Agency Zen has launched its second facebook application.  Stick Aliens lets you use the Oracle to determine your alien tendencies.  To use the Oracle just drag the eye or any of its icons around and then the Oracle will provide a Stick Alien vision on your profile page.

Stick Aliens on facebook: http://apps.facebook.com/stickaliens/

The plan is also to launch Stick Aliens through Open Social and one day enhance the feature to solve mystical puzzles based on which aliens your friends have.  Enjoy!

Here is a post from ZenVlog that summarizes various interests in guroovity. Enjoy!

Click to View Vlog
or see: Part 1 | Part 2

The movie The Love Guru is coming out soon - looking forward to it!

All gurus of love psychedelic dance as one of their forms of exercise.

Dan Zen dances to The Garden - a social environmental Indian / Arabian / Persian sounding a Capella yodeling psychedelic song! Please see the video on YouTube. Or download the song from SoundClick. Or visit the Dan Zen page on facebook.

Dan Zen wears his San Francisco Groovy Guru robe. The one he wore for the International Groovy Day poster. Should we choose a day for that? Or should it just be any day? Oh… also check out the Love Mash - the robe shows up there too and it would be cool if some more people made Zen Mixes and maybe someone will make us a love mash!

Dan Zen also “starred” in a movie called the Guru Monster Movie. Some of that can be seen pictorially on Thee Gnostics mySpace page - more to come as TheeGnostics.com site happens.

In 1996, Dan Zen traveled to San Francisco and wore a guru robe - quite a beautiful traditional green robe with yellow embroidery. He was at the Macromedia Conference where Shockwave was unveiled. A flower lei held his festival pass. An Indian guard, after much deliberation, came up smiling and said, “You know… in my country… the women wear those robes”.

Get dancing people! Loosen up - no steps to follow - you can’t go wrong and it feels great - puts you in touch with your body and nobody has to know! Unless… you start vlogging it with Zen Mix!

Dan Zen is posting the images from Utopia - the erotic mystery on flickr to mark the 10 Year Anniversary of the mystery that had thousands of people lined up for the $500 prize.

Visit the flickr Utopia Set

Visit the flickr Utopia Slideshow

(please view on slow and set options to not “embiggen”)

Promotional images are currently posted and starting Friday May 23, 2008 the mystery pictures will be posted one day at a time (12 pictures per day - 6 days).

Have fun! Please visit often and tell friends.

~ 08 ~

Group Games is a new concept that in a sense hacks the facebook groups to create games where the leaders are those with the most group members or pictures or wall posts of a certain type, etc. Here is a link to the Group Game group on facebook. Note, that anybody can make a group game and it does not require coding. If you are interested, please consider adding it to the group game page and be part of the collective.

Nano Race! Is the first group game where you join one of the groups that are working towards being shrunk to nano size to gain great speed, strength and riches. How exactly that works is up to the players to role play. The group with the most explorers is winning the race!

The game hearkens back to early Dan Zen social networking games of Blimp Race and Shrink Ray. Please see the post on Social Networking, Social Media and Social Gaming.

The groups are pictured below but do not link through to the game. It is best if you join the overall game group for nano race by clicking the Join Group link at right. Then pick one of the groups by clicking the link to the group and then JOINING the colony group. Then invite friends and write on walls to role play the game.

1. Join the nano race group
2. Join the colony group of your choice
3. Invite friends to join your colony group
4. Write on the walls to role play the game

Have fun!

Here is the Dan Zen board interface from 1998 (Read about it on this Blog). All this talk of Social Networks reminded me of my Social link up to left. This was really my blog announcing the latest things on Dan Zen through one of my “barnacles” Eg Orna. The barnacles were all anagrams of their colors.

More to the point is that just this corner of the site shows five social networks and games - they are still active and some started in 1996. To date there are a couple dozen social games on Dan Zen averaging about two per year over twelve years. They can be seen thought the Social Category at the right of the blog - please note there are two pages with the second page being accessible from the top.

The five social games shown in the corner are (Moustache Mysteries is a game for individuals):

1. Spirogram where you send and receive encoded messages.
2. Salamander where you go into a park with a bunch of others and try and find a spy called the Salamander based on clues.
3. Opartica where you can share portfolios or individual op art creations.
4. Hip Cats, an all out social network with accounts; ratings of other hip cats; dating; friending; indication of favorite movies, books, and music; top ten hip cats newsletter; a buzz section with user created music, book, movie and Website reviews, happenings, protests, koans, radical ideas, first times and translations that turned your words into certain hip moods like psychedelic, beatnik, goth, urban and surf; messages; ratings on products; tie-ins to affiliate Amazon purchasing; templated scenes for organizations to host a Hip Cats site complete with stats, word filtering, self modifying drop outs; all programmed in DHTML within months from its launch.
5. Password Paradox is another self modifying social game where the passwords you guess right are actually the passwords that others have already guessed.

Another thing I noticed recently was the Loves You tag on the top of the flickr logo (replacing the alpha or beta that once was there helping bring in the age of Web 2.0 gizmos). Dan Zen used to put We Love You at the bottom of a number of pages often after introduction and help pages. Examples are below. You can still find them on Hip Cats and other pages. Of course we are all welcome to love! It was really nice of flickr

1980’s

Personal Computers | Bank Machines | Networks | MiniVans | CD ROM | e-mail | KB

1990’s

Internet | Online Shopping | Search Engines | Portals | Pictures | SUV | DVD | Webmail | MB

2000’s

Environment | Social Networking | Mobile | Broadband | Hybrid Cars | video | Thumb Drive | Messenger | GB

2010’s

Cradle To Cradle | Electric Cars | Oled Walls | Digital Paper | Micropayments | Nanotech | Solar Panels Everywhere | TB

2020’s

Mediated Reality | Genetic Tech | No New Gasoline Cars | Oled Everywhere | Room Junkies

2030’s

Public Space Travel | Molecular Computing | Implants To Extend Life 10 Years | Holograms Everywhere

2040’s

World Council | No-waste Nuclear Batteries | Artificial Intelligence Passes Turing Test | Communication Implants

2050’s

World Currency | Space Resorts and Colonies | Life Extended By 40 Years | Nano Plague | Mind Mapping and Storage

Dan Zen would like to encourage people to blog and perhaps more generally to create content.

META VIEW
A blog for Dan Zen is a meta view of content. The games, gadgets, tools, art, etc. content exist and the blog is an organized way to provide information about the content. This frees the content from verbosity - which is handy when your features have embedded or hidden interface. Blogs help features remain simple. If you have a product or service site - then keep it simple with just the facts. Then blog about your product or service in a free and more relaxed voice.

NEWSLETTER / PRESS RELEASE
Blogs with their RSS or Atom feeds are the new newsletter - the new press release. Subscription is standardized across many free readers including traditional e-mail clients. Nothing is lacking in infrastructure - if you do not have a reader then please find one or set one up - google reader, Thunderbird (down there in the news and blogs folder) and subscribe to this blog via the entries feed link at the bottom - and join the millions who get their news and updates this way and will not go back.

SEARCH ENGINE RESULTS
Blogs have excellent search engine placement due primarily to their title being placed in their URL as well as their network of “Blogrolls” or links. Dan Zen has become the number one psychedelic dancer in the world (according to Google) through blog placements.

PORTABLE AND POSTABLE
Blog posts are portable. For example, the content of the Dan Zen facebook page comes from blogs. Post once, display many places. And writers or editors can create and update their own posts without delay because blogs have easy content management systems built for anyone. You do not need a Web team for maintenance and your site is less likely to get stale. Oh… they are free even for many gigs of space.

DAN ZEN BLOGS
Here are some sample Dan Zen blogs. Posts are occasionally cross-posted to the main Dan Zen blog (this blog) making the Dan Zen blog quite diverse in subject matter. Of course content helps and being a mad inventor, there is no shortage of content. Dan Zen has been blogging since 1996 with his now defunct Social Page and Telepathy Newsletter to 25,000.

ZEN VLOG
http://zenvlog.com
A video log using the vlogging tool Zen Mix to mix video on picture or event interactive works. Content includes Phsychedelic Dancing as Exercise, Environmental messages, A nano antigravity sci-fi mystery called META told by ages 5 to 100 and many more.

INVENTING WITH DAN ZEN
http://inventor.wordpress.com
Discussions and tips on inventing including connections with the philosophy of Nodism, experiences from being a patent agent, video of offline inventions, unjunk movement, environmental inventing by distribution of ideas as opposed to physical product.

INTERACTIVE MULTIMEDIA
http://interactivemultimedia.wordpress.com
The Blog for Sheridan Interactive Multimedia one year post grad program in Oakville Canada including many innovative and current code samples for creating interactive video, video motion capture, frequency beat analysis, and a variety of event information, links to countless multimedia pioneering blogs and more.

BANVAN
http://banvan.blogspot.com
A new environmental blog encouraging reconsideration when purchasing minivans, SUVs and trucks. Includes a spottings chart of license plate numbers and encourages others to enter their spottings.

FOCUSO
http://www.focuso.org
Out of focus photography for artistic intention. This blog shows examples and discusses the reasons why out of focus work can be included as a part of so many features as background.

NODISM
http://www.nodism.org
A blog on the philosophy of Nodism. Nodism takes our learning in Object Oriented Programming as the way we model life in gaming and simulations and XML as the way in which we share and represent data and applies these two hierarchical systems to the philosophical value of viewing life as a single hierarchy leading to node zero. The hopes are the most logical people in the world will see this as a philosophy they can explore and use to reach further understanding.

WANNAGET
http://wannaget.blogspot.com/
Experimenting with Blog games where people come back every hour to get more objects. WannaGet is set up for Harry Potter, James Bond and Narnia but anyone can start a WannaGet game and put it on their blog.

TAPOLL TECHNOLOGY BLOG
http://tapoll.blogspot.com/
Tapoll is a poll where you get to predict the results as you vote. This blog needs some loving and if you want to be a technology blog editor, please let us know. The blog discusses and allows for discussion about technology issues and centers around a tapoll poll. Tapoll makes use of Chikita ads and revenue sharing is hopeful!

FALCON
http://falconflash.wordpress.com/
A blog to help designers connect between Flash and Database. A Falcon class is provided that turns 15 complex lines of code into 3 simple lines of code. Uptake from search engine traffic has been wonderful and it feels good to be helpful.

SHERIDAN BLOGGERS
http://sheridanbloggers.wordpress.com
A new blog to encourage all students, grads, faculty and staff from Sheridan College - the second largest art school in North America to aggregate their feeds to show up on Sheridan Bloggers. It has just been out a few weeks and participation is positive, Talks are underway to encourage teachers to blog for their programs and get students blogging as well. There is a facebook presence which reads in the RSS feeds as well.

One area of concern is comments. It has been hard to get comments despite open invitations. Perhaps Dan Zen needs to get out more and comment on other people’s blogs - too busy creating ;-). Dan Zen created comment right at http://www.commentright.org to try and remedy the comment issue - the results can be seen on Zen Vlog but we shall persevere.

Perhaps the BlogPreneur contest below will bring more people or people who are used to commenting. That would be very rewarding.

In 250 words, tell entrepreneurs at the conference how you were able to successfully get your blog up and running…

Blogs allow you to easily publish to many people. People can subscribe to your blog to be notified of updates like a news letter or press release. Blog pages also have excellent search engine placement due to the way their title appears in their URL and the linking power of blog networks.

Blogs come with a very easy content management system. You can publish in one place and distribute to many places such as a facebook page without extra work. You do not need a Web team to maintain your site so it is easy to keep the site fresh. Blogs are free even for gigabytes of content.

Dan Zen is a mad inventor with hundreds of inventions ranging from food to out of focus photography, mysteries to meta philosophies. Many Dan Zen inventions are Web games, gadgets and communities found at http://www.danzen.com. This is the Dan Zen content.

A blog for Dan Zen is a meta view of content. The content exists and the blog is an organized way to provide information about the content. This frees the content from verbosity - which is handy when your features have embedded or hidden interface. Blogs help features remain simple. If you have a product or service site - keep it simple with just the facts. Then blog about your product or service in a free and more relaxed voice.

Make a blog with your first post in ten minutes at WordPress or Blogger like I did at http://danzen.wordpress.com.

Tapoll is the site where you get to predict a poll as you vote. Now, you can decide on which polls go on the front page. That is, until someone else decides on a different poll.

Visit Tapoll the Predict-a-poll site

To view polls you can choose a poll topic at left, choose the latest 20 polls, or see all topics. Once you choose a poll, you can predict and vote on the poll. Just above the poll is a link that says front. Click this link and confirm that you want the poll on the front and it will be placed on the front page of Tapoll.

See the YouTube video showing a brief demonstration of Tapoll

Have fun!

There is a site that tiles pictures from Flickr and here is a link to the latest Dan Zen shots arranged according to “Interestingness” determined by Flickr . There are many pages so please relax for a few minutes and have a browse. You can click on any picture and then choose the all size icon at the top of the Flickr page to go to larger versions of the picture.

flickr

Flickr is the photo sharing site owned by Yahoo. It is an amazing site of countless photographs organized by tags and put in groups by photographers (professional and not) from around the world. Here is the Dan Zen site on Flickr.

flickr VIDEO

Recently, flickr has added the feature to post video. This is something that I perhaps wanted 3 years ago but now with YouTube and Blip.tv and all these other video sites I think it is perhaps an unfortunate move by Yahoo. flickr was pure and in its purity had strength. It does indeed have an amazing organizing system and I can see the value of locating video in the same way we locate pictures. And there has been a bit of a lull on flickr so perhaps it will help but my intuition is that it is unnecessary and perhaps unwanted as the Flickr “We say NO to Videos on flickr” petition group below indicates.

http://www.flickr.com/groups/no_video_on_flickr/

Currently with 21,000 members.

Just making sure that anyone searching online for interactive op art tool will find Opartica at http://www.opartica.com. Opartica is a fully interactive optical art maker that lets you spin and overlap shapes like rays, concentric circles and squares, zig zags, and spirals. You can change color and centers. It was built some time ago as a first Flash feature in 2001.  Still works and gets lots of hits etc.