ITPlay » php

SyncStory

Steve — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 05:57:29 +0000

Brief Description

SyncStory is an effort to create a text adventure/choose your own adventure (CYOA) using Twitter as the plumbing. The branching story structure is developed by prompting the reader to choose the next action. With each 140-character event, the reader must select one of two choices, which then propels the story forward.

Try it for yourself! Friend @syncstory on Twitter. Then send a direct message (DM) to @syncstory to begin (the body of the DM is not important). In return, you will receive the first line of the story with a choice of two actions in brackets. Reply to @syncstory with your choice. Once the narrative is complete, you will then be sent the next line of the story. Please be patient, I’m now charged with developing the narrative to fit in this new framework.

Continued Development

After creating this framework, the most time-intensive task is to write the narrative content. As I try to accomplish this on my own, I’m also exploring ways of creating a content-management system to “crowd-source” narratives that automatically feed into SyncStory — Providing the SyncStory audience with choice.

I’d also like to implement a scoring system, possibly with different levels of achievement. I see @syncstory’s tweet timeline as an announcement feed. For instance, “@twitteruser has reached level 5!” Click on the thumbnail to the right for a mock-up of a scoring interface. This mock-up assumes only a leader board, but I also see value in a login-system as a portal to the user/readers stats associated with SyncStory.

Background

The idea for SyncStory developed out of a recent interest in the choose your own adventure format. More specifically, I was recently introduced to the text adventure Zork. Also, I had recently been thinking about the effect of SMS and Twitter, 140/160-character messages on the way we communicate. There seems to be a shift from long form communication (books, email, etc.) to this shorter form. So, I decided to explore reversing this trend by turning a short message form into a longer form of communication (i.e. A full-length narrative).

Story Writing, 160 Characters at a Time

Steve — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 16:19:11 +0000

Twitter is still reinventing the way we communicate. At 140 characters per tweet, it is so easy, and somewhat mindless to broadcast a message to the world (or at least your followers). The common way we view these short messages is in list form which maintains our perception of each tweet being independent of the next.

Now butt each tweet one after the other in paragraph form. The perceived effect is that we are now writing one, extremely long story (narrative, documentary, autobiography, etc.) This is what my project aims to explore.

Whether or not you are aware of it, your Twitter account, @alias, has a persona of its own. And if you were calculating about it, you may have purposefully created the personality perceived through your tweets. In a serendipitous event, while I was trying to form this idea of “short messages combined to form narrative,” a friend (unknowing of my new project) sent this to me in an email. Briefly, Andrea Pitzer writes about Peggy Nelson’s intentional use of Twitter to bring characters (fictional/historical) to life. Can Twitter and SMS be leveraged to create a narrative 140/160 characters at at time?

Equipment Room SMS Rental System

Steve — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 18:12:28 +0000

In the first step of many, I have a basic SMS rental system functioning.

To test the system text the following to 41-411:
itper checkout A1534

This follows the syntax required by the TextMarks.com service of using the 41411 shortcode for their system, followed by my registered keyword “itper” followed by an internal keyword (either “checkout” or “return” and finally the serial number identifying the equipment you are checking out.

How does this work?
The TextMarks.com service allows a text sent by anyone with the above syntax to ping a custom PHP page I’ve coded. The custom page records the sender’s phone number, text message, and timestamps the record as well. Then the script can recognize whether or not you’ve entered “checkout” or “return” and it sends a confirmation back to the sender.

How to make it better?
I’m going to continue developing this system to improve my PHP and mySQL skills. As a result of texting the “checkout” or “return” commands I would like a record in a separate database table to keep track of who has each piece of equipment checked out, as well as when it is due back. The due back date should then be sent with the confirmation after a ITP student checks out a piece of equipment.