More cruel jokes to play on literal-minded people. Similar:Virtual debates about homelessness in Sim City hold up a mirror to real lifeBack in 2009, the story of Alice and Kev…BooksBusiness is the most popular college major, but that doesn’t mean it’s a good choiceMake that dime-a-dozen business degree m…AcademiaBattle of Agincourt — 600 Year Anniversary…
Reuters: To launch next year as a massively multiplayer online game, or MMOG to those in the gaming community, Lego Universe will let players create online versions of themselves and interact with each other. Thanks for the suggestion, Rosemary. Similar:Vintage TV News Coverage of Pac-ManVintage TV news coverage of Pac-Man. …CybercultureHow professors use their time:…
Not the best spoof I’ve ever seen, but if you really want to see a spoof of a trailer of a documentary about text adventure games, you might be somewhat amused. (Here’s the original.) I’m mocked in this, if that’s any incentive to anyone… Similar:A 27-Story Vertical Forest Grows in MilanBosco Verticale was conceived in…
The Weekly Standard does not like The Newseum. Our terrific country offers lots of ways to make a living, but with the possible exceptions of movie acting and architecture, only modern journalism would have the nerve to celebrate itself with something as gaudy and improbable as the Newseum. Similar:Police respond to Twitter bot sending death…
In case you didn’t know, Choose Your Own Adventure (CYOA) is back. (School Library Journal) The CYOA books allow middle graders to experiment with nonlinear storytelling, “a developmental step that some kids need.” Choice-points in the stories force youngsters to visualize and mull over plot possibilities, letting them take control of the reading experience. Individual…
AP: Nearly a third of children ages 6 to 10 are regular users of digital audio players, according to market research firm the NPD Group. And thanks to entrepreneurs like Katz, they can now use them to listen to bedtime stories. In March, the Audible.com founder launched AudibleKids.com, where children can download books directly onto…
Naomi Alderman (Guardian): [S]ometimes I admire the beautifully-rendered star-filled sky, and sometimes I drive the in-game car into a lamp-post, just to see what happens. It is play, just like “cops and robbers”, just like daydreaming, just like writing a novel. I’m not a big fan of driving games, and the longest stretches of game-playing…
Guardian: First Battlestar Galactica was reinvented as a must-watch TV show and clever allegory for US foreign policy post-9/11. Then the Doctor returned from Gallifrey to make sci-fi cool and revive mainstream family viewing. Now Sky One is hoping to continue the successful reinvention of the genre with a multimillion-pound remake of the 1970s British…
Wired: The U.S. Army Intelligence Center is using a custom game to train interrogators, or “human collectors,” as they are euphemistically known. Known by the staggering title of Intelligence and Electronic Warfare Tactical Proficiency Trainer Human Intelligence Control Cell, the simulation was designed by General Dynamics from the shooter Far Cry. The Army game features…
Inside Higher Ed: “Information on computer science subjects in Wikipedia is likely to be accurate and informative, often using unique resources to illustrate concepts that are not available to print media,” wrote de Medeiros in an e-mail. “This probably derives from the fact that computer scientists use the computer as their main form of access…
Nerdvana: ROFLCon (From Leeeeroy Jeninks to Bert is Evil to LOLTrek to Tron guy, old friends come back from the abyss; good thing too, because I’ve got more than 15 minutes of love for our favorite memes of yesteryear. Mix up a bunch of super famous internet memes, some brainy academics, a big audience, dump…
Pew / Internet (PDF): Most teenagers spend a considerable amount of their life composing texts, but they do not think that a lot of the material they create electronically is real writing. The act of exchanging emails, instant messages, texts, and social network posts is communication that carries the same weight to teens as phone…
NYT: T. rex shared more of its genetic makeup with ostriches and chickens than with living reptiles, like alligators. On this basis, the research team has redrawn the family tree of major vertebrate groups, assigning the dinosaur a new place in evolutionary relationships. Similar molecular tests on tissues from the extinct mastodon confirmed its close…
Geeky awesomeness from the Steampunk Workshop. Similar:If I don’t design the sign for the pub on my #steampunk space cruiser, who will? #prioriti… Aesthetics15 more sites that forbid you from linking to them » Malcolm ColesSome people don’t seem to get it. Here,…CybercultureEntire staff of Russian TV channel resigned during a live stream with last…
Back when the box art had little to do with the way computer games looked, you got used to the cognitive disconnect between the two media. My brain still hasn’t fully processed Infocom Diskgate, when I come across a trove of Atari 2600 cartridges that resemble games I played, but the boxes seem… different. Here’s…
Imagine that, since childhood, you’ve been a fan of a now-obscure genre of computer games called interactive fiction. Imagine that, since 1999, you’ve kept a weblog. Imagine that, since 2003, you’ve taught journalism and new media courses, in which you have introduced students to weblogs and interactive fiction (among other topics, of course). Recently, after…
Jason Scott (who has produced a documentary on BBS culture and is working on one now on interactive fiction) offers a thoughtful analysis of an Atari forum thread that went awry. The problem with a “what do you think about this”, or the hardest portion, is listening to what people say and then waiting until…
Andy Baio offers some forensic digital journalism: From an anonymous source close to the company, I’ve found myself in possession of the “Infocom Drive” — a complete backup of Infocom’s shared network drive from 1989. This is one of the most amazing archives I’ve ever seen, a treasure chest documenting the rise and fall of…
Wired: An enterprising photographer, Eadweard Muybridge, captured a series of snapshots — a filmstrip — of a horse trotting and definitively settled the question in the affirmative. You can see the horse in-motion and check out the geeky tech from this magazine piece on high speed photography. Fast forward 130 years and we can now…
Inside Higher Ed: 1998 was the last time that John Gallaugher, an associate professor of information systems at Boston College’s Carroll School of Management, used a traditional print textbook. He assigned it to his graduate-level introductory course in information systems. The book cost about $150. He also assigned supplemental reading — trade press articles, online…