Wipley, Social Gaming Platform

The first application we have developed is FlickrBabel, a service to help in multimedia information retrieval, first using Flickr. The operative and utility of this tool is very simple. When a query is given to the system, it generates translations (by means of Google Translation API) to other languages (Spanish and English, by the momento) and it creates an expanded query with these translations. Finally, it generates the query using Flickr API (we use phpFlickr class for interacting with Flickr from PHP) and shows the results. servicio de ayuda a la búsqueda de fotografías en Flickr. El funcionamiento y utilidad de esta herramienta es muy simple.

As well as expanding queries by means of automated translation, FlickrBabel is able to search for related photographies using the contextual information attached to a given Flickr photo. When a photographie is geotagged, FlickrBabel also shows the photographies taken near from that location as a way to expand the vision of some places.

FlickrBabe borned as a satellite application when exploring several web services APIs trying to understand better how they work to use that knowledge in Wipley development. For getting a deeper knowledge from that APIs, nothing better than doing something practical, and this is the first result. By now,  FlickrBabel is at a “beta” stage, so we will add some functionalities from time to time.

And, What is Wipley? Wipley is a project that is being developed since some months ago by some enterprising (Francisco Carrero, Borja Monsalve y José Carlos Cortizo). This project combines some topics we are really interested on: videogames, social networks and intelligent systems.

Wipley hopes to become in some kind of Facebook for ganers. A Social Network highly configurable and usable that allows videogamers to access all the information about their games, characters, groups, clans, etc. unified in a single site. But, we also look forward into a easier and more dynamic way to relate videogamers.

By the other hand, Wupley will not be a typical social network, it will incorporate several technologies to increase its usability, the information access and its interoperability, and it will also have some functionalities further than typical ones in social networks.

Where do we want to reach? We have decided to do not impose limits to ourselves. We hope the users guide the development of Wipley. For that, we have created this blog, to inform all the possible users about our advances, and where we hope to receive all kind of comments and suggestions that help us to improve Wipley.

Which is the actual status? By now, we are centerd on the business plan and working very hard in the first prototypes. We plan to release the first beta after the summer.

I like videogames. I was going to say that I spend over 10 hours per week in games like WoW, GTA, FIFA, . . . ot even SingStar, but it could seem I’m an addict :P. Besides, I spend some other hours searching for information about videogames, discussing in forums, or even having something for drink with people from my clan.

The truth is that I have just realised that I waste most of the time I am surfing the Internet. Having to read 30 blogs, log-in and review 10 forums, visit pages and pages of Google search results, access the web of my clan to see what’s going on, connecting to the messenger to see if anyone wants to play a fast game… I hope you don’t missunderstand me: the problem os not going through all that websites, but having to access all of them without knowing if there are upgrades, if my friends would have posted a message for me or if anyone would play that game with me.

I have already told to my friends from Wipley: “I want you to develop a unique web where I can find all that stuff about videogames, access all my clans, and searching for new friends to play with. I want a Facebook for videogamers.”

Said and done. They are working on it…