September 22nd saw the arrival of Halo 3: ODST, a game that builds on the story of Halo 3 in new and interesting ways.  Unlike the first three games in the franchise, Halo 3: ODST does not feature Master Chief as its main protagonist.  That cybernetically enhanced super soldier instead gives way to “The Rookie”, a silent new recruit to the ranks of the Orbital Drop Shock Troopers, those folks who literally drop into the fight from ships in planetary orbit.  They’re “the best of the best,” of course, but they lack the accoutrements that Halo players are used to using – they have no damage-absorbing and renewable shield, they cannot dual wield weapons, and they cannot run as fast or jump as far.  If they take damage they’ll need to find a health pack in order to heal.  In other words, the ODST soldiers are more mundane than good ol’ Master Chief, more normal.

In the world of video games, especially in the worlds depicted in first person shooters like Halo, normal is actually pretty exceptional. Read more…

Heavensfield Retreat Center, home of the reSTART program, outside Redmond. (Image courtesy of reSTART)

A new addiction treatment program unlike any other in the country opened recently outside Redmond. This new program, reSTART, aims to heal a malady created by the digital age: Internet addiction. Though similar centers exist in Asia and online, reSTART is the first of its kind in the United States. Patients pay $14,500 to live at Heavensfield Retreat Center for 45 days. They participate in individual and group counseling, outdoor activities, life coaching and a variety of other programs.

So how do you distinguish between healthy Internet use and an addiction? According to an article in the American Journal of Psychiatry by Jerald Block, a Portland psychiatrist who specializes in this field, symptoms of Internet addiction include excessive use; feelings of anger or discomfort when away from a computer or portable device; the urge to increasingly buy better software or technology or to expand usage; and negative impact on quality of life; including sleep deprivation, poor performance at work or in school and lying about how much time one spends online. Internet addiction generally falls into three categories: gaming, sexual content and email or text messaging.

Read more…

Both a waterfront dinner to greet our talented new cohort and an orientation for all students to introduce plans for cross-fertilization of coursework and MCDM’s business and community laboratory, UW Media Space.

What: Reception and Orientation to MCDM program and UW Media Space

Who: All new MCDM students
All second year MCDMers are strongly encouraged to come
MCDM alums
Bring your family and kids!
MCDM faculty, director, associate director, and staff
MCDM business and community partners
Prospective students

Where: UW Waterfront Activities Center (Parking is free)

When: Sunday, September 27
3:30-4:30 New and continuing Student Orientation
(Prospective students may attend as space allows)
4:30 on: picnic dinner, socializing and family fun (boating and rock climbing wall available). If weather is inclement, we’ll raise tents.

In this era of social media, companies have made headlines (for better or worse) by way of their social media policies.

With respect to this trend, I say Netflix should take Best in Show.

Netflix has posted its entire quasi-employee handbook titled, “Reference Guide on our Freedom & Responsibility Culture.” It promotes everything you’d want to read in an employee handbook – freedom, flexibility and fun. Even if this was published as a marketing ploy, it’s a darn good one.

Read more…

Today, Peter Rojas and Ryan Block – the masterminds behind Engadget and Gizmodo – launched gdgt, “a place for you to engage with your devices and hang out with people who are as passionate about their gear as you are.”

gdgt appears to be a church for gadget geeks, so it’s no wonder why the site came to a halt due to traffic shortly after its launch this morning. As proven by the success of their previous personal technology news sites, the gadget audience is lively and loyal. Read more…

Last night, MCDM launched Beyond the Fail Whale: How Twitter is Changing Organizations, “what may be the first university-level class dedicated to Twitter in the country.”

The class, taught by @kegill,

“explores the impact of Twitter on how organizations communicate (internally and externally) — from facilitating knowledge sharing to bypassing traditional communication gatekeepers, from social network impacts on content creation to new methods of conversational marketing.”

Students will research how Twitter is used in selected industries and compile their reflections in an ebook or print book.

As is the custom at MCDM, students will be using Twitter during class. Follow their tweets in real-time at #uwtwitbook, every Tuesday night from 6-10pm (PDT) through August 11, 2009.

Update: The hashtag for the class has been changed to #uwtwtrbook.

Update, August 17: TwitterBook OpenHouse at University of Washington (CMU126) and on uStream.tv

Students will be giving five minute presentations on the “best of the best” uses of Twitter in their study area—including airlines, hospitals, food banks, politicians, government, Latin America, news media, food service, visual communication, and the military.

Twitter account holders, RSVP at http://twtvite.com/3df62z

Presentations will be shared at http://twitter09.wordpress.com/students/final-presentations/

Note: The uStream link will be added.

On June 3, 2009, Bing was introduced to the public.  Many call it a new search engine, however José Piñero, Microsoft Manager, stated that Bing is a decision engine to help people to make decisions faster, especially in the areas of shopping, travel and health.

Last Tuesday,  Piñero introduced Bing to the Hispanic community here in Seattle through a Spanish News Program (KUNS/UNIVISION). Bing is available in the Spanish language and currently Bing is investing in different languages in all parts of the world.  This multilingual section not only includes the languange, but local feature development that addresses the user habits and the user needs, in other words an engine with cultural competence.

Using the term decision engine when referring to Bing, will distinguished Bing from other search engines that do not offer the same feature as Bing does.  Innovation will continue in this area as more business get that there is a global market out there.  My question is, what would be next?

According to Digitalmediawire, Facebook suprpassed the US Web traffic for the first time during the month of May.  Facebook had 70.278 million unique visitors vs. MySpace with 70.255 million.

It seems that Facebook is getting a worldwide attention. For example, in Chile, Facebook is the most used social media platform with 4,069,520 users, placing the South American country among the ten countries in the world the use Facebook the most. (Knol, 2008). According to O’Reilly Radar, among the other ten countries are, UK in second place after the United States, Canada in third, Turkey in fouth, Australia, Colombia, France, Norway, and Sweden.

This shows the power of the Facebook community, however this social media platform has not had the same results all over the world. This does not mean that it won’t in the future, but there is always the possibility that other countries will not follow the Facebook path. Only time will tell…

Side Note: Facebook overtook MySpace in worldwide unique visitors in April 2008. (Digitalmediawire, 2009).