noticings: the blog

Hello Little Fella

Thu, 18 Feb 2010 17:06:47 +0000

Phew. It’s been too long since we did a rule change on Noticings. But, here goes:

We’re reducing the score for lost things down to 10 points from 2x. It’s been a good rule, but it’s easy to game and we want to keep things fresh.

We’re adding a Hello Little Fella rule! For faces that you spot in objects. Just like this by tim_d:

This is inspired by Matt Jones’ Hello Little Fella Flickr group. We wanted to do the scoring based on whether you’d added your photo to the group, but it turns out that Flickr doesn’t provide that information in the API very easily. So, for now, tag your photo as ‘hellolittlefella’ to be scored appropriately.

Those changes are in play from now.

New Year, New Rule

Wed, 30 Dec 2009 18:40:41 +0000

(New Yorker Sign by Diego_3336)

The new year is nearly upon is, and so that means it’s time for a new rule. Namely: a bonus ten points for noticing new things. New anythings: new years, new friends, new Yorkers. Just make sure it’s tagged as new and that it is new. And if it’s not new - fear the wrath of the moderator.

Joking!

But: this rule only lasts for pictures taken during the first week of the New Year - Jan 1 2010 to Jan 7 2010. So keep your eyes peeled for new things. There’s a lot of them this time of year.

Happy New Year all, and happy noticing.

A Widening Pond

Sun, 27 Dec 2009 18:15:00 +0000

We’re just a little minnow of a game, but it’s always nice when we get featured by some of the bigger web-trout. Flickr wrote about us on their blog and said “yay!” a lot, whilst ReadWriteWeb described us as “a great way to keep you sane in your hometown while literally putting it on the map for its unique features”. Not that we were fishing for complements.

All that attention has bought us lots of new players - welcome! We’ve had enough of an uptick that we’re going to have to spend some time upgrading our servers to make sure things keep running smoothly. So we’ll be down for a couple of hours, sometime in the next few days.

And we’re aware the game needs some freshening up for the new year. We’ve got plans afoot for new rules and features. There has been plotting over fish finger sandwiches, notebooks have been sketched in and now code needs to be written.

Thanks for playing, and onwards!

Important rule changes

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 17:00:30 +0000

Listen up Noticers, we’ve got some rule changes!

1. We’ve got rid of 20 points for noticing something red. It seemed to be quite easy, and the results weren’t that exciting.

2. We’ve bought back double points for noticing something lost. There were loads of great lost things spotted last time we did it, and we loved looking through them. Again, tag with ‘lost’ to be scored correctly.

3. We’ve added 20 points for noticing a typo or misspelling on a sign. It’ll be intresting to see what hapens with thsi one. Tag with ‘typo’ to be scored correctly.

And the big one. From tomorrow, each player is limited to three noticings per day. We hope that’ll focus attention on picking the best stuff, not everything you see. Notice wisely.

All that is in play now.

Noticings iPhone application launched

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 23:56:37 +0000

We just launched an iPhone app! It’s designed to help you get photos from your iPhone onto Flickr, including all the metadata required for Noticings, with the minimum of hassle.

Take a look at our splash page for it, or jump straight to the App Store.

We’re in the Guardian Guide today!

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 11:36:22 +0000

We’re in the Guardian Guide today!

Noticing something red

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 21:48:00 +0000

I think the bonus points for noticing lost things went quite well. The last day is still to be calculated, but there were 53 things spotted, include rope, a shoe, a teddy bear, a jumper and a rubby duckie. Very good. You can see the full selection on Flickr.

So, it’s time for another challenge. This time, noticing red things. You know: things that are predominately red in colour.

This feels a bit easier than noticing lost things, so we’ve giving twenty points instead of doubling your score. Obviously we’ll adjust that if it doesn’t feel right.

And again, we’ll run this for two weeks. Happy hunting!

Update: just to clarify: tag your noticings on Flickr with ‘red’ to be scored correctly.

On Rules

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 18:44:40 +0000

One of the most interesting things about Noticings for me is that the rules are always in flux. For example, lost things are currently scoring double points, but that’ll stop on Sunday 8th November, probably to be replaced by something else.

It might be described, loosely, as a Nomic, a game in which the rules are always changing. We’re not particularly democratic about the rule changes at the moment, but we’d like to be. We want people to submit ideas for new rules, and to negotiate changes between themselves, much like we used to in the playground.

Hopefully in the future we’ll have a better way of doing this, but for now the Get Satisfaction forum is the best place for it.

For example, at the moment, I feel that players in city centres are getting too much of a bonus for noticing something near another player’s noticing. And we’ve got a few ideas of what we’re going to do about this, but we’d like your thoughts too.

Of course, there are a few house rules, to give the game some bounds and constraints.

One of those is that Noticings aren’t people. Pictures of people seemed just too complicated to deal with, with too much hidden meaning, and it just seemed safest to exclude them from play.

Another one of the house rules is that your photo has to be of something, and that something has to be visible to others. If it’s not clear in the picture, then some information in the title will help.

We’ve not always done a great job of signposting these rules, but now we’ve got a rules page, detailing these. If you think we’ve got something wrong, please let us know.

Also, now, when we remove a photo because we think it doesn’t meet the criteria, then you’ll be able to see why on your profile page.

I’ll leave you with this terrible pizza incident, by Jason Reidy:

Double points for finding lost things

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 21:58:29 +0000

We’re trying an experiment for the next couple of weeks. From Monday 26th, through to Sunday 8th, if you stumble across something that’s been lost by someone then we’ll double your score for that photo.

We’re looking for things that have obviously been lost by someone. Things like this child’s photo, spotted by Meg Pickard:

Lost cat posters don’t count, and neither does stuff that you’ve lost and then found.

The important bit: If you’ve spotted something that qualifies, tag it as ‘lost’ as well as ‘noticings’ on Flickr, and we’ll score it appropriately.

We’ve got no idea if this will work, but it’s worth a go. Looking forward to seeing what you find!

Clarifying the Machine Tags

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 18:36:28 +0100

In my excitement, I probably didn’t quite explain the machine tag bit very well. When I said add the machine tag noticings:id=x, what I meant was that x should be the ID of the photo on Flickr. If you look at the address bar, it’s the number after your name: flickr.com/photos/scraplab/3962506654/.

And if you want Flickr to pick it up, you’ll have to add it after your photos have been scored on Noticings. Which is why it’s best to do it automatically: just change the machine tag settings under ‘your account’ when you’re signed into Noticings.

Flickr machine tags + more fine features

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 10:35:00 +0100

If you take a look at the site right now, you’ll probably spot a big change. Whilst you’ve been out noticing stuff, we’ve been adding new features and tidying up the site. Normally we’d release these changes as we go, but we’ve got one big feature that we hope it was worth waiting for.

We’ve been working with the fine folks at Flickr (thanks Aaron!) to add Noticings to their third party machine tag services. What on earth does that mean? Basically, a badge on the sidebar of your Flickr photos linking to Noticings, like so:

When you add the tag noticings:id=x to your photos, Flickr automatically fetch details of the noticing and its scorings from us and display it alongside the photo. To make this super easy for you to do, Noticings can write these tags for you, so you don’t even need to it yourself.

To turn it on for your account, sign into Noticings, click on ‘your account’, and change your machine tag settings. We’ll start updating your photos within 24 hours, so you might need to wait a while.

We’ve also tried to introduce Noticings to new visitors a little better with a big home page, explaining what it is and how to get involved:

And that’s not all. Here’s a little list of the some other stuff that’s been added or tweaked:

Places and people pages now paginate perfectly. How’s that for alliteration?
The score shown on a player’s page is now over the last 7 days, rather than their all time cumulative score.
Each player’s page now shows their most active neighbourhoods.
And at the last minute, there’s now a places search page, searching over 1.4 million neighbourhoods and towns. Try Soho, for example.

As always, if you notice anything awry, get in touch on our Get Satisfaction page.

Weekly bonus, and your first noticing in a neighbourhood

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 10:47:12 +0100

Three very dedicated noticers got the weekly bonus, for noticing something every day for a week (Monday to Sunday). Well done to Knebworth Chap, russelldavies and Ben Terrett. You each got an extra 70 points. In fact, Knebworth Chap managed to combine this with the first noticing in a neighbourhood for a whopping 110 points on a single noticing.

We’re also awarding points for your first noticing in a neighbourhood. So even if someone else has beaten to you a place, you can still pick up some points if it’s your first noticing there. 10 points in fact, which seems reasonable.

And here’s a lovely noticing of a kite, trapped on overhead telephone cables, by Keith Bolland in New Zealand:

Dropped the nearby noticings bonus to 10 points

Sat, 26 Sep 2009 11:55:00 +0100

We decided that the 20 point bonus for nearby something within 100m of someone else’s noticing was a bit much, and gave a bit too much power to those in city centres who happen to be nearby other noticings quite often. So we’ve dropped it to 10 points.

The Fourth Dimension

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 17:12:07 +0100

Good news everybody! There are more rules coming, and this time they’re focused around time, not space. But we’re going to release them quietly just to see if anyone discovers them, for a bit of fun.

However you’ll need to take a few moments to check that the time and date are set accurately on the camera you’re noticing with. Otherwise you might find strange things happen. Which would make it lot less fun. Go and do that right now. We’ll wait.

…

Well done.

Date archives

Sun, 20 Sep 2009 13:26:00 +0100

Just a little tweak. There are now archives for each day, such as this one for last Wednesday. And the front page will only show the last day calculated. Do let us know if you spot anything amiss.

Top noticers in a place & our Twitter account

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 22:06:00 +0100

Oh, in all the excitement I forgot about a couple more tweaks we’ve made live. Now, on place pages you’ll be able to see who the top noticers in that place are. Such as this page for King’s Cross in London.

And we’ve got a Twitter account, @noticings. We’ll try to keep it more interesting than just links to our blog posts.

A new logo, and a home for help

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 21:55:33 +0100

Mr Ben Terrett has very generously provided us with a logo. And isn’t it good? You see what he’s done with the eye? That’s graphic design that is.

It works very nicely as a favicon or Twitter avatar too. We’re very chuffed. And it’s live on the site for you to admire.

That said, the front page is looking very shabby in comparison, and it’s getting a bit cramped with all the noticings pouring in every day. I think we’ve got some sketching to do.

We’ve also set up a Get Satisfaction page for problems and ideas you might have for the game. Asking and answering over there will save our inboxes and help fellow noticers at the same time. So when you’re stuck, head there.

In the mean time, the bus stop is that way:

First noticing in a neighbourhood

Fri, 11 Sep 2009 16:08:41 +0100

There’s a new rule in the game, as you might have spotted from yesterday’s noticings: the first noticing in a neighbourhood now gets an extra 30 points. So go forth and discover unnoticed places, and notice things in them!

A hole in time

Tue, 08 Sep 2009 14:12:35 +0100

Time zone bugs are very difficult to spot, especially when you live in GMT/BST. It turns out we’ve been counting noticings between 11pm-11pm, rather than midnight to midnight.

Because of the way the scoring works this means that we’ve missed a few noticings that happened between 11pm and midnight, such as these layers of advertising in the London Underground by Chris Gornell:

Don’t worry though, we’ve gone back and manually scored the ones that were missed, as well as fixing the bug. So it should be hunky-dory now.

Thanks for bearing with us as we work out the kinks.

Looking back, looking forward

Mon, 07 Sep 2009 10:01:59 +0100

About 10 days ago we took the password off the site, and opened it up to the world.

I wrote a little bit about how it works on my blog, Tom elaborated about our plans on his, and a friend of ours, Russell, said some nice things too.

It’s been great to see people pick up the idea and run with it, and there have been some superb noticings, such as this one from meltingman:

And this one from I like:

The 174 noticings, from 39 players, across 6 countries so far have given us an idea of how people are playing the game, and where we might want to head with it next.

We’ve got a few new rules in the pipeline, and when those go live we’ll explain them on here. Further down the line we’d like to move to a more open, collaborative game, with players able to suggest rules and adjustments, and maybe allowing everyone who plays to vote on them. A nomic if you like: a game in which changing the rules is part of the game.

We’ve realised that we’re going to have to work on explaining Noticings better, so new players know what they should be looking for. And when we have to pull a noticing because it’s not quite what we’re looking for, we need to explain that.

But for now, thanks for playing, and keep your eyes open.