random musings on various possible microfutures of SVG

1. My 12 year old daughter (who is quite savvy when it comes to interactive computer games) has recently become a fan of something known as Poptropica. The web site (no doubt done in Flash) is actually produced by "Family Education Network, a division of Pearson." It is large and highly interactive and filled with some very clever puzzles. (For example, there is a variant of the puzzle of 15 crossed with Othello that would probably never have been invented before computers, but is very imaginative and intriguing). Many of the games remind me of the Jump Start games (ages pre-K through 4th grade or so) that are very fun and challenging. Anyhow it is all playable for free. The site has doubled in size (and is very large already -- like hundreds of hours worth of gaming without the kid seeing the whole world). Some of the special effects are very compelling and suggest a very rich library of effects has been developed. Anyhow, the game has commercials for Disney and Cartoon Network (and possible others) sprinkled in fairly tastefully into the backdrop of the game world (sort of like l'Oreal having billboards in Second Life). The size of the programming effort impresses me, as does the revenue model, whatever that may be. Made me think: how about something like that all done in SVG and open source with a different model of contribution and development. What a wonderful environment for clever folks to showcase their artsy-compsci talents. 

2. rewriting the wikipedia entry on SVG. I mentioned this a couple of months ago, but at SVG Open it seems like the Wikipedia folks were talking about adopting Google's SVGWeb so as to allow ubiquitous usage of SVG throughout their site. Seems like the article on SVG would be a natural place to start. Maybe we could even put some simple SMIL content into Wikipedia. If people saw moving pictures and then saw how simple the source code is (and it's free!) then inertial might build.

Just a couple of thoughts -- not Possible Futures (in the big P big F sort of sense) but just little microfutures.

cheers
D

Received on Tuesday, 8 December 2009 01:21:57 UTC