Tapoll Gets Bigger!

Tapoll at http://tapoll.com has received over 100,000 views.  In honor, we have made it bigger!  We took the 980 pixel width of Facebook, Google+. flickr, etc. to make Tapoll easier to see and operate!

TWIST

Tapoll polls have a unique twist:

Tapoll lets you predict and vote on a poll at the same time.

The results then show the predictions which often vary quite a bit from the actual votes.  Using the graph feature, you can see over and under predictions as well as the percent of user who voted for their own prediction.  This is often in the 50% range.

SHARING

Just recently, we added share buttons for Facebook, Twitter and Google+.

VIDEO DEMO

The top left corner is redesigned and now includes a link to a video demo on YouTube.

INTERACTIVE VIDEO AD

On the right hand side you will see a video ad for the Touchy game at http://touchy.mobi.  It shows up every once in a while and relates the ad to the keywords of the poll you are viewing.

INSPIRATION!

Tapoll also shows related news and social links in the inspiration column at right.  If you press the TAPOLL button next to any of these, it will start you off creating a poll with this link, picture, video, etc. cited as a reference.  You can also make a poll based on another Tapoll poll as well using the TAPOLL button under any poll.

Please come on by and share a few polls on your social sites!

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Inventing for the Internet Part 2

Just posted Inventing for the Web Part 2 (2006-2010) on the Inventor Blog as a continuation to the first part (1995-2015).

Here we look at inventing for a medium (and we define a medium) and see some examples. Topics include:  chat, facebook, social media, mixes and mashes, Tapoll, Focuso, comment activism, parties, aliens, groups, Flash, feathers, interfaces, Snipisode, story telling, playing Touchy, mobile, iphone apps, Nodism, hierarchies, the environment, mediums, and McLuhan. Come on by and have a read!

– 10 –

Google Buzz 2010 – Hip Cats Buzz 2000

Google has just announced Google Buzz which lets you post and share status lines from your g-mail.  Buzz is a good word – Dan Zen sure did not invent buzz – it being around at least from the early 70s and more likely a 60s maybe even 50s term.  But in celebrating the hip word for what’s happening, Dan Zen did use Buzz in Hipcats the social media site from 2000 pictured above.

The Buzz section let you post on the following topics which is a little different than a plain status post:

• Media Reviews (Books, Video, Music)
• Cool Websites
• A Happening
• A Protest
• A Zen Koan
• A Radical Idea
• A First Time
• A Translation (themes to translate words in Hip Cats)

Never really did catch on – but the rest of the site had its moments 😉

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 😉