Utopia – Erotic Mystery launches on flickr for 10 Year Anniversary

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 Presents Nano Race! on facebook

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!

Social Networks, Social Media and Social Games on Dan Zen

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 😉

The Next 50 Years – Futurist Inventor Dan Zen

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