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This is not my first post about Network Neutrality, neither the second, but since I crossed with this couple of videos in YouTube, I decided to take another try, and share them with you.

The first video is from one against Net Neutrality:

Which do you prefer?

Backseat Games is a research project at the Mobility Studio at the Interactive Institute in Stockholm, Sweden. The project focuses on creating mobile augmented reality games to be used by children travelling on the back seat of cars. The aim, to terminate with the "Are we there yet?". How? This way:

The game turns churches, bridges and other roadside objects into a fantasy land filled with virtual creatures, treasures and adventure. By pointing the gaming device towards objects as they pass by, players can defend themselves against attacking creatures, pick up magic artifacts or collaborate with players in meeting traffic.

So far the project team has developed two prototypes and is working on a third one.

In Backseat Gaming, a Pocket PC is equipped with a digital compass and a GPS-receiver to connect the game to the surrounding world. The real world acts as the gaming space, and the game content has clear connections to the roadside objects seen outside the windows of the vehicle. The game consists of a framing story and a set of game locations where local stories are told. The player can catch attacking creatures and pick up virtual objects that exist in the vicinity of specific roadside-objects. Watch a video clip< from a user test.

The second prototype, Road Rager, is a multiplayer game, which uses wireless ad-hoc peer-to-peer networking technology to enable game-play between car passengers as they come within each others vicinity. Contingent traffic encounters such as rapid meetings, protracted overtaking or gatherings, i.e. traffic jams or red light accumulations constitute an essential part of the experience of travelling along a road. Road Rager focuses on using these contingent traffic encounters to create a fun and compelling mobile game. The game is developed on a WLAN equipped PDA and uses a Bluetooth GPS-receiver to locate the player’s geographical position. Watch a video clip from a user test.

The third and current running project, Backseat Playground, uses a GPS-receiver, a handheld computer, and headphones, all connected to a laptop in the trunk of the car to create an in-car gaming experience developed around an interactive game which corresponds to the vehicle’s real-world route. The game begins with a radio newsflash relayed by the handheld computer. This radio newsflash places the passenger at the start of a murder mystery or a werewolf thriller. As the car travels along its route, the player receives further phone calls and walkie-talkie messages from characters in the game. The overall purpose of the game is to create a gaming experience where narrative episodes and embedded gameplay combine with the experience of travelling through the road network. To learn more check out the video.

Due to the lack of good statistics about this blog RSS readers and subscribers, I decided to serve my RSS feeds (?) via FeedBurner. The problem was, how to do it without disturbing my faithful subscribers?

The how-to:

• The original link is //joaobordalo.com/xml/rss20/feed.xml.
• I went to FeedBurner and create a new feed pointing to the above URL, which resulted in http://feeds.feedburner.com/JoaoBordalo
• Added the following lines to my .htaccess file:
  RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} !FeedBurner
  RewriteRule ^xml/rss20/feed\.xml$ http://feeds\.feedburner\.com/JoaoBordalo [R,L]

Done. If you have any problems with my 'new' RSS feed, please let me know, by leaving a comment.

It looks like an epidemic of busted screens for users of Nintendo’s new Wii game system. That's not all: the website Wii Have a Problem is collecting cases of Wii-related accidents. Well, whatever you do - DO NOT- throw the controller out of anger.

The saga, one of the best animations I've seen ever. If you are reading this through a RSS reader, come on in, we have a embeded video to show.

Update2: Following a suggestion from Joel, here are the direct links for the two videos: Animator vs Animation and Animator vs Animation II. The videos have better quality in the Atom Films website, but you have to pay the price of watching some publicity.

Update: Youtube decided to drop the video, so I had to browse for a while to find it in another "share your videos" service. So, here it is again, now from DailyMotion:

For those who never saw the first episode, here it is: