Lecond Sife

The popularity of Sceond Lfie will grow, I feel, to the point where it will attract the same amount of press that WoW and Everquest once did. The latter two games attracted attention on Wall Street because of the massive profits they reaped. They attracted mainstream media attention, however, because people were beginning to die playing them. Secnod Lief is quickly becoming as widespread as WoW and Everquest once were, while being equally addictive.

It's fantastic that someone can become a literal millionaire playing an online game such as Seocnd Flie, but is it worth the 2 1/2 years of 70 hours per week of vegetation? Guys, think about how much hair you'd lose.

I remember being in an Internet "Cafe" in South Korea.** They sold Snickers bars, Coca-Cola, and Juice for 75 cents a pop. I talked with a guy who had been playing Everquest and Counter-Strike for 2 1/2 days straight. No sleep. They guy's eyes had blood vessels popping out. He acted like a zombie and said he'd only consumed Snickers bars and cans of Juice for every meal, for the previous 2 1/2 days. Keep in mind, they also have to pay for the time they spend on the computer. I imagine the cafe offers a "day pass," which is probably 50 bucks for 24 hours of play on your own private computer terminal.

I was very glad to hear about WoW instituting a "rest" policy by which your character is helped when he/she is not active. This encourages players to stop playing... but still, until the companies begin to limit online play to 4-6 hours per day, I'm not sold. Likewise, I refuse to purchase such games, especially considering that I'm a little familiar with the ridiculous markup of those games. What a rip! You get ripped at the Store, in your Life, and you might even DIE.

**For those of you who aren't techies, South Korea is one of the largest gaming server/internet hubs in the world. Online games require a great internet connection, and in SoKo, it's blazing. When I lived in Japan, I'd always play my online games on South Korean servers, and never on Chinese, or, heaven forbid, Japanese servers. They couldn't keep up.

And yes, I intentionally misspelled Secodn Lief everywhere in this post. It's one of many ways I rebel against the system. :P

Tomorrow We Ride...

Oh please, please interrupt my dinner by cold-calling me and attempting to solicit goods that you know for a fact I do not want. Interruption marketing.

Let's try this again: If I am hanging out with a friend and that person tells me about a wonderful product they've encountered, I am much more likely to check it out. Word of mouth has the power to accomplish anything. Random, meal-interrupting phone calls are much more likely to attain the 2% or less positive response they seek.

In the last few months of my senior year of high school, some students sought to organize a "senior skip day," in which all the seniors would show up at the school parking lot one morning, and then proceed to carry out an unauthorized field trip to some of the more trendy and risquee districts of Tokyo (I was living in Japan for my latter high school years). Some students had an examination and could not attend, but 76 of 78 graduating seniors failed to show up for roll call that particular morning.

Did any of us know what facebook was? Being in Japan, we just didn't use it. Nor did we use AOL Instant Messenger. Some people used Yahoo or the more popular MSN messengers... but not many. How did 97% of our class find out what day "senior skip day" was, when to meet, and how much money to bring/where we were going? Good question. The same way Firefox had 25 million dowloads in its first 99 days of existence. (As Scoble tells us in Naked Conversations, pg. 36) Word of mouth!

The day before this planned coup against the administration was to take place, the student council president gave very detailed instructions to a few notoriously bad students, concerning the procedure for the following day's events. Before the end of the school day, everyone knew when and where we were meeting, how many Yen to bring, what to tell their parents, how to write a phony note, etc. The detail was incredible. The two students that did not attend our jaunt had an examination. Funny thing: The school staff and administration were completely blindsided- through all the word of mouth, not a word reached their ears.

The moral of the story is that if one person had sent a mass e-mail to all the seniors, the word "sketchy" probably would have well characterized everyone's thoughts regarding this proposal. But the fact that everyone told his and her friends made it personal. Your friend was skipping, so you were going to as well. It was a chain reaction. "I don't think I can..." was just not an option. It was legitimate; it was going down tomorrow; your friend was not coming to school: That's all there is to it. This is how ICQ, AIM, Firefox, and Skype have found so much success: Everyone wants to have the coolest, latest thing to lighten up their lives. In my case that was ditching a single day of school after 12 hard years of work. : )

Get "With It" ~and~ (Hardly) Be Yourself!

Well first I will say that I was a bit disappointed to find out in the "Naked Conversations" intro (pg. 1) that the book did not in fact feature "middle-aged white guys talking in the nude."

The blacksmith analogy made in the aforementioned introduction explains exactly how I feel about businesses that do not adapt quickly enough to the rapidly changing industry (and way of life) that technology is. I recently ordered a headset for ITEC-200 (also w/ Prof. Mel) and the shipping tracking displayed as follows:

Clearly the scanning device was reset. And, most likely, December 31st, 1969 is the default begin date. Now, the device used for scanning the packages cannot be more than 5-6 years old. Therefore, why would the software programmers even allow the device to register a date earlier than, say, 2001? This is the kind of silliness that I despise, and Scoble and Israel agree with me in saying that companies like this will not find themselves with work for very long.

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On a related note, those companies that are technologically "with it" have an active blogging force who contribute to and maintain the corporate blog. I can see a lot of confusion arising with regard to proper conduct of a company employee in a corporate (or even personal) blog. How far is too far? And, how active or inactive, passive or aggressive should one be in defending or advertising their company?

To see an actual, well-though out manifesto of proper corporate weblog conduct (NC, 190) really filled me with excitement. I found the gist of this passage to be along the lines of, 'be yourself, but to an extent.' Having a thick skin, and posting frequently and with passion are advocated, yet we are reminded that we do not have free speech, and that lawsuits can ensue if we are not careful. I feel that there are noticeable contradictions in this set of guidelines, but it's also the most thought out (and therefore best) start toward establishing a standard for corpblog activity that I've yet to come across.

I think all companies with blogs should give their blogging employees this list, and instruct them to abide by it as their Constitution and their code of conduct. Likewise, companies who don't presently blog should use this manifesto as a foundation for success in the blogging community. It's much easier to start a new blog and follow these rules, than to try and reform an old, beat-up, and dirty blog that's been around for several years.

Naked Conversations: http://www.amazon.com/Naked-Conversations-Changing-Businesses-Customers/dp/047174719X. The authors' blog: http://redcouch.typepad.com/.

link

Rubbish!

Charles Kadushin, in his article about Social Network Theory, raises the point that many people are probably more than six degrees apart because of their environment.

Check out this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qXJ1DAfYBA.

Now, I believe that it's safe to say that we here in the US are no more than six degrees away from anyone else who is from a nation as developed as ours. The map at this link: http://web.ges.gla.ac.uk/~mshand/africawww/Image7.jpg, will show you how Internet connectivity on the African continent has progressed in recent years. This map is deceptive, however, because after much further research, I've discovered that much of the continent is still disconnected due to geographical issues and a lack of funding to cope with it. With the continent being so disconnected, how can one say that someone in the western plains of Cote d'Ivoire is only six degrees of separation from myself? It is possible, surely, but very unlikely. Only the most modern cities would have sufficient connectivity and the infrastructure to support a man hunt of this kind.

The Six Degrees theory emerged in 1967 at a time when America had no Internet connectivity. Supposing the theory was applicable then, most Americans at this point cannot be many more than 3 or 4 degrees away from one another.

Environment takes its toll, however, because once someone from this country tries to link up with someone from another, language barriers will likely begin inhibiting the ultimate success of this task. For instance, how would you locate someone in Karuizawa, Japan? 丁度 ("exactly").

Many barriers, including social, cultural, geographic, and financial exist that make the theory of six degrees more applicable to today's society more than ever before, however I retain my skepticism that this theory held truth in 1967. Only in small application has it yielded positive results. Six Degrees may work for you, but only if you and your target fit into the right 'category'.

Kadushin: http://sixdegrees.wikidot.com/local--files/reading-history/kadushin.pdf

Do you ever...?

Do you ever write out things you've already done on a day planner, just so you can cross them out?

Or, for the more techy in nature: Do you create digital sticky notes on your desktop just so you can delete them? Or, elongate the note on a sticky, right before you delete it?

I get an ever increasing feeling of satisfaction when I can see tangible notes be crossed out or thrown away. Something about it necessitates that I procede in such a fashion until I have achieved a supreme level of satisfaction through this means.

A bit on Kevin Bacon and his glorious six degrees:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPB8L_sFMaM&mode=related&search= Bacon talking about his charity.

http://www.sixdegrees.org/Default.aspx Bacon's charity website.