Gaming is one of the greatest uses of Flash technology. There are tons of places to get your Flash gaming on, and one of my new favorites is Nonoba. I found my way there earlier this morning from a link on Download Squad for a particularly fun game called Comboll that's a cross between Breakout and a scrolling level of Super Mario Bros.
The site offers the same communal experience of playing games with others as Kongregate does, with built-in user chat, reviews and commenting, along with achievements and a built-in social network. There's also a revenue-sharing program for publishers looking to make some cash off their work. One of the service's coolest features, however, are the labs.
Like Digg's swarm visualization, Nonoba has its own visualizer called LiveStats to show you what people on the site are up to in real-time. It shows if they're on a game or community page, or when new games have been uploaded. The more users there are in any location the bigger the spheres get. It also shows you user movements of both registered and unregistered users as they zip around the site. This is far more engaging than a simple Top 10 list, and after watching it for a while you can see trends as masses of people hop on to play certain games and small titles become more and more popular.
One small hiccup is that the visualizer chugs to a near standstill when the site is overrun with users. On several occasions it would make my browser hang--so be careful about leaving it on to long.
Track user activity on the gaming site Nonoba with its Flash visualizer.
(Credit: CNET Networks)
Put this feature in the category of neat looking but potentially headache inducing. It's a recently-introduced YouTube feature that lets users view videos in a floating array of thumbnails. Users of Digg's swarm visualization will feel right at home, as both share a slightly similar interface (albeit Digg's is a little more useful).
Access the 'warp' view by first clicking the full screen (left) then the triangle-like button in the player (right).
(Credit: CNET Networks)To access the warp mode click on the full screen button in any YouTube video (the one on the far right) and then move all the way over to the left to the strange triangle-looking button. Clicking it zooms the video out into a black space with tiny round video thumbnails. Holding your mouse over any of them will pull up other similar videos--a process you can continue forever, or until you hit a dead end (marked with a red border). If you've ever used Quintura's video search, it works the same way.
One thing to note is that this feature only works from videos watched on YouTube, and not embedded clips. It also doesn't seem to work yet with videos that have YouTube's overlay ads in them.
Update: Gallery of warp videos here.
Make connections and watch videos in the same place. If you start venturing too far off course, YouTube creates a line for you to figure out where your exploration started.
(Credit: CNET Networks)
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