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"Instead of aiming to elevate the medium by making games that are more socially responsible – which by my estimation reduces quickly down to a feature driven approach that ultimately offers little more than cheap didactic moralizing, our aim should be instead to empower our creative visionaries to explore the human condition through their work." In a nutshell: rather than explicitly trying to make 'worthy' games, why not just let people make games about, you know, the human condition – ie, what every other artform does – than just about shooting dudes? (Disclaimer: sometimes, shooting dudes is fun. But I like Clint.)
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Very simple; very effective.
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"Golden Hook is an innovative fashion brand which allows you to create made-to-order beanies by choosing your beanie style, material, and color. You also choose the authentic grandmother who will knit your beanie from our gallery of grandma photos." Awesome.
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Some of these are very nice; many are likely to end up on posters for dubstep nights in Shoreditch soon, I fear.
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"Need a little excitement? Snap into a little Flickr game I just discovered called Noticings!" Noticings is on the internet telly.
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"Over the weekend, I wrote a web application that takes advantage of the new [EchoNest] APIs to make it easy to get a click plot for just about any track. Just type in the name of the artist and track and you’ll get the click plot – you don’t have to find the audio or upload it or wrestle with python or gnuplot." Echonest is bloody magic.
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"So, is it possible to mix segments and querystring?" Sort of, maybe, seems to be the answer.
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"The original Keynote Kung-fu article describes how to set up and use Keynote for the first time, but once you’ve done a couple of presentations, you’re going to want more." Rands drops some Keynote science, and I learn at least one new thing.
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Even if it's got a long way to go, there's so much promise and potential here – and it's interesting to see how refined some of the puzzle ideas are. And: mind-bending in the way the best puzzle games are.
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"I'm looking forward to working with new, clever people and getting my hands dirty again. I'm charged with leading the Open Library into fresh, fun territory; to enlist many hands to make "a page on the web for every book ever published" a great resource. I'm thrilled to be working with Brewster Kahle and his crack team in an important time for books on the web." What a perfect hire. Can't wait to see what George brings to it.
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This is epic and brilliant and has so many jumping-off points I need to read it again, and again, and again.
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"Now that suburban housewives in Missouri are letting their thoughts be known via Twitter, it's as if writing itself is thought to be under attack, invaded from all sides by the unwashed masses whose thoughts have not been sanctioned as Literature™. In many ways, I'm reminded of Truman Capote's infamous put-down of Jack Kerouac: "That's not writing, it's typing.""
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Pop band from Bristol, made good singles, got a deal, rather than touring recorded an album, album got shelved by label that had wanted them to tour, band broke up, album now sees light of day from SVC, for three quid. Phew!
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Lanchester writing about games, from the point of view of a smart person who's actually played the games he described. I certainly don't agree with all his points, but I don't disagree with them all, and he's not mouthing off: he's making smart connections and indicating more than a passing familiarity with the medium. Might write a tad more on this.
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"1352 components driven by a 450 link chain and nickel silver drums, prices range from $275k–$400k." Ignoring the price: do want very much.
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It's basically Outrun 2 SP, but in hi-def, and on XBLA and PSN. And it looks like it has all the music intact. Very exciting!
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The metagame is the game. Use the elephant to earn achievements. Apart from earning slightly /too/ many instantly at the beginning, it's a lot of fun. Don't reach for the hints too early.
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Yes, it's an app about weight loss. But: the UI is superb in its touchability and suitability for task at hand, and the reporting functionality is solid (and looks like it'll get much better).
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"Well-designed games make us forget the technical impediments to the enjoyment of art, and this is more than half the battle."
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Yes.
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"KeyCue gives you an instant overview of the overall functionality of any application, plus lets you automatically start working more efficiently by making use of menu shortcuts." Awesome. Really, really awesome. I might well end up registering this.
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Jos Buivenga's font foundry, with many free faces (usually in a few weights – other weights are paid-for). Some beautiful stuff in here.
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Beautiful, free, sans-serif font. Gorgeous – especially at 900-weight.
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"His advice for those attempting a project like this, is to get people who understand the web. DICE hired a web development director, and a web producer. "Without those people, we would have never made it as far as we have," he says. He also recommends a web tech director, which DICE did not need to hire "because we had a team in DICE who were pretty strong."" Excellent article about building games for the online age; the section on the socially-driven BH website is very incisive.
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"Bandcamp isn’t Yet Another Place to Put Your Music. We power a site that’s yours. So instead of our logo plastered between banner ads for Sexy Singles Chat, your fans see your design, your music, your name, your URL. You retain all ownership rights, and we just hang out in the background handling the tech stuff." Via Waxy; looks really excellent, and some wonderful stat-gathering tools for bandowners.