Of all the computer games I’ve ever played, only three really stand out: Barrack, Myst and Myth. Barrack is dead, and Myst was really exciting when it first came out but there’s not much to replay there. Myth was the only one that did what really good classic boardgames do: it combined a simple interface with endless options for strategy.

Yesterday I was idly browsing through some new real-time strategy titles (finding them all somehow lacking) while fondly remembering the endless hours wrapped up in troop formations and explosions that Myth provided. I googled “Myth-like game”, only to find that the game I loved, which I thought had died after Microsoft bought Bungie in 2000, is still very much alive, with a multiplayer game server, maps, plugins and updates lovingly produced by dedicated developers working for free. Runs perfectly on my Intel MacBook running Leopard. A computer game that still has staying power like this after 10 years is really something you shouldn’t miss–go download it now.

Ever since I got the iPod Touch I find myself mapping the city in terms of WiFi-happy areas. I don’t mean which cafes have unlocked wifi, but which street corners, which tram stops, which apartment doorways. It’s also been fun to follow what the various hotspots are called in different areas, where I find large concentrations, and which areas are dominated by a handful of pay-per hour corporate hotspots. (The hotspots causing the most rage are the ones that show up as unlocked, but then open a webpage requiring you to log in.)

But the interesting part is that I feel like I’ve been literally surfing in this extra ocean-like dimension of the city, looking for good, strong waves. I mean literal surfing, not “browsing”. Kind of a neat feeling, though not particularly practical, and I assume it will wear off once my signal-map gets more familiar.

It gets me thinking about wifi-enabled jewelry again. What would it be like to feel the signals around you, instead of reading them off a list? How could one translate a locked signal vs. an unlocked one (into, say, vibration), or a favorite, trusted signal vs. an uncertain one? And what about those names? Could corporate/Wippies/FON/private signals also have a different “flavor”? I’d love to just be able to “feel” that I just walked into a happy grade-A wifi zone.

I’m sure this is not new. But let’s consider possible inputs:

1. Vibration: intensity, beat(fast/slow), patterns
2. Lights: intensity, beat(fast/slow), patterns, colors
3. Temperature: intensity
4. Shape: Expansion/contraction, patterns(braille-like)
5. Display: intensity, beat(fast/slow, patterns, colors, text, images

Of the above, only vibration, temperature, and shape would be inputs that could inform via touch alone. Which is what I’d be going for.

Nitinol could expand/contract AND provide temperature.

Mr. Köykkä might have more ideas for implementation…

Stocks widget on the iPod Touch? Oh la la how 90’s! What will those of us not addicted to the stock ticker to do with this app, then?

Enter magic Yahoo Finance codes to turn Stocks into Currency Exchange watch.

Type “EURUSD=X” as a stock code to get the neatly updated EUR to USD exchange rate. You can guess the rest from there. Travelers rejoice!

Even if you’re not hooked into the ADD world of Twitter/Pownce/Jaiku, you’ve got email, web, and probably a dozen open windows and applications all screaming for your attention while you’re trying to get work done. Here are some apps that will tell them all to shut up and try talking one at a time:

Think by Freeverse: Hides everything except your one chosen app behind a dark translucent backdrop. Free.

Spirited away by drinkin.com: Hides windows if they’ve been unused for a certain period of time.

Writeroom by HogBaySoftware: A text editor that fills your entire screen, including the menu, black, and leaves you with nothing but a blinking cursor. Criticized by Niko for cashing in on retro nostalgia, but, well, it twangs the right heartstrings for me.

The web is filled with more tools than anyone can bear to shuffle through. Unless you’re glued to the web like me. So for all of my friends out there who keep asking me what’s good, this is what I suggest right now:

• Photos: Store and share them on www.flickr.com
• Your desktop on the web: www.netvibes.com
• Organizing your life, simple project management: www.backpackit.com
• IM/Presence: Adium(OSX) / www.jaiku.com
• Blogging: www.wordpress.com
• Mini-blogging: www.tumblr.com
• Commercial blogging: www.squarespace.com
• Music: www.last.fm
• Recipe inspiration: www.opensourcefood.com
• Shopping inspiration: www.productdose.com
• Simple online strategy gaming: www.weewar.com

If I missed something, or if there’s something you’re looking for, let me know–I’ve probably already found it. Now go play outside.

After the past week or so of using Jaiku(as opposed to Twitter), I have found the following uses for it, some highly personal, some more generally useful:

1. Taskmaster for the self-employed:

Discipline is one of the hardest things about working for yourself. Especially if you work on a computer, where the web is a carnival of distractions. However, when I jaiku what I’m doing, eg. “working on website X template”, I stick to it better. Because my friends just read that. And if I end up playing Flash games instead, I’ll be lying to them.

2. A place for declarations of intent:

A bit similar to #1, except that instead of jaikuing what you’re doing, you jaiku what you’re going to do. So before going to bed, I can jaiku what tomorrow’s goals are. Even after the intention-muddying effects of sleep, I’ve got a message from my yesterday-self posted up to get me to fulfill promises and plans I’ve made to myself. Again, since they’re posted up for all to see, it’s a bit more effective than writing them on a piece of paper before bed.

3. Logbook for the day to increase efficiency:

Any small observations I might have during the day are archived for future use. By rereading them, I noticed repeating chains of events and causality that I hadn’t been aware of before. For example, I noticed my productivity plummeted on days that I had scheduled appointments between noon and four. Why? Because they break my midday zone thoughtflow. Scanning through my Jaiku log made this obvious.

4. Polite and passive awareness of partner’s plans:

My girlfriend also has a very random work schedule, and I often have no idea when I’ll see her on a particular day, if at all. I can now check her next appointment on her Jaiku stream, see if she’s waiting at the bus stop, or if she’s sent out an update, and know whether or not to expect her for dinner without calling to interrupt her all the time. Also, sometimes when I notice she’s in the same area of town as me during the day, we can meet for impromptu lunch between appointments.

5. Polite and passive awareness of friends’ status:

If I feel like going out somewhere, I can see which of my friends are hanging out at home doing nothing, who’s sleeping, who’s busy, who’s already out, etc. I don’t have to call everybody, I can just call the ones likely to be up for something. I can also check if they’re around the neighborhood.

6. More immediate, deliberate awareness of your own day:

You could do this with a piece of paper, but somehow declaring absolutely what I’m doing at the moment I do it makes me more actively mindful of it. Vaguely like the way Zen monks mindfully do dishes or sweep temple steps. Everything you do is part of how you spend your life, so it’s been kind of interesting to take such deliberate note of everything, and then do that thing fully. At least that’s been a neat minor side effect for now. Before the newness wears off…
What’s missing?

• A shoutout function, reserved for actually really BOTHERING all your contacts(“beer, anyone?”)–this could be the only Jaiku that arrives as an SMS, while the rest stay passive.

• Seeing and being able to edit your Overview on your phone, add comments, etc. Apparently this feature is coming, as is a version for Java-enabled phones.

• Privacy layers–my little sister, keeper of the finger on the pulse of the youth nation, is squicked out by the thought of all her friends being able to see where she is all the time, not to mention all the status info she’d like her boyfriend to see. Family would be ok, friends sometimes. For me it would be friends all the time, family in some cases, and work in some cases. Flickr-like privacy groups would let this service expand into the work sector, where it could be REALLY useful.

Twitter is like standing in a room with all your friends in it, screaming out what you’re doing every now and then so everyone can hear it. Sometimes it’s useful, as in “Beer, anyone?” and sometimes it’s annoying, as in “I just fed my cat!”.

You can also hear your friends’ side of conversations they are having with other friends, which is like sitting beside someone while they talk on the phone. So in addition to the above, you get messages like “Wednesday is fine” with no context, or even “Beer, anyone?” not directed at you, but still landing in your SMS inbox.

This falls into a category my friend calls social noise. Like zoning out in a crowded restaurant, you hear lots of people talking, but without context it’s just buzz. You might as well be at home alone–it doesn’t make me feel connected, it makes me feel like I’m missing things all the time. Compound this with the fact that each above message represents an SMS to be deleted, and it quickly becomes a chore.

Twitter SMS messages all have the same level of importance, and they are relentless. You can’t tell from the beep in your pocket whether it’s your girlfriend asking you to pick up some milk before you come home(useful), or Joe telling some stranger he’ll be “there” soon(pointless). And the beeps just keep coming.

My text message inbox also serves as a loose to-do list, so general statements of la-la are somewhat unwelcome in bulk quantities. I like knowing what my friends are up to though. What next?

Enter Jaiku. Jaiku is developing passive presence. I only see what my friends are doing if I feel like it. And I don’t have to tell them what I’m doing all the time–my phone does that for me, automatically reporting my general location as I move around. My friends can go look at my “presence” in a kind of address book on my phone, but my status reports won’t be filling their inbox.

If I want to add something more specific, like “I’m going for a beer,” I can. But I don’t have to. This has already come in useful, though mainly on the domestic front–my schedule is not fixed, so during the day I move around between certain specific locations quite a bit. By checking my Jaiku presence, my girlfriend can tell, for example, if a meeting is going on forever without having to SMS me, and can plan accordingly. She is also saved an inbox full of “still at work” status reports. She only receives the information if she’s looking for it(she might not care when I’m coming home), and I don’t need to bother her unnecessarily.

You’re also spared listening in on your friends’ comments to their friends(which some people like), thanks to the Jaiku commenting system, which lets you comment on a specific jaiku. This comment is only seen by the original poster, or by others who comment on the same post.

You can choose to get your Jaikus via SMS, but seeing them on Jaiku mobile is what brings in the value for me. At the moment you can’t see your “overview” on your mobile, but apparently this feature is on its way. The overview (or post feed) is also nice because you can add other feeds to it, so I can see links to my friends’ new blog posts, or new Flickr photos, or even their posts to Twitter.

I’ve heard several times now that Jaiku has “better” features than Twitter, but “all my friends are on Twitter.” Which is how we get to the MySpace problem:

MySpace is hardly the best, or even semi-best social networking site out there. In fact, the platform itself hasn’t seen many changes since the 90’s when it began. Compare it to imeem or even Friendster, and it looks like a tabloid disaster area. Changing your MySpace page’s background image can confuse even seasoned coders, because it’s a gum-and-toothpicks affair that MySpace wasn’t initially designed for, and they haven’t updated their code since then.

Yet at the moment it’s the most popular and well-known social networking site, probably because the mainstream media, (who seem only barely aware of the fringes of what’s going on on the web) picked it up as a poster child for “connectedness” and put it on/used it with shows like the L Word. So throngs of rubes filled it up, and now because your cousin Bob who can barely handle email has a MySpace page, you have to have one too, because he won’t join imeem because he hasn’t seen it on TV. I’ve had friends admit to me that they HATE MySpace, but have a MySpace page only because it seemed inevitable. I am hearing the same comments about Twitter.

Now Twitter is not MySpace–it’s simple and relatively uncluttered, and it does what it does as it’s supposed to. It is nice to be able to have a “anyone for a beer?” app. I just think it isn’t doing it well enough. And it’s frustrating to see Twitter growing as a result of a mood of social inevitability instead of the strength of its features. If more people stuck to what they thought was better, Jaiku could do well indeed.

It occurs to me that the two services could also combine nicely–Twitter reserved for grand announcement-type messages, and Jaiku for random thoughts and status reports that everyone doesn’t HAVE to hear immediately(which is most of the time.) Immediate vs. passive info. Twitter doesn’t work for me currently as an announcement thing, because there is so much data coming in I can’t put in the time to sift through it all. I often end up reading Twitters about doing something several hours after they were posted.

Another possibility might be being able to sometimes post specifically TO Twitter through Jaiku while receiving Twitters as SMS and Jaikus in your Jaiku Overview stream. Your Overview could also include your Twitter feed.

It is already possible to receive every Jaiku as an SMS, but that would turn it into Twitter. The day has only so many hours and I only have so much attention. Or maybe I’m just getting old.

Next post will probably be about the privacy question–and what else Jaiku is good for. I’m collecting a list.

Part Addams, part Far Side–I don’t tend to have the patience for web comics, but these are delicious, not only twisted funny, but satisfying to look at: The Perry Bible Fellowship

They’re drawn in an incredibly broad range of styles, it’s hard to believe it’s all the same guy. He’s threatening to publish a book soon too.

Update: Due to the lack of information and pictures on this subject, I created a group on Flickr where people can share their white tattoo pics. If you’ve got a white tattoo of your own, go add yours: http://www.flickr.com/groups/whiteinktattoos/

I think white tattoo ink is interesting. It’s a new color in a new medium, usually used for hilights, but I think for those who want a tattoo but don’t want to go the generic tribal/kanji route this offers new possibilities. Not much info about it out there, but here’s what I’ve found so far:

• The good, safe kind is made of titanium oxide, which is harder than steel, which tends to wear out the tattoo needles it’s used with. This means there’s a possibility of the result not being entirely white, but slightly grayish.
• Also, it goes UNDER your skin, so your own skin pigment will tint it somewhat. For “white” (pinkish) skin, it’s likely to go a bit cream-colored. A better bet is to place it where your skin is whitest already and doesn’t have much contact with the sun, like inside your forearm.
• It’s hard to put on evenly over large areas.
• People have said it looks like a scar or a brand when healed, albeit a potentially very intricate one. Sometimes it stays kind of raised (after more than one application) and sometimes it goes flat.
• In photos at least it looks like it gives a “powdery” effect, like chalk paint on top of your skin.

All of the above are problems if you want something that screams “tattoo!”. But if you have been investigating tattoos in general, and just let the stuff be what it is, you might turn its weaknesses into strengths and come up with something truly unique. Here are the only examples I found, of which there are few and far between as of yet:

Sources I can identify: Friendster, ModBlog (NSFW).

Flower thing by Julie’s Tattoo Studio.

Snowflake by Timppa from Other Side Tattoo in Lahti, Finland.

After noting several posts on Gizmodo wondering about what gadgets will appeal to women, it occurred to me that there are, in fact, gadgets for women–but they might not be quite what you’d expect. Over the years, I’ve come across a group of products that women talk about among themselves and use, but aren’t advertised anywhere. So as a public service, I’m listing them here:

The menstrual cup: A bunch of companies sell this alternative to tampons. Among them: Keeper (natural rubber), Diva cup, Mooncup, and Lunette (silicone). (Plug: Lunette is made in Finland!) You only have to buy one at a time, and one will last you years. Aside from the financial benefit, this also means you don’t have to lug around a box of tampons everywhere you go, which can be annoying on camping trips in particular. I’ve even used one of these camping out in the African savannah among a bunch of men who definitely did not want to find pad and tampon residue around the campsite–it was weird enough for them to have a woman present to begin with. It works like this: You fold it up and stick it in like a tampon. It lasts about as long, sometimes longer. Every now and then you empty it–some bathrooms have sinks, and if they don’t, just wipe it clean with paper and off you go. If you can’t stand the idea of coming into contact with your own bodily fluids, however, this is not for you.

The P-Mate: By a Canadian company called Female Freedom, this lightly waxed recycled paper funnel allows women to pee standing up. Why would they want to? You’ve obviously never agonized with a full bladder in the woods, facing the prospect of either undoing fifteen layers of clothing and baring your ass to -25ºC , or presenting it as a all-you-can-eat buffet to clouds of eager bloodsuckers. Not to mention standing in the endless lines to the Port-a-Potty while men dash past to have a quick pee in the urinal around the back. So. If this is penis envy, so be it. The plastic version of this is sold by TravelMate.
UPDATE: I was reading a book called The Pirate Queen by Barbara Sjoholm(too personal-narrative for my taste, was hoping for more historical info) and randomly stumbled across a story about a Sami woman called Buks-Beret, who would go out fishing with the men, and had with her a “tissehornet” or hollowed out reindeer horn for peeing over the side of the boat on longer trips. So this is nothing new…

The Feeldoe: Designed for women, by a female engineer, although enterprising men may find uses for it as well. No harness needed if your PC muscles are strong enough. Happy sensations for both partners. This swiss army knife of dildoes comes in three sizes, with vibe and without, and has gotten rave reviews.

The Epi-No: Apparently this device helps you train for childbirth. In their words:

German medical innovation is reducing the risk of tearing and episiotomy (’stitches’) in…women wanting a natural vaginal birth.

That sounds like a good idea to me, don’t know if it works or not, but it seems at the very least unlikely to do harm. I’ve had some friends sneer, Women have been birthing babies for millennia without anything like this.

Maybe so, although the epi-no is apparently based on an African custom of using gourds to gently stretch the perineum just before birth, and also I find the argument of “We’ve always managed without” to be rather silly: “Humans have lived for millennia without the internet/central heating/toilet paper, so there’s no need to use those things now.” There may not be a need, but these things certainly make life a bit more comfortable. Why should birth be any different? In fact, episiotomy itself is a rather new invention, and a rather unpleasant one at that, yet many women don’t give that a second thought.

Have been looking for horror stories related to this device, accusations of fraud, danger, etc, and have found none. I’ve found various references to it on midwives’ blogs and the like, though. At worst, people have said it doesn’t help/is a waste of money. At best, women have reported greater confidence going into childbirth and maybe an easier delivery. What can I say? Technology marches on. Available in the UK here.

If any of you have products you think should be added to this list, let me know, I’ll add them to the post.