-
'Somali pirate leaders say they have links around the world to help them ensure the delivery of aid without being detected by the armed forces of “enemy governments.”'
links for 2010-01-30
links for 2010-01-28
-
'Scattered across the centre of San Francisco are almost seventy semi-secret spaces, privately owned but open to the public…. These so-called POPOS (Privately Owned Public Open Spaces) allow alluring vistas of San Francisco and access to its intimate interiors. However, they are often poorly indicated – perhaps a deliberate tactic by the private companies who own the spaces to prevent the pesky public from using them.'
-
Some numbers on top-selling XBLIG games.
-
'The AI crowd, too, was pleased with the result and the attention, but dismayed by the fact that Deep Blue was hardly what their predecessors had imagined decades earlier when they dreamed of creating a machine to defeat the world chess champion.'
links for 2010-01-27
-
'It’s fitting, then, that the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences, the industry group which puts on the prestigious DICE Summit each year, would choose Crane as the recipient of its first Pioneer Award, which recognizes videogaming visionaries who took the first steps in the early days of the industry.'
links for 2010-01-26
-
'If you don’t like what’s in your own head, then the world has done a number on you.'
VVVVVV.
It’s not necessarily a question of how hard a game is; it’s often more about how forgiving or unforgiving it is. VVVVVV is crazy difficult in places, but it’s also extremely generous.
links for 2010-01-22
-
'As Americans across the country wrestle with spouses and their thermostats over how low to go… there are those who are living nearly without heat by choice, and doing just fine, thank you very much.'
-
'Researchers found that players with a larger caudate nucleus and putamen did best on the variable priority training, while players who had a larger nucleus accumbens did better than their counterparts in the early stages of the training period, regardless of their training group.'
links for 2010-01-20
-
A game to teach users to deal with Office '07's horrible toolbar: 'If you start with the idea that users are learning machines, all our observations about usability tests snap into place. Of course, people stumble when they use an application for the first time. They don’t understand the interface because it is new to them. And users will stay at that inexperienced level if we do not make an attempt to teach them how to improve.'
Shoffle Roffle
I got a sudden urge to prove that I could make a game from scratch in just one weekend. Here’s the result: Shoffle Roffle. Conclusion? It is very possible to make a game in under two days. Making a good game, on the other hand, probably requires a little more time.
links for 2010-01-17
-
'If we're building a public stage, we need to give people the ability to protect themselves, the ability to face the consequences honestly. We cannot hide behind rhetoric of how everyone is public just because everyone we know in our privileged circles is walking confidently into the public sphere and assuming no risk.'
-
'if aggressive self-promotion and pompous self-aggrandizement is what gets people ahead in the world, then at the individual level, it's better to perform in that kind of way than it is to sit passively and watch yourself get passed over by more clumsy, venal, smug, aggressive, macho idiots. But at the level of the company, at the level of the community, at the level of the industry – are these attributes in fact in any way desirable? Does self-promotion really lead to great products or projects? Is the ability to lie and mislead really what it takes to achieve?'
links for 2010-01-16
-
'As developers are turning into publishers and the new landscape emerges, the main problem for game operators is to acquire users for their services in a fragmented and competitive environment.'
-
'The cuts… will reduce frequencies on every Muni line and, if they're approved by the agency's Board, will be coupled with fare increases on services including the F-line, express routes, and cable cars. Numerous additional changes are proposed, including charging MTA employees for parking and seeking labor concessions.'