Google Movie Reviews
—Google Movie Reviews (Google) Amazing… one page gives you the showtimes and rating of movies playing in your area, along with a link to the IMDB. I learned about this on Dan Gillmor’s site.
The Huffington Post: First Response
What will be the contributions of a large bunch of people, who could have blogged on their own if they wanted to, but were motivated to do so by the Arianna Huffington brand name? I briefly checked out The Huffington Post today. I was never too impressed by the collective achievements of the celebrity intellectuals…
Thinking machines go pop
I take the view that computer languages, robot ethics, method acting, and biomechanics are the main ingredients that fused, in the 1950s, to become the cultural meme we call Artificial Intelligence, or AI for short. None of those ingredients was wholly new at that time: biomechanics and the Method – first known as the Stanislavski…
A History of the GUI
Like many developments in the history of computing, some of the ideas for a GUI computer were thought of long before the technology was even available to build such a machine. One of the first people to express these ideas was Vannevar Bush. In the early 1930s he first wrote of a device he called…
When Those Pesky Blogs Undermine NPR News
The appeal of the blogs? Humor seems to be the biggest attraction. Ironic detachment from the news, an ability to deflate egos and refreshing, undisguised opinion are also valued. All are antithetical to most news organizations. American newspapers traditionally and scrupulously segregate fact-based reporting from opinion by designating pages for each. Radio and television try…
Journey to ''Serious Games''
BreakAway has collaborated with the nonprofit group Believe in Tomorrow to create Splash, which helps pediatric cancer patients cope with painful treatments by donning headsets for a virtual scuba dive. CyberLearning Technology sells a $548 game system to treat kids with attention deficit disorder in more than 80 therapy clinics. It uses neurofeedback sensors to…
Software Tracks Tea-Making Duties
Before leaving for the kitchen, responsible brewers log onto Teabuddy and check a box next to the name of those for whom they are making a cuppa. Teabuddy tallies the total cups made and consumed by each employee, keeping a history that lists the date each user last poured forth — it’s “objective, factual proof…
HUH? We Do Stuff ™
Are you confused yet? Of course you are. And that’s just how we like it. Our marketing professionals are constantly coming up with new ways to make you feel inferior and stupid. Because you are. And we’re not. We’re new-age, eMoving, marketing consultants. —HUH? We Do Stuff ™ Great parody site.
The Birth of WikiNews
None of these dedicated reporters and editors is paid for their efforts. In fact, most of them don’t know the first thing about professional journalism. All however are as passionate about their craft as the top earners at the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, Fox News or the BBC. What’s more, they’re…
Distracting visuals clutter TV screen; viewers less likely to retain content
Robert Pittman, who created MTV, attributed the station’s success to the ability of viewers in their late teens and early 20s to process multiple facets of information simultaneously. In television, success brings imitation…. “When Mary Lynn Ryan, who was CNN’s producer at the time, did this the news ratings skyrocketed,” Grimes said. “So it appeared…
Time for a change: The Associated Press as Napsterized news
AP started as a cooperative. Today, it is a cooperative in name only. It’s time to take a lesson from music swappers and invent the new AP – a digital cooperative, a Napsterized news service. The 21st Century news business needs a peer-to-peer network that lets local operations drive cost out of their non-local news…
Pick Up Ax Link-O-Rama
Pick Up Ax Link-O-Rama (Jerz’s Literacy Weblog) This year, I’ve taught Anthony Clarvoe’s play Pick Up Ax in two of my courses — Intro to Literary Study and Media Aesthetics. If you’re just itching to find out what my students had to say about this play about geeks who listened to rock music that was recorded…
Doom 4: End of the Game Industry?
The game scene is resorting to faddish ideas from years ago to try to appear original. I’m surprised they haven’t come out with Pet Rock software yet. None of this will save a doomed industry. The business is going to attempt to sustain growth and creativity by making game players buy newer and newer machines.…
Teachers Who Position Their Blog or CMS as their Professional Home Page
In the minority are those teachers who have setup their blog/cms as the main home page for their site, integrated into their blog or CMS or at least provide obvious links to their CV, teaching experience, etc, off of the main page of their blog. The blog/CMS is thus positioned as the main public face…
The New Old Journalism
Nowadays, news consumers have an almost unlimited choice. They don’t sit down with a newspaper for an hour to read it cover to cover. Instead, they bounce from site to site, story to story, link to link, customizing their newsgathering experience, clicking on whatever stories from whatever publications appeal to them. They don’t stick around…
Incredibles DVD Freezes in My Player
Incredibles DVD Freezes in My Player (Jerz’s Literacy Weblog) The other day, my wife picked up a copy of the widescreen, 2-disc DVD of The Incredibles. The movie disc loaded, played the FBI warning, then froze on the screen that threatens our little family with legal action if we ever offend The Mouse. I’m used to…
PRIVATE AND URGENT
I discovered an abandoned deposit in my company owned by one of our Outer Rim customers who died along with his entire family as a result of an landspeeder crash. He actually deposited this funds amounting to IC12,000,000,000.00 (Twelve billion Imperial Credits), for safe keeping in my company here in Mos Eisley. Company file records…
Snails are faster than ADSL
First, pigeons cannot fly through Windows. Second, since they don’t fly in darkness either, this method’s bandwidth drops to zero 50% of the time. Finally, there’s the problem of droppings download. We are pleased to report that all these shortcomings were resolved in our new data transfer protocol, as we now turn to describe. System…
Such Stuff as Footnotes Are Made On
Our time here may be fleeting (“Out, out brief candle!”) but footnotes are not supposed to be. When online citations extinguish, every discipline is befouled, because replication, at the heart of the research process, becomes difficult without stable archiving, which libraries used to provide. It was called a book shelf, as in Shakespeare’s day. —Michael…
Emails 'pose threat to IQ'
The distractions of constant emails, text and phone messages are a greater threat to IQ and concentration than taking cannabis, according to a survey of befuddled volunteers. Doziness, lethargy and an increasing inability to focus reached “startling” levels in the trials by 1,100 people, who also demonstrated that emails in particular have an addictive, drug-like…