Cool title goes here

You’re in Facebook jail!

It’s not the first time that I’ve seen events like this - the Geocities shutdown was just last year, after all. Nobody cares about their data any more. Just stick it up in “the cloud” and forget it. And it’s getting worse, not better - 40% of the traffic goes to the largest 10 internet domains. That means that when you get pissed off with Facebook or MySpace, there’s nowhere else to go, even if you could get your data out in an accessible form.

It’s like the early internet and email all over again. For the most part, AOL users were limited to just emailing each other and accessing AOL approved websites. Facebook is cut from very similar cloth, ditto for Myspace. It’s possible to get your email out of GMail and back it up, but how many people do? Twitter has an API, but how many Facebook users are going to switch if they can’t play Farmville, post their cat pictures or find their friends? There’s some powerful lock-in happening. Facebook and the other incumbents aren’t going to open up their data so that you can take it elsewhere. You’re a modern day sharecropper - while you’re plowing their digital fields, Facebook are raking in the cash. Privacy? What’s that?

So what can we do about it? Movements like The Data Liberation Front and OpenSocial are a step in the right direction, but I don’t think they’re the whole solution. The best step that I can see is to try and break up the Facebook monopoly, the same way that open email won out over AOL’s watered down system. We need an open system that we can bend to our own goals, rather than Facebook’s.

It’s not even that hard - just google for “open source” “social networking” and you’ll find plenty of potential platforms, with one main problem: they’re all geared towards recreating the Facebook-style platform, only on a much smaller scale. Now you have 100 different Facebooks, from your University to the local pigeon-fanciers club.

What’s needed is for all of those small platforms to interact with each other. Why can’t I friend someone from the pigeon-fanciers club and have that link stored on my account on a different server? Oh right - Facebook wants to lock you into their service. GMail manages to send email to other servers, doesn’t it? It’s not much of a stretch from storing the name of people on the same server to people on a different one - it just takes a slightly different mindset.

In fact, I bet I can Knock One Up In An Afternoon(TM)1. And once it’s reasonably feature complete - I’m thinking along the lines of friends, blogging/pages, groups, status updates and cat picture galleries - I’ll bet it’ll have a reasonable chance of becoming popular. Here are some other ideas:

• a real security system, so that you can limit any part of your public profile
• OAuth and OpenID support
• a plugin system so that people can write their own types of updates

Of course there are other hurdles to overcome, both technical and non-technical. But isn’t it better to get started than to cry about network effects? If you’re interested in helping out, let me know - I’m planning on putting up a repository over the next couple of days. I still need to think of a cool name for the overall plan - openfriendly seems a bit lame.

1 - Particularly when I can use Django, django-registration, -profile and Pinax. I’m betting that most of it’s written for me already, and I just have to figure out how to plug it all together.

Update: I’ve put up a repository and a landing page at http://openf.oarsum.com/ to get people interested. Now that I look reasonably respectable I can get on with the actual coding.

The Weasel guide to Settlers of Catan, part three - the second half of the game, and some dirty, dirty tricks

In which I describe the late game of Settlers, some winning tactics and a few nasty tricks.

In the last installment, I covered the set up and starting game; how to get a good start and avoid throwing it away. In this final episode, we’ll look at how to get into a winning position in the middle game, and maneuver for the win in the final game.

The middle game

The critical question for most people is whether it’s safe to trade with a particular person. Obviously, you don’t want to trade with them and have them get a city out of it, while you get a timber to build a road. There are a few tactics you can employ to minimise the chance of this happening.

Read More

The Weasel guide to Settlers of Catan, part two - The First Half

In which I describe the initial game of Settlers, set up and starting strategies.

In the last installment, I gave an overview of the various Settlers strategies around, and how to play them. This time, we’re going to look a bit harder at some of the tactics that you can use to make your opponents’ lives harder. Since there are quite a few tricks, I’ve broken it up into the first half of the game (this post) and the second half (the next one).

Initial Placement

Your initial placement in the game is very important. Get a good head start on the other players and you can streak into the lead, where only a concerted counterattack can hold you back, or even slow you down.

Read More

The Weasel guide to Settlers of Catan part one - The Strategies

In which I describe the various types of Settlers strategies, and their strong and weak points.

This guide was first written in late 2002/early 2003, while I was playing Settlers semi-regularly with friends in Perth. It’s tempting to try and change it, but I haven’t played much Settlers of late, so I’m somewhat rusty and it’s hard to know which bits are right and seem wrong, or wrong but seem right. So I’ll just write it out straight - I lost the original electronic copy, but recently found a long-forgotten hard copy, so I’m retyping it. I also unfortunately lost the original weasel graphic, and have had to improvise using Google images.

Thanks go to Lee Taylor and Jason Funnell, who helped review earlier drafts and provided extra weasel tricks, way back in 2003.

Read More

“Cheating” and game design

Like a lot of people on Facebook, I tend to play silly web games. Unlike most people though, I have a very low tolerance for the mind numbing tedium involved, and tend to overanalyse things. Plus, I can program.

I’ll use Farmville as an example, but any other popular competitive web-based game can stand in it’s place.

If you take a look at the Zynga terms of service, you’ll notice the usual restrictions on doing idiot things; spamming and abusing people, sending viruses and generally being an asshat. One term bears closer examination though:

xiv) except as may be the result of standard search engine or Internet browser usage, use or launch, develop or distribute any automated system, including, without limitation, any spider, robot (or “bot”), cheat utility, scraper or offline reader that accesses the Service, or use or launch any unauthorized script or other software; …

xix) engage in cheating or any other activity deemed by Zynga to be in conflict with the spirit or intent of the Service.

In other words, no bots! At first glance rules like this are fair enough. You don’t want people scripting your game, getting lots of goodies, and having an unfair advantage. But once you look a bit closer at the game and the business models involved, things start to look a bit murkier.

Read More