For the Open Source movement, the issue of whether software should be open source is a practical question, not an ethical one. As one person put it, “Open source is a development methodology; free software is a social movement.” For the Open Source movement, non-free software is a suboptimal solution. For the Free Software movement,…
AUTOMAKER Nissan Australia was trying to put the brakes on a social media backlash today after handing out a car as top prize in a Facebook competition to a friend of the employee managing the contest. The PR disaster came only a day after iconic national airline Qantas experienced a similarly negative reaction when it…
Qantas on Tuesday invited users of the micro-blogging site to enter a “Qantas Luxury” competition, asking people to describe their “dream luxury in-flight experience” and possibly win a pair of Qantas first-class pyjamas and a toiletries kit. The timing of the PR exercise was questionable, coming just a day after Qantas and its unions broke…
This is the first moment I’ve had in months to think a bit about my upcoming 3-week online course, “Video Game Culture and Theory.” The class went well the last time I offered it, though there is always room for improvement. Best practices include deconstructing single longer assignments into frequent shorter assignments, scheduling the first…
Now, we’ve shown that Facebook promotes captive content on its network ahead of content on the web, prohibits users from bringing open content into their network, warns users not to visit web content, and places obstacles in front of visits to web sites even if they’ve embraced Facebook’s technologies and registered in Facebook’s centralized database…
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I wonder what kind of a government we would have, if laws were written as collaborative Wikis. Looks like Iceland’s new constitution came close. To write the new constitution, the people of Iceland elected twenty-five citizens from among 522 adults not belonging to any political party but recommended by at least thirty citizens. This document…
I posted this several years ago, but it’s worth a repost. Look ye! A fair lady has dropped her scented handkerchief and now laughs into her sleeve as I stoop to proffer the sundry to her coquettish hand. Is she the young and flirtatious Anne Boleyn, brought once more to life by the holodeck’s vast…
I might be able to use this in my “Media and Culture” class next term. The handwritten word or the hand-drawn line is a material object as well as a sign — as is whimsically demonstrated in the silent cartoon “Comicalamities” (1928), where Otto Messmer draws Felix the Cat in pen, and Felix then starts…
No, I’ll never watch any Twilight films, but I will enjoy reading reviews of the Twilight films. Perhaps the single funniest thing that I’ve seen happen as a result of the popularity of “Twilight” is that horror sites run stories on it now. Horror sites. “Twilight” is to real horror as cotton candy is to…
Some people have taken in The Code passively, by simply watching the broadcast episodes; some have played the Flash games as casual gamers; some have turned their hand to real-world exploration or artistic photography for the Prime Number Challenge; some have used pen and paper to individually work out the classic puzzles; some have turned…
As you are probably aware, you cannot side-load or run any Google app that requires a login on the Kindle Fire. That means no Gmail, Google+, Google Voice (I need to text my peeps) or Google Docs. I should have carefully researched the Amazon app store before I bought the Kindle Fire. I falsely assumed…
Gary Garcia (pictured on the right), one-half of pop duo Buckner & Garcia and co-creator of early ’80s hit single “Pac-Man Fever”, reportedly passed away at his home in Englewood, Florida yesterday. Long before MC Frontalot, Mega Ran, and other geek-themed musical acts made a living out of video game songs, Buckner & Garcia rose…
Two hierarchies enmesh themselves in the routine of consuming pellets and hunting phantoms, producing a single myth. The first is familial, the patrilineal logic that tells us Pac-Man and his partner, who we know only by her relation to Pac-Man, should bear a son in the image of themselves and in the image of modern…
With the verbatim tool on, we’ll use the literal words you entered without making normal improvements such as making automatic spelling corrections personalizing your search by using information such as sites you’ve visited before including synonyms of your search terms (matching “car” when you search [automotive]) finding results that match similar terms to those in your query…
Blogging this so I can find it again for a future freshman writing course. (It’s too late in the term to introduce a new text, but this could spark some good discussion.) Advertisements for laundry products often feature women, but new commercials from Tide feature a stay-at-home dad. He’s shown throughout the ads folding a…
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My talented wife has written a set of lesson plans for It’s a Wonderful Life, the immediate occasion being our local professional theatre company’s production of the musical version. (See Stage Right Greensburg calendar.) Based on Philip van Doren Stern’s story “The Greatest Gift” (1943), Frank Capra’s 1946 film It’s a Wonderful Life celebrates the…
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I finally committed “Twittercide” about a month ago. Some of my followers begged me to reconsider, and the flood of affection and good wishes felt a little like the end of “It’s a Wonderful Life.” But I knew it was time to return to mine. Do I still have the occasional urge to tweet? Do…