jeremy snyder’s meta|remix

trevor smith over at transmutable, posted a little note about his participation in the virtual worlds management industry forecast 2008.

so i didn’t get a chance to contribute this year, but here are the questions:

1. What are your top 3 trend predictions for 2008?
2. What business goals have you set for 2008?
3. What challenges do you expect 2008 to bring for the virtual worlds industry?
4. A number of new platforms are launching in 2008. What are the biggest impacts this will have on the industry?
5. How will the above changes affect your specific segment of the industry in 2008?

and my responses:

1. my top 3 trends for 2008:
   1. more media companies in virtual worlds; less retail, manufacturing
   2. more virtual worlds moving to the web, meaning fewer thick clients
   3. more mash-ups, especially with blurred line stuff. i happen to have a few insights into this area, but i can’t quite share them yet.
2. business goals for 2008: well, i work for a virtual world company, so our goals are to get every single member we can
3. challenges for the industry for 2008 are going to be much the same as this year. technology is still a big deal, and we’re back to facing problems like platform support with thick clients. another challenge will be justification. aol and pontiac have pulled out, other corporations are not sure. companies will need to see good reasons to go into virtual worlds.
4. new platforms, like ours, will accomplish a few things in 2008, i think. first, they’ll get more and more awareness out there. each new platform will probably appeal to a new demographic or network of people. second, they’ll push each other to develop new approaches and new technologies. but most importantly, they’ll force us to think harder about true innovation, and i mean that mostly in the area of business model
5. the changes above will have a large impact on us, because they all ultimately shape what our business does and how we work. but for the most part, it’s kind of more of the same - we’re a young and flexible company, and we’re constantly watching all these factors and the whole industry, and making adjustments where we need to.

so i started using flickr last weekend because i wanted to share some photos, and have a web-based backup of my photos. i also really wanted something i could integrate into wordpress here.

flickr is really slick. the upload is nice and easy, works quickly, and tagging and permissions all worked really well. the wordpress plug-in, while not perfect, is pretty decent. but the flickr limitations on free accounts are really annoying.

i’m seriously considering switching to picasa web. any thoughts or experiences out there?

so it’s still in beta, but twinity is up and running. we sent out a round of invitations yesterday, and i’ve been amazed at the response. we have had a bunch of new users, new apartments, and we’ve been having fun running around talking to everyone.

i’ve recently gotten back in touch with a few of my old friends from high school, college and some past jobs. i’m going to be putting up some picture pages to share. as i’ve said before, i mostly use this blog for professional reasons, and i’m a bit more cautious about putting too much personal stuff out here. for that reasons, those posts will be password-protected. if you want the password, please email me at jeremy (at) jeremysnyder (dot) cc.

i have profiles on a bunch of different social networking sites. admittedly, some of them i only created because my employer makes one (yumondo) and i wanted to check out some of the others. so, here’s  a quick list of the ones where i have profiles, and what i think of them at a high level. Continue reading »

just a note that i’ll be blogging more often. i’ve got a bit more time at the moment, and some things i feel like blogging about.

i just finished neuromancer:

this is one of those books that i wish i had read 20 years ago. actually, not 20 years ago, more like 9 or something. in any event, before i had watched movies like the matrix. this and snow crash are kind of seminal works of the metaverse movement. after seeing those movies before reading this book, more so with neuromancer than with snow crash, it’s hard to purge images built by the movie when you read the book. so you kind of read with pre-conceived notions of how certain things should be.

in all honesty, i wasn’t a huge fan of this book. the concepts were really more interesting to me than the storyline itself. i found the narrative really hard to follow, and the drug-riddled picture of the future not at all appealing.

Ender’s Game is one of the books that has had the most impact on my life. i’ve read it about 10 times, and i’ve also read the other books in the series and the remix of the series, which is based on bean’s perspective.

it’s really one of the few books that  has stayed with me, and no matter how many times i read it, i still enjoy it. i love the pace of the story, the mixed narrative (email/memos at the beginning of the chapters) and of course the story itself.