The Funware Blog @ rmbr

For those of you that have been following, we recently released beta version 1.1 of our social lead management and contact exchange application, rmbrME. Its arrival last week was met by a flurry of press attention, including a fantastic article from VentureBeat’s Dean Takahashi about the imperiled future of the business card.  Yesterday also saw the publishing of a well-commented, slightly provocative write up from the master of button pushing at TechCrunch, Jason Kincaid, this time advocating for the death of those 2×3 paper dinosaurs. Both articles were prompted by us, and ably executed by their respective writers (with some minor ‘nitpicks’ about Jason’s).

The most interesting thing for us - other than the sharp rise in usage over the past week - has been the plethora of ideas that have emerged from our users and the commenters. People are polarized on the idea of an electronic business card (less so its implementation), though that sort of polarization has yielded some interesting gems of insight for us already.

There was a Jon Stewart-quality “Moment of Zen” in the TC article’s comments that really brought home the need for rmbrME and who its targeted at. This is a photo that Michael Arrington (TC EIC) uploaded of his desk drawer. Check it out and read his caption:

Although I don’t presume to have the same social obligations and interactions as Mike, his experience of cards, and the poignant comment he made were the exact reason we launched the rmbrME service in the first place. For those of us in the high-volume social/business meeting context, the process of dealing with new contacts after meeting them has stopped being fun.  You may notice a pattern here…funware to the rescue, anyone?

And while making real life experiences fun is the province of this blog, the sheer volume of activity at rmbrME has necessitated the creation of a separate blog focused just on that product. If you want to follow what we’re up to at rmbrME, go to http://blog.rmbrme.com/ and you can keep tabs on our progress/leave your feedback.

Thanks again, and we’re very much looking forward to keeping the Funware momentum going!

It seems that diet and exercise, the two bogeymen of the obesity apocalypse are finally seen to be getting the funware treatment.

The $50Bn+ diet/exercise industry hasn’t generally done a great job of making itself fun - even though it’s obvious that it would benefit from it.

But, with the advent of the Wii Fit, we’re beginning to see a greater realization that games and weight loss/physical fitness can be effectively combined. Like most funware analyses of the world around us, the games have (generally) always been there - it’s just our changing perspective that lets us see them as the games they are.

Clive Thompson makes one such realization in his solid article about Weight Watchers RPGishness in today’s Wired. What’s interesting to me is that Weight Watchers has always been an RPG - their basic system is unchanged since its inception. Even the use of points (see the diabetes association as well) - which Thompson finds surprising - should come as no shock. It’s not exactly like we invented the idea of keeping score in game design.

The Wii too has seen a fair amount of coverage relating to its effect on people’s exercise habits. ConsumerAffairs talks about an enlightening experiment at Dalhousie about the real health benefits, while Time weighed in with its well-written analysis of the wii making workouts fun!

While most people are focused on the obvious connection (workout-fun), I’m increasingly pleased at the way that our knowledge of games and game design is being put to spectacularly good use to understand the world around us.

Yes - if you make working out fun, people will do it more. You can substitute any activity for working out that you’d like. The axiom is always true.