ExitReality - simple review

I was reading the Virtually Blind blog about the ExitReality '3D Internet' pluggin and decided to give it a try. The pluggin from ExitReality of about 3.7 MBs provides users the ability to view and navigate any 2D website in 3D. The signup is relatively easy:

After you downloaded the pluggin, the installation is also fast and without fuss. However, there is about where the nice experience ended. Using the pluggin I was first brough to this page:

There is no immediate tutorial, and the interface is not that intuitive. It took a while to learn how to navigate around. If you clicked on the tutorial, there will be instructions to help one start out. I'm also not sure why would people want to view a 2D website in 3D. ExitReality's own site is nice and pleasing but other people's sites may be less so in 3D. The pluggin also crashed my system once. Compared to other new 'Virtual Worlds' like SmallWorlds or the Amazing Worlds 's mirror world, there is much room for improvement. Oh well I guess it's all in beta stage and it is unfair to write it off so soon.

Here's how this blog looks like in ExitReality. The pluggin managed to detect that the general theme is in black, and painted the background correctly. Hopefully it will look better the next time, when the product is fully ready.

Lunar Festival, Haris Pilton & Zangramash in WoW

There are lot of blogs and websites on World of Warcraft (魔兽世界) with reviews, guides, discussions ... etc and I shall not add to the information abundance. Instead, let me just put a few pictures of the interesting (I feel) events of the game.

One such event is the Lunar Festival, where players in WoW can celebrate by doing simple quests. One of the quests requires the players to shoot fireworks into the air. The fireworks are quite pretty actually. Here's two screenshots of the event, where the heart shape fireworks could be seen in the lower picture.

Blizzard is always very creative when it comes to the naming of NPC and quests. We know the tribute to Zelda, King Kong & Mario in the crafting of Un'goro Crater quests. There is also the 'Haris Pilton' NPC in Shattrath City tavern, with an affiliation of 'Socialite'. She has a pet (of course) named Tinkerbell. Click on the picture to see a larger version.

It is always fun playing WoW, not just for the fantastic gameplay, but also for these little humour along the way. Let me end this blog with a beautiful picture of a sunset taken while I was flying over Zangramash.

Cabal Online Screenshots

There are a number of games where I didn't play enough to do a proper review. Nonetheless there were a couple of screenshots that might be entertaining for some visitors and so over the next few blog posts I'll just put the pictures up.

The first game is Cabal Online and I played in the South East Asia servers. The game website has a host of useful information including videos as demos (which partly explains why there is not much need to write more about the gameplay). For new players, take a look at the forums where the different classes are pretty well explained.

The first picture was taken outside of the towns where players fight the monsters. I was using a long distance attack.

This screenshot was taken after the completion of a dungeon quest. The dungeon quests occured in 'instances' and often have timings as deadlines for players.

After some of the quests, and at particular levels (e.g. aura mode at level 20), the players will be able to gain special abilities.

The graphics is great, and here's a screenshot of player talking to a NPC, Kallua.

Other than the towns, there are also special rooms where the players enter to meet other NPCs. The rooms are quite well decorated.

Here's a screenshot of the town. In towns, players could open shops for trading with each other. Sometimes one could even look at other players doing funny dances, e.g. here's a blog spot about a funny Cabal group dance to the tune of Wonder Girls' "Tell Me".

See also:
- Cabal Online / Granado Espada Soundtracks

IDC - Yahoo Web 2.0 Digital Marketplace

IDC organised a free seminar today (24th June) on Web 2.0 Digital marketplace, with Yahoo! as the big sponsor. The seminar was over-subscribed substantially, such that the hotel staff needed to pull in a large number of chairs from the next seminar room. The fourth speaker actually remarked that there is a large increase in Singapore in the interest in Web 2.0 applications and services, especially for the enterprise community.

All 4 speakers were very engaging, and presented their pitch very well. I guess the 1st two speakers have vested interests to sell their products. Some of the remarks made were funny *in my opinion*. For example there was a comment of 'sponsor the access, and charge the use', which is very applicable for Web 2.0 social sites, but the image I had in my mind was actually the local clubbing scene's 'Ladies Night' where the girls get free entry *access* while the guys pay for everyone's drinks *use*. There was a lot of comments about China and India developments, and how Asia will see the next wave of social networking. The importance lies in 'making the destinations *sites* social instead of making social destinations *sites*' as one speaker put it.

Back to the seminar, the speakers cover broad topics of:

• 'Social Web: Success, Business Models and Emerging Trends'
• 'User Behaviour and Psychology in the Web 2.0 space'
• Web 2.0 Hits Asia' *Interesting is the comparison about whether there is a bubble forming again in the tech sphere*
• 'Social Media Becomes the Social Norm: Web 2.0 in the Classroom and How It Impacts Your Business'

The notes for the seminar could be downloaded from IDC website from 4 July onwards, so I think I shouldn't reveal too much. Nonetheless one of the speaker, Justin Lee, shared this YouTube video which is really funny and yet show some interesting things about Web 2.0. You should watch it!

Communic Asia 2008 - Omnia, Amazing Worlds, Toughbook & Such

Communic Asia 2008 is one of Asia's biggest exhibition and platform for operators, service providers, technology vendors and consultants to network, exchange industry info and discuss the future of technology. I went yesterday and spent 1.5 hours at two of the Halls. Trust me, you need at least more than 2 hours to really walk around the exhibitions at Expo. Make it at least a half-day trip for anything fruitful.

Nonetheless the short trip is good enough for me to experience some gems at the exhibition. One of them is the Samsung Omnia. Right at the front of the exhibition halls is the Omnia advert (pic below). It looks slim (12.5 mm thick metallic casing) and runs on Windows Mobile 6.1 system, so you could have access to the Microsoft Office apps. The screen (3.2 inches) is wide enough for video or photos viewing, and Omnia comes with a 5 megapixel camera as well. The screen is a bit too sensitive in my opinion, which makes navigation a bit tricky. Guess my fingers are too thick.

There are more than 10 sets of it available for visitors to try it out. For those with no patience to queue for a hands-on, Samsung has also done up a mock huge-sized functional version which sort of looks cool.

Other than Omnia, I took a quick look at the other exhibitors. Guess this is Communic Asia and there are plenty of exhibitors from around the region, including China and Korea. What is surprising is that there are also European companies (I saw Norway companies).

Another gem I found at the Communic Asia 2008 is a Singapore / US company, Amazing Worlds, that builds and maintain 3D mirror worlds! It was only in April 2008 when I remarked that Mirror Worlds will come to Singapore one day (earlier blog here)! Watched their demo and even played with the system for a while. Impressive. There is still a lot that Amazing Worlds need to do in terms of populating the servers with content, but it will be interesting to monitor their development. Here's a demo of their product on YouTube:

The exhibitions also have other products but well this is not PC Show so the focus is different. I find the display of Panasonic Toughbook interesting, and Yahoo! also provided some demo of their mobile content platform. It is also interesting to experience the demo by DoCoMo on the Osaifu-Keitai mobile wallet that StarHub Mobile will bring to Singapore soon.

For those who wish to visit Communic Asia 2008, Friday 20th June is the last day and the event closes at 4pm, so better hurry!

World of World of Warcraft?!

Saw this in the news and I wonder if it's real? Anyone knows? Afternote: Ok, just found out that these folks are satirists. Well, guess I didn't know that earlier. Sorry.

World of World of Warcraft allows Warcraft gamers to do what they like to do more than anything else in life, which is, play Warcraft.

'Warcraft' Sequel Lets Gamers Play A Character Playing 'Warcraft'

Simple Review of Smallworlds - New Virtual World

With all the rage about interactive social virtual worlds, there are a number of such developments around the (actual) world. One relatively recent development is the SmallWorlds by Outsmart based in New Zealand.

Small Worlds is flash based and that is a big advantage for players since it eliminates the need to download a few hundred megabytes of client files. Moreover, with a flash based platform, a player can enter the world using any other computer and not be restricted to the computer with the client software.

So yes I joined Small Worlds (currently still in beta stage) and it is fun! Firstly, the tutorial or beginning 'missions' are relatively easy, and that smooth out the learning curve drastically compared to say, 2nd Life. A player can have his own pets, and house right from the start with options to re-decor the wall and floor tiles. Game mechanics is easy, including the basic navigation and inventory management. One could also customise the avatar features and dressing with multiple options.

The interesting part of the Small Worlds is that it allows for interaction with other Web 2.0 applications, e.g. a player could get a 'photoframe' to hang on his wall that displays his 'flickr' photos. Players could also link to music applications in the Small Worlds that allow for playing of their song tracks in common area like the Small World Cue Room. I understand that there is also the TV gadget that could be used to link to Youtube, which allows for multiple people to watch 'TV' Youtube together, as well as message board linked to Twitter. So I went in, and played some pool games with a UK player. The games applications like Pool, Checkers, Chess...etc are already available in the common rooms.

The game makes it easy to learn how to interact with these applications by creating quest 'missions that requires players to interact with each other via the games. After playing the pool game with another another player, I 'completed' the mission, which grants tokens that I can use, for example to buy furniture. Other than tokens there are 'gold coins' options which I guess will be bought using real life currency.

There are a number of other 'missions' available, including 'shopping' quests that introduce the basic concepts of items purchase and manipulation.

Below is a pic of the Mary's Antique shop where a player could do some shopping. I bought some chairs, table, candles and a vase of flowers. Guess my house still looks quite empty for now. I want the TV and message board, so ok it's time to complete more quests / missions in Small Worlds.

Related post
- Smallworlds application in Facebook
- Update about Smallworlds