DocumentCloud Critical Gaming Project | Play. Critique. Teach. A game studies collaborative at the University of Washington. by Theresa Horstman and Edmond Chang Thanks to those who joined us for our most recent Gaming Keywords session, CLOSE/DISTANT on April 4, 2013. The games and readings represented multiple interpretations of our fifth keyword for this year, and as usual, the conversation ran the gamut: reading, playing, research methods, intimacy and space. Close playing is to video games what can be interpreted as the equivalent of close reading in literature. Distant reading, as summarized in Kathryn Schulz’s article, is a large scale analysis of large works of literature–much like big data in play analytics. In other words, the study of, research in, and critique of games requires a set of practices and approaches that can handle the multimodal- and multimedia-ness of video games. All in all, the session was thoughtful and insightful.
How It Works Socrative is a smart student response system that empowers teachers by engaging their classrooms with a series of educational exercises and games. Our apps are super simple and take seconds to login. Socrative runs on tablets, smartphones, and laptops. Teachers login through their device and select an activity which controls the flow of questions and games. Students simply login with their device and interact real time with the content. Student responses are visually represented for multiple choice, true/false and Short Answer questions.
30 Places to Find Open Data on the Web Finding an interesting data set and a story it tells can be the most difficult part of producing an infographic or data visualization. Data visualization is the end artifact, but it involves multiple steps – finding reliable data, getting the data in the right format, cleaning it up (an often underestimated step in the amount of time it takes!) and then finding the story you will eventually visualize. Following is a list useful resources for finding data. Your needs will vary from one project to another, but this list is a great place to start — and bookmark. 1. Data.gov: This is the go-to resource for government-related data. 2. These are the places that house data from all kinds of sources. 3. Usually, the best place to get social data for an API is the site itself: Instagram, GetGlue, Foursquare, pretty much all social media sites have their own API’s. 4. Wunderground has detailed weather information and also let’s you search historical data by zip code or city. 5. 6. 7.
The Battle Continues: Samsung To Appeal Apple’s European Injunction As expected, Samsung has decided to fight back against Apple’s preliminary injunction to ban sales of the Galaxy Tab 10.1 across the European Union (excluding the Netherlands). On August 25, the rumble continues, as Samsung will go to court in Dusseldorf, Germany to appeal the court’s decision, reports the Wall Street Journal. It’s been a long and bloody fight so far, with both sides losing quite a bit of ground. In Samsung’s case, the European injunction is by far the greatest setback. But the GalTab has also been put on hold in Australia, with decisions pending here in the U.S. The GalTab is widely regarded as the strongest competitor to the iPad, and Apple’s widespread control of the tablet market is certainly threatened by this new Samsung slate. At the same time, Apple tends to overreach. In any case, we’re the ones with the most to lose.
Top 10 Geek List | Geek 24: Gadgets, Techn This is the mother of all top 10 geek lists. We just scoured around and put together a list of all the Top 10 stuff you would find interesting. Starting first with our own Top 10 Geek Movies. Top 10 Geek Movies Top 10 Worst Gadgets 2005 Top 10 Geek Gifts Top 10 Geek T-Shirts Top 10 Geek Novels Top 10 Science Fiction Movies Top 10 Geek Alumni Top 11 Scariest Geek Movies (oops..11) Top 10 Geek Watches Top 10 Sexiest Geeks - 2005 But, after we reached the end of our top 10 of top 10 geeks list we couldn't resist adding a few more as some of them were down right funny, so here they are: Top 10 Worst Geek Pickup lines Top 10 Signs that you are an Internet Geek Top 10 reasons to date a geek Top 10 differences between Nerds and Geeks Drop a comment if you know more of the interesting top 10 geek's.
45 SEO and Social Media Tools #SESLondon I really lucked out after moderating the morning session at SES London on Social Media Tools by joining the SEO Tools of the Trade session that followed. Both sessions had great speakers and I’ve decided to combine my notes for both into one post about social media automation tools and SEO tools. The sources for the SEO tool recommendations include: Richard Baxter of SEOGadget, Dave Naylor from Bronco, and Neil Walker from Just Search. The social media tool recommendations came from Andrew Girdwood from bigmouthmedia, Paul Madden from Automica and Marcus Tober from SearchMetrics. Before I get into the list of tools, I feel compelled to share a quote that I’ve often used to give people context for tool use, since it’s so important to use them for scale, efficiency and to gain a competitive advantage: “Tools are only as effective as the expertise of the person using them.” Ok, let’s start off with SEO Tools: Social Media Automation Tools (Some are a bit Grayhat SEO) There you go.
Hushmail Hack Yourself A Super Secret LCD Monitor Say you have some paint thinner, a pair of sunglasses, a box cutter and and old LCD computer monitor. Quick, what do you do? I'll tell you what. PHOTOS: Hacker's Playbook: Common Tactics That's right, no need to take your obsolete monitors to the Salvation Army just yet. The monitor is made of two layers of film — polarized and anti-glare. Next, get your paint thinner, or any other solvent, to soften the adhesive that remains on the glass. BLOG: Anonymous Spokesman Flees Over Safety Concerns Now take your sunglasses — or any other frames for that matter — and pop out the lenses. The polarized film is normally used to to filter backlight from what's visible onscreen. [Via GizMag] Credit: Instructables user, dimovi
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