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The World of Warcraft Miniatures Deluxe Edition was released today! (San Francisco’s Gamescape was, once again, very accommodating and might be starting up a WoW Miniatures game day on Sundays.) The Deluxe Edition set comes with 6 random World of Warcraft miniatures, 6 character cards, 12 action bar cards, 12 ten-sided dice, 6 UBases (which many players have simply stopped using in lieu of dice), a poster/complete character list, a scenario book, and one of three game boards (either Ashenvale, Tanaris, or Winterspring). Here are photos of the unboxing:

I knew what the real gem was going into the purchase: the scenario book and game board. In combination, the scenario book, blank game board, and custom hexes allow the players to imbue the map with different features, adding variety and extending playability. The cheaper starter set comes with a passable game mat on glossy poster paper. But there’s nothing quite like unfolding heavy, high-quality chipboard onto the table. The map surface has a durable matte finish, and is a subtle pleasure to play upon.

However, I’m violently shaking my fist at Upper Deck Entertainment (UDE) for putting random game boards in the Deluxe Edition boxes instead of marking explicitly which game board is in the box. I accept the idea that the booster packs (miniatures only) have a random assortment of characters, but random game boards? With each Deluxe Edition set costing $50, I should absolutely be able to pay $150 and be guaranteed ownership of all three game boards. But as it stands, dumping $150 into 3 Deluxe Edition sets only gives me a 22% chance of having all three boards.

Funny!

Bahaha! According to this AP article,

The squabble is over a fake letter sent out by Taco Bell Corp. asking 50 Cent to change his name for one day to 79 Cent, 89 Cent or 99 Cent to help publicize its value menu.

Michael Masnick of Techdirt describes Taco Bell’s letter as an open letter, which seems to lump this activity in with a nascent trend of for-profit corporations adopting “dot org” strategies and messages. Open letters strike me as a tool used by the “little guy” (consumers, activists, public interest organizations) to open up an assault on a more powerful entity; receiving any kind of response from the target is basically a victory. Here, Taco Bell has co-opted a strategy more often used to bring about a public good — instead successfully using it to bring about a private good (awareness and profits for itself). They inverted the typical power structure too — in this odd situation, a huge corporation used an open letter to pick on an individual rapper.

(Photo of 50 Cent Wheelie Bin by David Jones under a Creative Commons 2.0 Attribution-Noncommercial License.)

Extrapolations aside, this whole episode is plainly hilarious.

Last night, I played some tunes at Shine and heard from some folks working at the intersection of technology and participatory journalism.

From Wikinews, we heard from Volunteer Coordinator Cary Bass and Wikinews volunteer Jon Davis. Wikinews articles are written by volunteers and are only published after meeting a set of guidelines: copyright (or “not infringing anyone’s copyrights,” most likely), newsworthiness, verifiability, neutral point of view, and style. Wikinews has done some breaking stories with original reporting, and has a particular advantage in being able to continuously update a breaking story as it unfolds.

Bass and Davis stressed that ultimately, they need more users. If you’re interested in participatory journalism, consider contributing some time and effort to Wikinews. It seems like you could get a lot of eyeballs for your investment — articles are indexed by Google News and the organization is instantly recognizable thanks to the tie to Wikipedia.

Here are some brief, somewhat disjointed notes about Wikinews:

• Wikinews has implemented “flagged revisions,” (an effort to mitigate the effects of article vandalism and preserve quality) where the public version of a page is one that was vetted by a trusted editor.
• Wikinews has a “newsroom,” where contributors can go to see what articles are being developed and may need help. A lot of work gets done through the IRC chatroom.
• Story writers can use any photo available in the Wikimedia Commons.
• Wikinews rarely exercises fair use when looking for photos/images to add to a story.
• Wikinews articles have no bylines. (This seems like a factor in their low participation rate — if Wikinews could develop some kind of joint byline system, where writers are credited on the basis of how much of their contribution makes it to the final article, I think they may see more people signing up to write.)
• Wikinews articles are licensed with an attribution requirement only — share alike is NOT required.

We also heard from an interesting non-profit funded startup called Spot.us. David Cohn, a journalist and geek, won the Knight News Challenge — a contest/grant given to develop community-focused news and information projects, services, and programs. His idea was to create a site to promote community-funded journalism. Note that the product is not necessarily community-written journalism, a distinction that I think is rather important.

So, Spot.us strikes me as pretty cool. Citizens can submit “tips,” which are leads to stories developing in their community. Freelance, professional journalists can submit “pitches,” either in response to tips or of their own conception, that introduce the idea and boundaries of a potential story. Users can then fund the story with donations, creating the resources and incentive for the freelance journalist to investigate and write.

Crowdfunding is not exactly a new idea, but Spot.us is doing something really interesting — for the first six weeks, Spot.us tries to sell the exclusive rights to the produced story to a local news organization. If Spot.us makes a sale, it pays the original crowdfunders back. Also, six weeks after an article is produced, it is Creative Commons-licensed, giving the public the right to make use of the work.

Cohn believes that by having the articles Creative Commons-licensed, the end product is a public good — the public “owns” the end product. But Cohn also noted that Spot.us is partially an experiment to answer the question: “Is journalism a public good?” Will the public be interested in funding journalism in order to gain a benefit from it? Having come from a journalism background, I think it’s an interesting question to be asking now.

Also, Spot.us is built on Ruby on Rails and is open-source.

Edit: My notes on the CC Salon are here.

Goofing off at a CC Salon last year.

Judging from the Upcoming.org page, this CC Salon looks like it’ll be well-attended. If you’re in town, join for drinks, music, and some presentations on citizen journalism from Wikinews (community-written news) and Spot.us (community-funded reporting). It starts at 7pm!