Quick read on the benefits of being lost and disorientated in NYC (or really any city for that matter).   Anyone else like the idea of software that helps you get lost (instead of all these services trying to keep you from wandering?)

ps:  article has a shoutout to Buddy Beacon - is that thing even still around??

ps2:  Things I hate about Tumblr #4 (sorry Karp):  On most sites, linked-headlines are permalinks.  Is Tumblr the only site out there that hides the link to external sites in the headline?  Whenever I write about a a site, I want to link to it in the description too (er, see above) since who’s gonna click the headline?  (or maybe I’m just too ooolllldddd to get how the kidz are using The Tumblr)

I’ve been shopping for a new project for a while now - actually I have about 5 half-baked ones going on concurrently, all of which are close to launch, none of which I really feel like committing to though.  When people ask me what I’m up to now my standard response is something in between “nothing” and “in between jobs”, but this is really what I’ve been working on (ssh).

Anyway, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about how to make a city guide - which is how I got hooked on the dodgeball stuff way back in the day to begin with (“Citysearch sucks, how do you make a better one?”).

Naveen pointed me towards this site - ontheinside.info - a while ago, and I think they kind of nail it.  Local celebs running through a list of their favorite places.  I like this, but I don’t really care so much about Johnny Famous Designer and Lil Ms. Socialight - I want this for what JJ$$ and McDz and arainert and Deeznuts McG etc etc are digging up near work, at home, and far far away.

I talk about this shit all the time - how can you use simple game mechanics to make the things you do everyday seem more gamelike.  A while I go, I was working on a half-baked (more like 10% baked) project called called Pedometer Wars - 10 of my BFFs rolling with pedometers, a text message blast was sent once a day at a random time during the day, everyone texts back how many steps they’ve walked so far, whoever walked the most was the winner for that day.  Super lame, but I was trying to make something (anything) that could act as an incentive (read: little voice in your head) to take the steps over the elevator, or to run an errand in the morning that you would have saved till after work, etc.  At the end of the day, these are less games and more teasing stats out of real life.

Anyway, I’ve seen some projects that have been exploring things along these lines - e.g. Pocket Sakura = Tamagotchi + pedomter, and FitBit an auto-syncing pedometer, and then there’s always Nike+.  Nintendo is apparently working on one for the DS too.

I kind of heart this stuff… the question is always what do the steps translate to?  With Pocket Sakura (er, the Tamagotchi) your steps translate into exerice / fitness for your little virtual pet.  With Nike+ you’re competing against yourself / your friends.  No idea what the FitBit is going to do in terms of social play, etc.  I always thought the sweet spot would be using steps (and other exercise metrics) to “power up” players in traditional console game - e.g. that custom guy you created in Madden 09 runs faster when your 10k pace gets faster or your Wii Tennis avatar’s (Mii!) level increases as you start exercising on a more regular basis.

Anyway, half-baked startup idea:  something to aggregrate exercise data across multiple platforms (er, are there multiple platforms outside Nike+???  Garmin?  Feltron / Daytum style personal tracking?).  APIs in/out and leverage mass user data to turn the points / steps / data into something more “real” (think: frequent flyer points sponsored by JetBlue or reward points sponsored by Amex?).  Huh.

Anyway, just an exercise in dusting off this Tumblr stuff.  Figured it’s better to blog about this shit instead of just dumping it into Delicious where no one ever seems to discover it.  (pow!)