Online Privacy is an Oxymoron

While today it can take a while before your public posts on sites such as Twitter, MySpace, and Facebook find their way to search engine results, both Microsoft (with their new Bing search engine) and Google (with their... well, you know google ) are seeking to improve their ability to search such content and have it appear in their search engine results.

It is being referred to as "real-time" information. Microsoft is betting on it as a part of a strategy to compete with Google, who recently struck some deals with Apple Inc.'s iTunes Store and Amazon.com Inc. for the rights to post music links at the top of search results - according to a Wall Street Journal article released today.

Microsoft has made deals with Facebook and Twitter to allow them to better search this content. I suppose the question becomes, what is public content? Everything you tweet about on Twitter is public - there's no question there. But what about Facebook? You have to invite friends to join you online - but once someone is a friend, posting information to your "wall" is hardly a private matter.

I continually see people leaving comments on their walls and other peoples walls, as if it were a private, encrypted email. Wall posts such as "I got so drunk last night, I'm still hung over - give me a call girl-friend", and "I'm taking the family to Florida for a long over-due vacation next week!" are disturbingly common.

It is sort of like all of the world's technically-illiterate decided to assemble in the info-space known as Facebook. Because the service is easy to use - it is used - if not entirely in the way it was intended. We in the IT industry have seen this sort of thing before.

Back in the late 1980's, early 1990's, there was a huge push at many corporations to install Microsoft Windows Operating Systems (At the time, it was Windows NT Server 4.0). The promises of easy use, low maintenance, and high return on investment (ROI) sold executives into moving away from their legacy Novell Networks Servers. Windows Server looked easy enough. There was an easy to use graphical user interface (GUI), and everything just seemed to work, right out of the box. Then, of course, came the hang-over from that party. Massive amounts of unsecured servers connected to the Internet just waiting to be brutally penetrated.

It would seem the near future may hold similar realities for the mindless clickers and posters of personal information to online facilities.

Think about your Facebook wall like a bulletin board at work - or in a mall. Don't post things to your wall that you wouldn't post to such a public bulletin board. But, I'm sure I'm just going overboard about this. After all - you are all intelligent adults. You have all read the agreement you made with Facebook, right? You must know what you are doing. I'll shut up now.

Its time to hear what you have to say about this. Please leave me a post, and add to the conversation.

Metajunkie

google AdSense Account Disabled

cross posted from our cyber-justu blog ...

Some of you may have noticed that the cyber-justsu dojo walls seem a little bare. The Google Advertisements are missing.

Google has disabled our AdSense account.

In an email, they have asserted that our "AdSense account has posed a significant risk to [their] AdWords advertisers".

This would appear to happen frequently enough, that they have a FAQ established to provide more information.

From the FAQ:

"Because we have a need to protect our proprietary detection system, we're unable to provide our publishers with any information about their account activity, including any web pages, users, or third-party services that may have been involved.

As you may know, Google treats invalid click activity very seriously, analyzing all clicks and impressions to determine whether they fit a pattern of use that may artificially drive up an advertiser's costs or a publisher's earnings. If we determine that an AdSense account may pose a risk to our AdWords advertisers, we may disable that account to protect our advertisers' interests.

Lastly, please note that as outlined in our Terms and Conditions, Google will use its sole discretion when determining instances of invalid click activity."

So, we really have no idea why our account was disabled. If any of our readers have been randomly or blindly clicking on advertisements, you have not helped us. In fact, you may have shut down what might have been a great source of passive income for our blogs.

We have petitioned google to reinstate our account. If that happens, I encourage you all to only click on advertisements which are of interest to you. Don't be afraid to click on advertisements, that is why they are there - but please refrain from just clicking because you know it is generating revenue for us.

I don't usually cross-post between these blogs - but I will put this message on all of the blogs.

Thank you for your understanding and cooperation.

Sensei Metajunkie

facebook: Cafe World game

Comparing Cafe World with premium MMORPGs was hardly fair. I've played the game now for about a day. While everything I mentioned in my previous post about crafting systems within MMOs maintains accuracy, Cafe World is really more like Sim City meets Greasy Tony's.

For those of you who didn't party with me in their youth, Greasy Tony's was a favorite after-hours Cafe that specialized in very greasy cheese steaks. It, unfortunately was torn down to make room for the expansion of Rutgers Hospital in New Brunswick, New Jersey.

If you can imagine rats leaving a sinking ship, and then replace the rats with drunken youngsters falling out of bars with a serious need for pizza, fries, and greasy cheese steaks, all descending upon this little cafe that stayed open for exactly that rush of business - you have a picture of what you might aim to achieve in Cafe World.

A game which seemed terribly simple at first has become rather addicting. As you successfully feed the never ending flow of people into your cafe, the popularity of your cafe increases. As the popularity increases, more people flow through your doors for a bite to eat. If you don't have an open table for them, they wait for a brief moment, but then leave. Of course, they leave disgusted, and your popularity drops slightly. Similarly, if you get them seated, but then not served in a timely fashion, they leave and detract from your popularity.

One nice feature of the game is that, after you have played it for a while, you can (it would seem) determine how hands-on your gameplay is going to be. For example: If you are cooking burgers, they are done cooking in five minutes. You need to be in the game five minutes after you start cooking them, to serve them. If you aren't, after a short while your food will spoil and need to be thrown away. Alternately, however, you could cook up a dish that takes fifteen minutes to complete, or an hour, four hours, or even a day or more. If one wanted to be involved in such a game, but minimally, these dishes which take longer to cook would be the way to go.

In addition to the compulsive adult (yours truly included), this game should appeal to younger people as well. In fact, with some prodding, a young person could easily learn a thing or two about running a business from this game. They would at least have an opportunity to look at profit margins between purchasing the materials needed to make a dish and the amount the end product sells for. I suggest some prodding though, one could easily just click their way through this game without ever giving it any thought.

For me, I find this game exactly the kind of distraction I need (or not) while I'm mining kernite asteroids in Eve-Online. I have several tabs open on facebook while I'm writing this post, and I can hear the "cha-ching" of my onion soup sales going through the roof right now. A cow just moo'd from my FarmVille tab... but we'll have to save that one for another post.

Facebook Game: Cafe' World vs. other MMO crafting systems

I recently played a game on Facebook called Cafe' World. This is another game by Zynga. Contrasting other Zynga games I've posted about, Cafe World is a game based on bare-bones 3-Dimensional graphical content that reminds me of early versions of The Sims. You are the owner of a cafe, and you cook different dishes to sell to customers. You hire your friends to help your business out. For example, unknown to my wife, she is a waitress in this virtual cafe I'm operating on Facebook.

The mechanics of the game are strikingly similar to crafting in EverQuest II. Even the sounds that are made while you prepare, cook, and sell food are reminiscent of the audio queues used by that games crafting system.

As an avid MMO player, I have crafted in such worlds as EverQuest II, Star Wars Galaxies, Vanguard, World of Warcraft; and, I currently mine asteroids in Eve Online.

Anyone who enjoys the game of Cafe World, no doubt has the particular temperament needed to succeed as a vendor in any of the more extensive silicon worlds I've mentioned above. The benefit of working in a more fully actualized virtual world such as these pay-per-month MMOs, is that there tends to be much more realism surrounding the task of crafting.

In this tiny Facebook cafe simulation, customers just continue to come into your store. While this is no doubt a boon for business, it leaves a player wanting a touch of more realism. The most basic notion of supply and demand seems to be lacking from the game. In contrast, the single most realistic online economy I have participated in, is that of Eve Online. If you haven't yet tried Eve Online, I recommend the free 14 day trial. Perhaps I'll see you in the asteroid belts someday soon.

If realism in crafting really gets you pumped up, you will no doubt enjoy the crafting system in Vanguard, Saga of Heroes, which is a Sony Online Entertainment game. If you prefer a bare-bones crafting simulation that gets you the stuff you are trying to make quickly, so you can get back to adventuring, you will probably enjoy the crafting system in World of Warcraft. The crafting system for Star Wars Galaxies is somewhere in the middle, but leaning toward more realism than that of World of Warcraft. EverQuest II had the most realistic and perhaps rewarding crafting system, until Vanguard was released.

I hope this sheds some light on crafting systems within MMOs. Please feel free to login with any OpenID account (such as a google mail account), and leave a comment to let me know what you think.

Facebook Games: Mafia Wars, Pirates, etc.

I recently joined Facebook and encountered some games which seem to be wildly popular amongst the denizens of the Facebook realm. Mafia Wars and Pirates are two games created by a company called Zynga. The terms of service are rather long, and intimidating for someone like myself who can be concerned with intellectual property rights. However, in a world where we click away our rights every day just to "make the damn thing work", neither game seems to be short on players.

These games are without a doubt Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Games (MMORPGs), but can we consider these games virtual realities? It seems most of the action takes place within the user's imagination, rather than in rich 3D virtual environments. But does a virtual reality require fancy graphics?

Would you consider the old MUDs (Multi User Dungeons) virtual realities? They too were certainly massively multiplayer online roleplaying games, but all of the action happened via text describing the scenes, events, and interactions.

These Facebook games, like Mafia Wars, are menu driven games which contain some static graphical content to enhance the text which drives the game. So, from that point of view, it would seem that they are slightly enhanced versions of the MUDs of my youth. However, one thing that the MUDs have over these Facebook RPGs is that the MUDs had a virtual environment which could be explored. For example, you could "GO NORTH" and receive text describing a new area of the virtual world. You could then "GO SOUTH" and return to the area you started in.

Conversely, it seems, at least from my limited experience with Mafia Wars and Pirates, that there is no "map" of their world. The virtual world of Mafia Wars and Pirates is devoid of static locations. The entire game world is made up of character development (including the acquisition of money and loot) and events (i.e. missions and mile-stones).

In a world where too many people have been raised on a diet of "gimme more" and "gimme it quick", these games may owe their seemingly addictive nature to a quick action fix and fast rewards of money and status. I'll give them some more time before passing final judgement on them - but right now, I'm having a hard time justifying how such a game could keep me from the much more wild adventures of mining in Eve-Online. :p

Announcement: City of Heroes: Halloween Event 2009!

For those of you who play City of Heroes (I have a nephew who loves it), they are running a Halloween Event from Tuesday, October 20th, 2009 through Tuesday, November 3, 2009.

They claim that there will be legions of zombies, werewolves, and jack-o-lanterns descending upon Paragon City and the Rogue Isles.

Will you be there to help defend or destroy?

Welcome to the Silicon Worlds Blog

This blog is dedicated to the virtual worlds that have been made, and are being made, within cyberspace.

This includes Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Games (MMORPGs) such as:

• Aion
• Eve-Online
• Dust 514 (when it is released)
• Star Wars Galaxies
• EverQuest II
• World of Warcraft
• Vanguard
• City of Villains
• Guild Wars (and the much anticipated Guild Wars 2)

This also includes Virtual Reality Worlds such as SecondLife.

We will also discuss topics such as Virtual Economies, and how the real world interacts with the online virtual worlds

When we cover things such as LUA scripting in World of Warcraft, and Programming Objects in SecondLife, the actual code segments will be covered in one of my brother-blogs: http://Hacking-Code.blogspot.com

Please leave a comment, if you'd like to talk about something else within the realm of Silicon Worlds!