WordPress updated
Let me know if there is any weirdness.
wordpress
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WordPress plugin for embedding Metaplace
Dara Roesner’s WordPress plugin for embedding Metaplace worlds is now up on WordPress.org. So you can grab it there, or you can go to your Dashboard, click Plugins, click Add New, and search for “metaplace.” There will be two results, actually, because SignpostMarv’s MetaverseID plugin also supports Metaplace. 🙂
In any case, from there you can install the plugin automatically! It supports both a sidebar widget and a tag for putting worlds within page or post content.
A few other embedding options have popped up already, by the way. There’s a phpBB setup walkthrough here as well, which will add [metaplace][/metaplace] bbCode to your forums. A few folks have also put it in an iGoogle gadget.
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Charlie Stross on gaming in 2030
For reasons that should become evident, I was unable to attend LOGIN this year. This meant that I missed my chance to be on a panel with Charlie Stross, one of my favorite science fiction writers, and someone I corresopnd with but have never met.
Fortunately, Charlie posted up the text of his LOGIN 2009 keynote, which is, well, no, not as good as being there. Oh well. it’s still fascinating, though perhaps not as outre to regular readers of this blog as it might have been to many in the audience.
So, let’s look ahead to 2030.
We can confidently predict that by then, computer games will have been around for nearly sixty years; anyone under eighty will have grown up with them. The median age of players may well be the same as the median age of the general population. And this will bring its own challenges to game designers. Sixty year olds have different needs and interests from twitchy-fingered adolescents. For one thing, their eyesight and hand-eye coordination isn’t what it used to be. For another, their socialization is better, and they’re a lot more experienced.
Oh, and they have lots more money.
If I was speccing out a business plan for a new MMO in 2025, I’d want to make it appeal to these folks — call them codgergamers.
Would have posted this earlier, but my last post was BoingBoinged and made the site inaccessible to me, despite a slightly-out-of-date version of WP-SuperCache. It is now upgraded, but who knows whether that will help. 🙂
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Nice article on virality on Twitter
We’re doing a lot of community outreach stuff with Metaplace these days — just doing sample key giveaways in different markets, that sort of thing. And Twitter, of course, has rapidly emerged as a significant force as it continues to gain adoption.
5 Steps to Going Viral on Twitter is a pretty nice article giving some advice on how to maximize the chances of ReTweets, based on datamining actual Retweets.
- Ask! Literally put “please RT” in your Tweet. Or at least some sort of call to action.
- Good ReTweet time is between 9am and 6pm EST, with the peak 11am and 3pm EST.
- Peak ReTweet days are Monday through Wednesday.
- 70% of ReTweets have a link in them.
- Social validation matters. If you really want something ReTweeted broadly, you want it to be ReTweeted by several people. So contact them directly and ask them to do so.
- Add value. You need to be providing some solid content.
No, I still don’t have a twitter account, but I am edging closer. 🙂 But I did go ahead and add a Tweet This link to the bottom of posts here on the blog. So “please ReTweet” posts. 🙂
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WordPress upgraded
We are now running the latest.
Once again, we triggered an automatic shutdown at the host. I blame the WoW/hiring story, which made it to the Times of London, the Guardian, and hundreds of other sites.