The British Red Cross

The game tells the story of Joseph. War in Northern Uganda has pulled him from his family. Finding the Red Cross is the only way to know whether his mother is dead or alive.

The game launched with the following video:

Register at the game’s site and wait for a mail from Joseph. A little tip: watch your spamfilter, mine took it.

More info on the how and why of the game can be found at (the by the way very interesting) Eliane’s Future-Making Serious Games. And, as usual, unforums are on the game!

The year is 2019. Human kind is facing extinction by 2042 if we don’t act now.

That is what the new game by IFTF (The Institute Of The Future), Superstruct, is all about.

They like to describe it as follows:

Superstruct is the world’s first massively multiplayer forecasting game. By playing the game, you’ll help us chronicle the world of 2019–and imagine how we might solve the problems we’ll face. Because this is about more than just envisioning the future. It’s about making the future, inventing new ways to organize the human race and augment our collective human potential.

Join up and create yourself in the future, as you see yourself in 2019. This future you will have to focus on the superthreaths to mankind: Ravenous, Quarantine, Outlaw, Planet, Power Struggle and Generation Exile. After checking out the introduction movie for each superthreat it’s time to act.

For explaining how the game is played, I once again turn to the FAQ:

Superstruct is played on forums, blogs, videos, wikis, and other familiar online spaces. We show you the world as it might look in 2019. You show us what it’s like to live there. Bring what you know and who you know, and we’ll all figure out how to make 2019 a world we want to live in.

Sounds like a very interesting project of what collaborative storytelling could bring. Those interested in playing the game should start over here. Better hurry up though, the game started the 6th of October and ends the 17th of November. At the end of the game, people over at IFTF (under the name of The Ten Year Forecast team) will start gathering everything the players generated and prepare an official Superstruct Report.

Can’t wait to see that one! But let’s play first, shall we ;)

• The album, as should happen for every big one, was leaked on the internet more than a week in advance of the release.
• Days before the release, you could listen to the entire album on last.fm. The tracks feature some comments by band members.
• They gave a lot of interviews to newspapers and magazines, but all interviewers were forced to sign a contract stating no interview should be published before the 15th of April. This was broken by 2 newspapers (De Morgen and Le Soir) and caused a lot of extra attention.
• The band will be performing the album live from their new recording studio (which is also called Vantage Point) this sunday. You can watch and listen at StuBru.

A lot of people are arguing on how the marketing surrounding this album is being handled, but one thing can not be denied: it’s working. You can judge by the smile on the faces of band members when you see them at the King Kong bar in Antwerp.

Oh, and the album? Very good.

Penguin Books teamed up with the ARG-wizards from Six To Start to build a 6-week trip to digital and modern storytelling under the name "We Tell Stories". This is about as good as it can get if you ask me :D

They asked six authors to create a story by using new technology. As an example, the first story is made entirely by using Google Maps. The next one, running as you read this, is using blogs and twitter to bring a story in real-time. The site will bring a new story like that every week for six weeks in total.

But there’s more. And I’m not only talking about the weekly prizedraw (UK only) or the competition. No, there is a 7th story. A story about a girl you know that is known for getting lost. I think you know who they’re talking about. To get you started on this one, check the main page and look for something, or rather someone to follow. Someone she followed as well, back in the day.

I got a mail via Flickr about my Song Charts. Someone is starting a blog to collect them and asked to use mine. I replied, and then I saw this:

Yes, the plugin was registering this as something it could follow. So I did. And guess what!

That’s right, all your FlickrMail are belong to us. If you have a Flickr account, and have sent mails to other people on Flickr via this service, your message is in there.

You can find loads more (and better) at this Flickr Group.

The first trailer (and the other one) bring us to the general site of the game.

If you want to catch up and play along, you can find all the info here. Me likes :)

Imagine you’d like the comments made on your blog to be texted to your cell. Twitter can easily do this for you! For instance I took the wonderful Twitter Updater plugin made by Victoria Chan and modified it a bit. You can find the new plugin here, but please remember that I made this quite quickly. I’ll tidy it up when I get the time ;)

So first I made a new Twitter account where the comments would appear. I followed this account with my main account, and made sure notifications was on for that specific account. After adding my cellphone number to my main twitter account, I installed and activated the plugin on my blog, entered the account details of the new account and… waited for some comments to be made. Of course that took to long, so I made one myself and voila, a text message appeared on my cell.

I’ll leave it to your imagination to think of other ways to use Twitter ;)

I know it’s been very quiet around here. This is one of those annoying posts stating that times will change. Also, the blog will change a bit. Sure, the main focus will remain on storytelling, but apart from that, this is now becoming my private, English blog. Me, that is Kevin De Mulder, and I’ve been blogging for a long time on my other blog, clopin.be, in Dutch. So this will be my spot to rant in English. Just so you know :)

Cheers!