This weekend, along with gorging myself on thanksgiving leftovers, I participated in the open beta for Star Wars: the Old Republic (it’s a new MMORPG from Bioware set in the world of their acclaimed Knights of the Old Republic ‘verse).  The weekend beta was open to anyone who wanted to sign up. It allowed bioware to stress test their systems and try and find any last minute bugs in time for the game to ship the week before Christmas. So from a tech perspective, these guys got a WHOLE bunch of really great data, and feedback for free. This feedback ranged from how good was the voice acting, were the missions engaging, to bug reports (some of the best from the chats were characters’ pants not rendering). This type of data is invaluable to companies that are all competing to dethrone WoW from the top of the MMO heap, especially when they are trying to follow up two HUGE successes (KOTOR 1 & 2), and when they are playing with a much beloved series (Star Wars, although it’s debatable how much love will be left after Lucas is finished… but I digress).

But the biggest thing they did was expose the game to a HUGE number of people that hopefully are now totally sold on the game, and will now go run and tell everyone else, and who are HUNGERING to get the game fired back up so they can keep playing. I am definitely one of these people. I have the game on my christmas list, it looks fun, and I wanted to give it a shot. THEN I actually got to play the game and I am completely changed on it. I have become what marketers like to call an evangelist for the game. I now want it BAD. And what’s more I want it now. If I had done this a month after release as a “free to play for the weekend” type deal I would have enjoyed it very much but I’m not sure if I would have been raving about it. But now I want it TODAY. It could be a factor of the ‘scarcity’ principle of sales, not entirely sure, but the fact that I can’t get it makes me want it more.

And I heard the same thing from everyone else one the chat. Granted you have to be VERY confident in your product (but to be honest if you’re not then you shouldn’t be launching it), but this tactic of having a wide range free test drive before release is great. It exposes a lot of people to the game PRIOR to launch and ideally will create a legion of evangelists, most likely people who did not ALREADY purchase the game who are now going to do so, AND encourage their friends/family to do the same thing, which will significantly boost first day sales.  Also it create a LOT of great buzz on the interwebs. Look at me, I’m writing about it right now, and so are a large number of other bloggers/web zines/et cetera.

So.. in closing on this love letter to SWTOR, I have to say, well played, Bioware, well played.

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About a month ago, I was interviewed by two different sets of high school students. Their questions mostly revolved around my background, my current position, what steps/events got me to where I am now, and what advice I had for them.  One of those pieces of advice that I gave at the time was that they should find some Art that they could find a passion for and cultivate that as a hobby. (an aside is that most of these students were interesting in physics or engineering) I found out after that this was very similar to what many of my fellow interviewees had said.

I have been thinking about this advice since then. I feel it is common advice given to folks. No matter what you do find some creative outlet and cultivate that to make yourself more well rounded. This is very similar to the Liberal Arts education I received at St. Mary’s College (and one that I am very thankful for!) However I am beginning to think that it is a bit flawed. Yes, we should encourage students to take some arts class in college (and hopefully beyond) whether it is a photography class, set design, painting, dance, etc.

BUT this only targets the creative side of our brain, the non logical, often chaotic side. Which we do need to stimulate otherwise we run the risk of becoming cubicle zombies. But we should also flip that and in the same way we encourage study of the Arts, we need to encourage study of the Sciences. Just as there a wide range of Arts so too are there a wide range of sciences. And a varying degree of depth to them! Just as we tell people to grow their creative and intuitive skills we need to be telling them to remember the scientific method and apply that to problems in the workplace. I am a firm believer in creative and intuitive problem solving, but logical progression has its place as well.

In addition, by finding the right scientific interest we can pique those same creative juices! Imagine the wonder of reading and learning about the solar system or having a passion for the depths of the ocean?!

Many seem to think that in order to be interested in Quantum Computers and to know about it, you need some combination of computer engineering, physics, and advanced math degrees. And you would most likely if you wanted to get into that field professionally, but there are many books, videos and websites that make Quantum Computing accessible to average people, but as photography can be made accessibly to those people who do NOT want to be professional photographers for the New York Times.

To wrap up, in order to create a fully balanced person, one truly able to adapt and appreciate their surroundings/life, we need to encouraging in equal measure exploration of the arts AND the sciences not as career paths, or life long quests but as things that can hobbies, can be explored on an hour long commute or on the weekends.

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I’m probably not going to add anything new to this discussion, but I wanted to point out this issue that I think anyone who spends more than 5 minutes online needs to be aware of.  I first saw this over at Dvice.  I’ve done some research online and didn’t come up with anything new to this story as the deal appears to be both fairly new and being kept fairly hush hush.

image detailing the deal between google and verizon that could end net neutrality

Essentially it boils down to Google and Verizon working out a deal where some websites (google) can pay the ISP a small fee to make it possible to have their pages load quicker than another webpage. Another option on the table is that ISPs will become like cable providers where they only carry a set number of pages (abc, cbs, nbc, usa, syfy, etc) and for a small fee can get access to others (hbo, showtime, etc).  Either way this spells really bad news for small businesses, internet marketers, and everyone who accesses the internet.  Right now you can use PPC and a bank account to help rank a page somewhat in Google, but the biggest pull for Google is relevant interesting content.  Content that is getting reposted, pingbacks, and dumped on slashdot/digg.  Having this great content can allow a small business or a basic blog to beat out larger companies, this is fantastic! This means that you have a much better chance of finding what you are wanting, and it gives a certain amount of survival of the creative (ie- successful internet marketers are the ones who are creative NOT necessarily the ones with the largest checkbook). Another implication is the paying by companies to have bad comments/reviews about them load slower than their websites which would in turn decrease visits, and then not rank lower in google.  This takes away a significant amount of the power from the internet. It frankly puts us in the same ballpark of China censoring the internet, except instead of a unified government we’re going to have whomever can pay the most money.  I’ve tried to make this a reasoned argument, putting up a few thoughts based on the limited information coming out about this deal.  I strongly urge anyone reading this to get themselves up to date on this deal and take action. Visit this site for some more.  I found this quote over at alternet.org.  As they pointed out is amazing how fast a company with the motto: “don’t be evil” can slide down the slippery slope of profit:  ”Today the Internet is an information highway where anybody – no matter how large or small, how traditional or unconventional – has equal access. But the phone and cable monopolies, who control almost all Internet access, want the power to choose who gets access to high-speed lanes and whose content gets seen first and fastest. They want to build a two-tiered system and block the on-ramps for those who can’t pay.”

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This was in an article over at CNN: “Facebook calls this new social paradigm the “Open Graph,” and Zuckerberg called the shift “the most transformative thing we’ve ever done for the web.”"  We’ve been talking about this “Social Graph” on the blogosphere for what I feel like is at least 3 years now. And now Zuckerberg decides to talk about it in a press conference and everybody is all over him for his GREAT idea.  Oh, and Facebook added a “LIKE” button. Uhm.. you mean like the folks over at Digg and Stumbleupon did years ago? This whole shpeel that Zuckerberg went on about at his latest press conference is a guy just repeating what everyone else online has been talking about or doing for years, but because he’s an “icon” people NOT online are treating it like it’s fresh and new.  Same thing as Steve and the iPad.  Yes, it’s a cool device, yes, it is getting great reviews. But is honestly a large iPod Touch with a few new features, it is NOT a rocket car, or a transporter.

Sorry for this rant, but I really don’t like Zuckerberg.  His assertions that Facebook is going to topple Google is just for the moment absurd.  You have a social network. Yes, it is the most popular but let’s not trick ourselves into believing things that aren’t true.  Google has a sound biz plan with the assumption that someone searching for a product type might actually want to buy it.  Facebook? Just because I throw up a status update that “I loved my bike ride up Blue Mountain yesterday” does not mean that I’m in the mood to buy a new book.  I just do NOT see how social networks are going to become the next Amazon, or hulu.  Heck, I use Hootsuite and almost never even log in to Facebook to see

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