R.I.P, GeoCities

I was sorry to hear that the long time free web hosting site, GeoCities (later Yahoo GeoCities) closed on 10/9/2009. To be sure, there are still plenty of sites left on the internet, and I'm sure many of the former GeoCities residents will just re-establish their pages elsewhere, but there will also be plenty who will not. What a waste! Then there is the obvious downside that a whole slew of links just went dead.

In view of all of the foregoing, now might be a good time to go through your links and weed out the dead ones, GeoCities-related and otherwise. I just went through my CoolNotions links page and had to remove about half of them, although as it turns out none of them were to GeoCities sites.

Well, stuff happens. R.I.P., GeoCities.

The Internet, the Zodiac Cipher, and the Power of the Crowd

The famed Netflix Prize contest recently came to an end with the members of the top scoring team gaining a million dollars to divide amongst themselves for their efforts, and Netflix gaining better algorithms for predicting what movies its customers will like. Without the internet it could not have happened in the time it did, if at all.

I wonder if the internet might eventually help bring about the solution to an even longer running intellectual challenge, the solution of the last three ciphers of the infamous Zodiac Killer from the late '60s/early seventies.

Oranchak.com has an interesting tool here to help anyone interested in taking a stab at breaking the cipher. Be warned, many of the best people in the field have tried and failed to, crack the last three ciphers. It's like crossword puzzles/Wheel of Fortune for experts.

So what's in it for you if you succeed? Well, there's no million dollar prize that I am aware of, but in addition to possibly helping crack a long unsolved case, you would almost certainly get a lot of fame if you succeeded, and I would expect you might be highly sought after as a code-breaker as well.

Easy Game Creation with "Sploder"

If you're looking for an easy way to create Flash games, Sploder.com is definitely something to consider. I spent a couple of hours on the site and had no difficulty creating a few simple games.

Currently Sploder allows for the creation of three different types of games: platform, ship game, or robot game (the last two falling under Sploder's general category of "shooter". Creating games in any of the three is fairly similar in that you use Sploder's drag and drop on screen tools to place enemies, allies, weapons, bonus items, etc. You don't need to know Flash (or even how to program).

Understandably, there are some limits to the games that can be created with such as an easy system. Complexity ranges from simple to moderate, and I think I might possibly have spotted a glitch or two.

Still, you can quickly create something moderately interesting with a fairly minimal amount of effort, and the games I created and played seemed to run very well for the most part. I would expect that in the future Sploder (which is still considers itself to be in Beta) will offer even more impressive capabilities.

The Sploder terms of service grant Sploder a rather broad license to the use of your "User Submitted Content" (which perhaps they need to do to allow your games to function at all), but they do state that levels created remain the property of the users who create them. Also, although I didn't see it specifically in their terms of service, they do say on their "About Sploder" page that

you can even download your games and post them on your own commercial web site.

So in general, they seem fairly reasonable to me. (Caveat: I'm not a lawyer, nor does any of the forgoing constitute legal advice. Consult a lawyer and/or read the information on the Sploder.com website to form your own opinion as to what Sploder.com does or does not allow.)

I expect we will probably see a lot more sites that facilitate easy game creation going forward. Maybe user-created games will follow much the same path as user created video. It would not surprise me to see Google get into the act soon (either through internal efforts or by acquiring and existing site).