Día: 20 julio, 2010

Breaking a World Record for Gaming

People are constantly breaking world records. This month alone, a record was broken for the longest tennis match, a mind-blowing 11 hours and 5 minutes. The record was also recently broken for the world’s largest salad, weighing in at 29,579 pounds. (No word on the salad dressing.)

But another, nerdier record, was shattered this week when six Dutch video game players went on a 50-hour, or 3,000 minutes, gaming marathon to break the Guinness World Record for longest period of time playing a video game.

The previous record was set last year by Chirantan Patnaik, an Indian gamer who played for 40 hours and 20 minutes.


By NICK BILTON

Gamers World Record
Vogels

People are constantly breaking world records. This month alone, a record was broken for the longest tennis match, a mind-blowing 11 hours and 5 minutes. The record was also recently broken for the world’s largest salad, weighing in at 29,579 pounds. (No word on the salad dressing.)

But another, nerdier record, was shattered this week when six Dutch video game players went on a 50-hour, or 3,000 minutes, gaming marathon to break the Guinness World Record for longest period of time playing a video game.

The previous record was set last year by Chirantan Patnaik, an Indian gamer who played for 40 hours and 20 minutes. Leer más “Breaking a World Record for Gaming”

Dime cómo eres y te diré cómo trabajar en equipo

El trabajo en equipo es fundamental para obtener resultados en cualquier organización. ¿Cómo deben relacionarse las aptitudes y actitudes de los miembros? ¿Cuál es la mejor dinámica de trabajo? En definitiva, ¿cómo obtener resultados?
De IESE Insight para MATERIABIZ

“Más vale solo que mal acompañado”, dice el refrán. ¿Quién no ha experimentado la frustración de creerse en un equipo y encontrarse solo ante el desempeño de una tarea que requiere de más cabezas y manos?

O al contrario, ¿quién no ha experimentado la frustración de necesitar mayor autonomía en el desempeño de su tarea dentro del equipo y encontrarse con que todos desean opinar y entrometerse en su realización?

Aunque todos creemos saber en qué consiste el trabajo en equipo, la realidad es que muchas veces éste se convierte en una “suma de individualidades que trabajan en compañía”, o en un “patio de colegio”.


El trabajo en equipo es fundamental para obtener resultados en cualquier organización. ¿Cómo deben relacionarse las aptitudes y actitudes de los miembros? ¿Cuál es la mejor dinámica de trabajo? En definitiva, ¿cómo obtener resultados?
De IESE Insight para MATERIABIZ

“Más vale solo que mal acompañado”, dice el refrán. ¿Quién no ha experimentado la frustración de creerse en un equipo y encontrarse solo ante el desempeño de una tarea que requiere de más cabezas y manos?

O al contrario, ¿quién no ha experimentado la frustración de necesitar mayor autonomía en el desempeño de su tarea dentro del equipo y encontrarse con que todos desean opinar y entrometerse en su realización?

Aunque todos creemos saber en qué consiste el trabajo en equipo, la realidad es que muchas veces éste se convierte en una “suma de individualidades que trabajan en compañía”, o en un “patio de colegio”. Leer más “Dime cómo eres y te diré cómo trabajar en equipo”

TEDGLOBAL / WHERE IDEAS MEET & MATE

Fresh from Oxford, Contagious’ co-founder Paul Kemp-Robertson offers his perspective on the world’s most intense conference experience…

It’s not always easy being an Adland native in the crowd at a TED conference. If you haven’t saved the world or don’t own enough liquid capital to die trying, then the whoops that greeted this jibe from economist Tim Jackson can make you feel like a dumb jock who’s accidentally stumbled into the Chess Club Christmas party.

But maybe that’s just my insecurity and the nagging suspicion that my soul has been stress-fractured thanks to 20 years of commentating on the mechanics of mass consumption. When the biggest task you’ve recently completed is a speech on ‘advertising as a conversation’ and you’re suddenly surrounded by AIDS activists, women’s rights campaigners, MIT brainboxes and people who’ve spent their retirement fund building an eco-school in the middle of a jungle, it’s hard not to feel just a teeny bit marginalised and shallow. But then, I guess, such abrupt introspection is actually part of the value of TED. The compressed intellectual energy of the 18-minute speeches certainly dragged this editor out of his corporate cocoon and berated and beguiled him in equal measure.


‘We spend money we don’t have on things we don’t need to impress people we don’t care about.’

TED_01.jpg

Fresh from Oxford, Contagious’ co-founder Paul Kemp-Robertson offers his perspective on the world’s most intense conference experience…

It’s not always easy being an Adland native in the crowd at a TED conference. If you haven’t saved the world or don’t own enough liquid capital to die trying, then the whoops that greeted this jibe from economist Tim Jackson can make you feel like a dumb jock who’s accidentally stumbled into the Chess Club Christmas party.

But maybe that’s just my insecurity and the nagging suspicion that my soul has been stress-fractured thanks to 20 years of commentating on the mechanics of mass consumption. When the biggest task you’ve recently completed is a speech on ‘advertising as a conversation’ and you’re suddenly surrounded by AIDS activists, women’s rights campaigners, MIT brainboxes and people who’ve spent their retirement fund building an eco-school in the middle of a jungle, it’s hard not to feel just a teeny bit marginalised and shallow. But then, I guess, such abrupt introspection is actually part of the value of TED. The compressed intellectual energy of the 18-minute speeches certainly dragged this editor out of his corporate cocoon and berated and beguiled him in equal measure. Leer más “TEDGLOBAL / WHERE IDEAS MEET & MATE”

Billboards learning to recognize the age and gender of passersby

Another sci-fi trope has come to life, unsurprisingly, in Japan, where digital billboards now discern the gender and age of passersby and adapt their messages accordingly. According to a spokesman for this project, “The camera can distinguish a person’s sex and approximate age … if he or she looks at the screen for a second.” The plan is to progress to interactive advertisements if this project catches on. Now we’re moving into sci-fi stuff I’ve written, which is really scary. Connections to Spielberg’s Minority Report are being made, and not kindly, but honestly, Facebook has been tailoring its ads in a similar way for a while now.


By David Kiefaber

Minority-ReportAnother sci-fi trope has come to life, unsurprisingly, in Japan, where digital billboards now discern the gender and age of passersby and adapt their messages accordingly. According to a spokesman for this project, “The camera can distinguish a person’s sex and approximate age … if he or she looks at the screen for a second.” The plan is to progress to interactive advertisements if this project catches on. Now we’re moving into sci-fi stuff I’ve written, which is really scary. Connections to Spielberg’s Minority Report are being made, and not kindly, but honestly, Facebook has been tailoring its ads in a similar way for a while now. Leer más “Billboards learning to recognize the age and gender of passersby”

The Recipe for Clouds Goes Open-Source

Ah, the cloud. It sounds like such a wonderful, fluffy place where computers hum away all day long and information roams free.

Until it doesn’t.

One of the big worries in the universe of cloud computing has centered on just how free a company’s information really is. If, for example, you start a big project on Amazon.com, can you move all the associated development work and data to a rival cloud computing service with relative ease should a cheaper, better opportunity arise?

Rackspace, one of the largest Web site hosting companies and a cloud computing service provider, has bet that big customers will prefer an open, free roaming cloud to one with a proprietary wrapper. On Monday, the company heralded the start of OpenStack, an open-source take on the underlying technology behind cloud computing services.


Diagram showing overview of cloud computing in...
Image via Wikipedia

By ASHLEE VANCE

Ah, the cloud. It sounds like such a wonderful, fluffy place where computers hum away all day long and information roams free.

Until it doesn’t.

One of the big worries in the universe of cloud computing has centered on just how free a company’s information really is. If, for example, you start a big project on Amazon.com, can you move all the associated development work and data to a rival cloud computing service with relative ease should a cheaper, better opportunity arise?

Rackspace, one of the largest Web site hosting companies and a cloud computing service provider, has bet that big customers will prefer an open, free roaming cloud to one with a proprietary wrapper. On Monday, the company heralded the start of OpenStack, an open-source take on the underlying technology behind cloud computing services. Leer más “The Recipe for Clouds Goes Open-Source”

Role playing, ¿qué es y para qué sirve este método de capacitación?

Los juegos de rol se volvieron inmensamente populares en la década del ’70, de la mano del célebre Calabozos y Dragones. Pero estos juegos no sólo entretienen. También pueden ser una poderosa herramienta de aprendizaje…

Por Alfredo Blousson

A finales de la década del ’60, en los Estados Unidos comenzó a desarrollarse un nuevo concepto de juego donde los participantes encarnaban el papel de distintos personajes.

Sin reglas demasiado estrictas, el juego se basaba en la interpretación, el diálogo, la imaginación y la aventura.

Este concepto evolucionó hasta plasmarse, en la década del ’70, en lo que conocemos como “juegos de rol” (Role Playing Games o, más sencillamente, Role Playing), que tuvo a su máximo exponente en el célebre Calabozos y Dragones.


zona de juegos
Image by wakalani via Flickr
Los juegos de rol se volvieron inmensamente populares en la década del ’70, de la mano del célebre Calabozos y Dragones. Pero estos juegos no sólo entretienen. También pueden ser una poderosa herramienta de aprendizaje…

Por Alfredo Blousson

A finales de la década del ’60, en los Estados Unidos comenzó a desarrollarse un nuevo concepto de juego donde los participantes encarnaban el papel de distintos personajes.

Sin reglas demasiado estrictas, el juego se basaba en la interpretación, el diálogo, la imaginación y la aventura.

Este concepto evolucionó hasta plasmarse, en la década del ’70, en lo que conocemos como “juegos de rol” (Role Playing Games o, más sencillamente, Role Playing), que tuvo a su máximo exponente en el célebre Calabozos y Dragones.

Aquí, cada jugador interpretaba a un personaje ficticio definido por ciertas características particulares. Leer más “Role playing, ¿qué es y para qué sirve este método de capacitación?”

5 Ways Tumblr is Tapping Global Bloggers

New language themes

As of this week, Tumblr is offering its themes in five languages: English, German, Japanese, French, and Italian. The 3.1 million global page visitors that flock to the site each day will likely appreciate this development — Tumblr makes no small deal out of all its featured and premium designs for blog pages. The site even has compiled these designs into a “theme garden” where you can choose from almost 500 templates. The “Bus Full of Hippies” theme, for example, has drawn 46,560 users. Theme designers can also translate their text strings into any of these five languages on the site.


Posted by Katy Gathright

tumblr-logo

Multimedia blogging platform Tumblr became a Top 50 Website for U.S. traffic this month, but the site’s most exciting growth is happening on the global stage. The proof? Tumblr has 6.25 million users, half of which are international. Here are five things Tumblr is doing to keep up its reputation around the world.

New language themes

As of this week, Tumblr is offering its themes in five languages: English, German, Japanese, French, and Italian. The 3.1 million global page visitors that flock to the site each day will likely appreciate this development — Tumblr makes no small deal out of all its featured and premium designs for blog pages. The site even has compiled these designs into a “theme garden” where you can choose from almost 500 templates. The “Bus Full of Hippies” theme, for example, has drawn 46,560 users. Theme designers can also translate their text strings into any of these five languages on the site. Leer más “5 Ways Tumblr is Tapping Global Bloggers”