Was Catalyst sein soll, habe ich hier und hier bereits erläutert. Aber eine schöne Idee ist wertlos, wenn sie nicht umsetzbar ist. Thus a few comments on the technical implementation of such a system:

Synchron und Asynchron

Der klassische und weit rezipierte wissenschaftliche Diskurs findet traditionell in asynchronen Medien statt. D.h. in Büchern und Journalen. Daneben gibt es Symposien und ihre berühmten Kaffeepausen. Catalyst sollte versuchen, beides zu bieten. Dabei müssen die Tools nicht nur leicht zu bedienen sein, sondern a) integriert, d.h. in einer Plattform und b) durchsuchbar sein.

Cyn.book

Eine Software Plattform, die das meiste bereits bietet, ist cyn.in von cynapse. Im Rahmen der #unseruni AG IT habe ich damit etwas herumgespielt. cyn.in ist tatsächlich ein sehr mächtiges Werkzeug. Aber es zielt ab auf Unternehmen mit einer festen Informations- und Workflow-Struktur. Darum bildet es herkömmliche Strukturen mit neuen Medien nach. Für ein diskursives Projekt ist das ungeeignet. Trotzdem erscheint mir cyn.in als wichtigter Bezugspunkt, gerade was den Reichtum an Tools anbelangt.
Dem ad hoc, Diskussions- und Open Space Charakter von Catalyst viel näher sind SNS wie Facebook oder Elgg. Allerdings fehlen diesen wiederum die Tools eines wissenschaftlichen Diskurses. Irgendwo zwischen diesen beiden Polen liegt Catalyst.

BuddyPress

Dazwischen liegt auch BuddyPress, eine soziale Weiterentwicklung der Blogging-Software WordPress, mit der auch dieses Blog läuft. Der große Vorteil von BuddyPress ist die Möglichkeit der Mitlgieder, sich selbst zu Gruppen zusammenzuschließen kombiniert mit dem Focus einer Blogging-Plattform. D.h. dass nicht nur jeder Nutzer ein eigenes Blog hat, sondern auch jede Gruppe. Darüber hinaus stehen mit Foren, Private Messages und Wires (vergleichbar mit Facebook Walls) weitere asynchrone Medien zur Verfügung. Und auch die Wichtigkeit von Nutzerprofilen darf nicht unterschätzt werden, denn hier stellen Studierende (und TutorInnen und ProfessorInnen) ihre Interessens- und Fachgebiete dar, sowie ihre »recent activity« auf BuddyPress.

Catalyst

Um aus BuddyPress Catalyst zu machen sind jedoch noch einige Features nötig. Zu denken wären etwa an GruppenWikis (vgl. etwa hier oder hier) oder die Einbindung von (Google) Wave. Die Verwendung intelligenter Tutoring Systeme könnte etwa notwendig werden, wenn die Zahl der teilnehmenden StudentInnen wächst. Auch sollte Zemanta Enterprise oder ähnliche Semantische Web Technologien in Betracht gezogen werden, um das finden von relevanter Information in Catalyst zu vereinfachen.
Schlussendlich fehlen noch die synchronen Medien. Hier ist zu unterscheiden zwischen Many-to-Many und One-to-One Medien. Letztere sind sehr einfach über das Chat Protokoll Jabber oder das VoIP Protokoll SIP zu implementieren. Auch Skype könnte man ohne Schwierigkeiten einbinden (SkypeMe!-Button)
Für Ersteres stehen mit dimdim und openmeetings freie Webmeeting-Server zur verfügung. Über die Verwendung von Adobe Connect lässt sich nachdenken, aber ich glaube, dass es unverhältnismäßig teuer ist. Darüber hinaus finde ich tweetboard’s Idee sehr interessant, Twitter mit anderen Websiten zu verbinden und so kontextuelle Diskussionen zu ermöglichen (vgl. tweetboard’s Website). Natürlich sollte man für Catalsyst von Twitter Abstand nehmen, und stattdessen einen eigenen Microblogging-Dienst per StatusNet oder Present.ly verwenden.

Integriert?

Der letzte Absatz hört sich zugegebnermaßen recht kompliziert an. Das sind aber nur die (semi-)technischen Details. Der große Fortschritt des web2.0 und web3.0 ist aber, die technische Natur der Anwendungen vor dem Nutzer zu verbergen. Das Ganze hat auch einen Namen: Usability. Und die muss gerade hier zentral sein! Darum auch die Wichtigkeit, die oben genannten Tools in einer Plattform, eben Catalsyst zu vereinen und optisch klar zu strukturieren.

Verlässlich?

Gerade für ein solches System ist es enorm wichtig, immer available zu sein und das auch mit entsprechender Geschwindigkeit. Darum, und wegen der Frage der (technischen) Skalierbarkeit von Catalsyst glaube ich, dass dieses System von vornherein auf einen Cluster/einer Cloud gebaut sein sollte. Das vermindert die Wahrscheinlichkeit eines temporären Ausfalls enorm und sorgt dafür, dass auch in Stoßzeiten genügend Rechenleistung zur Verfügung steht.

Gerade Canonicals Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud oder Red Hats Cloud Computing bieten sich hier an. Und mit der Öffnung von Windows Azure für freie Runtime Environments ist auch ein Microsoft Cluster denkbar. Ich bin mir aber sicher, dass es andere, möglicherweise bessere Optionen gibt.

Sicher?

Fragen der Sicherheit und Privacy sind ebenfalls zu bedenken, wenn man Catalsyst umsetzen will. Während ich glaube, dass Privacy-Concerns an dieser Stelle eine untergeordnete Rolle spielen und leicht addressiert werden können, ist die Sicherheit vor Black Hat Hackern ein Langzeitprojekt und man sollte sich überlegen, nicht eine Consulting-Firma zu engagieren um universitäre Netzwerke regelmäßig zu checken – nicht nur Catalsyst.

As an operational manager working in the blogosphere I use at the private-professional level Feedly and Zemanta. It is my sincere belief that deploying these tools in knowledge-intensive organizations and professionals will result in 15% productivity gains.

Read the article and connect !

Post found http://www.semanticweb.com/news/feedlying_the_enterprise_142627.asp#more

To be continued at http://www.semanticweb.com/news/feedlying_the_enterprise_142627.asp#more

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I gave a 5 minute update at one of the IPAN (Interactive Professionals Association Netherlands) evenings. The evening –led by Jacqueline Smit (Microsoft)– was about the continuous conflict between online and traditional agencies.

To explain the situation I introduced the New Human. The New Human is NOT hanging in front of a TV watching a continuous stream of mindless soaps. The Old Human has evolved.

You can clearly recognize four characteristics of the New Human in the following four leading web concepts.

Number 4: Twitter!

I twitter like MAD. And I love it. If you look at Twitter today and what it already has done and even might do in the near future, It’s magic. Twitter has changed search behaviour. Real Time search through a repository made and validated by users is a HUGE step forward.
It’s free of paid ranking, free of manipulated content, short like 14o characters, and most important of all .. UP TO DATE. Try to find news on an earthquake in Google! It was very hard to find what is happening right now.

Number 3: Facebook

Facebook has grown so rapidly in 2009, it scares me. But if you have no family at all you can start one of your own. … the power of connecting people and have them share a domain is a proven  concept in the off-line world. With Facebook you can do the same online. The real strength of this platform is yet to come.

Number 2: Layar

Not very well-known as the New York Subway App maybe but as innovative as any other new web concept: Layar. With a mobile and a cam you can find your way through the city with augmented reality. This concept will turn any screen into a screening device. Imagine this in your car on top of your TomTom Navigator.

Number 1: Zemanta

My personal favorite new application. Can I use a stupid and rigid word like ‘application’ for this dream piece of software engineering. It helps you blog, make connections, ad tags and links. The concept is based on Semantic browsing which I’m following with great interest. People are lazy by nature. After the calculator took away our math, Google took our accurate knowledge. The computer will become our brain.

Now why is that the New Human?

We want to be seen and heard (Twitter).
We want to be loved and admired (Facebook).
We want to be served with information (Zemanta).
We want to be able to move (Layar).

If you’d like to talk to the New Human, use these elements and give him tools that support him. He wants to be heard, loved, fed, and he wants to feel free. Grow with him.

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I did my first stand-up comedy ten-minute set ever at Paradox Comedy’s “Motel Hell” Halloween show yesterday (October 29) evening at Art 6 in midtown Richmond, VA, following in the illustrious footsteps of RVA comedians such as Jared Cullum, Ray Bullock, Blake Midgette, Jeff Curran and Melanie Rasnic. I guess we’ll know we’re making progress when some of us start showing up in Wikipedia and Zemanta starts suggesting links when I use these names. If I left anyone out of Paradox’s stand-up roster, I apologize profusely. (Not that anyone cares.)

People responded well and got props from some members of the audience afterwards. Thanks for Jesse Wiley and Thomas George for affording me the opportunity. Thanks to Jesse for being the friendly face in the front row. (Actually, there is a Thomas George in Wikipedia but he’s a politician in Australia.) I did a couple of jokes about Artie Lange again but that may be too infra dig for RVA. I wonder if people in Richmond know who he has. Of course, Howard Stern had a run in Richmond syndicated to a local radio station but I suspect that was way before Artie’s time. Lange really looks like hell in the above photo — he makes John Belushi look like a health nut. Mandie Hillary hadn’t heard of balloon boy so my joke went over her head. She must be one of the few people on the planet who hasn’t heard of him by now, and that might be a good thing.

Paradox Comedy didn’t have comedy club lighting so I could see people in the audience a lot better than usual, not to mention good lighting for videotaping moi. I’m now four videos of my sets behind. Procrastination more than anything else. I did a couple of interviews with Jesse and Thomas after the show, audio and video.

I have been uploading videos I shot of the previous “Motel Hell” to a new YouTube channel I started at www.youtube.com/LaughHut. I’m going to use Laugh Hut as a place for videos of non-me comedy. I’ve been trying to separate out videos by channels to avoid confusion: one channel for interviews (SmokinHotComedy), one channel for my stand-up (ChrisMartinComedian) and one for general stuff (Mediastupor). I’ve been trying to upload more stuff by setting up the YouTube multi-loader to upload stuff while I’m sleeping. That’s generally good for two or three videos a night based on the fact that it takes roughly an hour per 100 megabytes with my low-end DSL connection.

Unfortunately, I exited the show only to find that the lock on my bike had malfunctioned so that I had to catch a ride from one of the crew, which screwed up my plans to swing by Kroger and also mail my latest Netflix movie.

I managed to blow past 200 followers on Twitter but the numbers are dropping back as I don’t follow people back who are into MLM or who appear to have randomly followed me based on no particular mutual interest (an Indian art advisor, The Elbow Friend, a gadget that you attach to your chair (may have been looking for the other Chris Martin since they posted a “Viva la Vida” YouTube video,  a NYC art dealer, etc. in hopes that I will follow them back. This makes about as much sense as making friends with people you randomly call from the phone book but whatever floats their boat. I make it clear on my Twitter page that I’m all about the comedy so there’s no false advertising on my part. They too shall pass.

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I’m sorry but people who think I shouldn’t be ashamed of what my race has been doing for the past generation or so should just either watch this video or shut the fuck up.

This is disgusting. People resting places aren’t even safe from ignorant out of control black teens these days. If they would of did it at a Zoo they would of fit right in but they’re in a graveyard doing this bullshit? Couldn’t they had went home to their house and did this niggertry? These idiots are ass shaking on someone’s grave. I don’t know where you’re from but that shit is just plain disrespectful. I was speechless when my friend first sent me the link to this video. All I could do was shake my head and hope my little sister don’t grow up to be a product of her environment.

I have to ask though, what are the parents doing if their are any present in the home? Furthermore, who was the idiot who said, “hey lets go degrade ourselves on someone’s grave”? I hope they didn’t do that shit because Halloween is near. I don’t care what the reason is, the fact still stands that they are in a graveyard, dancing on people’s graves. Just when I thought the youth of this generation couldn’t get any stupider. I don’t even think I can blame this on the parents. They’re at that age where they know right from wrong but they’re victims of peer-pressure as well. Not making excuses for them because there is no excuse that can excuse them from doing some out of the world shit like that.

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Social Media has definitely grown out of its infancy. Although, according to all the geeks that attended the first integrated edition of Blogworld and New Media Expo in Las Vegas. More than 2500 bloggers, podcasters, consultants and other new media mavericks visited Sin City for 3 days to talk about and share experiences on Social Media. Close to 300 speakers gave dozens presentations and panel discussions on a large variety of subjects. Without going into detail of all of them, I will give you the highlights of the conference.

Twitter rawks

If there was one subject that was mentioned in almost every discussion then it was Twitter. With great passion Twitt-lebrities like Laura Fitton (@Pistachio), Robert Scoble (@scobleizer) and Aaron Strout (@aaronstrout) shared the power of Twitter. “The power of unisolating people”, according to Laura. “And it’s not about the writer, it’s not about the number of followers you have but it is about the message you share. People are made to socialize, also in business. For that it is important to surround yourself with inspiring people. Twitter is a great tool for that.”

Guiness World Record

Thanks to Twitter a Guinness World Record was set during Blogworld. The highest number of social network mentions within 24 hours. And last Monday the record was confirmed by Guinness World Record: a total of 209,771 social network mentions of #beatcancer in one day via Twitter, Facebook and blog posts. As a result eBay/Paypal and MillerCoors offered a donation of $70.000 to four non-profit cancer organizations (Spirit Jump, Bright Pink, Alex’s Lemonade, and Stand UP to Cancer). As the campaign continues, you can still donate and help promote this initiative via Beatcancereverywhere.com.

Shoe4Africa
More good causes-support from eBay/Paypal. Their booth was completely dedicated to this theme. One of the good causes was Shoe4Africa, a non-profit organization aiming at ‘empowerment through sports and education, creating unique health initiatives, and promoting AIDS awareness.’ Cornerstone project is the development of a children’s hospital in Kenya, which will be the first public hospital in Kenya and the largest children’s hospital in Africa. The project is supported by Anthony Edwards, who sat in the keynote Celebrity panel. Although not yet very active in Social Media, Edwards understands the difference he can make as a celebrity using Social Media to spread the word around this project. So at Blogworld, he lost his Twitterginity and made his first tweet. Follow him on @anthonyedwards4. We also had a short interview with him which will be published shortly.

Dutch presence
And of course we ran into Vincent Everts, a webexpert and trend-watcher. Vincent presence at Blogworld was to promote yubby.com, a video aggregator the collect videos from over 30 popular video sources. Previously known as Dik.nl, but you can imagine, not a name that would work well in the US (although, flickr didn’t change its name for Holland…) And of course, Vincent not only did his upmost for yubby, he also worked on his own brand. Being very present at various sessions and as member in one of the panels, the success of his quest was confirmed to be successful during the closing keynote. When one-time talk-show host Guy Kawasaki asked the audience who has not heard of Jenny the Blogess, Vincent raised his hand as one of the few. Guy looked at him and said ‘oh, that’s that guy in the white suit’. An interview with Vincent will be launched shortly.

Chris Brogan

If there is one Social Media guru that is reaching superstar status without losing it, it’s Chris Brogan. I think he is the most mentioned, quoted, RTweeted and appreciated speaker of Blogworld 2009. And true, Chris is a very sympathetic and respectable person, but moreover, he is a visionary and true knowledge expert in the field. His keynote on day one was for me the most inspiring of all sessions. ‘Stop tapping each other on the back, but get out there and start working. There is so much to do out there’. And he is right. Social Media has grown out of its infancy. As much as we liked the pioneering atmosphere at New media Expo 2007, those days seem to be over. Social Media is becoming true business. Moreover, we shouldn’t call it Social Media anymore. It’s Human Business.

For more details go to Chris’ blogpost on his keynote. Here you can find the entire keynote (and all other keynotes).

Trend for 2010
On the exhibition floor, there were several companies that demonstrated applications based on aggregation of content. We already mentioned yubby.com as a video aggregation site, but aggregation goes beyond video. Zemanta is an application that helps you look for content related to the blogpost you are writing. While you’re writing, it ‘looks over your shoulder [..] and gives you tips and advice’. It analyzes your content, suggests keywords and related articles. With Zemanta, your blog becomes more visible and generates more traffic.
Regator goes even further in aggregation. There is an enormous amount of content available within the blogosphere. Regator ‘gathers the world’s best blog posts and organizes them in a way that’ makes it easy to find the things you need’. This selection is not purely done through some fancy algorithm, but through a team of editors. Yes, real people that search the web for valuable content. In fact, they decide for you what’s valuable or not. Regator uses criteria like regular updates, topical, well written, originality and whether or not your blog is ‘awesome’ based on which you can be added to the selection. The last criterium is rather vague and subjective, but that’s admitted by Regator.

Content is still king in new media. But finding the right content becomes like a monk’s job. For that we need aggregation, and we predict aggregation becomes the trend for 2010.

Audio Bummer
Was it all highs in Vegas? No, there was definitely a bummer. As there were more than 5-6 simultaneous tracks, you had to make up your mind what session to attend. Obviously, that was challenging as interesting presentations were scheduled at the same time. At New Media Expo in the past all participants were given the opportunity to download the audiotracks of all presentations. For free (or better, at no additional fee). Blogworld changed that policy: audiotracks are now available for $15 per session. Not funny. I can’t split myself up in 6, but feel that I have paid close to 1200 bucks to make all these sessions possible. Therefore I plead that all participants should have access to all recorded sessions (at least audio). And I was not the only one complaining about that. Organizer Rick Calvert should make up his mind or consult Tim and Emile Bourquin, former organizers of New Media Expo.

Another disappointment was that there was not much on the use of New Media for internal communication, in our view the way to learn what New Media is, to gain experience and in addition, to improve your internal communication, which in many organizations is underdeveloped. Truly win-win. A separate track should have been developed for this topic. Hopefully the organization considers this for the next edition.
Further, there was a strong focus on blogging, too strong to my liking. New Media is more than just blogging and Twitter. The focus overall was too much on the technology. There was hardly any attention for the development of a New and Social Media strategy. If we really want to go out there and help companies adapt New and Social Media, we need to understand that this is key to success. From that perspective I didn’t really hear anything new in these three days.

Conclusion
Conclusion for Blogworld and New Media Expo 2009: a lot on technology (and then mostly blogging) and too little on strategy. A lot of panels, some good and some which had a tendency towards too much ‘incrowd’. Some very inspiring speakers, a good atmosphere and at night awesome parties. Overall, a more than average event. Rick Calvert only has to solve this audio issue and I will certainly consider attending Blogworld and New Media Expo 2010.

Watch for some new types of postings:

• I will create some posts that relate to the items we’ve done in class, to supplement our discussion there. Feel free to jump in with a comment on any of them. My purposes are (a) to help us keep the various ideas in dialogue with each other and (b) to provide models of styles of writing for blog posts.
• I will highlight posts of a variety of styles from other blogs, so that you will be able to see how other authors write about research studies, government facts and figures, theories and positions about social issues.
• I will post some blogging-specific resources to supplement the items Heidi showed you yesterday.

Blogging lab office hours

• I’d like to host some Office Hours specifically to help people work on the mechanics of their blog that will enhance the presentation.
  • For instance, a blog that focuses on a particular topic, or a specific type of organization, can be enhanced by having a widget on the side where news about that topic or that organization comes up.  It’s not hard to put together – with a little help.
  • Another would be the Zemanta service that makes it easy to add pictures and other resources to posts like this one
  • Or links to the organization or information sources
  • There are lots of options
• I will be commenting in the blogs and taking inventory over the weekend.  I’ve heard that people are having trouble doing revisions because folks are not doing the comments.  I’ll look into that situation to see where we stand and what we need to do.

Next textbook

Building Powerful Community Organizations – Michael Jacoby Brown

• My copy of Brown’s textbook on community organizing arrived, and I’ve heard that others already have their copy. One person dropped a note to say that this book looks really good – I hope the rest of you have the same experience.
• The book is easy reading, and includes a number of stories.  As we read, go deeply into the stories.  Brown – unlike Ganz – goes deeply into the personal experience of being a change agent: not only the skills, but the feelings and maturity that one has to develop to survive and to be effective.  The stories illustrate the concepts and go into that personal dimension.

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Some people argue that its just games and that people shouldn’t be so pissy about errors in the game but if Zynga is going to design and distribute games, they should work and be stress free. People play video games to ease stress but all Zynga Games is doing is provoking stress. There are a lot of complaints about the multiple errors in both Cafe World and Roller Coaster Kingdom but the designers at Zynga aren’t paying attention to that. They are constantly adding more features to the game instead of fixing the problems with the game.

The games are awesome they have potential but they lack structure. Yea beta’s are not always supposed to be the complete game that’s why its called a beta but these two games seem like they still in the crawling stage. Well here are the complaints with both Cafe World and Roller Coaster Kingdom

Cafe World

• The lack of space. The game allows you to have all these stoves, counters and tables but you have no room to put them all. You have to wait probably for months or so before they allow you to expand your park.
• Constant down-time. The game is either down because of the servers are down or because they felt that adding new features and items to the game in the middle of the day is the perfect time.
• Losing dishes that were cooking. Say you are cooking pizza and you refresh or go to another game, come back and the dish is gone. That pisses you off doesn’t it?
• Taking doors down and still have people entering restaurant. I’ve seen this a few times in the past week or so where I would want to pause the game by taking the doors down because I was out of food and I did not want to lose my buzz rating of 105.0. I take the doors down and people are walking through walls. So I close the browser and open it back up the next day and there is a door on the wall when I specifically deleted them all.

There are more but those are the major ones for Cafe World.

Roller Coaster Kingdom

• Having to babysit the game just to get money and to level up. I have to sit and keep the game open just to make sure I get the money and the leveling up that I deserve from the visitors.
• Having to use real money. Its understandable in Farmville but its just stupid in Roller Coaster Kingdom.
• People lose everything. I never had these problems but after Zynga updates the game and people can play again, people have lost their money, rides, neighbors and or tours.
• The servers. Enough said.
• That annoying music before the game starts up. Also the fact that when it loops, you can actually tell its looping.
• The loading screens. I don’t know why their servers favorite % is 74…
• It uses too many browser resources. I mean come on, its a flash game and I don’t think the games over at Shockwave.com uses that many resources.
• Visitors getting stuck. Now this one I have witnessed. They’ll be in a line but they won’t move. They’re just standing there frozen.
• Hiring friends to work as operators. Hiring friends does not add value to the user, it is obviously a way to market the game to other potential users.
• Too many restrictions. You can’t do this, you can’t do that..etc…etc.
• Expanding your park requirements. You have to have a billion neighbors to expand the park. Again with the marketing ploy.
• Moving rides around. There should be an easier way to move rides around. You should be able to rotate them as well.
• No saving option. You should be able to save your progress since leaving the page would result in you losing your visitors. Farm-ville and now Cafe World has a save feature.

Complaints from other users:

1. Do not attempt to collect rewards (Broken down bus, Baby Moose or Lost Bag of money) in a new browser page while you have customers in another or the connection will be lost and with it, all your customers.

2. Sometimes the connection is reset at random = all customers and thus all coins and XP is lost.

3. The three prices, Lost Baby Moose, Broken Down Bus and Bag of money once were worth between up to 60K coins. Zynga reduced this to 1000 coins for the baby moose/bag of money. The broken down bus now only yields 6 park visitors (or orphans) with 15 coins each to spend. Whoopeee! 90 coins instead of 10,000 – what a trade… NOT!

4. It is by far the WORST memory hog ever in the history of Windows. Park visitors still have half their coins but it has already slowed to a crawl with the pagefile fully used up. (2.2 GB) With so much available memory one wonders what is demanding in Flash using vector graphics. Even a RAM defragmenter has no effect. Yuck, RCK is a nice idea but very poorly implemented.

Anyway if you play these games and would like more neighbors, either leave a comment with your facebook link so people can add you or just add me. I’m always looking for Neighbors for Farmville, Cafe World, Roller Coaster Kingdom and Yoville.

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Downloaded zemanta IE plugin after watching video in videolectures.net. The tool suggests images and tags to the blog post. I tried in my last blog post where it took the keywords from the post suggested as tag such as “DERI” expanded with “Digital enterprise research institute”,”sindice”,”semantic web” but the tag “ iswc09″ was not recognised ,is a bit strange though it was part of the title and tagged with. It looks like it takes the clean keywords and the strongly corelated words. regarding image It suggested “semantic web stack” and “linked data” image.

If it works it is an interesting idea to test and adapt as well. Can something be thought of for user videos ?  Once the user upload videos is any tools there to suggest the tags, blog posts and news items related to the videos ?

To LostWinds: Winter of the Melodias διαθέσιμo στο WiiWare | Game 2.0

Σε περίπτωση που δεν το έχετε πάρει μυρωδιά ακόμα, το LostWinds: Winter of the Melodias είναι διαθέσιμο στο WiiWare από την Παρασκευή.

Μάλιστα, το Winter of the Melodias αποτελεί και το 100ο παιχνίδι της πλατφόρμας[next]

Section 8 – Gameover.gr

Όσοι παίκτες προμηθευτούν την PC έκδοση του Section 8, προφανώς δεν θα έχουν πρόβλημα να παίξουν το παιχνίδι όπως ακριβώς θα έπρεπε σε online περιβάλλον. Όσοι προτιμήσουν την έκδοση για το Xbox 360 είναι καλό να ξέρουν ότι αν δεν διαθέτουν Xbox Live Gold συνδρομή θα έχουν πολύ λίγα πράγματα να κάνουν εδώ.[next]

GameWorld – MotorStorm: Arctic Edge (PSP)

Το MotorStorm είναι ένα από τα αγαπημένα games της Sony καθώς πρόκειται για ένα από τα games που συνόδεψαν το Playstation 3 στο παγκόσμιο ντεμπούτο της κονσόλας. Φέτος, κάνει το ντεμπούτο του και στο PSP, σε μία περίοδο όπου η Sony αρχίζει να στηρίζει την φορητή της κονσόλα και μάλιστα κυκλοφορώντας μέσα σε λίγες ημέρες δύο μεγάλα racing games! Παραδόξως, το MotorStorm: Arctic Edge είναι καλύτερο από το αντίστοιχο Gran Turismo του PSP, παρ’ ότι αναπτύσσεται από την μικρή Βρετανική προγραμματιστική ομάδα Bigbig studios. Δεν είναι τυχαίο άλλωστε ότι η εταιρεία αυτή ιδρύθηκε από πρώην μέλη της Codemasters και εξαγοράστηκε πριν από δύο χρόνια απ’ τη Sony για να δουλέψει αποκλειστικά για το PSP. Κι όπως όλα δείχνουν, τελικά απέδωσε πολύ καλύτερα σε σύγκριση με άλλους έμπειρους επαγγελματίες του χώρου.[next]

Αλλαγές για το Medal of Honor – Gameover.gr

Μια ιδιαίτερα αινιγματική δήλωση έκανε ο CEO της EA, John Riccitello, αναφερόμενος στο μέλλον της σειρά Medal of Honor. Για ακόμα μία φορά επανέλαβε ότι τουλάχιστον ένα νέο επεισόδιο θα κυκλοφορήσει κάποια στιγμή στο μέλλον, αν και τελικά αυτός ο “μελλοντικός χρόνος” ίσως να μην αφορά μόνο την περίοδο κυκλοφορίας του τίτλου.[next]

Σκέψεις για νέο τίτλο Dark Cloud – Gameover.gr

Η Level-5 παραδέχθηκε ότι σκέφτεται πολύ σοβαρά το ενδεχόμενο να ασχοληθεί με ένα νέο Dark Cloud, αρκεί να το επιθυμούν και οι φίλοι της σειράς. “Δεν υπάρχουν άμεσα σχέδια για κάτι καινούργιο. Απλά αποκάλυψε ότι η συγκεκριμένη σκέψη τριγυρίζει εδώ και πολύ καιρό στο μυαλό μας” δήλωσε Yoshiaki Kusuda, υπεύθυνος της ομάδας ανάπτυξης[next]

Warriors: Street Brawl, The (X360) | byteme

Η ιστορία του παιχνιδιού είναι βασισμένη, έστω και σε μικρό βαθμό, στην ομώνυμη ταινία. Η συμμορία μας κατηγορείται για ένα φόνο που έστρεψε εναντίον μας όλες τις άλλες και τώρα πρέπει να διασχίσουμε την Νέα Υόρκη για να φτάσουμε στην βάση μας, στο Koney Island. Εμείς αναλαμβάνουμε τον ρόλο ενός μέλους των “The Warriors” και πρέπει μέσα απο επτά στάδια και δεκάδες τραμπούκους να φτάσουμε στην βάση μας. Αν και μεταξύ των σταδίων υπάρχουν cut scenes με στατικές εικόνες των χαρακτήρων μέσα απο τις οποίες εξελίσσεται η ιστορία, μην ξεγελιέστε πως υπάρχει και… ιστορία. Είναι απλά για να δικαιολογήσουν την χρήση του license στο οποίο βασίζεται το Street Brawl.[next]

Eco Tycoon: Project Green (PC) | byteme

Προϊόν της ValuSoft, το Eco Tycoon: Project Green είναι ένα μάλλον απλοϊκό παιχνίδι στρατηγικής που ως στόχο έχει να αφυπνίσει όσους το εμπιστευτούν αναφορικά με τις εκπομπές διοξειδίου του άνθρακα (CO2), ψυχαγωγώντας τους παράλληλα. Στο Eco Tycoon λοιπόν αναλαμβάνετε τα ηνία μιας ηπείρου (διαθέσιμες είναι οι: Ευρώπη, Βόρειος Αμερική, Νότιος Αμερική, Αφρική, Βόρειος Ασία, Νότιος Ασία, Υπόλοιπη Ασία/Αυστραλία) έχοντας ως στόχο την πρόοδο και ανάπτυξή της με όσο το δυνατόν φιλικότερες προς το περιβάλλον μεθόδους.[next]

Δύο demos για το νέο Ratchet & Clank – Gameover.gr

Την πρόθεσή της να προσφέρει δύο και όχι ένα demo του Ratchet & Clank: A Crack in Time αποκάλυψε η Insomniac. Ο λόγος της συγκεκριμένης επιλογής είναι ότι το αρχικό αρχείο ήταν υπερβολικά μεγάλο και έτσι η εταιρία επέλεξε να το μοιράσει στα δύο, με το κάθε ένα από αυτά να αφορά έναν από τους δύο πρωταγωνιστές.[next]

Διαθέσιμο το demo του Machinarium – Gameover.gr

Η Amanita Design -δημιουργός των Samorost 1 και 2- έκανε διαθέσιμο ένα demo του Machinarium, το οποίο έχει μέγεθος 35 MB και μπορείτε να το “κατεβάσετε” από εδώ. Τo Machinarium είναι ένα point-and-click puzzle/ adventure δύο διαστάσεων, όπου οι παίκτες χειρίζονται ένα μικρό ρομπότ, το οποίο έχει πέσει θύμα μιας συμμορίας ρομπότ.[next]

Quantum Theory, το ιαπωνικό ‘Gears of War’ | Game 2.0

H Tecmo έδωσε στη δημοσιότητα ένα νέο trailer του επερχόμενου third-person action-shooter Quantum Theory.

Παρακολουθήστε το παρακάτω και δείτε πόσες ομοιότητες θα βρείτε με το Gears of War.[next]

Στις 16 Οκτωβρίου το Machinarium – Gameover.gr

Το παιχνίδι που κατάφερε να κλέψει τα βλέμματα της indie κοινότητας στη φετινή έκθεση PAX ‘09, είναι δημιούργημα των ανθρώπων που είναι υπεύθυνοι για τα φανταστικά Samorost και Samorost 2. To Machinarium είναι ένα point-and-click Puzzle / Adventure δύο διαστάσεων, με τους παίκτες να χειρίζονται ένα μικρό ρομπότ, το οποίο έχει πέσει θύμα της Black Cap Brotherhood, μίας συμμορίας ρομπότ.[next]