See also my resources on interactive fiction (text adventure games), programming in Inform 7, making games in Scratch, and coding hypertext stories in Twine.
Rosenblum’s idea is to bring “video journalists” to TV newsrooms and beyond, one-man bands that can report stories, shoot digital video, edit it on laptops and broadcast it. His client list already includes the BBC, New York Times TV and Oxygen, and he is currently helping to train VJs at local TV stations such as…
Now, the notion that story doesn’t matter is worst with the industry old-timers. “Just repeat that 30 seconds of gameplay, and you’ve got it,” I’ve heard. Or worse: “We’ve never had to worry about of that story stuff before.” Maybe that’s okay for a small audience of addicted gamers, but the new charter for platforms…
Dear Sen. Clinton: I’m writing to commend you for calling for a $90-million study on the effects of video games on children, and in particular the courageous stand you have taken in recent weeks against the notorious “Grand Theft Auto” series. I’d like to draw your attention to another game whose nonstop violence and hostility…
“Look,” I said. “I happen to know that the address www.abc.com has not been registered. Go down to your basement, find your most technical computer guy, and have him register www.abc.com immediately. Don’t even think about it. It will be a good thing to do.” They thanked me vacantly. I checked a week later. The…
While gangsta rap is seen as celebrating the violence and aggression that claimed two of its brightest stars, “geeksta” rap is a hip-hop genre celebrating coding skills and school grades. Also dubbed “nerdcore,” this branch of hip-hop is for geeks, by geeks. —Robert Andrews —Rap Marketing Comes to Nerdcore (Wired)
The happiest and most peaceful parts of the World Wide Web are the places where people are buying things. The nasty parts of the Web are where people are doing what the Founding Surfers intended: expressing themselves and forming communities. […] Having spent a decade working at the devil Microsoft and then at a big…
In this essay, we will explore the idea of emergence. We will examine how objects and patterns can arise from simple interactions in ways that are surprising and counter-intuitive. We will present examples with simple squares that turn on and off, but the underlying ideas will provide you with a new perspective for thinking about…
The evolution of the Internet as collective, public dream via electronic interfaces, and the evolution of human beings into civilizations, has many striking parallels. The earliest networks were often protected by their owners, and communities were relatively secretive or ?cave-dwelling.? The wiki, on the other hand, is out in the open field, where its vulnerability…
Okay. It’s true, as Johnson says, that video games can be intensely challenging and absorbing, and that book-loving snobs tend to be oblivious to this fact. It’s true that “The Sopranos” is complicated and subtle as well as violent. And although you yourself don’t watch “24,” your smart colleagues talk endlessly about its intricate plotting.…
Grist for the e-mail forwarding mill. Whatever you call them, Web fads are entertaining, unintended consequences of life on the World Wide Web. Once the masses could put anything online easily, they turned up weird fetishes, hilarious parody, jaw-dropping narcissism, and moments of brilliance. And over the past 10 years, some of these ideas broke…
When playing Rogue, I’m almost as into the game as when playing an uptodate game like Diablo. The atmosphere is almost the same. How on earth did you achieve that? “I don’t know. In a lot of ways, I think playing Rogue is to playing Diablo as reading a book is to watching a movie.…
Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. has demonstrated the seriousness of its commitment to digital media by reaching a deal to buy Intermix Media Inc. for $580 million in cash…. The announcement — one of the biggest commitments to the Web by a big media conglomerate in recent memory — underscores how important online advertising has become…
All this week the BBC News website is speaking to people whose creativity has been transformed in the digital age. From blogging to podcasting, millions of ordinary people are becoming writers, journalists, broadcasters and film-makers thanks to increasingly affordable and accessible tools. —Darren Waters —Digital Citizens: The film-maker (BBC) Thanks for the suggestion, Rosemary.
Journalists are worrywarts. We worry about toxins in the drinking water, graft at City Hall, opposition leaders in countries you’ve never heard of and the rotator cuffs of journeyman pitchers. We worry about greenhouse gasses, decorum in the Senate, childhood obesity, abandoned pets and the fall lineup on ABC. If there’s an asteroid headed in…
Everyone that plays video games knows Grande [sic] Theft Auto and it’s [sic] reputation for violence, especially GTA 3, GTA: Vice City and now GTA: San Andreas. Lately, however, GTA:S.A. has come under more fire than its predecessors and it’s all because of something called the “Hot Coffee Mod.” Apparently the .mod,which unlocks minigames that…
One minute, I’m watching families talk about how they don’t know how to buy school clothes for their kids on their minimum wage salaries; the next, I’m watching spoiled 18 year olds watching martial arts films on their $1000 toys, under the pretense of taking notes in a classroom. —Mike Arnzen —Getting By In Class…with…
– You are Albus Dumbledore, a great wizard. You find yourself in a small room. There are exits to the north and west. There is a table in the corner. > Examine table – On the table is a wand and a suspicious pipe > Smoke pipe – As you begin to smoke the pipe…
—Scrollbars (Leegte.org) Interesting sculptural installation that uses Windows scrollbars. Via the very interesting Information Aesthetics.
In a meeting today, I learned that there is such a place as the ?blogosphere.? I thought the speaker was joking, and so appropriately, I giggled. The stern look I received in response jolted me to the realization that not only was this not a joke, but that I was the fool for not knowing…
In general, the more code you put into making the page look a certain way, the more time a user spends wondering why the page hasn’t loaded yet. For example, the store locator page that started me on this month’s topic was packed with large menus carefully rendered in alternating color schemes. Every menu had…