Perplex City -- not your average jigsaw puzzle
In the Chinese calendar, 2005 is the "year of the rooster". The British government meanwhile has decreed 2005 "the year of the volunteer". But to anyone with half an ear on the popular pulse, 2005 is most definitely the "year of the mystery".
With the runaway success of Dan Brown's thriller 'The Da Vinci Code", puzzling and mystery-solving have become de rigeur for the 21st century generation. Take the explosion in popularity of Su Doku, a numerical problem-solving game, featured previously in this column.
Alternative Reality Games (ARGs) are the latest gimmick to tap into the modern Sherlock Holmes mentality. These games are run in cyberspace and quickly capture a dedicated following through an intricate array of websites, encoded advertisements, phone calls and the like. The latest offering, Perplex City, the brainchild of London-based Adrian Hon, has quickly transformed into a media and game-playing phenomenon.
$200,000 awaits the devoted player who pieces together a myriad of clues to solve the mystery of the stolen Cube. But this ARG is more than just a glorified treasure hunt. Perplex City lives! It has its own newspaper, university, blogs and a plethora of characters, which players must get to know in order to solve the puzzle.
Hype and tantalising mystery is essential to the games success. Many readers of Marketing Week, which featured an encrypted advertisement plugging the game, apparently thought they had stumbled on a recruiting tool for MI5 (the British secret intelligence service). Crucially, much of the action takes place not online, but in the real world. Scores of people turned up simultaneously at the famous level crossing at Abbey Road in London to open an envelope revealing the next clue in the mystery. Players are encouraged to work together, and communicate online to discuss the meaning of the latest enigma or allusion.
The trail is now hotting up, with the release of a series of puzzle cards, which contain clues about the theft of the Cube and more information about the imaginary city from which it was stolen. The makers insist it is not a marketing stunt for a product, as previous ARGs have turned out to be. Adrian Hon believes very soon, we'll all be playing them. Kiss good by to that paperback, and put off going to the cinema. ARGs are here to stay.
Wikimania Sweeps Frankfurt
Wikifounder Jimmy Wales believes in the power of the Wiki.>If you happen to be in Frankfurt am Main over the next few days, don't be shocked to see an unusual number of computer geeks among the city's staid banking-types. From Thursday to Sunday, the city is playing host to Wikimania!, the annual gathering of enthusiasts involved in all aspects of the Wiki project, an open-source online effort to provide free knowledge in a Web-surfable format. Started by Ward Cunningham and Jimmy "Jimbo" Wales in 2001, the concept behind Wiki (which means "quick" in Hawaiian) was to provide a fast, free and user-edited encyclopedia. In 2003, Wales founded the Wiki Foundation as an umbrella for all of Wiki's various other projects -- from the startlingly large Wikipedia, the effort has swollen to include a dictionary, Wiktionary, and an open-source news service called (surprise!) Wikinews.
It's telling that Wikimania is taking place in Germany. Wales recently wrote in his blog "Like the great artist ... David Hasselhoff, I'm only appreciated overseas."
Space Shuttle Discovery -- Up Close and Personal
All eyes were in space on Wednesday, as -- in a scene reminiscent of Apollo 13 -- astronauts aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery hastily worked to make emergency repairs on the damaged craft. Until Wednesday, astronauts had never ventured underneath an orbiting shuttle, nor attempted to repair the delicate thermal skin while in space. But the repairs are believed necessary to keep the craft from overheating during its planned descent to Earth on Monday. That is partly what happened to the doomed Challenger flight in 2003. To safeguard against such an accident, astronaut Steve Robinson spent hours working on the ship.
In another startling innovation, the whole process was -- and continues to be -- live-streamed and accessible via NASA TV. Some of the cameras are fixed, while others are mounted on Robinson's helmet and provide truly up-close views, along with a blow-by-blow audio account. The NASA site also provides amazing and fun photos of the day, which are also well worth a browse. Today's picture shows astronaut Soichi Noguchi waving from the Shuttle's payload bay with a glorious and unforgettable backdrop -- planet Earth.
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