Lauren Wu dot com

D was recently invited to speak on a panel at the Harvard Business School's Asia Business Conference 2006 regarding "The Internet and New Media Industry":

"Internet has entered a new era characterized by Web 2.0 user generated content, broadband internet, mobile and digital media convergence. Internet is no longer a mere piece of technology, but an integral part of our life that shapes our culture and the way we work and live. With Internet, we are not just the consumer of wider variety of products, every one of us is empowered to be a creator and innovator. Aren't you excited by so many new opportunities presented in the new wave? At the same time, wonder who will be the winner in the new era? What is the future trend in the Asia market? What opportunities in Asia that are waiting for you to create another legend?"

Since we were snowed in that day and couldn't return home, D & I spent the afternoon chatting with some of the panelists and students. About 30 minutes into our casual discussion, one of the panelists asked, "OK, what's Web 2.0?" Everybody started laughing. D thinks it's just the natural evolution of the Internet, so assigning a name to it is rather silly, but in case you are interested, O'Reilly has a definition.

When we were in Boston last weekend (wouldn't you know, we were caught in the middle of the Blizzard of 2006), D & I visited his cousin Jeanne, her husband David, and their new baby girl Hazel. We got into a discussion about baby names (and how they chose the name "Hazel"), and they told us about the Baby Name Wizard. It's a cool java applet that graphs name popularity over time. To start, just type in a name at the cursor -- it's much easier to use than to explain.

Even though I've decided that World of Warcraft is too much of a time sink, I still like the idea of occasionally playing computer games to unwind and relax. Which reminds me, I'm still stuck on Syberia, and I refuse to look at a walkthrough or even a hint. I've occasionally found the odd game on Yahoo!Games that fits the bill. Most of them offer a free one hour trial, and sure enough, by the time a message pops up to say that my free hour up is up and I need to purchase the game to keep on playing -- I've lost interest and ready to do something else.

I mentioned this to Crystal, and she suggested that I try Oasis, which is reminiscent of a poor man's SimCity or even Pharoah (which I used to play). For the first time, after my free hour was up, I actually reached for my credit card to purchase the game ($20) but then I stopped myself. I think I'll go back to adventure games. By the time I finish Syberia, Dreamfall (the sequel to The Longest Journey) should be available.

D recently told me about digg. He was in a meeting one day, and mentioned something about Slashdot, and the tech snob he was talking to said that "Digg is the new Slashdot". I can just see this guy rolling his eyes and thinking "Slashdot is soooooo last year!" Not a week later, digg was profiled in the Wall Street Journal (subscription required).

What's Digg? According to its own website, "Digg is a technology news website that employs non-hierarchical editorial control. With digg, users submit stories for review, but rather than allowing an editor to decide which stories go on the homepage, the users do." Digg's faq provides additional explanation.

As part of my work, I discovered Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPGs). Yeah, it's a mouthful, and even the acronym is hard to pronounce. Through my friend Crystal, I had the misfortune of stumbling across World of Warcraft (WoW) which was developed by Blizzard (now owned by Vivendi). I still remember the first time I saw it. I made a point to check it out at E3 back in 2004 because Crystal had asked me to take a look and report back. It looked like a colossal waste of time. Turns out, it's a phenomenal game which is easy to play and highly engaging.

I stopped playing at the beginning of this year. Not that I didn't like the game anymore. On the contrary, I thoroughly enjoyed it, but found myself spending way too much time on it, and it started interfering with real life. My instincts were right: it was a colossal waste of time (albeit highly enjoyable)! So I went cold turkey and switched off. Now that I've stopped playing, I have time for other things, e.g., reading, blogging (not quite switching off, but higher in the food chain than playing computer games), and talking to D (who is relieved that his wife has become a more productive member of society).

On the blogging front, I wanted to document the useful Warcraft resources I've found in case I return to the game at some point, mostly likely when the Burning Crusade launches.

• Allakhazam and Tthottbot: general all-purpose WoW databases
• Community forums
• WorldofWar.net: maps
• List of profession trainers
• WoW Rankings: guild and character rankings
• PlayOn: Discusses the social dimensions of massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs) and virtual worlds
• MMORPG.com: Extensive news coverage, features and community for the MMORPG genre

Labels: mmorpg, WoW

Wow. It's been a LONG time since I've updated my blog. I'm usually at work when I think of an interesting topic, and since I don't want to actually blog at work, I wait until I get home. Of course, by the time I get home, I forget about what I wanted to write about! I need to start sending myself one line reminder emails.

Since I haven't blogged for a while, I haven't clicked on the W3C validator button on the side of my webpage. I did that today and found over 100 errors. Oops. Most of them were due to forgetting to convert the "&" sign into "&". The REALLY annoying errors were due to Google's free web search code. It doesn't validate. Fortunately, I found valid Google search code on the web... using Google search of course!

The reason why I gave up on my Atomz search is because they wanted to start charging me for it. Google search is free. Sort of. I've also toyed around with the idea of incorporating AdSense in my site. They've actually integrated it with Blogger but I have yet to turn it on because I abhor the thought of having ads on my site, even inconspicuous text ads. Most people probably wouldn't notice it, but I would know they're there.

Labels: blog