That they are. Got to love the type on these.

"Cosmovox is a unique and innovative musical instrument for the iPhone and iPod touch." Nearly a theremin. Nearly.

"Tim, or perhaps T.J. (we were at the pudding stage), began talking about the experience of editing Cliffhanger (the edition we were going to print), and about some of the material that had to be changed or cast away – characters’ names, a lesbian sex scene, the ending itself – and we wondered whether, in a born-digital text, these sloughed-off palimpsests acquired an existence of their own, beyond the shadows of an HFS hard drive; in a library run by Veet Voojagig, perhaps." Picador publish both the final version of the book in print – and the urtext as a separate digital product. Fun.

"The time comes again. Here’s the first five pages from the first issues of PHONOGRAM: THE SINGLES CLUB. Not only that, but we include seven sample B-side pages, plus a little introduction about what they’re all about, like." Looking jolly good, and am rather excited by the B-sides.

Wonderful pastiches of popular US newstand titles to promote the new season of Dexter. The New Yorker pastiche is particularly superb.

"To be seen as art, games need to be easier. A lot easier. They don't have to be only easy. They can provide Elite Super Awesome levels for the enjoyment of those who love to be challenged." Eesh, I don't know. I think there needs to be easier games – hell, games are getting easier all the time – but a super-hardcore game like Psyvariar does _not_ need a built-in easy mode. Its purpose is to be hard. Not convinced by this article at all, unfortunately.

"Because stupidity is such an unthinkably terrible thing in our culture, the students will then spend hours constructing arguments that explain why they are intelligent yet are having difficulties. The moment you start down this path, you have lost your focus."

"Innovation seems to mean doing something so significantly different that you alienate the userbase that should be familiar with your product. More applaudable, in my mind, are those games that smuggle in small amounts of unique and exciting gameplay that enhances the experience without fundamentally redefining it… Warhammer Online is a game that abounds with this kind of innovation. From elements that are purely new and thought provoking, to small gameplay tweaks that subtly push new perspectives on tired MMO cliches, there is a lot of good stuff to be found in the game." Brandon Reihnart takes a look at WAR.

4chan /b/ thread on the American economic deficit, which explains things quite well, and has stick-man-anon illustrations to boot.

"[the film] presents the simple joy of photography and, without hyperbolizing or talking down to its audience, gives a comprehensive explanation of how the camera works." Lovely film explaining the way the SX-70 works, from the Eames brothers; the explanation of how the film itself works is beautiful.

"So we decided to treat Availabot as a world probe: it was decided that we would take Availabot through to the position of being factory ready, and in the process learn as much as possible about the processes of manufacture, and how to develop these kind of complex products with so many moving parts." And, best news of all: Availabot will be coming to market. Excellent.

"…this leads up to a discussion of two things: the OAuth protocol which aims, amongst other laudable goals, to help safeguard users’ passwords, and the distinctly unnerving trend which Jeremy Keith has christened the password anti-pattern, which really doesn’t." A clear, articulate explanation of the issues around authentication.

In 2000, a group of seventh-graders were asked to draw what they thought scientists looked like and describe their pictures. Then, after visting Fermilab, they were asked to repeat the exercise. Some of the quotations are genuinely excellent, cf "Some people think that (scientists) are just some genius nerds in white coats, but they are actually people who are trying to live up to their dreams and learn more." Aren't we all?

"At GDC 2006 Sony’s Lead Programmer – Tim Moss had talk titled “God of War: How the Left and Right Brain Learned to Love One Another”. I read it, remembered mainly that it was interesting they had used Maya as main tool and kinda forgot about it. Only recently I’ve found out that recording from this session has been made available (for free) as well. You can download it here. Combined together they’re really interesting and I recommend everyone to spend few minutes and listen to it while reading slides." Some interesting stuff – God of War pre-scripts a lot of things that other people might want to do in real time, and as such, makes some stuff simpler, and makes controlling the players' experience easier.

A detailed look at various techniques for greebling Lego models.

"To me, these bizarre sequences represent adaptations of classical Brechtian stagecraft to video games. The way we interact with a game is different than the way we interact with a staged fiction, and by manipulating the tools specific to game-interaction– the interface and the mission-delivery system– Kojima delivers that sense of alienating weirdness that's the hallmark of the Verfremdungseffekt." I like Pliskin's commentary here – the absurdity of Arsenal Gear was great, and much preferable to the boss-rush that followed it.

"The dissertation builds on available sociological approaches to understanding everyday life in the networked city to show that emergent technologies reshape our experiences of spatiality, temporality and embodiment. It contributes to methodological innovation through the use of data bricolage and research blogging 1, which are presented through experimental and recombinant textual strategies; and it contributes to the field of science and technology studies by bringing together actor-network theory with the sociology of expectations in order to empirically evaluate an area of cutting-edge design." Anne Galloway's PhD thesis, now online.

A remake of "You Have To Burn The Rope", in the style of an Intellivision game. They've changed an important play mechanic and given the game an entertaining twist ending. Fun.