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March 30, 2007

Incremental Awesomeness

Robin says,

So there's this game called Desktop Tower Defense (yeah, thanks for nothing). It is one of those super-addictive web games that comes out periodically (see also).

Usually they get made and sort of sit there. Well, the guy behind Desktop Tower Defense... is upgrading it!

This is brilliant. If Desktop Tower Defense gets new enemies and units every two weeks or so I am pretty much never going to stop playing.

Comments (5) | Permasnark | Posted: 12:41 PM

March 28, 2007

Radical Radical Transparency Transparency

Robin says,

I totally do not have time to process this right now, but I'm pretty sure it is awesome:

  1. Wired does an issues on radical transparency. One part is a piece by Fred Vogelstein on Microsoft's blogging efforts.
  2. Microsoft's PR firm, Waggener Edstrom, writes up a giant briefing document for MSFT execs on how to deal effectively with Vogelstein.
  3. The firm accidentally emails this document to Vogelstein. Ta-da!
  4. Wired editor Chris Anderson blogs about it.
  5. Fred Vogelstein blogs about it.
  6. Wait for it...
  7. The president of Waggener Edstrom blogs about it!

The whole thing has transformed into a kind of crazy transparency-off. Yes, I have made up my mind: This is awesome.

P.S. Also in this issue of Wired: Clive Thompson quotes me! (I commented on his blog while he was working on this piece.)

Comments (1) | Permasnark | Posted: 12:18 AM

March 27, 2007

Cape Town Living

Robin says,

20070327_southafrica.jpg

More photos! PingMag writes up The Beautiful Struggle, a big ol' book of photos taken in Cape Town, South Africa. Even if you don't read the interview with the book's creator, scroll down the page and read the photo captions. Really cool stuff.

Comments (0) | Permasnark | Posted: 12:23 PM

Shanghai Living

Robin says,

20070327_shanghai.jpg

There are only a few photos on this page, but they are really phenomenal: apartments in Shanghai.

Living spaces -- real ones, not the Dwell-worthy -- are so interesting. Anybody know of any projects to document and share them?

(Via.)

Comments (3) | Permasnark | Posted: 11:37 AM

March 26, 2007

Hal Varian

Robin says,

The Berkeley information economist Hal Varian regularly writes cool analysis pieces for the NYT. As part of my quest to transform everything into the universe into a feed: Here they are.

Comments (0) | Permasnark | Posted: 9:28 PM

MMORPG Sociology

Robin says,

Weird finding: MMORPG players are more likely to be first-born than middle, youngest, or only children.

Also: They are areligious and left-leaning. But,

Players who preferred to be play Paladins in WoW tended to be more conservative and religion tended to play a bigger role in their lives.

I love this stuff.

All from the Nick Yee's incomparably cool Daedalus Project.

Comments (1) | Permasnark | Posted: 10:52 AM

March 23, 2007

Fatal Flaw

Robin says,

Whoah. I just realized something. That News Corp.-NBC-big media YouTube competitor is totally going to use Windows Media, isn't it? It totally is. Consider this my official prediction.

Comments (7) | Permasnark | Posted: 11:16 AM

March 19, 2007

Superlegitimacy

Robin says,

Though a bit old, this is one of the best things I've read on the internet in a while:

Yesterday I took a Tokyu line train from Okayama to Meguro. I was standing in the first carriage, right behind the driver. I noticed a series of odd cries, muffled by glass, and realized they were coming from the white-gloved driver himself. Alone in his cabin, he was accompanying his actions with sharp cries. It was astonishing, yet, weirdly, I was the only passenger paying any attention. My first thought was that the driver was mentally ill. [...] I watched -- and filmed -- the lunatic. He did seem exceptionally focussed. At each station he made an immaculate white-gloved gesture -- a series of florid manual curlicues more like the gestures of an orchestral conductor than a train driver. He pointed at the TV screens in his console showing the doors, then pulled the train away with both gloved hands on his accelerator lever, uttering as if by compulsion his ecstatic falling cry: 'Kkkkyyyyyoooooooo!' Crossing points or passing other trains, he made similar noises. They seemed less like words than explosions of passion for the regular events of the job. And yet it was a passion as formalized as the whoops and howls of kabuki actors.

What's going on? Why, it's superlegitimacy.

(Warning: It might also be naive orientalism.)

Comments (1) | Permasnark | Posted: 10:46 PM

March 18, 2007

A Rare Rant

Robin says,

Did anybody else see "300"?

I thought it was basically war porn.

Via Rex I just saw this NYT op-ed by Neal Stephenson defending the movie somewhat:

The less politicized majority, who perhaps would like to draw inspiration from this story without glossing over the crazy and defective aspects of Spartan society, have turned, in droves, to a film from the alternative cultural universe of fantasy and science fiction. Styled and informed by pulp novels, comic books, video games and Asian martial arts flicks, science fiction eats this kind of material up, and expresses it in ways that look impossibly weird to people who aren