See also my resources on interactive fiction (text adventure games), programming in Inform 7, making games in Scratch, and coding hypertext stories in Twine.
“For all the glitz surrounding the unveiling Monday of Apple Computer’s new music service, a quick look suggests that it’s a solid, but hardly revolutionary, addition to the market….The integration between the one-click purchase service, Apple’s iTunes music jukebox software and the iPod player goes well beyond what any other music service has done. It…
“Mosaic wasn’t the Web’s first browser. It wasn’t even, as it’s so often been described, the first browser to sport a graphical user interface. Tim Berners-Lee’s “WorldWideWeb” was the first graphical point-and-click browser, followed by Pei Wei’s Viola browser.|But for most people, Mosaic was the easiest browser to use. It installed easily, and allowed people…
“[Cyberpunk novelist William] Gibson is currently winding up the book tour in Ireland and Britain. Once it is over, he’ll end the weblog, he says. ‘I have to go do whatever it is I do, to find the next novel,’ he said. ‘Writing novels is pretty solitary, and blogging is very social.’” Karlin Lillington —Gibson…
“In an enormous blow to the music and motion picture industries, a Los Angeles federal judge dismissed a lawsuit against file-sharing services Grokster and StreamCast Networks Friday, saying that they can not be held culpable for illegal file trading done over their networks. | The ruling, made by U.S. District Court Judge Stephen Wilson, represents…
“Forty percent of students lack basic reading skills, and their academic performance is dismal compared with that of their foreign counterparts. In response to this crisis, schools are skilling-and-drilling their way ‘back to basics,’ moving toward mechanical instruction methods that rely on line-by-line scripting for teachers and endless multiple-choice testing. Consequently, kids aren’t learning how…
That’s a good one. Via Microdoc News. —What is the best search engine?Ask Jeeves)
“TypePad is the first new consumer-grade weblogging product in more than a year, but it shows a change in the marketplace: grabbing the new middle ground of users who want all the advanced features of a self-hosted weblog, but none of the tears of having to learn about Linux or Perl or FTP. This should…
Google: “switch[ed] to Blogger“: 165. Google: “switch[ed] to Movable Type“: 534Blogger vs. Movable TypeLiteracy Weblog)
“In 1999, Fanning, a 19-year-old Boston-area hacker from a broken home, stumbled on the idea for making digital MP3 files easy to find on the Net. Teaming up with fellow geeks he knew only through online chat rooms, he crafted a simple technology that allowed millions to swap music collections free of charge. The operation…
When a blogger dies, what happens to the blog? “I keep it on my ‘friends’ list just so I can see his name every so often, but I can never bring myself to click on his name. The first year or so after he passed on I visited it with decreasing regularity, until eventually I…
WebCT, like Blackboard and Jenzabar, is a content-management tool for online education. It sets up a password-protected space where students and teachers can present their materials. Laura Gibbs writes: “[O]ne of the major themes of the WebCT presentation was that ‘you don’t need a website anymore – not like you used to!’. Hmmmmm….. since when…
When I found this in my in box it made my day. It’s a report from a former student who is now a techical writer: “Recently, one of your articles came up in my department at Unisys. Each month, my colleagues across the country and I receive a departmental ‘e-zine’ that includes links to technical…
“The most common password was ‘password’ (12 per cent) and the most popular category was their own name (16 per cent) followed by their football team (11 per cent) and date of birth (8 per cent).” John Leyden —Office Workers Give Away Passwords for a Cheap PenRegister)
“Usability has two roles: to set the direction for the design and to check that the design works. The second has gotten the most attention since it is the simplest: just run a user test of any Web site and you will quickly have a long list of things that must be changed to make…
“Retail employees who sell violent video games to minors would face a $500 fine under a bill passed by the Washington state Senate.” —Peddle a Violent Game [to Minors], Pay a Fine Wired) A tiny news item. I added “to minors” in the headline, because this tiny news item seems much more flame-worthy without it.
“Until earlier this afternoon, a CNN server housed mock-ups of web pages announcing the yet-to-happen deaths. The CNN pages, which were discovered by the intrepid folks at fark.com, were yanked about 20 minutes after being exposed… In addition to Cheney and Reagan, CNN also prepped online farewells to Fidel Castro, Bob Hope, Pope John Paul…
“Good evening, I’m Andy Card — Chief of Staff to President George W. Bush. I welcome you to the inaugural ‘Ask the White House’ online discussion. I am pleased to be here tonight to answer your questions. The Internet is an important communications medium. We have witnessed, especially during Operation Iraqi Freedom, a substantial increase…
“Over their keyboards, lonely souls submit questions into the ether, praying that answers lie somewhere in the vast network – and, if not resolution, then at least succor.” Michael S. Malone —Inside the Soul of the Web: 24 hours watching the world look for answers at Google.Wired) Articles in Wired make technology the hero of…
The bottom-feeding 419 scammers are exploiting the Iraq war now, according to this Spam I just received: “First let me use this medium to introduce myself , I am Mohammed MARGAI from KONO district north of Baghdad IRAQ from the family of late Alhaji Mustafa MARGAI THE FORMAL MINISTER OF PETROLEUM AND NATURAL RESOURCES.”SPAM Scammers…
Perhaps it was the sight of Captain James T Kirk scribbling away on his executive starship tablet. Maybe it’s the recurring dream of reducing computing to its simplest, starkest elements — a screen, an input device, perhaps some sound. It could even be the thought that with the technology now just about able to do…