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Clicking around on the MUSE award winners, I found some of these games from McCord Museum interesting, including Watch the Birdie.

Are the Canadians particularly known for their museums or their internets or something?

I also followed Eduweb to Pestworld for Kids which is almost as scary as it sounds.

I was lucky enough to be able to attend the AAM annual conference recently (thanks, Nat!) and I wanted to blog some of the interesting websites I saw for kids, and, in fact DID but I was an idiot and started it as a text file without saving and I'm having battery issues and lost it all. So if this entry is a little lack-luster, blame the fact that I'm writing it twice. The version I lost was totally awesome.

Anyway, in spite of all the talk about "Web 2.0" which I find kind of silly and so, well, late 2006 or something, I did see and hear about some interesting projects, and I definitely learned a lot. It's funny because at the time, I wasn't all that impressed -- I think this is partly a hangover from being in graduate school where, despite myself, I was more impressed by things that were hard to understand initially than things that were immediately transparent. Whereas in this case, I wasn't all that impressed initially but then the more I think about things, the more interesting I find them.

Anyhoo --

For the parents looking for something with more educational content than Star Wars Legos, it might be worth noting that museums are eager to get your online business for their own nefarious educational purposes. Also, I'd love to know what kids find interesting. Katy made a good point that we should set up a focus group of kids for any games and stuff we develop.

Learning at Whitney has a dealio where kids can go and "curate" their own online exhibits, and it's interesting looking at what other groups have put together. I'm not sure how inspired I'd be to do it if I was just a kid on my own, but for a classroom project, it has some potential, especially if you're actually going to visit the Whitney.

The Living Museum (part of the Museum of Jewish Heritage) makes it more Web 2.0-esque by allowing kids to create their own online exhibits using material culture from their own lives. I thought this was neat and was extra happy to see that one of the three exhibits was from a Portland classroom! Note that I don't think the interface is the greatest -- it's kind of unintuitive to me that you click around the bottom of the page to view the gallery. Like a lot of sites, users are missing from the equation.

Someone from the Getty talked about Whyville, and in particular how some museums have partnered with Whyville to create a museum neighborhood in Whyville, which is apparently a very popular site with the kids. So the Getty has a lounge in Whyville where you can go and play Art Set -- which is actually a pretty great idea, I think, for a game. (Set, if you don't know, is a game with a very simple premise but can be challenging and is, I think, fun.) Anyway, you have to register to use Whyville, but it seems like it might be worth it for some kids. I thought the Set game was a lot more interesting than the games they have on their regular education website, but some younger kids might like those games, too, and at least they'd be looking at art.

The guy from Eduweb gave two presentations. He was interesting and made some points that some people may find really obvious, but were new to me about games in which the mode of play itself helps model the learning and games that don't -- hangman is in the latter category, and I guess role-playing games are in the former. I'm not explaining very well. Hopefully you already knew this point so my explaining coherently isn't important.

Kids might want to check out Eduweb's games and adventures. If you do, and you enjoy any of them in particular, let me know!

By far the best project he spoke about was on Wolfquest -- I can't wait to play!! (and be sure to check out the awesome and hilarious preview. (I smell elk!!!) And the developor's blog is interesting, too (and very popular) -- great if you want to read about why, "As exciting as a wolf MMO might be, that’s just not what we’re up to with this game."

Romans in Sussex was described by one presenter as a "great website" and maybe it is, but it seems awfully Web 1.0.

Some of these award-winning games might be interesting to some kids. The mapping game looks cool, and I met the folks from Bean Creative (briefly, over drinks and dessert next to a ginormous submarine) and they seemed like nice people.

OK -- here's some stuff not for the kids, but I found it interesting.

Steve Museum is the art museum social tagging project, intended to reduce the gap between curator language and regular old human language. Initially I thought this wouldn't have much application for history projects, because historical records are less subjective (if you tag something as "Oregon" when in fact it's based in Maine, you're not really helping anyone). But the more I think of it, the more I think it might make sense in some settings.

Collection X is a Canadian project that, like the Living Museum project for kids, allows people to upload their own content and stuff. Pretty cool, I guess, although I'm not completely sure what makes it different from something like flickr.

The Center for Open and Sustainable Learning has some tools that are, quite frankly, beyond me. Maybe they are cool? I don't know.

I do think the Open Courseware Finder seems like a good idea. You know, that reminds me: the very first webpage I ever made was to post my preliminary exam reading list -- I was so damn proud of that thing. I wonder if they have an "open prelims list" finder? Well, if not, they should!

The Eduweb guy talked about using a program called Unity 3-D to develop games -- and I think I mis-quoted the price of the software to someone earlier -- it turns out it was $10,000 to create a simple game total, but only $1,500 for the software itself. I really think it would be awesome to be able to design 3-D games at the drop of a hat!

My colleagues may want to check out Musematic blog of the Museum Computer Network and AAM's Media & Technology Committee.

And I think I'll be clicking around on the MUSE award winning websites.

Or maybe you'd like to listen to some museum podcasts?

OK -- I'm tired, and this is getting to be less of a blog entry and more of a run-on note type up, which is okay, I suppose, but not very readable, is it?

I'll post more if I find more in my notes.

A service where someone checks out library books for you and then returns them on time.

I love the idea of big piles of changing constantly free books around my house, but every time I check something out I invariably end up with at least a $20 fine. It's just not worth it. Also, I have no real taste, so I never know what to get. I suck. I never used to have this problem.

I know some people who are horrified when other people don't really have directed, specific tastes in things like books and music, and I don't really have a response or an excuse. I just don't have passionate feelings that drive me to seek things out. I mean, I have things that I like and don't like, but just not that much. I don't know that I'm doing anything better with that part of my brain -- I hope so, but I suspect it's actually replaying old episodes of Perry Mason.

Anyway, I know that there are plenty of people out there who are strongly passionate, up-to-date, and opinionated about things, and they should get busy making money off of lame people like me, not just giving it away, like Chris does with his media.

It's similar to my idea for more personalized TiVo programming services, and identical to my suggestion that library books are a great gift idea.

You'd interview the client, see what their interests were, or if they had some other motive (like looking smart in a particular area when their friends visited).

I think Erin would be great at this. Maybe I'll see if I can give her $5 to rent some books for me next time she goes to the library.

Ever since I made my first dime from google AdSense, I've been clicking compulsively on the AdSense report page to see the pennies add up in hopeful anticipation of the day they actually pay me (you need to make $100 before they will cut a check). It's pretty addictive, like I imagine the lottery or something is, except with clicking instead of scratching (though I do some scratching, too, but that's a matter of hygiene).

Anyway, I know google likes to keep things simple, but I think they're missing an real opportunity by not running ads on the AdSense report page itself, like, "get rich while working from home," and what not. Who is more desperate and impressionable than someone looking to make money from their blog?

Same thing with google analytics pages. It could be an interesting feedback loop -- you post on a subject, you get traffic because of that subject, then you're looking at your report which lists your traffic and then links to products having to do with that traffic. And because it's all in the context of your own content. you'll be extra interested. I find myself extra interested in the ads on my blog, for instance, although I try not to click on them because I think that's cheating, but there are so many fascinating products -- like Virgin Mary statues! And so many interesting wedding services and concepts!

People love personalized things. Especially advertising. It makes them feel special.

I enjoy TiVo, it's true. But it could be better. I've been very disappointed in TiVo's suggestions, the TV shows it is supposed to spontaneously record based on your stated preference and viewing habits. It has never done anything so specific and interesting as to conclude I am gay -- actually, the only thing I can really remember it recommending is Rosanne and the Simpsons. Part of the problem, to be honest, is because I insist on keeping an entire season of Survivor on the hard drive at a time which, even though I have a super-duper whopper hard drive that Chris installed, still leaves not a lot of room for suggestions. But the other problem is that the programming just doesn't seem that creative.

My first idea was for an ultra personalized TiVo recording service. It would work like this: You'd hire a professional TiVo programmer (some kind of smart nerd who consumed a lot of media, but ideally you'd have a stable of different kinds of experts to consult with -- like the little old lady, or the sports fan, etc.) to talk to you about your viewing preferences for a half hour or so on the phone, they'd look at your existing playlist, and then, using your online interface, they would add things based not only on what you liked to watch, but what is actually good and interesting (I know, I know -- there's not thatmuch to choose from). Chris actually offered to do this for me, after my hinting around about it, and I think that would be great. But then after a conversation with Arne, it seems like you could simplify this and just offer downloadable playlists based on different, real personalities. You might chose from the following:

• celebrity playlists, like Madonna, Jon Stewart, Oprah, Dave Barry, etc.
• playlists created by your favorite "faith" leader, like that Dobbs guy, or maybe the Pope!
• playlists created by random individuals, like "Julie, a 12 year old girl who loves horses and lives in Detroit" or "Brian, a 23 year old aspiring rap-star who works at an auto parts store." You'd give away TiVos to people who created the most interesting playlists as part of a competition.

Anyway, you get the idea. At the very least, they should make it easier to have a "friends" function like Netflix -- which, incidentally, kind of sucks because you can't see what your friends-friends are watching. I really don't understand why they don't do more stuff combining the Friendster-type stuff with media consumption -- or at least, do it a little more effectively and deeply.

I had a realization this morning while listening to NPR while half asleep that blogs and the "mainstream" media suffer from the same problem of constantly feeding off one another -- because I was half asleep, it probably seemed more profound that it really is, but I'll blog it anyway.

I've complained a lot in the past about how NPR the NYT and the New Yorker et al. all cover the same damn stories -- not just the big stories (which makes sense, after all -- I'm not upset that Abu Ghraib got coverage), but with the cute little human interest stories it's boring and redundant and lazy. Of course, I'm not the first to observe this and the problem extends to all media. Anyway, my half asleep revelation was that there's a fine line between a meme and lazy reporting. Since I've been reading a lot more of the mainstream, high visibility websites and blogs lately I realized that they all tend to cover the same things and it's kind of ... well, boring. Especially when the blog or site doesn't itself add much in the way of content or commentary while linking. How many times do I need to see a link to a wooden laptop? I mean, it's cool, but really.

I think that this redundancy is a legitimate part of the point of linking and how the web functions -- that if you don't have a certain weight of interest giving a website google visibility then you won't be able to find the trees for the forest. But if everyone continually covers the same stories, media consolidation or media democracy doesn't matter -- you get the same result.

I may be wrong on this philosphicaly or moral or what have you; I'm just thinking. It's probably one of those slippery slope (I almost wrote "slippery slop" which would be more appropriate!) things -- a little bit of repetition/memery is good, too much is lazy. Actually, I think it's more like the mapmaker's dillemma, but I can't seem to find a link for that (which is weird ... maybe I'm calling it the wrong thing?). It's my favorite paradox: a good map represents reality accurately and the more detailed something is, the more accurate it is. But the more detail you get, the harder it is to use and the most accurate map would just be a recreation of reality but that would be useless for actual mapping purposes. So, you need something that's pretty accurate, but also interpretive (I like it as an analogy about writing history).

Maybe the deal with linky websites is, I'm not so excited about the ones that don't have an interpretive theme beyond "this is cool." I mean, I love them, I read them, but I think they aren't doing much of a service. I don't apply the same principal to smaller blogs like my own, of course -- (although, ahem, I do have a theme). And everyone gets some latitude in their theme. And the NYT/NYer/NPR cabal -- well, I'll deal with them later.

So I guess my conclusion is to renew my commitment to not pulling links from other blogs and only posting links I find through my own searching or whate have you -- realizing that anything I find through google may well have higher visibility if it was already linked in someone's blog. (Is there a word to distinguish between someone's little semi-invisible personal blog [i.e., mine] and something like wonkette or slashdot? probably but I don't know it. tell me!). If I see something I think is interesting to my non-blog-reading friends on one of the megablogs then I'll send it to them the old fashioned way -- in an email.

So maybe that's where I'll leave it for now. Time to make the donuts.

I'm kind of interested in the netflix "friends" option -- partly because it's one of those things I vaguely wished existed and then found out it did a week later, partly because I just think it's a good idea. But I don't know who among my friends has a Netflix account. So if you do, and I haven't already sent you a supplicating email, invite me to be your friend, fer pity's sake. And I'll start actually rating my movies.

I love Perry Mason. I wish the National Association for the Advancement of Perry Mason still existed so I could join it. I would KILL for the Perry Mason board game. Perry Mason is brilliant. It features an incredible assortment of celebrities and wierd plots -- especially in the mid-1960s (which my local affliate is broadcasting now). Perry Mason interiors are lovely! And did you know that Raymond Burr was gay? (apparently this has generated some controversy among some of his viewers -- it's a generational thing, I guess). And he had a vineyard.

Anyway, I was sick off and on over the last few weeks which gave me plenty of opportunity to enjoy Perry Mason -- truth be told, now that I have TiVo, every night can be like those long, lovely Perry-Mason punctuated afternoon I remember from my mispent youth. Perry Mason has been on at noon on Channel 12 ever since I can remember and now it's on twice a day -- 2 hours of Perry! Kids have it so good these days!

What I especially love about Perry Mason while I'm sick is it's really good sleep television. I have a few shows that I love to sleep to: Victory Garden, Nature, any old movies, Masterrace Theater, and, for some reason, Monk -- I like shows that are kind of quiet, not too compelling, and ideally without a lot of commercials -- although the right kind of commercials are okay. Perry Mason features a lot of ITT tech and Western Culinary Institute ads, and court stenographer ads, too, of course -- gentle, optimistic testimonials of employability -- I can sleep to that!

I don't think I'm the only one who likes to sleep to TV, so my idea is that with the advent of digital television and potentially an infinite range of narrowcast channels, we should have a channel called "Sleep TV" entirely devoted to sleepable programming. Now, you might be tempted to say: "isn't that what PBS is all about?" But if you did, you'd be missing the enormous marketing potential for advertising aimed at sleeping or half-asleep viewers who are arguably more vulnerable to marketing messages, and certainly less likely to TiVo through the commercials. The ads would be produced by sleep-advertising specialists. I'm sure they'd do some research on what would be most suggestable to viewers without actually waking them up. Even if it turned out that people were pretty immune to advertising while actually asleep, I'll still bet you could get some pretty desperate advertisers to buy whatever pseudo science you could come up with to sell it -- at least for awhile. But no children's programming.

When you called an office and were put on hold, the first thing the system would ask you to do is say your name into the phone. Then, while you were on hold, the system would talk to you and play music using your name: "You're a valued customer [Mary], please continue to hold."

You would subscribe to the New Yorker, Harpers, The Nation, The New York Times, Reader's Digest, Rolling Stone, TV Guide, etc. but be able to specify that your subscription begin in, oh, say 1935. Issues would arrive in sequence on a regular subscription schedule after that. You could sell it to old folks, historians, history buffs. You might start a gift subscription to someone on their birthday.