In 2002, David Winer bet Martin Nisenholtz that In a Google search of five keywords or phrases representing the top five news stories of 2007, weblogs will rank higher than the New York Times’ Web site. According to Workbench: So Winer wins the bet 3-2, but his premise of blog triumphalism is challenged by the…
I just got this e-mail. Scratch is an amazing tool designed to teach programming to kids. My nine-year-old loves it. I’m planning to use Scratch in my “New Media Projects” class next fall. Because of your interest in Scratch, we thought you would like to know about the Scratch@MIT conference that we are hosting next…
NY Times Elizabeth has nearly eight years to go yet before she would overtake Victoria’s other noteworthy place in the monarchical record books, the length of her reign — 64 hugely eventful years, from the abolition of slavery to the Boer War. But the chances look pretty good: Elizabeth is thought to be fairly healthy,…
News Digest: After a 2006 shake-up at Yum, an executive named Hearl rose to the top position. But now Hearl is out, replaced by someone named Eaton. Yum executive Hearl will retire Eaton to be new development chief By Alex Davis alexdavis@courier-journal.com The Courier-Journal Yum! Brands announced yesterday that the company’s chief operating and development…
The special coding Wikipedia has developed for its user-edited pages is powerful. Some shortcuts are simple and elegeant — you just put [[square brackets]] around words to make them into links, and clicking on the link will automatically either take you to an existing page, or let you create a new one. But as Wikipedia…
A student sent me an e-mail asking for advice on how to write a letter to the editor. I found plenty of web resources that are designed to help volunteers write letters designed to get a particular message out — that is, Citizens for the Defense of Rutebegas offer specialized tips for how to write…
This ABC News story following up on an early 1990s story ends on a deftly sensitive note. Since entering prison Smart has completed two master’s degrees, one in law and one in English literature. Those studies have kept her focused. And she said her favorite book is “The Scarlet Letter,” which is the tale of…
News I saw on theonering.net (via Slashdot) has LOTR fans unclenching their hairy, unshod toes and reaching for the tobacco jar: The two “Hobbit” films – “The Hobbit” and its sequel – are scheduled to be shot simultaneously, with pre-production beginning as soon as possible. Principal photography is tentatively set for a 2009 start, with…
I know what you’re thinking, but my story is that I’m gathering information for a research project on gender in science fiction. Yeah, that’s it. Similar:Your first #blender3d retractable #steampunk landing wheels will be your worst. But you ha…Your first #blender3d retractable #steam…AestheticsBe Kind, for Everyone You Meet Is Misattributing This Quote in a MemeBe…
Advice from GameCareerGuide.com resembles what I tell my English literature majors about why they are expected to study and benefit from literary works that they might not choose to read for their own pleasure. (The same goes for students in my Video Game Culture and Theory course.) Before you begin down this path there is…
Anna L. Mallory (Roanoke Times): The game, a takeoff on programs popular before the Internet and Nintendo, blends social-networking and choose-your-own adventure tools. It allows players to not only play games but also create and share their own adventures in user-submitted fictional lands. Mallory also includes some quotes from former Infocom Imp Steve Meretzky on…
In Wired, Jenna Wortham focuses on what blogs typically look like to journalists. Blogs are re-shaping not just news and entertainment, but also publishing, politics and public relations. Robert Scoble, Microsoft’s most famous blogger, is widely credited with putting a human face on the giant company and facilitating an exchange between customer and corporation. Matt…
Filing this MetaFilter thread on movies about journalism. Similar:Katie Couric Gun Documentary Undermined By Manipulative Editing : NPRInterviewer Katie Couric asks a group of…CultureMy meeting was cancelled, so I spent the morning assembling a cabinet for a Little Free Li…AcademiaNetworks cut away from Trump’s White House addressNEW YORK (AP) — ABC, CBS and NBC all…
The American Scholar: One of the students sticks his or her head out the passenger window and serenades — or accosts — the startled pedestrian with some passionately recited lines by Walt Whitman or Pablo Neruda. The kid pops back in, rolls up the window, and the van takes off in search of the next…
For Jorn Barger, who coined the word “weblog” in December of 1997, outbound links are key to the formula that makes a weblog useful to readers: 2. You can certainly include links to your original thoughts, posted elsewhere … but if you have more original posts than links, you probably need to learn some humility.…
Katie Haegele quotes Chris Joseph: “It seems most people these days equate literature with the novel, which is obviously a relatively recent form, and then judge all other literature by that standard, which is a terrible measure of digital literature,” Joseph said in an e-mail interview. “My feeling is that younger audiences already do accept…
I’m misquoted on your December press page. What I wrote was When students are writing about some areas of popular culture, user-authored sites such as Wikipedia and Urbandictionary, or game databases like MobyGames are actually far more useful than academic sources (which take months or even years to appear). http://jerz.setonhill.edu/weblog/permalink/banning-wikipedia-at-school-go/ But the quote appears as…
From the Google Blog, a preview of Google’s mashup of Wikipedia and About.com: The key idea behind the knol project is to highlight authors. Books have authors’ names right on the cover, news articles have bylines, scientific articles always have authors — but somehow the web evolved without a strong standard to keep authors names…
Blogged as a reference, for the next time I have to introduce students to semiotics (ytmnd.com). Similar:Making movie magic with my dueling gut-shot daughterAestheticsChilling analysis of organized, anonymous disinformation campaign against Parkland survivo…Forty-seven minutes after news broke of …CultureFascinating details in reports about Trump's Russian retractionWe’re all still reeling from Trump’s sta…Current_EventsHuge Collection of Free…
Why does this happen? For some reason, perhaps the oddity of ordering milk from an online bookseller, has attracted a large number of spoof reviews — Lovecraft, Coleridge, romances, haiku. Here’s a bit of Tuscan Whole Milk flash fiction: This milk was so good, I passed out. When I woke up 3 weeks later, apes…