Instead of the usual holiday greeting card, we decided to make a small 3-minute minigame to help you feel more christmassy

when going out and buying presents this week.

Here is a video:

The game is available for free on the Motiviti website, and you can play it online or download a full resolution desktop version.

And there is even an OSX widget to spice up your dashboard.

I have a couple of Google Wave invites left, so let me know if you need one.

Although it still has a long way to go before you will want to use it on a daily basis (for one thing, it is slow), Wave is probably going to be an important communication and collaboration tool for some obvious reasons:

1. The platform is easily extensible

You can write a useful gadget in a couple of hours (Google Wave gadgets guide).

2. The server architecture is open to federation

Just like e-mail (Google Wave Federation – Why it matters).

3. E-mail is an outdated communication tool

4. It’s Google

Google has a lot of steam to power this transition – slowly but surely

Love is the most important metric

says @sebdeh of Playfish. And according to Zynga general manager Roy Sehgal, the number of players returning regularly (and not play time) is the metric that most closely correlates to a social game’s suitability for monetization.

Having monetizability in mind during the initial stages of game design helps, but the fact is that unless you have love, you have no business asking your players for money.

Ads may cover some costs, but only rarely to any significant extent.

But even when there is love, measuring just about everything and continuously redesigning and innovating the gameplay and monetization tactics from day one is what brought companies such as Zynga, Playdom, Playfish and others their immense success.

And this is only the beginning – social games are forecast to be a 1.5 billion dollar industry in 3 years, and even today, the number of unique monthly players on Facebook alone surpasses 55 million.

At my company Motiviti, we are keeping all of this in mind and we realize that in order to thrive in the casual/social games market, we need to put all of our efforts in creative innovation and sound execution. And as we prepare to launch our first games for the iPhone and the browser, we are humbly trying to learn from the best and the brightest in this young industry at Casual Connect in Seattle.

Follow me and the hash tag #casualconnect on Twitter if you want to discuss Unity 3D, Flash and social network game development.

In his latest book (Outliers), Malcolm Gladwell argues that if you want to really master something (e.g. playing guitar, programming, playing golf), there is a high probability that the number of hours you will need to invest into it will revolve around 10,000.

10,000 hours if you want to be an expert at something. This means 14 years if you are doing it 2 hours per day.

Looking back at Seth Godin’s insightful post entitled What would a professional do?, this makes me wonder:

How much can you really achieve by doing all the little tasks you’re (at most) average at yourself instead of leaving them to those who have devoted their 10k to them?

Once again the question of focus and extreme specialization. Sharing work and profits vs. keeping it all to yourself because you can just do it so much better and faster.

Based on the experiences of others and my own, I would say that the question you need to ask yourself is this:

Is the combination of your personal talents, traits and circumstances, confronted with all the tasks in front of you, so wonderfully special that you can do twice a better and cheaper job doing it all by yourself?

This is seldom the case, but surely not unheard of. And of course, your environment and circumstances might be preventing you from doing otherwise.

But consider this: if you can do it only twice as good as with a team of other 10k-ers, you will probably make a profit; however, the next time around you will not have made the important connections and experiences to even have this choice and you will most likely be doing it by yourself again.

And as you get older, and the cycle continues, you probably start losing your edge, along with your wonderfully special advantage – and you lose.

Bottom line:

Do the stuff that matters to you the most right now and stop thinking about what you feel might come in handy later.

Otherwise you end up just being an amateur at a lot of things. And – as Seth Godin put it -

Be an amateur on purpose, not because you have to.

There will always be enough time for your whims later on if you do it right. Right?

Focus FTW!

P.S.: I think we might be building up a little fascination with the number 10,000 here (see my earlier post, 10,000 Reasons To Focus).

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I wanted to share Steward Brand’s talk on The Long Now Foundation’s ambitious project to build a clock that will be able to hold accurate time every single day for the next 10,000 years.

Far from being a mere engineering gimmick, the project entails the design of a unique and memorable experience during the ascent to the mountain cradling the 10,000 year clock.

Needless to say, long-term thinking like this is extremely valuable and inspiring, especially in these times of alleged crisis.

Recession or no recession – this is a great time to be creative and to focus on what’s really important in the long run.

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• Neal Stephenson and the 10,000-Year Clock
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Best Obama picture ever (courtesy Boston.com)

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Image via Wikipedia

How many books do you read per month nowadays?

Two? One? Half a book?

If you’re a busy professional, perhaps not even that?

I’ve always found reading to be an essential part of personal development. Not blogs – I mean the normal, in-depth, catch every word – not just the headlines – reading .

Over the past couple of years, I’ve noticed how my shelves started getting full of books I had no idea when I’d come around to read. Business books, fiction, language books, you name it …

Looming over me like a very pronounced shadow of outdated aspirations.

But why do I read less?

I suppose partly due to the standard reasons that we all face – apart from the apparent busyness, it’s ever-shifting interests and professional pressures that are making it increasingly hard to sit down and dive into one of the classics that you’ve always felt bad about not having read.

Like War And Peace, or Crime and Punishment, Bhagavad Gita, the Qu’ran, or even Cryptonomicon.

Another undisputable factor is the change in the way we read. This article captures it well.

We’re far less experiencing but rather processing written content – one of the tools our minds use to help us survive the information overdose.

But let’s back to the initial problem – sitting down, opening a book, focusing and doing nothing else for about 10 hours.

Quite rare in my current life.

So – about 2 years ago, I switched to audio books. I got one of those subscriptions at Audible and since then, not one month has passed without an epic story, historical drama, marketing advice or similar.

I run about every other day for 20-40 minutes, which makes a bit less than 8 hours per month, and I’m in the car at least 8 hours per month.

About a thousand hours per year that could potentially be wasted.

The dramatized version of War And Peace is about 9 hours long (the unabridged version is 65 hours ), so this is just about right for 1 audio book per month without any significant change to my daily routine.

This means min. 1 book in the busiest months and about 2-3 on average – not perfect but more than satisfactory for the current pace of life.

What about recommendations?

I’ve recommended business books before, so here are two magnificent works of fiction, both about young girls in dire circumstances.

A Thousand Splendid Suns – a stunningly tragic and epic account of a young girl’s life in Afghanistan during the recent wars

The Diamond Age – Neal Stephenson’s epic sci-fi drama about a Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer – a great read or listen, almost as good as Snow Crash

In about 5 minutes, Mars lander Phoenix is going to attempt to land on the surface of Mars.
The event is being broadcast live at a number of museum events and at NASA TV here.

Here is a live blog from mission control (also following @MarsPhoenix on Twitter).

*just entered the atmosphere*

It’s exciting to watch this in real-time – it’s sad that space exploration gets so little mainstream attention nowadays.

* altitude 1700 meters … altitude 1000 meters … altitude 150 meters … altitude 80 meters … altitude 15 meters *

Everybody is on their toes …

* touchdown * * cheering *

Apparently, the landing was a success! Congratulations!

Now everybody is waiting for the solar arrays to be deployed and if this goes well, the mission that the NASA team worked on for 5 years will be a success.

I just finished setting up Wordpress 2.5.1 for a friend and as it took me 1 hour to figure out a weird file upload issue, I thought I’d make it easier for you.

Here is what you do if you get an HTTP Error when using Wordpress 2.5.1 (which uses Flash to upload files):

1. First check if both /wp-content and /wp-content/upload have 777 permissions
2. Try entering the following snippet into your /wp-admin/.htaccess

   
   <IfModule mod_security.c>
   <Files async-upload.php>
   SecFilterEngine Off
   SecFilterScanPOST Off
   </Files>
   </IfModule>

3. If this doesn’t work, you are either a) using shared hosting with a non-typical or overly paranoid configuration or b) your Flash plugin doesn’t work properly.

Try updating Flash to version 9.x (or the latest), if it still doesn’t work you will have to use a Wordpress plugin to suppress Flash uploading, at least until you can figure out what’s going on.

True in so many ways …

Last Friday, I was at the 2nd Web.Start conference organized by Initium in Zagreb (Croatia).

Like last year, the two main themes were technology and business.

Although I only attended the biz part (day two), there was a lot of opportunity to meet interesting techies, entrepreneurs and VC’s active in this region – and of course to catch up with old friends.

The line-up of presenters included Yoav Leitersdorf (YLVentures), Reshma Sohoni (Seedcamp), Patrick de Laive (Fleck), Jim McGough, Andraz Tori (Zemanta) and many others.

This provided for a good balance of entrepreneurs and VC’s talking about what it takes to get a successful startup running in Europe (and especially Eastern Europe and the Balkans).

Is building a highway to London really the only way?

I think not – but I do think starting to focus more on business than technology per se and getting some local biz traction are a prerequisite if one wants to get something globally notable off the ground over here.

Overall, a good and well organized conference – congrats to Berislav, Ivan & co.!

This region is definitely hungry for web conferences – it’s time we organize a good one in Slovenia, too!

He was a great politician and a man of noble ideas and actions.

I’m personally not big on numerology, but:

2+0+0+8 = 10

And according to Larry Niven’s The Mote in God’s Eye (released in the 70’s), there are nice things on the horizon for 2008:

Here’s an excerpt:

1969 – Neil Armstrong sets foot on Earth’s Moon.
1990 – Series of treaties between United States and Soviet Union creates the CoDominion.
2008 – First successful interstellar drive tested. Alderson Drive perfected.

So let’s hope Niven was right and 2008 really does become a perfect 10 for most of us!

I’ve just made my first call using Skype on Fring with my good old Nokia N70.

Apart from a < 1 second latency, it seems to work fine!

Fring is a mobile application that integrates services such as  Skype, MSN Messenger, ICQ, Google Talk, and SIP, giving you a chance to use your mobile to make and receive “free” calls.

I’ll give it a try for a week and see how it goes …

I still have 9 invitations left … anyone?

I spent the weekend at a permaculture farm near Sevnica, owned by my friend and colleague Borut.

On Sunday, we had a picnic party with some interesting guests, including Borut’s friend Srečo and his son, who own a hot air balloon.

They were kind enough to give us a lift – unfortunately the bad weather didn’t allow us to go beyond the reach of the ropes that tied the balloon to the neighbouring trees, but it was still a thrilling experience!

I’ve posted more pictures here.

Image via Wikipedia

If you are an early adopter like me, you are probably struggling with all the means of communication and self-expression currently available.

At the moment, I’m using the following tools, each of them scratches a specific itch:

1. Instant Messaging Windows Live Messenger, Skype

2. Asynchronous Targeted Messaging E-mail, Pownce, Facebook, Myspace (ugh)

3. Asynchronous Disorganized Self-Expression Pownce, Jaiku, Twitter, Facebook

4. Organized Publishing My blogs

5. Presence LinkedIn (professional), Facebook (personal), Myspace (bleh)

6. Loopback Publishing Del.icio.us + Tumblr, combined with Google Reader (subscribing to my own feeds)

I’m speculating here, but I expect/hope this list to boil down to the following over the next 2-5 years:

*UPDATE* Using acronyms to make the post look less crappy with this theme (hopefully )

1. IM Windows Live Messenger, Skype, SMS

2. ATM E-mail, Pownce, Facebook, Myspace (ugh)

3. ADSE Pownce, Jaiku, Twitter, Facebook

4. OP My blogs

5. P LinkedIn (professional), Facebook (personal), Myspace (ugh)

6. LBP Del.icio.us + Tumblr, combined with Google Reader (subscribing to my own feeds) Pownce

So … This would leave Pownce, Facebook, LinkedIn and blogs.

What do you think?

So it’s happening.

On August 5th, it will be illegal to smoke inside public buildings (except for psychiatric hospitals and some other happy places), bars and restaurants (except inside fish tanks) in Slovenia.

I quit smoking in 2005, but I can’t help but feel some compassion.

Around a quarter of people smoke in Slovenia, and I wonder how this is going to affect the whole going-out experience.

I am sure we will eventually come to appreciate the newly acquired oxygen levels .