Doesn't look all that scary to me

Project: MyWorld

The thing I've been working on for the last three years has finally been announced! We can talk about it, at last!

What would it look like if Nintendo built Google Earth?

Project: MyWorld turns the real world into a fun 3D social gaming experience. Project: MyWorld is a virtual recreation of the real world combined with 3D gaming and social media.

It is the next-generation of social gaming.

Digital Economy Bill: The Reply

After waiting five days for a reply to my last email, I forwarded it to Stewart Hosie's main email address, as well as the SNP HQ email address.

Within a couple of hours, I'd recieved this reply from Kevin, the same assistant who'd replied to my previous missives. The yellow highighting around "PEGI" is his, not mine; I'm still not 100% sure why it's there.

Dear Paul

Further to our recent correspondence, Stewart has advised that, whilst he agrees there was a lack of scrutiny to the bill, he believed that the need for PEGI to become the classification system for video games overcame his concerns regarding scrutiny and the other sections of the bill.

He appreciates that you may be personally disappointed but his decision was one he did give careful consideration to.

Yours

Kevin

This rang hollow to me; after all, the BBFC and PEGI already rate pretty much every game released in the UK, and rushing through a bill with the kind of security and civil rights implications of the #debill just to formalise that situation seems extreme to me, so I sent this short message back - and have yet to recieve a reply.

Kevin,

Thanks for the reply - I was just hoping to get a little bit more information from you about Stewart's decision.

Given that video games are already certified by the BBFC in some cases and PEGI in all others, what benefit does rushing through the Digital Economy Bill have? I don't see how waiting a couple of months with the system we have - which is perfectly functional and enforcable - is such a terrible prospect that the civil liberties of voters need to be put at risk from legislation that has not been given proper scrutiny and consideration.

I don't understand how the serious concerns about the bill expressed by internet companies, security agencies and your constituents are deemed less important by Stewart than the rushed official implementation of a ratings system that is actually already more or less in place.

I'm looking forward to your reply.

Thanks,

-Paul

Hopefully I'll get a reply, but honestly I'm not expecting much.

The Digital Economy Bill

Last night, the House of Commons passed the controversial Digital Economy Bill. For more information on why this bill is a useless piece of garbage, see here and a million other places online.

Immediately after the debate, shortly before midnight, I sent an email to my MP, the SNP's Stewart Hosie, asking how he'd voted. I got a reply from one of his assistants this morning saying they'd look into it and get back to me.

I found the answer myself, before they got back to me, so I sent this to them as well.

Hi Kevin,

I already know, thanks to Hansard (link), that Mr. Hosie voted in favour of the Digital Economy bill, which only really leaves one question outstanding:

Is it the official policy of the SNP to disregard the impact of wide-reaching and unscrutinized legislation on your constituents' civil liberties, in order to appease corporate lobbyists, or is that only the case for this bill? Did Mr. Hosie not read or understand the bill and its implications for free speech and communication, or did he simply not care? He obviously didn't feel strongly enough about the bill's contents to participate in the debate beforehand, despite being in the House of Commons for the finance debate that took place immediately before it.

Dundee prides itself on its thriving digital businesses; games companies like Denki, Realtime Worlds, Tag Games, Ruffian and Proper Games; Abertay and Dundee University's focus on computing and new media courses; the city's participation in the Fibre City Project, and of course the massive publishing and content creator that is DC Thomson. How can Mr. Hosie, who claims to represent many of the people who work for these companies and institutions, justify not standing up to say a single word during the Digital Economy Bill's debate?

Given the controversy surrounding this bill, and the massive impact it could - and very likely will have - on the future of communication in this country, it was essential that the whole House be allowed to scrutinize the whole bill before it was passed. Instead, the Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrat front benches colluded to have the bill forced through in the wash-up, bypassing the democratic process and cheating their constituents out of their rights. I am horrified that my MP and the rest of the SNP went along with this cheap sham.

Leaving aside the grave implications this bill has for the health of Britain's digital economy, the freedom of speech and the sharing of information, this is a severe precedent set for the future of democracy in the UK.

Yours,

Paul Cosgrove

Go beyond the web

From the excellent Savage Chickens.

Ohai

The most interesting thing I've been up to lately: I've made (and released) an app for the Palm Pre. It's a search app for the Wizards.com D&D 4e Compendium (if that doesn't mean anything to you, then you might as well skip the rest of this entry), which I put together for two reasons:

1. I wanted to learn how to use Ajax and multi-scene apps in the SDK, and
2. I wanted this app for myself

The second one is probably the bigger impetus; with any other phone or device, I'd probably have waited for someone else to (never) make what I wanted, but this is the first time I've been in a position to do it myself so I figured I should probably take the opportunity.

These screenshots are actually significantly out of date; I've just finished the first pass on my second round of features, so it does a ton more now than it did when it went online last week. I'm hoping to test it more thoroughly over tomorrow and during a D&D game on Wednesday night.

I've done some minimal promotion, on the D&D forums and Twitter, and at the time of writing it's been downloaded 89 times, which is way better than I could ever have hoped. If anybody reading this has a Palm Pre or Pixi (or if you know someone who does!), you can download it here - although if you wait til the weekend, the newer version will hopefully be available then.

This is actually the second app I've written for the phone, but the first will never see the light of day for fear that I will be sued into oblivion for copyright infringement.

In other news: work is good; the Christmas holidays were over far too soon; we finally got a comfortable computer chair.

News From The Front

From Kate Beaton's fantastic Hark, A Vagrant.

The Intelligence Squared Debate: Stephen Fry

The Intelligence² Debate - Stephen Fry (Unedited)
by Xrunner17

This speech is utterly astounding.

It makes me want to hug him.

Gameswipe

I thought it was funny, but it seemed to miss its own point.

At the beginning, Brooker seemed to complain that TV's traditional portrayal of games as unnecessarily violent or pointlessly boring was unfair; he then went on to spend the next 45 minutes showing how unnecessarily violent and pointlessly boring games have become, despite the technological improvements.

The target audience is a mystery as well - the beginners guide to genres was obviously to pull in casual or non-gamers, but then it's intercut with a frankly horrific couple of scenes from Wolfenstein where the player brutally dismembers Nazis with an axe.

I know that Charlie Brooker delights in pointing out the contradictions of media (which is what made Screen- and Newswipe so good), but it just seemed to confuse the show's message - assuming it had one. Personally, I'd have preferred to see a comparison between the mainstream assumption of what games are, the common denominator stuff that encourages that perception, and the stuff that shows what videogames can do to properly engage the player. Where was Shadow of the Colossus? Okami? For all the talk about violence, why was there no mention of games where avoiding conflict is more desirable and rewarding than direct confrontation with your opponent - like Arkham Asylum, or the MGS series?

Maybe it was too much to expect from Charlie Brooker*, but I was hoping for a show that I could give to game-skeptics to say, "Here's what gaming is really like" - instead, it would probably just confirm their suspicions.

*I like Brooker, don't get me wrong. But he has a penchant for the melodramatic and hyperbole, which is already in plentiful supply when it comes to the discussion of videogames and their content.

I found this quote about Gameswipe in the comments section on another blog, and thought it was quite good:

One of the things Rab and Ryan used to get absolutely spot on with Consolevania and VideoGaiden was trying to show the viewer what their experience of playing a game was like. That’s what you need to get across in a TV show about games, the other stuff is windowdressing, or bullshit. Playing games is all about the experience.

I think that is what was missing - it was too much about the public perception, and not about the gamer's perception. An explanation of why we love games, in my opinion, would have done a much better job of getting a positive point across than a series of people complaining about the worst bits of the games they play.

Pre on October 16th!

The press release that finally confirms the UK release date and pricing of the Palm Pre came out this morning; these long months of speculation and guesswork from every gadget blog and forum with European members are finally over.

Friday, October 16th - just three weeks away - is Pre day!

The tariffs and pricing are more or less the same as for the recently-release iPhone 3GS, which is potentially a mistake; the Pre has half the memory of the low-end 3GS (8GB vs. the iPhone's 16), and is missing a lot of the multimedia features that have made the iPhone such a success among casual smartphone buyers.

Nevertheless, I will be picking one up, on the 24-month £35 contract (which nets me a "free" Pre) on launch day. I just need to figure out when to contact Vodafone to get my number ported to O2. I'm planning on heading into the O2 store here in Dundee this lunchtime to ask them some questions; I imagine they'll be more eager to give me answers on changing providers than the network I'm leaving.

Fox Hunt

From the excellent Hark! A Vagrant.

About bloody time

The announcement was made this morning that O2 are going to get the Palm Pre in the UK, Ireland and Germany, with fellow Telefonica subsidiary Movistar getting it in Spain.

But while this confirmation is nice to have, the carrier information was already more or less a given - very few people doubted, especially in the last few weeks or months, that O2 would be the one to take the Pre to market here. The arguably more important information about pricing and the release date - which was also rumoured to be getting a reveal this week - hasn't materialised yet.

I'm still hoping to get a Pre on release - and in fact the later it lands, then the easier it should be to get out of my current Vodafone contract - but it's frustrating to have so little firm information. They'll apparently be bringing the phone to market before the end of the year (in time for Christmas, allegedly), which is certainly pointing towards the end of November or start of December, if the verbiage used to describe the US release is anything to go by. Palm spent the first five months of 2009 telling people that the Pre would be out "in the first half of the year", and released it in early June - so it's a fair bet that a "second half of 2009" release won't materialize until early December.

(I realise this is turning into a bit of a one-track posting habit, but hopefully I'll stop talking about the bloody thing once I finally get it.)

Pre, post-launch

So, the Palm Pre is out now in the US. Anybody got one (or tried one out) yet? I've read a whole bunch of reviews and forum posts, but the opinions of people I know online are always much better than random blogs and forum idiots.

I'm dying to get my hands on a device to try it out for myself; even just so I can try out the keyboard, which seems to be the main area of complaints, and the only part of the phone I have any significant concerns about. There have been a few reports of overheating, bricking and screens being warped, but this is a first-gen device and I don't think anybody was expecting a perfect machine straight out of the gate. Sprint and Palm seem to be doing a good job of replacing faulty devices, but that can't be doing wonders for their already-low stock levels.

I've got it on good authority that the UK release for the Pre will be in October (pending supply; December if things fall through), on O2. Presumably we won't hear any official announcements until the stock situation calms down enough that they can forecast availability for the UK launch, but it's frustrating to have to rely on third-hand information and rumours for so long.

In any case, I'm hoping that the hardware and software issues that have been encountered during the American launch will be largely ironed out by the time we see the Pre arrive on this side of the pond.

otaSCOTIA

There's an online geek radio station called otaSCOTIA that I recently put together a WordPress skin for - it's just gone live, so check it out and let me know what you think (of the site, not the show - that's @otascotia's side of things).

Pre in September?

All current rumours point to the Palm Pre getting a UK release sometime around September, which is pretty good, I guess. The American release is, according to the same speculation, coming out early July, so it hopefully won't be too unbearable a wait.

Most rumours still seem to be pointing to Vodafone as the carrier here, so hopefully that one will pan out too, and I can keep my number and won't have to change my contract too much.