Excerpt:
"...In the new website, the storyline will be brought to life with sumptuous newly-commissioned illustrations and interactive ‘Moments’ through which you can navigate, starting with the first book, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s (Sorcerer’s) Stone. On entering, you choose a magic username and begin your experience. As you move through the chapters, you can read and share exclusive writing from J.K. Rowling, and, just as Harry joins Hogwarts, so can you. You visit Diagon Alley, get sorted into a house, cast spells and mix potions to help your house compete for the House Cup.
At a press conference at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, Rowling revealed some key features of the website. In an announcement which will thrill fans, she described how she has brought to life both the Sorting Hat and Ollivanders experiences from her books for the first time on Pottermore, by revealing the questions asked by the Sorting Hat - which places newcomers into their Hogwarts houses according to their characteristics - and the magic behind the Wand Chooser – which finds the right wand for each user from over 33,000 possible combinations. She also revealed glimpses of the new information she has provided on some of the best-loved characters..."
Excerpt:
"...On the other, there is the promise of multimodality represented by what's been described as interactive "moments" introduced around the books -- including a sorting hat process and a wand shop -- which allow fans new ways of interacting with the story. For literary critic Lev Grossman, who has been a key enthusiast for the books, this aspect of transmedia causes him to pause:
When publishers mix reading with other media, the way Pottermore does (or the way that The 39 Clues, another Scholastic creation, does), I find it confusing. Every time I see more of the Potterverse realized in other media, as video or audio or even still images, it undoes the work I did by reading about it. It takes away from the marvelous, handmade Potterverse I've got going on in my head and replaces it with something prefabricated.Those of us who are more enthusiastic about transmedia see it differently: we see these materials as expanding our knowledge and deepening our experience of the story (at least in so far as they are done well and everything about Potter has been done well) by allowing each medium to do what it can do best. There's been lots of talk about whether there has been a killer demonstration of the potential of transmedia -- this may well become that killer demo, for better or for worse, and I for one am going to be watching closely to see what happens next...."
Excerpt from Olivia Solon's article in Wired UK:
"...In each chapter there are interactive "moments". In the first book there are 44 of these moments. One such example includes Diagon Alley where you can enter Gringots (the wizard bank) and pick up 175 galleons -- the in-game currency. You can then use this to buy items on your shopping list from shops such as Wiseacre's Wizarding Equipment.
On the journey to Hogwarts you can explore a virtual train carriage, finding digital trinkets such as magic beans and a different spell cards that you can add to your personalised trunk for use later. The trunk can be accessed on your profile page which shows all of your friends, digital wallet, all of your digital items, details about the wand you have and the house you are in.
The Sorting Hat -- which allocates users to a Hogwarts house -- is a lot of fun. You go through a series of multiple choice questions to assess your character. Based on your unique responses you get allocated a house -- Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw or Slytherin. I volunteered to be sorted into a house in the press conference and got sorted into Gryffindor.
Having been sorted into a house, you can challenge fellow students to wizard duels or by successfully mixing potions in order to win points for you house. This part seems to play a little like a multiplayer game -- with leagues of point winners competing against each other.
You can also see what your friends are doing on Pottermore -- you can see where they are in the storyline and go and meet them should you so wish.
Rowling took a hands-on approach to Pottermore and came up with questions for the aforementioned Sorting Hat and for the Wand Chooser -- which selects the appropriate wand for each user for one of thousands of possible combinations. All of these extra details appear to be the Harry Potter encyclopaedia that Rowling has alluded to in the past. TH_NK has previously worked with Sony to create Little Big Map -- a huge Google Maps mash-up which allows fans of the game Little Big Planet to connect with each other.
Pottermore will be first opened in beta on 31 July (Harry's birthday) to a million fans who will be required to find a Magical Quill in an online treasure hunt. They will be able to feedback their comments and criticisms of the site in order to shape the final look and feel of the website before it opens to everyone on 1 October. This will also be when the Pottermore shop will open, allowing people to purchase the e-books and digital audiobooks in a selection of languages. The second book, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, will go live in early 2012. Other books will follow later..."
By Ed Borden
"Do you buy this "Smart City ®" that is being peddled to you? Do you feel the magnificent effects of BigGov and BigCo overhauling urban infrastructure with "Smart City ®" connected traffic lights, energy meters, and surveillance systems? Does knowing where the "Smart City ®" subway is in real-time BLOW YOUR FREAKING MIND??
Here's a newsflash: (Dramatic pause.......) Using computers and the internet increases efficiency! Of basically everything! Even cities!
Blistering cynicism aside, let's face it, BigGov missed the boat big-time on this one. Shouldn't they have delivered on the "Smart City ®" a long time ago? I mean, it's 2011. People are building their own flying drones out of cell phones and Arduinos. People are consolidating all the world's information onto Wikipedia. People are using Twitter to stage national revolts.
And BigGov is busy connecting garbage cans.
Just like the M2M dinosaurs are on the brink of extinction in the commercial world, BigGov has become irrelevant in the public sector, eclipsed by someone with a supercomputer in their pocket, open source hardware and software at their fingertips, and a global community of like-minded geniuses at their beck and call: YOU.
YOU are the Smart City.
While BigGov is bickering over what datasets it might want to release for the use of developers and entrepreneurs, people like Leif Percifield are climbing down into the sewers and getting data that BigGov doesn't have. A massive earthquake and subsequent tsunami causes one of the worst nuclear disasters in history to occur on his home soil, so Shigeru Kobayashi leads an effort to crowdsource radiation data that BigGov wasn't providing publicly. Jeff Starin has jumbo jets flying over his house at low altitude all day long, so he starts publishing ambient noise data that BigGov doesn't even want to see, let alone make available themselves...."