Search giant Google plans for the first time to sell ads that include images, a surprise reversal for a company that has won regard for its pioneering use of text-only marketing pitches and for keeping its home page religiously free of banner advertising. —Google to sell banner ads (ZD Net) I’m still waiting to hear back…
I’m such an important blogger that I don’t have to give you any reason as I urge, even command, you to visit this link. [W]hen famous A-listers write those self-satisfied one-line posts, they aren’t really blogging well. Instead, they are just spending the social capital they’ve already accumulated. They accumulated that social capital by first…
Blogging since 1999Â (Jerz’s Literacy Weblog) It occurrs to me that it was shortly after I turned in my final grades in Spring, 1999 — six five years ago — that I started tinkering with the table of contents page for my collection of online handouts. I thought that, instead of just posting links to the…
Pattern Recognition: F:F:F must have very low traffic. (Jerz’s Literacy Weblog) It just occurred to me that for someone who’s supposedly a core member of the online group F:F:F, Cayce Pollard doesn’t really spend that much time reading or posting. I’ve spent most of this academic year away from the newsgroup rec.arts.int-fiction, and as I finished…
I was a soldier. I was a sergeant, who taught five-hour training sessions on the Geneva Convention and the Laws of War. And I’m disgusted, and I hope you’ll let me tell you why. The two soldiers in the photographs, as well as the others you may have seen in more recent pictures, will be…
Henry shared the media that influenced him, including films like Operation Frontal Lobe and Isaasc Asimov sci-fi novels. He agued that every other pop culture medium has been involved in education, and games need to catch up. Even Hollywood markets films with education guides (e.g. The Alamo, which has one available on the official website).…
Europe’s Mars Express probe has sent back detailed images of a region of the Red Planet that was shaped by intensive continental plate activity. —Image Reveals Mars’ Active Past (BBC) Thanks for the suggestion, Neha. Similar:Charlie and the Chocolate Factory / Willy Wonka Lesson Plans Through our local theater school, ou…CultureExploring Myst's Brave New World”We wanted…
I listen in part because I am intrigued and seduced by what I don’t know: by the Greek tragedies I will never have time to read, by the symphonies I will never have time to appreciate, by the questions I will never have enough philosophical training to ask or understand in their richest contexts. Like…
He added that a difference exists between journalism and propaganda. As he addressed some of the hard hits journalism has taken in the field of ethics, Carroll noted that anyone could be a journalist because, unlike other fields, journalism had no qualification tests, boards to censure misconduct or a universally accepted set of standards. However,…
The truth about the campaign, which Mini USA and Crispin Porter call “interactive fiction,” is to be finally revealed this month. Wall posters are to go up in big cities like Los Angeles and New York, featuring the Mini Cooper logo above images of the “motorbots.” Those images will also turn up on the brand’s…
What’s the point? What adult has the time to master this stuff? Could it ever be worth it? Recently, I’ve decided the answer is yes, even if you’re reduced to tears by a hellish game, it can be worth it to plug through. Why? For the same reason it’s often worth struggling through many other…
A blog is a Web site with regularly updated chronological entries containing commentary, opinions, lies, rumors, half-truths and innuendos. More importantly, it’s where you can express your opinions, make comments, spread rumors, tell lies, create fiction and bore the world with your thoughts on just about any subject. […] In a lot of ways, reading…
The Unbearable Lightness of Being had a remarkable success when it was published in English in 1984 (this autumn will see an anniversary edition from Faber). Here was an avowedly “postmodern” novel in which the author withheld so many of the things we expect from a work of fiction, such as rounded characters – “It…
Imagine how quickly the slaughter of innocents at My Lai would have become known had it been captured by a palm-sized digital camera (or phone) instead of reported by letter. What does this mean for journalism? First, it converts all camera-toting participants of an event into potential irrefutable witnesses and therefore sources. Second, these witnesses…
Shovel Ready I recently heard our dean of academic affairs use the term “shovel ready” to refer to the progress of a campus construction project. I’d never heard that term before… A group of English faculty members experimented with remediating it to mean “ready to dig your own grave,” but I don’t think that meaning…
Sheet music began to have cars on the cover almost as soon as the automobile was invented. Some songs, like The Swagger Two-Step, didn’t have lyrics, and so the car on the front, along with the opulently dressed couple, seem to have been part of the illustrator’s attempt to make the tune symbolize wealth and…
The admission, during an interview with CNN, undermined Moore’s claim that Disney was trying to sabotage the US release of Fahrenheit 911 just days before its world premiere at the Cannes film festival. Instead, it lent credence to a growing suspicion that Moore was manufacturing a controversy to help publicise the film, a full-bore attack…
Beyrle hid in a hayloft near a farmhouse for a few days until around Jan. 15, when a Soviet tank brigade came by. “I went down with my hands up and said, ‘Amerikansky tovarishch, Amerikansky tovarishch,’” Beyrle recalled, using two of the few Russian words he knew: American comrade. Beyrle managed to convince the brigade’s…
Because digital cameras have features like automatic focus, they have made it easy for anyone to take technically good photographs. “You no longer have to have someone standing in bright sunlight to get a good picture of them,” Howe said. Combine that with Internet connections that have made it easy to send pictures in seconds,…
After a couple of hours of subscribing to favorite feeds, your news grazing habits will be changed forever. Just as TiVo lets you watch TV more efficiently, RSS readers do the same by letting you scan your favorite blogs and news sites faster or letting you cast your net over a wider range of material.…