See also my resources on interactive fiction (text adventure games), programming in Inform 7, making games in Scratch, and coding hypertext stories in Twine.
“Roughly 40 percent of all e-mail traffic in the United States is spam, up from 8 percent in late 2001 and nearly doubling in the past six months, according to Brightmail Inc., a major vendor of anti-spam software. By the end of this year, industry experts predict, fully half of all e-mail will be unsolicited.”…
“It is becoming clear that millions of people are turning to weblogs for news, information, commentary and entertainment -? just for the pure joy of taking in writing that’s vivid, vibrant, telegenic, emotion-laden, and driven by personal experience rather than the formula of detachment that deadens far too much traditional journalism. | What does it…
“Ridiculous comments, such as Dan Gillmor’s claim that ‘with the advent of weblogging, the readers know more than the journalists’ only stoke the fires of hyperbole and do not help us understand this new tool. | Blogging is not journalism. | Often it is as far from journalism as it is possible to get, with…
“Crafting pages that work well with search engines and users is a black art. Chris Sherman sheds some light on the subject, and offers some SEO writing resources. Dr. Dennis Jerz, an English professor at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire also has some excellent blurb and headline writing advice.” Andy King —Writing for Search EnginesWebReference)…
“Benetton’s Sisley line of clothing will contain a Philips Electronics radio frequency ID tag that will replace ubiquitous bar codes, which have to be manually scanned…..While there is no indication Benetton intends to track its customers with the tags, privacy advocates are worried that the technology could lend itself to unauthorized customer monitoring.” —Benneton Clothing…
“According to a videotaped message airing exclusively on CNN, media mogul Ted Turner has sent himself back in time to January 2000 to avert the catastrophic merger of America Online and Time Warner.” —Ted Turner Sends Self Back in Time to Prevent AOL Time Warner MergerThe Onion)
—I Will Use Google…The Flow?) We’re in midterm crunch time… I don’t want my students to read anything into the timing of this posting. I just thought it was funny. I’m unsure where this is “really” from. While using Google in the hopes of tracking down the source of this image, I found this creative…
“The Web is only limited by the hard drive(s) your site is stored on, print is strictly limited by story inches. Have you noticed a tendency to ramble on a bit online? If you want to retain your readership you’ve got to curb that urge, at least on your front page. The way around that…
“Everyone say it with me. I will not get bad luck lose my friends or lose my mailing lists if I DON’T forward an e-mail…” —The SoapboxSmilePop) An amusing flash animation. Thanks, Danielle.
The world’s first brain prosthesis – an artificial hippocampus – is about to be tested in California. Unlike devices like cochlear implants, which merely stimulate brain activity, this silicon chip implant will perform the same processes as the damaged part of the brain it is replacing. | The prosthesis will first be tested on tissue…
“Teens and twentysomethings usually do not bother to set a time and place for their meetings. They exchange as many as 5 to 15 messages throughout the day that progressively narrows in on a time and place, two points eventually converging in a coordinated dance through the urban jungle. To not have a [portable phone]…
My book, Technology in American Drama, will be published shortly. I have no intention of flogging it endlessly on my blog, but as I was doing some final (I hope) paperwork and checking the page my publisher devoted to the book, I spotted the “printer friendly book flyer” link. When you click it, the browser…
“Spam is the best kind of email to get, because you look at it quickly, see that it’s spam, and delete it. Then you get back to work. Personal email is the second best kind of email to get, because you either respond quickly (“Hi Jane, great hearing from you. See you at the club…
Granddaddy blogger Dave Winer has moved from Silicon Valley to Harvard, where he will head up a major initiative to use blogs in an academic setting. The Harvard Crimson has a small article; see also CNET and Business Today. I haven’t blogged this for some time becuase I was looking for a really good article…
“The Ark – setting virtual sail on Easter Sunday – is billed as 40 days and 40 nights of games, challenges, topical discussions and arguments about mucking out the gorillas: “Theology meets showbiz meets cowpats – and there are no lifeboats”….Dallying with kitsch low culture – far from debasing the Church – could be the…
“The mood at the Game Designers Conference this year was, fundamentally, one of despair. To even the blindest apologist for the silly, if monstrous, construct the game industry has become, the handwriting on the wall was clear. Ten years ago, you could find a dozen publishers to pitch to; today, perhaps five. And of the…
“This time around, many observers predict that the U.S. will also deploy viruses, government-trained hackers, and special electromagnetic pulse bombs to knock out Iraq’s computers and other sensitive electronic equipment. But if the U.S. wants to cut off Iraq’s access to the Internet, it need only give a nod to operators of a satellite farm…
“Losing your clean credit history is one thing; losing your freedom is another. And victims of America‘sfastest-growing crime are discovering they often have much more to worry about than the hundreds of hours of paperwork necessary to clean up the financial mess associated with ID theft. Sometimes, they have to worry about ending up in…
“The American public is apparently turning away from the mostly US-centric American media in search of unbiased reporting and other points of views. Much of the US media’s reaction to France and Germany’s intransigence on the Iraqi war issue has verged on the xenophobic, even in the so-called ‘respectable’ press. Some reporting has verged on…
“Nobody expects Google, or any index, to be perfect, since the Web is growing and changing so fast and many parts of it are generated from databases and therefore essentially impossible for a search engine to find or classify. | However, researchers at the highly-respected Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University have…