The PR league will be starting soon. I am interested, not the least because it has a cool cash prize of $5000 for the winner, as well as a vacation in Las Vegas, but because the play will be against the best of the PR world (hopefully).
Still, given my current financial situation, I am loathe to pony up the $190 in competition fees and possible fee for flying to the competition should I qualify. Anyone want to sponsor me? We can split the prize if I win. For what it's worth, I'm currently number one on Pr-game and I had a close to 50% win record on BSW while I was playing (multiplayer game, remember). If you're a company and you want to sponsor me, you get free advertising, too.
I've played around a thousand times and I rarely get tired of it.
Yehuda (shadejon at gmail)
P.S. I'm all the way up to 106,000 on Technorati. Whee! And Gone Gaming broke 50,000. For those of you who read my blog but still don't link to me, I would be much obliged if you could rectify that. Thanks.
P.P.S. If you haven't yet, please cast your nominations for the Board Game Internet Awards. You only have a week left to nominate, and I'm sure that plenty of good stuff hasn't yet been nominated.
Technorati Tags: board game, board games, games
Friday, January 06, 2006
Thursday, January 05, 2006
Seven Tips For Sony Regarding Its New Book Device
Sony,
We haven't forgiven you for your CD DRM fiasco, so it is with dread that we now hear that you are planning a new electronic book device. Here are seven tips to keep you from fouling it up:
1. Don't allow only Sony provided content onto the machine. In fact, open up your format so that anyone can produce a book for your machine. Allow Sony content to be readable on other machines as well.
2. Don't DRM anything. Don't work together with content providers to lock anything. Don't issue content that will only work on a single device. People who buy books for your machine may also want to read them online. Let them. People who buy books online may want to read them on your machine. Let them. Assume your customers will be honest. The billions you make from happy customers will offset the thousands you lose to book copying, which is still illegal. And you're not going to stop them, anyway.
3. Price your books in such a way that we know that we're not paying for printing, binding, distribution, and all the other things that no longer apply to eBooks. In other words, price the eBooks less than regular books. Don't worry that every eBook sold represents a loss of paper sales; it doesn't, any more than DVD sales represent lost movie ticket sales. They coexist.
4. Allow us to resell the content. Allow us to resell the devices. Otherwise, it's not going to work, and you'll find someone to blame, but it will be your fault.
5. Design it for the 99% of the people who are going to buy it and how they are going to use it. That means: portable, easy to read in all light conditions, no eye strain, water-resistant, scratch-resistant.
6. Make the reading experience as book-like as possible, but include the following key features: text-to-speech, for the hard of hearing; option for big text and contrast, for the hard of seeing; bookmarks; highlighting; hypertext; wi-fi and USB connections for emailing, blogging, sharing, and tagging; automatic screensave and powersave; long battery-life; easy and cheap to fix; few and simple navigation controls.
7. Do not automatically send a unique device ID to anyone whenever the device connects to the internet. Do not try to suck any information about anything I read in order to transmit it to anyone, ever, even in bulk. Get that information from the distributors when I buy it, if you must.
Yehuda
Technorati Tags: digital rights, Sony, eBook, eBooks
We haven't forgiven you for your CD DRM fiasco, so it is with dread that we now hear that you are planning a new electronic book device. Here are seven tips to keep you from fouling it up:
1. Don't allow only Sony provided content onto the machine. In fact, open up your format so that anyone can produce a book for your machine. Allow Sony content to be readable on other machines as well.
2. Don't DRM anything. Don't work together with content providers to lock anything. Don't issue content that will only work on a single device. People who buy books for your machine may also want to read them online. Let them. People who buy books online may want to read them on your machine. Let them. Assume your customers will be honest. The billions you make from happy customers will offset the thousands you lose to book copying, which is still illegal. And you're not going to stop them, anyway.
3. Price your books in such a way that we know that we're not paying for printing, binding, distribution, and all the other things that no longer apply to eBooks. In other words, price the eBooks less than regular books. Don't worry that every eBook sold represents a loss of paper sales; it doesn't, any more than DVD sales represent lost movie ticket sales. They coexist.
4. Allow us to resell the content. Allow us to resell the devices. Otherwise, it's not going to work, and you'll find someone to blame, but it will be your fault.
5. Design it for the 99% of the people who are going to buy it and how they are going to use it. That means: portable, easy to read in all light conditions, no eye strain, water-resistant, scratch-resistant.
6. Make the reading experience as book-like as possible, but include the following key features: text-to-speech, for the hard of hearing; option for big text and contrast, for the hard of seeing; bookmarks; highlighting; hypertext; wi-fi and USB connections for emailing, blogging, sharing, and tagging; automatic screensave and powersave; long battery-life; easy and cheap to fix; few and simple navigation controls.
7. Do not automatically send a unique device ID to anyone whenever the device connects to the internet. Do not try to suck any information about anything I read in order to transmit it to anyone, ever, even in bulk. Get that information from the distributors when I buy it, if you must.
Yehuda
Technorati Tags: digital rights, Sony, eBook, eBooks
Session Report Up
Note the link while I try to regain jergames.com, which will take a few months.
Games played: San Juan, Lord of the Rings: the Confrontation, Primordial Soup, Princes of Florence, Taj Mahal.
Yehuda
Technorati Tags: board games, board game, games, session report
Games played: San Juan, Lord of the Rings: the Confrontation, Primordial Soup, Princes of Florence, Taj Mahal.
Yehuda
Technorati Tags: board games, board game, games, session report
Blog Redefining
I have been going back to some posts and relinking them properly, adding Technorati tags, and so on. So if you see old posts showing up in bloglines, that's why.
Speaking of old posts, I have been very late in getting the next chapter of Encounter to Gone Gaming. My previous entry is here. One of the major reasons I have been late with chapter 5 is that the story naturally contains some sexual themes, and I have been trying to find a way of telling what needs to be told in such a way that I can post it to a public blog. I think it's almost there.
And speaking of Encounter, the new Entertaible sounds just like the table I briefly described in my last chapter. If I don't get out the rest of my story soon, it won't be science fiction anymore.
Yehuda
Technorati Tags: Encounter, board games, board game, games
Speaking of old posts, I have been very late in getting the next chapter of Encounter to Gone Gaming. My previous entry is here. One of the major reasons I have been late with chapter 5 is that the story naturally contains some sexual themes, and I have been trying to find a way of telling what needs to be told in such a way that I can post it to a public blog. I think it's almost there.
And speaking of Encounter, the new Entertaible sounds just like the table I briefly described in my last chapter. If I don't get out the rest of my story soon, it won't be science fiction anymore.
Yehuda
Technorati Tags: Encounter, board games, board game, games
Wednesday, January 04, 2006
Great Bits and Gaming Report
Ever since I set up my own Google news searches I hadn't visited the nifty site Great Bits, so I never noticed that it had passed on and merged with Board Game News.
I think that all Ward does is reformat the same information you could get with a Google search, but unless you're a freak like me, it is simpler for most people to just point their browser to Great Bits (now BGN) to find out about mainstream media coverage of board games.
I'm still subscribed to my Google searches; it's fun to see what articles hit by my search do or don't get covered on BGN's media watch.
Also, looking at Tom Vasel's list of links I noticed Gaming Report, a pretty rich site devoted to game news that is mostly RPG related, but also has some board game stuff. A wonder I never noticed it before. I wonder how it compares to RPG Net.
Yehuda
Technorati Tags: board games board game board game news
I think that all Ward does is reformat the same information you could get with a Google search, but unless you're a freak like me, it is simpler for most people to just point their browser to Great Bits (now BGN) to find out about mainstream media coverage of board games.
I'm still subscribed to my Google searches; it's fun to see what articles hit by my search do or don't get covered on BGN's media watch.
Also, looking at Tom Vasel's list of links I noticed Gaming Report, a pretty rich site devoted to game news that is mostly RPG related, but also has some board game stuff. A wonder I never noticed it before. I wonder how it compares to RPG Net.
Yehuda
Technorati Tags: board games board game board game news
Dangerous Ideas
So it seems that I am unwilling to completely run this blog as a "content-only" blog, as opposed to a "linking" blog. I will just have to challenge my idea that a blog can only be one or the other.
Anyway, the link above is to an amazing article asking over 100 thinkers to propose "dangerous ideas" as topics for discussion. Highly interesting and thought-provoking.
Link comes by way of Slashdot. The link, by the way, is to the "printable" version of the article, which is the only way to see it all on one page.
Yehuda
ObGame: Taught my mom-in-law how to play Anagrams last night.
Anyway, the link above is to an amazing article asking over 100 thinkers to propose "dangerous ideas" as topics for discussion. Highly interesting and thought-provoking.
Link comes by way of Slashdot. The link, by the way, is to the "printable" version of the article, which is the only way to see it all on one page.
Yehuda
ObGame: Taught my mom-in-law how to play Anagrams last night.
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