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Thursday, February 02, 2006 |
Move Over, Wilt Chamberlain.
Here's an incredible story. A female high school basketball player from New York scored 113 points in a game on Wednesday. That breaks the record of 105 held by Cheryl Miller (Reggie's sister). But that's not the most amazing achievement in women's basketball. The most amazing achievement was Lisa Leslie scoring 101 points in the first half of a game in high school. The other team refused to play the second half, so she didn't get to set a record no one would break. [Dispatches from the Culture Wars]
7:17:22 PM 
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More on Perplex City.
Mark Frauenfelder:  (Click on thumbnail for enlargement) I just had a meeting at Boing Boing headquarters with a Perplex City representative named Bill. He revealed to me a few pieces of this exceedingly rich and chewy alternate reality game. My head is still spinning, but the gist of Perplex City is that you buy packs of six cards for $5 a pack and enter a world of puzzle solving, interactive fiction, and real-world/fantasy crossover. (The makers of the game are happy to admit the inspiration came from Kit Williams' 1979 treasure hunt book, Masquerade, which provided clues to help readers locate a valuable "golden hare" hidden in the real world. The current edition of Masquerade includes the solution to the puzzle.)
Each Perplex City card has a puzzle on the front. Sometimes the puzzle will lead you to a faux corporate website or blog with additional hints. By entering your answer on the Perplexity website, you get points and can compare your ranking with other players.
Some of the cards have delightful gimmicks, like heat sensitive or ultraviolet inks that contain hidden clues. In addition to the obvious puzzle (I think there are 260 cards in the entire series, half of which have been released), each card contains elements of meta-puzzles of varying complexity.
Sometimes you have to send text messages to get information, or check the classified ads of newspapers in China, or in one case, be a published author to gain access to a research library that contains critical information:
Some time ago, the players had to get a character credentialed to do research with a library. In order to do this the character needed to be a published author. So a group of players *wrote a book* for it and it is going to be published shortly and distributed under a creative commons license from Lulu. The Perplex City publishing company is http://seaside-press.com/ (though the book being published has not been updated there yet).
Eventually, someone is going to solve enough of the puzzles and pick up enough additional clues to locate a real artifact secreted somewhere on the planet and claim the $200,000 prize -- a six-inch block called the Receda Cube. (My eight-year-old daughter, who is as enchanted by Perplex City as I am, is convinced the cube is in our neighboring town of Reseda.)
Here's more information about the game from a spokesperson:
Two years in the making, Perplex City has defined a genre by creating its own self-supporting universe. First off, players can purchase silver packs containing six, cryptic puzzle cards have been created by a range of leading designers and illustrators. They range in difficulty from 'fun and easy' to 'captivatingly complex,' the wide range of unusual puzzles include beautifully crafted riddles, origami challenges, pop culture trivia, logical mindbenders, 3D mazes and Egyptian hieroglyphs. Many of the cards can be assembled together to create large maps or new puzzles, and there is often hidden content to find. Once solved, they provide the player with their first clues to the location of the buried treasure. However, the cards are only the entryway into Perplex City. Go deeper and there is a further series of interlinked puzzles which spill into the real world - from baffling websites, coded newspaper ads, TV clips, billboards, cryptic anonymous phone calls, stray emails, sky writing, mystifying text messages and urban treasure hunts in random cities around the world.
I don't play games, because I don't have time for them, but I'm making an exception with this one. I think it's going to be a genre-busting bestseller that will break open the floodgates to a new form of popular entertainment.
Link
[Boing Boing]
7:17:11 PM
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Microsoft’s new guidelines and China.
An analysis by reporter Tom Zeller in the New York Times provides some details for China’s position on government censorship of the Internet and for Microsoft’s current response. On January 31, Microsoft unveiled new company guidelines in response to the shutting down of Chinese blogger Zhao Jing five weeks ago at the request of the Chinese government. Zhao Jing works as a research assistant in Beijing for the New York Times.
Zeller interviewed the Microsoft general counsel and uses quotes from him to describe the company’s position. The analysis concludes with these opinions:
The guidelines were praised at the Lisbon conference by Mary Robinson, the former United Nations high commissioner for human rights, who said they were "deeply significant."
But Julien Pain, head of the Internet desk at Reporters Without Borders, a Paris-based press freedom group that has been monitoring Internet censorship and the imprisonment of bloggers in China called the development an "illusory victory."
"There's a good side and a bad side," Mr. Pain said. "It's clear that they've begun thinking about their ethical responsibility. But it also shows that they accept censorship, and that they believe in this new form of the Internet, in which the rights of users will vary according to their geographic origin."
This, he said, "is in direct contradiction with the original idea of what the Internet was supposed to be — something with no barriers, no boundaries."
[Smart Mobs]
7:19:50 AM
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New aggressive approach failed.
Everyone is shocked that China and Russia suddenly agreed on referring Iran to the Security Council. I'm chocked too. All odds were against this, in my mind and I guess this is a great achievement by the EU3 and the US.
Now, Kayhan, the hard line newspaper who's always backed the new aggressive negotiation approach and cruised the former team, suddenly shows dissatisfaction with the new situation and seemed completely surprised.
In its daily satire piece, they mock the Chinese for their sudden shift and in its editorial, written by Hossein Shariatmadari, strongly suggests that withdrawing from NPT is the most feasible choice Iran has now.
Among the public, based on some of the blogs I've seen (Bahman's for instance), people are surprised too. They were not expecting the new approach, given the strong ties between China, Russia and Iran, would fail.
To be honest, I'm personally very surprised.
[Editor: Myself (English)]
7:19:06 AM
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Western Union Stops Sending Telegrams.
 After 145 years, Western Union has quietly stopped sending telegrams, reports Live Science via digg.
On the company's web site, if you click on "Telegrams" in the left-side navigation bar, you're taken to a page that ends a technological era with about as little fanfare as possible:
"Effective January 27, 2006, Western Union will discontinue all Telegram and Commercial Messaging services. We regret any inconvenience this may cause you, and we thank you for your loyal patronage. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact a customer service representative."
[Smart Mobs]
7:18:36 AM
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Start your own country by purchasing one of the many islands listed for sale here. 
