Acceptance and Tolerance

I would like to share with everybody a comparison of the terms "accept" and "tolerate". It has come up in a game design discussion on Twitter that certain words, acceptance and tolerance, are generally misunderstood, or used, when it comes to the behaviors of others. This started with a tweet saying that somebody had asked their class if they would play a game with a homosexual male hero rather than a heterosexual male hero, and that nobody said they would. Immediately after that came a tweet that called such people "pathetic" for not wanting to play a game with that content as though they were condemning others for their choices by not being willing to act out those choices in a game. Acceptance gets thrown around in these situations, but accepting an idea for yourself isn't the same as accepting the views of another. The latter is tolerance if you don't agree.

So, let's start off with some definitions to give a common ground.

Accept Definition | Definition of Accept at Dictionary.com

"ac⋅cept
–verb (used with object)
1. to take or receive (something offered); receive with approval or favor: to accept a present; to accept a proposal.
2. to agree or consent to; accede to: to accept a treaty; to accept an apology.
3. to respond or answer affirmatively to: to accept an invitation.
4. to undertake the responsibility, duties, honors, etc., of: to accept the office of president.
5. to receive or admit formally, as to a college or club.
6. to accommodate or reconcile oneself to: to accept the situation.
7. to regard as true or sound; believe: to accept a claim; to accept Catholicism.
8. to regard as normal, suitable, or usual.
9. to receive as to meaning; understand.
10. Commerce. to acknowledge, by signature, as calling for payment, and thus to agree to pay, as a draft.
11. (in a deliberative body) to receive as an adequate performance of the duty with which an officer or a committee has been charged; receive for further action: The report of the committee was accepted.
12. to receive or contain (something attached, inserted, etc.): This socket won't accept a three-pronged plug.
13. to receive (a transplanted organ or tissue) without adverse reaction. Compare reject (def. 7).
–verb (used without object)
14. to accept an invitation, gift, position, etc. (sometimes fol. by of)."

If you look, most of that is using the word as positive affirmation of some sort, agreeing with the views stated. However, the big difference between accept like that and accepting the views or choices of another is in what you are saying is true, right, okay and so on. If accept that the sky is blue, that means I now think the sky is blue. If I accept that you think the sky is green with brown spots, that means I now think you think the sky is green with browns spots. It does not mean I agree that the sky is green with brown spots. Why is this important? Well, to say they mean the same is to say that "yes" is the same as "no", which obviously makes it inaccurate in normal uses.

Tolerate Definition | Definition of Tolerate at Dictionary.com

"tol⋅er⋅ate
–verb (used with object), -at⋅ed, -at⋅ing.
1. to allow the existence, presence, practice, or act of without prohibition or hindrance; permit.
2. to endure without repugnance; put up with: I can tolerate laziness, but not incompetence.
3. Medicine/Medical. to endure or resist the action of (a drug, poison, etc.).
4. Obsolete. to experience, undergo, or sustain, as pain or hardship."

So, to tolerate does not mean to agree with or to help, but rather not to take action deliberately against whatever is being tolerated. It's like patriotism. Being a patriot doesn't mean you are against the other groups, but rather that you are for your own group. Put that into views and opinions and you get tolerance of other views and opinions. As an American this hits close to home, as one of the big topics of American history is tolerance of religious, social and other beliefs that don't take away the rights of others. In essence, tolerance means taking a neutral stance of taking no specific effort to help or hinder with no mention of your own beliefs, though the assumed would be that you disagree.

So, the discussion and those words apply to both education and game design via human interaction. Let's look at the conversation as it happened.

Person A: Asked my class if they'd play a game in which a male hero saves a male love interest rather than a female one. No one said yes.

Person B: realy? there are people that pathetic still around these days? depressing

Myself: A lack of interest in playing a particular style of game design or story doesn't make one "pathetic".

Person C: Not particular style, supposedly in modern culture we should be able to accept the difference with a blink of the eye

Another person joined the discussion, while persons A and B did not join the discourse that arose out of their comments. Two ideas seemed hard to get through in it, that one's choice in games to play doesn't necessarily mean anything more than personal preference of games to play and that one can "accept the difference" without agreeing. To the credit of Person C, who with myself did most of the discussing, they considered the ideas rather than just dismissing them. Plenty of people get into the polarized debate mentality which segregates people into allies and enemies. Many people take it a step farther and assume the if you agree with them you are right and if you disagree you are close minded, wrong and possibly stupid. It only gets worse with sensitive topics. That's why I said that it was to the credit of Person C that they didn't close their mind to the possibilities.

Besides the obvious uses in a classroom and game to shape the experience, their is another possibility to use this to help people think in a more open minded and humane way. Each individual has at least one motivation for any particular action. To dismiss that thought, reasoning and views behind another's actions is to think of the person as sub-human. In learning about the views and reasons behind the actions of others, one can come to terms with the idea of tolerating, because that is agreeing to disagree. Doing that requires acceptance of the other person's humanity, intelligence and worth as a human; unless you are thinking of the person as a thing.

That's easily understood as being applied to the "audience", students or players. In the classroom some students need help to understand what comes easily to others, be that extra time from the teacher or something to overcome a disability. The same goes for players. I've worked on a User Interface with Rob Florio and had classes with a person who in high school and college who was barely able to hear and speak. I've also done tutoring since middle school, so my personal view is that everybody has both strengths and weaknesses, but some are more obvious than others. Each person is a human, and individual, with emotions, beliefs, thoughts, reasoning, dreams and motivation.

However, that is the application that shapes the experience while the other application is putting people into situations that challenge how we view life. A great example are the stories where it seems that one of the villains is cruel and ruthless beyond redemption till it becomes known that the person has been having ethical dilemmas the whole way and was misinformed. Would you have been wrong in their shoes? This can also be seen in the stories where you gain understanding as to why the overly-strict teacher, or supervisor, is so strict. Maybe they have their own problems that have mentally and emotionally scarred them. It's also possible they are handling way more than you know or they can easily handle. Maybe they were right to be that strict. History for instance isn't just a bunch of facts and dates, it's the stories of every individual interwoven into a single tapestry. Those who find history most interesting seem to be interested in either the things of the time period or the people.

The two applications have a real effect on our daily lives. Those who do not consider the views of others limit themselves. What would happen if a popular socialite and a tech savvy nerd/geek were to work together and help each other? The one is better with people while the other is better with technology. Those two could easily be the ones behind some awesome events as the tech and social engineering aspects of the events are both taken care of, repeatedly. That's just the start.

When dealing with conflicts, remembering to tolerate people having bad days, misunderstandings and so on will do wonders for you. As a person used to internet forums, I've had discussions that were arguments to the other person, or where they were just having a bad day and I was the final straw. One of my favorite sayings is, "life happens" and the reason is that bad days will come. We should be willing to assume the person was pushed to, and beyond, their limit.

I've been told repeatedly that life is not black and white. Patience, consideration and benefit of the doubt are good things to me, "white" if you will. Jumping to conclusions, not listening and reacting without care are not good things to me, "black" if you will. Together these pieces make a mural of varying shades of gray. There is selfishness in every action we make and some good in them too. The reason is that no person is wholly one or the other. This is part of humanity that we need to remember if we are to be tolerant, and to truly understand tolerance. It's also easily forgotten.

Have fun, spread the word and tell me what you think,
Igen Oukan

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Tools, Tune-ups and Testing

As typical for an INTJ, I like to make my processes more efficient. To be honest, I'll redesign the process before working on the project. Why, because the process affects the project. The less time focused on the tools and process problems means less wasted time and more focus on the project goals. This is true for both education and games.

Most of today I've been going over the possibility of making Fire Fox act like Flock. There is a lot I like about Flock, but some things I miss about Fire Fox. So, I looked at my tools, started doing some tune-up work and now am testing some of that work. For this post I am using Scribefire like I used Flock to post Social Gaming and Learning. Honestly, I like Scribefire more than Flock's blogging tool, though neither seems to have a way to create and save blog post templates. However, Scribefire has a "notes" feature that could be used to save the template.

Anyways, the point is that wonderful tools in a general sense can be horrible tools in the personal sense. I've blogged about Iteration and Prototyping, and linked to articles that touch on using the right tools. Well, this post is specifically aimed at using the right tools.

While looking for add-ons to Fire Fox I installed and uninstalled some multiple times. The initial settings are always something to look at when picking up a new tool, or add-on in this case. What I found was that some of the add-ons were not well suited to me without customizing the settings. One color codes the tabs, but starts out as just randomly coloring, rather than site based color coding. A little customizing and I now have URL based color coded tabs. That customizing process is akin to an initial tune-up, but that doesn't mean it will always be working great for you. That's when more tune-ups can help. Organization systems are prone to this. In programming there is even a name for it, refactoring. Tools also have this problem, as they commonly have settings and options to customize them to you. Thus, as you change over time, the settings may need to change to better fit you.

The way to figure out when, and what kind of, tune-ups are needed is testing. That's what I'm doing with this post, to test the the new tool I've installed. At this point it seems to be doing fairly well, and like I said, I like it more than the blogging tool in Flock. I'm a little curious about what will happen when I try to publish this, but till I try I won't know. My guess is that it will work, since the preview function said it published, and deleted, a version of this post to set up the preview function for this blog. If it does work, I think I'll pester some people like Jim Groom, Stephen Downes and others working with interesting tools for educational blogging, as Scribefire would work well for research paper type blog posts. This may become a favorite tool of mine for just that kind of posting.

Some of you might notice how this parallels iterative design practices. Seems to me that it's an iterative process refining your tools, their uses and their settings. That's just fine for me. I like experimenting with ideas that might improve how I do things, though one should be careful of volatile situations, for obvious reasons.

After all that, yes I know it's not much, I will point out one of the most important parts of dealing with your tools; take the time to give them tests and tune-ups. It seems obvious now, but when you are done with a project, or starting one, you should take some time for this. After a project is done you should have information from the project, and hopefully more coming in as user feedback, to work with. At the start of a project you should make sure your tools will be able to do the basics of what you want, and should be easy enough to create a mock-up with. If you can find somebody who knows what they are doing, and are willing to help, it would likely help your project to have them advise you on how to improve your process. Sometimes it is a little change, with no math based proof, that will improve team moral and the quality of the project.

One aspect that shouldn't be overlooked is user participation in the process. User feedback is better than technician, designer and developer feedback. Having real users try your project results will give you the most relevant testing results. They may not be very clear, but they will be relevant. This is especially important in the game and education fields, as user perceptions and results are the main focus.

Have fun, spread the word and tell me what you think,
Igen Oukan

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The Candle Problem Of Pen And Paper

Levels and experience are possibly one of the worst things for creative play. If you haven't watched the TED Talk by Dan Pink on motivation, you should, or this post will not make as much sense.

http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html



For a while now I have been playing with some concepts for tabletop game designs for play and to help writers. This was inspired by the help of random content generators. If random content could help with the blank canvas problem, maybe there was more that could be done. The content generators weren't up to the idea I had as is, but a flexible framework for exploring possibilities based on die rolls, now that had possibilities to me. So, I started looking into the changes needed to create a tabletop role-playing game for writers.

I mention this because there are times where I had to completely redesign the basic direction of the systems. This was centered on motivators without the intention. As I watched the TED Talk for the second time I realized the connection between my design efforts and the results of the Candle Problem. Motivation was a part of it, but I had yet to see the scope of it.

To pull this together, let's look at the reason I dropped levels, experience and "balance". Levels and balance are like the box and holding the tacks. Experience points are the rewards that push functional fixedness ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_fixedness ). Most of the skills, feats, abilities and other things are combat rules. That means the presented function is combat. The rewards come from combat for the most part in most games with levels. So, to encourage a more varied type of gameplay, levels, experience and such were dropped for a more realistic modeling style. You want it, build it. Sometimes there is a master and an apprentice working together, which might throw off the balance. The result is the stereo-typical D&D/d20 style games has a group of similar level, mostly same level, characters as a group that focus on fights.

Don't get me wrong here. I like a good fight in a game, but that style of fight is only sometimes good. Since I like to play odd characters, like a defensive swordsman/diplomat/medic, I've come across the limitation of most well known systems. What did he do in a fight? Attack, defend, move? He was careful and used his brain. This kind of character pushes for a more interesting and creative experience. He doesn't blindly walk into the traps, enrage NPCs without forethought and so on. Such characters are also a PAIN to create using standard rules, unless they are specialists or stereo-tpes. That particular example actually require GM approved alteration and almost excessive use of house rules to create. Simply put, they don't fit well with the levels and balance of the game.

While it is entirely possible to create an amazing, interesting and deep gameplay with the combat focused rules, that doesn't mean the system encourages that kind of play. The different systems each have their own flavor. Some are amazingly versatile and some are niche games. So, how you present the system, how the system works, what's defined by the system and so on affect how the players and GMs deal with your game. It's just like the two versions of the Candle Problem shown in the TED Talk. When all the pieces are laid out and it's a very mechanical problem, incentives and rewards work well, but when the cognitive and creative aspects are the more important the incentives are likely to be a hindrance.

System Does Matter: http://www.indie-rpgs.com/_articles/system_does_matter.html
Deliberation and Intuition: http://socialbrain.rsablogs.org.uk/tag/candle-problem/

There is a type of tabletop games, sometimes called story games, where the focus in on the interactions of the play with combat merely being another form of interaction. Fudge, FATE, PDQ, Travellers and probably HERO are such games. FATE has "aspects" of the character that have both positive and negative effect throughout gameplay, and are the main way to earn FATE points. Those points are used to do really cool stuff in the game. PDQ has "upshifts" which boils down to a roll bonus for "graphic, flavorful, and entertaining" description of an action. Both can be used in and out of combat. HERO actually covers contacts as a part of the system. Thus, the gameplay adapts to the individual game, and encourages immersion.

The other part is that the players play the way they do for the love of the game, story and characters more than anything else. Sure, some of the specifics may be due to the rules, but they normally don't get in the way of story so much as tweak it. Maybe your character costs too much for the HERO game, or the "aspects" don't quite work out for the FATE game, but those normally aren't horrible problems as much as changing a couple things. Perhaps your character just needs to be younger or less trained to fit. None of these are giant problems or fixes. Besides a character "fitting" the game, there is just taking the game through its natural course. Sometimes it's fighting, sometimes it's dialogue and sometimes it's something else entirely. Since there isn't a "fight to get experience" style to the games, the players are looking for fights when they want to get into fights. If they want their character to progress, this style gives fewer restrictions and rewards creativity.

This difference may not seem like much, but let's consider the way a person might attack another person in a fight. The combat oriented way a person moves into range and says they are attacking with a certain weapon, or other means of attack. The attack resolves and the game continues. It's not till you get creative that it becomes a lot of fun. Somebody using telekinesis to counter a rocket with say, a rock, now that's interesting. A medic who is trained in close quarters combat using the tools of their trade to face the opposition, that's interesting. Then there is the combat that is generated when combat isn't all about attacking the enemy directly. Hand to hand combat that goes beyond simple rule usage because you are trained in a particular fighting style adds flavor and alters the results.

Another thing is that if you really want experience points, it should be a reward for what you want to encourage in a way that makes sense. Say an archer is facing a dragon, with the aid of his/her party. The archer shoots a single explosive arrow into the dragon's mouth and blows out the dragons throat. How much experience is that worth? Seems like that should get a reward for creativity, but maybe that reward should be mostly gold, items and reputation. Maybe the experience should be earned for pulling that to save the party? Maybe there should be more experience for the grueling adventures and situation? Personally, I don't like the linear growth systems that are linked to game balance, because they do so many things badly. Who you are, and how you think affects how you grow, and how much, so personalities and approaches make a big difference.

Personality types have come up in my design attempts, but the reason I bring them up here is because of a question, "Does it work?" It's not in reference to personality types and profiling, but it's also a question constantly asked by the personality type I seem to be. Lateral thinking, creative solutions and such are commonplace for the personality type, by what I've read, and so there might be something to the personality type's approach to problems that could help everybody.

"INTJs are perfectionists, with a seemingly endless capacity for improving upon anything that takes their interest. What prevents them from becoming chronically bogged down in this pursuit of perfection is the pragmatism so characteristic of the type: INTJs apply (often ruthlessly) the criterion "Does it work?" to everything from their own research efforts to the prevailing social norms. This in turn produces an unusual independence of mind, freeing the INTJ from the constraints of authority, convention, or sentiment for its own sake."
- http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/academic/psychology/alt.psychology.personality/profiles/intj.html

The following three articles are wonderful at describing how to apply the concept. First is an article covering some common problems in Flash games. The second is about a project where game prototypes were created in under 7 days most of the time. The third is a Gamasutra article called "Practical Tips for Independent Game Developers". In all of them there is a sense of asking, "Does it work?" about each piece of the process and product.

http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/GregMcClanahan/20090723/2561/Fatal_Flaws_in_Flash_Game_Design_and_Development.php

http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20051026/gabler_01.shtml

http://www.gamedev.net/reference/business/features/indieTips/page4.asp

More can be found in this direction in a couple posts I've made about Iterative Design.
http://blog.igenoukan.com/2009/07/parallel-prototype-iteration.html

http://blog.igenoukan.com/2008/10/iteration-and-prototyping.html

Have fun, spread the word and tell me what you think,
Igen Oukan
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To Save, or Not to Save

I just read two blog post I found through the #gamedesign hash tag on Twitter. The two posts deal with saving in games and the implications of different ways to handle it. The first post advocates splitting up the gameplay and the saving system, while the second post says that it can be advantageous to put progress at risk between saves. The rest of this post will tell you where I stand on this, and might inform you on the topic.

When it comes to saving systems, I've seen of plenty of types and times where they've gone wrong. Watching somebody save their game AFTER making a choice that leads to a game over, on the second disc out of four, is something that sticks with a game designer. However, there are other problems like forcing a player to choose between playing for another 20 - 30 minutes or loosing the last 30 - 90 minutes of progress. Some might say that loosing a half hour or more of progress due to a couple mistakes is a problem. I tend to agree, but for very specific reasons.

The first kind of saving system is actually no saving at all. This kind is really only suitable for the kind of game you could play through in a single sitting. The difference between the two opinions in the two posts is evident even when there is no possibility to save. That's because the choice to have no saving for the length of time and possibility that the player will have to repeat most of the game over and over to beat it. How long is too long for this option? That question is at the heart of this matter.

If you have a saving system, it will usually have either pre-set or custom choices for when and what you can save. One of the simplest systems is password, or codes, that you earn through play that tell the game what state to start you at. In some ways the "saved game" is a more complex and automated version of that system. The original is strictly a pre-set when and pre-set what. If you wanted to get really technical ALL saving systems are like that, but for this comparison the pre-sets are very limited while the custom choices represents a wider variety. Since the codes told the game to load a particular state, such as the start of the fourth level, only the places you've fully beat are "saved" when you beat them.

From there the saving systems get more complex giving options. Perhaps you are allowed to save only at particular locations, from in a menu or maybe anywhere on the map. At those times/locations, you may be able to save what you've fully beaten, partially beaten, your inventory, money total, win record and untold other things based on the game. There are certain times, like during a complicated task, that you aren't likely to be allowed to save, or aren't allowed to save the progress in that task. Boss fights and some puzzles are like that for the sake of the gameplay. It doesn't work well to load a game you haven't played for a while and find yourself in the middle of a tough boss fight. However, this brings up the temporary save, which is basically an extended pause. You can stop there, and pick it back up later, but after starting you don't restart there again.

Honestly, I don't think progress risk should be a part of the weightiness and tension that gives a players actions value and importance. That reason is that the actions with value are usually tasks, as mentioned above. A boss fight is a single task the player is supposed to succeed at to continue farther. These task are what I think the author of the second post I linked to was talking about. Sometimes it is a level, and sometimes it's however much the player wants within reason. Mario games with a halfway point and finish are one example used that fits as a task. A saved game says how much has been beaten, but each level is a task with rules. You have to beat the level within a certain number of lives or restart, as a difficulty modifier for the task.

Not all games are made up entirely of tasks, which is what the first post seemed to be saying. Walking through a field, defeating endlessly respawning enemies and cutscenes aren't tasks like those mentioned above. Who cares when you save when outside of tasks? It's like being able to plat the paths between levels of the old 2D Mario games like levels. Beating the "levels" is accomplishing tasks, getting to those levels isn't a task in the original format. If you make getting to those levels tasks in their own right they become levels. At that point the gameplay takes a different tone. Perhaps it means you have to manually traverse the map lots of times. Perhaps it means that you gain free access to other levels, like the original gameplay already had, only with more levels.

The second post mentions game balance as one of the reasons to put progress at risk, but I find the two posts to be arguing the same point with different unstated assumptions and points of view. The first is from the angle of when there should be more opportunities to save, and the second is from the angle of when limiting those opportunities can help the gameplay and game design. Both acknowledge that limiting the opportunities to save "too much" is a bad thing. Finding the sweat spot between "too much" and "too little" is what balancing is for. Considering the medium and how the player is going to play your game is part of the balancing that the first article is stressing. On a mobile game, saving is important, because you may be playing for a short or long time. Like all other aspects of game design, what works best depends on what you are aiming for. However, outside of "tasks", which can be reasonably completed within a single sitting, it can be necessary to allow saving to prevent player frustration. Maybe that time is only in the menu and task selection screen, and maybe you can save at any time including during the tasks. Maybe you can't save between every task, though this is generally my suggestion as loosing progression through tasks you've already completed can frustrate and bore players, as well as make those parts loose their value to the player, but the big thing is to let your players save enough to make the gaming experience, dealing with the real world, fun.

Here are some quotes from the articles that cover what I said, probably more concisely that I did.

"Single-play sessions are difficult to design for, because exactly how long they will last is completely unknown." - 1st

"Simply, players should be able to stop playing a game at any point without fear of losing significant progress. To do anything else is to be disrespectful of your audience's time. It's absurd to require the player to wall off a section of their day to play your game." - 1st

"A game designer can promote player tension and create a sense of danger through challenging gameplay and the careful use of failure conditions and responses. When a failure condition is met the game will respond by penalizing the player in some fashion, often through the loss of progress. Thus, the player might be forced to replay certain parts of the game or be presented with an extended challenge as a penalty." - 2nd

"If having that save anywhere/anytime is problematic to the game's design, providing a single "bookmark" save slot that is deleted after it's loaded is sufficient." - 1st

"A reasonable penalty can make the game more challenging and exciting, but too large a penalty will lead to player frustration." - 2nd

"If you're forcing players to repeat swaths of your game as a consequence for failure, something has gone off the rails." - 1st

"We've all seen it. It's the save point just before massive, unskippable cutscenes that rolls immediately into a very difficult boss fight. It's the failure that forces you to perform the exact same series of actions again and again. These things don't make the game more challenging, they don't make it more interesting, they simply make the game more frustrating." - 1st

"It is the game designer's job to achieve the proper balance between creating tension and avoiding player frustration." - 2nd

The saving system is but one part of the game design that must work well with the rest to provide the best gameplay experience for the player. It is entirely possible to be respectful to the game design and the player, and we should strive to as that is how we cane achieve the best gameplay experience, where the gamed design and player combine to generate "fun".

Have fun, spread the word and tell me what you think,
Igen Oukan
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Social Gaming and Learning

I'm typing up this post in a browser specially made for social networking called Flock, and I generally like it. Playing with the features got me thinking about some of the things I've heard about concerning games and education, the social aspects of course.

First, there is the education, because that is what I've been hearing more social stuff coming from by way of informal forms of learning. I could see tools like Flock being used for courses and classes using social aspects of the web; Twitter, blogging, e-mail, maybe Diigo in the future.

Second is the possibility for "social gaming" though I haven't looked too much into it. I think there is great strides to be made in making games social activities, but to really do something with social games there has to be a way to do it. Flock is merely one example of the tools that are coming out that could be used to great effect.

There are possibilities, but I think the coolest part is the idea of a social networking dashboard. I'll admit that a part of me cringes at the thought of have my log in information stored in my browser, but I'm like that. I like the idea of being able to got online and just participate. Posting in all my online social communities, and having them listed out so I don't forget them. I'm like that too sometimes. There are a few things I would change, but these tools are in there infancy so I'll give them some time and see what they grow into.

Personally, I'd really like to see something like an e-mail dashboard that incorporates all the different APIs for popular social tools like forums, wikis, blogs, e-mail and feeds, only in a more co-operative way. Speaking of feeds, I wonder if that is really the way to go to make this stuff work; feeds and pings. How about forums thread feeds being used like blogs feeds are used? Wiki pages and so on now all seem to have feeds for changes and such, so it makes sense to me to build a feed reader that informs the user like an e-mail dashboard does. Add some multicategory/tag-based organization for all that stuff and it could be something really useful.

How could we use such a thing in our daily lives, as students, teachers, designers, developers, consumers, journalists, socialites and more? Or, better yet, how do we keep it all organized? See that's where the tag and category idea comes to mind. Tag it to organize it, and grab it when it's relevant. Having a business meeting? Tell the dashboard the right tags to lookk for and have it bring the links and accounts to you. Have a MMO group thing going on? Put in the right tags and find all those resources, friends and communication tools you have prepared for just such an occation.

Wait. I see a slight issue here, or is it? Normally you have to go and log into a service, use there individual systems for each item you want to have "prepared". However, if you have something like a dashboard through which you normally deal with your social services, and it also submits actions and content to multiple services as you want, it might not be a problem. How about the tag search looking through image collections, blogs, feeds and bookmarks you have on your social services? How might games and education use such a dashboard? I think there are definite possibilities.

Have fun, spread the word and tell me what you think,
Igen Oukan

Blogged with the Flock Browser

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