Members of The Official Transformers Collector's Club can now read I, Lowtech, the latest TF story from myself and Greg Sepelak, in the members portion of the website. Here's the official Blurb:
The Official Transformers Collectors Club is excited to present the final installment from its trilogy of TransTech illustrated short stories by Greg Sepelak and S.Trent Troop. Noted Transformers comic artist Nick Roche illustrates this members-only tale with colors by Winston Bolen. I, Lowtech is the third text story set in the teeming TransTech Metropolis known as Axiom Nexus and serves as a follow-up to the previous two stories: Gone Too Far and Withered Hope. I, Lowtech also offers a glimpse into the final hours of the current Transcendent storyline which concludes this November.
Something horrible has happened in the depths of Axiom Nexus. Bulletbike, a member of the TransTech elite, has had his life stolen from him. His fevered climb to regain his position will take him from the lowest of the Offworld Zones to the heights of TransTech society amid mystery, madness and murder. You will see the rise and fall through his optics as his one-Transformer struggle against his faceless enemy brings him into contact with beggars, thieves, smugglers and a seemingly unstoppable killer.
All this and three, count them, three Swindles!
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Hyperlinks have been added for the Transformers impaired.
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Breaking the Chains of User-Created Content Exploitation
Ok, I believe strongly in user created content. Heck, its the best way to get a lot of things done. Seriously, look at Spore!
But sometimes user-created content gets exploited. And that's the situation with Wikia, a wiki-hosting company that, up until now, hosted the Transformers Wiki. In short, because their advertising system was made to support a lowest-common denominator system, they began imposing increasingly limiting rules on how people ran their wikis, to the point that those hideous animated, noise-making ads started being put within the body of the wiki entries themselves.
That's right. You go to read about, say, Blitzwing, or, say, me, and there would be a two-inch square screeching monstrosity howling at you to buy Pringles like some rabid baboon. And this would be displacing, and in some cases, covering up content.
Well, it was Wikia's servers, so one might argue that they were within rights (though not ethics) to change their rules constantly and outright mislead their contributors (who, BTW, make their money for them.) But it was also within the rights of those contributors to beat feet outta there. And they did. The whole thing is now located at www.tfwiki.net, thanks to bold culture heroes like David Willis (the Shortpacked dude, as some know him). The wiki has taken control of its own destiny, and that to me is what the internet experience is all about.
I don't do much contributing to the wiki, since I currently have a hand in producing TF fiction. But I did write their press release for the move, I support their move and the motivations and principles behind it, and I encourage everyone to check them out. This isn't your standard dry wiki: its informative and irreverent, the way the internets/interweb/tubes/webway/snarkzone/that Tron Place ought to be. After all, nothing that considers me worthy of an encyclopedic profile probably shouldn't take itself seriously.
Really, check it out:
Trent Troop @ TFWiki.net
And no, I didn't create my own page.
But sometimes user-created content gets exploited. And that's the situation with Wikia, a wiki-hosting company that, up until now, hosted the Transformers Wiki. In short, because their advertising system was made to support a lowest-common denominator system, they began imposing increasingly limiting rules on how people ran their wikis, to the point that those hideous animated, noise-making ads started being put within the body of the wiki entries themselves.
That's right. You go to read about, say, Blitzwing, or, say, me, and there would be a two-inch square screeching monstrosity howling at you to buy Pringles like some rabid baboon. And this would be displacing, and in some cases, covering up content.
Well, it was Wikia's servers, so one might argue that they were within rights (though not ethics) to change their rules constantly and outright mislead their contributors (who, BTW, make their money for them.) But it was also within the rights of those contributors to beat feet outta there. And they did. The whole thing is now located at www.tfwiki.net, thanks to bold culture heroes like David Willis (the Shortpacked dude, as some know him). The wiki has taken control of its own destiny, and that to me is what the internet experience is all about.
I don't do much contributing to the wiki, since I currently have a hand in producing TF fiction. But I did write their press release for the move, I support their move and the motivations and principles behind it, and I encourage everyone to check them out. This isn't your standard dry wiki: its informative and irreverent, the way the internets/interweb/tubes/webway/snarkzone/that Tron Place ought to be. After all, nothing that considers me worthy of an encyclopedic profile probably shouldn't take itself seriously.
Really, check it out:
Trent Troop @ TFWiki.net
And no, I didn't create my own page.
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
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