Just received word that Game Neverending is back online! This game was extremely innovative, but played by very few people during its limited beta test. One of the very first web-based MMOs, Game Neverending was eventually shut down as the Ludicorp team focused their efforts on Flickr.

Last year, Cal Henderson showed me an internal server running the original GNE code, but it wasn’t accessible outside the company intranet. Over the last year, Cal and Myles have ported the old ASP codebase to PHP, and it’s now live for anyone to play for the first time.

http://gne.flickr.com/

(You’ll need to be signed in to Flickr for the link to work.)

Here’s the April Fools-themed message that announced it publicly, a parody of Jerry Yang’s internal emails. More than an April 1 prank, I’ve been told that it’ll be around longer than today only but completely unsupported. Hooray!

Update: After much speculation, I’m happy to announce GNE is still alive on April 2. I spent all yesterday playing, got up to Level 7, built a lovely house in Fierov Heights, and had enough making points to build the final item of the game, a Game Neverending. Unfortunately, I was about $8 million short to buy the ingredients. (Stewart, Caterina, Ben, and five other Ludicorp employees must be purchased in the back room of a mash pub for $1M each.)

Everybody pooled their resources to buy the ingredients, and at about 8pm, a Game Neverending was created. We passed it around so everyone could hold it, and then handed it back to its creator so she could win the game. Screenshots here.

Update: GOD announced it’s shutting down in an hour (about 11am PST). As yeoz said, “GNE is a shared temporary hallucination.”

Aaand, it’s gone. I managed to send it off by winning the game in the last four minutes. I captured video of building the GNE and using it to win the game. Striatic also captured the last few minutes of the game.

“As computer technology becomes part of everyday life, a new program comes to BBC2 now: be you beginner, buff, or somewhere in between.”

Thanks to Martin Brewer, here’s the first episode of The Net, a documentary series that ran for four seasons from 1994 to 1998. Despite the name, this first episode has very little to do with the Internet. Instead, it’s an almost perfect video equivalent of the early Wired Magazine, covering a mish-mash of digital culture from video games to virtual reality.

This episode has five segments.

Continue reading “BBC2's The Net, first episode from April 1994” →

No entries this week. I’ve had a miserable flu since Sunday that’s made it impossible to think straight. I’ll see you Monday, Internet.

The second in my series of Internet Videos from the VHS Era was contributed by James Burke. Here’s what he said about it:

“I enjoyed the Internet Power VHS tape and dug up an old VHS tape from my old school district. It’s a 20-minute video from June 1995 that discusses the district’s technology plan with lots of funny and archaic technology and it’s an interesting look at a school district that was on the cutting edge back in the mid nineties.”

After watching the whole film, it’s clear this public school district was way ahead of their time. Some of the video was a bit fluffy, so I edited the original video to focus on the technology and screen captures.

Josh Lake’s awesome homepage. Dig that big blue throbber on Netscape 1.0.

A breathless 3rd grader checks her email before learning about “Netscaping and writing our own homepages.”

Searching Webcrawler in Netscape 2.0.

The Clinton-era Whitehouse homepage in Netscape 1.0.

The sexy Netscape homepage, with interlaced GIF banner.

Telnet in Windows 3.1. The only PC in this video.

A pile of US Robotics modems jammed into holes in a cardboard box for dial-in network access.

Mildly-creepy student profiling application.

IP address as official URL. Charming!

“This is not language. This chart is a fucking lie.”
Anil Dash, Battledecks 2008

A few years ago, I wrote an entry about knee-jerk contrarians on the Internet: those delightful people who find fault in anything and everything, dismissing months or years of work with a few words.

This is nothing new. It’s as old as communication itself. I’m sure that the moment man discovered fire, there was some guy nearby saying, “Too smoky. Can burn you. Lame.”

In the modern age, we’ve found a much more efficient way to express disdain, distilled into only four letters: FAIL. This usage as a standalone interjection has been around for years, since at least 2003, but its recent explosion in popularity comes from 4chan and the Lolcats memes. Dedicated blogs like FAIL Blog, Shipment of FAIL and Fail Dogs further spread the meme.

On Twitter, the conservation of space combined with a meme-savvy audience creates a perfect storm for spreading FAIL. With only 140 characters, it’s not surprising that people have taken to using this often as a shorthand for longer criticism.

Here’s a recent example from Chris Messina (who hopefully won’t mind me picking on him):

factoryjoe: @skitch Nice Twitter + Email integration, but where’s the OAuth?? FAIL!

Obviously, Chris adores Skitch. It’s the best screenshot application ever made, he uses it constantly, and evangelized it to friends (I found out about it from him, in fact). I’m sure he intended it as a gentle ribbing, but the message is pretty straightforward: Skitch has failed because it doesn’t support an emerging standard he feels strongly about. Pretend you’re one of the Skitch developers, and compare the original to this slight reworking:

@skitch Nice Twitter + Email integration! I’d love OAuth support, too.

Part of the problem is that “FAIL” implies objective truth, when it’s just your personal opinion. Tantek Çelik pointed out that, in LOLspeak, “DO NOT WANT” would be more appropriate since it clearly conveys a personal opinion.

I know many people who make stuff for the web, all of them very passionate about what they do. And every time I see a “FAIL” assigned to their work, it makes me sad. Yes, I know you’re trying to be funny. But I’m starting to see a trend away from the funny, and towards the angry, bitchy, or mean. So please, mind yer words.</missmanners>

24 Hours of FAIL on Twitter

The following is a small sampling of tweets mentioning “fail,” pulled from this Tweetscan search. Among the failures in the last day or so: Twitter, Facebook, Skype, Gmail, and Scrubs.

petroldarling: Oh my god. Metrotransit’s website is made of fail. In reality, the 84 stopped running an HOUR AGO. Now I am stuck in Midway.

nikete: facebook lacks a way to search the messages in your inbox. FAIL

jremsikjr: hulu.com FAIL! They cut out of full screen video to take me to the sponsors website at a commercial break 🙁

DjDATZ: skype = fail.

madpilot: Paypal development sandbox allows you to send payments to accounts that don’t exist. FAIL

93octane: top chef dumbass can’t follow directions. FAIL

rv510: San Francisco protest —–> FAIL

boyafraid: Twitter is currently looking broken. Word wrap/line breaking has experienced epic FAIL.

CocoaSamurai: I can’t rent “I am Legend”? iTMS FAIL

AndrewTerry: YouTube on iPod Touch; wotta lotta fail….

jkestr: you would think a movie called blackjack would come out on the 21st rather then the 28th. Marketing dept: fail.

nrturner: Safari 3.1 is *still* using the blue ‘RSS’ icon that looks like ‘ass’ in the address bar. Fail!

montythestrange: Google Mail spam filter in EPIC FAIL mode again.

px: BofA is really good at sales I suppose. But when it comes to training their employees in regards to the issues I am facing they FAIL.

rob_ballou: not allowing symbols in passwords = FAIL

sambrown: Billings only uses my System Preferences currency settings? I can’t change it per project? What a waste of time that was. *sigh* Major Fail.

aeoth: Oh I’m loving VicLink today. I want croydon -> mt waverley, it gives me Scorsby -> mt w. NOT EVEN CLOSE. EPIC FAIL

bobthecow: kronos webapp standards compliance FAIL.

tdcool: UK broadband = fail

ferhr: Used a 15 year old /usr/share/X11 over a 2007 one. Total FAIL. Gnome/gtk is really a fragile piece of software.

Pistachio: Oh FAIL. Quickbooks online does not run on a mac. MUAH, Quicken. I love you too.

ourfounder: Valve software requires you to update your warez very very slowly before you delete them. “Fail!”

dosminos: Friday Night Lights pilot – win, Scrubs pilot – fail. Supernatural and One Tree Hill pilots – maybe.

mjjames: Visual studio doesnt use jsdoc it uses its xml way. Fail

stevefleischer: very hazy and smoggy in HK today. Air has an orangy tinge to it. Mainland fatctories EPIC FAIL.

muffinresearch: No seats what a pile of FAIL

ndw: The Scala beginner’s guide is a PDF? FAIL

knufflebunneh: I have a prediction for 2008: you fail.