Our games team is working on a new game called The Political Machine. It won't be out until May and the website hasn't even been announced. But I'll share it with you guys here . It's actually a strategy game that can be played either single player or multiplayer on the net. We've been doing a great deal of demographic research to find out what issues matter to voters in which states and splice it between Democrats and Republicans. If you click on the game link on its page you can get more d...
One of the things I've been surprised about on forums, and I wrote a post about this recently, is just how poor at debating many younger debaters are. They seem interested in debating but it's as if they have no idea how to debate. Debating isn't just arguing. It is an exchange of ideas in which both sides try to make the case for their position. Lawyers in court, in theory, debate. They dont' just yell back and forth "Did so!" "Did not!" for hours until the judge flogs them. Highschools used...
They didn't have blogs back when I was 18. Back when I was 18 (14 years ago), I had a BBS but that wasn't the same. But I kept a journal. Unfortunately. A journal is the same as a diary. Except guys don't keep diaries so we call them journals. It's about marketing. This past week I went back and read my journal which took place between the age of 17 to 20. I remembered how melodramatic life seemed back then. But until I re-read my journal I had no idea just how bad it was. When you're 17...
Recently I wrote two articles that tried to explain Tolkien's mythology on Lord of the Rings in fairly plain terms. You can read them here and here . Jaime writes: Brad- thanks for your helpful, plain language articles. Just rewatched the first movie with a bunch of friends, and even those of us who read the Silmarillon, etc. couldn't remember them well enough to answer some background questions that your articles answered nicely. We still have some questions I thought you mi...
Linux will never make it mainstream on the desktop unless Microsoft does something incredibly stupid. I fought in the trenches of the OS Wars back in the 1990s. During the height of the Microsoft-IBM battle for the desktop with Windows 3.1 vs. OS/2, myself and Dave Barnes from IBM went on the road together demoing OS/2 and OS/2 + Object Desktop to HP, Gateway, Dell, Compaq, and the rest in an effort to get OS/2 pre-loaded. At the time, OS/2 was remarkably better. There was no debate about ...
I often talk to people who are convinced that that aliens are visiting our planet. They believe in UFOs. Having thought about it, I've concluded that it's highly unlikely that we're being visited by aliens. It's not that I don't think there is intelligent life in the universe. Space is big. Very big. And there are trillions of worlds in this universe and so statistically it seems pretty likely there are intelligent beings on other planets. But how close would these beings be? ...
There is a chink in the mighty iTunes armor. Those of you who follow this blog know that I've been a strong proponent for Apple's iTunes. But today I discovered something I wasn't aware of before: iTunes will not burn MP3 CDs with commercially downloaded music. Why is that a big deal? The other players probably don't do that either right? (actually I'm pretty sure that Windows Media Player does but I could be wrong). The reason it's a big deal is that if I want to make an MP3 CD for list...
Through life we all have experienced, to varying degrees, how high ideals don't survive the encounter with real life. To put it another way, life is unfair and despite noble sentiments otherwise, some things are true even if they shouldn't be true. I've always been a very social person and one to talk to people about all kinds of things (which shouldn't be surprising since I started a blog site). I've been running BBSes, bulletin boards, forums, chat channels, you name it for the pas...
"Invented on the Mac" If I keep ripping out my hair I'll be bald in no time. When it comes to getting press coverage in the tech industry, it's a lot easier to get it if you're a Mac program than a PC program. The Mac has always gotten far more attention than its numbers warrant. Often times, the media will actually make statements implying that a given program is unique to the Mac helping carry on the myth that the Mac is the land of innovation while Windows is the land of cheap knock of...
The Creative Muvo is a great MP3 player...while it functions. Last night mine died for no apparent reason. I don't even use it that much. It simply stopped working. So I went on-line to see what I could do. Turns out, the Creative Muvo is very unreliable. Many people pointed out that after around 90 days they tend to just crap out. Which is annoying for a $80 product. So scratch one MP3 player. I'll have to look around for a new Mp3 player.
If you want to change the way Windows looks and feels (the GUI) the main way to do that is with WindowBlinds . But some people on Windows XP have found that if their hack their uxtheme.dll they can apply additional msstyles, a basic skinning format made by Microsoft to handle the blue/silver/olive visual styles. So some users have managed to put together some nice msstyles. Most visual styles made are for WindowBlinds, but if you do manage to come across an msstyle on some site, you can now...
When we got married my wife and I had put a great deal of thought into important issues to us long before we had gotten too serious. We didn't enter into marriage lightly. I think it is for that reason we have had such a splendid marriage over the years. We rarely bicker and have few significant arguments. When it comes to raising children, we bring very different life experiences to it. And boy are those life experiences different. Different to the point that it creates real conflict on what...
Price points are one of the most challenging things in business to come up with. At what point does something become too expensive for your target audience? It is something we wrestle with constantly. Raising the price decreases the number of buyers but not at a steady rate. The challenge is always figuring out the highest price you can sell for while maintaining the relatively biggest user base. Sometimes pricing things too low can hurt you. People assume that a product or service is o...
One of the more frustrating aspects of the Internet is also one of its strengths - it is the great equalizer. People from all walks of life can get together and debate about anything. It is frustrating because often times you find yourself debating on some issue you're an "expert" on with some high school kid who has no idea what they're talking about. I will be debating a legal point or making a business argument only to find myself trading posts back and forth with some kid who is just plai...
It's important to set goals for yourself. Pretty much everyone knows that and yet so few people actually sit down and articulate specific things they want to do. Every New Years people come out with "resolutions". Often times these resolutions are just not realistic. "Lose 25 pounds". That's easy to promise. But is it realistic? I'm a big believer in setting bunches of very easy goals that take only a little effort. I'd be the one to say "Lose 5 pounds" as a resolution for example. So here...