No matter how many times Kah Hong asked me if I have blogged about this session, I had been trying to defer it. Honestly I didn't find much interesting points (to me) to blog about. Let's go through what happened that night!
The first pitch was about World Cities Summit. Basically that they want to make a simulation game in Facebook that is similar to SimCity, address some real issues and difficulties that the planners might face when managing a real city. Not only so, they want to raise the awareness of public about condition / requirement of a livable city/ a good city to live (well, you have to take a good care of your city so you should know what's good and bad for your own, real city!) I think it's promising to be popular in facebook! Where any kind of simulation game is popular =.= No one in the class showed any interest though. Someone said it was a government project so..
The second pitch is from a guy from Microsoft talking about data servicing. It was like a mess; only until he finished his talk I had some idea of what he wanted to say. Well, maybe it was because of all the troubles he faced during his talk (network connection, etc.) I think he went off topic quite a lot: began the talk by talking about data and how data could be processed, etc, while what he wanted to say is that he got some good data that can sell to us. Well, I had a little idea about what his data can be used for. How do you guys think?
The similar idea with that (in term that they provide us some service), but in different presentation way, is the pitch from iSyndica. Their talk was much more open and direct than the one I mentioned above. They had a platform to store, share, distribute media products like photos, videos in various (social) network like picasa, flickr, youtube(?), facebook, .. They had created the API to their platform already and now ready to give it away for us to use. And everything is free! The first thing I thought about was Treehouse project by Cedric, Andy & Adhiraj,. (as they wanted to pursue it to final project) So far I didn't see any prominent different of their app with other better communication way. If they could make use of iSyndica to provide more video features (like offline video message) it might be cool!
Next I will talk shortly about Module Review. The talk focused totally on module review, and nothing related to us! What did the speaker want from us? He didn't say a word of it. To speak of module review, I think it's kind of a wiki page for modules in NUS right? Why dont we create a wiki page called NUSWiki or so, so that people can update all information about NUS?
Redsport also spent quite an amount of time to talk about what it is doing and only talked about what it wanted from us in the last few minutes of the talk. Quick thought about this I think Kah Hong and his sgBEAT might work well with them in term of providing / updating result in time and easily (via sms). I was in charge of Temasek IHG (Interhall game) website and I also thought about this once. Like the speaker said, what matter the most, what needed the most on sport are results of the games. So this method might be a boost for both parties. Bringing Redsport into facebook, so far I can only think of making comment / discuss in Redsport easier (via facebook connect). Sharing the posts? I think it wouldn't really work. But well, having 1 more button might boost people to click. Another idea is giving feed (of new result, new posts) via facebook (fan page?).
Little to say about 6Wave. It was a kind of detailed lesson on making money from social network game! They were professional and that's the point! What they wanted to say is if you have a good app/ good idea, come to us, we are pro, we can help you promote your app and we can share profit!
Prince of Persia is the most realistic project in the pitching. It's something big! something real! something that is running! Quite a good chance for those who are interested in game development. To talk about that, when I came back, I actually tried ExplosiveBarrel's games, and I must say their game are of high quality! Try Strawhat samurai! Their newest game is kind of messy though: you have to control 3 character of different abilities at the same time! But other stuff like graphic, game design are very professional.
What did the speaker want from us? He didn't say a word of it.
ReplyDeleteHe said he had some ideas but he would like to hear from you first. :-)
To speak of module review, I think it's kind of a wiki page for modules in NUS right?
Not exactly, you should check out the site. It's like an unofficial teaching feedback system.
"I think he went off topic quite a lot"
ReplyDeleteYes, he was trying to make time to get the technical stuff fixed - I guess, he didn't expect any such interruptions.
I actually thought that the availability of data is quite an important resource to have. One thing I thought of, when he mentioned that data about bus-boarding/traffic information, was to somehow use this information to advise people as to which routes to take. By carefully weighing in-bus rush and the rate of bus arrivals at a given bus-stop, an app could suggest which bus to take (the current one, or the next one) to give an option that could optimize comfort + travel time.