Awevation

Awebital mockup mockup

Pablo Picasso once said:

“Good artists borrow, great artists steal”

And that is so true. Anyone who thinks the great creative minds of the human race got to where they did on just their own steam are delusional, an artist needs inspiration. Of course people come up with their own ideas, but they’re always inspired by something else, there’s never anything truly new created, only some old bits cobbled together in interesting new ways. It’s been like that from the beginning of our universe, things are built on top of each other. Everything at it’s basic level is just atoms. It can even be broken down into smaller elementary particles, like quarks. Humans can intelligently design new parts out of old parts, and that’s all an artist ever does, consciously or subconsciously. This is all of course, particularly relevant to Picasso considering his famously unique art style.

“Good artists borrow, great artists steal”, if we don’t then we get worse art. If I refuse to use someone else’s idea, that would fit perfectly into my art, merely  on principle, I get inferior art. Some people can’t face up to this, because they want to believe everything they create is truly theirs. Nothing is truly yours, as much as you and I would like to believe it, make your art better and give credit where credit is due.

What you made could never have been made without you, be safe in that knowledge. You are unique, and so is your art, it’s a unique combination of other, more basic, pieces, but it has been compiled and added to by you. It is unique as unique can be, and oh-so special. Without you, it wouldn’t exist, but without others it wouldn’t exist either. Credit the human race, credit the universe. You were the little cog that could, the little cog that turned in a slightly different direction.

That’s fantastic, that’s wonderful, that’s beautiful and inspiring for everyone in the world.

So what’s this got to do with technology? What on Earth’s Awebital and why on Earth do I care?

There’s a problem with the world of technology as it stands, we have thousands of great, innovative ideas, concepts, designs. And no one can see them. Market competition and all that, yes, I understand that Apple can’t tell people what the next iPhone will look like, Microsoft can’t give us their 2012 roadmap, Facebook can’t release their planned feature list. I totally get that.

But it goes so much further than that. Not every Microsoft employee is the CEO of Microsoft. That sounds obvious, but think about it. There are thousands of people who are passionate about technology, and only a few at the top, only a few who dictate where we may go. Random dude 1 might have had the idea for the next FaceBook, and arguably more importantly might have the potential to have that idea. Random dude 2 might have had the idea for the next paradigm in interface design, the next iPad, or again more importantly might have the potential to have that idea.

The point is, these ideas people are having are clearly never going to be implemented due to lack of life-time, and so much more importantly, they will never be seen by anyone else. Will never inspire another human being. That’s so sad to me, imagine if Einstein had never been able to publish his results. Imagine if Rowling had been a successful buisness-women and never published the first Harry Potter.

Let’s go deeper. These ideas will never be built upon by others. Would FaceBook exist without Friendster? Probably not. Would Google exist without Yahoo? Zuckerburg, Page and Brin were inspired by others. They were in the right place at the right time. They were lucky.

Random dude 1? He wasn’t so lucky. he never saw Random dude 3′s idea and was never inspired.

If you compare this to science, a world where information is largely shared. Trust me, if CERN had succesfully found proof of the Higs boson, I’d know. If some neutrinos, for instance, were believed to be travelling faster-than-light. I would know. The worlds aren’t directly comparable of course, but so many parallels can be drawn. And maybe that’s a horrible example, but I don’t actually think it is…

By keeping things from each other, hiding things from like-minded people, we in turn hurt ourselves. It’s not good for innovation, and only for stagnation. In technology, so much that could be open is closed to the world, sometimes not even for good reason. I’m not Richard Stallman. Lines have to be drawn, but they’re usually drawn in completely the wrong place.

What we need is something to encourage sharing of information, it needs to go further than code, further than technology. It needs to be social, and promote encouragement from an early stage. Finally, it needs to be designed so that ideas, and individual parts of those ideas, can be taken and built upon by others. It needs to be an end-to-end solution, from inspiration to creation. Such an idea is hard to comprehend, hard to ‘get’. It needs to connect on a human level, to be intuitive. So I built an idea with my imagination, of metaphors and similes. 

Meet Awebital, a social network, for ideas. A database of inspiration and social artistic creation.

Bubbles eh? I love bubbles. So bubbly. So I put them at the base of the current idea for Awebital. Users should be able to create a bubble, and put something into that bubble. That something can be anything, from a snippet of code, or pseudocode, a plot idea, a design concept, a building schematic, a piece of art… The emphasis really is that you can put anything in this bubble. The bubble will support all common types of data, images, text, documents, 3D models… Anything really.

Now after you put something in a bubble, you can make links to that bubble, to other bubbles. You can edit that bubble, but that bubble specifically is just one piece of data. The bubbles linked to it have other pieces of data, other bits of whatever! A mind-map, for data. Mind-mapping, built for the technological world. Imagine planning a game like this. Have a bub-branch (hehe, bub-branch) for graphics, one for code, one for plot, one for design. Each one of those can branch off however much it wants, it could become a hugely complicated data-structure, that anyone (or just your friends if it’s a private bubble!) can view intuitively, anyone can suggest additions and omissions, and anyone can create a clone, revisions would be stored… Yeah, version control, for human beings.

But wait? Why is it called Awebital? Well, projects that relied or were related to others, would orbit around each other. For instance, using software as an example, Ubuntu would orbit around Debian (Ubuntu is an OS based on the Debian codebase), which would orbit around Linux, which would orbit around UNIX…. You get the picture?. But then, again using open software as an example, different KDE applications would orbit around the huge KDE bubble, things like Plasma (the desktop shell) would be orbiting close, things like Dolphin (the default file manager) would orbit further out. Say you wrote some fan fiction based around another author’s works, guess what would happen.

Would this look confusing? I don’t think so. Orbiting would be slow, not fast, and if you were zoomed into a project, it would just look like the background was scrolling. If you zoom _out_ however, you’d get a view of something truly amazing, you’d see everything Awebiting (yeah I said it) around each other. It would seem rather spectacular I think, you’d get a clear picture of where everything fitted in. The Bubtrix, if you will.

Then you’d get bubbles floating through space, simple ideas that might never go anywhere. But they’ll be out there, floating around, ready for people to look at and thumb up or down, or add to, or add suggestions or comments to. Comments would probably be inside bubbles, around the piece of data. Am I talking about a bubble within a bubble? Bubeption? Yup. Aweception.

In the end you would have a product, something mapped out for all the world to see. Something the end user could rate, download. But the key difference here is the end user can make contact with ‘the project’, with all those working on it and all those that view it. They could suggest, tweak. It’s a social network for creativity…. For ideas.

A social network for ideas. A visual data mind-mapping bubtrix bubception for creativity. That sounds crazy, sounds insane.

But you know what? The Universe sounds insane. And the Universe is wonderful.

The Zelda Symphony Logo

I recently travelled to the Zelda Symphony in London, literally thousands of Zelda fans came from all over Europe in order to see the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra perform a broad selection of music from the Legend of Zelda franchise, and celebrate 25 years of saving Hyrule.

The RPC performed some of the best pieces from the Zelda franchise, including sweeping themes like Hyrule Field and delicate melodies such as fairy fountain. Highlights for me in particular included the Wind Waker Symphonic Movement and the spectacular Gerudo Valley. If you’ve ever had the fortune to listen to these tracks, synthesised and composed into MIDI you’ll know they fit the game perfectly. Played with such passion and fidelity, right in front of you, however was something quite wonderful.

You must remember that time when you first galloped into Gerudo valley, storming the fortress, and were stunned by quite how much fun you were having. The music was a huge part of that experience, as it is with all media. Try watching a horror film with the music removed, or your favourite scene in an action movie. It’s not nearly as fantastical. The music transported the listener and watcher back to that core experience of adventure and excitement, the ecstasy of their imagination. 

So the atmosphere created was brilliant, magical and electric, not just due to the music but due to the fact that thousands of fans were there, and boy were they fans. Everyone had come because of one thing, they loved or had loved playing The Legend of Zelda, and it showed. Cosplayers were there in full force, even with a pair dressing up as Kotake and Kotume, whom I saw in the queue and did not quite believe it. There was a lot of green, and a lot of Links and in the interval I even got the chance to speak to some, whom I knew through the social web (mostly Twitter, in my case), people I never believed I would really meet.

But the thing that surprised almost everybody there (I think the press already knew!) was the appearance of Zelda Williams. She turned out to be the host of the event, and she was very good at it! Despite her apologetic manner, and clearly being overwhelmed by the sudden audience presented to her, she came across as both a nice person and someone who held Zelda dear to their heart. Well done to her, I doubt I could have done it.

There was also another person was there that night. Eiji Aonouma came on stage at the beginning, and even tried to speak English! Before reverting to the use of his trusty translator. Before talking he seemed just as overwhelemed as Zelda! He kept sort of, turning away and almost collapsing, it was clear he was finding it hard to confront the crowd, but he was so happy to be there and in the end came across as confident, when he got into his stride. This was a man I had been looking at in magazines from a very early age, so seeing him like this, in the flesh, was quite surreal.

Similarly, when Kondo came on to perform a Grandma’s Theme solo at the end I felt the same. It seemed really non-canonical that these people were in my life, it felt like I’d finally reached some point where I was part of the world at large, and that was quite something to me.

The thing that really struck me about all these people, was that they were nice, good people. They weren’t arrogant, or seeming to think they were above anyone else. And the fans were similar, all so friendly. Everyone there seemed to give off only good vibes, and I honestly don’t remember thinking ‘what a prat’ at any point, and for a room full of thousands of individuals, that’s an achievement, and a testimony to what the company’s doing, to attract such people.

At the end of the day, it didn’t matter that Nintendo were trying to sell posters for £20, or that I didn’t quite get the chance to play Skyward Sword. Because it reminded me of just why I was a fan of the company, why I’d stuck with them for all this time, why I own a 3DS. It reminded me of how they’d given me a huge part of my childhood, and how they had done the same for so many others. It made me realise, that The Legend of Zelda had made such a huge influence on me, and that if I ever do anything significant in my life, especially creatively, it’ll be so inspired in part by Zelda. It made me realise that Nintendo, whatever anyone says, is something quite special, something quite unique, and something I want to stay a part of, whatever happens to them.

I contacted OnLive to ask if Linux client would be a possibility. The reply was pretty standard. Basically, no, not yet.

Greetings,

Thank you for contacting OnLive Support.

At this time we currently do not have any information regarding the possibilities of a Linux client at this time. Should more information become available for this, we will post it on the sites I have listed below.

If you have any other questions please feel free to ask.

Joseph
Customer Service Representative
http://support.onlive.com/

For the latest news: 
Twitter | @OnLive or http://twitter.com/onlive
Facebook | http://www.facebook.com/onlive

Last night I posted a half thought about, badly presented idea. I’ve had some feedback, I’ve had some funny comments, I’ve earned some hate. It was a confusing piece, one written with many strands running though it, many of which were confusing. The idea has grown, changed, mutated into another beast. If you were put off by the previous piece, that’s fine. But maybe you could read this, and try to understand me.

This project is about exciting and inspiring. It’s about getting ideas out there to those who want them, letting them cultivate those ideas. It’s about providing an end-to-end solution of creation. Not just creation of software, think bigger.

What’s the point? Exciting and inspiring.

I’ve had people tell me that all this would be is the internet, that it all already exists. I don’t blame you. But I disagree. I think there’s something this could offer.

So, say you have an idea. It could be an idea for some software, for a story, for a building’s design, for a service. You don’t have the time, you don’t have the money, you don’t have the skills. You just have an idea. Well, an idea is a powerful thing. It can be infectious, it can spur both evolution and revolution. The key is, an idea is just an idea, a whisper on the wind.

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UPDATE 2: Here it is. Read this for historical purposes. http://www.awevation.com/2011/09/08/bubbles-giants-and-sheds/ 

UPDATE: I’m writing a follow up post explaining it in a better way! The idea’s evolved. Quite a bit. Please stay tuned. Thank you so much! You’re great people. I love you. 

This is a piece on an idea I had. An idea that I like the direction of. It’s an idea that doesn’t really exist yet, the ghost of an idea.I don’t really know quite how it’d work, quite what it’d do. But I think it’d do something, for some people. I would love you to read, and stick with me. Then comment at the end, and criticise it, and tear it apart. Please, it helps me, doesn’t hurt me.

The guys on a gaming podcast I listen to (Infendo radio) had and idea for a new console. It would do away with all bells and whistles of all the new hardware, only have three buttons and a d-pad. It would even do away with the select button, only having start in the centre. The console itself would have a huge emphasis on 2D games, only allowing developers to make games that happened on a 2D plane. It was a beautiful idea, and one that resonated with me. I even made them a 3D render in Blender (a FOSS and cross-platform alternative to 3DS Max. It’s actually very capable.) of the controller. They posted it on the site here: http://www.infendo.com/concept-designs-of-infendos-unreleased-console-leaked-to-internet/ 

Then, the guys on one of my favourite podcasts, The Linux Action Show, had a yearning for another device. It would do what IBM, Intel etc had pioneered with the PC, for the mobile market. I buy Windows PCs, but I must confess I put Linux on them very quickly and hardly ever use the OS it came installed with, although I keep it there. I do this because I can just do whatever the hell I want. I can even hack my own kernel to pieces and recompile it if I wanted. This mythical device would simply be the hacker’s tablet, you could easily flash whatever on there and play with it in whatever way you wanted. The hardware would truly be yours, when buying the device software pre-installed would be irrelevant.

On yet another podcast (I listen to lots), starring my favourite team of tech bloggers (Josh Topolsky, Nilay Patel and Paul Miller) has had an ongoing theme throughout what was The Engadget Podcast, is now This Is My Next Podcast, and soon to be The Verge Podcast. They want this halo device, a device that has literally no branding on it and a monolithic design. It’s just a svelte black block with a screen, and hardly any bezel. It doesn’t even have to get mass-market they say, just let those who want one get one.

I think all these things are linked. People, geeks at least, seem to want this device, or this platform. I think all these people, all at the centre of the current tech scene, just want great tech. They don’t care who makes it, what exactly it runs. They want the greatest application of technology they can imagine, and they’re frustrated that no one seems to want to make it. Everyone’s fighting for a monopoly, not a single intelligent consumer wants a monopoly. The businesses should ideally see that competition is fantastic for them, because it forces them to innovate, to evolve.

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That's not falling. That's flying. With style!

Pilot Wings Resort is an interesting game. It’s the return of a franchise that has had two previous iterations, both launch titles, both showing off new tech in all it’s glory. The original Pilot Wings, released around (or at, depending on you region) the launch of the SNES, demoed the consoles revolutionary ‘Mode-7′ tech. It worked by rotating 2D sprites in a 3D space, the result was something that looked truly spectacular to a world that had never seen 3D games before, even if it looks incredibly dated now.

The next intsallment in the series was Pilot Wings 64* a game which met praise and sales upon launch release. Gameplay was very similar, fly planes, hang gliders, rocket belts and a few other ‘easter egg’ machines through hoops and explore the vast environments. It was those vast environments that were arguably the point of Pilot Wings 64 (and to a larger extent the 64 itself). They were the tech demo aspect, they showed of the 64′s gusto in style.

And now, a fair few years later at the (rather barren) launch of the 3DS come a new installment in the series: Pilot Wings Resort. But has the latest lost sight of the series’ original purpose? Which was never to make a launch line-up but compliment it in style.

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On May the 4th, 2010, something happened. Something big, except no one realised quite how big it was to become. John Graham and Jeffrey Rosen launched Humble Bundle #1.  It offered five, quality, indie games for a ‘pay what you’ want price. How is that not a good deal? Pay 1 cent and you still receive all the games. The marketing is simple, you split your money exactly how you want. You have a choice of two charities, the developers and can give a ‘humble tip’ which goes to Jeffrey and John. You can split how ever much money you’re willing to give, whichever ways you want. Now that sort of ‘giving’ psychology is nearly a ‘gamification’ tactic in itself, but let’s not go into psychology.

They had an (what they believed to be unrealistic) goal of raising one thousand US dollars. As they launched however, it was clear they were on to something. By the end of the week they had raised over $1,000,000. They extended the offer for a few days, they kept on making a lot of money. The offer closed, it’s creators elated with its success.

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Adorable, beautiful, wonderful. How can you not be moved by this image?

Let’s cut the crap guys and gals, let’s get this straight. Video games are an art form, whether you like it or not. It seems I am the antithesis of Roger Ebert, but here’s the thing: He’s a film critic, video games aren’t his forté.

This article isn’t directed at Ebert, it isn’t directed at anyone. I’ve always thought that games are art. This isn’t just about getting games more recognition, more ‘respect’ from people as general as a sophisticated way of expressing one’s self, although that’s part of it. I just wanted to write a definitive (for me) post/essay on why I think this.

So let’s break it down, into the different components of a video game, and compare those components to each other and to film, painting, music and so on.

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Beauty, is in the eye of the beholder

What made Minecraft so successful? What allowed it to arrive and sweep over the blogosphere, virally spreading all over the internet, all over people’s minds? What makes it so addictive, so compelling, so brilliant?

It’s simple really. It’s been here all along, all of time. It goes back to a theme of an earlier post. Intuitivity, what feels natural.

If one looks at children, they see a human in it’s most natural form. Acting on instinct, not pressured by the world into ‘the norm’. Not influenced, innocent. Pure humanity. Impulsive, silly and outgoing. Society stifles humanity, makes it conform to what is ‘right’. It’s a natural factor of a huge society as the ‘normal’ far outnumber the ‘abnormal’. The ‘abnormal’ feel the need to conform, but only as they get older, get released from their ‘bubble’ they’ve been living in and exposed to ‘normal’ people.*

What do children enjoy doing? What are the ‘timeless classics’ of toys? Lego comes to mind. What else do children like doing? Finding new things, exploring. Adventure. What makes the back yard, Lego, so exciting? For hours on end. Surely it should be mundane, become tedious. No, not for a child. Why?

Imagination.

We stop having to use it as we get older, it’s still there, just not in use (we have jobs, not as much free time to run around back yards, build giant Lego castles and dream). It doesn’t come as naturally any more. Until something prompts it. ‘The Trigger’ if you will.

Along comes Minecraft. Everything about it screams USE YOUR IMAGINATION. The world looks bland, everything is low resolution, blocky and mundane. All a fuzzy mess. The sound is minimal. The world is randomly generated, the game designer does not control what you see. There are no other people, you are left entirely to your own devices. To do exactly what you wish, like a child.  You are given nothing to do but build in this barren world, mine for material** and build. And so you do, and you love it. It triggers ‘the child within’.

Notice how it’s 1st person by default. It puts you in this world. Absorbs you. After a bit, suddenly, the world looks beautiful in your mind’s eye. You see sloping cliffs, rolling hills and deep, cavernous mines. You live a blissful existence, rediscover who you were (who you actually are).

Your rediscovered imagination is let out of it’s cage, into a land of ‘adventure’, ‘mystery, ‘intrigue’. The core philosophy of ‘crafting’ is identical to that of Lego, something that has proven a timeless, enjoyable endeavour.. ‘Mining’ is, at it’s heart, the same as exploring your back yard.

Minecraft allows the imagination to run wild, the bliss and joy of being a child. This is what it has nailed, what it will always have nailed. This is a timeless piece of game design and something that I hope my children’s children will have the chance to play.

*On a side note, it’s the ‘abnormal’ that drive society forward.

**Another reason Minecraft is successful. It’s similar to the ‘unlock’ mechanic in many games. It’s a progressive, addictive feeling.

Dream duo? Or a frivolous HP venture?

As Implied in my earlier post, RIM have had it. They really need to pull off something spectacular and I have to say, I don’t think they will.

The gauntlet of ‘third player’ is thrown down then, HP, you’re up. You have an immediate chance to compete with Android and iOS here, you just need to execute it correctly. Mainly, you need to be committed. You need a huge advertising push, a major differentiator. The initial push will be hard work, but if you don’t do this, you have no hope. Here’s what I can see happening:

HP try to advertise advertise the TouchPad and Pre3. Here’s the flaw, they don’t advertise them as ipad competitors, they advertise them as ipads. This is where everyone has fallen down before, it’s classic ‘let Apple win’ syndrome. It happened with the iPod, look who dominates. When people see a Xoom, a Transformer (well, presumably not that Transformer, then we’d all be in serious trouble), they say ‘is that an iPad’? Hell, when they see my kindle they say ‘is that an iPad?’ This is how Apple wins, their brand becomes synonomous with whatever they are selling, then everyone else immediately tries to equal they’re product, advertising theirs. They come off as inferior copies to the consumer, even if they’re not.

If HP don’t succumb to this syndrome, if they advertise WebOS as WebOS, get the devices into people’s hands, have lots of promotions, make some losses in the beginning, then they can beat down RIM before Windows Phone 7 does, which is a very real threat. Then they have a grip on the market, this grip is key. If they don’t get people talking about it, people won’t talk about it. Give away free ones, make some crazy ads. Come on HP, this is the only way. You need a grip on the market, all you’ll fall to the wayside. Forever.

then there’s the app problem. You don’t have any, so develop some quality in-house software, advertise it, bundle it. Come out with apps the iPad can’t inherently do, don’t think just having ‘Angry Birds’ is good enough. It’s not. Really, it really, really, isn’t. Have I hammered that point enough? No? ANGRY BIRDS WILL NOT SELL YOUR DEVICE!!!!!! FOR GOD’S SAKE PULL YOURSELF TOGETHER. Nice to have that sorted.

HP, there’s no knew iPhone, Ice Cream sandwich won’t be here for a while, Nokia is still burning away platforms with MaeGo for a while.
You have your window, go all out, you can do this.

Please, we don’t need another Microsoft monopoly.