Offtopic: Props to Linksys Tech Support

It's fashionable these days to rant about bad customer service, so I figured saying thank you is fair game, too. So, thank you, the intrepid, patient and very polite Linksys tech support guys (girls? dunno, it was a live chat) who brought my wireless router back to life. Never once did you make me feel like the stupid noob that I am about networking, and the phone call you made to check if I was still alive when our chat connection dropped was a very touching gesture as well. Thank you. And if you are from Linksys, please pass my personal thanks to the people who handled the case 070831-013061.

New Announcements of 3D Hardware

It's been a while since the last post on 3D stuff, mostly because nothing exciting seems to be trickling from behind those lab doors to the general market, but but these three announcements just showed up back to back in the RSS reader:

"Mitsubishi recently revealed a new Blu-ray player that can convert existing 2D movies into 3D in real time." (Physorg)

"Philips is introducing the 3D WOWzone, a large 132­inch (335 cm) multi-screen 3D wall, designed to grab people's attention with stunning 3D multimedia presentations." (press release)

"Japan's Hitachi has developed a lightweight 3D display that can potentially be adapted for mobile devices such as telephones." (Physorg)

Facebook Applications Stats

Daily updates on changes in user base for various Facebook apps on adonomics.com.

Met up with a developer recently whose app is in the top 20. Man, this is the biggest gold rush since 1998, and there was not a single ad agency rep at the most recent Facebook developer event. Dave McClure summed up the importance of Facebook quite succinctly: "People see shit other people are doing in the Feed, and then they click on that shit."

See the Facebook developer wiki.

Avatars, Bots in Google Earth

"Unype Facebook application lets Facebook users roam around inside Google Earth and see/interact with each other." More in Unype's blog post. It's not yet quite as exciting as it sounds, mainly because of the Google Earth's limitations -- no real-time movement or animations, for example, and not too many Facebook users either, but a very exciting step nonetheless.

Unype has also developed chat bots that can live inside Google Earth: "You can park your bot and leave your salespost ( hotel, house for sale, car dealership, resort, or simply a store ) and go away. The Unype bot will talk to your visitors for you and keep a log of what happened. The brain is completely programmable by a simple text editor and a little knowledge of AIML so you can customize it to say exactly what you would like it to say."

Now suddenly all those millions wasted on marketing experiments in Second Life don't look so quite wasted.

And here's a long article in a recent issue of Tech Review about how the merge between Google Earth and Second Life-like world is inevitable (free reg).

Earlier
Rumor: Google Planning Virtual World
Google Earth Becoming Virtual World, with a quote from Jerry Paffendorf: "I would expect to see someone using Google Earth as a virtual social space by the end of the year."
Google Earth Compatible With Other 3D Environments
Whirlpool Offers 3D Models of Appliances for Google Earth

Halo 3 ARG Post-Mortem

A short post-mortem for the fairly low-key "Iris" ARG campaign to promote the upcoming Microsoft's Halo 3 title. The release of Halo 2 in 2004 was pushed by the widely popular "I Love Bees ARG" (via ARG Net, via Clickable Culture).

An interesting piece of technological innovation: "The campaign's third episode featured a cell phone ring tone that unlocked a 3-D animation on Halo3.com when played into a microphone-equipped PC."

Intel's Map for Battlefield 2 Game

image source

Here's the downloadable map for EA's Battlefield 2 game developed and made available for free by Intel.

Engadget's Ryan Block Against Popover Ads

Engadget's editor Ryan Block writes an open letter asking fellow bloggers to stop using IntelliTXT popover ads: "With all due respect to you, friends, fucking stop it. Seriously, stop supporting these shysters that advertise by generating fake links and popovers on your content."

Sears Builds Community Site

This is it. Probably not done yet. Make the Logo Bigger and Roger Dooley write about the longish privacy policy required to sign up to the community. Here's what Sears means by community: "It’s a community that connects shoppers like you to SHC employees, including the most senior executives, so that together we can build a better shopping experience. In exchange for participating in the community, members will have access to free planning and budgeting tools, special forums to express their views and ideas and will receive exclusive offers and promotions."

There is no community yet. There's a lengthy online survey that asks you a lot of questions about waist sizes and car-driving habits. The survey is not well designed: there seems to be no cross-checking of input across sheets (I entered different household size numbers and it didn't react at all), it's a chore to fill out, it gives no progress indication and no incentive. But as I said above, it doesn't look like it's intended for the prime time just yet anyway.

Out-Stare a Rugby Player

Archibald Ingall Stretton in London built an advergame for the O2 mobile provider that puts you in a staring contest with three rugby players. The exciting part is that the game is able to tell when you blink or look away: "We capture the output of the webcam using BitmapData, using the current and previous frames of data we apply a Difference filter to the two images and then we analyse, pixel by pixel, what has changed."
-- thank you, Geoff.

KFC Carts Meals Through Corporate Halls

Press release: "KFC is placing the mouth-watering aroma of Kentucky Fried Chicken directly into the corporate halls of America. As part of the program, KFC has teamed up with mailrooms across the U.S. to secure the ultimate product placement - right outside your office at lunchtime!"

To promote the $2.99 meal, KFC is sending it out on "a mail cart through the halls, thus enticing employees to smell and be interested in enjoying the meal for lunch." (Weber Shandwick via email)

Earlier:
Giant KFC Logo Seen from Space
KFC Creates TiVo-Proof Ad
KFC Claims Secret-Message Ad Successful
KFC Edits YouTube Clips into Spot