The Blogosphere By the Numbers
—The Blogosphere By the Numbers Nothing terribly quotable, but a good source of statistics relating to weblogs.
Football Slouches Toward a Former Women's College
I don’t have many positive associations with any sport, beyond lots of “quality time” with Dad in kiddie leagues. In high school I once accidentally caught a pop fly ball in my baseball cap. I somehow managed a flabby toss to a teammate, who tagged a passing runner for a double play. But traumatic run-ins…
The Dead Grandmother/Exam Syndrome and the Potential Downfall Of American Society.
In England it is called the “Graveyard Grannies” problem, in France the “Chere Grand’mere,” while in Bulgaria it is inexplicably known as “The Toadstool Waxing Plan” (I may have had some problems here with the translation. Since the revolution this may have changed anyway.) Although the problem may be international in scope it is here…
Interactive Fiction: Words vs. Pictures
IF as a genre, fundamentally unchanged for more than twenty years, evolved in a world of gaming where graphics were non-existent and words were the sole medium of expression. The game described locations, objects, and actions in text, and the player controlled the story’s protagonist by typing commands in English (or any other natural language…
Weblogging Software Leader Six Apart Acquires LiveJournal
—Weblogging Software Leader Six Apart Acquires LiveJournal (Biz Yahoo) There’s really nothing quotable in this rather dry press release, but I’m linking to it as a reference anyway. SixApart is the company that makes MoveableType, the software I use for blogs.setonhill.edu. An increasing number of my students are familiar with the LiveJournal style of personal blogging…
The Command Line in 2004
The X-Monkey comes from a line of monkeys originally bred by the military for the purpose of driving tanks. It’s a good fit, because the modern Apple sedan is actually a tank in a fancy shell. The X-Monkey’s only drawback is that he can only drive a car from Apple. Show him any other vehicle,…
Okay, I'll Bite [Tsunami Relief Links]
Anders Jacobsen is offering to donate $1 for every blog posting a link to his page and the following tsunami relief organizations. You can add mine to the list, Anders! I tell you what I‘ll do. I‘ll add my own $5… —Okay, I’ll Bite [Tsunami Relief Links] (Wordmunger) Link-whoring with a social conscience. This I like.…
The Bane of the President's Existence
A few months into my new job as a “new media journalism” teacher at Seton Hill University, a small liberal arts school in southwestern Pennsylvania, I was at a fancy on-campus dinner event, where the university president was working her way through the crowd, laying on the charm. I heard her relate a slightly off-color…
Troops stationed in Iraq turn to gaming
At the Marine base several miles southeast, high-speed wires snake down hallways, through doors and out windows. The Navy engineers play “Half-Life 2.” At the gym, where seven Playstations get heavy use, Marines wage “Madden NFL 2005” tournaments. “Neverwinter Nights” reigns in the public affairs office. —Troops stationed in Iraq turn to gaming (MSNBC/AP)
A Medium Coming Into Its Own
While the number of new blogs is rising, readership is growing even faster. —Dan Gillmor —A Medium Coming Into Its Own (Dan Gillmor on Grassroots Journalism) Gillmor is commenting on a datum from a new study from the Pew Internet & American Life Project.
Why Wikipedia Must Jettison Its Anti-Elitism
Ultimately, it became very clear that the most active and influential members of the project–beginning with Jimmy Wales, who hired me to start a free encyclopedia project and who now manages Wikipedia and Wikimedia–were decidedly anti-elitist in the above-described sense. Consequently, nearly everyone with much expertise but little patience will avoid editing Wikipedia, because they…
Call of honour for UK games maker
Leading British computer games maker Peter Molyneux has been made an OBE in the New Year Honours list. The head of Surrey’s Lionhead Studios was granted the honour for services to the computer games industry. —Call of honour for UK games maker (BBC) OBE = “Order Of the British Empire”. The article’s last paragraph: “Being an…
Brought to Book
Crichton doesn’t like the idea that someone else is better placed to make judgments than he is. He seems convinced that global warming is largely an invention of careerist scientists abetted by a partisan press. And he seems to find something smug and stifling, if not dishonest, about consensus: “the work of science has nothing…