Will Wright in WSJ
Nice article about WIll Wright in yesterday's Wall Street Journal.
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May 28, 2006
Islamic Militant Video Game "Mods"/UPDATED
UPDATE 5/28/06:
Video Game Touted as Muslim Militant Recruiting Tool Revealed as JokeThe Hague - A video game that the U.S. government said was a "modded" version of Electronic Arts' "Battlefield 2" created by Muslim militants as a recruitment tool has been exposed to be a joke created by a 25-year-old Dutch gamer, Reuters reported. At a May 4 Congressional hearing, a Defense Department contractor paid $7 million to monitor militant websites called the homemade game a terrorist recruitment tool. "Samir," the game's creator, told Reuters he altered the game as a joke and to show off his production skills. "Government agencies should do more research before coming to conclusions," Samir told Reuters. "The movie wasn't what they presented it to be." Samir added that part of the modded game's soundtrack was taken from the satiric film "Team America: World Police."
http://tinyurl.com/etoxj (Reuters)
From digitalmediawire:
Defense Dept: Islamic Militant Video Game "Mods" Make U.S. Bad Guys
Washington - lThe U.S. Defense Department reports that it has discovered militant websites where popular combat video games have been modified so that young Muslim players can virtually take up arms against U.S. soldiers, Reuters reported. Electronic Arts' "Battlefield 2" is among the games for which tech-savvy militants have developed such "mods". "What we have seen is that any video game that comes out ... they'll modify it and change the game for their needs," said Defense Department public diplomacy specialist Dan Devlin. "I was just a boy when the infidels came to my village in Blackhawk helicopters," a narrator's voice says in the modded version of "Battlefield 2," which also features an inserted recording of George W. Bush's statement from Sept. 16, 2001: "This crusade, this war on terrorism, is going to take a while."
http://tinyurl.com/gsuxw (Reuters)
May 15, 2006
Lifelog trials
A soldier’s after-action mission report can sometimes leave out vital observations and experiences that could be valuable in planning future operations. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is exploring the use of soldier-worn sensors and recorders to augment a soldier’s recall and reporting capability. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is acting as an independent evaluator for the “Advanced Soldier Sensor Information System and Technology” (ASSIST) project. NIST researchers are designing tests to measure the technical capability of such information gathering devices.
via David Pescovitz on BoingBoing.
May 9, 2006
GPS mobile game
"The Shroud" - a new mobile game with GPS features that will be shown at E3:
GPS: The Next Big Thing for Mobile?BIZ: From a business/marketing standpoint, GPS games could potentially lead to some unique promotional activities. For example, perhaps visiting certain real-world locations could earn points for purchases with that marketing partner or could unlock in-game extras sort of like in-game ads meets real-world. Have you thought about anything like this?
RS: We certainly have thought of such scenarios. In fact The Shroud already has static GPS hotspots centered around real world monuments and landmarks throughout each market we plan to operate in. For example anyone playing The Shroud who goes to Fisherman's wharf in San Francisco will be sent off on a GPS fishing challenge. (optional of course). Should a company want to sponsor The Shroud nationally or locally and, for example, have the players use all Burger Kings as GPS challenge hotspots then we most certainly could accommodate that request if we felt it was the right fit.
May 2, 2006
Call for Artworks – ACM Multimedia Interactive Arts Program
Call for Artworks – ACM Multimedia Interactive Arts Program
University of California, Santa Barbara, October 22-28, 2006
REMOTE: Networked Realities & Prospective Locative Hacks
Art Exhibition Deadline May 12, 2006
Artist-engineer hybrids are invited to submit artworks for the ACM exhibition to take place in the California Nanosystems Institute at UC Santa Barbara. For this exhibition we seek artworks based in technological research that raise issues related to human-human, human-machine, human-machine-world, machine-machine, human-world and machine-world interactions, including emphases on the cultural, linguistic, network-centric, algorithmic, spatial or geospatial, informatic or the processing of data, or…..
In particular, we seek works that focus on the roles that multimedia content and technologies play in exploring human and social aspects of technology and science, including how it may re-define relationships and understanding between cultures and already established disciplines. We welcome any interactive artworks that address the topics above, including multimodal interactive spaces, locative media artworks, networked systems, data visualizations and communications systems. Please visit the website http://www.mat.ucsb.edu/acmmm06/arts/index.html for up-to-date information including deadlines, procedures, list of exhibition and program review committee.
ACM Multimedia is the premier annual multimedia conference, covering all aspects of multimedia computing. The ACM Multimedia Interactive Art Program seeks to bring together the arts and multimedia communities to create the stage to explore, discuss, and push the limits for the advancement of both multimedia technology through the arts, and the arts through multimedia technology.
The Interactive Art Program consists of a conference track and an art exhibition. We invite artists working with digital media and researchers in technical areas to submit their original contributions.