Text-message shorthand conventions arose from the users, because the need to type quickly on a tiny keyboard was greater than the need to spell correctly and preserve the subtleties of punctuation. But as users find more ways to hash and remix their social networking, a new set of technical needs may give rise to new…
While scanning the coverage of the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, I found this interesting editorial, which questions the depiction of the student protesters as pro-democracy. The truth is that the students in the square had only the haziest understanding of western-style democracy. To the extent that the protests were directed at abuses…
The social web is the new walled garden: the photos we upload to Facebook, the 140-character messages we post to Twitter, and all of this other social activity is more or less locked away in those services. A friend cannot reply to your Twitter post without registering an account, and you are basically locked out…
The concept is simple: from the top of the screen a series of differently-shaped “blocks” fall slowly towards the bottom. The player can turn each block as it falls – making a line into a column, say – or move it sideways, but once it hits the lowest point, it stays. If the blocks fill…
In Montfort and Bogost’s case study platform studies also suggest a useful approach to media histories. Their work on the Atari VCS focuses on the role of creative individuals in the process of game development for the platform, and the book earmarks several important moments in videogame history. These moments are traced back to the…
To protect itself from millions of dollars worth of taxes, Proctor & Gamble UK tried to defend a lower court’s ruling that a Pringle is not a potato chip. At some point, a potato-chip-like item is so different from a potato chip that it can no longer be called one — but when?– Adam Cohen,…
A good overview of a genre I’ve been following from the beginning. I sometimes wonder why references to political cartoons aren’t more common in discussions of games about current events. At any rate, the article begins by mentioning the importance of Flash, the 9/11 attacks, and Gonzalo Frasca’s thought-provoking response, September 12th. Water Cooler Games,…
This sort of thing makes me very unhappy… without my permission, Microsoft pushes out an add-on for a competitor’s product. The service pack for the .NET Framework, like other updates, was pushed out to users through the Windows Update Web site. A number of readers had never heard of this platform before Windows Update started…
Nearly a century after she was rescued from the decks of the sinking Titanic, the last remaining survivor of the disaster has died, aged 97. Elizabeth Gladys Dean, known as Millvina, died today at the nursing home near Southampton where her care had been subsidised by Leonardo Di Caprio and Kate Winslet — stars of…
I’ve used Google Docs for some time; most of my recent conference proposals have been drafted there. Because there is an excellent open-source (free) alternatives to Microsoft Office (OpenOffice.org), I’m not all that convinced that cloud computing is the answer. I’m not comfortable with the idea that, if my internet connection hiccups, or Google goes…
One of my first dates with my wife was interrupted when I got a piece of beef stuck in my throat. I could breathe, but not swallow. When the paramedics arrived, I asked them to wait in the lobby while I walked out to my date, handed her my keys, and explained that I was…
Soon after, Mario entered into the Mushroom Kingdom and proceeded to steal from their banks and museums with his brother Luigi in Super Mario Thieves. Throughout the game he is chased by Bowser, chief of police at the M.K.P.D. (Mushroom Kingdom Police department) and the Goomba’s and Koopa Troppers in blue. […] Bowser’s chase of…
Even as the use of electronic media has become common across fields for research and teaching, what is taken for granted among young scholars is still foreign to many of those who sit on tenure and promotion committees. In an effort to confront this problem, the MLA and a consortium called the Humanities, Arts, Science…
The current summer 100 Days project gathers a group of story writers, poets, visual artists, musicians, and programmers for one hundred days of creative effort. Each artist’s work will be unique yet build on the work of others in the collective. Here we make, remake, shape and reshape. Steve Ersinghaus :: Story Carianne Garside ::…
Photopia unceremoniously dumped the idea of a ‘puzzle-based’ narrative in favour of what it called a ‘story-based’ narrative, a linear progression (linear in terms of interactivity, not time) from beginning to end that throws seemingly random fragments of a story at the player, which slowly start to weave into one another and create a cohesive…
I teach journalism at a very small school, where staff members are also likely to be involved in the student activities on which the paper is supposed to report. I’m keeping my eye out for real-world conflicts of interest, so that my student-journalists can be informed when they make their own ethical decisions. The union…
If you’re a fan of lifehacking, you’ll already be familiar with some of these issues. I’m blogging this because it’s a good example of doing justice to an opposing view, giving a good presentation of the strongest objections to multitasking. If the pundits clogging my RSS reader can be trusted (the ones I check up…
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This article does a good job reminding us how the world of media has changed in the past few decades. The metaphors we use to think about changes in media have a lot to tell us about the particular moment we’re in. McLuhan talked about media as an extension of our central nervous system, and…
New media researcher and capital-letter-avoider dana boyd recently answered questions about teens and their use of social media. These folks will be in college soon, so it makes sense for us to learn about their media habits. @mirroredpool: What borders to teens place of social networking sites and education? How would they react to using…