Blogging Goes Mobile

“People will soon be able to publish their own website via their phones as blogging goes mobile.” —Blogging Goes MobileBBC) Sounds a bit much like drafting a press release to fill a Sunday evening news gap, but journalists have been quick to grasp the social significance of weblogs. Thanks for the link, Rosemary. Similar:I created…

Note to Self

The next time you publish a timely magazine article that gets mentioned by a lot of webloggers during the same week that you accept a new job, resist the urge to celebrate by sending out for Papa John’s pepperoni pizza and getting laid up for three days with a bad case of food poisoning. My…

Google Don't Blink

Dave Winer on scripting news quotes from my “On the Trail of the Memex” in order to disagree: Here’s one for the history books. “For all intents and purposes, Google owns the Web, by virtue of its superior and highly popular search engine.” I don’t agree. Teoma appears to be as good a search engine…

Games: Not in the World

DADDY: Peter, the weather is so nice… let’s play a game.PETER (age 4): I do NOT want to play any game that’s in the world. I want to play a game that’s NOT in the world.DADDY: Peter, what kind of game is not in the world?PETER: (pointing towards computer) On a CD.Games: Not in the…

The New Humanists

“The arts and the sciences are again joining together as one culture, the third culture. Those involved in this effort?on either side of C.P. Snow’s old divide?are at the center of today’s intellectual action. They are the new humanists…..In too much of academia, intellectual debate tends to center on such matters as who was or…

How Not to Request Help Online

Here is the complete text of a message in my inbox today, from someone who signed it “freak”: “help find information about the beleives of the pilgrims in 1620” How Not to Request Help OnlineE-Mail) Sorry. Please do your own homework. Similar:The Hut Where the Internet Began – Atlantic MobileLet’s start at the end point:…

Why Nerds are Unpopular

“Of course I wanted to be popular.|But in fact I didn’t, not enough. There was something else I wanted more: to be smart. Not simply to do well in school, though that counted for something, but to design marvellous rockets, or to write well, or to understand how to program computers. In general, to make…

Welcome to Bloggers World

“I HAVE just ploughed through the first five books devoted to an Internet art form that fascinates me and may well be unknown to you. Where to start?|Say for the moment that the weblog – a log of the World Wide Web, as it were -can be personal publishing at its most liberating, an online…

Gollum: Dissed by the Oscars?

“Andy Serkis’ computer-aided performance was one of the best things about ‘The Two Towers.’… Is Hollywood ready to acknowledge and honor digital performances, or even human-digital hybrids? This year, the answer seems to be a resounding no.” Ivan Askwith —Gollum: Dissed by the Oscars?Salon) Similar:The Life and Times of ¯\_(ツ)_/¯But, in addition to symbolizing despair,…CybercultureTales…

Getting Emotional

“[A]cademics are throwing themselves into the study of emotion with the rapturous intensity of a love affair. In a sense, emotion has always been at the core of the humanities: Without the passions, there would not be much history, and even less literature. Indeed the very word ‘philosophy’ begins with philos (love).” Scott McLemee —Getting…

The Software Developer as Movie Icon

“Unfortunately, most will just view the team projects, class presentations, software life cycles, and ambiguous problem statements as ‘hoops they have to jump through’ to graduate. I recall a meeting with a student who was having trouble working with her project team in a recent class. She actually asserted with some confidence that the problem…

Survey: Web Use Trends Ever Upward

“The dot-com economy is long gone, but that hasn’t curbed the public’s appetite for shopping, banking and generally amusing themselves on the World Wide Web, according to a recent study.|Significantly more people are using the Web to send pictures and videos, shop, download music, play games and do their banking, according a study that compares…

Google Blogging Right Along

—Google Blogging Right AlongWired) There’s nothing new in this Wired story that wasn’t already covered by blogs over the weekend. Similar:Narrow ParsersCreating n00b-friendly interactive ficti…CybercultureDetails like headlines matter. Journalists should work hard to avoid being misread.If you were this person’s attorney, you’…Current_EventsProgramming as Magic Spells in Erica Sandbothe's New NovelIn her new novel, Codecrafter, Sandbothe…BooksDeath…

Always a Dull Moment: The hottest game in the sky is simulating a holding pattern. Fasten your seat belt.

“Vatsim allows virtual pilots (but real people) and virtual air traffic controllers (also real people) to see each other and communicate. The result is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game patterned after the government’s dullest bureaucracy.” —Always a Dull Moment: The hottest game in the sky is simulating a holding pattern. Fasten your seat belt.Wired)…

Write This Way, Gentle Reader

“In the autumn of their careers, they are in a mood to dispense the wisdom that comes of decades of slugging it out with editors, critics, other writers and, roughest of all, their own restless egos….Let us summon in spirit some of these authors of literary guides and memoirs and hear what they have to…