It seems like a guaranteed recipe for success: (1) source material from a series of best-selling fantasy novels (Terry Goodkind’s Sword of Truth series), (2) the producers who brought us Hercules and Xena (Sam Raimi, who has since knocked our socks off with Spider-Man, and Rob Tapert, who is married to Xena‘s Lucy Lawless), (3) a lush New Zealand setting (which, if you didn’t already appreciate it in Raimi and Tapert’s previous series, probably hooked you during Lord of the Rings), and (4) a cast of seasoned fantasy actors (Star Wars’ Bruce Spence and Jay Laga’aia, and Lord of the Rings‘ Craig Parker).
If you were on Twitter yesterday, you might have noticed a flood of tweets with a mysterious “#wotw2” code in them. Well that was a “hash tag” or “hash code” you were seeing there and those tweets were completely fictional.
The fake tweets were all on account of War of the Worlds 2.0, an effort by Kris Kowal to re-enact the first reading of War of the Worlds by Orson Wells on live radio. If you remember the story, Wells’ 1938 radio performance caused panic across the nation because many listeners tuned in late and only heard descriptions of a massive alien attack. A pretty huge, if unintentional, spoof if ever there was one.
Kowal and his friends worked out a plan to recapture the spirit of that performance by getting as many people as they could to update Twitter as though that fictional attack was really happening, all over the world. The benefit of multiple authors is that each story is not only unique, but localized as well. Users also cross-talked on Twitter, encouraging one another to develop their own personal storylines.
How did it all work? Well, the team running War of the Worlds 2.0 organized it collaboratively on a Google Docs spreadsheet. After the plan was laid, they created a Twitter account named wotw2 that would announce each major event as it was meant to occur chronologically. This kept everyone’s story consistent.
So that everyone could follow the developing story together, each tweet was tagged with #wotw2. From there, a quick search on Twitter or Twemes brought up every relevant tweet. All throughout Halloween day the story progressed until the dramatic conclusion of the mock-invasion (we won!). Below is a chart illustrating the increased usage of the #wotw2 tag over the course of the day.
Being a sci-fi geek myself, I played along and even made a few blog posts to bolster the realism. In my story, the tripods initially left my part of campus alone as they went after Washington, DC, but eventually they returned and wrecked my whole housing area! Later I hid out in the rubble that was once our late-night diner. No heroics for me I’m afraid, my feed was all about survival.
Another user who did a great job was sea_dot, who summed up her antics that day in her own blog post. She began her story watching the “meteor shower” that eventually turned out to be the first wave of the invasion. Sea_dot’s stuff was so realistic (it included pictures and video clips) that one of her regular readers actually asked her if Denver was safe or not!
Overall, it was a fantastic experience and I hope it starts a trend. We’ll need to come up with a name for this kind of thing…any thoughts?
This thing looks great, but I can’t imagine anyone passing from house to house on Halloween inside that mech costume! It would make picking up candies kind of inconvenient, don’t you think?
A new EU trade rule has caused one winery to become a bit more creative with its naming scheme. Peltier Stanton makes port wine, but unfortunately, only grapes grown in Portugal can be used in the official production of “port.” Other grapes of the same variety can be used, of course, but the primary name cannot include the word in the title.
For this reason they have named their latest batch “USB” to poke fun at the EU ruling. In fact, nowhere on the bottle is the letter combination “p-o-r-t” found. For instance, the description on the back contains phrases like “an im____ant agreement” or “in your ____folio.”
The label design is also very nice. The top figure forms a grape vine and the bottom figure forms the Universal Serial Bus icon. On top of that, the pictures are made with binary that spells out “Peltier Stanton.” You’ll definitely want to keep this bottle on your bookshelf when you’ve finished with the wine inside.
With the US election entering its final few days, all talk is on the “battleground states” and to which candidate they will swing to. But what about the battleground of Azeroth in World of Warcraft? If Barack Obama and John McCain were campaigning in Azeroth, which way would Azeroth go? Blue or red?
Well one person decided to go into Azeroth and find out the “pulse” of the voters! Which candidate do the trolls, orcs and undead favour? Can “Maverick” McCain stage a comeback with the dwarves and split the human vote? Only one way to find out!
I know this isn’t very geeky but when I found this on YouTube, I laughed so hard that I couldn’t resist posting it here. Plus you’d better watch it quick before YouTube takes it down!
Homer tries to vote for Barack Obama in the upcoming election but he discovers that the voting machine is rigged to count every vote for John McCain. Then the machine tries to eat Homer!
Good news! Google, in addition to servicing most of your Internet-related needs, is also fighting hard to save your brains. Today, their robots.txt begins with the lofty declaration:
User-agent: zombies
Disallow: /brains
That’s right: zombies are disallowed from accessing /brains today. I for one feel much safer knowing that Google is on my side.
Of course, every good war with the undead needs some background music, right? The obvious choice is “Re: Your Brains,” by geek musician Jonathan Coulton. As you may remember from our previous post about Code Monkey, he releases his songs under Creative Commons and encourages fans to make videos. I’ve seen some pretty good zombie-themed Coulton music videos, including one featuring the World of Warcraft undeads, but I think this recent addition is my new favorite though, for pure storytelling:
See? That’s what can happen to an office environment that doesn’t use Google’s services. Happy Halloween, everyone!
Barclaycard has recently released an awesome new commercial showing why a waterslide transport system would be the ultimate way to commute from and to your workplace. Wouldn’t something like this make your day just a little bit brighter? As far as I’m concerned, I know it would!
Sorry for the odd title, but check out this ridiculous toilet.
It’s similar to the kind found in prisons, but there are two main differences. For one it’s out on a public sidewalk. Also…it’s in a box of one-way glass. That’s right, you can see them but they can’t see you. It’s a real mind-trip!
I’ll ask again: Would you use this thing? Discuss in the comments!
If you’ve been following the election recently and happen to be a geek, odds are you get a bit of your news coverage from social networks. Well on November 4th, two of those networks, Digg and Twitter, will be coming together on Current TV to bring you an election night watch party. Of course the party’s not just for you…it’s for everyone on the internet!
How is it going to work? Good question. It looks like Current TV will have people contributing via Twitter, as usual, with Digg articles integrated as well. On top of that,12seconds.tv (with video clips) and DJ Diplo (providing background beats) will be getting into the mix too. I think it will definitely be worth a look on election night. It’s about as close to a party as you can get while still sitting in front of your computer!
It seems like a guaranteed recipe for success: (1) source material from a series of best-selling fantasy novels (Terry Goodkind’s Sword of Truth series), (2) the producers who brought us Hercules and Xena (Sam Raimi, who has since knocked our socks off with Spider-Man, and Rob Tapert, who is married to Xena‘s Lucy Lawless), (3) a lush New Zealand setting (which, if you didn’t already appreciate it in Raimi and Tapert’s previous series, probably hooked you during Lord of the Rings), and (4) a cast of seasoned fantasy actors (Star Wars’ Bruce Spence and Jay Laga’aia, and Lord of the Rings‘ Craig Parker).
If you were on Twitter yesterday, you might have noticed a flood of tweets with a mysterious “#wotw2” code in them. Well that was a “hash tag” or “hash code” you were seeing there and those tweets were completely fictional.
A new EU trade rule has caused one winery to become a bit more creative with its naming scheme. 
