Eric Kaltman is blogging the Cabrinety Collection, and he's doing a great job so far.

"The Stephen M. Cabrinety Collection in the History of Microcomputing at Stanford University consists of several thousands of pieces of computer hardware and software. Dating primarily from the 1980s and 1990s, the collection chronicles the formative era of personal computing, specifically computer gaming." Amazing.

"Psychologists know that torture causes, among other horrid things, lasting mental-health problems. But 24's frantically violent fairy tales are typical of what passes for mass-cultural debate about torture. We're not encouraged to think about what happens next, so we don't. It is a massive failure of the public imagination. Which is why we need more torture in videogames." Clive Thompson responds to Richard Bartle's issues with that WoW quest, and he makes some sensible points, although I still have some issues with the Blizzard implementation.

Lovely – and, amazingly, free – shmup for the iPhone. Move the ship up/down with the direction of your finger; drag over enemies to lock; release to fire. Pretty, fast, and not crippled despite your finger being in the way.

"The problem I have with the note is not that he was having a party and didn't invite me, it was that he selected a vibrant background of balloons, effectively stating that his party was going to be vibrant and possibly have balloons and that I couldn't come." David Thorne knows how to wind people up.