I don’t know if my blog is ready to expand to gaming. I don’t care, I’m going there.

I got Ann GH3 (to it’s friends) for Wii, as we have one. ADDICTING. REALLY.

I’m glad we have kids who nap, otherwise I’d be spending/wasting much more time faux rocking. It is precious when your 3 year old asks you to rock more though, and gets agitated when you don’t immediately. That’s a fan base worth housing and feeding!

Anyway, it’s an awesome game, I’m picky about calling games awesome – there you have it. Be warned: it’s a massively addicting game, that’s REALLY difficult to master, masquerading as a casual game. I can frag and grind with the best of them (ok, the pretty good), but I couldn’t 5 star on easy until I had practiced a few hours. Casual games do NOT require practice

Caution 2: I see this really driving “Learn electric guitar” package sales. I know I’m mulling it around. If anyone has a friend that wants to ditch a beat up old electric guitar, leave a note.

Happy New Year and Cheers to anyone who has this on their RSS feed still.

Brian

To: VW Hype Machine

Dear Hype Machine,
I’m sorry to inform you most people use “virtual worlds” for gaming. Yes, gaming. I know it upsets you to hear the truth. I understand. You just want to create a new hype bubble to write stories about and IPO with. It’s completely natural! It’s true though – MMORPGS – EVE, WoW, Ultima Online, Meridian 59’s (back in ‘96!) usage eclipses even the most optimistic stats Linden can put out.

How could this have happened?

It has to be said, even lame games are more fun with other people playing them. How do you think WoW got to be the hit it is? It’s a horrible grindfest. But it’s the framework wrapped around rich social interaction. It’s a shared unreality that people can play in. Yes, play. Sure networking happens, business happens. That’s just what happens when people get together. You don’t have to force it.

Look I know the truth is hard to embrace when it’s so contrary to your world view. Look at the evidence. Put down the Linden stats. Everyone knows they are crap. How much does Blizzard gross? Go on look it up – I’ll wait. How long was Ultima Online – online. It was a trick question, it’s still running.

Making avatars is fun! This isn’t a problem to solve. I’m looking at you IBM VP. I’ve never heard a WoW player whine that they can’t move their ‘toon’ to a different environment. They take about 60 seconds to generate. People – gasp – enjoy playing different avatars!

Second life, with it’s infinitely customizable avatar/content system, is a great idea. When you you can make it something that a person can pick up in an hour with no 3d modeling or programming background – let the media know.

I’m sorry Hype Machine, many of us tried to use Second Life. Many of us WANTED it not to look like a bargin bin game from 95, sans gaming element. Really! Making the avatar go from second life to Google Earth is far from a killer app.

I hope you pick yourself up and move on Hype Machine, this is a dead horse.

Yours not so much,
Brian

I wholly endorse OmniGroup’s OmniPlan application. I’ve been using it this weekend for the first time and have not found it lacking in any area. If you have an Apple and you do things, you should try the free trial.

I have been laying out a series of projects for the woefully small group web/digital/computery group at my employer. In doing so with OmniPlan, I’ve found it to be far superior to sticking dates into Excel in a vain attempt at creating a chart that may appear, to the uncouth, as a Gantt chart. If you are trying to use Excel in this fashion, I’m sure you know you’re being silly.

I’ve only used the task/date assignment functions and have yet to get into assigning resources and such. I’m hoping to use OmniPlan to populate team calendars with all sorts of milestones, tasks and minutiae that would otherwise be lost in a shuffle of email.

The user interface is intuitive. I watched a few screencasts and started using it. If you use OmniGraffle, you’ll immediately see significant areas of similarity as soon as you open the ‘inspect’ window.

Given I know who reads my blog (“hi!”), by and large, I’ll keep you all posted.