Listen to the podcast of this interview via iTunes, or just click here to listen, right-click to download.

BTW - anyone knows the release date and pricing info on the samsung sph m800 or the samsung glyde?

Affiliate senior researcher, Institute for the Future

Also of interest: Online dating.

I’m very curious to follow the project and see how would Graham manage to collect his 1st (?) million.

Yes, you got it right - Bratz dolls are to rival Barbie Girls, Webkinz, and Ty Girlz out there in expanding world of online games with the their new Be-Bratz dolls and site. As reported, these Be-bratz dolls and onlien Be-Bratz games are aimed at girls age 6 and. The site offers 1) music, 2) games, 3) fashion (think likely online paper-doll play with the online dolls, outfits, hair and accessories) and last but not least 4)safe communication and interaction opportunities for girls. Pleas enote what Be-Bratz.com is currently in BETA.

MGA Entertainment sez “Be-Bratz.com is an immersive virtual world that extends the immensely popular Bratz brand into the online space through stimulating activities, a highly personalized ‘MyPage’, a customizable 3-D room, and fun, safe communication tools.

today’s young girls are eager to go online, so this connection between doll and web is a natural, esp. given the success of past toy/web initiatives.”

USB Key - your key to the world

As with Barbie Girls, Webkinz or Ty Girlz, the only way to access the web site for play is to buy one of the branded products. For access to Be-Bratz.com, you need a special “glam” necklace that comes packaged with one of three new Bratz fashion dolls. The necklace is a USB key that unlocks access to the Be-Bratz.com world. There will be three Be-Bratz.com dolls to choose for, and they come with a pet, real working mouse, mouse pad and the necklace with the USB key. Suggested retail for the Be-Bratz dolls are $29.99 each, and it is compatible with Windows® OS 2000/XP. Later this year, support will be added for MAC and Windows Vista.

New Content Will Be Added Monthly

Once on the site, you can create your own Bratz avatar, customize your own page, and then explore the virtual world including a salon, Game Zone and more. Since this site is in BETA, much like the Barbie Girls and Ty Girlz sites, the site will be added to and MGA Entertainment (the owners and creators of Bratz dolls) intend to add new content to the site each month. Additional Be-Bratz.com product will include speakers, mini-web cam, mini-keyboard and more, all in pink.

Definitely worth checking out.

Also: Neopets videos

Ujay writes “rich has become the de facto buzzword…”. I’ve actually been pleased to see that the use of that word seems to be on the decline recently. Compared to other experiences – like the example of a dinner with friends – even the richest experiences on the web still seem pretty impoverished.

Michael makes a great point in his comment here: thinking of “rich” as basically a synonym for “enhanced marketing” feels like a very limited definition of the idea. Ujay suggests on his blog that we “re-imagine the design as a speech to the user, convincing the user this product is best for meeting specific goals…” I do think that this rhetorical approach to certain interactions is appropriate, but truly “rich” online experiences do not do this. Who wants to “make speeches to users” anymore?

There are some truly rich experiences on the web that are totally different from the ones listed above. I’m thinking of alternate-reality games like those that sprang up around List (http://www.thelostexperience.com/) or the new Nine Inch Nails album (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_Zero_(alternate_reality_game) ), or World Without Oil (http://www.worldwithoutoil.org/default.aspx).

Those experiences are actually rich and fit Ujay’s definition above really well: they appeal to reason and emotion, they involve mental effort, real human interaction, and (gasp!) offline activities. But the technology and design around these experiences are about as Web 1.0 as you can imagine, basic HTML, email lists, maybe some phone calls. Often the design around them is ugly and clunky. They rarely if ever include what Adobe/Macromedia has tried to claim as “rich media”: a lot of snazzy drop-down menus and drag-and-drop. “Rich” doesn’t mean being compelled to click on a zooming, fading UI widget.

Also: Neopets videos

Podscope published an interview with Jane McGonigal of “World Without Oil” - Can a game help us prepare for a major oil crisis? (May 21)

Gameswatch blog writes:

Just received a note from Jane McGonigal about her ARG World Without Oil, and it’s well worth re-iterating and checking out the work towards a solution on Unfiction.com, because it’s a pretty interesting project - it was mentioned in passing when GSW covered the SF Weekly article on Jane, but we didn’t really focus on it.

Jane explains that World Without Oil is “…funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and it’s the first alternate reality game to harness the collective intelligence of gamers to address a real world problem (oil dependence!)… In the first two weeks, we’ve had 1500 people from around the world (including soldiers in Iraq!) contribute original content to the game (videos, photos, web comics, blog posts, etc.) and over 35,000 people play.”

What I found particularly notable is that there’s an Unfiction messageboard thread which isn’t directly solving the problems of the ARG - but rather, talking about the issues of alternative power, with commentary like this: “Until we build more nuclear, hydroelectric, geothermal, solar, wind, wave, etc. power generation facilities, fuel-cells are not the answer to our problems.” So people are thinking about the problem - which is the entire point of this exercise.

Here’s an update on the folks who are trying to solve a faux oil shortage crisis in the nonprofit alternate reality game World Without Oil:

WORLD WITHOUT OIL: The Alternate Reality Event Is Creating A Rich, Sobering, Tangible Answer To A Timely Question: What Happens When Our Thirst for Oil Exceeds Supply

People around the world challenged to contribute viewpoints, demonstrate new
behaviors

The serious game for the public good
began April 30, ends June 1

Play it ­ before you live it
www.worldwithoutoil.org

(San Francisco‹May 16, 2007)‹In Murfreesboro, Tennessee, community cooperatives are being formed. In Philadelphia, workers share downtown apartments. In San Francisco and Chicago, abandoned cars block the streets. In Bristol, England, rationing has begun. In WORLD WITHOUT OIL, the first alternate reality game to enlist the Internet¹s collective intelligence and imagination to confront a real-world problem, the world is entering its 17th
week of an oil shock, with petroleum supply running five percent under demand, and the volunteers at the grassroots website www.worldwithoutoil.org struggle to keep track of what¹s going on.

Produced by the design team at Writerguy, WORLD WITHOUT OIL was created to
leverage the power of people connected by the Internet to imagine the actual events of an oil shortage, and then to find innovative solutions. Midway through its run, WORLD WITHOUT OIL has created a vivid and visceral picture of an oil shock by inviting anyone to contribute their views and adding them to the 1000-plus blog pages, images, phone calls and videos already linked to by www.worldwithoutoil.org.

Almost 30,000 regular visitors follow the emerging story, with more voices being added every day. A full-on ³Web 2.0² effort, WORLD WITHOUT OIL exists as a growing network of thousands of interconnected sites and content caches across the Internet, as bloggers on LiveJournal or WordPress link to channels on YouTube or podcasts on iTunes. The game has participants representing every major metro area and every region of the U.S., plus players in Canada, France, Germany, Iraq, the Netherlands, Holland, Brazil, Poland, Norway and Venezuela. One index of its reach: a Google search for the phrase ³world without oil² will return over a quarter of a million pertinent results.

Besides creating a rich, diverse and collaborative documentary of an oil shock, WORLD WITHOUT OIL is a forum for citizens to share life-changing ideas applicable to real life.

³Our game structure gives people Œpermission¹ to think seriously about an eventuality they might otherwise avoid thinking about at all,² says Creative Director Ken Eklund. As a result of the game, people are thinking about their neighbors and communities in new ways, and planting gardens, going to farmer¹s markets, using bicycles and transit, and otherwise questioning their dependence on cheap, plentiful oil.

WORLD WITHOUT OIL is being followed closely by many leaders in digital and gaming culture, who see the game as a groundbreaking foray into engaging “collective intelligence” to address a real world problem. The game’s serious outcome will be a realistic story, collaboratively written by thousands of authors, that tightly weaves real experience with imagined experience. This approach can create the sort of immersive engagement that
makes learning more effective. People of any age or Web ability can participate. In addition to visiting www.worldwithoutoil.org, participants can call 1-866-996-8762 to
leave a message “in game,” or send an in-game email to wwo@worldwithoutoil.org. To help middle and high school teachers incorporate the game into class activities, the designers have created a web page: http://www.worldwithoutoil.org/teach.

WORLD WITHOUT OIL is produced by the Writerguy team, and is a joint project of PBS’ Independent Lens and its Electric Shadows Web-original programming.