“Boilerplate was a mechanical man developed by Professor Archibald Campion during the 1880s and unveiled at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition.” A remarkably convincing fake website by Paul Guinan. —Boilerplate: Mechanical Marvel of the Nineteenth Century Similar:Carolyn Gombell Is Not a Real Person: #JusticeforCarolyn Is a Campaign Against Twitter Ref…Fascinating use of social media. To…
: I have no idea how useful this article really is — it’s a classic case of “I found it on the Internet.” (A few posters have evaluated this article on MetaFilter.) —“Real” Deal about Nuclear, Bio, and Chem Attacks Similar:A Matter of Perspective (ST:TNG Rewatch, Season Three, Episode 13) Multiple-POV Courtroom …Rewatching ST:TNG after…
What’s up with public high school students? “They’ve had careful self-esteem training since they were 2. They’re told exactly what to feel about everything and they have to be happy all the time,” says researcher Elinor Burkett. —School Daze in America (Wash Times) Similar:Web Literacy for Student Fact-Checkers: Four MovesThe confirmation bias describes the very…AcademiaThinking…
The Disney Channel airs a cartoon that comments on file-swapping software. An insightful real-world teenage morality tale, or corporate brainwashing? —Disney’s Peer-to-Peer Pressure (Wired) Similar:High Schooler's Fake Story of Stock Riches Fools New York Editors”If your mother says she loves you, chec…BusinessSecond episode of “Electron Jones” paranormal detective audio series is up. waobaudiotheat…https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTe47W3S…AmusingWhy I Rarely…
“Who says we aren’t a nation of readers? Shucks. Before you can use a new electric skillet, you’re supposed to read its 12-page manual.” Marti Attoun —My On-and-off Struggle with Instruction Manuals (CS Monitor) Similar:Exploring Myst's Brave New World”We wanted a true persistent world. If y…CybercultureMy Cow Game Extracted Your Facebook DataThe Cambridge Analytica scandal…
“MS Word has no right to be a standard for document preparation, since it’s clearly less efficient (for most purposes) than readily available alternatives,” fumes Allin Cottrell. —Word Processors: Stupid and Inefficient If the alternative involves typing commands like “c:\gs\gsview\epstool -b -c -o%1.tmp.eps %1.eps”, is it easier to sell your soul to Microsoft? (See: “Using…
Many of the links on this site are broken, but the message pretty much keeps me going. Comments? “Students need the wonder, awe, and delight which comes from the adventure of confronting the unknown, unfettered by knowledge and common sense. Then learning is wonderful, awesome, and, delightful.” —Nothing Matters Similar:Ethics of standardized testingA blogger who had…
“It’s like these sci-fi nerds can’t handle the real world, so they hide in a fake one,” says sports fanatic Scott Moreland, whose online fantasy-football team, DaJerseyJintz, was 4-1 at press time. —Walking Sports Database Scorns Walking Sci-Fi Databasesatire from The Onion) Similar:I felt a great disturbance in the Fandom”…as if millions of voices suddenly cr…AestheticsThe…
E-mail messages, voice-mail recordings and other electronic traces of people were routinely preserved by computer networks or telephone companies… These e-relics often captured a moment in time that is both beautiful and chilling to the people who discovered them. Ariana Eunjung Cha —Salvaging Electronic Last Words (WashPost) Similar:The girl performed musical commercials for a fund-raiser…
“New research reveals that 40 percent of Web surfers will visit a news or information site more often if its pages load faster.” Excuse me, but… duh! I guess you should ignore the August 2000 press release in which Jupiter advocated these “expensive enhancements.” —Fast And Efficient Web Sites Will Drive Greater Customer Retention Than…
Microsoft a monopoly? Pshaw. “Microsoft sees themselves as a small fish in a big pond. The pond is all information that could potentially be digitized in the universe. Just some insight into where they’re coming from.” Zimran Ahmed —Belly of the Beast Revisited (winterspeak.com) Similar:little drops — Why Dove's "Real Beauty Sketches" Video Makes Me…
The anthrax scare will likely encourage greater use of e-mail. “If you’re connected to the Internet—and, duh, you wouldn’t be reading this if you weren’t—probably your e-mail-to-snail-mail ratio overwhelmingly favors the former.” Steven Levy —The End of Snail Mail? (MSNBC.com) Similar:How to lie with charts, by the @NYTimes I tend to defend journalism when sho…Current_EventsNTSB…
“Traditionally, each company has had to design and implement all of the services it wanted to offer its website users. This approach leads to incredible waste, unprofitable websites, and lowered usability…” [Jakob Nielsen is talking about e-commerce, not personal home pages.] —The End of Homemade Websites (UseIT.com) Similar:Jimmy Maher's Appreciation of Infocom's Classic Sherlock Text…
(satire from The Onion) “Have a long history of experience in the field you’re applying for and glowing recommendations. Either that, or print your résumé on really nice, heavyweight ivory paper.” —Job-Hunting Tips Similar:I’m still teaching journalism and my usual courses, but after 21 years I’ve stepped aside …I’m still teaching journalism and my usu…AcademiaI'm…
“The Apostrophe Protection Society was started in 2001 by John Richards, now its Chairman, with the specific aim of preserving the correct use of this currently much abused punctuation mark in all forms of text written in the English language.” —The Apostrophe Protection Society Similar:Journalists who are doing their job by reporting fairly on a…
There’s way too much information online. What really matters to readers is quality, not quantity. Gerry McGovern —The Need for Editors on the Web Similar:Children of Time #StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch (Season 5, Episode 22) Defiant crew meets happy co…Rewatching ST:DS9 In the Defiant mess…AmusingThe elements, in haikuEach element of the periodic table gets …AmusingPope Leo…
Metadata “collects critical information such as heading, summary, author name, date of publication, classification, keywords, etc…. Without metadata a document is left floating in a cyberspace filled with 550 billion other documents. The chances of it being found by the right person at the right time are greatly diminished.” Gerry McGovern —Why Metadata is Important…
“Coming very near the bottom of an official list of religions put out by the [U.K.] Statistics Office, Jedi Knight is known by the code 896. Heathen comes in at 897. Followed by Atheist at 898 and lastly None with 899.” Kieren McCarthy —Jedi Knights Achieve [Sort of] Official Recognition as Religion (The Register) Similar:A…
“[T]he Internet story has come to an end.” Reuters —Silicon Alley Reporter Magazine Closes (Wired) Similar:Let's face it, it's time to give up on those Portal and Half-Life sequelsReserving judgments is a matter of infin…BusinessThe Unbearable Weakness of Trump’s MinionsNote that the URL of this story indicate…AcademiaSpace Shuttle Challenger (Destroyed 28 Years Ago Today)I was…
“a cybernetic process whereby people in power deepen their dominance by using online communication to negotiate for the consent of the subjugated.” Mike Dorsher —Hegemony Online (UWEC) Similar:Learn to code? No: Learn a real languageI don’t see learning to code as a substi…CultureNo space for over-30s as relaunched MySpace erases its pastKeep a local backup…