“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:Emotional Intelligence Needs a RewriteI’ve recently processed…
“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:Why Fan Theories Are Destroying Film Discourse Fan theories are no substitute for…
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:Oh dear, George Lucas! Why the Star Wars…
“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:Know your rights: photographers — what to do if you are…
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:Iffy "Cloak of Darkness" on Inform7/Parchment”Iffy Cloak of Darkness” is based on the…CybercultureAvoid static, wordy…
“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:Schisms (#StarTrek #TNG Rewatch, Season 6, Episode 5)Rewatching…
(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:Short Reports: How to Write Routine Professional DocumentsNew graphic. First step in touching up m…BusinessIronic QuotesAmusingTwo More Chances to See Prime Stage's…
“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:Some fairy tales may be 6000 years oldFairy tales are transmitted…
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:Think Before You Tweet In the Wake of an AttackSobering analysis. Would I be able to fo…CultureAdvice to a recent journalism graduate* The best stories are the ones you find…EthicsMariah Carey…
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:Caroll…
“[T]he Internet story has come to an end.” Reuters —Silicon Alley Reporter Magazine Closes (Wired) Similar:Crash site and Tower of Voices. Well worth the side trip on the way back from a weekend gi…Flight 93 crash site and Tower of Voices…CultureEmployers Will Hire You For: 1) Leadership; 2) Teamwork; 3) Writing; 4) Problem-solving 5)…What do…
“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:This is what happened when a KDKA-TV journalist showed biasSocial media platforms are full of peopl…CultureParable of the Polygons – a playable post on the shape of societyA…
“The Argument: A dying human being is like an automated spacecraft leaving the Solar System and entering interstellar space. Do we leave this world and arrive at another world?” Poetry by Jonathon Vos Post —Valedictory on Software Similar:While searching my bag for a cable, I found an unexpected wealth of food-substitute items.AmusingGirl Moved To Tears…
MIT will offer its courses online for free: “This ‘OpenCourseWare’ initiative represents a radically different approach to digitizing, marketing and globalizing education.” —Brave New World for Higher EducationTechnology Review) Similar:When Robert Pinsky Wrote a Video Game[F]or a brief time in the mid-nineteen-e…CultureMy meeting was cancelled, so I spent the morning assembling a cabinet for a…
(CNet) :”Sometimes they were raw, sometimes they were pretentious and sometimes they were flat-out wrong–I’d dare say that many times it was all three combined!–but the information was fresh and real and unmediated by any intervening institutions.” Charles Cooper —When Blogging Came of Age Similar:What My Classroom Looks Like During Today's Video Journalism Workshop Within…
(SiliconValley.com) “Via e-mails, mailing lists, chat groups, personal Web journals and non-standard news sources, they received valuable context that the major American media couldn’t, or wouldn’t, provide.” Dan Gillmor —Webloggers Offer View Media Can’t Similar:Adorable Dolphin encounter makes Texas sloth video go viralMy social media feed just featured adora…AmusingSharing memes about news you don’t see…
Of course, you can’t trust everything that you find on the Internet…. weblogs and e-mail chains are also responsible for spreading hoaxes: “Is it true, for instance, that Osama bin Laden profits directly from sales of gum arabic, a food additive? Or that radio DJs are forbidden to play more than 150 popular songs now?” …