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I love bees also opened up the genre of Alternate Reality Games to the general public, using Halo 2 as a draw. As a result, it was the biggest game of it's kind yet created. It's story was complex and deeply engaging. It gave thousands of bored office workers a chance to talk to interesting people, and an excuse to do something rewarding and exciting once a week.

If you actually visited the web site, the name Halo 2 never came up once. Although everyone knew what the game was supposed to promote, none of the people running the game and very few of the players even discussed it. It was totally self-contained up till the end, earning ire and wrath from some people who thought they would be getting free Halo 2 demos just for showing up at a GPS location.

It was also a completely free game given as a gift to the players. They even gave out a limited edition DVD, and then told the players to distribute it on bittorrent and give copies to whoever they like. Microsoft giving anything away entirely free is news to me.

I love bees inspired people to become artists and actors, if for a short time. It also encouraged it's players to leave their shitty jobs and go back and get their Masters' degrees. I'm not kidding.

Unfortunately, to understand any of this, you had to have the patience and forbearance to actually play the I love bees game. Since a lot of people never did this, all they heard was "web site" and "Halo 2." Those people missed out big time. A log of the game and the entire radio play are still available, though, for anyone who wants to find out what all the fuss really was about. (Hint: it wasn't Halo 2.)

Read this and this

Who's the hottie who plays Dana?

It would appear, to my much surprise, that none of you have read the wired article. Basically I Love Bee is a game. But a game played out in real life. They provide clues, and you run around working the clues out for more clues. This happens in the real world, using phones and websites. This game was used by Bungie to promote their own game, which happens on your XBOX. Very simple concept, terribly obscured.
Anyway these links provide more information, and a community you play the game.
http://bees.netninja.com/
http://forums.unfiction.com/forums/
They probably aren't ready for a slashdoting.

Check the Beewiki FAQ. It's basically an ARG.

Hmm... Sounds like ilovebees.com's hostile AI wasn't kidding when it said it had metastasized. Now it's gone from Spying on Dana to spying on everybody...

According to this page (quoted below in italics), "Dana" is trying to remove the defacement.

If you use WHOIS to look up the domain registration for ilovebees.com it has the following information:

Margaret Effendi (ladybee777@hotmail.com) 2370 Market Street #510 San Francisco CA 94114-1575 Phone: (415) 248-2617

Calling the phone gets you a voicemail "Hi, this is Dana, please leave a message." but the mailbox is full. From this I would assume the address also belongs to Dana.

--- The domain name ilovebees.com was registered on June 14, 2004, the same day as the first post in Dana's blog. The domain is registered until June 14, 2009.

However, the tags tell another story.

Before the closing /HTML tag, there is a FONT tag with the attribute "CLASS=dana_white", which applies to what is supposedly the "regular" site text.

However, in the piece of HTML inserted after the final /HTML tag which produces the black square overlay, there is a FONT tag with the attribute "CLASS=dana_big".

Would a real defacement have taken the time to begin their class names with "dana_" as in the rest of the document?

Probably not.

This, combined with the domain registration taking place the same day as the first post in Dana's blog, leads me to the conclusion that the whole thing is a set-up.

However, the authors of this elaborate set-up (as in the movie The Game) have left those of us that are smart enough to figure out that this is bullshit a little easter egg:
<META NAME="keywords" CONTENT="honey, bees, Margaret, small busines, beekeeping,
hives, retail, market, Operator, bug, buggy, virus, infestation, WTF is
going on with this damn thing, parasite, strong intrusive inclination, medium,
messages, shipwreck, network throttling, SOS, hoax, game, bee hoax, bee game,
survivor, survive, evade, resist, escape, a little help would be appreciated,
thanks and tip your waitress, sleep, is, good, install, reinstall,
re-reinstall, re-re-reinstall, I, love, bees">