Group items tagged

This a brief look at combining some linguistic approaches to the content of wikipedia and asking questions about the shaping of the meaning of words.

Black boxes: not just for airplanes anymore... And these should actually be black.

Nature Valley has definitely put a spin on what it means to explore the great outdoors. We've had a few conversations in class about the difference between reality and virtual reality. While I strongly argue that Watching a video or seeing pictures does not come close to first hand experience, sites like this are good for exploring places you might like to go or to remind you of favorite places you've been. It also makes me wonder if there's anything that Google doesn't dabble in.

I thought parts of this article were interesting and relevant to the reading we're doing. O'Reilly discussed privacy to some extent in this first half, but, I thought it might be interesting to look at some policy about privacy protection more deeply.

This is a page off the official website of Tim Berners-Lee, and here he explains the Semantic Web, which involves "using the WWW infrastructure to create a global, decentralized, weblike mesh of machine-processable knowledge."

I don't have much experience with video games (I still rock out with Sonic on my Sega Genesis), but this could be a gateway game for me. I love the concept of adapting and crossing lines of genres and mediums, but it's interesting to note some of the dramatic differences and losses that must take place in translation. In this example there are some real game changers (I'm not sorry for the pun) involving plot and narrative. It's as if Dante has suddenly been inspired by Mario and must save the princess from the castle. I wonder what the equivalent of Yoshi would look like in the 7th ring of Hell...

"Print will survive. Books will survive even longer. It's print as a marker of prestige that's dying." Discusses Wikipedia as an extension of its predecessors' vanity and inherent print medium. 

Bogost on gamification.

Lawmakers are finally putting a stop to this practice. Since we broached the topic of rhetorical strategies in making arguments in class, the argument one law expert makes is interesting: ""It lays down boundaries on what you can and can't do. It takes a gray area and makes a bright line ... The bill is a win for employees who want to protect their data security and their personal content passwords. But it's also a win for employers. ... Employers don't want to have access to this content. With access comes responsibility."

I wanted to add this link to the famous court case of Miller v California that helped define pornography and its protection (or lack thereof) under the first amendment. There is a lot to discuss here regarding offensiveness and "social value" especially in regard to the fact that the case dates back to the 70's. Perhaps the same case would be tried differently today.

CISPA could be used to go after WikiLeaks and other sites.

This is a very user friendly time frame of viruses from the birth of the concept up until 2004. It doesn't cover everything, but it is interesting to see the evolution.

Why? Good question. $1 billion seems like a big chunk of change to shell out when there isn't an obvious indicator that there will be a turn of profit.

Have you seen the Daily Show bit on this? Hilarious! Does seem rather odd, but I have faith that almighty Facebook has some sort of plan...maybe.

A nice theme for the weekend-- Social Media blurs religious traditions OR makes them stronger, depending on your point of view.

Unique TED talk from Kellee Santiago who claims that Roger Ebert's claim that video games can't be art is wrong.

This is Bogost's personal webpage and I thought it was interesting to look at not just to gather more info about Bogost, but also because the website itself has an interesting layout worth dissecting or borrowing for our own sites. :)

The author argues that Word has too many workarounds, and especially when it comes to publishing on the web. There's another nice example of the code Word throws in there, too.

An article about Jonathan Blow, creator of Braid. His game is featured in the first chapter of Bogost's book ("Art") as an example of a proceduralist game.

On "casual" games and their addictiveness