See also my resources on interactive fiction (text adventure games), programming in Inform 7, making games in Scratch, and coding hypertext stories in Twine.
“They aren’t videogames, after all; except for the occasional cut scene, we almost never use video. We use images rendered on the fly–and the images are the surface of the game, the interface, the cotton candy. The meat of the game, the heart of it, is in the underlying code. These are games that run…
“People will soon be able to publish their own website via their phones as blogging goes mobile.” —Blogging Goes MobileBBC) Sounds a bit much like drafting a press release to fill a Sunday evening news gap, but journalists have been quick to grasp the social significance of weblogs. Thanks for the link, Rosemary.
“Dear Strong Bad,|Right now I am putting off writing a paper for my English class. Can you write my Englilsh paper? I don’t even care if it’s good or not. I just don’t want to do it.” —A Well Thought-Out Englilsh [sic] Paper, by Karl “The Yellow Dart” SmithHome Star Runner) Never underestimate how a…
“When writing a website the writer needs to be focused on the reader; that is write for readers. Even though human readers are those who are going to be active and do something about your site, one of your primary readers is Googlebot. Writers need to be aware that building information has an effect on…
“It’s time for a reality check. Hypertext is not, and has never been, all that. Electronic literature is a tiny field and mostly, no one cares about it, except for a handful of endlessly bickering insiders. Maybe 200 people in the world are even marginally interested in the academic arguments….From the outside, though, it looks…
Here is the complete text of a message in my inbox today, from someone who signed it “freak”: “help find information about the beleives of the pilgrims in 1620” How Not to Request Help OnlineE-Mail) Sorry. Please do your own homework.
DADDY: Peter, the weather is so nice… let’s play a game.PETER (age 4): I do NOT want to play any game that’s in the world. I want to play a game that’s NOT in the world.DADDY: Peter, what kind of game is not in the world?PETER: (pointing towards computer) On a CD.Games: Not in the…
Dave Winer on scripting news quotes from my “On the Trail of the Memex” in order to disagree: Here’s one for the history books. “For all intents and purposes, Google owns the Web, by virtue of its superior and highly popular search engine.” I don’t agree. Teoma appears to be as good a search engine…
“I HAVE just ploughed through the first five books devoted to an Internet art form that fascinates me and may well be unknown to you. Where to start?|Say for the moment that the weblog – a log of the World Wide Web, as it were -can be personal publishing at its most liberating, an online…
“When we view the computer as an interactive artifact the computer exists as our partner in the completion of important tasks. We ask the computer to do something and it, by proxy, does it for us. We should, instead, view the computer as a tool that we use to perform tasks: we use it so…
—Google Blogging Right AlongWired) There’s nothing new in this Wired story that wasn’t already covered by blogs over the weekend.
“The dot-com economy is long gone, but that hasn’t curbed the public’s appetite for shopping, banking and generally amusing themselves on the World Wide Web, according to a recent study.|Significantly more people are using the Web to send pictures and videos, shop, download music, play games and do their banking, according a study that compares…
“Andy Serkis’ computer-aided performance was one of the best things about ‘The Two Towers.’… Is Hollywood ready to acknowledge and honor digital performances, or even human-digital hybrids? This year, the answer seems to be a resounding no.” Ivan Askwith —Gollum: Dissed by the Oscars?Salon)
“Hypertext as mediated by the Web browser has not proved to embody the qualities of the ideal post-structural text longed for by literary theorists such as George Landow; neither has the World Wide Web fulfilled the document-association function of the memex, the hypothetical research tool Vannevar Bush described in his 1945 essay, As We May…
Dan Gillmor’s column reports that Google has purchased Blogging Company Pyra, which means that Google is becoming the AOLTimeWarner of the Internet. So far, I’ve been happy with whatever Google has done… but think about it — I search the web with Google, I search Usenet with Google, I read the news with Google, and…
“Things like the Back and forward button, we never intended that to be a permanent part of the interface. But people get locked into metaphors. You have to be careful with the metaphors you put in front of people because once they click onto one, that’s it.” An interview with Netscape creator Marc Andreessen —Web…
“Google adds fresh pages to its database everyday. You can search these fresh pages to find new information from today, yesterday or over the last 7 days if you wish. The only thing is, do not head to Google.” —Search the Fresh Internet in Google with GooFresh!Smoogle) A description of GooFresh, a website that lets…
“If recent rumours are to be believed, AOL is getting ready in the next month or so to add blogging to the home-page services it offers users.|It is a sign of how far these regularly updated pages of web links with personal comment have come in the past five years.” —Blogging for DollarsThe Age) Hrmm.…
“‘The Internet allows us to do all kinds of things quickly and efficiently, and that includes hoaxing,’ Jerz says.|Jerz, an assistant professor of English at UW-Eau Claire, learned of the Olsen hoax when a skeptical student emailed him the fake CNN story….News hoaxes aren’t the only ones that spread by e-mail, says Jerz, who often…
“Over the past month, the U.S. military has periodically sent e-mail to Iraqi military and government officials urging them to protect their families by helping U.N. inspectors and turning away from Saddam Hussein.|U.S. government officials won’t comment on the campaign, but according to sources in Iraq and Iraqis living in the United States, each time…