social media sendup

thanks to robin, who posted this cheerleading clip on a social media site where i found it.

they conflated a lot of things as “social media” in this. seems more like a grab-bag for all things popular right now. Include hulu, really?

gaming and virtual life

photographer Robbie Cooper shows just how focused young video game players can be. it looks to me like there are pieces where the kids are just watching something, less engaged, maybe those are from cut scenes between game levels?

watch in wide screen format

my first real job was working for a virtual reality input device company long, long ago. i worked on the software for exoskeleton-style hand and wrist devices. there was a question i recall in those days of how virtual reality would go mainstream if at all. mostly it was a kind of gadget excitement i think, a love of the gear itself. you might say that virtual reality as defined then by jaron lanier and others failed, because we are not wearing 3d headsets and using data gloves to do much of anything. but that supposed failure to me merely shows how much the human mind can find immersion without them. give me compelling content, a high resolution screen, and i’ll nearly forget that i’m playing a game. modern video games prove to me that lanier and others’ vision was spot on. entering a virtual world is quite compelling. and when you expand that to social interaction, perhaps sites like facebook are as immersive without graphics at all.

splitting my blog

i’ve been blogging since april of 2003. and my interests have migrated but somewhat settled on three topics: design / professional, personal, and meditation related. but lately i’ve encountered some writers block, perhaps because those three categories are so disparate i don’t know who my audience might be for any given post.

focus? naw… let’s splinter instead into three blogs and subscribe to just the topics you’re actually interested in. if you stumbled here, use the tabs across the top to discover the other now separate blogs.

this site will host my thoughts on experience design, usability, interaction design and perhaps even software design and development.