Inventing for the Internet the Early Years

Over on the Inventor Blog, I have just posted on Inventing for the Internet – the Early Years. Below is a brief synopsis but please see the post for the examples.

—————–

Here is a look at inventing for the Internet written in 2005 looking back over the ten year period from 1995 up to 2005. In general, the focus was on making new use of the medium:

1. People can interact to make content not just view content
2. People can communicate with each other
3. A computer mediates to enforce rules of a game or environment
4. Production and distribution of virtual objects are free

Other inventive focus was the relation between story and game play. Sometimes a story would suggest game play but usually a relevant story was created for a given game play.

Here are the comments about inventing features for the Internet in the early years. Many of these ideas would have relevance being redone in today’s social media aware world – because we were socially aware in the past but perhaps did not quite have the platforms and sharing systems worked out.

Inventions for 2005 – 2010 will be the focus of the next posting.

Enjoy – Dan Zen – Full Post

Kirputnik Cam – Mad Inventor’s Workshop

The Kirputnik Cam was a prototype interface for Dan Zen and then launched as the first feature of the Pagoda of Games interface. It provides a bumpy ride through the Dan Zen workshop viewing imaginary representations of Dan Zen games through a Web cam mounted on the Webmaster robot, Kirputnik.

The interface features movement and zoom and also introduces random bumps along the way.

The drawings are of Dan Zen online games and gadgets as well as some offline inventions. As you roll over the features, Kirputnik describes them but eventually Kirputnik runs into some technical difficulties which you can overcome by pressing a button. Have fun.

Dan Zen – Pagoda of Games

After a few years of the Board interface, we started to get… board. It was also fairly full. We created the Pagoda of Games, a Flash interface with lots of motion, to lead people into a pagoda of games and present them with moving menus representing motion through rooms in the pagoda. This allowed the Dan Zen games to be categorized.

The Pagoda also offered a different approach to making money where if people donated to Dan Zen then they would let everyone in line into Dan Zen. So it was an appeal to help others with their donation as well as Dan Zen. This did increase donations by 100%. But unfortunately 100% of a little is still a a little ;-).

The pagoda has lasted three years and filled up nicely as expected. So it was time to redesign and along came the Dan Zen Deck of Creations.