urbansheep@gmail.com

“With the twenty-first century comes a new breed of struggling independent artist: the indie game designer. Refusing to toil for major developers, these innovators independently conceive, design, and program their distinctly personal games in the hope that they, too, may find success. ¶ After two years of painstaking work, designer Edmund McMillen and programmer Tommy Refenes await the release of their first major game for Xbox, Super Meat Boy—the adventures of a skinless boy in search of his girlfriend, who is made of bandages. At PAX, a major video-game expo, developer Phil Fish unveils his highly anticipated, four-years-in-the-making FEZ. Jonathan Blow considers beginning a new game after creating Braid, one of the highest-rated games of all time. ¶ First-time filmmaking duo Lisanne Pajot and James Swirsky capture the emotional journey of these meticulously obsessive artists who devote their lives to their interactive art. Four developers, three games, and one ultimate goal— to express oneself through a video game.” #проигры - × × ×

“Never forget how many coworkers you can get to pretend to like you for only seven dollars.” - × × ×

“The story begins in 2006 with a trip down Route 66. Day in, day out, I looked at U.S. traffic signs that were either set in the old, somewhat clumsy “FHWA font series” or the new Clearview HWY typeface. Approaching the signs, I would often test myself: which typeface works best from a distance, and which of its features or details might be responsible for its performance. I had so many more questions than answers. Surely every professional type designer has at least an inkling of how a signage typeface should look: Probably it sports a rather clean sans serif design, open counters and a rather large x-height. But which x-height works best, and why? What is the optimal stroke width? A monocular or binocular g? Should the design be somewhat condensed to permit more information on a sign, or rather should it be relatively wide so that individual letters are more easily differentiated?” - × × ×

“The viewing data obviously makes a huge difference, but I also find it interesting that there's a clear distinction in the kinds of recommendations people that work if people are going to "watch now" vs. "watch in the future." ¶ I think this is an issue that Netflix probably has faced on the DVD side for years: when people rent a movie that won't arrive for a few days, they're making a bet on what they want at some future point. And, people tend to have a more... optimistic viewpoint of their future selves. That is, they may be willing to rent, say, an "artsy" movie that won't show up for a few days, feeling that they'll be in the mood to watch it a few days (weeks?) in the future, knowing they're not in the mood immediately. ¶ But when the choice is immediate, they deal with their present selves, and that choice can be quite different. It would be great if Netflix revealed a bit more about those differences, but it is already interesting to see that the shift from delayed... - × × ×

Странный тег - × × ×

“Consider that if simplified, there are 3 different types of products out there: ¶ In the first case, we have something like purchasing food. Immediately that hamburger has a lot of value (you’re hungry right?) but after you eat it, the value is largely gone. ¶ In the second case, there are products that deliver the same amount of value to you every day. A newspaper subscription is a great example of this. Every day it shows up at your door and you get the same value from it each time. ¶ In the final case, you see a product whose value increases over time. On day one, you haven’t invested much time into it and you probably don’t even understand how it helps you. However, as you use it more and more and put more into it, the value because increasingly clear. Services like Dropbox and Evernote are perfect examples of this. ¶ By being a paid app, Read It Later was charging like the fast food case, even though the value of our product maps much closer to the second and third graphs. Put simply: From a business perspective, having a user pay $2.99 up-front once and then use the app for 4 years just doesn’t make a lot of sense.” - × × ×

Интригу напустили :) Про бизнес, в смысле. Интересно. - alex@kapranoff.ru

PDF version of my ignite talk, with notes. (I noticed that PDFs get read 3x-6x more than keynote files.) - × × ×

“Art director/graphic designer Erin Jang got her start working in New York City for magazines like Martha Stewart Living and Esquire. She recently set out on her own to open The Indigo Bunting, a studio where she continues to focus on magazine design and illustration as well as custom invitations and paper goods. Her latest project, Food Sketches, might inspire your 4pm snack craving today. Listen up to the music mix that keeps her humming in our newest Playlist.” - × × ×

“I love this image because it shows three events: Fireworks to celebrate Australia Day; lightning from a beautiful thunderstorm and in the middle of the two you can see Comet McNaught” - × × ×

Одна из немногих мирных фотографий там. - mindszenty

#now_this_is_awesome ∙ #фотосерии ∙ #профото - × × ×

«Министерство образования и науки РФ решило вычистить русский язык от загрязняющих его иностранных терминов, провести ревизию словарей и справочников, а также создать интерактивную справочную службу по вопросам русского языка. В онлайновой справочной будут работать квалифицированные специалисты — кандидаты и доктора филологических наук. Бюджет на все эти цели — 4,5 млн рублей.» - × × ×

какого-то андроида неправильного нарисовали, оранжевого и квадратного - кот от котов

just what half of the colon is this semicolon? - кот от котов

220к фотографий в пуле как-то удивляют. #flickrussian - × × ×

“Просторнее всего на самом верху, потому что никто по-настоящему туда не хочет.” - Правила жизни Роберта Олтмена, Esquire - × × ×

А потом перестаёшь замечать эффект, пока не сойдёшь обратно в пучины детокса, и вот тогда уже снова учишься жить тупым животным, которому ничего особенно не нужно. #better_living_through_chemistry - × × ×

#триумфы_локализации - × × ×

""As for the origin of the word," Longreads' Armstrong told me, "I just used to see people use it as an offhand remark, or even a warning: 'Prepare yourself: it's a long read.' I thought it could be turned instead into a badge of honor, rather than something to be shunned. I made it one word for hashtagging simplicity (#longreads) and gave it an exact definition — non-fiction or fiction over 1,500 words." Lammer's origin for "longform" is less exacting — "There is no great story as to why we're longform.org rather than long-form.org or long_form.org, other than dashes and underscores in URLs suck" — and maybe more interestingly, so is his definition — "Knowing what to call these kinds of pieces is tricky, but whether they're called them 'New-Yorker-kinda-stuff,' 'features,' '2000 words +.' or '#longreads,' — you know it when you see it."" - × × ×

"Before he ever stepped foot in Iraq, Washington Post reporter Ed O’Keefe had already navigated his way through landmines, used a tourniquet to help an injured person, and been ambushed. He did all this and more in a hostile environment training course that he took prior to a six-and-a-half week reporting stint in Iraq. The training, he said, helped prepare him for what to expect and made him more aware of the precautions he needed to take to stay safe." - × × ×

"Why doesn't the publishing industry want these consumers? For one thing, the US and European book-buying libraries have been willing pay the prices necessary to keep the industry happy - and not just happy, in many cases obscenely profitable. Rather than provide our work at cheap enough prices that anyone in the world might purchase, they have taken the opposite route - making the prices higher and higher until only very rich institutions can afford them. Scholarly publishers have made the trade-off between offering a very low price to a very large market or a very high price to a very small market. But here is the rub: books and their scholars are the losers in this trade-off - especially cutting edge research from the best institutions in the world. The publishing industry we have today cannot - or will not - deliver our books to this enormous global market of people who desperately want to read them. Instead, they print a handful of copies - less than 100, often - and sell them to libraries for hundreds of dollars each. When they do offer digital versions, they are so wrapped up in restrictions and encumbrances and licencing terms as to make using them supremely frustrating." #прокниги - × × ×

“Christopher M Kelty is an Associate Professor of Information Studies and Anthropology at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is the author of Two Bits: The Cultural Significance of Free Software. ¶ The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.” - × × ×