I finally got my friends page!

Not that I need to feel popular or anything, but I’ve been bugging Jerald for a while now to make a page that features all of our friends and health content providers. I was out of the office on Friday and ta-da! My request is granted. Maybe I should leave the office more often? (Just kidding, Jerald.)

The Playnormous site now features a page dedicated to all of our wonderful friends and researchers, appropriately entitled the Friends and Researchers page. Thank you to all of our amazing friends for your support! This page also features our medical research partners who provide our health content and have helped us as we create new and fun games about health.

Happy talky.

Better still, to my complete surprise, Jerald presented another page this morning that I’d only been hinting about. We now have a Press and News page too. This is just a little shout-out to all those wonderful bloggers and members of the press out there that have helped spread the word about Playnormous and our mission to make kids healthier through fun. Thank you, thank you. Without you, we would not have the amazing amount of visitors we have today.

Get involved.

Feeling a bit jealous that your name or company isn’t listed? Like our site and want to help us get the word out about Playnormous? Here’s how you can help:

• Add Playnormous to your site!
• Write about us–blog post, article, whatever!
• Talk about us–send out are link to friends, family, coworkers, whoever!
• Comment on the Monster’s Blog–Digg, StumbleUpon, Del.icio.us, Reddit, Technorati, etc posts you like.
• Give us feedback about the site and/or games–contact the Big Monster here.
• Follow Playnormous–visit the site often or join us on Twitter and LinkedIn.

I’m so excited–we’re on HealthLeader!

I am beyond pleased to announce that Playnormous is being featured on HealthLeader, an excellent online wellness magazine from The University of Texas Health Science Center. Links to Food Fury, Judy Fruity, and Reggie Veggie are now available in the HealthLeader health tools section.

Now that’s some credibility!

There are several reasons why I’m thrilled that Playnormous has made it onto HealthLeader:

• HealthLeader is an award-winning health, prevention, and wellness magazine produced by The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston in the famous Texas Medical Center.
• The magazine is extremely well written and full of useful information. No fluff here. For example, need some help planning for hurricane and flood season? I mean, some info that’s actually helpful? Look no further than HealthLeader’s two-part series Hurricane & Flood Handbook written by Karen Krakower!
• The website is very well done, and it’s easy to find what you’re looking for. This sounds silly to mention, but I can’t say that about a lot of sites that I visit.
• Quality, creative graphics. Again, sounds silly, but very important and more rare than you’d think.
• Important causes are highlighted, like having a button right on the front page where people can sign up to participate in clincial trials.
• The site is full of useful tools like a calculator that can help you figure out if your weight is healthy. Playnormous is listed among these health tools. Wow!
• New content is added at least twice a week. There’s always something new to enjoy. You can sign up for weekly emails too. I love that! Info right to my inbox.
• And last but not least…this online magazine uses over 1000 leaders in the health industry as its sources–clinicians and faculty members who are experts in medicine, nursing, dentistry, public health, human genetics, and biomedical science. Now THAT’S some credibility!

Special thanks to editor Karen Krakower and web designer Sophia Solis for making Playnormous part of the already amazing HealthLeader experience. Keep up the good work!

One term, two definitions.

If one were to ask, “What’s Web 2.0?” you’d probably get a variety of answers. It depends on who you ask. Ask a businessman or an entrepreneur and they’ll probably start talking about social networking sites like LinkedIn or sites where they put down their thoughts like Monster’s Blog. Ask a techie, and they’ll probably start talking about Google Maps or AJAX.

There are a lot of arguments about what Web 2.0 actually means. From our perspective, there are two basic definitions for Web 2.0:

1. A websites comprised of user-based content.
2. A technique for creating more responsive web applications that do not require web pages to be reloaded each time data is collected from the server.

Definition 1 explained.

The first definition is a bit easier to explain because there are so many examples. Wikipedia has a great overview (and is a perfect example of Web 2.0). Wikipedia is a wiki which allows users to create and add their own content to the site. That’s Web 2.0 definition 1…a website that is comprised of content added by users. Tim O’Reilly, founder of O’Reilly Media, is usually credited for coining the phrase “Web 2.0.” He used definition 1. Examples include Facebook, del.icio.us, AdSense, Flickr, Skype, and MapQuest.

Definition 2 explained (by example).

The second definition of Web 2.0 is a little harder to grasp. The first person to explain it to me was Paul, the third Principal at Playnormous parent company, Archimage, Inc. Paul opened Gmail, and then clicked on my Inbox. I saw a list of all the emails that had been sent to me that day. He then clicked on Sent Mail. The lists of emails changed, and I saw all the emails I’d sent. But nothing else on the web page changed (even though the website URL had changed). I still saw the Gmail logo, the sidebar, footer, etc. Only information on a small section of the website had changed, and clicking between Inbox and Sent Mail did not cause the web page to completely reload. That’s the techie definition of Web 2.0…moving between web pages without seeing the entire page reload.

Definition 2 explained (techie-style).

Here’s the basic idea from a technical standpoint.

• You go to a website and decide to click a button on the homepage. When you click the button, the web application used to create the website must retrieve information that is on the server the website is connected to.
• With a Web 1.0 site, you actually see this information exchange occur on your screen–the entire web page reloads.
• With a Web 2.0 site, the web application retrieves that same information but does it bit-by-bit “behind the scenes.” The entire web page doesn’t reload each time you fetch a new piece of information from the server. This is MUCH faster, and thus, more user friendly.

See, that wasn’t so hard. Haha! Many say definition 2 is a misnomer, but I have an office full of guys that would violently disagree. Well, maybe not violently, but they would disagree loudly.

Childhood obesity? Controversial? Surely you jest!

I was reading my favorite health blog, Well: Tara Parker-Pope on Health, and ran into this apparently controversial post written by Tara Parker-Pope (TPP) about childhood obesity. Not that the post itself caused a huge stir, but it was due to the photo that she posted of a large 5-year-old leaving an exercise program for overweight children. Only 207 people have commented so far (ONLY 207!), and all were very passionate about how they felt. Some of my personal favorite quotes:

• “It’s just energy economics.” –Posted by An MD’s Husband
• “Kids of my generation spent a lot of time in front of the TV; we didn’t get that fat.” — Posted by WigWag
• “Don’t manipulate [your kids] into doing ‘activities’” –Posted by Formerly Fat
• “Talk to your govn’t representative about public outdoor fitness.” –Posted by DR
• “Stop buying soda!” –Posted by Leslie
• “If you are fat, good chance you are passing the lifestyle on down the line. It’s its own form of child abuse.” –Posted by Dora
• “It is pretty clear that being fat is not as unhealthy as being dead…” –Posted by JillyFlower
• “Just as having poor personal hygiene, being a disgusting slavery bigot, should never be allowed to become a social norm.” –Posted by Nom, nom, nom! in response to another person’s comment

So much passion! I would LOVE to hear people’s thoughts.

Is any press good press?

The post mentioned Baylor College of Medicine’s Children’s Nutrition Research Center. Our partners! TPP discussed the energy calculators developed by CNRC that parents can use to determine how many calories their child should be eating each day. The reference to CNRC had nothing to do with the photo; it was just a bad coincidence that she mentioned them in this particular article.

However, I wonder if any press is really good press. It at least exposed some people to the CNRC and that there are researchers here in Houston that are trying to help kids by learning more about nutrition. Lots of people have opinions about nutrition, physical activity, obesity, etc. Most people don’t agree on these topics at all. I suppose it’s good that 207 people care so much about a photo of a child going to an exercise camp.

What do you think?

We’re one of the cool kids now.

Playnormous was featured in an article written by Shayna Glick of Slashfood, a site for all things food…fun, zany, and original food that is. As always, the comments are very interesting.

The Slashfood site is very cool, and I’m honored to say that Playnormous has made it to Slashfood.com. I’ve kind of become a pretty big fan as I’ve been looking at more and more blogs. The site is not necessarily all about healthy food (unless you look in the Healthy Eating section), but some great food info nevertheless. I learned how to make my own tuxedo and wedding dress strawberries today! They always have useful tips of the day, kitchen essentials, and a daily cookbook. Ever seen a meatloaf cupcake? Well, in Slashfood’s gallery you just might.

Have some fun playing with your food.

Slashfood features a section for kids and families called Play With Your Food. This site includes food trivia, family friendly recipes, funny food news, and fun food activities. Try taking the Snack Cake Quiz. Do you know the difference between a Swiss Roll and a Ho Ho cake?

All I have to say is Slashfood.com is an original–just like Playnormous.com!