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BlogsTags > gamesFour short links: 9 May 2013By Nat TorkingtonMay 9, 2013 On Google’s Ingress Game (ReadWrite Web) — By rolling out Ingress to developers at I/O, Google hopes to show how mobile, location, multi-player and augmented reality functions can be integrated into developer application offerings. In that way, Ingress becomes a … A very serious game that can cure the orphan diseasesBy Andy OramMay 2, 2013 In the inspiring tradition of Foldit, the game for determining protein shapes, Fit2Cure crowdsources the problem of finding drugs that can cure the many under-researched diseases of developing countries. Fit2Cure appeals to the player’s visual–even physical–sense of the world, and … Four short links: 11 April 2013By Nat TorkingtonApril 11, 2013 A General Technique for Automating NES Games — software that learns how to play NES games and plays them automatically, using an aesthetically pleasing technique. With video, research paper, and code. rietveld — open source tool like Mondrian, Google’s code … Talk the Talk, Walk the Dead 
By Peter DrescherMarch 23, 2013 This is a story about a video game with the emotional power of a movie. Rethinking gamesBy Mike LoukidesMarch 20, 2013 At a recent board games night hosted by Greg Brown (@practicingruby), we played a game called “Pandemic” that made me rethink the meaning of games. I won’t bother you with a detailed description; it’s enough to say that there are … Learning from a video game publisher’s demiseBy Paul RhodesFebruary 22, 2013 So, it’s done. After years of speculation, THQ went under the Chapter 11 auction hammer, most of it going to rival publishers, with the majority of the remaining employees losing their jobs. (THQ’s letter to its employees, along with who … Four short links: 14 February 2013By Nat TorkingtonFebruary 14, 2013 Welcome to the Malware-Industrial Complex (MIT) — brilliant phrase, sound analysis. Stupid Stupid xBox — The hardcore/soft-tv transition and any lead they feel they have is simply not defensible by licensing other industries’ generic video or music content because those … Becoming a community-centric content publisherBy Paul RhodesJanuary 18, 2013 Following on from my last post, which began a conversation about similarities between the book publishing and gaming industries, I see the second key pivot as actually the most important one. The formats I talk about in that first post … Lightning strikes twice: The first digital pivotBy Paul RhodesJanuary 17, 2013 We’re often told in publishing to look to other media for inspiration for the digital transition. Indeed, I have been an often vocal and staunch supporter of bringing in skills from other industries to help us build the skillsets we … Outthink Inc. believes learning should be funBy Andrea SheehanJanuary 3, 2013 Most of us who pursued careers in publishing did so because reading, in some way, impacted us as kids. But kids today live in a vastly changed world, and tablets have now taken over. One in four adults owns a … Four short links: 24 December 2012By Nat TorkingtonDecember 24, 2012 Creating The Next Big Thing (Wired) — excellent piece showing Tim’s thinking. Apple. They’re clearly on the wrong path. They file patent suits that claim that nobody else can make a device with multitouch. But they didn’t invent multitouch. They … Big data is helping EA level upBy Ron MillerDecember 12, 2012 Electronic Arts (EA) isn’t the first company that comes to mind when you think of big data. Yet the gaming company is collecting increasing amounts of data about its online players, and as this data accumulates and gains steam, it … Four short links: 30 November 2012By Nat TorkingtonNovember 30, 2012 Kids Use Minecraft to Design School — “Students have been massively enthusiastic, with many turning up early to school to work on their Minecraft designs and they continue to do so at home too.” Also see the school’s blog. Napster, … Four short links: 20 November 2012By Nat TorkingtonNovember 20, 2012 When Transaction Costs Collapse — As OECD researchers reported recently, 99.5 per cent of reciprocal access agreements occur informally without written contracts. Paradoxically, as competition becomes more intense or ”perfect”, it becomes indistinguishable from perfect co-operation – a neat trick … Four short links: 15 November 2012By Nat TorkingtonNovember 15, 2012 Atkinson Dithering in Real Time — a Processing app that renders what the video camera sees, as though it were an original Mac black and white image. Patching Binaries — a patch for a crashing bug during import of account … Four short links: 7 November 2012By Nat TorkingtonNovember 7, 2012 A Slower Speed of Light — game where you control the speed of light and discover the wonders of relativity. (via Andy Baio) Facebook Demetricator — removes all statistics and numbers from Facebook’s chrome (“37 people like this” becomes “people … Four short links: 6 November 2012By Nat TorkingtonNovember 6, 2012 Tilt-to-Fly Controller and Copter (Kickstarter) — This looks totally awesome and hackable. The controller has a USB port, the protocol is documented, and you can even connect your own electronics payload, like an Arduino, camera, or homebrewed project to the … Four short links: 24 October 2012By Nat TorkingtonOctober 24, 2012 Restoration of Defocused and Blurry Images — impressive demos, and open source (GPLv3) code. All those blurred faces and documents no longer seem so safe. Peter Molyneux Profile in Wired — worth reading for: (a) Molyneux’s contribution to the genre; … Four short links: 7 September 2012
By Nat TorkingtonSeptember 7, 2012 GS-Collections (GitHub) — Goldman Sachs open-sourced (Apache-licensed) their Java collection library, full of lambda goodness. No report on whether it requires a 750G bailout. Learning ZIL — old manual for the interactive fiction programming language that Zork and other Infocom … Four short links: 5 September 2012
By Nat TorkingtonSeptember 6, 2012 DIY Spectrometry Kit — This open hardware kit costs only $35, but has a range of more than 400-900 nanometers, and a resolution of as high as 3 nm. A spectrometer is essentially a tool to measure the colors absorbed … Games for Health covers current status of behavior changeBy Andy OramJune 15, 2012 A few existing and upcoming projects that illustrate what games are doing in health care, and some trends to watch. Games for Health covers current status of behavior change
By Andy OramJune 15, 2012 A few existing and upcoming projects that illustrate what games are doing in health care, and some trends to watch. Four short links: 19 April 2012
By Nat TorkingtonApril 19, 2012 Superfastmatch -- open source text comparison tool, used to locate plagiarism/churnalism in online news sites. You can pull out the text engine and use it for your own "find where this text is used elsewhere" applications (e.g., what's being forwarded out in email, how much of this RFP is copy and paste, what's NOT boilerplate in this contract, etc.).... The Secret Yanni Technique, with key changes
By Peter DrescherApril 2, 2012 What if the game's audio engine kept track of what key was playing, and generated bonus sounds to match? I wanted to demonstrate this approach, and so wrote a game for the Android platform called LandSeaAir that uses the FMOD Interactive Music System to do just that. Four short links: 30 March 2012
By Nat TorkingtonMarch 30, 2012 TypeConnection -- a game that teaches you how to match fonts and why successful matches work. (via Sacha Judd) Lessons Learned Building Open Source Software (Mitchel Hashimoto) -- the creator of Vagrant talks about the lesson he's learned building a great open source project. Kickstarter Post-Mortem (Ze Frank) -- excellent dig into the details of his campaign, what worked,... Developer Week in Review: The mysterious Google I/O machine 
By James TurnerMarch 22, 2012 While we wait to sign up for two of the major conferences of the year, Google has released a brainteaser, Java suffers another security breach, and a new language prepares for takeoff. Top Stories: March 12-16, 2012 
By Mac SlocumMarch 16, 2012 This week on O'Reilly: Computational linguist Robert Munro explained why location language is far more complex than many realize, we looked at how Kickstarter's crowdfunding is helping game developers, and Joe Wikert explored the major trends shaping ebook prices. Developer Week in Review: When game development met KickstarterBy James TurnerMarch 15, 2012 Crowdsourcing is changing how software development gets funded. It's also driving one of the great reference guides of the 20th century out of print. Four short links: 15 March 2012
By Nat TorkingtonMarch 15, 2012 atomize.js -- a distributed Software Transactional Memory implementation in Javascript. mari0 -- not only a great demonstration of what's possible in web games, but also a clever mashup of Mario and Portal. Lessons From BerkeleyDB -- chapter on BerkeleyDB's design, architecture, and development philosophy from Architecture of Open Source Applications. (via Pete Warden) An API Ontology -- I currently... Developer Week in Review: When game development met Kickstarter
By James TurnerMarch 15, 2012 Crowdsourcing is changing how software development gets funded. It's also driving one of the great reference guides of the 20th century out of print. Four short links: 29 February 2012
By Nat TorkingtonFebruary 29, 2012 StuxNet Deep Dive -- extremely technical talk, but this page has a redux. The presenter's thesis, well-argued, is that StuxNet was absolutely aimed specifically at the Natanz facility. (via Chris Douglas) Smithsonian Digitizing Items (CNet) -- two-person project, only able to do a few items a year, but still an excellent advance. See also Bronwyn Holloway-Smith's art project around... Developer Week in Review: NASA says goodbye to big iron
By James TurnerFebruary 16, 2012 This week, NASA marked the end of an era, as the last of its big iron is retired. Microsoft continues to signal that its forays into open source are legitimate. And a new open source gaming project has a little extra horse-power, thanks to the fans behind it. Four short links: 16 February 2012
By Nat TorkingtonFebruary 16, 2012 The Undue Weight of Truth (Chronicle of Higher Education) -- Wikipedia has become fossilized fiction because the mechanism of self-improvement is broken. Playfic -- Andy Baio's new site that lets you write text adventures in the browser. Great introduction to programming for language-loving kids and adults. Review of Alone Together (Chris McDowall) -- I loved this review, its sentiments,... Four short links: 23 January 2012
By Nat TorkingtonJanuary 23, 2012 Adafruit Flora -- wearable electronics and accessories platform. (via Tim O'Reilly) Killed by Code -- paper on software vulnerabilities in implantable medical devices. Discovered via Karen Sandler's wow-generating keynote at linux.conf.au (covered here). (via Selena Deckelmann) DIY London -- fun little Budget-Hero game to make apparent the trade-offs facing politicians. Kids should play Sim* and Civilization games: you get... Four short links: 3 January 2012
By Nat TorkingtonJanuary 3, 2012 What the Sumerians Can Teach Us About Data (Pete Warden) -- money quote: Gathering data is not a neutral act, it will alter the power balance, usually in favor of the people collecting the information. I also loved the Sumerian boundary marker covered in the supernatural equivalent of "copying is a federal crime!" pre-roll DVD warnings. 2011 Holiday Shopping... Four short links: 27 December 2011
By Nat TorkingtonDecember 27, 2011 Write Logs for Machines -- argues that services should log in a format suitable for automated analysis, not for humans to read as has been the custom in the past. tmpltr -- Javascript template previewer, open source on github. Dspace Badge -- what my son and I are building this week, our first Arduino project. Prince of Persia C64... Three game characteristics that can be applied to educationBy Marie BjeredeNovember 7, 2011 Cloud technologies and thoughtful roadmapping of digital technology can ensure that authenticity, social interaction, and play remain central components of education. Three game characteristics that can be applied to educationBy Marie BjeredeNovember 7, 2011 Cloud technologies and thoughtful roadmapping of digital technology can ensure that authenticity, social interaction, and play remain central components of education. Four short links: 18 October 2011
By Nat TorkingtonOctober 18, 2011 Web Search Education (Google) -- lesson plans and materials for teaching people how to use search, from operators to critically evaluating sites. This latter area is the weakest: when I teach innocents about the web, I show them organic vs paid results, discuss why people advertise, how people pay for their sites, noticing domain names and organizations, etc. I... Four short links: 13 October 2011
By Nat TorkingtonOctober 13, 2011 Memorable Indexes (Futility Closet) -- Carroll's index also includes entries for "Boots for horizontal weather," "Horizontal rain, boots for," "Rain, horizontal, boots for," and "Weather, horizontal, boots for". They're silly and whimsical, but the underlying problem of making multiple accessible entrypoints into a single corpus of content is with us today and only compounded by the vast growth of... Four short links: 7 October 2011
By Nat TorkingtonOctober 7, 2011 Viber -- more and more people are wanting to talk to me via this, rather than Skype or direct phone call (req. wifi). Can't tell whether massive disruptor or toy. Who Killed Videogames -- “The players will come for the cute characters, and stay for the cruel mathematics.” Visual Diffs for Open Source Hardware -- just what it says.... Strata Week: Crowdsourcing and gaming spur a scientific breakthroughBy Audrey WattersSeptember 22, 2011 In this week's data news: Fold.it gamers help with HIV research, Twitter eyes data analytics, and Google testifies before the Senate. Strata Week: Crowdsourcing and gaming spur a scientific breakthrough September 22, 2011 In this week's data news: Fold.it gamers help with HIV research, Twitter eyes data analytics, and Google testifies before the Senate. ePayments Week: The economics of in-app purchases August 18, 2011 Flurry says gamers are more likely to buy goods they use than ones that last. Also, Safaricom sells buckets of $80 Android phones in Kenya, and some thoughts on what makes a good app. Four short links: 12 August 2011
By Nat TorkingtonAugust 12, 2011 Hippocampus Text Adventure -- written as an exercise in learning Python, you explore the hippocampus. It's simple, but I like the idea of educational text adventures. (Well, educational in that you learn about more than the axe-throwing behaviour of the cave-dwelling dwarf) Pandas -- BSD-licensed Python data analysis library. Building Lanyrd -- Simon Willison's talk (with slides) about the... Four short links: 19 July 2011
By Nat TorkingtonJuly 19, 2011 Tame.js -- async programming library for use with node.js and other V8 projects. (via Hacker News) The Rise of PDF Malware (Symantec) -- detailed whitepaper showing the incident rate, techniques, and evasion techniques of PDF malware. Despite the fact that the number of PDF CVEs [Common Vulnerability/Exposure] are close to Microsoft Office’s numbers, the amount of nonunique PDF attacks... Four short links: 18 July 2011
By Nat TorkingtonJuly 18, 2011 Organisational Warfare (Simon Wardley) -- notes on the commoditisation of software, with interesting analyses of the positions of some large players. On closer inspection, Salesforce seems to be doing more than just commoditisation with an ILC pattern, as can be clearly seen from Radian's 6 acquisition. They also seem to be operating a tower and moat strategy, i.e. creating... Four short links: 15 July 2011
By Nat TorkingtonJuly 15, 2011 The Gender Question -- a clever solution to the vexed question of asking users for their gender. (via Luke Wroblewski) Katamari Damacy Creator Joins Glitch -- an amazing coup for Stewart Butterfield's new game. How Online Companies Get You to Spend More and Share More (Wired) -- Dan Ariely ("Predictably Irrational") tackles Amazon, Netflix, Groupon, etc. and shows how... Developer Week in Review: The unglamorous life of video game developers
By James TurnerJuly 7, 2011 The folks who make video games sound the alarm bells on working conditions, governments try to break the Internet, and MITRE unveils 2011's most dangerous software errors. Four short links: 4 July 2011
By Nat TorkingtonJuly 4, 2011 Let There Be Smite (Pippin Barr) -- simple diversion for the 4th of July. It won't be easy for God to save America. (via Pippin's blog) Basel Wear -- to answer the question I know was burning on your lips: "what *did* the Swiss wear in 1634?" Impressively detailed pictures from a 1634 book that is now online. One... 1 to 50 of 114 Next Stay Connected
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