The other day I was searching Amazon for a digital edition of the poems of Emily Dickinson, and was pleased to find a digital edition for a few bucks. I know that Project Gutenberg has a decent edition of the original publication of the version her family first published, but the first publication changed her…
If you are [in marketing], Twitter apparently looks like a heaven where brands and people interact constantly, the same way tweeters interact with other people. And every time brands and people interact with each other represents an opportunity to reinforce messaging about that brand. Our tires are safe! Our oil rigs don’t leak! […] However,…
Some college campuses will start seeing fewer students coming to class with a pen and paper — and more carrying iPads. At Seton Hill University, in Greensburg, Pa., every fulltime student, no matter what year they are, will be receiving an Apple iPad when they return to campus this fall. The iPad will be used…
Someone that I knew when we were high school students just e-mailed me to say she had been given an assignment to get a blog started up by the end of September, and she asked for links and reading suggestions so she could understand the basics. English is not her first language, and with a…
Researchers also asked students questions about websites they chose. After using Google to get to a website, this interaction occurred between a researcher and a study participant: Researcher: “What is this website?” Student: “Oh, I don’t know. The first thing that came up.” “Search engine rankings seem extremely important,” Hargittai said. “We found that a…
We use the metaphor of a ladder to show this, with the rungs at the higher end of the ladder indicating a higher level of participation. —Forrester Similar:Google overtakes Apple in the US classroom Google in US schools, with Chromebook …AcademiaWhy teens are leaving Facebook: It’s ‘meaningless’However, there’s a silver lining for Mar…BusinessAI researchers find…
Director Peter Berg is expected to soon begin shooting the live-action tentpole based on Hasbro’s naval combat board game. —Variety Boggle. Trouble. Sorry. Similar:Desert Bus: The Worst Video Game Ever CreatedPenn and Teller are involved with this s…BooksA stranger took this photo of my parents doing their daily crossword together in a cafe.A stranger took…
Just a small item. The iPad is about to have its academic chops put to the test this fall in a number of programs around the country. Colleges and universities are looking to adopt the iPad as a collaborative tool, a standardized mobile device to integrate into curriculums, and, in some cases, even a cost-saving…
Good students all, the class was a seminar on “Designing for Effective Change” for the Honors Program, but lacking experience in this sort of approach to instruction, the students wrote to their conception of what I wanted to hear from them. I can’t imagine a more constipated mindset for producing interesting prose. For this class…
The Blender Foundation has announced its release of version 2.53 beta. Blender is a free, open-source 3D animation and game design package. I’ve taught it in the past in my New Media Projects course, but no student has ever chosen a Blender creation for a term project, and some of my textually-minded English majors have…
No, the awesome mascot-based space platformer you cheerily sketched on graph paper when you were supposed to be focused on math homework is not going straight to production. No, in fact, there are not a million page views at the ready for your exhaustive essay on the themes of Silent Hill 2. You will probably…
There is a documentary film on text adventures here. Paths lead off in all directions.>get GET LAMP Similar:Solitaire ChessSpent a relaxing evening in playing soli…AmusingA tale of two headlines: CNN and Fox shade their reports of UFC crowd's reaction to TrumpHeadlines from CNN and Fox shade in diff…Current_EventsYou didn’t make the Harlem Shake go viral—corporations…
How very apt… the answer comes in the form of a flowchart. (10000words.net) Similar:Short Reports: How To Write Routine Technical DocumentsI don’t get to teach technical writing m…BusinessStop trying to figure out if screentime is good for studentsPro-technology response to the NYT “No C…AcademiaIt's “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” 111th birthdayInteresting introduction to the history …BooksDelightful interview…
Still reading? You’re probably in a dwindling minority. But no matter: a literary revolution is at hand. First we had slow food, then slow travel. Now, those campaigns are joined by a slow-reading movement – a disparate bunch of academics and intellectuals who want us to take our time while reading, and re-reading. They ask…
Like all of O’Connor’s work, the meaning of a sentence like that expands over time like a sponge. Mystery and Manners is packed with them. It contains talks about the act of writing, about teaching, about the art of raising peacocks, about the South, and Catholicism. But what I value most when I read these…
Editors of the long-awaited autobiography of Mark Twain said Tuesday they were surprised to discover the unedited manuscript of the forthcoming book contains lashing, in-depth criticism of the website YouTube, the recent BP oil spill, and the ongoing military action in Afghanistan. —The Onion Similar:It's unfair to treat every gaffe as evidence of malice or…
In a desperate attempt to preserve the financial integrity of journalism size of his revenue stream, media mogul Rupert Murdoch recently put content at the UK TImes and Sunday Times behind a pay firewall. The information-wants-to-be-free crowd can’t wait to see this experiment fail. A Murdoch and Fleet Street veteran with whom I’ve been corresponding…
I’m trying out iMT, a slimmed-down blogging interface designed for the iPhone. It works with the iPad, though the design does not take advantage of the iPad’s screen size. This interface only permits plain-text editing (so you have to code the HTML by hand if you want bold or photos and such). There is no…
Creating interactive fiction (a genre also know as “text adventures”) means writing computer code that represents objects and behaviors, while also creating interesting characters, a compelling plot, and maybe a few narrative surprises, all of which can be assembled for a reader to experience in multiple different ways. The resources that follow are intended to…
The call-and-response form of IF — “TAKE LAMP”, “I don’t know how to take the lamp” — has been a familiar gag for thirty years now. And somewhere, in the basement of the computer game world, a few people are still writing text adventures. A few people… a few games… Actually, lots of games. Over…