Eric Martindale

I've always loved Eve Online. It's a space MMO, with ridiculous levels of immersion. They tout that it's the world's largest game universe, and let me tell you - it's absolutely huge.

One of our new members has posted her intentions to work on an Eve Online Roleplaying Journal. I think this is an incredibly awesome idea. It's not new, I've seen character journals before, but it just seems to fit in with Eve's extensive world and role playing experience.

Character journaling is a great way to extend the world of a game and add more depth to both the character and the plot. Be careful that you don't fall victim to the inactivity that often plagues real journaling! Stick to it, and you'll reap the benefits of fleshing out your character and having a solid history of the thought processes involved.

Be sure to check out Emywn's Journal from Eve Online Roleplaying. It looks like it's going to be something I'm going to have to follow using my trusty Google RSS Reader. Good luck, Kethro - and thanks for the idea!

P.S.: Google Reader is an amazing tool that lets you follow your favorite sites and their content without ever checking the page. You can check out my shared items list to see what sort of things I follow, but check out the official Google Reader page for more information.

As many of you know, a lot of my best friends came from an online hobby called "online roleplaying". One of the more popular forms is a type of collaborative fiction called "play by post", in which the participants alternate writing sections of the story. More succinctly; I started a roleplaying site of my own in 2005 called RolePlayGateway to give people the same opportunity I had when I was younger.

I wanted to take a moment and go over some of my favorites, for those who are reading.

RolePlayGateway: an obvious favorite. It takes a little while to find your place (if you're a more 'advanced' roleplayer), but our strength is the wide range of people that play here. Oh, and we have an awesome chat built specifically for roleplaying!

Roleplayer Guild: Run by Dan Neumann, Roleplayer Guild is as close to a sister site of RolePlayGateway as it gets. They've got a slightly different format from RolePlayGateway, letting you browse roleplays based on their "quality" level (e.g., Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced). A great place to go if you're looking to start a nice tight-knit group!

Althanas: Althanas is one of the only other large sites dedicated completely to play-by-post roleplay. I've roleplayed here for a couple years (as an anonymous account!) and they're a great group. The "Guides" sections is irreplaceable, so if you're looking to learn, this is the place to be.

Up and coming!

These sites are new or are just getting off the ground, so they're not as established as the above listings.

Roleplaygetaway: launched as a refuge from the insanity that RolePlayGateway provides, RolePlayGetaway (albeit, a confusing name) is showing a lot of promise. With a brand new roleplaying system built to track your roleplays, it is taking the same route that RolePlayGateway's fabled roleplay tab is taking. It's being run by several of my staff members and close friends, and I can attest that they know what they are doing. I hope to see more sites like this!

Fallen off my list...

These sites used to show some promise, but for some reason or another have fallen by the wayside. As such, I'm rel="nofollow"'ing their links.

AnimeLeague: AnimeLeague appears to have gone the way of AnimeMetro; that is, it has begun to focus more on Anime and conventions instead of roleplay. Sadface! Gaia Online: Gaia Online used to be a fairly decent place for play-by-post roleplay, but then it got uber popular. It too is now expanding beyond play-by-post, and the focus has been lost.

Running a role playing game online presents a large of amount of flexibility in the way you run the game. You no longer need individual sessions where all players are present, and there are a plethora of options as to where you are going to run it - if you want to run it in any one place.

One of the number one questions I receive relates to the medium for online RPGs. There are tons of different ways of communicating online, mainly grouped into a few categories. We have instant messenger, chats, message boards, and emails. There are a few custom services out there, but I'm going to touch on the four that I've mentioned.

On RolePlayGateway, we have a set of roleplaying forums as well as a roleplaying chat. When you're running an RPG, there are a few items you should consider when deciding where you're going to keep everything.

Forums have the benefit of being static and always available - users can post to forums at any time during the day and be sure that other users (and roleplayers) can see their message. Forums are also very flexible, they allow you to embed images and other multimedia within your posts, allowing you to share any experience with your players. However, it is post based - forums are often not the quickest way to communicate, as it is not a live feed of information like a chat.

Chats, on the other hand, have the benefit of being real time. Games can be run in chat (and instant messenger) on a moment's notice, and work best when all of the players can be available at the same time. Because it is real time, short blip-based sessions such as character conversations and interactions work extraordinarily well with chats. Players can get the chance to interject into other player's actions and statements without the worry of too much time going by. It is for this reason that the longer posts, such as those that exceed a paragraph, are often too large and unwieldy for chats - players end up waiting too long for each post, and will get bored.

Longer posts do very well on forums, where writing an individual post can take half an hour or longer to refine and perfect - just enough time for the players to go look at other games and other topics before they come back and begin formulating their response.

If you're running a game with a detailed and/or complicated storyline or characters, it is always good to post something on a forum for player reference. This lets the players have a place to communicate out of character (OOC) - such as when they won't be able to make a chat session, or when they want to discuss plans for character interaction, growth, or development. Even if your game is already on a forum - it is a good idea to create a place for OOC discussion. For chat-based games - this gives a perfect opportunity for players to jump in at the middle of a game with little trouble, as they simply need to read over the history of the game on the forum, which they can do at any point in time, and less time is needed explaining the game to the player.

Instant messenger works well when dealing with one on one sessions, such as when two characters are the only ones in an interaction or a meeting needs to be private. These interactions can be summarized or written into a cinematic format and then posted to the forum, for other players to enjoy as well. Instant messenger (as well as Private Messages) does very well at asking questions of the other players, which is convenient when you have a question about how they're playing a role or a reference they made in character.

There are also emails - many games aren't run by email anymore, but email is still a very valuable tool. RolePlayGateway like many forums offers you the ability to subscribe to topics. Subscriptions will let you receive an immediate email update whenever someone replies to the thread. This is extraordinarily helpful when there's an RPG with only a few players that can only reply every once in a while, but it requires that people, y'know, actually check their email. RolePlayGateway also has the special ability to instant message you when there's an update to a subscribed thread. All you need is a Jabber account (GMail accounts work, too) and to set up the notifications. We'll send you a message as soon as there's an update.

What methods have you used to manage your online roleplaying games? Are you a fan of forum or chat? Both? What helps you determine where you're going to hold your game? Discuss!

Warning: Strong nerdery follows. Please be cautious of your fragile mind.

Since late 1997, in all of my pre-teen glory, I have been involved with something my friends and I simply called roleplay in our own little vernacular. Of course I've since learned that roleplay doesn't only refer to the peer-driven world of online roleplay, it refers to all sorts of real-world tabletop games, live acting, and various amounts of storytelling, but this particular post is written with the word roleplay referring to the freeform online roleplaying that I have always been so close to.

Freeform roleplay, or the idea that there is no GM (game master) or storyteller (as in Vampire: The Masquerade), and is instead driven solely by the players, with no concrete rules for battle, statistics, or progression of the story. Rules and guidelines were driven by common expectation, which developed as a sort of social justice system that remains effective, even today.

The very roots of this sort of roleplay stem from early chat systems, where one could adopt a simple moniker and create a personality around the idea of an "avatar", which in most cases consisted only of this name. Players, without defining themselves as such, would interact in an imaginative world that coalesced out of their collaborative imagination. Each would react to the other characters' actions and dialogue in a fashion that suited their own character's theoretical personality, and this would create a constantly evolving story arc.

As the web (and the young teen's perception of the web) evolved and grew, so did the concept of roleplay. Online forums became an entirely new beast, allowing users to write more and more into their in character posts, instead of being limited to the single lines that chat provided (of course, some chats had enough space for people to post a full paragraph, or even two - but this was limited at the time), they were able to expound upon their writing and even proofread their copy before sending it across the web for the other players to view.

Freeform roleplay had also grown to be very competitive at this point, with groups of players forming groups known as clans, guilds, or otherwise, and expanded their IC competitions from chat to the forums and message boards now provided by a few enterprising organizations (or individuals). It was this competitive banter and challenge that defined what many now call the golden age of roleplay, which is what really drove the forefront of this gaming medium.

There were plenty of players who had entered their late teens (and some even were adults at this point, gasp!) who moved away from chat, and who moved away from the conflict-driven world of this type of roleplay. They went on to create storyline-oriented games, with a small and select number of players in more of a collaborative fiction setting. These players often went on to become writers and editors, being driven more by the literary aspect of relaying a fiction onto the internet, and often have their own private niche where they can continue to do this with their long-standing playergroup.

And... that's where we are today. The freeform roleplay community is growing and changing, barely 15 years old at this point. We have the chance to nurture it, just as we have the chance to neglect it. Those of us who've been involved since the beginning have the greatest opportunity to influence the course of growth, and that's exactly what I'm hoping to do.

I am never anonymous. I never act online without some sort of name attached, be it my real name or a variation on 'mandrill'. Anonymity online is a myth, people can find out who you are if they're determined enough so what's the point?

Yes I am also agreed with this post that “Education must be Open source and Free for all”; there are many potential students who are not able to get proper education because of high Tuition fees. However recently one of my friend got online Life experience degree from his professional Experience , This Good thing which universities have started to offer. You can more info here http://www.usauniversitiesonline.com/degree/awarding-honorary-doctorate-degree/  or you can Google it about online life experience degree.

One of my favorite blogs is run by Martin Reed, and it's about online community building. He's really onto something here, and it's a shame there aren't more blogs out there on the topic (ahem, nudge nudge, wink wink). His content is top notch, and it relates directly to what it is that I do with my sites, particularly RolePlayGateway.

Just today he posted an article on active forum members and their value, and I'll be damned if I didn't forward that article to two teams on RolePlayGateway. And then I submitted it to StumbleUpon for good measure! Keep up the good work, Martin!

Does anyone know of any blogs about online community building? Please, share!

Between work, my social life, and training, I play a game called EVE Online. It's the first game I've ever shelled out a monthly fee for, and it's well worth it. I came across this fan-made video for one of the in-game factions on CrazyKinux's blog.

Full screen this and play it in HD, while keeping in mind that this is made entirely of recorded gameplay video.

I'm the director of a group of players (called a "Corporation" as opposed to "Guild" in other MMORPGs), and if you're interested in playing with me, shoot me a line or message me in game as "Baeryn". You'll never find a game so perfect.

Share if you oppose "Booberday," the G+ meme of sharing photographs of cleavage.

It's demeaning, and it is precisely the gateway to harassment that drives women away from online communities. We have a responsibility as early adopters to create a respectful, caring community where everyone feels welcome. If it is acceptable in a community to post a photograph of cleavage, it becomes okay to comment on it with sexual jokes, then to comment on a photograph of a woman in the G+ community with a sexual joke, and then with sexual comments that are not jokes. If left unchecked, an online community that tolerates harassment against women can become dangerous for women, professionally and physically: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/apr/06/gender.blogging.

When I commented on +Robert Scoble's post disagreeing with his participation, there were two primary reponses: (1) telling me to relax because it was just a single post of a woman who consented and (2) explaining that the purpose is breast cancer awareness. I normally wouldn't get upset about a single poster, but when my stream went from a thoughtful, respectful community to 2/3 animated gifs of breasts, I think I have reason to warn people: this isolates women and will cause them to leave. And this is not about breast cancer awareness, this is an excuse to share photographs of breasts without being derided as a pervert; if there ever was a component related to breast cancer awareness, that was lost the moment that the photographs were directed to excitement, rather than to the collection of research dollars (immediately?).

+Robert Scoble, I expected more from a public figure than to join in with a concept that degrades the quality of this budding community. You have one of the highest follower counts here, so what you endorse can dramatically shift the nature of the community. As a result of your post, thousands of additional people will join in this meme next week. That participation will harm women.

Please reshare.

Share if you oppose "Booberday," the G+ meme of sharing photographs of cleavage.

It's demeaning, and it is precisely the gateway to harassment that drives women away from online communities. We have a responsibility as early adopters to create a respectful, caring community where everyone feels welcome. If it is acceptable in a community to post a photograph of cleavage, it becomes okay to comment on it with sexual jokes, then to comment on a photograph of a woman in the G+ community with a sexual joke, and then with sexual comments that are not jokes. If left unchecked, an online community that tolerates harassment against women can become dangerous for women, professionally and physically: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/apr/06/gender.blogging.

When I commented on +Robert Scoble's post disagreeing with his participation, there were two primary reponses: (1) telling me to relax because it was just a single post of a woman who consented and (2) explaining that the purpose is breast cancer awareness. I normally wouldn't get upset about a single poster, but when my stream went from a thoughtful, respectful community to 2/3 animated gifs of breasts, I think I have reason to warn people: this isolates women and will cause them to leave. And this is not about breast cancer awareness, this is an excuse to share photographs of breasts without being derided as a pervert; if there ever was a component related to breast cancer awareness, that was lost the moment that the photographs were directed to excitement, rather than to the collection of research dollars (immediately?).

+Robert Scoble, I expected more from a public figure than to join in with a concept that degrades the quality of this budding community. You have one of the highest follower counts here, so what you endorse can dramatically shift the nature of the community. As a result of your post, thousands of additional people will join in this meme next week. That participation will harm women.

Please reshare.

Share if you oppose "Booberday," the G+ meme of sharing photographs of cleavage.

It's demeaning, and it is precisely the gateway to harassment that drives women away from online communities. We have a responsibility as early adopters to create a respectful, caring community where everyone feels welcome. If it is acceptable in a community to post a photograph of cleavage, it becomes okay to comment on it with sexual jokes, then to comment on a photograph of a woman in the G+ community with a sexual joke, and then with sexual comments that are not jokes. If left unchecked, an online community that tolerates harassment against women can become dangerous for women, professionally and physically: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/apr/06/gender.blogging.

When I commented on +Robert Scoble's post disagreeing with his participation, there were two primary reponses: (1) telling me to relax because it was just a single post of a woman who consented and (2) explaining that the purpose is breast cancer awareness. I normally wouldn't get upset about a single poster, but when my stream went from a thoughtful, respectful community to 2/3 animated gifs of breasts, I think I have reason to warn people: this isolates women and will cause them to leave. And this is not about breast cancer awareness, this is an excuse to share photographs of breasts without being derided as a pervert; if there ever was a component related to breast cancer awareness, that was lost the moment that the photographs were directed to excitement, rather than to the collection of research dollars (immediately?).

+Robert Scoble, I expected more from a public figure than to join in with a concept that degrades the quality of this budding community. You have one of the highest follower counts here, so what you endorse can dramatically shift the nature of the community. As a result of your post, thousands of additional people will join in this meme next week. That participation will harm women.

Please reshare.

Share if you oppose "Booberday," the G+ meme of sharing photographs of cleavage.

It's demeaning, and it is precisely the gateway to harassment that drives women away from online communities. We have a responsibility as early adopters to create a respectful, caring community where everyone feels welcome. If it is acceptable in a community to post a photograph of cleavage, it becomes okay to comment on it with sexual jokes, then to comment on a photograph of a woman in the G+ community with a sexual joke, and then with sexual comments that are not jokes. If left unchecked, an online community that tolerates harassment against women can become dangerous for women, professionally and physically: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/apr/06/gender.blogging.

When I commented on +Robert Scoble's post disagreeing with his participation, there were two primary reponses: (1) telling me to relax because it was just a single post of a woman who consented and (2) explaining that the purpose is breast cancer awareness. I normally wouldn't get upset about a single poster, but when my stream went from a thoughtful, respectful community to 2/3 animated gifs of breasts, I think I have reason to warn people: this isolates women and will cause them to leave. And this is not about breast cancer awareness, this is an excuse to share photographs of breasts without being derided as a pervert; if there ever was a component related to breast cancer awareness, that was lost the moment that the photographs were directed to excitement, rather than to the collection of research dollars (immediately?).

+Robert Scoble, I expected more from a public figure than to join in with a concept that degrades the quality of this budding community. You have one of the highest follower counts here, so what you endorse can dramatically shift the nature of the community. As a result of your post, thousands of additional people will join in this meme next week. That participation will harm women.

Please reshare.

So, entirely not in light of any recent events, I was integrating the chat rules that Vexar wrote into RolePlayGateway's Rules, and I was looking for some examples of forum etiquette that other forums use. In searching, I found this perfectly humorous video:

(I found it on Neil Boortz's website, but since headed over to videojug to get the original. PS, Neil? You're awesome.)

That was probably the best one I found, above and beyond the video I came across that seemed geared towards the Steam forum community, which was a bit too NSFW to actually embed here on my blog. If you'd like, you can go check out posting a new thread on AlbinoBlackSheep.

I'm admin on several online forums, and I'm a moderator on many more; not counting the countless other communities where I'm an active member. I was pretty proud of the rules I put together on Gateway, and I think they're clean, simple, and easy to follow. No one likes being bombarded and tacked down by rules, so I try to keep them as simple as possible. What do you think of them?

How do you manage forum users and set rules? I know Martin Reed has some good tips on forum rules, and there are many others out there that learned a lot from running forums. The best thing that we can do is learn from others, and gather experience on how to handle these issues. What is your approach to forum etiquette?

Of Space, War, and Virtual Reality
+CCP Games has always been on the right track with their most successful project, the single-server, fully persistent world of +EVE Online.  Having launched +DUST 514 as an extension that exists within the same game world, CCP has raised the bar of innovation already, and continues to carve out territory with the announcement of +EVE: Valkyrie.

Valkyrie is a virtual reality game originally designed for +Oculus VR [1].  If you're not familiar with Oculus, they're the makers of the Oculus Rift. The Rift is a 3D display device that you wear like a pair of glasses, and literally move your head to look around the space.  This interaction makes it feel like you are actually in the virtual space, and represents a huge step forward in immersion.

What interests me most about EVE is the fact that it's a truly alternative reality; a simulated universe, of which only one exists, and to which there will never be a sequel or a "version 2".  CCP has committed to simply improve the game over time rather than ever introduce an "EVE 2", building the universe iteratively over the past 10 years.   This means that the time you invest in the alternative reality has a degree of permanence and importance, rather than the transience and fragmentation of other sharded universes.

Let's hope this integrates directly into the EVE Universe, in the capacity of participating in actual fights, and not just "conquer this asteroid field to make it available to EVE players".  Anything less would be a grave disappointment and moreover, a potentially critical business mistake as the two games, EVE Online and Valkyrie, operate in the same space.

Either way, I'm looking forward to seeing how this pans out.

[1]: EVE-VR: Fanfest Trailer

Of Space, War, and Virtual Reality
+CCP Games has always been on the right track with their most successful project, the single-server, fully persistent world of +EVE Online.  Having launched +DUST 514 as an extension that exists within the same game world, CCP has raised the bar of innovation already, and continues to carve out territory with the announcement of +EVE: Valkyrie.

Valkyrie is a virtual reality game originally designed for +Oculus VR [1].  If you're not familiar with Oculus, they're the makers of the Oculus Rift. The Rift is a 3D display device that you wear like a pair of glasses, and literally move your head to look around the space.  This interaction makes it feel like you are actually in the virtual space, and represents a huge step forward in immersion.

What interests me most about EVE is the fact that it's a truly alternative reality; a simulated universe, of which only one exists, and to which there will never be a sequel or a "version 2".  CCP has committed to simply improve the game over time rather than ever introduce an "EVE 2", building the universe iteratively over the past 10 years.   This means that the time you invest in the alternative reality has a degree of permanence and importance, rather than the transience and fragmentation of other sharded universes.

Let's hope this integrates directly into the EVE Universe, in the capacity of participating in actual fights, and not just "conquer this asteroid field to make it available to EVE players".  Anything less would be a grave disappointment and moreover, a potentially critical business mistake as the two games, EVE Online and Valkyrie, operate in the same space.

Either way, I'm looking forward to seeing how this pans out.

[1]: EVE-VR: Fanfest Trailer

Of Space, War, and Virtual Reality
+CCP Games has always been on the right track with their most successful project, the single-server, fully persistent world of +EVE Online.  Having launched +DUST 514 as an extension that exists within the same game world, CCP has raised the bar of innovation already, and continues to carve out territory with the announcement of +EVE: Valkyrie.

Valkyrie is a virtual reality game originally designed for +Oculus VR [1].  If you're not familiar with Oculus, they're the makers of the Oculus Rift. The Rift is a 3D display device that you wear like a pair of glasses, and literally move your head to look around the space.  This interaction makes it feel like you are actually in the virtual space, and represents a huge step forward in immersion.

What interests me most about EVE is the fact that it's a truly alternative reality; a simulated universe, of which only one exists, and to which there will never be a sequel or a "version 2".  CCP has committed to simply improve the game over time rather than ever introduce an "EVE 2", building the universe iteratively over the past 10 years.   This means that the time you invest in the alternative reality has a degree of permanence and importance, rather than the transience and fragmentation of other sharded universes.

Let's hope this integrates directly into the EVE Universe, in the capacity of participating in actual fights, and not just "conquer this asteroid field to make it available to EVE players".  Anything less would be a grave disappointment and moreover, a potentially critical business mistake as the two games, EVE Online and Valkyrie, operate in the same space.

Either way, I'm looking forward to seeing how this pans out.

[1]: EVE-VR: Fanfest Trailer

Of Space, War, and Virtual Reality
+CCP Games has always been on the right track with their most successful project, the single-server, fully persistent world of +EVE Online.  Having launched +DUST 514 as an extension that exists within the same game world, CCP has raised the bar of innovation already, and continues to carve out territory with the announcement of +EVE: Valkyrie.

Valkyrie is a virtual reality game originally designed for +Oculus VR [1].  If you're not familiar with Oculus, they're the makers of the Oculus Rift. The Rift is a 3D display device that you wear like a pair of glasses, and literally move your head to look around the space.  This interaction makes it feel like you are actually in the virtual space, and represents a huge step forward in immersion.

What interests me most about EVE is the fact that it's a truly alternative reality; a simulated universe, of which only one exists, and to which there will never be a sequel or a "version 2".  CCP has committed to simply improve the game over time rather than ever introduce an "EVE 2", building the universe iteratively over the past 10 years.   This means that the time you invest in the alternative reality has a degree of permanence and importance, rather than the transience and fragmentation of other sharded universes.

Let's hope this integrates directly into the EVE Universe, in the capacity of participating in actual fights, and not just "conquer this asteroid field to make it available to EVE players".  Anything less would be a grave disappointment and moreover, a potentially critical business mistake as the two games, EVE Online and Valkyrie, operate in the same space.

Either way, I'm looking forward to seeing how this pans out.

[1]: EVE-VR: Fanfest Trailer

I've just learned of a virus that was launched against the U.S. Drone Fleet. See the attached article from Wired.

Earlier this year, the Pentagon recently concluded that digital attacks such as this can constitute an act of war [1]. This one doesn't [yet] seem as sophisticated as last year's attack on Iran's nuclear reactors by Stuxnet [2], but it continues to show how important and integral our computer systems are in this rapidly changing world. Security professionals +Alex Levinson, +Jerome Radcliffe, and +Scott Hanselman surely have some great insight here, I highly recommend you go take a look at some of the things they've written.

In 2009, a very sophisticated [and successful] cyber-attack was launched from inside China that targeted the United States through Google and Adobe [3] that caused surprisingly few stirs within our government, especially after NATO was sent in to assist in the defense of Estonia's computer systems during the 2007 attacks [4]. Not long after this, the widely-used and [formerly] explicitly trusted RSA security mechanism, used in a large number major institutions around the world. was completely and entirely broken [5] by an embarrassingly simple hack [6].

Aside: We can look back at some of the things actual software engineers like +Ryan Dahl [7] and +Zack Morris [8] have been saying lately and quickly conclude that there's something fundamentally broken with the whole system. If you've ever worked on or with a large software project, you can see evidence of negligence and ignorance alike embedded at every level. It certainly contributes to if not causes these types of security concerns.

[1]: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304563104576355623135782718.html
[2]: http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/10/stuxnet.html
[3]: http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/01/operation-aurora/
[4]: http://www.wired.com/politics/security/magazine/15-09/ff_estonia
[5]: http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9214757/RSA_warns_SecurID_customers_after_company_is_hacked
[6]: http://www.zdnet.co.uk/blogs/mapping-babel-10017967/rsa-hack-targeted-flash-vulnerability-10022143/
[7]: https://plus.google.com/115094562986465477143/posts/Di6RwCNKCrf
[8]: http://zackarymorris.tumblr.com/post/10973087527/the-state-of-the-art-is-terrible

I've just learned of a virus that was launched against the U.S. Drone Fleet. See the attached article from Wired.

Earlier this year, the Pentagon recently concluded that digital attacks such as this can constitute an act of war [1]. This one doesn't [yet] seem as sophisticated as last year's attack on Iran's nuclear reactors by Stuxnet [2], but it continues to show how important and integral our computer systems are in this rapidly changing world. Security professionals +Alex Levinson, +Jerome Radcliffe, and +Scott Hanselman surely have some great insight here, I highly recommend you go take a look at some of the things they've written.

In 2009, a very sophisticated [and successful] cyber-attack was launched from inside China that targeted the United States through Google and Adobe [3] that caused surprisingly few stirs within our government, especially after NATO was sent in to assist in the defense of Estonia's computer systems during the 2007 attacks [4]. Not long after this, the widely-used and [formerly] explicitly trusted RSA security mechanism, used in a large number major institutions around the world. was completely and entirely broken [5] by an embarrassingly simple hack [6].

Aside: We can look back at some of the things actual software engineers like +Ryan Dahl [7] and +Zack Morris [8] have been saying lately and quickly conclude that there's something fundamentally broken with the whole system. If you've ever worked on or with a large software project, you can see evidence of negligence and ignorance alike embedded at every level. It certainly contributes to if not causes these types of security concerns.

[1]: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304563104576355623135782718.html
[2]: http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/10/stuxnet.html
[3]: http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/01/operation-aurora/
[4]: http://www.wired.com/politics/security/magazine/15-09/ff_estonia
[5]: http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9214757/RSA_warns_SecurID_customers_after_company_is_hacked
[6]: http://www.zdnet.co.uk/blogs/mapping-babel-10017967/rsa-hack-targeted-flash-vulnerability-10022143/
[7]: https://plus.google.com/115094562986465477143/posts/Di6RwCNKCrf
[8]: http://zackarymorris.tumblr.com/post/10973087527/the-state-of-the-art-is-terrible

I've just learned of a virus that was launched against the U.S. Drone Fleet. See the attached article from Wired.

Earlier this year, the Pentagon recently concluded that digital attacks such as this can constitute an act of war [1]. This one doesn't [yet] seem as sophisticated as last year's attack on Iran's nuclear reactors by Stuxnet [2], but it continues to show how important and integral our computer systems are in this rapidly changing world. Security professionals +Alex Levinson, +Jerome Radcliffe, and +Scott Hanselman surely have some great insight here, I highly recommend you go take a look at some of the things they've written.

In 2009, a very sophisticated [and successful] cyber-attack was launched from inside China that targeted the United States through Google and Adobe [3] that caused surprisingly few stirs within our government, especially after NATO was sent in to assist in the defense of Estonia's computer systems during the 2007 attacks [4]. Not long after this, the widely-used and [formerly] explicitly trusted RSA security mechanism, used in a large number major institutions around the world. was completely and entirely broken [5] by an embarrassingly simple hack [6].

Aside: We can look back at some of the things actual software engineers like +Ryan Dahl [7] and +Zack Morris [8] have been saying lately and quickly conclude that there's something fundamentally broken with the whole system. If you've ever worked on or with a large software project, you can see evidence of negligence and ignorance alike embedded at every level. It certainly contributes to if not causes these types of security concerns.

[1]: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304563104576355623135782718.html
[2]: http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/10/stuxnet.html
[3]: http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/01/operation-aurora/
[4]: http://www.wired.com/politics/security/magazine/15-09/ff_estonia
[5]: http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9214757/RSA_warns_SecurID_customers_after_company_is_hacked
[6]: http://www.zdnet.co.uk/blogs/mapping-babel-10017967/rsa-hack-targeted-flash-vulnerability-10022143/
[7]: https://plus.google.com/115094562986465477143/posts/Di6RwCNKCrf
[8]: http://zackarymorris.tumblr.com/post/10973087527/the-state-of-the-art-is-terrible

I've just learned of a virus that was launched against the U.S. Drone Fleet. See the attached article from Wired.

Earlier this year, the Pentagon recently concluded that digital attacks such as this can constitute an act of war [1]. This one doesn't [yet] seem as sophisticated as last year's attack on Iran's nuclear reactors by Stuxnet [2], but it continues to show how important and integral our computer systems are in this rapidly changing world. Security professionals +Alex Levinson, +Jerome Radcliffe, and +Scott Hanselman surely have some great insight here, I highly recommend you go take a look at some of the things they've written.

In 2009, a very sophisticated [and successful] cyber-attack was launched from inside China that targeted the United States through Google and Adobe [3] that caused surprisingly few stirs within our government, especially after NATO was sent in to assist in the defense of Estonia's computer systems during the 2007 attacks [4]. Not long after this, the widely-used and [formerly] explicitly trusted RSA security mechanism, used in a large number major institutions around the world. was completely and entirely broken [5] by an embarrassingly simple hack [6].

Aside: We can look back at some of the things actual software engineers like +Ryan Dahl [7] and +Zack Morris [8] have been saying lately and quickly conclude that there's something fundamentally broken with the whole system. If you've ever worked on or with a large software project, you can see evidence of negligence and ignorance alike embedded at every level. It certainly contributes to if not causes these types of security concerns.

[1]: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304563104576355623135782718.html
[2]: http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/10/stuxnet.html
[3]: http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/01/operation-aurora/
[4]: http://www.wired.com/politics/security/magazine/15-09/ff_estonia
[5]: http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9214757/RSA_warns_SecurID_customers_after_company_is_hacked
[6]: http://www.zdnet.co.uk/blogs/mapping-babel-10017967/rsa-hack-targeted-flash-vulnerability-10022143/
[7]: https://plus.google.com/115094562986465477143/posts/Di6RwCNKCrf
[8]: http://zackarymorris.tumblr.com/post/10973087527/the-state-of-the-art-is-terrible

Following suit with the likes of Tim Bray and Eric Meyer, I figured I'd throw together my browser's letter sweep tonight.

• [A]dmin Site. Yeah, I guess I would be visiting the admin panel for this. Quite frequently.
• Mirascape's [B]log. An infrequent haunt of mine, but fairly obvious.
• [C]MON. Cluster Monitor for MySQL Cluster, something I almost always have open.
• Google [D]ocs. This one is painfully obvious, I use Google Docs extensively.
• [E]ricMartindale.com. Okay, that's a gimme. Does this make me egocentric?
• [F]acebook. I'm actually fairly ashamed of this one. Why can't I have a cool F site? sadface
• [G]mail. Three accounts linked using Google's Multiple Sign-in. Open [almost] all day.
• [H]ighcharts JS. A pretty kick-ass Javascript library for generating charts on the clientside.
• [I]nternal Discussion. A site for communication with my team. :)
• [J]Query Mobile Demo, 1.0 alpha 3. I've been spending a lot of time toying with jQuery Mobile, seeing where it's going compared to Sencha Touch.
• [K]r.github.com. Keith Rarick's GitHub redirect. Total ass-kicker.
• [L]inkedIn. Pretty straightforward, between hiring for our team at @Mirascape and the travel to and from various conferences and Meetups lately.
• [M]irascape. The augmented reality platform I'm responsible for.
• [N]oxBot. A nice PHP-powered IRC bot with various plugins. A bit out of date, but very powerful. Been using it for a couple things lately.
• [O]K, QR Me!. A QR Code-generating link shortener I built.
• [P]ostmark. Best Email delivery service I've used. Nice RESTful API, flat rate for emails sent.
• [Q]uora. These guys nail Q&A, and they're doing it pretty well. Check out all their buzz, too. But for some reason, I just don't stick.
• Google [R]eader. “From your 1,040 subscriptions, over the last 30 days you read 21,549 items, clicked 274 items, starred 853 items, shared 37 items, and emailed 8 items.” -- </stats>
• [S]erver Stats for Mirascape. Powered by Munin, it's how I keep track of the status and metrics of all my servers.
• [T]witter. Not surprising. I love their webapp for my personal use, but own and manage at least five accounts using SplitTweet.
• [U]serVoice. Pretty sweet tool I use for giving the communities I manage a good way to build a consensus on what they desire most. Examples I run: for RolePlayGateway, and EVE UserVoice for EVE Online.
• Google [V]oice. Allows me to use SMS from my computer, read (as opposed to listen to) voicemail. Great tool. If only it supported MMS.
• [W]achovia. One of the places I do banking.
• [X]DA Developers. An indisposable resource for getting rid of carrier-installed crap and running my own choice of software on the hardware I purchased!
• [Y]ouTube. Another big namer. No surprise.
• [Z]ecco. Where I trade most of my public stocks. :)

Surprisingly populist, and there's a lot of Google-owned properties in there. I'm also using Chromium, so I think it prefers the roots of the sites I visit instead of searching through my history for individual pages.

On the Ongoing Attacks between China, U.S., Russia, Israel, etc.…
The latest round of evidence of ongoing digital warfare between the superpowers is now being reported in the N.Y. Times [1] after an undeniably incriminating 60-page report on the Chinese attacks on the U.S. by security firm Mandiant [2].

“Either they are coming from inside Unit 61398, or the people who run the most-controlled, most-monitored Internet networks in the world are clueless about thousands of people generating attacks from this one neighborhood.”
                                                    — Kevin Mandia

The report goes on to track individual participants in the attack, tracing them back to the headquarters of P.L.A. Unit 61398.

Attacks from the Chinese have been ongoing for many years, notably back to Operation Titan Rain [3] in 2003, in which attackers gained access to military intelligence networks at organizations such as Lockheed Martin, Sandia National Laboratories, Redstone Arsenal, and NASA [4].  Direct military targets were also included in the assault, such as the U.S. Army Information Systems Engineering Command at Fort Huachuca, Arizona, the Defense Information Systems Agency in Arlington, Virginia, the Naval Ocean Systems Center, a Defense Department installation in San Diego, California, and the U.S. Army Space and Strategic Defense installation in Huntsville, Alabama [5]. 

These ongoing attacks are labeled "Advanced Persistent Threats" or "APT" by the American Military, are considered acts of war by both the White House [6] and the Department of Defense [7] as far back as 2011, and are not unique to the Chinese origins.  You may remember the 2007 attacks on Estonia [8], which has been attributed to entities within Russian territory operating with the assistance of the Russian government [9].  These attacks disabled a wide array of Estonian government sites, rendering services in the world's most digitally-connected country unusable.  The attacks also disabled ATM machines, effectively disabling some portion of the Estonian economy.

The United States [and arguably Israel, [10]] have also been actively participating in these attacks [11] with the deploying of FLAME and Stuxnet against Iran, which made international headlines this past year when the coordinated efforts of the tools were used to disable Iranian nuclear centrifuges in an attempt to slow their progress in their nuclear program [12].  These efforts are ongoing, with the latest addition of the Gauss and Duqu malwares [13] continuing to target middle-eastern countries.

“From his first months in office, President Obama secretly ordered increasingly sophisticated attacks on the computer systems that run Iran’s main nuclear enrichment facilities, significantly expanding America’s first sustained use of cyberweapons, according to participants in the program.”
                                                    — +The New York Times

Obama reportedly went on to sign a classified directive last year [14] enabling the government to seize control of private networks, and the 2012 NDAA (National Defense Authorization Act) includes terms [15, section 954] that authorize offensive attacks on foreign threats [16].  The official United States policy already is to deem any cyberattack on the U.S. as an "act of war" [17], and it looks like these types of actions and attacks have already been made legal.

While it may once have been a subject of fiction [18], it's now and has been a harsh reality that we're in the middle of a new era in warfare, and the battles are already well-underway as countries around the world are openly engaging in offensive attacks on one another that are impacting economies on a massive scale.  I don't know what else to call this other than a world war—even the CIA's Center for the Study of Intelligence (CSI) predicted this [19], as have many others even earlier [20].  

Here's a thought; if our constitution gives us the right to bear arms, and the government deems these types of attacks as acts of war, then isn't it our right to keep and bear these arms?  Yet another case for a mass-algorate society [21], which Mr. Obama appears to agree with me on [22], at the very least.

[1]: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/19/technology/chinas-army-is-seen-as-tied-to-hacking-against-us.html
[2]: http://intelreport.mandiant.com/
[3]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titan_Rain
[4]: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1098371,00.html
[5]: http://www.zdnet.com/news/security-experts-lift-lid-on-chinese-hack-attacks/145763
[6]: http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/rss_viewer/international_strategy_for_cyberspace.pdf
[7]: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304563104576355623135782718.html
[8]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_cyberattacks_on_Estonia
[9]: http://www.vedomosti.ru/smartmoney/article/2007/05/28/3004
[10]: http://www.zdnet.com/meet-gauss-the-latest-cyber-espionage-tool-7000002405/
[11]: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/01/world/middleeast/obama-ordered-wave-of-cyberattacks-against-iran.html?pagewanted=all
[12]: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-11388018
[13]: http://www.zdnet.com/meet-gauss-the-latest-cyber-espionage-tool-7000002405/
[14]: http://endthelie.com/2012/11/15/obama-reportedly-signs-classified-cyberwarfare-policy-directive-with-troubling-implications/#axzz2LMPlf8iA
[15]: http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-112hr1540enr/pdf/BILLS-112hr1540enr.pdf
[16]: http://endthelie.com/2011/12/17/approval-of-covert-offensive-cyberwar-sneakily-inserted-into-ndaa/
[17]: http://www.forbes.com/sites/reuvencohen/2012/06/05/the-white-house-and-pentagon-deem-cyber-attacks-an-act-of-war/
[18]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuromancer
[19]: https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/vol48no4/new_face_of_war.html
[20]: http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/reprints/2007/RAND_RP223.pdf
[21]: https://plus.google.com/112353210404102902472/posts/MVQXyw9EJDE
[22]: http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-57569503-1/obama-endorses-required-high-school-coding-classes/

On the Ongoing Attacks between China, U.S., Russia, Israel, etc.…
The latest round of evidence of ongoing digital warfare between the superpowers is now being reported in the N.Y. Times [1] after an undeniably incriminating 60-page report on the Chinese attacks on the U.S. by security firm Mandiant [2].

“Either they are coming from inside Unit 61398, or the people who run the most-controlled, most-monitored Internet networks in the world are clueless about thousands of people generating attacks from this one neighborhood.”
                                                    — Kevin Mandia

The report goes on to track individual participants in the attack, tracing them back to the headquarters of P.L.A. Unit 61398.

Attacks from the Chinese have been ongoing for many years, notably back to Operation Titan Rain [3] in 2003, in which attackers gained access to military intelligence networks at organizations such as Lockheed Martin, Sandia National Laboratories, Redstone Arsenal, and NASA [4].  Direct military targets were also included in the assault, such as the U.S. Army Information Systems Engineering Command at Fort Huachuca, Arizona, the Defense Information Systems Agency in Arlington, Virginia, the Naval Ocean Systems Center, a Defense Department installation in San Diego, California, and the U.S. Army Space and Strategic Defense installation in Huntsville, Alabama [5]. 

These ongoing attacks are labeled "Advanced Persistent Threats" or "APT" by the American Military, are considered acts of war by both the White House [6] and the Department of Defense [7] as far back as 2011, and are not unique to the Chinese origins.  You may remember the 2007 attacks on Estonia [8], which has been attributed to entities within Russian territory operating with the assistance of the Russian government [9].  These attacks disabled a wide array of Estonian government sites, rendering services in the world's most digitally-connected country unusable.  The attacks also disabled ATM machines, effectively disabling some portion of the Estonian economy.

The United States [and arguably Israel, [10]] have also been actively participating in these attacks [11] with the deploying of FLAME and Stuxnet against Iran, which made international headlines this past year when the coordinated efforts of the tools were used to disable Iranian nuclear centrifuges in an attempt to slow their progress in their nuclear program [12].  These efforts are ongoing, with the latest addition of the Gauss and Duqu malwares [13] continuing to target middle-eastern countries.

“From his first months in office, President Obama secretly ordered increasingly sophisticated attacks on the computer systems that run Iran’s main nuclear enrichment facilities, significantly expanding America’s first sustained use of cyberweapons, according to participants in the program.”
                                                    — +The New York Times

Obama reportedly went on to sign a classified directive last year [14] enabling the government to seize control of private networks, and the 2012 NDAA (National Defense Authorization Act) includes terms [15, section 954] that authorize offensive attacks on foreign threats [16].  The official United States policy already is to deem any cyberattack on the U.S. as an "act of war" [17], and it looks like these types of actions and attacks have already been made legal.

While it may once have been a subject of fiction [18], it's now and has been a harsh reality that we're in the middle of a new era in warfare, and the battles are already well-underway as countries around the world are openly engaging in offensive attacks on one another that are impacting economies on a massive scale.  I don't know what else to call this other than a world war—even the CIA's Center for the Study of Intelligence (CSI) predicted this [19], as have many others even earlier [20].  

Here's a thought; if our constitution gives us the right to bear arms, and the government deems these types of attacks as acts of war, then isn't it our right to keep and bear these arms?  Yet another case for a mass-algorate society [21], which Mr. Obama appears to agree with me on [22], at the very least.

[1]: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/19/technology/chinas-army-is-seen-as-tied-to-hacking-against-us.html
[2]: http://intelreport.mandiant.com/
[3]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titan_Rain
[4]: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1098371,00.html
[5]: http://www.zdnet.com/news/security-experts-lift-lid-on-chinese-hack-attacks/145763
[6]: http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/rss_viewer/international_strategy_for_cyberspace.pdf
[7]: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304563104576355623135782718.html
[8]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_cyberattacks_on_Estonia
[9]: http://www.vedomosti.ru/smartmoney/article/2007/05/28/3004
[10]: http://www.zdnet.com/meet-gauss-the-latest-cyber-espionage-tool-7000002405/
[11]: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/01/world/middleeast/obama-ordered-wave-of-cyberattacks-against-iran.html?pagewanted=all
[12]: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-11388018
[13]: http://www.zdnet.com/meet-gauss-the-latest-cyber-espionage-tool-7000002405/
[14]: http://endthelie.com/2012/11/15/obama-reportedly-signs-classified-cyberwarfare-policy-directive-with-troubling-implications/#axzz2LMPlf8iA
[15]: http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-112hr1540enr/pdf/BILLS-112hr1540enr.pdf
[16]: http://endthelie.com/2011/12/17/approval-of-covert-offensive-cyberwar-sneakily-inserted-into-ndaa/
[17]: http://www.forbes.com/sites/reuvencohen/2012/06/05/the-white-house-and-pentagon-deem-cyber-attacks-an-act-of-war/
[18]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuromancer
[19]: https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/vol48no4/new_face_of_war.html
[20]: http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/reprints/2007/RAND_RP223.pdf
[21]: https://plus.google.com/112353210404102902472/posts/MVQXyw9EJDE
[22]: http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-57569503-1/obama-endorses-required-high-school-coding-classes/

On the Ongoing Attacks between China, U.S., Russia, Israel, etc.…
The latest round of evidence of ongoing digital warfare between the superpowers is now being reported in the N.Y. Times [1] after an undeniably incriminating 60-page report on the Chinese attacks on the U.S. by security firm Mandiant [2].

“Either they are coming from inside Unit 61398, or the people who run the most-controlled, most-monitored Internet networks in the world are clueless about thousands of people generating attacks from this one neighborhood.”
                                                    — Kevin Mandia

The report goes on to track individual participants in the attack, tracing them back to the headquarters of P.L.A. Unit 61398.

Attacks from the Chinese have been ongoing for many years, notably back to Operation Titan Rain [3] in 2003, in which attackers gained access to military intelligence networks at organizations such as Lockheed Martin, Sandia National Laboratories, Redstone Arsenal, and NASA [4].  Direct military targets were also included in the assault, such as the U.S. Army Information Systems Engineering Command at Fort Huachuca, Arizona, the Defense Information Systems Agency in Arlington, Virginia, the Naval Ocean Systems Center, a Defense Department installation in San Diego, California, and the U.S. Army Space and Strategic Defense installation in Huntsville, Alabama [5]. 

These ongoing attacks are labeled "Advanced Persistent Threats" or "APT" by the American Military, are considered acts of war by both the White House [6] and the Department of Defense [7] as far back as 2011, and are not unique to the Chinese origins.  You may remember the 2007 attacks on Estonia [8], which has been attributed to entities within Russian territory operating with the assistance of the Russian government [9].  These attacks disabled a wide array of Estonian government sites, rendering services in the world's most digitally-connected country unusable.  The attacks also disabled ATM machines, effectively disabling some portion of the Estonian economy.

The United States [and arguably Israel, [10]] have also been actively participating in these attacks [11] with the deploying of FLAME and Stuxnet against Iran, which made international headlines this past year when the coordinated efforts of the tools were used to disable Iranian nuclear centrifuges in an attempt to slow their progress in their nuclear program [12].  These efforts are ongoing, with the latest addition of the Gauss and Duqu malwares [13] continuing to target middle-eastern countries.

“From his first months in office, President Obama secretly ordered increasingly sophisticated attacks on the computer systems that run Iran’s main nuclear enrichment facilities, significantly expanding America’s first sustained use of cyberweapons, according to participants in the program.”
                                                    — +The New York Times

Obama reportedly went on to sign a classified directive last year [14] enabling the government to seize control of private networks, and the 2012 NDAA (National Defense Authorization Act) includes terms [15, section 954] that authorize offensive attacks on foreign threats [16].  The official United States policy already is to deem any cyberattack on the U.S. as an "act of war" [17], and it looks like these types of actions and attacks have already been made legal.

While it may once have been a subject of fiction [18], it's now and has been a harsh reality that we're in the middle of a new era in warfare, and the battles are already well-underway as countries around the world are openly engaging in offensive attacks on one another that are impacting economies on a massive scale.  I don't know what else to call this other than a world war—even the CIA's Center for the Study of Intelligence (CSI) predicted this [19], as have many others even earlier [20].  

Here's a thought; if our constitution gives us the right to bear arms, and the government deems these types of attacks as acts of war, then isn't it our right to keep and bear these arms?  Yet another case for a mass-algorate society [21], which Mr. Obama appears to agree with me on [22], at the very least.

[1]: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/19/technology/chinas-army-is-seen-as-tied-to-hacking-against-us.html
[2]: http://intelreport.mandiant.com/
[3]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titan_Rain
[4]: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1098371,00.html
[5]: http://www.zdnet.com/news/security-experts-lift-lid-on-chinese-hack-attacks/145763
[6]: http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/rss_viewer/international_strategy_for_cyberspace.pdf
[7]: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304563104576355623135782718.html
[8]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_cyberattacks_on_Estonia
[9]: http://www.vedomosti.ru/smartmoney/article/2007/05/28/3004
[10]: http://www.zdnet.com/meet-gauss-the-latest-cyber-espionage-tool-7000002405/
[11]: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/01/world/middleeast/obama-ordered-wave-of-cyberattacks-against-iran.html?pagewanted=all
[12]: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-11388018
[13]: http://www.zdnet.com/meet-gauss-the-latest-cyber-espionage-tool-7000002405/
[14]: http://endthelie.com/2012/11/15/obama-reportedly-signs-classified-cyberwarfare-policy-directive-with-troubling-implications/#axzz2LMPlf8iA
[15]: http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-112hr1540enr/pdf/BILLS-112hr1540enr.pdf
[16]: http://endthelie.com/2011/12/17/approval-of-covert-offensive-cyberwar-sneakily-inserted-into-ndaa/
[17]: http://www.forbes.com/sites/reuvencohen/2012/06/05/the-white-house-and-pentagon-deem-cyber-attacks-an-act-of-war/
[18]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuromancer
[19]: https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/vol48no4/new_face_of_war.html
[20]: http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/reprints/2007/RAND_RP223.pdf
[21]: https://plus.google.com/112353210404102902472/posts/MVQXyw9EJDE
[22]: http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-57569503-1/obama-endorses-required-high-school-coding-classes/

On the Ongoing Attacks between China, U.S., Russia, Israel, etc.…
The latest round of evidence of ongoing digital warfare between the superpowers is now being reported in the N.Y. Times [1] after an undeniably incriminating 60-page report on the Chinese attacks on the U.S. by security firm Mandiant [2].

“Either they are coming from inside Unit 61398, or the people who run the most-controlled, most-monitored Internet networks in the world are clueless about thousands of people generating attacks from this one neighborhood.”
                                                    — Kevin Mandia

The report goes on to track individual participants in the attack, tracing them back to the headquarters of P.L.A. Unit 61398.

Attacks from the Chinese have been ongoing for many years, notably back to Operation Titan Rain [3] in 2003, in which attackers gained access to military intelligence networks at organizations such as Lockheed Martin, Sandia National Laboratories, Redstone Arsenal, and NASA [4].  Direct military targets were also included in the assault, such as the U.S. Army Information Systems Engineering Command at Fort Huachuca, Arizona, the Defense Information Systems Agency in Arlington, Virginia, the Naval Ocean Systems Center, a Defense Department installation in San Diego, California, and the U.S. Army Space and Strategic Defense installation in Huntsville, Alabama [5]. 

These ongoing attacks are labeled "Advanced Persistent Threats" or "APT" by the American Military, are considered acts of war by both the White House [6] and the Department of Defense [7] as far back as 2011, and are not unique to the Chinese origins.  You may remember the 2007 attacks on Estonia [8], which has been attributed to entities within Russian territory operating with the assistance of the Russian government [9].  These attacks disabled a wide array of Estonian government sites, rendering services in the world's most digitally-connected country unusable.  The attacks also disabled ATM machines, effectively disabling some portion of the Estonian economy.

The United States [and arguably Israel, [10]] have also been actively participating in these attacks [11] with the deploying of FLAME and Stuxnet against Iran, which made international headlines this past year when the coordinated efforts of the tools were used to disable Iranian nuclear centrifuges in an attempt to slow their progress in their nuclear program [12].  These efforts are ongoing, with the latest addition of the Gauss and Duqu malwares [13] continuing to target middle-eastern countries.

“From his first months in office, President Obama secretly ordered increasingly sophisticated attacks on the computer systems that run Iran’s main nuclear enrichment facilities, significantly expanding America’s first sustained use of cyberweapons, according to participants in the program.”
                                                    — +The New York Times

Obama reportedly went on to sign a classified directive last year [14] enabling the government to seize control of private networks, and the 2012 NDAA (National Defense Authorization Act) includes terms [15, section 954] that authorize offensive attacks on foreign threats [16].  The official United States policy already is to deem any cyberattack on the U.S. as an "act of war" [17], and it looks like these types of actions and attacks have already been made legal.

While it may once have been a subject of fiction [18], it's now and has been a harsh reality that we're in the middle of a new era in warfare, and the battles are already well-underway as countries around the world are openly engaging in offensive attacks on one another that are impacting economies on a massive scale.  I don't know what else to call this other than a world war—even the CIA's Center for the Study of Intelligence (CSI) predicted this [19], as have many others even earlier [20].  

Here's a thought; if our constitution gives us the right to bear arms, and the government deems these types of attacks as acts of war, then isn't it our right to keep and bear these arms?  Yet another case for a mass-algorate society [21], which Mr. Obama appears to agree with me on [22], at the very least.

[1]: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/19/technology/chinas-army-is-seen-as-tied-to-hacking-against-us.html
[2]: http://intelreport.mandiant.com/
[3]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titan_Rain
[4]: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1098371,00.html
[5]: http://www.zdnet.com/news/security-experts-lift-lid-on-chinese-hack-attacks/145763
[6]: http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/rss_viewer/international_strategy_for_cyberspace.pdf
[7]: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304563104576355623135782718.html
[8]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_cyberattacks_on_Estonia
[9]: http://www.vedomosti.ru/smartmoney/article/2007/05/28/3004
[10]: http://www.zdnet.com/meet-gauss-the-latest-cyber-espionage-tool-7000002405/
[11]: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/01/world/middleeast/obama-ordered-wave-of-cyberattacks-against-iran.html?pagewanted=all
[12]: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-11388018
[13]: http://www.zdnet.com/meet-gauss-the-latest-cyber-espionage-tool-7000002405/
[14]: http://endthelie.com/2012/11/15/obama-reportedly-signs-classified-cyberwarfare-policy-directive-with-troubling-implications/#axzz2LMPlf8iA
[15]: http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-112hr1540enr/pdf/BILLS-112hr1540enr.pdf
[16]: http://endthelie.com/2011/12/17/approval-of-covert-offensive-cyberwar-sneakily-inserted-into-ndaa/
[17]: http://www.forbes.com/sites/reuvencohen/2012/06/05/the-white-house-and-pentagon-deem-cyber-attacks-an-act-of-war/
[18]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuromancer
[19]: https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/vol48no4/new_face_of_war.html
[20]: http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/reprints/2007/RAND_RP223.pdf
[21]: https://plus.google.com/112353210404102902472/posts/MVQXyw9EJDE
[22]: http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-57569503-1/obama-endorses-required-high-school-coding-classes/

Just makes it more upsetting to have online class homework

Eric if only it was on a weekend! Is it going to be an online vid streaming for that? or maybe it will get recorded and be shared later on? :)

to be fair i like the more visual approach. this is good for the consumer. i still dont know why i would want to dig into my past pics and add and make a "scrapbook" online. where are the privacy settings mate?

Wow, it's Friday already. Payday. Christmas gift time.

So, I've been pondering if I should go to an online university, a community college, or just straight to an in state school (UNC, NC State, possibly Duke)?

I've watched pretty much all of em, Alex gave a talk there and was meeting with all kinds of people. I had no idea it even existed and was amazed at how underplayed it was here compared to other conferences considering how huge RSA is... But i just bring it up because if you think that's news... that's just scratching the surface and alot of the discussions that happened had a underlying sense of online warfare.

+Zebulin Magby do you honestly believe that there was ever any real anonymity online, even in the days of Bulletin Boards? I think there was just little motivation or profit to be made back then. Now is a different story.

We're going live in 15 minutes with #bitcoin Core Developer @jgarzik on the @DecentralizeAll podcast! Watch online:

That's one of those great, simple ideas that makes me think, "Huh. Why didn't someone think of that sooner?" :) Your dedication to making a positive difference is really inspiring!

My current project is to give back to the online community that has taught me so much by making some educational videos of my own! I hope to start very very soon, if school doesn't get in the way of my education. =P

totally. emoticons are to teeny jpgs like real breasts are to a boob jobs, you know what I mean? but not only that, you CAN use emoticons and still be cool. I've stopped worrying that people might think that I must be a bozo since I use 'em. Things can get really charged up online, and emoticons are the ONLY shorthand available to help telegraph (there's an obsolete term!) your actual "body english" behind what you're saying.... :0)

RT @martindale: We're going live in 15 minutes with #bitcoin Core Developer @jgarzik on the @DecentralizeAll podcast! Watch online: https:

RT @martindale: We're going live in 15 minutes with #bitcoin Core Developer @jgarzik on the @DecentralizeAll podcast! Watch online: https:

RT @martindale: We're going live in 15 minutes with #bitcoin Core Developer @jgarzik on the @DecentralizeAll podcast! Watch online: https:

Including the Artificial Intelligence class that I and over 58,000 people have signed up for ( http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/16/science/16stanford.html ), Stanford is now offering 13 of their fall semester classes (including statements of accomplishments for those who complete them!) online, for free:

http://see.stanford.edu/see/courses.aspx

Now, the question is... which others to sign up for? How many should I take?!

Including the Artificial Intelligence class that I and over 58,000 people have signed up for ( http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/16/science/16stanford.html ), Stanford is now offering 13 of their fall semester classes (including statements of accomplishments for those who complete them!) online, for free:

http://see.stanford.edu/see/courses.aspx

Now, the question is... which others to sign up for? How many should I take?!

Including the Artificial Intelligence class that I and over 58,000 people have signed up for ( http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/16/science/16stanford.html ), Stanford is now offering 13 of their fall semester classes (including statements of accomplishments for those who complete them!) online, for free:

http://see.stanford.edu/see/courses.aspx

Now, the question is... which others to sign up for? How many should I take?!

Including the Artificial Intelligence class that I and over 58,000 people have signed up for ( http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/16/science/16stanford.html ), Stanford is now offering 13 of their fall semester classes (including statements of accomplishments for those who complete them!) online, for free:

http://see.stanford.edu/see/courses.aspx

Now, the question is... which others to sign up for? How many should I take?!

Kindigo posted an awesome Oekaki contest over on GWing, and will be awarding 10,000 GWing Credits to a winner, every week. I can't wait to see some of the submissions. I think I'll participate, too. Maybe. <3

An Oekaki, for those of you who don't know, is a sort of online version of Photoshop. You can use an Oekaki to draw, sketch, and discuss all the little splurge-arts that you might have. A lot of fun, indeed. For an example, you can check out the GWing Oekaki, and maybe even draw something while you're there.

Don't be afraid - take a look at some of the shameful submissions I've posted!

If you're using MySQL Cluster and have recently added a nodegroup, you can use the following code to generate a report of what tables are currently partitioned across the nodes as you apply ALTER ONLINE TABLE ... REORGANIZE PARTITION to them to get them partitioned:

select count(p.table_name) as partitions, p.table_schema, p.table_name from tables t join partitions p on (t.table_schema=p.table_schema and t.table_name=p.table_name) where t.engine='ndbcluster' group by p.table_schema, p.table_name order by partitions desc;

You'll get a nice clean report of all your tables, what schema they belong to, and how many partitions they have. Use in combination with my method of finding the largest tables in MySQL and you'll ensure smooth growth of your cluster!

+Coursefork is happy to announce the Startup Giveback, an initiative for entrepreneurs to donate equity instead of cash to social initiatives, in partnership with +Shoeboxed and the +American Underground.  All are welcome to our first event, which will be hosted at the Shoeboxed HQ in Durham, NC.  100% of equity will go directly to Startup Endowment, while cash donations at the door of the event will go to the Triangle Community Foundation.

Donations of all sorts, not just equity, are welcome!  While we're aiming for a 1% equity donation from each participating company, you're welcome to donate cash either online or at the door of the event.  Feel free to leave comments if you have questions!  I hope to see you there.

Free Press and the Harry Potter Alliance collaborated on this video featuring a series of online celebrities and writers speaking about the importance of Net Neutrality.

Featuring John and Hank Green (the vlogbrothers); actor and blogger Wil Wheaton; bestselling author Maureen Johnson; Shawn Ahmed from the UnculturedProject; vloggers and musicians Kristina Horner and Luke Conard; and Adam Savage from Mythbusters.

Take action to save the Internet now: http://www.savetheinternet.com

How would you behave in a world with no anonymity?

Researchers from +Yuriy Zubovski's alma mater, Carnegie Mellon University, raise a few troubling questions about identity and privacy in a paper released at BlackHat in August [1]. They show results from a facial recognition study and hit some points about how it relates to Augmented Reality (AR), right up +Robert Rice's alley.

One of the authors, Alessandro Acquisti, also gave a talk at USENIX shortly after the release, of which there is video [2]. He explores some fascinating examples of how the images and videos that people have posted online can be utilized for tracking identity, even in cases where you explicitly "untag" yourself, which may people simply do not consider.

[1]: http://www.heinz.cmu.edu/~acquisti/face-recognition-study-FAQ/
[2]: http://www.usenix.org/events/sec11/stream/acquisti/index.html

How would you behave in a world with no anonymity?

Researchers from +Yuriy Zubovski's alma mater, Carnegie Mellon University, raise a few troubling questions about identity and privacy in a paper released at BlackHat in August [1]. They show results from a facial recognition study and hit some points about how it relates to Augmented Reality (AR), right up +Robert Rice's alley.

One of the authors, Alessandro Acquisti, also gave a talk at USENIX shortly after the release, of which there is video [2]. He explores some fascinating examples of how the images and videos that people have posted online can be utilized for tracking identity, even in cases where you explicitly "untag" yourself, which may people simply do not consider.

[1]: http://www.heinz.cmu.edu/~acquisti/face-recognition-study-FAQ/
[2]: http://www.usenix.org/events/sec11/stream/acquisti/index.html

How would you behave in a world with no anonymity?

Researchers from +Yuriy Zubovski's alma mater, Carnegie Mellon University, raise a few troubling questions about identity and privacy in a paper released at BlackHat in August [1]. They show results from a facial recognition study and hit some points about how it relates to Augmented Reality (AR), right up +Robert Rice's alley.

One of the authors, Alessandro Acquisti, also gave a talk at USENIX shortly after the release, of which there is video [2]. He explores some fascinating examples of how the images and videos that people have posted online can be utilized for tracking identity, even in cases where you explicitly "untag" yourself, which may people simply do not consider.

[1]: http://www.heinz.cmu.edu/~acquisti/face-recognition-study-FAQ/
[2]: http://www.usenix.org/events/sec11/stream/acquisti/index.html

How would you behave in a world with no anonymity?

Researchers from +Yuriy Zubovski's alma mater, Carnegie Mellon University, raise a few troubling questions about identity and privacy in a paper released at BlackHat in August [1]. They show results from a facial recognition study and hit some points about how it relates to Augmented Reality (AR), right up +Robert Rice's alley.

One of the authors, Alessandro Acquisti, also gave a talk at USENIX shortly after the release, of which there is video [2]. He explores some fascinating examples of how the images and videos that people have posted online can be utilized for tracking identity, even in cases where you explicitly "untag" yourself, which may people simply do not consider.

[1]: http://www.heinz.cmu.edu/~acquisti/face-recognition-study-FAQ/
[2]: http://www.usenix.org/events/sec11/stream/acquisti/index.html

Making the case for a mass-algorate society, in which we all know how to write code. I wholeheartedly agree.

Some resources:

Learning to Code
- Codecademy: http://www.codecademy.com/
- Stanford's Online CS101 course with in-browser Javascript exercises: http://www.stanford.edu/class/cs101/
- Learn You a Haskell: http://learnyouahaskell.com/chapters
- Project Euler: http://projecteuler.net/

Media
- +Douglas Rushkoff's Program or Be Programmed: Program or Be Programmed by Douglas Rushkoff
- +Daniel Shiffman on Artful Programming: http://vimeo.com/16140257
- +John Graham-Cumming on Teaching Our Kids to Code: http://blog.jgc.org/2011/09/teach-our-kids-to-code.html

Making the case for a mass-algorate society, in which we all know how to write code. I wholeheartedly agree.

Some resources:

Learning to Code
- Codecademy: http://www.codecademy.com/
- Stanford's Online CS101 course with in-browser Javascript exercises: http://www.stanford.edu/class/cs101/
- Learn You a Haskell: http://learnyouahaskell.com/chapters
- Project Euler: http://projecteuler.net/

Media
- +Douglas Rushkoff's Program or Be Programmed: Program or Be Programmed by Douglas Rushkoff
- +Daniel Shiffman on Artful Programming: http://vimeo.com/16140257
- +John Graham-Cumming on Teaching Our Kids to Code: http://blog.jgc.org/2011/09/teach-our-kids-to-code.html

Making the case for a mass-algorate society, in which we all know how to write code. I wholeheartedly agree.

Some resources:

Learning to Code
- Codecademy: http://www.codecademy.com/
- Stanford's Online CS101 course with in-browser Javascript exercises: http://www.stanford.edu/class/cs101/
- Learn You a Haskell: http://learnyouahaskell.com/chapters
- Project Euler: http://projecteuler.net/

Media
- +Douglas Rushkoff's Program or Be Programmed: Program or Be Programmed by Douglas Rushkoff
- +Daniel Shiffman on Artful Programming: http://vimeo.com/16140257
- +John Graham-Cumming on Teaching Our Kids to Code: http://blog.jgc.org/2011/09/teach-our-kids-to-code.html

Making the case for a mass-algorate society, in which we all know how to write code. I wholeheartedly agree.

Some resources:

Learning to Code
- Codecademy: http://www.codecademy.com/
- Stanford's Online CS101 course with in-browser Javascript exercises: http://www.stanford.edu/class/cs101/
- Learn You a Haskell: http://learnyouahaskell.com/chapters
- Project Euler: http://projecteuler.net/

Media
- +Douglas Rushkoff's Program or Be Programmed: Program or Be Programmed by Douglas Rushkoff
- +Daniel Shiffman on Artful Programming: http://vimeo.com/16140257
- +John Graham-Cumming on Teaching Our Kids to Code: http://blog.jgc.org/2011/09/teach-our-kids-to-code.html

Yep, this April 22nd, 2008 is my birthday (credit to the intro goes to sXePhil), and I'm turning 21 today. However, due to the upcoming MMA fight that I've got at Dorton Arena on April 26th, all mandatory 21st birthday celebrations will be postponed until after the fight.

For those of you who aren't already aware, you can pick up tickets at Carolina Fight Promotions. I'm going to be fighting Andy Teague, a well-versed jiujitsu competitor, and the match is scheduled for three rounds at 3 minutes each.

So, today being my birthday--and as such, I've received tons and tons of birthday wishes--I thought I'd give some shoutouts to everyone who has done so. It's pretty simple, all you've got to do is write a "happy birthday" post somewhere on the web, link to me, and then show me the page you want me to link back to.

My twitter friends have had an early start, and it's already the afternoon - don't procrastinate, I'm ending this at midnight tonight!

Thank you guys for the happy birthday wishes! Martin Bowling Michelle Reno Brian Mark Rae Hoffman Dave Rohrer Alex Simpson Heather Sexy SEO SEOcom

I'll be fighting at this weekend's "Fight to the Finish II" (Greenville, NC), as the second event run by the Amateur Fight League. Tickets are still available, especially with some great deals available from AFL's Online Store - don't wait, make sure you get your tickets before the weekend. :]

I'm scheduled to weight in as a middleweight (171 - 185 lbs.), which is a step up from my normal weight (170). I've been lifting heavy and training hard, gaining some weight to meet Brian Ward in the ring in my third mixed martial arts fight. Since my last fight against Will Estes was deemed the most exciting fight of the night by StarNews, I've been training harder and working more towards my professional career as a mixed martial arts fighter.

Rest days start after my last training session on Thursday night, so I'll be getting some well-needed rest and relaxation Friday to prepare for the weighin on Saturday morning at the Greenville Convention Center. Afterwards, my friends and I are meeting one of my RolePlayGateway staff members at the Olive Garden in Greenville to enjoy my pre-fight lunch. Then it's off to rest (hoorah for naps), and then later that night - it'll be fight time.

Get in touch with me if you're out in Greenville and you're interested in having lunch with us or if you want to show up for the fight (which is at the Greenville Convention Center, tickets will be available at the doors), you're more than welcome to come.

Let's do the damn thang.

I've been using Twitter since pretty early on (and long before @oprah), and I've found it to be a superbly convenient communication tool and notification service. Even though it's still very young on the web (Twitter was founded in March of 2006) It's been the home to great ideas like the #twitterdata proposal and the publicdomain book-via-tweets project. It's also an awesome reputation management platform, and can be used to both to provide effective customer service and help distribute news and updates about your business or product, which is exactly how I use it for my online roleplaying project.

But as with the rest of the social media world, Twitter can become very complex very quickly (but I still contend that there is no social media overload) and as a result, can be difficult to manage. As a result, I use several third-party tools to help me manage and gather information that helps me do my Twitter job much more efficiently and effectively.

Splitweet [caption id="attachment_196" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="Splitweet allows you to post and monitor multiple Twitter accounts and brands."][/caption]

For those of us with multiple Twitter accounts (like some people who create a Twitter account for each roleplaying character they use), Splitweet is an absolute savior. This service allows you to tweet to multiple accounts at the same time, as well as combining the "stream" from each account into one page. A lot of desktop Twitter clients offer this kind of functionality, but where Splitweet truly excels is in its ability to track what it calls "brands" (more reputation management terms here): you can specify keywords and phrases that will appear in a separate feed, even if you do not follow those users. This gets us around the disastrous changes Twitter made to the @replies, and helps us keep up to date on any mentions of our site's name and any tweets relating to what it is that we do.

Sherflock [caption id="attachment_195" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="Sherflock provides detailed statistics and summaries of Twitter users you are associated with."][/caption]

Sherflock is an absolutely awesome stat tracking machine that helps weed out the waves of spam that have been coming in since Twitter has gone mainstream. Sherflock gives a large number of statistics about each every account the either follows you or that you are following, and lets you sort and filter users based on these statistics.

Twitterfall [caption id="attachment_194" align="alignnone" width="217" caption="Twitterfall offers a live stream of twitter updates on keywords that you specify."][/caption]

This tool allows you to specify any number of keywords that you wish to view on a live, moving stream of tweets. This is very useful if you are using a computer that allows you to "pin" a window on top (like Ubuntu Linux), or if you have a multiple-monitor rig, or even if you use multiple computers using the input-sharing app Synergy. You'll get a live feed of updates on any topic of your choice, which can even be updated and changed in real-time.

Using these three tools will help you maximize you Twitter performance and make the most of an already awesome service, preventing you from being inundated with the massive stream of messages that you're surely going to subscribe to.

What are your top three Twitter tools? Feel free to make a comment or write your own post, and I'll gladly append a link to this post to help everyone out!

RPGChat is one of the other large roleplaying forums out there, and they've been around since about May, 2001. Since then, RPGChat has gone through many evolutions, and has expanded rapidly - they started with a forum, grew into a decent sized roleplaying chat, and finally removed the chat and went back to forums.

You'll immediately notice the large number of forums, which for most boards isn't an issue. In today's roleplaying world, RPGChat's index fits right in.

They've got four basic navigation options at the top of the page, which are images instead of text, which isn't very good for SEO. The four menu options are Home, Forums, Chat, and Rules. I gave each of them a shot, but it looks like only the "Home" and "Rules" link work.

I'm going to take a look at their code, because using images for links isn't horrible if you specify the right attributes. Let's have a glance:

<a href="http://forums.rpgchat.com/index.php"> <img src="header/but_home.jpg" border="0"> </a>

Yikes! Not only does the anchor not have a title attribute, but the image doesn't have an alt attribute! Search engines won't be able to understand the context of these links, and the flow of link juice to the two working links won't be very beneficial.

I participated on these forums for a few months as the username Alighieri, for that period, I became the single most active user in their welcome forum. I posted in several other topics, but got pretty frustrated with the limitation on the length of a post (20,000 characters).

When attempting to post a profile for one of my characters, I was immediately snubbed by the limitation. This makes well-researched posts difficult to make, specifically with the citations that must be put in place for accurate references. Ultimately, I was forced to cut out portions of my character's history to fit it into the post.

After posting for a few weeks nonstop in the Welcome Forum, I headed off to the The Arena area, where turn-based fighting is largely popular. I opened a topic with a list of the top turn based fighters, placed into a neat little image and posted right into the topic. It took a few days to get any response at all, (save for a few people who contacted me over AIM) and when I did get a response, I logged in to RPGChat to find that I had been banned for "advertising on multiple occasions", much to my surprise.

However, while my visit was cut short, I met some good friends, and had some great discussions. Unfortunately, the forum does not allow any links to external sites of any kind, and also does not allow signatures, which makes it very difficult to spread the word about the topics you start there. This isn't very good for encouraging member interaction, and makes it very difficult for momentum of any sort to be gained within the community.

After speaking with someone who had messaged me on AIM prior to my banning, I confirmed my worst fears - RPGChat is a closed community, and is not very open to outside communities or positive interaction with those communities. This is the number one concern mentioned to me about RPGChat and their future, and there is ongoing fear of the community continuing to stagnate without any growth other than direct referral.

I sent a request via the site's contact form, as listed at the bottom every page, which merely opened a new email to their support address, forums@rpgchat.com - I sent a couple questions in my email, and I identified who I was, but I haven't yet received a response. It'd be great if we could get an interview with an admin from RPGChat on the history of the site!

In terms of organic visitors, a search for pages on RPGChat has about 16,200 results. When digging through the pages, I noticed that only 477 pages were in the primary index, with the remainder in the supplemental index. That's scary!

Let's take a look at their search results:

As you can see from the above search, we can confirm that there is some duplicate content problems. However, from what we've seen - most of RPGChat's traffic is a result of direct referral. We can identify with the importance of defensible traffic, but organic traffic is also a high-quality method of driving laser-targeted traffic to your site, and it looks like RPGChat is seriously missing out on this.

RPGChat has a relatively active forum; 63,708 threads, 1,925,709 posts, and 59,352 "active" members. While that's only an average of about 30 posts per thread and only about 32 posts per user, they do have some great quality and style elements in their posts that you simply don't see in many other places in roleplaying forums these days. I think it would be a great move for them to deactivate a lot of their older and inactive members, and send out reminders to these users to come back and join in on the fun.

It also seemed like a consensus that the single best area on RPGChat was the Clans & Guilds forum, which most users simply called "C/G" for short. It looks like most other forums' version of a multiverse, where roleplay is freeform, and most action is player-driven with rules being defined by the status quo.

Lack of availability aside, RPGChat leaves a pretty strong impression, and if you're careful to follow their 500 word list of rules, you can likely make some friends and enjoy some great high-quality roleplay. The administration needs to do some overhauling if they're going to keep the community healthy, but for the time being - RPGChat makes for a great roleplaying destination.

I just invested in $500 worth of targeted advertising for GWing Roleplay. So, what's the total impact upon my wallet?

A grand $5 in activation fees.

Big shoutouts to Computers.net for pointing this out. I was thinking of organizing a group of friends to throw multiple instances of these offers into advertising for GWing, but I realized that it would be difficult to target the advertising properly, as I found it rather complicated to create my own template of keywords and negative keywords to match the optimal result for what we desire in our community. If you sign up for these offers, be sure to carefully monitor your expenses! The billing is most likely set to recurring, and will continue to charge your credit card after your account balance has been used.

Alternately, I woke this morning to find DoesMyGeek's New Podcast, and was greeted by a shoutout and a link over the air to yours truly, and GWing Roleplay. What an amazing podcast, talking about the classic combination, roleplay and beer. Here's to you guys. ;)

One more - I just got linked to Michael Robertson's Evaluation of a College Degree, and found the article particularly interesting in this time. And now: back to work.

I was putting together a "Top 10 Ways to Kill a Roleplay" list, and I figured I'd post it on the GWing Roleplay site to get everyone's input on the issue. Roleplayers there should spread the votes across all of the options, for the most part. I'll probably take the top 10 and make this top 10 list a bit more intuitive.

On another note - a friend from my childhood found me on Facebook last night, and we were talking this morning a bit. It's good to hear from her, it's been a few years. Her mother called me on Saturday, and we chatted for a short while. It's always good to stay connected. Okay, maybe not always, but this circumstance DOES apply.

Though, it doesn't quite make up for Facebook's broken note import feature.

I got a haircut last night - I'm down to maybe half a curl of hair. I don't have any pictures yet, but as soon as I do I'll post them here. Tonia killed me two or three times over when she found out. Sorry!

On another note, I'm writing this post in Google Docs. Since I'm using the Blogger Beta, I wasn't able to do this up until about a week ago, but I'm only now testing it out. It's a fairly easy setup, all I've had to do is select "Blogger (Beta)" from the Blog settings here in Docs, and then enter my username, password, and finally which blog I'd like to post to. This last bit of information is optional, and they said that they'll post to the first blog they find if you don't specify it.

We're (GWing Roleplay) looking at some excellent affiliate options, and will be presenting the community with a good number of resources in the near future. There are some outstanding opportunities that have presented themselves, and we're striving to give GWing the best environment possible for the roleplayers. We'll keep you updated as things progress, we promise!

I'm growing weary of the community that thrives on IRC, particularly of the fighter portion. (When I say fighting, I refer to a sport called text-fighting.) Andrew describes them quite eloquently: arrogant. They seem to believe that the IRC world is all there is, and that it is necessary to determine which channel, and perhaps even network, is better through means of blind hatred and ignorance.

Take, for example, this Animelab and SurrealChat thing. The GWing chat is hosted on SurrealChat. We often get users from Animelab telling GWingers that they suck and should die, in much more vibrant color, because SurrealChat is stupid, and they hate SurrealChat. Granted, this conflict has died down, but it does seem to be an epidemic.

I love when a conversation of these IRC nerds proceeds as follows.

"I'm the best roleplayer on this server."
"No, you're not."
"Yes, I am."
"How about a hybrid match to determine that, then?"
"Okay. Stance up."

Does my point need to be exemplified any more clearly?

Fighting a hybrid match is NOT ROLEPLAYING. Morons.

+Jim Carver And your roleplay costume would be...

I just came across an artist's work of a futuristic fantasy Tokyo that is overgrown with vegetation, and is amid reclamation by nature. Immediately, I thought that these images demanded a roleplaying game to go along with them, perhaps of the walk-through nature.

They came from a blog called Tokyo Genso (Tokyo Fantasy) - which has some altogether amazing works of art, so go check them out. :)

[gallery]

Number of times that I've removed the Microsoft Office Language Bar in the past 7 days: 17

On another note, we've put up a technology forum, and hopefully this will help us keep things organized. Additionally, as I'm sure some of you have seen, we've launched the Role Play Academy.

Look for FreeForm Roleplaying Chat soon, too.

I just found an awesome list of Open source applications for Windows, and thought I'd take the time to update.

I think I'm sick or getting sick from the weekend, which was awesome all in itself. Rode over to Ian's on Saturday, enjoyed a good night with some new friends, playing Unreal Tournament (the original, what else?) until somewhere around 3AM. Ah, good times. I woke up the next day in time to give Amber a call before she left for work. We got to gaming shortly after lunch, and for once, our ship didn't esplode! (partly because we left it behind for the majority of the game...)

Sunday we relaxed and watched football, both American and World. Poor poor Chelsea! I ended up rolling in at about 4PM, and proceeded to put together some home cooking for when Amber got off work. Unfortunately, my plans were foiled by her work schedule, and she got off at six instead of the planned five, denying us the opportunity of going to the park to eat while the sun set. We enjoyed ourselves nonetheless, and had a good cuddly evening.

Work today was a pain, though. Internet was out, and Bellsouth took until 5PM to bring us a mediocre solution. One of our major clients was having email problems, which I couldn't troubleshoot until the internet was up. Pity.

And, now I come home, GWing is having some people problems, and the GT League is bumbling along as usual. Now, about that roleplaying social reform...

I've been seriously slacking in getting RPGateway's blog up and running, but I've finally gotten around to re-posting the files and re-connecting Wordpress to the database. Now all I've got to do is to get a couple of our admins (and hopefully, one of our loverly owners) to start posting and managing it.

The idea here is to create a single update page where watchers who don't want to be involved in the site can still read updates from the staff. A buzz can be established, and hopefully, some real momentum can be generated with content that is updated daily. The so-called 'blogosphere' (I cringe too, relax.) is a very powerful force in the tubes today, and I think it's important to at least begin to establish some sort of presence here.

I was recently pointed to Trevor Somerville's 30 days to success, and I'm only reminded that articles are the Queen in a world where daily updates are King. Good luck to Trevor, I'll probably swing by once or twice to check up on his progress and see if he has any useful tips.

I started fiddling with some new posting options again, in particular the email posting. Blogger lets you set up a secret email to which you can send blog posts, at which point they'll automatically be added to your blog. I had a contact set up in my Gmail as of (insert long period of time) ago, and I sent a post to it, but I haven't seen anything of it. It looks like the same email, but... apparently not. I guess I'll be reconfiguring this later.

I've been having great experiences with SEO and RolePlay Gateway, we're rising in rankings rather quickly, even after the domain migration. Many thanks to the folks over at DigitalPoint for my education over the past few months. I'm sure I'll be telling these success stories soon, but right now I have to head off to Winston to run a few service calls.

Peace out!

While marketing RolePlayGateway, one of the things we considered was the "virality" of our approach. Viral marketing is any marketing technique that induces Web sites or users to pass on a marketing message to other sites or users, creating a potentially exponential growth in the message's visibility and effect. We're going to guide you on the road to a truly viral campaign.

A successful viral push can be launched simply by following three simple rules.

1. Don't spend everything you have on a single campaign.
2. Don't rely entirely on one vehicle of viral marketing.
3. Be different from everyone else; stand out.

While we're not nearly viral enough, part of our success so far has been the evangelism of our passionate users. And there you have it, one of the most important keys to successful viral marketing:

Passion: Users who are passionate about your service, your community, or your site. They will propagate, they will evangelize, and ultimately will generate more passionate users who will do the same thing for you. Dawn Anfuso calls these members Boomers - and it is important to not ignore them.

Make it easy for your users to share. Make it hard for them NOT to share. Add a feature on your site that encourages them to send an email to their friends about the service. Add blocks where they can copy and paste code straight to their social profiles on sites like MySpace, Facebook, and Bebo. Jeanne Jennings wrote an amazing article on Optimizing the "E-mail This" Marketing Opportunity, and I'd recommend you read it and implement the things you learn from it.

Widgetize: On that note, we arrive on one of our most powerful vehicles for viral marketing: Widgets. The list of sites that you can infect with widgets are endless. From iGoogle to individual sites, widgets encourage users to put your tool on their page. Be sure to incorporate other techniques here: Include encouragement to share it. Make it easy to post elsewhere and share.

One of the items that RolePlay Gateway could utilize to great success is the concept of game trailers. Many of the games on RPGateway are text-based, and have no real graphics. However, most of these games have amazing storylines, storylines which could be utilized to hitch audiences, or at least entertain them. Flash-based videos, or trailers, with pivotal content, captivating video and audio, and viral marketing elements such as "Email this!" or "Share This", would be an amazing leap forward. Take a look at how YouTube's video player works. Such trailers could even be uploaded to social networking sites, like YouTube and Google Video, and shared to millions of users with a touch of viral marketing magic.

Juice It Up: Include your URL everywhere you go. Facebook, MySpace. Everywhere. This generates user authority, even if the site you are on has nothing at all to do with your target market. Cross sections are a beautiful thing, and even if you don't get a drop of link juice in comments, market saturation is a very important, yet delicate, part of viral marketing.

Maintain a presence on every social networking site you can sustain. Extend your campaign to all of them. Create social groups for each of these sites, and publicize them. The more targets you hit, just like investing, the less committed you are to that particular market. Your assets are distributed, and while the workload may be unfathomably difficult (keeping up with so many social networking sites sucks... that's why we have ProfileLinker), the potential for success is incredible.

Reward: Another option is to provide tangible rewards for marketing. This can be in the form of prizes, such as in a contest, or to individual users. Incentives are very powerful, and drive many users to promote where they'd be otherwise apathetic. Things can be very simple, such as giving them tokens or credits, to very expensive, such as providing real cash per referral. This is probably the most effective, albeit expensive, method of encouraging users to infect others.

Don't Stop. Don't set these actions in motion and then hope they work. Get involved. Comment on profiles. Reply to messages. Enhance your viral effect. Make it tangible. If users can see that there is a real person there, they will be a lot more enthusiastic and encouraged to participate, and your viral marketing campaign will be more successful.

Other Resources!!! Web Marketing Today has an amazing list of resource articles that are sure to help you build your campaign.

There's been a lot of active discussion about the state of AOL's directory project, DMOZ. There have been many attempts to unseat the directory project from its position as the most authoritative listing resource, such as the Yahoo Directory. Many of these attempts have fallen by the wayside, as Rand Fiskin points out, but none have remained more controversial than DMOZ. More recently, Chris Crum's post on WebProNews about his lack of respect for DMOZ has stirred up a hornet's nest of DMOZ criticism, including a particular post claiming DMOZ is a waste of time.

I forwarded a lot of this on to Philip Nicolcev, known by username as "frug", who is the editor of several roleplay-oriented categories on DMOZ. He responded to me directly with a highly insightful email, and I was fortunate enough to receive his permission to share its contents.

I've been editing the pbp category at DMOZ for what... 4 years now? About that. This article is a big whiny complaint which misses the mark. They are both correct and sadly mistaken. Yes, dmoz is outdated and yes, it fails because of attitude problems, but not silly allegations of 'corruption' or people who are bitter because they didn't get listed. We don't list everything, I don't list even half of the submissions I get, and anyone who has been an administrator or an editor for a similar type of project knows better than to take these kinds of complaints seriously. One thing they say is definitely correct: Apply once carefully following their rules if you wish and then, as Will suggested, forget about them.

This is exactly the approach that should be modeled for any directory, regardless of its state or condition. When you are submitting a link to a directory, you are being offered the privilege to be listed as a resource by the owners and management of that directory. They are not obligated to list your link, let alone review it in a timely fashion--but this would be genuinely appreciated and would reflect on the directory's position as a "good" resource.

DMOZ is the primary source for Google's Directory, and you must respect the opinion of such a large and successful company. It's obvious that the idea behind an open directory like DMOZ is good, but where they fail is in execution. More on that later.

He continues:

That is what you should do. Apply once and forget about it, don't claim anybody is corrupt because whether you believe my opinion or not, there's no corruption. Nobody cares enough about dmoz anymore for it to be valuable for extortion. Don't be ridiculous. Furthermore if you were to speak to some of the senior editors you'd discover that they are pretty damn uptight, even obsessive. The problems with dmoz are, in my opinion, twofold. First off, you have the dated trashy look of the website which is a relic of the 1990's. It's not user friendly, it doesn't entice anyone to go browsing, and it hasn't adapted or added features that would help people understand the structure of the directory or find what they're looking for. The editor forums still use phpBB2, and you should see the editing panel. You wouldn't believe how dated this stuff is. Frankly it has needed an overhaul for years now.

I largely agree with him. The phpBB team deprecated the phpBB2 branch at the beginning of this year, ending support for the outdated platform. AOL would do well to do a complete overhaul of the site's design now that "Web 2.0" has come and gone (and I could reference posts all day on that) - and AOL has completely missed their opportunity to latch on and ride the wave.

Philip finishes his correspondance with the frightening truth that has been plaguing many post-Web2.0 sites and services:

The second problem, attitude, is partially the cause of the first problem. It's a stagnant atmosphere where nothing gets done and nobody gets listened to. They would rather leave a directory as a cluttered mess of garbage than risk breaking its structure by overhauling it. Fixing my category took me about two years before I had approval to restructure it, and I'm in a small niche category nobody pays much attention to. Since becoming an editor I have deleted about 60% of the outdated links listed. Had I not joined, they'd still be there cluttering things up with linkspam geocities pages from 10 years ago. So yeah, dmoz is failing, but not because of corruption or because some guy didn't get what he wanted. And, honestly, if the author of this article was applying to dmoz just to 'test how fair it was' then I'm glad they rejected him. Somehow they made the right decision because he's wasting their time.

And that's the exact problem - the DMOZ community has completely stagnated, which has resulted in the puddle of goop that the directory has become. In my personal opinion, I think that AOL could do a lot better job at community management (all reputation management aside) by setting up a more rigid structure of responsibility. The editors need to be held responsible for a timely review specified by their superiors, and there needs to be cross-checking of the editor's work by other qualified editors.

Is this another example of AOL's purchases being mismanaged and ultimately being forgotten, such as what many people claim is the case with ex-Nullsoft product WinAmp? Perhaps, but I think that remains to be seen. After all, even our favored Google took a questionable amount of time to convert phone-consolidation service GrandCentral to the new Google Voice after its 2007 acquisition. DMOZ was in fact originally a Netscape project, which then-strong AOL acquired in 1998. Since that acquisition, little has changed.

All said and done, DMOZ needs some love if it's going to survive as anything more than a relic of trust and authority in the Web 2.0 bubble. As Philip points out, it has both good and bad traits and deserves further attention, but it needs to be attention in (and from) the right direction. The questions remain; where has AOL been? What can be done about the editors (or lack thereof)? How can DMOZ be improved?