It’s not surprising that marketers love IntelliTxt while many journalists despise it. AlwaysOn columnist Rafe Needleman called IntelliTxt “pretty bad news” from an ethics standpoint “because it blurs the line between editorial content, which readers should expect to be free of commercial influence, and advertising, which we know is paid-for and biased.” —Adam L. Penenberg…
Blobjects are blob-shaped objects, because of NURBS and meshes and splines and injection molding and CAD-CAM. They’re highly curvilinear consumer items designed on workstations, and then they’re generally blasted into being in a burst of injection-molded goo. Blobjects are the period objects of our time. They are the physical products that the digital revolution brought…
Michael Keaton (“Batman”) will join Lindsay Lohan (“Mean Girls”) in Disney’s “Herbie: Fully Loaded” according to Variety, but the film’s writers might be its brightest spot. Herbie is a car with a mind of his own, but don’t let that fool you–this is no “Knight Rider.” —HERBIE: FULLY LOADED Casting News (TD) My six-and-a-half-year-old son is…
In an effort to educate the nation’s neediest children on nutrition, a new project uses the familiar medium of video games to broadcast its message. The Fantastic Food Challenge, a package of four computer games, is designed to teach people who get nutrition aid such as federal food stamps how to make better use of…
In computer and math science, holders of high school diplomas and associate’s degrees make up approximately 40 percent of employees. In engineering, 20 percent of workers have less than a bachelor’s degree. The proportions are much smaller (10 percent or less) for occupations in the life, physical and social sciences. —Ed Frauenheim —Many engineers lack…
Effective with this sentence, Wired News will no longer capitalize the “I” in internet. At the same time, Web becomes web and Net becomes net. Why? The simple answer is because there is no earthly reason to capitalize any of these words. Actually, there never was. —Tony Long —It’s Just the ‘internet’ Now (Wired) Thank…
The books are written by a small stable of independent authors, who receive 50 percent royalties, a rate unheard of in traditional publishing. Edited collaboratively over the Net, the books are published “within moments of going to press” as small, downloadable PDF files. Costing $5 or $10, the books come with free updates for readers…
I just got an e-mail from someone I knew in elementary school. She and I were often rivals for class reading contests and vocabulary quizzes and such. I considered a friendly rivalry, though I remember her as mature and well above my own lowly social status. I always thought she was smart and nice, and…
If your IF game has a story, your scene descriptions should serve the story. If you want to give your game atmosphere, broaden your use of sense details within your scene descriptions to include sounds, smells, and even textures, instead of just sights. If you want your game to have a strong narrative voice, scene…
[E]ach student blog was given a set of categories. If students had already had blogs before class began, these categories could have been added to their existing blogs: ewriting: agenda item – outside reading ewriting: agenda item – student assignment(s) ewriting: assignment submission ewriting: general discussion / announcement non-ewriting (for students who did not create…
One member of staff, who did not want to be named, said: “East Kilbride managers were at a training day when it was announced they would replace good morning with Mahna Mahna. “The staff had just returned from lunch and all the managers were in a training room, sitting in a semi-circle and looking really…
No two signatures by one person are exactly the same in style, so the new technique involves making a 3D model of the pressure applied when a person writes. The model translates the writing into an image showing dips and furrows of the sample so that anomalies can be detected. Conventionally, handwriting has been analysed…
According to Canadian texts (six are cited), the United States planned to conquer and annex Canada during the Revolution, the War of 1812, the Civil War and at various points in between. During the Cold War, the United States repeatedly bullied Canada into supporting its aggressive military policies. Canadian officials hoped that NATO would evolve…
I warn my students not to freak out when they see a lot of ink in the margins of their papers. I explain my golden rule: “You put effort in, writing to me? I put effort in, writing back to you. That’s the respect writers give each other.” Whenever I’ve watched my under-confident students in…
WICHITA, KS?Delivering the central speech of his 10-day “Solution For America” bus campaign tour Monday, Democratic presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry outlined his one-point plan for a better America: the removal of George W. Bush from the White House. “If I am elected in November, no inner-city child will have to live in an America…
For almost an hour Saturday morning, the Associated Press reported that a 22-year-old San Francisco man, Benjamin Vanderford, had been beheaded in Iraq. The report of Vanderford’s death was based on a 55-second video clip that Vanderford and two friends had faked and distributed via the Internet. The story also was picked up by the…
To those who roll their eyes at retro gamers, I say, “What is really so great about the games you are playing?” Is there really that much difference between Soul Calibur II and International Karate? We are still mashing buttons and kicking people in the groin. Why did your game take years to produce? I…
Editors say stars do their own writing but are subject to editing like any freelancer. Keys says she tends to “overwrite. I want to get every nuance in there.” Stiles’ Guardian article needed “a couple of rewrites,” the actress says, “but they were good suggestions, and I didn’t mind doing them. … I have a…
At my first mock job interview with a faculty member from my home institution, I was informed that I would appear “too white.” (My dissertation examined the uses of rock music and culture in American prose literature of the last 50 years, and white men have created the lion’s share of the source material.) Having…
In the latest attempt by the scientific community to offer algebraic explanations for the seemingly inexplicable, mathematicians have come up with a formula for the best kind of scary movie. Using the equation (es + u + cs + t) squared + s + (tl + f) / 2 + (a + dr + fs)…