Posts from — April 2003

TURN OFF YOUR TV week

The KeyPaso – a computer in a keyboard.

New computer called the KeyPaso that's contained entirely within a keyboard, so all that's needed is a monitor.
Read [Translated from Japanese using Babelfish]

[Gizmodo]

It's a commodore 64, i've seen it before…. honest.

Sub-$1000 universal disc player.

From Denon, the first so-called single disc universal player to drop below a thousand bucks. These universal players can handle just about anything that's shiny and five inches in diameter, including Super Audio CDs, DVD-Audio discs, CDs, CD-Rs, CD-RWs, DVD-R, DVD-RW, and DVD-video discs.
Read

[Gizmodo]

nifty, now if we could just store about 50 of these away for 40 years or so….

Not Exactly Darwin's Radio: Philosophy Radio and Philosophy Lectures. Philosophy Radio and Philosophy Lectures

Among many selections are Relativism and Scepticism, Ethics and Morality ,The Origins of Value, Heidegger's Being and Time, Memes, Zombies and Human Consciousness, The Soul In Our Time and a football match between Grecian and German philosophers. We call it soccer. There's more comedy featuring a pseudointellectual cult leader beloved by privileged prep school students and college freshmen everywhere and stavrosthewonderchicken has recommended The Philosophers Drinking Song. Miguel has his picks, too. I found this while researching my I Feel Therefore I Am post yesterday and mentioned it in a comment but, heck, it deserves its own post, no?

[MetaFilter]

mmm philosophy humor

one humanism or another is fine by me.

New Global Vision.

New Global Vision is an interesting video project out of Italy. They are aiming to archive videos from around the world to ease the burden of bandwidth on any single download source. They've assembled a database of 130 videos so far — all under the Attribution, Noncommerical, Share Alike Creative Commons licenses.

New Global Vision is also powered by free software technology.

[Creative Commons: weblog]

interesting, this is something like i'm working on….

Semantic Studios: Trust by Design. Peter Morville. In recent months, I've become a big fan of the Stanford Persuasive Technology Lab and the Web Credibility Project. Their studies regarding how people evaluate a web site's credibility show the critical importance of information design and structure. [Tomalak's Realm]

some interesting work here….

Philip Greenspun on the death of the MIT Media Lab. [Scripting News]

yes, it will be viewed with disdain hopefully as a marker of the downfall of public oriented research…

Digital Storytelling Festival returns
Eight years ago I attended the first Digital Storytelling Festival in Crested Butte, Colo., at which a group of three dozen or so invited guests assembled to talk about the collision of narrative art and digital technology. It remains one of the high moments of my conference-going career — and not only because Crested Butte is about 9000 feet above sea level.

In the three successive years that I attended, the conference grew in size, and it acquired a more specific focus on how individuals — professional artists and everyday people alike — can use digital tools to tell their own stories and break through the logjam of “old” media. Yet that first event set a pattern of intelligence and camaraderie that held up through the years.

I was unable to go to conference number five, in fall 1999, and since then the event has been on hiatus — its founder and guiding spirit, Dana Atchley, passed away in Dec. 2000. But Dana's wife Denise — working with Joe Lambert and Nina Mullen of the Center for Digital Storytelling, and with the core of people that have formed the Digital Storytellers Association — has revived and revitalized the festival this year. It happens June 12-15, and I'm going to be talking there, along with a bunch of great people (including, as of now, Brenda Laurel, Harry Marks, Jonathan Delacour, Derek Powazek, Kit Laybourne, and many others).

One big thing that's changed is the location: The festival has moved to Sedona, Arizona. Arizona in June may sound like a recipe for frying, but Sedona's up high (though not as high as Crested Butte) — I've been there in June, and it's delightful. There's lots more info here. [Scott Rosenberg's Links & Comment]

nifty i hope the invite deena.

Genderplay: Successes and Failures in Character Designs for Videogames.
How do gendered elements of character design impact gameplay? [game girl advance]

Interesting, now is the hypersexualization really the problem? or is there a nascent appeal toward stabile identities…. is there a problem or does the theory and assumptions make us believe there is…..