apoc week 2

Last night was the second meeting of our APOC class at USC. We're still tinkering with the format of the class, but a major component is a review of news from the previous week. Appropriately enough, last week we had raised Scrabulous as an online community and business to watch - both because of the clear legal risks and the superb design and execution.
Lo and behold, a week later, Scrabulous is all over the news and we're all on the edge of our seats to see how it plays out.

Part of the homework for week one was to explore various wikis and blogs in order to select the best options for their own blogs and the class wiki. On the wiki side, the usual suspects were explored but two -- wetpaint and pbwiki -- were nearly uniformly selected. Why?

Video tutorials. "When I use it, I don't feel stupid."

How obvious is that? Well, probably not obvious enough to tech geeks, but obvious to everyone else. How much more conversion would difficult products -- like virtual worlds -- get if their front pages had a friendly human showing them how to use them?

Much of the class' work is also moving its way online. Check them out. You'll learn about wikis, a review of the Aspen Institute's report on "Next Generation Media," an overview of tech blogs, and an argument for why Scrabulous should be saved.

I can't wait to hear what the class has to say about virtual worlds and games.