Tag Archives: AI

AI, Technology

Ciphers Thwart Generative AI Plagiarism

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Watermarks in Plaintext

Combined with massive compute cycles, multiple ciphers can be embedded in Generative AI text output without the recipient’s knowledge of which ciphers are applied. One or more ciphers can be used. The more text the AI generates, the more ciphers are applied.

If a person attempts to use an AI-generated text fraudulently, such as submitting a research paper to a professor, the professor could electronically upload/scan the submitted research paper to ChatGPT, assuming ChatGPT, based on current popular opinion. This new interface will then scan their massive library of Book Cipher keys looking to detect one or more ciphers that may have been used when the text was generated. The larger number of cipher algorithms and the amount of generative AI text output becomes more secure.

Generative AI embeds multiple text watermarks that can be identified. It’s not bullet proof whereby the person using the generative AI output can attempt to move the words around, use different words, synonymous for words, and even move paragraphs around.

The output from a ChatGPT scan to search for ciphers can be used to determine the probability (%) that generative AI was used to produce the document.

The AI community, at large, can produce a centralized hub for all documents to be searched regardless of the Generative AI bot used. All the Generative AI company participants using the same hub would close the possible gap to increase the identification of Generative AI output.

Application of a Book Cipher

In the 2004 film National Treasure, a book cipher (called an “Ottendorf cipher”) is discovered on the back of the U.S. Declaration of Independence, using the “Silence Dogood” letters as the key text.

How a “Book Cipher” Works

A book cipher is a cipher in which each word or letter in the plaintext of a message is replaced by some code that locates it in another text, the key. A simple version of such a cipher would use a specific book as the key, and would replace each word of the plaintext by a number that gives the position where that word occurs in that book. For example, if the chosen key is H. G. Wells‘s novel The War of the Worlds, the plaintext “all plans failed, coming back tomorrow” could be encoded as “335 219 881, 5600 853 9315” — since the 335th word of the novel is “all“, the 219th is “plans“, etc. This method obviously requires that the sender and receiver have the exact same key book.

The Book Cipher can also be applied using letters instead of words, requiring fewer words to apply ciphers.

Solution Security

Increase the Number of Book Ciphers

The increased number of ciphers in one Generative AI “product” decreases the ability to “reverse engineer” / solve Book Ciphers. The goal is to embed ciphers in Generative AI “products”, as many as technically possible.

Increase the Complexity of Inserted Book Ciphers

Leveraging a “Word Search” like approach, the path to identify the words or letters in the Generative AI “Product” may not need to be read/scanned like English, from left to right. It may be read/scanned for cipher components from top to bottom or right to left.

How to Keep “Book Ciphers” for Generative AI Publically Secret

AI, Artificial Intelligence, Technology

Privacy: Exposing AI Chat Plugin Access to User’s Conversation History.

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There are many benefits for allowing third-party plugin access to a user’s Chat history. For example, an OpenAPI, ChatGPT Plugin could periodically troll through a user’s chat history and proactively follow up on a conversation thread that appears to still be open-ended. Or, periodically, the Chat Plugin could aggregate the chat history into subjects by “smart tagging” conversations and then ask the user if they want to talk about the Manchester United, football game last night. Note, in the case of OpenAPI ChatGPT, it has “Limited knowledge of world and events after 2021.” Also, note presently OpenAPI ChatGPT API or the ChatGPT plugin has not exposed the user’s chat history.

3rd Party, Security Permissions for OpenAI, ChatGPT API, and Plugins

Just like authenticating 3rd party apps with your Google credentials, allowing the app to access Google user’s data, this level of authentication should be presented to the user, i.e., “Would you like to allow XYZ ChatGPT Plugin access to your Chat History?” I’m sure there are many other security questions that could be presented to the user BEFORE they authenticate the ChatGPT plugin, such as access to personal data. For example, if the AI Chat application has access to the user’s Google Calendar and “recognizes” the user is taking a business trip next week, the Chat app can proactively ping the user a reminder to pack for warm weather, in contrast to the user’s local weather.

Grass Roots, Industry Standards Body: Defining All Aspects of AI Chat Implementations

We don’t need another big tech mogul marching up to Washington to try and scare a committee of lawmakers into the benefits of defining and enforcing legal standardization, whatever that might be for some and not for others. One of the items that was suggested is capping the sizes of AI models with oversight for exceptions. This could cripple the AI Chat evolution.

Just like we’ve had an industry standards body on the OAuth definition for implementation, another cross-industry standards body can be formed to help define all aspects of an AI Chat Implementation, technology agnostic, to help put aside the proprietary nature.

In terms of industry standards for artificial intelligence, Chat standards, permissions for the chat app, and 3rd party plugins should be high on the list of items to invoke standards.

Extensions to AI Chat – Tools in Their Hands

Far more important than the size of the AI Chat Model may be the tools or integrations to the AI Chat that should be regulated/reviewed for implementation. The knowledge base of the Chat Model may be far less impactful than what you can do with that knowledge. Just like we see in many software products, they have an ecosystem of plugins that can be integrated into the main software product, such as within JIRA or Azure DevOps marketplaces. With relatively simple implementation, some plugins may be restricted for implementation. Many AI Chat applications’ extensibility requires manual coding to integrate APIs/Tools; however, assigned API keys can solve the same issue to limit the distribution of some AI Chat tools.

AI Chat “Plugins/Extensions” can vary from access to repositories and tools like SalesForce, DropBox, and many, many more. That’s on the private sector side. On the government sector side, AI Chat plugins can range, some of which may require classified access, but all stem from a marketplace of extensibility for the AI Chatbots. That’s the real power of these chatbots. It’s not necessarily the knowledge of cheating on a university term paper. Educators are already adapting to OpenAPI, ChatGPT. A recent article in the MIT Technology Review, explains how teachers who think generative AI could actually make learning better.

Grassroots, Industry Standards Bodies should be driving the technology standards, and not lawmakers, at least until these standards bodies could expose all facets of AI Chat. Standards may also spawn from other areas of AI such as image/object recognition, and not all items brought about during the discovery phase should necessarily be restrictive. Some standards may positively grow the capabilities of AI solutions.

Chat Reactive versus Proactive Dialogs

We are still predominantly in a phase of reactive chat, answering our questions regarding the infinite. Proactive dialogs will help us by interjecting at the right moments and assist us in our time of need, whether we recognize it or not. I believe this is the scary bit for many folks who are engaging in this technology. Mix proactive dialog capabilities with Chat Plugins/Extensions with N capabilities/tools, creating a recipe for challenges that can be put beyond our control.

AI, Augmented Reality

Platform Independent AI Model for Images: AI Builder, Easily Utilized by 3rd Party Apps

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With all the discourse on OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Natural language processing (NLP), I’d like to steer the conversation toward images/video and object recognition. This is another area in artificial intelligence primed for growth with many use cases. Arguably, it’s not as shocking, bending our society at its core, creating college papers with limited input, but Object Recognition can seem “magical.” AI object recognition may turn art into science, as easy as AI reading your palm to tell your future. AI object recognition will bring consumers more data points from which Augmented Reality (AR) overlays digital images within an analog world of tangible objects.

Microsoft’s AI Builder – Platform Independent

Microsoft’s Power Automate AI [model] Builder has the functionality to get us started on the journey of utilizing images, tagging them with objects we recognize, and then training the AI model to recognize objects in our “production” images. Microsoft provides tools to build AI [image] models (library of images with human, tagged objects) quickly and easily. How you leverage these AI models is the foundation of “future” applications. Some applications are already here, but not mass production. The necessary ingredient: taking away the proprietary building of AI models, such as in social media applications.

In many social media applications, users can tag faces in their images for various reasons, mostly who to share their content/images with. In most cases, images can also be tagged with a specific location. Each AI image/object model is proprietary and not shared between social media applications. If there was a standards body, an AI model could be created/maintained outside of the social media applications. Portable AI object recognition models with a wide array of applications that support it’s use, such as social media applications. Later on, we’ll discuss Microsoft’s AI Model builder, externalized from any one application, and because it’s Microsoft, it’s intuitive. 🙂

An industry standards body could collaborate and define what AI models look like their features, and most importantly, the portability formats. Then the industry, such as social media apps, can elect to adopt features that are and are not supported by their applications.

Use Cases for Detecting Objects in Images

Why doesn’t everyone have an AI model containing tagged objects within images and videos of the user’s design? Why indeed.

1 – Brands / Product Placement from Content Creators

Just about everyone today is a content creator, producing images and videos for their own personal and business social media feeds, Twitter, Instagram, Snap, Meta, YouTube, and TikTok, to name a few. AI models should be portable enough to integrate with social media applications where tags could be used to identify branded apparel, jewelry, appliances, etc. Tags could also contain metadata, allowing content consumers to follow tagged objects to a specified URL. Clicks and the promotion of products and services.

2 – Object Recognition for Face Detection

Has it all been done? Facebook/Meta, OneDrive, iCloud, and other services have already tried or are implementing some form of object detection in the photos you post. Each of these existing services implements object detection at some level:

  • Identify the faces in your photos, but need you to tag those faces and some “metadata” will be associated with these photos
  • Dynamically grouping/tagging all “Portrait” pictures of a specific individual or events from a specific day and location, like a family vacation.
  • Some image types, JPEGs, PNG, GIF, etc., allow you to add metadata to the files on your own, e.g. so you can search for pictures on the OS level of implementation.
3 – Operational Assistance through object recognition using AR
  • Constructing “complex” components in an assembly line where Augmented Reality (AR) can overlay the next step in assembly with the existing object to help transition the object to the next step in assembly.
  • Assistance putting together IKEA furniture, like the assembly line use case, but for home use.
  • Gaming, everything from Mario Kart Live to Light Saber duels against the infamous Darth Vader.
4 – Palm Reading and other Visual Analytics
  • Predictive weather patterns
5 – Visual Search through Search Engines and Proprietary Applications with Specific Knowledge Base Alignment
  • CoinSnap iPhone App scans both sides of the coin and then goes on to identify the coin, building a user’s collection.
  • Microsoft Bing’s Visual Search and Integration with MSFT Edge
  • Medical Applications, Leveraging AI, e.g., Image Models – Radiology
Radiology – Reading the Tea Leaves

Radiology builds a model of possible issues throughout the body. Creating images with specific types of fractures can empower the autodetection of any issues with the use of AI. If it was a non-proprietary model, radiologists worldwide could contribute to that AI model. The displacement of radiology jobs may inhibit the open non-proprietary nature of the use case, and the AI model may need to be built independently of open input from all radiologists.

Microsoft’s AI Builder – Detect Objects in Images

Microsoft’s AI model builder can help the user build models in minutes. Object Detection, Custom Model, Detect custom objects in images is the “template” you want to use to build a model to detect objects, e.g. people, cars, anything, rather quickly, and can enable users to add images (i.e. train model) to become a better model over time.

Many other AI Model types exist, such as Text Recognition within images. I suggest exploring the Azure AI Models list to fit your needs.

Current, Available Data Sources for Image Input

  • Current Device
  • SharePoint
  • Azure BLOB

Wish List for Data Sources w/Trigger Notifications

When a new image is uploaded into one of these data sources, a “trigger” can be activated to process the image with the AI Model and apply tags to the images.

  • ADT – video cam
  • DropBox
  • Google Drive
  • Instagram
  • Kodak (yeah, still around)
  • Meta/Facebook
  • OneDrive
  • Ring -video cam
  • Shutterfly
  • Twitter

Get Started: Power Automate, Premium Account

Login to Power Automate with your premium account, and select “AI Builder” menu, then the “Models” menu item. The top left part of the screen, select “New AI Model,” From the list of model types, select “Custom Model, Object Detection”Detect Custom Objects in Images.”

AI Builder - Custom Model
AI Builder – Custom Model

It’s a “Premium” feature of Power Automate, so you must have the Premium license. Select “Get Started”,. The first step is to “Select your model’s domain”, there are three choices, so I selected “Common Objects” to give me the broadest opportunity. Then select “Next”.

AI Builder - Custom Model - Domain
AI Builder – Custom Model – Domain

Next, you need to select all of the objects you want to identify in your images. For demonstration purposes, I added my family’s first names as my objects to train my model to identify in images.

AI Builder - Custom Model - Objects for Model
AI Builder – Custom Model – Objects for Model

Next, you need to “Add example images for your objects.” Microsoft’s guidance is “You need to add at least 15 images for each object you want to detect.” Current data sources include:

Add Images
AI Model – Add Images

I added the minimum recommended images, 15 per object, two objects, 30 images of my family, and random pics over the last year.

Once uploaded, you need to go through each image, draw a box around the image’s objects you want to tag, and then select the object tag.

Part 2 – Completing the Model and its App usage.

AI, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Technology

Who’s at the Front Door…Again?

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Busy Time of Year, Happy Holidays

The holiday season brings lots of people to your front door. If you have a front door camera, you may be getting many alerts from your front door that let you know there is motion at the door. It would be great if the front doorbell cameras could take the next step and incorporate #AI facial/image recognition and notify you through #iOS notifications WHO is at the front door and, in some cases, which “uniformed” person is at the door, e.g. FedEx/UPS delivery person.

RIng iOS Notification
RIng iOS Notification

This facial recognition technology is already baked into Microsoft #OneDrive Photos and Apple #iCloud Photos. It wouldn’t be a huge leap to apply facial and object recognition to catalog the people who come to your front door as well as image recognition for uniforms that they are wearing, e.g., UPS delivery person.

iCloud/OneDrive Photos identify faces in your images, group by likeness, so the owner of the photo gallery can identify this group of faces as Grandma, for example. It may take one extra step for the camera owner to login into the image/video storage service and classify a group of videos converted to stills containing the face of Grandma. Facebook Meta also can tag the faces within pictures you upload and share. The Facebook app also can “guess” faces based on previously uploaded images.

No need to launch the Ring app and see who’s at the front door. Facial recognition can remove the step required to find out what is the motion at the front door and just post the iOS notification with the “who’s there”.

One less step to launching the Ring app and see who is at the front door.

Agile, SDLC, Technology

Power Automate Goes Beyond “Out of the Box” Azure DevOps Automation Workflow

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“Out of the box” are Process Workflow features to build automation rules within Microsoft Azure DevOps (ADO). One caveat found thus far. If criteria are met for an update to an ADO work item, the user cannot update the Tags of a work item (e.g., append tags). Bizarre but true.

In this case, the user must leverage Power Automate to update the ADO work item to append Tags to the work item(s) that meet the criteria.

Thanks, Omer, for pointing out this shortfall so we could plug the hole with Microsoft Power Automate. Note: other fields can be updated when the rule is executed, just not the Tags field. Special logic is required to update this Tags field, i.e., Replace, Append, Remove

Again, Microsoft Power Automate to the Rescue.

AI, Augmented Reality, Business, Information Architecture (IA), Virtual Reality

Microsoft’s Plethora of Portals

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As I was looking through Microsoft’s catalog of applications, it occurred to me just how many of their platforms are information-centric and seemed to overlap in functionality. Where should I go when I want to get stuff done, find information or produce it? Since the early days of AOL and AltaVista, we’ve seen the awesome power of a “Jump Page” as the starting point for our information journey.

Microsoft, which one do I choose?

From one software vendor’s perspective, we’ve got many options. What’s the best option for me? Seems like there should be opportunities to gain synergies between available Microsoft platforms.

Bing.com

Searching for information on the internet? News, images, encyclopedias, Wikipedia, whatever you need, and more is on the web. Microsoft Bing helps you find what you need regardless if you’re using text or an image to search for like for like information. It also serves up “relevant” information on the jump page, news mixed with advertisements. There is also a feature enabling you to add carousel “boxes”. for example, containing latest MS Word files used, synergy from Office.com

Office.com

Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Visio, Power BI… If you’ve created content or want to create content using Microsoft applications, Office.com is the one-stop-shop for all your Office apps and the content created using these applications.

SharePoint

Another portal to a universe of information around a centric theme, such as collaboration/interaction with product/project team members, an Intranet, SharePoint site with one or multiple teams. At the most fundamental level is the capability to collaborate/interact with teams, potentially leveraging Microsoft collaboration tools. Just one of many of its capabilities “out of the box” is a document management solution and the use of version control.

SharePoint can also be used for any type of Internet/web platform, i.e., a public-facing portal platform. However, SharePoint, in fact, is a sharing tool in which the authors of the website can share video presentations, shared calendars of public events, and a plethora of customized lists.

Yammer

Engaging your people is more critical than ever. Yammer connects leaders, communicators, and employees to build communities, share knowledge, and engage everyone. I’m thinking synonymous with a bulletin board. The implementation of Yammer looks like Facebook for the Enterprise.

  • Use the Home feed to stay on top of what matters, tap into the knowledge of others, and build on existing work.
  • Search for experts, conversations, and files.
  • Join communities to stay informed, connect with your coworkers, and gather ideas.
  • Join in the conversation, react, reply to, and share posts.
  • @ mention someone to loop them in.
  • Attach a file, gif, photo, or video to enhance your post.
  • Praise someone in your network to celebrate a success, or just to say thanks.
  • Create a virtual event that your community can ask a question and participate live or watch the recording afterwards.
  • Use polls to crowd source feedback and get answers fast.
  • Stay connected outside the office with the Yammer mobile app.
  • Use Yammer in Microsoft Teams, SharePoint, or Outlook.

“Yammer helps you connect and engage across your organization so that you can discuss ideas, share updates, and network with others.”

Microsoft Teams

For any team, there is a wealth of information varying from the group or single Chats, Teams, Calls, Files, and practically integration for almost all Microsoft applications and beyond. The extensibility of MS Teams seems relatively boundless, such as integrations with Wikis, SharePoint document folders, etc. From what I can tell, many organizations just use Teams for the group, or individual Chat channels are barely grazing the surface of MS Teams’ capabilities.

Setup of MS Teams, Teams “landing” page is a great place to start constructing your “living space” within MS Teams. From there, you can carve out space for all things related to the team. For example, in the “Team ABC” Team channel, you can add N number of “tabs” relating to everything from an embedded Wiki to specific SharePoint folders for the team’s product specifications. A team could even create an embedded Azure DevOps [Kanban] Board to show progress and essentially “live in” your MS Team, team channel.

Another porta;l overlap, Microsoft Teams Communities, seems to equate to Yammer.

Delve

What is Delve – Microsoft 365?

Use Delve to manage your Microsoft 365 profile and to discover and organize the information that’s likely to be most interesting to you right now – across Microsoft 365.

Delve never changes any permissions, so you’ll only see documents that you already have access to. Other people will not see your private documents. Learn more about privacy.

Delve is a content curation platform for the person it’s most relevant to…you. It gives the appearance of a user experience similar to carousels of video streaming apps. There are “Popular Documents” carousels and other carousels that are based on the most recent access. Based on how files are saved based on who can access content is how the platform gives you a treasure trove of documents you never knew you had access to or existed. It actually paints a potential compliance nightmare if people select the default document access as “…anyone within my organization…”.

Outlook.com / Best of MSN

Another portal of information focused around you: your email, your calendar, your To-Dos, and your contacts/people. It’s not just your communication with anyone, e.g., your project team members; it’s organizing your life on a smaller scale, e.g., To-Dos. You can also access other shared calendars, such as a team release schedule or a PTO schedule.

The Best of MSN is information, i.e., news around your interests, a digest of information relevant to you, delivered in an email format. Other digests of information from other sources may be curated and sent if subscribed.

Mediums to Traverse Information: AR, VR…

The visual paradigms used to query and access information may drastically influence the user’s capacity to digest the relevant information. For example, in an Augmented Reality (AR) experience, querying, identifying information, and then applying it, serving up the content in a way most conducive to a user’s experience is vital.

Users can’t just “Google It” and serve up the results like magic. The next evolution of querying information and serving up content in a medium to maximize its usability is key and is most evident when using Augmented Reality (AR). If you’re building something, instructions may be overlayed by the physical elements/parts in front of the user. Even the context of the step number would allow the virtual images to overlay the parts.

Automated and Manual Content Curation is a MUST for all Portals

Categories, Tags, Images, and all other associations from object A to everything else, the Meta of Existence, are essential for proper information dissemination and digestion. If you can tag any object with metadata, you can teach an AI/search engine to identify it in a relevant query. Implementing an Induction Engine, a type of Artificial Intelligence that proposes rules based on historic patterns is a must to improve query accuracy over time.

Next level, “Information applications” – Improved Living with Alzheimer’s

Next Ecosystem: Google..?

Agile, AI, Education, Technology

2020 posts that never were

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Occasionally, when a thought gets bubbled up in my brain, I pop open Twitter, and tweet the thought. In some cases, the fleeting idea seems larger than a tweet, so I open up WordPress, and start a post. I may save it and come back to add content to the post. I’ll come back to the post, and say to myself, what was I thinking, and don’t pursue publishing post. Here’s the list of blog posts that I drafted this year, but decided for one reason or another, I wouldn’t post it.

LITTLE KNOWN FACTS ABOUT MICROSOFT BING

THE ANATOMY OF A TWILIO STUDIO PROGRAMMABLE VOICE WORKFLOW

LOW COST, PLATFORM AGNOSTIC, BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE, PROLIFIC REPORTING TOOL

RADICAL TRANSFORMATION OF K-12 EDUCATION SYLLABUS

AFTER THE PANDEMIC: GETTING PAST THE FEAR FROM SOCIAL DISTANCING

STOP WORDS: MODEL TRAINING

AI – BEST IN SHOW

BUY AND BUILD – DIGITAL TRANSFORMATIONS

AI, Artificial Intelligence, Education, Entertainment, Finance, Games, Technology

Roblox, Massive Tween Gaming Platform, Goes Public

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Popular tween gaming platform Roblox filed to go public on Thursday. The company declined an interview, citing a quiet period.

Source: Roblox, massive tween gaming platform, goes public – CNN

My son and I, OneWildRide,  are hooked on the Roblox game Theme Park Tycoon 2   I’m fixated on building out my park.  For beginners, there are the “out of the box” rides you can buy, and the amount of items you can use to accessorize your park is staggering.    Not only can you add “canned” rides, such as the Gravatron, but the theme park builder can add all different types of roller coasters, water rides, park transportation, etc.

Users of the Theme Park Tycoon 2 are Graded by:

  • number of active users in your park
  • the amount of money you make based on park admission, pay per ride, and concession stands
  • People can “like” your park, and provide feedback at the entrance

Commoditizing Roblox Games

I will shamefully admit that I purchased Roblox Bucks, with real dollars, that can be used on a plethora of items to build my Theme Park.  For example, the Theme Park has a height limit for how high you can build your roller coasters, so naturally, the builder/user has the ability to purchase to lift the height requirements.  You can also purchase additional “packs” that provide the builder enhancements to their rides, such as running the ride in reverse or looping the ride three times instead of the default single loop.  There’s also the conversion of USD to Roblox $$ because builders need to buy the components to build water rides or roller coasters.  You can even purchase concession stands (e.g. Popcorn Vendors).  The builder of the amusement park must also buy/build restrooms and spread out trash cans throughout the park.  There is also the concept of day and night, so make sure to buy/place lamps across the park.

Pay to Play – AI Bots = Theme Park $$

These “auto” bots/characters paying to play in your park may leave if they are dissatisfied, such as no bathrooms.  Also, without trash cans, there will be visible trash on the ground that must be painfully cleaned up, pile by pile, or left there to pile up.  On the flip side, these AI amusement goers will pay:

  • Park Entrance Fees
  • Pay Per Ride
  • Pay to use the loo
  • Pay for Concession Stands, such as Soft Drinks, Popcorn, and Pizza
  • Pay for Theme Park Memorabilia, such as Santa Hats, Tis the Season!

The Theme Park Builder sets the prices for EVERYTHING.  The AI Bots have “thoughts”, such as “This ride is really cheap.” to help you gauge your ride pricing, or “I’m Hungry”, to imply you should buy/place concession stands throughout your park.

Minecraft Anyone?!

I should say someone should have seen this coming, several someones.  You build this Theme Park at the “block” level, very similar to Minecraft, however, it seems, as far as I can tell, the graphics of Roblox seem somewhat superior to Minecraft, although this is a very debatable topic.  Minecraft has lots of 3rd party “mods” or customizations/modifications to the game.  Minecraft has had a lot of time to cultivate its userbase as well as a marketplace for users to buy these modifications.  Roblox as an application/gaming platform seems intriguing in light of the IPO.  I wonder what the highest-grossing games are on the Roblox platform.

Availability

Roblox Theme Park Tycoon 2 is available on Xbox, iPad / iPhone, and Windows to name the environments we use, jumping from device to device wherever is convenient.

Multiplayer Environment

My son constantly wants me to go over to his Theme Park, and go on rides he has just built.  It’s really a lot of fun to go to other builders’ parks.  There is a basic transit system to move between amusement parks.  You can get LOTS of ideas by looking at other builders’ parks, some of these parks put the “real world” amusement parks to shame.  So far, I’ve seen six (6) people playing concurrently, where you can see who has the most Roblox Bucks, and who’s park has the most visitors currently.  Naturally, if you’re not the big kahuna, you’ll want to stroll by the other builders’ parks.  If you are in close proximity, if you time it right, you can log in to the same server, and play with friends.  Doesn’t always seem to work quite right when people jump on and off the game.  There is probably a feature I’m not using to guarantee the same server with friends, maybe the “Premium” version of Roblox?

Build Your Own Roblox Games?  Monetary Incentives?

Wow, I really didn’t contemplate it that much.  I didn’t even think about the possible monetary returns from building one’s own Roblox game.  Not sure what the requirements would be to be a developer, how easy or hard it would be to build Roblox games, i.e. is there a coding language to use, a proprietary language, or just a simple graphical tool to build games.  No clue if there is a “developer/partner” annual cost, which is what I paid when developing applications for the iPhone / iPad.  Also, playing on the iPad / iPhone Roblox platform hosting the Theme Park game, would Apple get a percentage of “In-App” purchases for Roblox dollars?  We purchased Roblox bucks from the PC, and XBOX, so it didn’t occur to me there would be margin paid to the platform on which it runs.

Disclosure – I am not a “Premium” Roblox member or a “game” builder.