweeted it and even posted the news on their blogs. Meanwhile mainstream international media estimated the number of protesters was between 3000-5000 people. What could have happened to the other a 699,5000 people?

As the new Twitter Journalism website by founder of Breaking Tweets, Craig Kanalley, explains:

“It’s obvious people want information from Iran, and they want it in real-time. So it doesn’t take much for a person to hit “RT” and to rebroadcast information they feel may be a “scoop.” But where’s the gatekeeper?
The gatekeeper is the retweeter, who takes a look at the tweet and within seconds decides its value. Anyone who eyes a retweet must keep this in mind, and treat every tweet with caution until confirmed.”

5-Tweeting is recycling news and tips

Most people tweet what they read on websites, and have also shared useful tips and information to help Iranians circumvent internet filtering and censorship. In other words tweeting helps create an information pool.

6-Misunderstanding the sender:

Sometimes there are 'senders', like Iranians based in the West, for example, who receive information about a demonstration from a source and tweet it without checking the facts, or without mentioning any references. Receivers - especially if they are not Iranians - may think the guy is in Tehran and tweeting from the frontlines.

7-Activism and agendas:

Most Iranians who tweet are activists supporting the protest movement and promoting a cause. Their information should be double-checked and not be accepted at face value, or as an eyewitness observation.

With all these things in mind, it is clear that Twitter is both a source of information as well as mis-information. It's the people behind the screens that matter, as much as the people who report on what they are saying.

When, a couple of weeks ago, the ExtremeTech site announced it would no longer be a functional site, but simply an archive of old stuff, I was thinking that Ziff Davis was on the shrink, due to the recession. I was sure that this was another company that was slowly but surely dying away, from lack of interest.

Well, those of us who are on the mailing list for any of the Z-D sites got an e-mail a couple of days ago, announcing the new site that the company is offering. It is called smartplanet, and though I’m not certain what my opinion is just yet, I do know it is a step in the right direction.

Though I seem to be in the minority of those who write about these things, I enjoy lots of company among the silent readers of the world. ExtremeTech should have been a combination of the spirit of Byte magazine, with the in-depth technical reviews of AnandTech, and the writing quality of Newsweek.

Well, it started out strong, but never quite achieved that; in the end, it was a self-indulgent space that allowed its contributors to build toys and have fun, with little in the way of depth of information.

That era appears to be over.

Smartplanet looks as though it is geared toward new and ecologically-responsible technology, which is the direction of the country, led by the current administration. It is also geared toward business, but seems as though it will be friendly enough for anyone to peruse without getting scared off. Information gleaned from the site will be usable to almost anyone, and what the site needs is a wide audience if it is to succeed.

Many of the contributors will be familiar to you if you frequent the ZDNet site, and others are also familiar if you read tech sites in general. The site is sponsored by IBM, among others, and should be a good read for quite some time. I really like the new, less busy feel, and the lack of angry fruit salad color scheme.

§

everyone is thinking about the ecology, these days, including the post office

·

On July 9, 1858, Illinois Senator Stephen Douglas gave a campaign speech to a raucous throng from the balcony of the Tremont Hotel in Chicago. Abraham Lincoln was in the audience when Douglas prepared to speak. Douglas invited Lincoln to come join him on the balcony to watch the speech. In his speech Douglas rang the themes of the momentous campaign that Lincoln and Douglas waged that summer and fall for Douglas's Senate seat.

Douglas paid tribute to Lincoln as a "kind, amiable, and intelligent gentleman, a good citizen and an honorable opponent," but expressed his disagreement with Lincoln's June 16 speech to the Illinois Republican convention that had named him its candidate for Douglas's seat. In that speech Lincoln had famously asserted that the nation could not exist "half slave and half free." According to Douglas, Lincoln's assertion was inconsistent with the "diversity" in domestic institutions that was "the great safeguard of our liberties." Then as now, "diversity" was a shibboleth hiding an evil institution that could not be defended on its own terms.

Douglas responded to Lincoln's condemnation of the Supreme Court's Dred Scott decision -- a condemnation that was the centerpiece of Lincoln's convention speech. "I am free to say to you," Douglas said, "that in my opinion this government of ours is founded on the white basis. It was made by the white man, for the benefit of the white man, to be administered by white men, in such manner as they should determine."

Lincoln invited Douglas's audience to return the next evening for his reply to Douglas's speech. Lincoln's speech of July 10, 1858, is one of his many great speeches, but in one respect it is uniquely great. It concludes with an explanation of the meaning of this day to Americans with matchless eloquence and insight in words that remain as relevant now as then.

Now, it happens that we meet together once every year, sometime about the 4th of July, for some reason or other. These 4th of July gatherings I suppose have their uses. If you will indulge me, I will state what I suppose to be some of them.

We are now a mighty nation, we are thirty---or about thirty millions of people, and we own and inhabit about one-fifteenth part of the dry land of the whole earth. We run our memory back over the pages of history for about eighty-two years and we discover that we were then a very small people in point of numbers, vastly inferior to what we are now, with a vastly less extent of country,---with vastly less of everything we deem desirable among men,---we look upon the change as exceedingly advantageous to us and to our posterity, and we fix upon something that happened away back, as in some way or other being connected with this rise of prosperity. We find a race of men living in that day whom we claim as our fathers and grandfathers; they were iron men, they fought for the principle that they were contending for; and we understood that by what they then did it has followed that the degree of prosperity that we now enjoy has come to us. We hold this annual celebration to remind ourselves of all the good done in this process of time of how it was done and who did it, and how we are historically connected with it; and we go from these meetings in better humor with ourselves---we feel more attached the one to the other, and more firmly bound to the country we inhabit. In every way we are better men in the age, and race, and country in which we live for these celebrations. But after we have done all this we have not yet reached the whole. There is something else connected with it. We have besides these men---descended by blood from our ancestors---among us perhaps half our people who are not descendants at all of these men, they are men who have come from Europe---German, Irish, French and Scandinavian---men that have come from Europe themselves, or whose ancestors have come hither and settled here, finding themselves our equals in all things. If they look back through this history to trace their connection with those days by blood, they find they have none, they cannot carry themselves back into that glorious epoch and make themselves feel that they are part of us, but when they look through that old Declaration of Independence they find that those old men say that "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal," and then they feel that that moral sentiment taught in that day evidences their relation to those men, that it is the father of all moral principle in them, and that they have a right to claim it as though they were blood of the blood, and flesh of the flesh of the men who wrote that Declaration [loud and long continued applause], and so they are. That is the electric cord in that Declaration that links the hearts of patriotic and liberty-loving men together, that will link those patriotic hearts as long as the love of freedom exists in the minds of men throughout the world. [Applause.]

Now, sirs, for the purpose of squaring things with this idea of "don't care if slavery is voted up or voted down" [Douglas's "popular sovereignty" position on the extension of slavery to the territories], for sustaining the Dred Scott decision [A voice---"Hit him again"], for holding that the Declaration of Independence did not mean anything at all, we have Judge Douglas giving his exposition of what the Declaration of Independence means, and we have him saying that the people of America are equal to the people of England. According to his construction, you Germans are not connected with it. Now I ask you in all soberness, if all these things, if indulged in, if ratified, if confirmed and endorsed, if taught to our children, and repeated to them, do not tend to rub out the sentiment of liberty in the country, and to transform this Government into a government of some other form. Those arguments that are made, that the inferior race are to be treated with as much allowance as they are capable of enjoying; that as much is to be done for them as their condition will allow. What are these arguments? They are the arguments that kings have made for enslaving the people in all ages of the world. You will find that all the arguments in favor of king-craft were of this class; they always bestrode the necks of the people, not that they wanted to do it, but because the people were better off for being ridden. That is their argument, and this argument of the Judge is the same old serpent that says you work and I eat, you toil and I will enjoy the fruits of it. Turn in whatever way you will---whether it come from the mouth of a King, an excuse for enslaving the people of his country, or from the mouth of men of one race as a reason for enslaving the men of another race, it is all the same old serpent, and I hold if that course of argumentation that is made for the purpose of convincing the public mind that we should not care about this, should be granted, it does not stop with the negro. I should like to know if taking this old Declaration of Independence, which declares that all men are equal upon principle and making exceptions to it where will it stop. If one man says it does not mean a negro, why not another say it does not mean some other man? If that declaration is not the truth, let us get the Statute book, in which we find it and tear it out! Who is so bold as to do it! [Voices---"me" "no one," &c.] If it is not true let us tear it out! [cries of "no, no,"] let us stick to it then [cheers], let us stand firmly by it then. [Applause.]

(Posted annually since 2004.)

A new torrent has been uploaded to U2Torrents.com.

Torrent: 4810
Title: 1992-11-27 .dvdf - Philips DCC Presents Zoo TV Featuring U2
Size: 4.25 GB
Category: ZooTv
Uploaded by: MrTheEdgeSTB

Description
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It's been some time since I've uploaded anything. Anyway, in the spirit of the new tour, thought I would share one of my fav's.

I uploaded this originally about 3 years ago, and it got some pretty decent response. I don't see it in the Zoo TV catalogue currently, so perhaps an encore is in order.

Philips DCC Presents Zoo TV Featuring U2
AUGUST-OCTOBER 1992
PRO-SHOT Video
Lineage - unknown (to me!) - MTV (VHS/PAL) -> DVD-R
Video - NTSC
Audio - Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo

Track List:
1. Television, The Drug Of The Nation (w/interference from Zoo TV)
2. Zoo Station
3. The Fly
4. Even Better Than The Real Thing
5. Mysterious Ways
6. Until The End Of The World
7. Trying To Throw Your Arms Around The World
8. When Love Comes To Town
9. Satellite Of Love
10. Interference from Zoo TV
11. Bullet The Blue Sky
12. Running To Stand Still
13. Where The Streets Have No Name
14. Interference from Zoo TV
15. Desire

- Ripped using SmartRipper v2.41 from PAL version (MTV)
- Remastered using Sony Vegas 5 to convert to NTSC, correct edits and synchronization issues (during end of Zoo Station beginning of the Fly); added original intro footage (video) back in from Czech version (audio contained broadcaster overdubs); mixed in composite audio for that segment from Television The Drug of the Nation (Zoo TV DC 1992-08-16) and audience noise from Zoo TV Sydney
- Reauthored using Sony DVD Architect 2 including new menus and navigation

Synopsis:
This is a great pro-shot compilation from the third leg of Zoo TV, dubbed the Outside Broadcast Tour. It was broadcast in various forms around the world in late fall 1992, with MTV carrying a substantially longer program in many markets (which included some documentary footage from the home video release "Zoo TV - The Videos, The Cameos and a Whole Lot of Interference from Zoo TV") at about 90 min, this version which edits out the aforementioned and runs 75 min, and the grotesquely edited Fox TV version in the U.S. at about 50 min w/ commercials.

This version retains a lot of the fun extras, including the "Zoo Non-product" commercials, the Adam Stalker (night vision) video, many of the Kurt Loder interviews, the Bill Clinton radio phone-in, the random Zoo Confessionals throughout, the Rona Elliot (bogus) live interviews, the Pat Kenney show with the Doppelgangers doing "Horses" whilst U2 sits in the audience, and the Anaheim (1992/11/14) finale call to the White House.

The source footage and audio has long been an obsession of mine. Originally I thought it to be entirely from New York Yankee Stadium. However, after obtaining the KTS disc "Outside Broadcast" which claims the audio to be all from Houston, TX (1992/10/14) which had same audio for many tracks, and subsequently getting the KTS pressing Zoo TV Live Transmission which is entirely audience recorded from the Houston show, I began to doubt that this TV special was from a single concert. This was later confirmed by reading Bill Flanagan's excellent tour biography "U2 At The End Of The World". Basically the band spent numerous nights in Los Angeles editing the special prior to heading to Mexico for the last 4 nights of the 3rd Leg.

So after embarking on a fevered mission to collect audience recordings from as many of the 3rd Leg Zoo TV shows as I could (including most of the famed ones), I was slowly able to make audio reference comparisons and determine a probable lineage (one that the band has even gotten surprisingly wrong on many of their recent commercial offerings that contained select songs from this special). So, based again on hours of listening comparisons, here's what I've come up with:

1. Television, The Drug Of The Nation (w/interference from Zoo TV) (unknown - lots of spliced footage)
2. Zoo Station (New York, 1992/08/29 - while David Salz is talking you can barely make out Bono saying "It's all right - Babe Ruth's in the house tonight" in the background)
3. The Fly (Houston, 1992/10/14 - audio definitely ("Achtung, y'all!"), video could be composited, perhaps including Dallas 1992/10/16, from the looks of the stadium)
4. Even Better Than The Real Thing (New York, 1992/08/30, at least through 1st verse and chorus, possibly to the bridge; Dallas, 1992/10/16 from the bridge to the end (just "Edge", instead of the usual "Sliding down..." or "Sliding down the surface of things")
5. Mysterious Ways (New York, 1992/08/30)
6. Until The End Of The World (Dallas, 1992/10/16 intro (Bono shouts "Hold on!" before the opening main riff) through just before the bridge (again, just "Edge..."); New York, 1992/08/30 bridge to the end - not sure when the video switches, but the audio second half is definitely NY night 2)
7. Trying To Throw Your Arms Around The World (Dallas, 1992/10/16 - Bono chuckles during "Your lips move but you can't talk...") whilst looking at Larry, who apparently flubbed part of his solo spot; and Bono to girl "You wanna dance with me, child?" - I have a crappy Dallas audience that fits this all to a T)
8. When Love Comes To Town (New York, 1992/08/30 - based on performance and Larry's wearing his black vest)
9. Satellite Of Love (Dallas, 1992/10/16 - before Lou Reed's solo, Bono says "Lou Reed - live from the moon")
10. Interference from Zoo TV
11. Bullet The Blue Sky (Toronto, 1992/09/05 - this is well documented, amazing performance; video might include some of New York night 1 and/or 2, but clearly you can see in some shots the giant Ferris Wheel in the background that is part of a carnival park in Toronto)
12. Running To Stand Still (Dallas, 1992/10/16 - the audio fits most nights, really, but the video has the same stadium appearance as Satellite, and Dallas was one of the few nights Bono did only 3 "hallelujah's" at the end of the song instead of the usual 4)
13. Where The Streets Have No Name (New York, 1992/08/30)
14. Interference from Zoo TV
15. Desire (New York, 1992/08/30)

Anyway, it's quite a trip and certainly highlights great moments from the tour. A real gem. I tell you what - if they ever decide to broker a deal and get the rights back for production as a real commercial offering, I will be the first to throw this boot in the trash and buy the real deal. In the meantime, hope this tickles everyone's happy spots!

Enjoy!
MrTheEdgeSTB
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

You can use the URL below to download the torrent (you may have to login).

http://u2torrents.com/torrents-details.php?id=4810&hit=1

Take care!

U2Torrents.com

Filed under: Comedy, Romance, Trailers and Clips

Continue reading 'The Ugly Truth' of Vibrating Underwear

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[Continuing a set of interviews by Game Developer magazine EIC Brandon Sheffield for GameSetWatch, he talks to Thatgamecompany's Kellee Santiago on a multitude of neat topics regarding downloadable games and the Flower creators' future.]

Kellee Santiago is cofounder of Thatgamecompany, known for genre-shaking downloadable titles such as flOw and Flower, which both push the boundaries of games and their emotional resonance, but also give Sony something to point to in the way of artistry in the PSN space.

Thatgamecompany has been growing, slowly but surely, to where Santiago can now step out of the defacto-production role she often held on top of her studio running duties, so that she can now look externally, to see how TGC can potentially help other smaller indies, or expand the company's offerings in targeted ways.

We spoke with Santiago recently about changes within the company, the potential of a Flower expansion, PSP Go and Project Natal, as well as the viability of a TGC game based on an emotion like rage:

Thatgamecompany's Next Steps

Can you talk a little bit about what's next for you guys?

Kellee Santiago: I have to admit that it's probably going to be a little frustratingly vague just because we're in the middle of just solidifying the details on our current PSN project.

But I think the last three years we've spent building up this brand of Thatgamecompany and what it is. We hope what people are getting from us is Thatgamecompany is about providing meaningful experiences and unique experiences through video games.

And as I see us going forward and growing as a company in the future, I think what we'd like is to bring more titles under that brand. Whether that's us growing an internal team to handle multiple projects or by going with more of like a label structure where we have "Thatgamecompany presents," and we're able to help other teams that we see and other projects that we see that we really want to see come to light, that would fit under that brand as well.

Interesting. So, not exactly like a publisher, but like a liaison or something?

KS: Hmm, a liaison? Yeah, I think it would be kind of... That's partially what we've been doing in some ways, and I think just formalizing that as a business plan maybe.

How would you say you've been doing it already?

KS: I think we've become involved with a lot of the other indie developers. I mean, we're all more connected now than we've ever been before thanks to venues like the Independent Games Summit.

What we've also tried to do in addition -- I mean, I always say that we're one of the few companies that hopes that other people copy us, because we don't want to be this little niche random thing. This is where we want things to go. We want a lot of games to be made like ours.

What we've also been trying to do is when we see stuff that's awesome, or if people come to us asking for advice or connections or something, we always try and set them up. In these interviews, I think we try and drop a lot of projects, you know, names, and try to gain exposure for the indie dev scene as a whole.

Talking about the next project I didn't realize that you were necessarily tied to PSN. I just knew it was with Sony. It didn't connect for me that it was PSN specifically.

KS: Well, the goal has always been digital distribution.

New Platforms

What do you think about PSP Go then?

KS: The PSPgo... It's interesting. I just remember Jenova saying that when he was in Shanghai, he saw a lot more people having PSPs than DSes. I mean, this is totally anecdotally, but that they were very much like fashion accessories, and that they would watch media on it or something or browse the internet but not really play games. And I could see the PSP Go continuing that, like being that. I don't know as a game system... $250 is a lot of money.

That's true.

KS: [laughs] I thought that was expensive, but...they're also putting out a lot of major franchise games on PSP, so it will be interesting to see if that helps more people on PSP playing games, checking out the new stuff that's there as well. Fat Princess is going to go PSP.

It's definitely been a piracy vehicle previously, so it will be interesting to see how the PSPgo does in that regard. I also wanted to ask you what you thought of Project Natal -- it seems like a Jenova kind of thing.

KS: Yeah, well, I was going to say, it certainly falls under a lot of the... Or touched on the things that I know he's been interested in as far as that. Especially when you think about accessibility, removing the controller completely.

I guess one of the major criticisms that I've heard the last couple of days is people saying, "Well, how are they going to first-person shooters on it?" It's like, "Well, maybe they don't do a first-person shooter."

And maybe it's about making new games, allowing for different kinds of games. We don't have to think about games that already and how they're going to translate to that control. I think what it is is it allows for new designs to emerge.

My question is how much of it is real.

KS: Yeah.

The New Hire

So you have Robin Hunicke (previously a design lead at EA) now. How did that come about?

KS: It grew really organically. I mean, as you probably know, we got her fresh off of shipping Boom Blox Bash Party. So, I think as she was wrapping that project, she was thinking about her next steps. She's just one of those people we also like to bounce ideas off of, so we started talking about some of the ideas we had for our current project, and it just seemed like a really great match.

I think that with our experimental game design process, one of the issues that we've had in the past is tightening up the production of that and tracking it and developing a better process for it. And Robin just really has a passion for designing a team experience around creating these kinds of games that we saw as a huge value.

My question will be how many incredibly strong personalities can Thatgamecompany hold without exploding? I know that even as a small team, it's difficult to get everyone to push in the same direction.

KS: Well... [laughs] I mean, part of that is Jenova growing as a director, and I think he has. I think that also allowed for this to happen on this project. I mean, hopefully we want there to be lots of strong personalities at Thatgamecompany because we want to be a company that attracts the best and the top talent.

You can find a lot of people who are willing to do whatever you tell them, but when you want to continue to create unique games and unique designs, you need people who will also step up as leaders and also champion their ideas and bring new ideas.

Flower

Certainly. Jenova talked a bit about whether there would be a Flower update. Can you talk about that at all?

KS: Again, there's nothing to confirm or deny right now. We're unfortunately still so small that it's hard to divide our resources effectively. Flower was certainly designed as a complete experience.

One of the ethical challenges we face as a company is that we really strive to provide meaningful experience to the player. So, in the past, when we've thought about developing expansions or developing downloadable content, it becomes very difficult because we really, really want to make sure that it's very meaningful, that we're not just trying to get more money out of people that love our games.

So, that's added to this challenge of Flower being a complete experience as well. So, when we think of what to add and what would be meaningful. It's very difficult. At the same time, it's regrettable right now that we haven't been able to support those fans and those players in a better way because the outpouring of expression after that game and the emails we get have just been amazing. We would really like show them that we care about that.

BIt's quite difficult when of course you sort of want to go on and do your next thing but people still want more of what you've already got.

KS: Yeah, yeah. Hopefully, part of that is satiated by just our next project, and that will be another Thatgamecompany project, and I think the players of Flower and flOw will enjoy it.

Right. But how long is that going to take?

KS: Right. [laughs] Yeah. And also, when we think about the projects, I mean, right now, as I was saying, it's like our current project is requiring an all hands on deck sort of approach, so it makes it difficult to then try and manage downloadable content or an expansion. But it's something we're trying to improve.

I guess you could go with like external help like you did with the PSP version of flOw, but I don't know if that's appealing.

KS: Yeah. I think that's also something where now that we've gained Robin as a producer, that will allow me to focus more on that stuff, hopefully opening up the opportunity of doing exactly that.

And certainly the code for Flower is a lot better, so in that way, it will be easier than flOw was. [laughs] Yeah, poor Supervillain had like the worst time, and I just really, really give them mad props for dealing with that.

I guess that's what happens with indie teams' early projects. It's like, "Well..."

KS: "No one's ever going to look at this ever again." [laughs]

As long as it works.

KS: Exactly. As long as we ship it.

On Rage

Are you going for a specific feeling for the next project?

KS: Yes, but we can't talk about it right now. But we always start with emotions, and this is no exception.

Well fine! I assume that... I always wonder what would you all do with an emotion like rage, or something like that, which I know is really outside of what Jenova wants to do. But I've always found that curious.

KS: Well, part of our mission statement is to create games that communicate emotions that aren't currently available on the video game apartment. Rage is well-covered.

Right.

KS: But that's not to say it's out of the realm of a Thatgamecompany game because if one day, we've moved well beyond, I don't know, the emotions that are communicated today, which I can't see because I think there will always be an audience for this -- I mean, I'm so stoked for God of War 3. I think it would be really interesting, that's all I can say.

I think it would be interesting to start a game with, you know... Well, maybe God of War, you know, that's what they captured so well, with that like visceral rage, and then designed everything around that.

I'm really interested with this Six Days in Fallujah project that keeps getting picked up and dropped and dropped...

Well... Have you actually seen the gameplay?

KS: Nah, I don't know.

That's the thing. A a lot of indies are coming out to stress the importance of Konami, but having seen it, it didn't look very complex to me -- like just another male power fantasy video game.

KS: I wonder, because I know some of the guys at that development studio, and their heart is in the right place. So, I guess I was excited by... Well, maybe partnering with Konami, they would have been able to get it to a very meaningful place.

But yeah, you're right. Intention isn't everything. There has to be execution behind it.

This post is part of Mashable’s Spark of Genius series, which highlights a unique feature of startups. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here. The series is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark.

Name: Launchly

Quick Pitch: Launchly showcases new websites to an audience to help site owners get the attention and feedback necessary to succeed.

Genius Idea: It’s hard to stand out and get attention for web applications and new websites. You can build a Twitter app over a weekend and get no traction because you don’t know where to promote it. Or maybe you need some feedback and advice on your newly launched website. Launchly does this, but instead of just showcasing a startup and letting it fall by the wayside, Launchly allows apps to resubmit new iterations and build on their ideas.

Essentially, Launchly is a Digg for startups. You submit your site to Launchly and include a short sentence description, a long description, the type of feedback you’re seeking, screenshots, related tags, and you can be up and running on the Launchly homepage. After that, it works a lot like Digg, in that users can rate your website up or down, comment on it, and share the webpage via Facebook, Twitter, and Digg. This can really affect how visible your web app is on the site.

The key to Launchly though is the iterations feature, which allows you to take the feedback you receive and submit a new version of your website to the service. This allows for a new round of feedback once you’ve made upgrades. You also receive some analytics on Launchly user engagement and social media buzz.

The catch, of course, is that this service isn’t free – the lowest-priced plan costs $40, with more expensive and feature-rich plans coming soon. The price is understandable, when you consider that valuable feedback can make or break a website. However, Launchly is very new itself and thus hasn’t hit the critical mass necessary to really get the community needed to justify the cost yet.

Launchly’s value is directly correlated with its community. As it grows, the value of a launch on the website will grow, but this also means that in its early stages, it is tough to shell out $40 for such little visibility. Launchly would do well to focus on building a strong community and offering promotions or discounts to startups to get the ball rolling. If it can gain enough momentum, there could be some real value.

BizSpark is a startup program that gives you three-year access to the latest Microsoft development tools, as well as connecting you to a nationwide network of investors and incubators. There are no upfront costs, so if your business is privately owned, less than three years old, and generates less than U.S.$1 million in annual revenue, you can sign up today.

Entrepreneurs can take advantage of the Azure Services platform for their website hosting and storage needs. Microsoft recently announced the “new CloudApp()” contest – use the Azure Services Platform for hosting your .NET or PHP app, and you could be the lucky winner of a USD 5000* (please see website for official rules and guidelines).”

Tags: launchly

On July 3, FoxNation.com features the headline "Obama Busted Stacking Town Hall ... What If Bush Had?" But the suggestion that Bush did not screen town hall audiences or questions was refuted by Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace, who said on the July 3 edition of Fox & Friends that "town hall meetings ... have always been something of an artifice, because I know in the Bush administration, George W. Bush, they had a lot of these town hall meetings, and they chose all the people there. So everybody has always tried to get a home-court advantage." Indeed, a March 12, 2005, Washington Post article on Bush's 2005 Social Security town hall events reported, "The carefully screened panelists [at a town hall in Memphis] spoke admiringly about Bush, his ideas, his 'bold' leadership on Social Security. If the presentations sound well rehearsed, it's because they often are. The guests at these 'Oprah'-style conversations trumpet the very points Bush wants to make."

In the wake of an October 13, 2005, "staged" public video conference Bush held with several soldiers in Iraq, an October 15, 2005, Washington Post article on that event called it "one of the stranger and most awkwardly staged publicity events of the Bush presidency." The article further reported:

Before they [Bush and the soldiers] spoke, Allison Barber, a mid-level Pentagon official, helped coach the troops on who would be asked what by Bush. Afterward, according to Reuters, she told reporters that "we knew that the president was going to ask about security, coalition and training" but not the specific questions.

This not a new technique for Bush; his White House has perfected the public relations strategy of holding scripted events featuring the president's supporters. During the first part of the year, Bush traveled the country to discuss his Social Security plan, while aides stacked the audience with Republicans and tutored participants in these town hall events on what to say.

From the March 12, 2005, Washington Post article titled "Social Security: On With the Show":

The few dissenting voices in the Cannon Center for the Performing Arts were quickly silenced or escorted out by security. One woman with a soft voice but firm opposition to Bush was asked to leave, even though her protests were barely audible beyond her section in the back corner of the auditorium. The carefully screened panelists spoke admiringly about Bush, his ideas, his "bold" leadership on Social Security.

If the presentations sound well rehearsed, it's because they often are. The guests at these "Oprah"-style conversations trumpet the very points Bush wants to make. Seniors on stage express confidence that Bush's plan to create private investment accounts would not eat into promised benefits, and the granddaughter of one spoke hopefully on Friday of a richer retirement if the president prevails.

These meticulously staged "conversations on Social Security," as they are called, replicate a strategy that Bush used to great effect on the campaign trail.

[...]

The White House follows a practiced formula for each of the meetings. First it picks a state in which generally it can pressure a lawmaker or two, and then it lines up panelists who will sing the praises of the president's plan. Finally, it loads the audience with Republicans and other supporters.

To help make its case, the White House recruits people such as Mark Darr, 31, an insurance agent from Benton, Ark., who joined the president on stage at a forum in Little Rock last month. In a subsequent interview, Darr said he believes he was chosen because he went to college with one son of Republican Gov. Mike Huckabee and provided insurance for another.

After the governor's office called, Darr said, he began receiving one call after another from the White House, quizzing him on his thoughts on Social Security and his family history, just as they did all the other candidates. "I'm sure they wanted to ... make sure they weren't going to embarrass the president," Darr said.

From FoxNation.com:

From the July 3 edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends:

DAVE RIGGS (guest co-host): Well, it's good to see this, some in the press corps firing back. But is this unprecedented, though, in terms of the pre-packaged presidency that we're seeing now? You mentioned that all presidents do this, but this is something in itself. I mean, we haven't seen anything to this -- this much packaging before, have we?

WALLACE: Well, yeah, as far as the town hall meetings, yes. I mean, there have been -- those have always been something of an artifice, because I know in the Bush administration, George W. Bush, they had a lot of these town hall meetings, and they chose all the people there. So everybody has always tried to get a home-court advantage.

By Angela Gunn, Betanews

This episode of Recovery is brought to you by a city full of nerds prepping for the Seattle Zombie Walk, because your Rain City geeks are all about the BRAAAAAINS and their undead data centers, and by frequent Betanews commenter PC_Tool, who said something in a comment that got me thinking.

I wrote earlier this week about an essay by Richard Posner that suggested that what the media needs to survive in the era of the Internet is a ban on linking, excerpting and such. Conversations about business models and copyright belong with Lockdown, and we're still talking about them in the comments section there this morning. But there are some things no one talks about concerning the old-line media, and here in the friendly confines of Recovery, I thought I'd go ahead and say them, because they may confirm what you've suspected all along:

The mainstream news industry dug itself this hole by not staying smart, humble, hungry and focused, and now it blames the geeks.

Some of the incurious double-digit-IQ nonsense I've heard in the newsrooms of old-line mainstream publications would make the average geek bite a mousepad in half. Frankly, a lot of people with journalism degrees are the last people who ought to become journalists.

The idea of journalism as a white-collar profession, rather than a grubby old trade, is only a few decades old. As the profession became a more attractive line of work to the children of the middle and upper classes (because like the song says, there's only so much you can do with a BA in English), its practitioners wanted to retain some shred of elevated class identity, as they would have if they'd gone into medicine or the law. The job of journalism became less a matter of scrap and skill and shoe leather and more about one's educational (and, to some extent, cultural) bona fides.

One of the side effects of that was a change in college curricula to make journalism an actual pre-professional major, on alleged par with pre-law or pre-med. Suddenly you became a journalist by getting trained in journalism, as opposed to being trained in science or economics or business or statistics or any of those things journalists write about. That trend accelerated in the wake of Watergate, when it really did seem for a bit like you could save the world (and get famous and have movies made about you starring Robert Redford!) by going into the journalism business.

So now you have a whole bunch of people trained "as journalists" -- they know how to write headlines, they know how to conduct interviews, they own a copy of the AP Stylebook -- and holding a self-important belief that their education has given them a "profession" rather than a set of skills that could easily have been learned on the job. What they tend to lack, certainly at the beginning of their careers and often for a very long time after, is a necessarily deep understanding of the things they may be writing or interviewing about.

Reporters that really sink their teeth into a topic area often manage to triumph over their silly education, but that's not how the system's designed to work. Instead, the "profession" of journalism is supposed to confer on its people the skill -- and necessity -- of hopping between beats and publications to get ahead. This year you're covering the courts, next year you've jumped to the business section at a higher-profile paper in another town, five years from now with some seniority there you luck into the television-reviews beat. Nothing at all wrong with learning new things, but the mainstream career path doesn't lend itself to deep, sustained knowledge.

Compare that to the geekish life, where deep knowledge is major currency. Let's say you're a security nerd today; would you consider it a wise thing to absolutely turn your back on all that tomorrow and declare yourself the go-to guy on printing tech or HR or wiring? Do you feel that too much first-hand knowledge of your specialty and opinionated conversation with people involved in it might taint your ability to think clearly about matters? Do you think it's somehow embarrassing to be passionately interested in a topic? No and no and no and no? Let me tell you, friend, you'd have a pretty uncomfortable time around a lot of journalists, who would accuse you of going native, or worse.

(Mainstream journalists, that is. On the tech side, we may jump publications -- or, more accurately, all sort of revolve amongst the publications available; the joke among tech writers is that sooner or later every one of us works for everyone else -- but we try to build on expertise. It's one of the many, many things that causes large amounts of mutual contempt between mainstream journalists and us specialty-press types, but that's a topic for another day.)

Meanwhile, while the profession of journalism was trying to get middle-class respectable, the era of family-owned local newspapers (or regional chains) was ending -- consolidation was at hand, and the era of the publicly-held publishing company. This newspaper racket, in those days, was rather lucrative, but publishers were greedy bastards; even back when profit margins for newspapers dwarfed those of just about any other sector, it was nothing but cuts and belt-tightening for the newsrooms. That's public ownership for you, by the way; as the marvelous old fellow who owned that magazine of mine said many times, calculating a publication's success in terms of quarterly stock earnings is a counterproductive and ultimately deadly. (And that publication's fortunes slid right to hell after he retired and his kids sold the company, but that too is a story for some other time.)

Anyway, publications -- newspapers especially -- started casting about for ways to save, and they turned to the wire services such as the Associated Press, United Press International, Reuters, and so forth. Years before it had been a badge of honor for a writer to earn a position at such places; a wire reporter was the very best of breed, tried and true, in whatever topic s/he covered.

As the profession changed, though, the wire services changed too, shifting from a best-of-breed model to a churn-and-learn approach, eating up young journalists at alarming rates (and low pay, which meant the turnover was vicious). The movement to keep younger (cheaper) journalists in newsrooms and shed the older (more expensive) ones likewise led to increasing brain drain on newspaper staffs; you simply can't keep smart, experienced grownups around when you pay less than McDonald's or Wal-Mart.

Newspapers started relying on the wires to augment their own newsrooms... and then started cutting staff, figuring that many topics areas could be covered day-to-day with material "from the wire." That freed up staff in ever shrinking newsrooms, in theory to cover specific stories but in practice to do, always, more and more attention-getting (not to be confused with better) stories.

So you have these journalists, striving to make themselves a professional class and to earn honors for showy pieces of work, rather than the shoe-leather journalism of years past. You have publishers pleading poverty and leaning ever harder on the wire services to cover a growing number of "out of the way" places and topics. And you have wire services serving the same dishes to just about every newspaper out there. Most publications turned into a sludge of in-house "signature" pieces padded out by wire copy that read much the same in every one of the hundreds of papers running it -- islands of high-profile, sometimes blatantly sensational pieces surrounded by the same commodified coverage you can get anywhere else.

So when publishers whine about Google News, they're fussing about a system they themselves built -- because Google News, by virtue of the way the algorithms work, turns almost every so-called big story into a commodity, precisely because the newspapers themselves have homogenized their coverage. A really orthogonal story isn't going to make the front page of Google News, because there aren't enough others like it to trip the circuit. (I guarantee you that if I turn from this column and write the best news story in the history of the universe about, say, IETF RFC 4301, there is precisely zero chance it'll hit Google News, because no one else is writing about it today. That's just how it goes.)

The lions of the old-line press, in other words, left themselves no structure for very focused journalism on any but a few high-profile topics. Google News and its ilk pick up that trend and extend it to its logical end. The blogs, meanwhile, take up the very sort of reportage newspapers have been saying they can't do (ultra-focused journalism) and won't do (by writers who are primarily experts, not writers). Most of us here probably have never relied less on mainstream news sources -- or more on highly focused specialty sites, blogs, and data feeds written by people who know a great deal and have first-hand experience with the things they're writing about. There's a niche yet for sites like Betanews and people like me, who are generalists by virtue of not being actual IT folk or coders or governance wonks but have a knack for synthesizing data (and have a huge well of experience with the industry to draw upon). Such pubs are small and they will always struggle to make themselves known in the maelstrom, but we're better off that the big mainstream books, because we provide a product that makes sense in the link-anywhere, drill-down era of modern news.

It's a specialist world now -- figure out what interests you and focus on those topics via blogs and searches and feeds, rather than expecting any single generalist publication to be your gateway. Good general reporting is a proper and necessary counterbalance to that, and it's a damn shame the old-line publications can't provide that more consistently, since that's the evolutionary path they chose.

The most interesting task in online news right now isn't figuring out how to support an old business model and an old education model. It's figuring out how to support the big watchdog / investigative efforts -- the kinds of projects that made the reputation of newspapers in the late 1800s, made the reputations of the Blys and the Tarbells and the Lewisis and the Woodwards and the Bernsteins and all the eager idealists that followed in their path, and eventually ruined the thinking of awards-mad editors, publishers and writers who forgot what actually mattered to everyday readers in their everyday communities. A lot of online journalists, professional and citizen, are figuring out ways of doing (and funding) those projects, but the era of those acting as tentpoles to otherwise denatured wire-service delivery devices is over. And going forward, journalists are going to need to actually know stuff -- and care about it as much as their target audience does.

And now for something almost completely different: The Park Bench has, for those among you seeking a geek chick as a partner, a guide to How to Meet and Woo a Nerdy Girl. The comments may also be helpful to those of you pursuing this path, especially since they throw in some zombie-evasion information just in case. A full-service blog, that Park Bench.

Let your geek flag fly and have a great weekend.

That's not an adjective in the title, "Awesome Grant" is the actual name of the grant, from the Awesome Foundation, of Cambridge, MA. Each month, they give away $1,000 to someone who wants to do something... well awesome. Here's how they define what they're looking for:

Awesomeness is more the product of a creator's passion than the prospect of audience or profit. Awesome creations are novel and non-obvious, evoking surprise and delight. Invariably, something about them perfectly reflects the essence of the medium, moment, or method of creation. Awesomeness challenges and inspires.

You enter the proposals on their site and they only need to be 500 words. If you get accepted, you even get access to workspace to realize your project (if you live in the Boston area).

If any of our readers submit a proposal that gets excepted, please let us know. We're sure there are plenty of awesome ideas bouncing around the noggins of Make: Online readers.

The Awesome Foundation