L33t Links: Volcanoes and the Internet Edition
Air travel news this week has been heavily disrupted by the eruption of the Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajökull. (Best reaction to that so far, and best response by stranded travelers.) As of today, the ash cloud is still causing trouble, though most countries have reopened their airspace. Previous eruptions in the last 2000 years have all been followed shortly after by an eruption of the neighboring Katla, an even bigger volcano. That would be bad news for the airline industry, to say the least.
Roger Ebert created a stir by writing a post arguing that videogames can never be art. (By "art" he seems to mean something like "high art" or "good art", though he seems to imply that it's about more than his personal taste.) Brian Ashcraft of Kotaku pointed out the obvious with eloquence, that Ebert is hopelessly inadequate as a critic of videogames. Mike Thomsen of IGN provides a brilliant answer to why the question is important, if video game fans, critics, or creators bought Ebert's argument, they would be intellectually impoverished when it comes to thinking about games. Tycho and Gabe were eventually compelled to comment, but seemed to decide that Ebert wasn't even worth a solid rhetorical crushing. Speaking of games and art, here's one recent title that you should be aware of.
Facebook announced new features which will bring their site to the rest of the internet (moreso than previous). Among them, easy ways to update your profile (to put more data in the hands of advertisers) and a "Login with Facebook" box that automatically shows users which of their friends are already using the site in question (bringing the forces of social obligation that make a terrible game like Farmville to bear on everything on the internet). Speaking of Farmville, the intersection of game design and marketing is indeed pretty scary, I think Jesse Schell is right to say that hasn't even begun to be explored. And Facebook is at the center of that. They really should be the one company Google is afraid of.
Twitter announced the addition of annotations for tweets, which will be what client developers make of it. The clear thing is that the future of Twitter has little to do with SMS and everything to do with mobile computing devices. (140 characters will be "length of a tweet" long after SMS is forgotten, probably.) Speaking of Twitter, Google's Follow Finder for Twitter is quite useful.
Various people are angry at the iPad's crazy terms of use for developers, which specify the language that apps must be "originally written in" (presumably to try to discourage automated porting, or to force people to use just Apple's suite of tools?), in addition to the people angry that the iPad hardware is closed. Brett McLaughlin argues that the iPad being closed isn't a big deal because it's not that hard to hack, missing the rather significant fact that doing so is now a felony due to the DMCA. Personally, I don't want an iPad that much, but I'm looking forward to the competition.
A few bonus links:
Roger Ebert created a stir by writing a post arguing that videogames can never be art. (By "art" he seems to mean something like "high art" or "good art", though he seems to imply that it's about more than his personal taste.) Brian Ashcraft of Kotaku pointed out the obvious with eloquence, that Ebert is hopelessly inadequate as a critic of videogames. Mike Thomsen of IGN provides a brilliant answer to why the question is important, if video game fans, critics, or creators bought Ebert's argument, they would be intellectually impoverished when it comes to thinking about games. Tycho and Gabe were eventually compelled to comment, but seemed to decide that Ebert wasn't even worth a solid rhetorical crushing. Speaking of games and art, here's one recent title that you should be aware of.
Facebook announced new features which will bring their site to the rest of the internet (moreso than previous). Among them, easy ways to update your profile (to put more data in the hands of advertisers) and a "Login with Facebook" box that automatically shows users which of their friends are already using the site in question (bringing the forces of social obligation that make a terrible game like Farmville to bear on everything on the internet). Speaking of Farmville, the intersection of game design and marketing is indeed pretty scary, I think Jesse Schell is right to say that hasn't even begun to be explored. And Facebook is at the center of that. They really should be the one company Google is afraid of.
Twitter announced the addition of annotations for tweets, which will be what client developers make of it. The clear thing is that the future of Twitter has little to do with SMS and everything to do with mobile computing devices. (140 characters will be "length of a tweet" long after SMS is forgotten, probably.) Speaking of Twitter, Google's Follow Finder for Twitter is quite useful.
Various people are angry at the iPad's crazy terms of use for developers, which specify the language that apps must be "originally written in" (presumably to try to discourage automated porting, or to force people to use just Apple's suite of tools?), in addition to the people angry that the iPad hardware is closed. Brett McLaughlin argues that the iPad being closed isn't a big deal because it's not that hard to hack, missing the rather significant fact that doing so is now a felony due to the DMCA. Personally, I don't want an iPad that much, but I'm looking forward to the competition.
A few bonus links:
- Continuity (a really sweet Flash game)
- The power of vi
- Robot Socrates is kind of a jerk
- Why Americans believe that crime is getting worse, when it's not
- An article on a $177 bagel sandwich