See also my resources on interactive fiction (text adventure games), programming in Inform 7, making games in Scratch, and coding hypertext stories in Twine.
Alas, the searches prove fairly elusive. But boynton found Sylvia Plath Engineering so intriguing and poetic a concept that she thought the only thing for it was a Googlepoem. Here are some edited couplets freshly compiled: plath sylvia plath on engineering engineering, accounting, working Nonfiction Technical Romance Sports the engineering part poets own sketches the:…
One day in the future all the lights in the city go out. The turbines stop, the telephones become quiet, the traffic lights shut down, TVs dim and computers download, and elevators wedge between the office towers’ floors. Hospitals with battery-run backup supplies stay functional, but the banks and the stock exchange with their E-Money,…
“The social scientist Ray Oldenburg talks about how humans need a third place, besides work and home, to meet with friends, have a beer, discuss the events of the day, and enjoy some human interaction…. In creating community software, we are, to some extent, trying to create a third place. And like any other architecture…
“Yes, the game business is increasingly reliant on movie licenses and sequels. It is less willing to take big risks, particularly in themes or audiences. But that risk aversion reflects an industry that largely is making fewer, bigger titles with absorbing, often branching narratives, well-written dialogue and much larger budgets — as much as $10…
“When students in Biloxi, Miss., show up this morning for the first day of the new school year, a virtual army of digital cameras will be recording every minute of every lesson in every classroom.|Hundreds of Internet-wired video cameras will keep rolling all year long, in the hope that they’ll deter crime and general misbehavior…
Be warned; this is a (strictly hypothetic) Google fan’s nightmare. 2014: Google, using its Geolocation feature, starts to heavily censor content for certain countries. Entering “Hitler” at Google.de returns zero results. 2015: Google buys the Yahoo! Directory and removes the DMOZ Open Directory Project. 2016: Google is successfully sued by Microsoft for spidering Windows Servers.…
Fully 80% of adult Internet users, or about 93 million Americans, have searched for at least one of 16 major health topics online. This makes the act of looking for health or medical information one of the most popular activities online, after email (93%) and researching a product or service before buying it (83%). |…
“After a user selects ?print? from the browser, the page is formatted before it is sent to the printer. The width of the layout is reduced to about 650 pixels for 8.5″ x 11″ paper, or 630 pixels for A4, assuming normal margins.|If all the elements of a page can’t wrap around to fit within…
“I couldn’t help reflecting on the connection between hypertext and napalm, via Vannevar Bush…” Jonathan Delacour —As We May Incinerate (Jonathan Delacour) A fascinating exercise in connecting the dots, and a glimpse into Vannevar Bush’s “war guilt”.
John Scalzi writes: So basically, my job: Demystify the journaling and blogging process for AOL members so they can jump in and start doing it. Encourage the writing, reading, and linking of blogs and journals on AOL and in the blogoverse. Write a kick-ass blog worth reading. Why me? Well, why not? —AOL Hires Blogger (Whatever)…
“Textual history teaches us that authors have been taking back their words for a long, long time (in the form of variants and revisions and new editions), and that ‘their’ words, as we read them on the page, might or might not originate with the person named on the title sheet. In other words (so…
I can’t remember if I cried When he cut me from his blogroll side But something touched me deep inside The day the blogging died —The Day the Blogging Died (Radio Free Blogistan) The thing about oral composition is that the oral performances aren’t archived, so people who repeat the performances for new audiences tend to…
“Academics are already seeking to study early games as the awakening of a potent new art form. Future developers will want to see how earlier designers approached play and mechanics — and solved complex problems using limited technology.” Suneel Ratan —Arcade Addicts Joust with Past (Wired) There was a time not too long ago when cinema…
—Merely OK — Usability Testing: What is It? (EServer TC Library) Of the 15 or so of my resources included in the EServer TC Library, my handout on Usability Testing is ranked the worst. Does anyone out there have any suggestions to make it better? Write a review, and post it on the page. The rest…
“When small independent online publications and collaborative news sites with an amateur staff perform original reporting on community affairs, few would contest that they’re engaged in journalism.|When citizens contribute photos, video and news updates to mainstream news outlets, many would argue they’re doing journalism.|But when bloggers comment on and link to news stories, is that…
“This is a very bad time for a new, young anchor to be starting out, because they’ll be the first to go. The point and click selection process of INTERACTIVE communication will eliminate the need for a news jockey–and certainly for the tiring ‘teams’ of too friendly, overly made up glamor clones we get on…
“Turns out Alex had been snooping in her Web cache, found the URL for the blog, and voilà, her secret was out.” —Busted By a Blog: Online Journal Reveals Relationship Infidelity (ABC News) Here’s a good example of how a journalist can subtly editorialize. Alex and Johanna have mended ways and learned a lesson: “We clear…
“Lord willing, AOL stock would rise high enough that Colburn would make enough to donate $1 million to the rabbis, with plenty to spare. The stock was a pretty sure bet. The way AOL’s stock was ticking up, up and away, reaching beyond $90 a share that December, he didn’t exactly need God’s help.|Then again,…
“[I]t should come as little surprise that a technology behind blogs–online chronicles of personal, creative and organizational life–has manifested the kind of bitter fight for control that is inevitable in any truly democratic institution….The dispute offers a glimpse into the byzantine and highly politicized world of industry standards, where individuals without legal authority over a…
—New Google Operator: ~synonyms Google has added a new operator — type “~word” to search for what Google calls synonyms (though sometimes it just appears to be different forms of the same word). An interesting detail… if you search Google for “~blog”, one of the words added is “blogger”, while if you search Google for…