Lovely behind-the-scenes on how the Guardian iPod app slowly evolved.

"I've long held that all media transit from being "functional" to "art" when they are no longer economically viable. It is that transition which dampers the cost and the consequence of failure and makes the space necessary for people to experiment and play. Think of lithography which was born of purely utilitarian needs and sherparded the arrival of the mass-produced image only to become capital-O objects as soon as the offset press was invented." I love Aaron.

"Unlike the iPhone and Android apps, which are built on feeds from the website, this one actually recycles the already-formatted newspaper pages. A script analyses the InDesign files from the printed paper and uses various parameters (page number, physical area and position that a story occupies, headline size, image size etc) to assign a value to the story. The content is then automatically rebuilt according to those values in a new InDesign template for the app.

It’s not quite the “Robot Mark Porter” that Schulze and Jones imagined in the workshops, but it’s as close as we’re likely to see in my lifetime. Of course robots do not make good subs or designers, so at this stage some humans intervene to refine, improve and add character, particularly to the article pages. Then the InDesign data goes into a digital sausage machine to emerge at the other end as HTML." Niiiiice.

"I suppose the point I was driving to that I let myself get derailed from is that all these trends in western cinema developed over time. It moved in eras of film, from the silent film, to the beginning of the talkies, to the pulp westerns, to their revival with Stagecoach and the classical period of westerns, to the revisionist and spaghetti westerns to the brooding psychological westerns of today. What RDR fails to pick up on is that these are all products not only of the time they were set, but the time they were made." This is a good post on one of my problems with the (generally very good) Red Dead Redemption: rather than trying to be *a* Western, it tries to ape *all* Westerns, and thus is all over the place tonally. Better examples in the full body – worth a read.

"Thinking about what defines a particular game medium, one doesn’t always consider elements like the player’s physical posture, and where they sit relative to their fellow players. But the experience of playing a digital game with a friend on the iPad proves quite different than that of sitting side-by-side on a couch with Xbox controllers in hand, or sitting alone with a mic strapped to your head. Your sense of posture and presence is part of the game’s medium, as much as the material of the game’s manufacture. Playing Small World gave me a frisson of novel confusion, marrying the player-interactivity of a board game with the board-interactivity of a computer game. I felt the seam that joined them, but it felt right. This was something new, comfortable, and fun." Jason McIntosh on how tablet gaming is similar to the "cocktail" cabinets of old.

Today's Guardian, from Phil, which is brilliant, for all the reasons explained in his post about it.

"Although the finished site looks nothing like a newspaper I think it has more in common with newspapers’ best features than most news websites do. The sense of browsing quickly through stories and reading the ones that catch your eye, feels similar." Phil is smart. This is good.

"McGilchrist's suggestion is that the encouragement of precise, categorical thinking at the expense of background vision and experience – an encouragement which, from Plato's time on, has flourished to such impressive effect in European thought – has now reached a point where it is seriously distorting both our lives and our thought. Our whole idea of what counts as scientific or professional has shifted towards literal precision – towards elevating quantity over quality and theory over experience – in a way that would have astonished even the 17th-century founders of modern science, though they were already far advanced on that path." Sharp review of what sounds like a fascinating book; I particularly liked this quotation.

"Building a working computer from Nand gates alone is a thrilling intellectual exercise. It demonstrates the supreme power of recursive ascent, and teaches the students that building computer systems is — more than anything else — a triumph of human reasoning." Ooh, that could be good, when I have an hour spare. (Another Google TechTalk).

"Every day a song is posted, one second shorter than yesterday's. A tumblr by Tom Ewing." Awesome.

In which the Guardian links to Noticings – hurrah! – and describes it as "Random I-spy for grown-ups."

"…the print method buffers the output. The easiest way to get around this (for a situation like the above) is to set the sync property on $stdout." Aha. That's where I've been going wrong!

"The Guardian is prevented from identifying the MP who has asked the question, what the question is, which minister might answer it, or where the question is to be found. The Guardian is also forbidden from telling its readers why the paper is prevented – for the first time in memory – from reporting parliament. Legal obstacles, which cannot be identified, involve proceedings, which cannot be mentioned, on behalf of a client who must remain secret. The only fact the Guardian can report is that the case involves the London solicitors Carter-Ruck, who specialise in suing the media for clients, who include individuals or global corporations." Oh, I'm looking forward to the next Private Eye.

Receipt as information design. Cabel is right: why do you get this *after* the meal? Other than that: an interesting move, and good use of space.

"…he and his brethren were plotting a future in which all writers and musicians would be at the mercy of the mathematicians and the electronic and numerological world they have created. Art is now content. It merely embellishes a "platform" of the kind I struggle to read about in the media pages which are now indistinguishable from the technology pages." I like Andrew Martin's writing a lot, but this article is both rubbish and angry-making. Grr.

"Valve subtly guides the player’s attention toward significant events and objects by using elements naturally found in the game world. This allows the player to retain control of their perspective without getting lost or confused, and contributes to an overall immersive experience." Matthew Gallant puts together a nice selection of screengrabs to illustrate Valve's craft.

"There was an implicit value judgement in Greenfield's talk between the "purely sensory experiences" of raves or today's computer games, and the cognitive activities of reading a book or listening to a symphony, which, because they make us "see one thing in terms of another thing", involve a more mature mental engagement. For Greenfield, the Beethoven was a higher experience because it offered an "escape from the moment", where a rave was about losing yourself to the "thrill of the moment". I think that's a flimsy distinction, since both are about submitting to the sensory power of music. I'd like to see the difference in brain activity between somebody "escaping" life's mundanities and another person "thrilling" to the implacable now of the beat."

"I thoroughly enjoy the more real time nature of these diary fragments popping up among my friends’ updates. It’s easy to picture @samuelpepys conducting his business and pleasure, travelling around London — from his home near the Tower of London to Deptford to Westminster — when he’s updating you on his progress during the day." Phil on the joy of small updates from things that aren't (quite) people.

"Sony acts like a character in a Charlotte Brontë novel–they seem to think they have an entire lifetime to seize the moment."

It's Oregon Trail, but where you take everybody's favourite emo band on tour of the states. Surprisingly deep and detailed, an affectionate tribute to Apple II entertainment and the rigours of being a touring rock band. It is very silly, and somewhat ace, and will be getting a blog post in due course.

"Tips and tricks only the pros knew, UNTIL NOW! Get ready to PWN up some NUBS on Xbox Live and get some MAD BP'S BRO!" I'm pretty sure I've played this guy.

"These are just various photos taken during the development cycle of the businessib. Enjoy them. We hope you think they are as hilarious as we do." Oh my word.

"If you keep the city and concentrate on putting more world into it, imaginativeness becomes the primary obstacle– you can add things into this city without having to add much physical space and new assets. There's legions of empty storefronts and empty buildings, waiting to be filled. And media– web sites, radio stations, tv shows– don't take up space either. Think of this cheap empty space as a place to tell new stories, because as a developer, you are good at this." Iroquois, hitting many nails on the head all at once, again.

The Guardian Open Platform launches, with their Content API, their Data Store, and a selection of client libraries for the API (one of which I did a smidge of work on). This is not just a good thing, it's a good thing Done Right, and I'm looking forward to what's next from the Open Platform team.

"A collection of accidents that happened while working on maps and other graphics." Bloopers from interactive infographics. Delightful; the patina and happy accidents of the 21st century.

Custodian is the Ruby gem for accessing the Guardian Open Platform Content API that James Darling, Kalv Sandhu, and I (although my contribution was minor) built. There's a Google Code link to it, but I'd imagine the github version is where the action will be.

"You may not know his name but you will certainly know his work: Morris Cassanova (aka Mr Chicken) designs and makes signs for most of the fried chicken shops in the UK." That's a good market to have sewn up, I'd imagine.

Jones annotates his screengrabs from the James Coburn classic; lovely to see it all captured so well, even if I'd disagree that the plot is a thing of "gossamer" – it's a _tiny_ bit thicker, surely?

"With Half-Life and Counter-Strike, and more recently Team Fortress 2, we've learned that we're no longer making stand-alone games but creating entertainment services. With Left 4 Dead we're extending that tradition by creating additional gameplay and releasing our internal tools to aspiring developers so they may also create and distribute new Left 4 Dead experiences." Lots of places have the news; this quotation is the killer, though. "Entertainment services". GAAS, anyone?

"What's So Great About The Wire?", a course at UC Berkley. Given the comparisons they suggest, to leave out any of Series 2 from their studies is, frankly, criminal.

"On Tuesday we shipped an update that added a bunch of features / bugfixes / balancing tweaks that came out of the community's feedback. In particular, it made some changes to the underlying TF damage system, and as part of that, it modified the way critical hits are determined. We thought it might be interesting to dig a little into the change, and hopefully give you some insight into our thinking." Another cracking example of explaining game mechanics clearly and directly, to an engaged community.

"You've got to get shit happening – you can talk about it, you can write it down, it means nothing until you actually make it and think f**k that's nothing like what I thought it was going to be! That happens most of the time." Gary Penn on prototyping, getting real, and how they do stuff at Denki. More good stuff.

"We always start with the idea of toys," says Ralfe. "They're the quickest way into finding fun. Rules aren't fun, so we never begin with them." Great feature from Keith Stuart on a visit to Denki; lots of good stuff in here.