‘Google is now an ad company’: Departing exec James Whittaker’s Goldman Sachs-style rant

Whittaker says that CEO Larry Page, who took over the company from Eric Schmidt, had a focus on ‘beating’ Facebook in advertising – which led the company to shift its focus from established products such as Google Mail onto its controversial social network Google Plus and other ‘social’ products built for advertising. –via ‘Google is…

25 Stupid Newspaper Headlines

25 Stupid Newspaper Headlines. Similar:Katie Couric Gun Documentary Undermined By Manipulative Editing : NPRInterviewer Katie Couric asks a group of…CultureThank you, frog and friends, for reminding us all what the Internet is supposed to be for.  https://twitter.com/PicturesFo…AestheticsStephen Coles’ The Anatomy of Type, reviewed.Talk nerdy to me. You’re my type. What …AestheticsMaking Interactive Fiction Mainstream: ReadersJon…

SXSW 2012: Should Web Sites And Video Games Be Preserved Like Art Is?

Presented by Jason Scott, adjunct archivist at Internet Archive, Kari Kraus, assistant professor at the University of Maryland, and Nick Hasty, director of technology at Rhizome. The “Preserving the Creative Culture of the Web” panel at SXSW addressed an interesting question: “Should web sites and artifacts be treated like works of art or architecture?” Our…

The importance of “show, don’t tell”

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My Memories of “Joseph…” [an original cast member reflects on Rice/Webber/Waring’s amazing technicolor musical]

My high school Drama coach and freshman English teacher Michael Garcia often shared his stories of making ends meet as a struggling young actor. When my 9yo daughter (a budding drama queen) recently started rehearsals for a local Stage Right professional production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, and when I found out that…

How Cheap Should Books Be?

Why would Apple have agreed to pay higher prices for books while Amazon was still out there hocking them below cost? Good question. Those curious circumstances are why some, including Justice it now appears, think there might have been collusion on the part of the publishers. The European Commission opened its own formal investigation into…

Multiple victims in Western Psych shooting

The Pittsburgh regional FIRST Robotics Competition, held in the Peterson Event Center, was put on lockdown because of this incident. It looks like the search for an alleged second shooter was a red herring — the more recent stories have not mentioned any second shooter. A message sent to Pitt employees at 2:08 p.m. said…

How to Reboot Star Trek for Modern TV

I am so far out of the TV-watching habit that, Trekker though I be, I doubt I would watch any new Trek shows. I would probably just explore the fan-made wikis and blogs instead, as I have with Lost and the Battlestar reboot. Still, this imagined set of overlapping mini-shows sounds interesting. How does one…