[MUD-Dev] Re: Real-world skills

[Andrew Wilson]

Koster, Raph:
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Bruce Mitchener
 
>>> The only stock Edu-Mud that I know is owned by MIT... err, it is
>>> called...  err... sending the request to long term
>>> memory.... err.... D'Oh! somthing Moo, Amy Bruckman's work.
 
> You mean MediaMOO.

Mud use, MOOs in particular, is widespread in the academic
community, both for teaching and collaboration.  It's been like this
for years now.  More names to consider:

    Connections		http://web.nwe.ufl.edu/~tari/connections/
    TappedIn		http://www.tappedin.org/
    Networked Writing Environment at the University of Florida
    (MOOville)		http://web.nwe.ufl.edu/writing/
    coMentor		http://comentor.hud.ac.uk/
    Access Grid		http://www-fp.mcs.anl.gov/fl/accessgrid/
    ...

Sometimes the Mud is a major (only) part of the system eg
Connections.  Sometimes it's just a support tool for a bigger
application eg: Backchannel for Access Grid's broadband audio/video
collaboration tools.  TappedIn wraps the mud up in a webbrowser
front end which makes the experience less of a hassle for the
first-time visitor, same with coMentor.  In some cases mud's prior
history as a place to write creatively (at least if you were an
admin) works well with the subject being taught eg: NWE's MOOville.

The basic theme though is that mud is considered to be a mature
platform to use for important stuff like education and research
support.  In all these cases the bigger project required a simple
chat interface so that people could get together and work things
out.  There may be alternatives for these roles of course, IMs like
ICQ, channel servers like IRC, 'presence' architectures like Jabber,
but nothing quite like persistent, programmable, bug-free,
available-right-now, unencumbered old mud.

Er, which in part may explain why people keep on tweaking and adding
new functionality to muds... there's nothing like competition.

Cheers,
Ay.

andrew at awns.com
Cell: 07889 61 61 44                 Voice/Fax: +44 (0) 1865 513 091  
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