See also my resources on interactive fiction (text adventure games), programming in Inform 7, making games in Scratch, and coding hypertext stories in Twine.
I sometimes ask my students to do a “media fast,” in which everyone tries to give up whatever is getting in the way. The last time I assigned the “media fast,” I had noticed that I would often ask my older son read a book to my younger daughter, as a way of keeping them…
Google says users will be able to buy digital copies of books they discover through its book-search service. It will also allow book retailers–even independent shops–to sell Google Editions on their own sites, giving partners the bulk of the revenue. The company would have copies on its servers for works it strikes agreements to sell.…
Roger Ebert recently posted this thoughtful essay, which is ostensibly about film criticism, but is also about how an intellectual activity benefits culture at large when the talented amateurs get access to power that was once the privilege of elite professionals. Another thing not everybody knows is that some of the best critical writing on…
A form I just got from the Academic Affairs office, as part of Seton Hill University’s plan to provide iPads to its faculty (along with all full-time students). This is just my roughest first draft. What do you think? What would you do with iPads in the classroom? If you wish to…
War is peace, ignorance is knowledge, and Apple is open. Oh, the fun one can have with search-and-replace. Here’s the doubleplusfun Hoopty Rides found: Before: Adobe’s Flash products are 100% proprietary. They are only available from Adobe, and Adobe has sole authority as to their future enhancement, pricing, etc. While Adobe’s Flash products are widely…
It’s rather amusing to read Apple’s CEO tut-tutting Flash for not being an open developing environment, but plenty of developers with years of Flash skills are watching this very closely. Flash was created during the PC era – for PCs and mice. Flash is a successful business for Adobe, and we can understand why they…
Tablets such as the iPad will only make it harder for students to pay attention in class and for schools to ban devices. Because the iPad can be used to read textbooks, professors might be unsure which students are goofing off and which are studying. Seton Hill University in Pennsylvania doesn’t seem to mind. In…
“Some problems in the world are not bullet-izable.”– A US general, speaking out, not against firing projectiles, but against the popular oral presentation crutch, PowerPoint.
Universities “should not be doing anything in the classroom that could be done online” (Times Higher Education) I’ll give the speaker the benefit of the doubt, and interpret that to mean “could be done just as well online.” Actually, I’ve recently been re-considering my goal of collecting and returning all feedback from face-to-face classes electronically.…
Hitler, as “Downfall producer” orders a DMCA takedown from Brad Templeton on Vimeo. As I understand it, the DMCA is not actually involved — it’s YouTube’s internal content-management feature, that lets copyright owners register their material, so that YouTube can search its database and take down, or monetize, any and all instances.
The industry’s great hope was that the iPad would bring electronic books to the masses–and help make them profitable. E-books are booming. Although they account for only an estimated three to five per cent of the market, their sales increased a hundred and seventy-seven per cent in 2009, and it was projected that they would…
For my money, memes on the Internet don’t get any better than the Hitler one. You know, the one in which you take some current event (the more mundane, the better) and shove it into the scene from the German film Downfall in which Hitler is told in his bunker that he cannot win the…
Roger Ebert expounds upon — but does not reconsider — his rejection of the aesthetic possibilities of the video game. Ebert is prompted to return to the topic because of a talk by Kellee Santiago, who used cave paintings and stills from early black and white movies to argue that just as painting and movies…
I just posted a new handout, introducing students in my “History and Future of the Book” course to Vannevar Bush and his memex. I’ll probably tweak that handout a bit more, but it’s quitting time today. In 1946, Vannevar Bush published “As We May Think” (I assigned it in EL236, but I’m not assigning the…
“As We May Think” has been constantly cited ever since, a development that has been analyzed by Smith (1981), who noted that the article has been used as a symbol for a number of different concepts. However, references to it often have little substance. The paper has become a fashionable icon of modern information science,…
Responding to Apple’s most recent legal agreement governing the way apps are developed for the iPhone. Some popular apps have been written in Adobe Flash and converted to work on the iPhone; this is cumbersome, but at least it lets designers use the Flash skills they already have. I have no love of no love…
Neal Stephenson’s Diamond Age (1995) features a fantastic interactive book that educates a neglected guttersnipe, turning her into a capable, intelligent independent heroine. The iPad doesn’t quite match the vision of that book, but this video is still amazing.
“Those big, heavy textbooks that kids go around with in their backpacks are going to be a thing of the past,” said Mary Ann Gawelek, vice president of academic affairs at Seton Hill, which is giving iPads to its 2,100 students and 300 faculty members beginning this fall. —Wired But we don’t have 300 faculty…
Jason Kottke uses standard Latin typesetting dummy text to express his opinion of the technology media’s coverage of the iPad. Hilarious! Lorem iPad dolor sit amet, consectetur Apple adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua Shenzhen. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud no multi-tasking ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip…