Ars Technica just published an interesting overview of ‘byte-sized’ stories that explores the possibilities of using microblogging as a story telling medium.  Ryan Paul, the author, mentioned brave new fiction (thanks Erica!):

A much grander test of the microstory concept is taking place at Brave New Fiction, a proof-of-concept web application that allows writers to compose entire stories with one 140-character line every day. Erica Naone, an assistant editor at MIT Technology Review with whom I discussed microblogging several months ago, is one of the many participants who is writing a nifty story at Brave New Fiction.

We just participated in the Seattle Google App Engine Hack-a-thon and it’s renewed our interest in working on the platform (where brave new fiction is currently hosted).  Since there are still some glaring holes in the app engine framework, and since the Google rep at the hack-a-thon hinted very strongly that more languages would be supported ’soon,’ I am still reluctant to devote much time and effort into developing brave new fiction in it’s current form.  Also, our client work has reached an all-time high so time to devote to bnf is at a premium.

But it is very exciting and hard to resist pouring everything into brave new fiction when people are using it and talking about it!  If you’re interested in helping us with development of the site, give me a hollar at brit @ figaro interactive dot com and we can talk!

Just booked tickets to Seattle for the last weekend in August. There’s a major convergence of awesome going on that weekend. First, Google is hosting a Hack-a-thon for App Engine at the Seattle Google headquarters. We’ll be swinging by to learn a lot about app engine and hopefully get some work done on brave new fiction. Oh, and looking forward to meeting a lot of other App Engine Developers.

The hack-a-thon just happens to precede the Penny Arcade Expo in Seattle also - we’ll be at both If I were a betting man, I would bet this is going to be a great weekend!

Hey neat, Shaun just told me that bravenewfiction.com is now one of Google App Engine Editor’s Picks!

Whew, well after a few nights of diving right into App Engine, I’m proud to announce a little demo I put together: brave new fiction. The site is inspired by a contest copyblogger.com recently had where writers were forced to create a story in exactly 140 characters. I loved the idea, and the results were amazing.

I decided to use that contest a basis for brave new fiction. The constraints are a little different: 140 characters or less per line, 1 line a day is published. This means your story is told in 140 characters a day - can you keep you audience interested?

The concept and implementation are a little rough around the edges, but like I said, this was just a technology demo for google app engine. Overall, app engine was amazing to work with. I had no prior experience with python or GAE (obviously) but the entire application took about 16 hours to create from start to finish. All of that is attributed to both python and GAE, I can’t say enough about either.

Anyways, if you’re interested - bravenewfiction.com. Check it out!

Browser based gaming is exploding.  The next couple of years we are going to see rapid increase in quality and quantity of all types of gaming in the browser and with the ever increasing stability, speed, and reach of Adobe’s Flash Platform, it’s an exciting time to be an actionscript developer interested in games.  We at Figaro Interactive definitely fall into that category.

We’re all about sharing our interest and discover of this new landscape with anyone who’s interested, so we’d like to proudly announce the launch of one of our passion projects, as3gaming.com - a resource and wiki devoted to actionscript game development.  The spirit of as3gaming.com is the sharing of knowledge and collaboration between developers on all things related to actionscript and game development.  Anyone can join, read, and contribute to the wiki, so hop right in!

We’re also excited that some of the big names in the actionscript gaming industry are as enthusiastic as we are about sharing their knowledge.  The guys at 8bitrocket and gamepoetry.com have graciously agreed to syndicated their tutorials and articles with the wiki!

If you have any interest in all, check out as3gaming.com and give us your feedback.  Exciting times are ahead in the actionscript gaming industry and our goal is to make as3gaming.com the go-to resource for developers like us.

Adobe just announced it’s open screen project, which is their initiative to get the flash runtime on as many devices as possible - tv, mobile phones, etc.

TechCrunch has a good article on it here.   This is exciting news for us and our industry for a number of reasons.  First, Adobe will be opening up it’s runtime.  This means we’re going to start seeing some major innovation in the flash player scene, much like we saw with the PDF platform a few years ago.

Secondly, more players from different vendors always means good things - competition and creativity is going to drive more efficiency in the player itself, and having the tech specs for SWF and FLV is going to provide a lot of insight to people trying to push the boundaries with flash technology.

We’re experiencing some amazing things happening the Flash world, specifically related to gaming.  For example, check out this 3d engine put together by a Russian group: http://blog.alternativaplatform.com/en/

Projects like these can only benefit from a more open and accessible flash specification.

Here’s Adobe’s list of what Open Screen Project is about:

    * Removing restrictions on use of the SWF and FLV/F4V specifications
* Publishing the device porting layer APIs for Adobe Flash Player
* Publishing the Adobe Flash® Cast™ protocol and the AMF protocol for robust data services
* Removing licensing fees – making next major releases of Adobe Flash Player and Adobe AIR for devices free

Some of the newer triple-A games have incredible web persistence layers that add a lot of depth and, well, persistence to their players’ experience even when the player can’t be playing the game.  Anyone who has played Halo 3, or World of Warcraft has experienced this.  Halo has Bungie.net where players’ daily stats are tracked like kills, deaths, favorite weapons, favorite maps, etc.  World of Warcraft’s Armory has similar web apps for its PvP stats and equipment/character management.

What if there was a white-label web service that emulated a lot of the best features of these big-budget sites?  Stuff that every game, no matter how small or large, can make use of like leaderboards and individual player stats.  Think a service like google analytics for games.

We think there might just an itch here that could be scratched, and we’re bringing our rich internet app experience to the table with a new passion project, StatForge.com.  Don’t look just yet; heck we’ve only just bought the domain name!  But soon we’ll be releasing more information about the service and what it can bring to the web gaming world.

Check back soon!

Aral Balkan has an in-depth article on the google app engine and how to work with flash. http://aralbalkan.com/1307. He promises some flex examples next… can’t wait.

Anyone else frustrated they didn’t get into the limited beta? 10,000 spots and they are gone within literally an hour. Ouch!

Microsoft has announced it’s attempt to buy Yahoo for a cool 44b or so. Read about it here and here.What does this mean for RIA developers like us?

On the surface, this deal seems inconsequential to rich internet application development, but then one has to think back to all the support Yahoo has given to the flex/flash platform with their own apps. Besides their recent snafu with Yahoo maps, services like Flickr and Pipes have always been flash friendly with fully supported APIs.

Then Microsoft comes along, and what do they happen to be pushing hard right now… ? - their very own Rich Internet platform, Silverlight.What’s going to happen to all the flash friendly apps hosted by Yahoo? Will they go the way of Yahoo maps?  Will Microsoft slowly replace those services with silverlight? Aral Balkan wonders the same thing.

Anyways, the windfall of this possible acquisition should be interesting no matter how it plays out for the rich internet application world.  We here at Figaro Interactive would be sad if Microsoft killed the innovative and flash friendly culture at Yahoo!.

Oh and anyone else get excited when Aral asks, If Microsoft buys Yahoo!, will Google buy Adobe?

Sun just announced their intent to buy MySQL for a whopping $1bn! This has the potential to affect all of us in the web development business. On his blog, Sun’s CEO, Jonathan Schwartz, explains that he hopes to continue MySQL’s current business model. Hopefully for all of us, that remains true!

Here’s the full announcement.