Murphy is launching PayPerPost.com, which will automate such hookups between advertisers and bloggers and thus codify a new frontier of product placement. Advertisers pay to post details about their “opportunity,” specifying, among other things, how they want bloggers to write about, say, a new shoe, if they want photos to be included, and whether they’ll…
A look at the documented deaths at Disney’s two theme parks in Florida and California since 1989: —Boy, 12, dies after riding Disney World roller coaster (Herald Today.com) Thanks for the link, Rosemary. Considering the number of people who go through the park, it’s not suprirsing that people die when they happen to be there.
Adorno once wrote “it would be barbaric to write poetry after Auschwitz”. Based on what we previously described, it seems that it would definitively be barbaric to create videogames about Auschwitz. However, if we could find a kind of environment where actions are irreversible, some of the main obstacles for designing “serious” videogames would disappear.…
The former vice president’s movie — replete with the prospect of a flooded New York City, an inundated Florida, more and nastier hurricanes, worsening droughts, retreating glaciers and disappearing ice sheets — mostly got the science right, said all 19 climate scientists who had seen the movie or read the book and answered questions from…
A Jacksonville man says he was duped and robbed by two girls after attempting to meet with a woman he met on the internet. —Teenage Girls Rob Man they Met on MySpace (WOAI.com) I’m uncomfortable with the hype that presents the internet as dangerous (as opposed to the predictablity and passivity of TV). Even this “man…
This semester, I presented my undergraduates with a challenging course. I expected them to participate in class and keep up with assignments. I told them straight out that if they were not to come prepared, stay home. I did not coddle them. The best students thrived on the regimen. The lazy students of course hated…
If you believe the hype, blogs are as significant as the invention of the printing press for their ability to change the way the world will be seen. If on the other hand you believe the counter-hype, blogs are a self-indulgence which pander to dull people’s misguided beliefs that they have something interesting to say.…
Complete with the Bernie Mac perfect afro the redguardsman stared back at me in 1080i. His racial description? The most naturally talented warriors in Tamriel, the dark-skinned, wiry-haired Redguards of Hammerfell seem born to battle, though their pride and fierce independence of spirit makes them more suitable as scouts or skirmishers, or as free-ranging heroes…
This class is unique in many ways, the most prominent is that students learn how to create new media resources for education. As Gee noted, “When people learn to play video games, they are learning a new literacy” (2003, p. 16). In this course students must develop an instructional game where all game elements are…
Reflections on Keys for Writers (Jerz’s Literacy Weblog) I’m paging through Ann Raimes’s Keys for Writers, which I used to use when I taught freshman comp at my previous job, and which I’m coming back to in the fall as Seton Hill offers a new “Basic Composition” course for the first time. (Our freshman writing offering…
When a young St. Paul boy got to pick the theme for his third birthday party, he didn’t pick Nemo or the Wiggles or Dora the Explorer. He didn’t even pick his favorite sports team. Henry Schally picked “The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer”. His mother, Jennifer Schally, designed party hats complete with pictures of the…
Teenagers, in particular, provide a moving target for Internet researchers, remarks psychologist Kaveri Subrahmanyam of California State University in Los Angeles. “By the time you publish research on one type of Internet use, such as blogging, teenagers have moved on to something new, such as myspace,” she says, with a resigned chuckle. —Bruce Bower —Growing…
Keillor’s humor has always been a bit of a puzzle: What is its irony/sincerity ratio? Is he mocking Midwesterners or mocking the rest of us via Midwesterners? In 1985, when Time magazine called Keillor the funniest man in America, Bill Cosby reportedly said, “That’s true if you’re a pilgrim.” A decade later, a cartoon version…
A 14-year-old girl who says she was sexually assaulted by another user of MySpace.com sued the social networking Web site Monday, claiming it does not take sufficient steps to protect underage members. —Girl, 14, Sues MySpace.com Alleging Assault (AP|MyWay)
“The number of term papers assigned over the years has decreased significantly,” said Herman Clay, director of history and social sciences at Los Angeles Unified School District. Instead, Los Angeles teachers are assigning more in-class written exams, oral reports with visual aids and PowerPoint presentations, said Clay, a former principal of Van Nuys High School.…
In mid-May, the difference between the student summer and the professor summer seemed vast to me. One approaches the student summer the way Evel Knievel approaches a line of Ford Mustangs — a burst of frenzied acceleration as one heads up the ramp of stress and procrastination, a brief moment of giddy release as one…
DUBLIN — Professor Hanlon O’Faolin, once called “mad” at the Royal Irish Academy for attempting to reanimate the traditional body of Celtic folktales with the power of elcectic multilingual puns, is readying his apoplectic Bloomsday Device for activation on June 16. “Yes! Yes, they laughed at me yes but now yes I will make them…
The whole idea of episodic stories was born in the 19th century when the printing press made cheap magazines possible. Writers like Charles Dickens hit upon the idea of delivering a big story in weekly chunks, each with a cliffhanger to keep the audience in anticipation. (The cliffhanger is essentially a technological invention — a…
Perched on the edge of a white grand piano and decked out in a full-length evening gown, the former CBS and CNN anchorwoman [Connie Chung] warbled a farewell song that put down Dan Rather (with whom she co-anchored the CBS news in the early 1990s), her husband and cable TV – all at the same…
Hollywood knows that it needs new ideas. The games industry doesn’t know. Hollywood goes out of its way to provide itself with a seed stock of new talent and ideas, the games industry doesn’t. Hollywood spends an enormous amount of money supporting colleges and universities, and training programs at those settings. The games industry does…