Spam has hit the Kindle, clogging the online bookstore of the top-selling eReader with material that is far from being book worthy and threatening to undermine Amazon.com Inc’s publishing foray. —Spam clogging Amazon’s Kindle self-publishing – The Globe and Mail. Similar:An interesting analysis of Trump's rhetorical strategy.In the Washington Post, Greg Sargent ana…CultureKing Oberon Midsummer…
It must have sounded like a great idea to someone at News Corp (NSDQ: NWS) at the time: “Hey, I know how we can sell more subscriptions through the New York Post iPad App! Let’s block access through iPad Safari and make them go to the app instead.” What they should have heard: “Hey, let’s…
Enterprise and Shuttle Salt and Pepper Shakers – The Official Star Trek Store. Similar:Visiting the #scienceofpixar exhibit @kaminsciencecenterPopCultAnti-Semitic Times Square Elmo admits to Girl Scout extortion attemptThe headline made me click the link, and…EthicsUp the Long Ladder (ST:TNG Rewatch, Season Two, Episode 18) — The Enterprise Visits the Pl…(Rewatching Star Trek: TNG after a 20-ye…EthicsJourney's…
The fact of the matter is that the entire PR industry is like a weed growing out of control. Current estimates have PR people now outnumbering journalists 3 to 1. Think about that for a second. And one of the industries in which this infectious growth is most apparent is the tech industry, where it’s boom…
Editing is the most important part of my job as an author. Before I gave up my day job to write full-time I was myself an editor, first at Penguin, then at Headline, which is partly why I’m so passionate about the process. And yet I cannot tell you how much I hate it. It…
Since its release, Call of Duty has stood as the exemplar of historical reality as a backdrop to a video game, with each of its following releases living up to this standard. Gamers are given the choice of playing through a number of different campaigns based on country, with each tailored to reflect the worldview,…
My plan is to publish on this blog an electronic edition of a libretto about once a month in formats you can read online, on your smart phone, or on most ebook readers. In some cases I’ll also be able to provide digitized images of piano/vocal scores for at least a few songs. Additionally, for…
I sense a made-for-TV-movie in the works. In an embarrassing about-face, federal prosecutors yesterday abruptly dropped criminal charges against an Indiana man who they accused of bugging his ex-wife’s automobile. The FBI last Friday arrested David Voelkert, 38, largely on the basis of messages the South Bend man recently exchanged with a purported 17-year-old Facebook friend…
The growing list of student bloggers who have found their way into good ‘pro’ jobs also includes Hannah Waldram, who founded the Bournville Village blog, ended up taking to professional local blogging as the Cardiff ‘beatblogger‘ for The Guardian’s now mothballed Local project before becoming a community coordinator for the same newspaper, and Dave Lee,…
…the whole resembles a lightly frothed kafka tale digitised as a text-adventure game thus anticipating later experiments in “interactive fiction” while also functioning as a satire for the author’s day and oh yes our own on the subtly crushing effects of corporate life which was always after all the genius of perec to marry a…
Perhaps on a different browser there is mouseover text, but on my iPad, I have no idea what these do. A helpful label would be, you know, helpful. Ars Technica Mystery Meat Icons. Similar:Those mean fake news people at the Washington Post are at it again, this time publishing a…Those mean fake news people at…
But for a few, the idea that a story can be told in a completely new method is what entrances them. It’s become an engrossing enough subject that people can now go to college and study the concept in an official capacity. People get into massive debates about the importance of story in games, some…
A typo brought me to this page. Weird. A globster, or blob, is an unidentified organic mass that washes up on the shoreline of an ocean or other body of water. The term was coined by Ivan T. Sanderson in 1962[1] to describe the Tasmanian carcass of 1960, which was said to have “no visible…
Code comments pose a number of interesting epistemological challenges. They are ignored by the machine interpreter and readable by humans, but not exactly legible. They are visible only if one is able to view the source code. They are not intended for the end-user, but with the right tools, the end-user might find them. In…
Lessons Learned in Playful Game Design – ProfHacker – The Chronicle of Higher Education. Similar:Tell-all crime reporting is a peculiarly American practice. Now U.S. news outlets are reth…Journalists should balance the public’s …CultureMy mother-in-law invited me to try out the 60- year-old tape machine that belonged to my f…My mother-in-law invited me to try out…
One of my favorite comments from last year’s communal exploration of the source code for Colossal Cave Adventure. Stephen Ramsay writes: I’m going to call it the “Code on a Grecian Urn” problem. Let me begin by calling attention to Nick Montfort’s wonderfully pithy note at the end of Week 1:”Hm, I don’t know. The…
An article that addresses some under-examined stereotypes (smears?), while also pointing out some thoughtful alternatives. The Catholic Church, for example, has often been attacked as doing too little to help the Jews during the Holocaust. Yet on July 19, 1933, the Catholic periodical America published a strong article condemning Nazi persecution of the Jews. Dark…
Have you heard the one about a homeowner foreclosing on a bank? via Bank of America Gets Pad Locked After Homeowner Forecloses On It Similar:McCain's 2008 Concession Speech: Republicans interrupt their candidate's concession speech…That moment during McCain’s concession s…CultureWe Need to Talk about the Burgeoning Robot Middle ClassMaybe it’s not the super-robots we need …BusinessSelling…
I have mostly a good first impression of the website touting MyPlate, the USDA’s replacement for the food pyramid. It wasn’t entirely clear that the items on the plate were clickable — probably because the graphic treatment of the plate resembles a button, and my brain said to me, “Oh, that’s a plate, how cute”…
Google, having failed to out-Facebook Facebook and to out-Twitter Twitter with Buzz, began a more modest attempt today to build social-networking features into its Web presence: the +1 button. —Google launches +1, a new social step | Deep Tech – CNET News. Similar:When it comes to the truth, point of view really does matter.You may…