Filed under: Fugly Friday
Fugly Friday: Cybertown
I remember stumbling into Cybertown around the turn of this century and being plenty impressed. Back then, before Shockwave got all 3D and around the time of RealPlayer G2's enhanced multimedia capabilities, this was neat stuff. Now, sadly, CyberTown is pretty much a Cyber-GhostTown.
No one but the resident chat bot appeared while I was online, and the markets, parks and cities were devoid of anything but a futuristic, bleak landscape. Pretty much what Caprica looked like after the Cylons were done bombing it to oblivion. Except with references to RealPlayer G2 (I kid you not).
Now, of course, even without any human meatbags occupying the place, it is rather sad. The graphics haven't improved in years, despite the new owners' insistence upon pending upgrades. The Blaxxun plug-in (not Mac or Linux compatible) is an older version as well, which doesn't say much for those upgrades. Adding insult to injury, the site owners now charge $5 a month for the privilege of walking through this virtual ghost town. Does it get sadder? Yeah, it kind of does. Check the gallery.
Second Life was hailed by many as a panacea of online life, the coagulation of years of sci-fi into a grand distributed game that's not really a game. 
Second Life, the popular 3-D online virtual community created by Linden Labs, is adding voice to its social grid. In addition to the current IM and chat functions, now Second Life residents will be able to speak to one another if they wish. Amazingly, with the speech technology employed, your little avatar's voice and figure can become animated so you won't sound like a robot or worse, like the grown-ups do in Charlie Brown.
So, just how good at time waster games are you? Think you've got the stuff? Well, The World's Hardest Game 2.0 doesn't think you do.
Yes, amazingly, it's possible to have a sequel to a game called "The World's Hardest Game". It doesn't seem logically possible, since if the first one was actually the world's hardest, how could another one come along and share the moniker? It made me doubt the name in the first place. That is, until I tried the game.
The mechanics of the game are very simple. You are a small red square, ...
