I’m always looking for new and innovative ways to completely waste my time online, so when I met Justin Hall at SxSW this year and heard about some of the cool things he was doing with games and user-surfing patterns, I knew his PMOG would probably be for me as someone who has been addicted to various MMORPGs and is a bit of a statistics collector.

He and his team’s specific PMOG can be found over at Bud.com, and you can find me as Phae.

The general premise is that it’s a world and game that you’re interacting with and in all of the time that you’re surfing about on the web. In it’s simplest terms, this is currently done by installing a plug-in onto Firefox and letting it collect the URLs you visit. The type of interaction you do with the web and the type of sites you visit determine your alignment and class.

That might seem a bit invasive to some, but that’s another kettle of fish - this is just for fun uses, not subterfuge and you can flick the plug-in off if you’d rather spend a bit of time without it logging you.

Now, surfing the web rewards you with XP - much like the traditional RPG - journeying means you’re experiencing. The only difference is you don’t actively have to do much - there’s no beasties to battle along the way (yet?) or keys to find or any other such fantasy. You’re just rewarded for being an active internet user.

<p>That’s the passive part.</p>
<p>The really interesting bit about this to me is the not-so-passive layer they’re adding.  You can start to interact and do more of the game part.  This is done via the traditional <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quest_%28gaming%29">Quest</a> formula.  <a href="http://bud.com/quests/">Quests in a PMOG universe</a> mean visiting a group of pre-determined links on a theme and getting some extra XP for doing so.  Along the way you might find some fun new sites or, heaven forbid, learn something new.  The Quests are created by other users, so there’s a variety of themes.</p>
<p>Then there’s <a href="http://bud.com/bazaar/">other things</a> like Portals - which allow a player to send another player to a new URL (like a hint, or trick, to get them to visit something new) by attaching a portal to a specific site.  Another fun item is Mines - which can be planted on a URL, so that when a player visits the URL they step on the mine and forfeit some of their Datapoints (the currency of PMOG, gained passively over time).  Other special items are in the works.</p>
<p>Now, the really fun part for me and the bit that’s really piqued my interest is the Items.  <a href="http://pmog.devjavu.com/projects/pmog/wiki/MicroFormat">Items in this universe</a> will be embedded into websites via HTML using standardised class names and values.  </p>
<p>What’s that?  </p>
<p>Yep - microformatting to give richer mark-up and machine readable, extractable, data which in this case will be magic items that can be collected (and probably in the future sold, swapped, used or combined).  </p>
<p>OK, I admit, it’s a bit of microformat’s principle no-no in that most likely these items will be hidden away and forgotten about in various websites that want to be richer parts of the PMOG universe, and also not human readable in the first instance, but what a fun use of <a href="http://microformats.org">microformats</a>!</p>
<p>One thing that is missing from the PMOG universe at the moment is <acronym title="Non-Player Characters">NPCs</acronym> - but they could be set up just as easily as items using <a href="http://microformats.org/wiki/hcard">hCard</a>, and then they can guide players off to new Quests and Items.  Or something like that, anyway.  Lots of potential.</p>
<p>I’m quite keen on following what they’re going to do with this on the grander scale.  Sometimes it’s nice to feel like you’re part of a big game and have everything you’re doing have another level of use (all be it just a fun, and intensely nerdy, one) and with real-life and internet social network lines blurring more every day, why not start blurring that one between gaming aswell?

By very popular request, here is an update. I didn’t want to do it.

Back to work after a brief trip to definitely not-so-sunny Cornwall for Flora Day. I didn’t take as many photos as last year, because, well… it’s pretty much the same deal every year. Feel free to browse last year’s shots with a grey and rainy filter to imagine you were there yourself.

Here’s my version of events through the medium of interpretive dance… or just flash photography…:

<p><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/phae_/sets/72157600186522567/">See more photos at Flickr</a></p>

I kept saying to myself that I will eventually get around to writing something about this, but being out of the office for 8 days and the best part of offline for 10 means I’ve just had too much getting in my way.

In short: South by South West was great!

First things first; our panel.

Well, it went well. I think. People have been nice and positive about it. Two main concerns generally were a) that it wasn’t exactly what we were billed to do and b) some people didn’t know what microformats were. Well, regarding point b - it wasn’t billed as an introduction to. We only had so much time, and we felt that those likely to want to attend this particular session would already have a foundation, or at least an interest enough to have read about them a little, in microformats enough to know what was going on. I’m sorry if you didn’t get it - I’m more than happy to give you an intro to if you drop me an email (fberriman AT gmail).

As for the first point. You’re right. We did do more of a history/what’s cool now, as opposed to looking deeply into the future. To be honest, it’s hard to know what’ll happen exactly. I think we did a good job in showing that take up has been brilliant and a lot of big names are getting involved with supporting and implementing microformats, and that there’s real ways you can start using microformats in your day-to-day internet experience.

How did I cope, I hear you ask? I was nervous as anything (particular thanks to Patrick who put up with me being the best part of mute that morning).

<p>About 10 minutes before going on, we learnt that rather than being in a small room which I had somewhat managed to psych myself up for - we’d be in the biggest room (18ABCD).  This means I was not at all prepared for the green lighting and the spotlights and the 700-odd people!  </p>
<p><a href="http://tantek.com" rel="friend met colleague">Tantek</a>, <a href="http://www.glennjones.net/" rel="friend met colleague">Glenn</a> and <a href="http://www.kaply.com/weblog/" rel="friend met colleague">Mike</a> were brilliant though.  I’ve heard back from a few people who were genuinely really impressed with the backnetwork and Operator.  <a href="http://adactio.com" rel="friend met colleague">Jeremy Keith</a> joined us about half way in after a completely unplanned, but perfect, question which allowed him to show of his cool little bluetooth trick.</p>
<p>I did learn that I don’t like prepared speeches though.  About 2 lines in, I realised I’d for some reason abandoned what I had planned to say and was making it up on the spot.  I did not enjoy that.  I did however really like the Q&amp;A section.  Having to think on the spot about what people wanted to know about seemed to have the effect of removing a bit of my stage fright.  I suppose I prefer conversational tones.</p>
<p>Am I glad I did it overall?  Yep.  Would I do it again?  No.  Actually, yeah, I might… if I could do some more smaller things in the mean time and get some practice in, I’d consider it.</p>
<p>Other than that, SxSW was fun.  It was a good chance to put some faces to names I knew online and meet a few new ones.  Panel wise, I made a bit of an effort to avoid subjects in my field since I didn’t expect to learn that much and headed for more unusual topics.  I went to quite a few of the game track (screenburn) sessions, and really enjoyed them.  It was especially interesting to learn that they are having a lot of similar issues surrounding maintaining identities/networks in different parts of the web as we are.  Also quite fun to know that OpenID is a topic for them.</p>
<p>I have more to write I think, but this is already a long post and late!  “Hi” if I met you though, it was a pleasure.

The Growth and Evolution of Microformats panel at SXSWi has been added to the rather handy panel planner on the SXSWi site (shame it’s not marked up as hCalendar though – [edit] the panel picker has now been microformated!). It gives a little bit more of an overview about what it’ll be about:

In its first year, microformats.org ushered in the rapid adoption of key formats for publishing and sharing tags, licenses, contacts, relationships, events and reviews on the Web. See what new microformats are being developed for resumes, classified listings, music, and media, as well as how tens of millions of established microformats on web sites of individuals, companies, and organizations are driving innovations in desktop applications and advancing personal data portability

<p>You’ll also note that the rest of the panel is announced too.  We’ve got <a href="http://tantek.com" rel="friend colleague">Tantek</a> of course - *the* microformat advocate, and moderating the session.  <a href="http://www.kaply.com/weblog/" rel="colleague">Michael Kaply</a> from IBM is the man behind the <a target="_blank" href="https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/4106/">Operator</a> toolbar for Firefox, which in my mind is the most complete and fully functional addition for Firefox for detection and use of microformats.  <a href="http://www.glennjones.net" rel="friend met colleague">Glenn Jones</a> is the only one of the bunch I’ve had the pleasure to have met before - he was 1 third of our <a href="http://www.fberriman.com/?p=95">microformats triple bill</a> at the first <a href="http://barcamp.org/BarCampLondonSep06">BarCampLondon</a> (along with <a href="http://allinthehead.com" rel="friend met colleague">Drew Mclellan</a> and myself). He’s an implementor and created the <a href="http://webdd.backnetwork.com/">backnetwork</a> which is stuffed to the gills with microformats.  He also presents on the topic, and did so recently with <a href="http://webdd.backnetwork.com/feeds/post.aspx?postid=297">Destroying Walled Gardens</a> at <a href="http://barcamp.org/BarCampLondon2">BarCampLondon2</a>.</p>
<p>Then there’s me, of course.  Makes me consider my place in the group though.  </p>
<p>I mentioned this to a few people and they simply said that I was the human side of things.  Possibly more down to earth and using microformats in day to day development.  Not too many ideas of grandure and using them practically, and advocating and explaining them in simple terms to those who want to learn about them.  </p>
<p>I’m also the most community involved panelist.  That might not seem important, but when you realise that microformats wouldn’t exist without the community it’s a lot more.  Every spec and decision made about microformats is done by an organic community of people, like myself, who are enthusiasts.  It’s this organic growth thats let microformats spring up out of nowhere and gather speed and support so quickly.  </p>
<p>I think it’s a good mix though, and I’m looking forward to the panel even if I am a touch nervous.

I have many microformat related posts (rants?) to come, but they’re best saved until after this weekend since BarCamp will make a better foundation for said discussions. Looking forward to what is turning out to be a little bit of a mini microformat camp though!

So on another topic - Twitter. I know, plenty of people have spoken about it, but I just haven’t been inclined to yet. I am now since the novelty is starting to wear off (I’ve been using it since November, I think) and this seems like as good a time as any to give my thoughts on it.

Twitter basically is sort of like web-based status messages (like you’d have on MSN messenger). Twitter asks “What are you doing?” and the correct response would be a 3rd person answer such as “looking at twitter.”. Anyway, what’s actually happened is Twitter is a status updater and a really slow IM client in one. I think it’s because Twit’s can be grouped into two main types:

• Status updater - this kind of Twit uses Twitter as intended and updates in the 3rd person about what they’re doing at that given time, or what interesting location they may be in. This kind of Twit generally dislikes the types below for muddying the stream. Often these Twitter’s could exist alone and don’t tend to be a response to anyone else, or require feedback. It’s a rather solipsist world. (I kind’a dig it.)

<li>Chatter - these treat Twitter like an IM client, generally holding conversations on the site.  Lots of “@Bob - See you there!” type messages.  To know who, what and where these Twits are you have to friend and follow all of their friends.  These Twit’s think the type above are boring.</li>
</ul>
<p>Of course, there’s a bit of overlap.  I try to be a Status Updater, but occasionally I fall into Chatter mode.  I don’t dislike either type, really, although my friends list has had to be culled a few times to remove those that I feel twitter too often, and those Status Updaters that only update about eating their lunch soon got lost as well.  </p>
<p>I actually quite <em>like</em> Twitter on the whole.</p>
<p>What I actually like about it is the ability to keep in touch with people I don’t see very often, but wouldn’t necessarily chat to or email.  A good example is the Brighton geek crowd - I see them from time to time, but now when I do see them I already know what they’ve been up to without having to go through the “How are you, what’re you up to lately?” mundane conversation because they all twitter update.  I know exactly where they’ve been and what projects have been driving them potty, and can cut straight to the chase.  That really works for me.</p>
<p>Another thing that interests me about Twitter, on a personal level, is how much I like using it when I’m away from the computer.  There’s something odd about me (and others) that makes me want to check in on my mobile and actually prove to people that I do go outside occasionally and maybe even go to interesting places.  Why do I need to do that?  I don’t often turn the updates on, so I don’t see any responses if there are any.  I think I must like solidifying the things I do in digital form.  <em>If it’s on the web it must be true!</em></p>
<p>As an aside, there is actually a 3rd kind of Twit.  The News Twit.  Generally, these are automated (the <a href="http://twitter.com/bbcnews">BBC news</a> headlines are available) but there are one or two human-controlled streams popping up, like the <a href="http://twitter.com/microformats">microformats one</a> we’ve set up and have been using to announce events.  I’m not sure how much I like this.  It doesn’t really fit - why not just subscribe to the RSS of the actual feed if there is one?  Jury’s out.</p>
<p>Ultimately though, I’ve always thought that Twitter can’t last as it is.  It needs better filtering and friends control - the noise is starting to get too loud.  Perhaps interest groupings?  Channels?  It works for IRC (which is still my preference for digital communications).  It needs smarter phone commands that might let Twitter become a worldwide answer to <a href="http://www.dodgeball.com">Dodgeball</a> so that it can be used more easily for getting together with friends and finding out what’s going on and where.  It’ll be interesting to see how useful Twitter will be in Texas next month, if at all.</p>
<p>I’m still checking in on it, but I’m not sure for how much longer.